Hyeonverse: The Last of the Balagans

People rushed in. Getting up, Ranta fled stumbling back to his car.

"Hyeon!" Tommy leaned over her body. "Are you alright?"

Blood pooled in her mouth.

Night had fallen when they arrived at the Balagan residence.

"Why didn't you lie down on the back seat?" Tommy helped the girl drag herself out of the shotgun seat.

"No, thanks," she grunted, nursing her swollen left cheek. "There are already enough seamen in there to man the Pacific Fleet."

Tommy winced. This fucking kid...

"Hey, hmm... thanks for helping me back there. Again..."

"Does this mean..."

"You're not touching the Firebird."

"You fuck..."

"You don't even have a mechanic certificate. Hyeon, why do you wanna fix cars so badly?"

"Because."

"Because.. what?"

"Because..." she eyed the pavement. "I wanna be like you, Tommy."

"Fuck outta here..."

"You get to be around cars and bikes all day, fix them, play with them,,, and you're good at it too!"

"You're good too. No, Vailea tells me you're a great P.I.!"

"I hate being a P.I.."

"What? Does your Da... does Cormac knows?"

"I'm not gownna tell him that, you crazy? It'd break his heart," she leaned against the Pontiac. "I just... I just can't do this anymore, been sneaking and spying and snooping since I was eight. Cheaters and thieves and liars and schemers... I'm sick owf it all. Just last month I saw two women shoot each other on the street."

"Geez..."

"I need... I need to do what you do." Her perpetual sneer was gone, but Tommy recognized those eyes. They were the same ones that had stared at his Mother's all his life, pleading for an act of kindness, a gesture of affection. Any kind of human warmth.

"... Okay."

"Owkay?"

"I'll let you help out in the garage."

"You will?"

"On one condition. You join the youth automotive training program, which means you go to school like a regular human girl. And after school, I'll show you the ropes."

"You've gowtta be fucking kidding me... school?"

"It's time you've learned to be around people, Hyeon."

"Fuck!" she groaned. "Fuuck..."

A taxi parked next to the Pontiac and a woman fully dressed in black came out, a jade bracelet shining on her wrist.

"The notorious Mrs. Vee," Tommy thought to himself. "We meet at last."

His smile died when her piercing green eyes fell upon him. Eyes that had seen death.

Hyeon's Belarusian Mother opened the side door, and the girl slid inside like a little mouse. Tommy watched the car drive off into the night.

Eyes followed him when he walked inside.

CHASING THE RAINBOW

A fountain pen rested on the foyer dresser, the one Hyeon carried around wherever she went. Smiling, Tommy grabbed it, noticing its weight.

She'd probably be back in the morning wondering where she had left it this time.

Tommy put it back.

His Mother wasn't in her room sleeping. Her shift at UpNorth Miller Co. would start in a few hours. Worried, Tommy heard a knock at the door.

"Hi, Tommy..." Kay grinned. She looked ravishing in a sexy beige dress holding a brown gift box and big brown balloons.

"It's not my birthday," he tried closing the door, but she slid her shoe in.

"P-please don't send me away, we have to talk."

"Go away, Kay," he hissed. "You're engaged to be married!"

"Not anymore. I gave Ricky his ring back," she showed him her fingers. "I love you, Tommy."

"You just love fucking," he sighed.

"Yeah, I love that too," she smiled, sliding inside. "but tell me you don't like fucking me too, you don't love these tits."

Seeing them again so close, he caved. Fuck, those really were an amazing pair of tits.

Kay glided into the living room, twirling.

"Oh, my God, your house is gorgeous! I had never seen..."

"What's in the box?"

She turned to face him with a mischievous smile.

"I can't give you the sky," Kay handed him the box. "So I'll give you the rainbow instead."

Tommy raised his eyebrow, opening it while Kay ran around turning on the lights. Soon, the house was as bright and festive as it had been during his parents' parties all those years ago.

There was a pair of shades inside the box.

"Well,... thanks, I guess?"

"Put them on!"

"At night?

"Just put them, you bozo!"

Glaring at her nonsense, Tommy put the shades on.

"Now they tell me this may take a bit to work, but it should..." Kay looked at Tommy nervously.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary, at first.

Then, Tommy noticed the yellow and green flowers on the wallpaper. And then the purple curtains. The yellow couch. The balloons, red, pink, yellow, blue...

"Oh, my God..." Tommy exploded. "It is amazing!"

"Isn't it?"

He turned to Kay and her tearful and fascinating green eyes smiled at him. Eyes that matched her dress and shoes.

"Oh... my... God..."

"Night, old sport," her voice crackled with happiness. "So, what do I look like in color?"

Staring at her from top to bottom, Tommy lifted Kay in the air, spinning on the living room.

He pulled her down to him and whispered:

"You remind me of a rose."

They fell on the couch and Tommy took the shades off and put them back on again.

"I.. I had no idea... is this.. is this yellow?"

"That's yellow. That's green, that's purple, that's red, and that's blue."

"That's red? Oh, my God, I always thought it was... geez!"

"What about pink, have you ever seen pink?" She put her hand on her cleavage, taking out a pink pregnancy test.

It was positive.

"is.. is it...?" Tommy stammered.

"Happy birthday, Daddy!" Kay jumped on his arms and Tommy broke into laughter, kissing her.

Their clothes flew away before they had landed on his bed. Within minutes, his lips were kissing her love button. Her orgasm was sublime.

Pushing Tommy back on the sheets, she climbed on top of him and finally took him in his own bed, claiming all of him for herself.

They fucked rabid and desperately for hours.

It was almost midnight when exhaustion finally conquered them.

THE SAD CLOWN

Loneliness woke him up.

Something was missing, but he couldn't place it.

Kay purred, clinging to him in her sleep. Had he left that bedroom door open?

Tommy walked downstairs, wondering why the house felt so empty.

The shades felt weird in his face, but he couldn't get enough of the colors. Now that the excitement had faded, he could admire his surroundings and the harmonious way the colors played with each other, mixing and matching in a charming visual rapport.

Triadic color scheme, Hyeon had called it; whatever that meant. Probably another artistic term she had learned from her Meth hooker friend Kim.

"You think she doesn't know you've been sleeping with Kay?" the girl whispered in his head.

How would Madeline know about him and Kay?

Tommy remembered the Namibian tribe of men who could see a million different shades of green but had never noticed blue. What had he failed to notice?

Her fountain pen still rested on the dresser. It felt heavy. Tommy played with the push-button and the muffled sound of a shutter responded.

That horrible girl had hidden a camera in his house.

Furious, Tommy inspected the device to find a hidden USB port.

Connecting the pen to his laptop, a 2 Gb folder popped up with video files inside.

He clicked on the oldest one and a tiny, lovely living room appeared. The camera panned to show Hyeon's most prized possession, a shelf filled with miniature toy motorbikes. She started humming Born to be Wild off camera.

The camera veered to a huge black man in his early sixties snoring on a couch. Her adoptive Dad, Cormac the P.I. was sleeping; on his lap, a book dangerously close to falling to the ground.

Hyeon's finger poked his nose and Cormac stopped snoring before resuming. The finger poked him three more times, interrupting Cormac's snoring at each turn. The girl giggled in delight.

"Hyeon!" someone reprimanded her.

The shot panned to Mrs. Vee at a table in a tiny kitchen, cleaning a Soviet Zastava M76 sniper rifle; gun parts spread in front of her.

"Turn that shit off."

"Sowrry, Mrs. Vee!"

The second file showed Hyeon in Tommy's foyer angling the camera to capture the Balagan household. Satisfied, she left through the back door and five seconds later, the camera turned itself off.

The third file opened with the same static shot of his house. What could have triggered the camera's motion detection?

Then, Tommy saw it.

On the first floor, the hatch to the attic opened quietly and the stairs descended.

Madeline climbed down the steps.

"Tommy... you can have Madeline anytime you want. You always could," Hyeon had told him.

She was gorgeous, even with a sleepy face.

Yawning, she headed into the bathroom and emerged an hour later in a floral dress.

Madeline proceeded to dust and clean the house, watering the orchids at the back and varnishing the wooden floors, only pausing to study Hyeon's fountain pen.

Her eyes were blue.

Grabbing a set of paintings under her arm, she headed out through the backdoor, locking it. She had kept the spare key after all these years.

Two hours later, Madeline rushed in terrified and climbed to the attic.

Tommy's heart skipped a beat, was she still there?

Another file filmed just recently caught his attention.

Charissa had arrived home, sitting on the couch. There was a gun in her hand. He recognized Mike's gun.

From the camera angle, all Tommy could see was her head rocking in and out of frame, eyes lost in space.

"Crr... crr... crr..."

His eyes kept traveling to the attic hatch. If his Mother found out there was an intruder in the attic, she could shoot Madeline.

Tommy scrubbed the timeline, and Charissa was still in the same position one, two hours later.

Finally, she got up and left, missing Tommy by mere minutes.

What was she planning to do with Mike's gun? He knew she had been depressed for years, could she be planning to kill herself? Kill him, like his Father had tried?

Fear took hold of his fingers, he needed to see more of what the girl's hidden camera had witnessed.

The next file captured the last events between him and Kay, ending with the couple kissing and rushing upstairs to his bedroom.

His heart raced, he had had sex with Kay while Madeline was hiding in there the whole time.

The hatch opened and Madeline climbed out with her paintings and a bag. She opened his bedroom door and stood watching him and Kay asleep. Crying, Madeline headed for the back door. Through its translucent panels he saw her silhouette lock it from the outside, put the spare key in the orchids' vase and walk out of his life.

The orchids' vase was still at the back.

Grabbing it, Tommy walked back in and sat on the couch, laying it on the coffee table.

He dug through the dirt and found the key tied to the ribbon she had proudly worn around her neck. Holding it close to his heart, Tommy cried.

The attic had been cleaned.

Torn pencil sketches of him in his sleep littered the floor.

It wasn't a dream, she really did come to his room several times.

A mattress lay by the window with blankets carefully folded on it. A crumpled pink paper flower rested on the pillow. It was brown on that day he had first stared into her eyes. Hugging the pillow, Tommy smelled Madeline's precious flowery scent.

She was gone, he had finally managed to completely destroy her.

Tommy walked down the stairs and into the living room holding the paper flower to his heart.

"Crr... crr... crr..."

He saw the gun first, the barrel aimed at his chest. Clarissa glared at him.

"Mom...?"

Tears streamed down his face, there was so much hatred in her eyes. The gun was meant for him after all. Tommy finally understood why she had never shown him any love or tenderness as a child. She wanted him dead too, just like Dad.

And how could she not? He had destroyed everything he had ever touched. He had let Madeline slip away between his fingers.

"He's a fucking disease!"

Tommy lowered his head, feeling empty and foolish. This was it.

His way out of everything wrong with his life. In a few moments, he would be free, dead and gone. Relief took hold of him and a hysterical giggle climbed out of his throat.

Tommy sprung up.

Despair drove him, powered by twenty years of rejection.

He was Ray Raven for one last time, dancing and grinning like a sad clown.

The voices that had taunted him in his childhood were his soundtrack as he spun on his toes, cutting frantic shapes with his legs and arms.

The gun followed his pathetic grin as he waved it all goodbye with one last performance, his 'Farewell and fuck you' to the world he had been shat into. Segueing from a Soulja Boy to a moonwalk to a B-Boy Power move, Tommy threw himself to the ground and circled his Mother doing a ridiculous Worm.

He finished with his arms stretched in the air and a stupid smile, waiting for the hail of gunfire. His lips were frozen in a grin but his eyes pleaded at her, begging to be put out of his loneliness and misery.

The bullets never came.

Tears were sliding down Charissa's face.

Her son's smile, that broken grin. It was Carl's smile, the one she had fallen in love with all those years ago.

And she had made that, through a lifetime of neglect and coldness.

Her shoulders twitched, and she lowered the gun, crying.

How could she have done this to her beautiful little boy?

At that moment, at the Brooklyn Mercy Rayne Clinic, an ominous beeping alerted the nurses to a flatlining patient.

They scrambled to resurrect him, in vain.

"Maestro" Carl Balagan died peacefully in his sleep on October the 5th, 2016.

Charissa reached out for the child she had rejected for twenty years.

Suddenly, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Footsteps rushed from behind her. Charissa lifted the Ruger LCR 9mm by instinct and Tommy screamed:

"Kay, no!"

Bam! Bam!

A bullet embedded itself on a step. The other dove into the wall plaster.

Kay lifted her arms and smashed the orchids' vase on Charissa's head.

Whud!

"Mom!" Tommy screamed, running to his Mother's aid.

Her head was covered in blood. He turned to his girlfriend and shouted.

"You've killed my Mom!"

"She... she was gonna kill you!"

"You... bitch!"

THE BROWN KITCHEN

"I'm done."

"What happened?"

"I got my ass kicked, that's what happened. I'm out; your boss-lady ain't payin' me enough for this shit."

"Fil, calm down. Start from the beginning."

"Okay, I was getting home and there was this black guy sitting there reading a book."

"Who was he? What did he look like?"

"I dunno; old, gray hair, sixties, big as a house."

"I don't know anyone by that description..."

"Well, he knew me! He saw me going in, got up and went 'Filbert Ranta?' I said 'Yeah, is me' and Kablamo! Knocks me right in the chin, I didn't even see his arm move."

"You got clocked? By an old guy?"

"Fuck off, Ed! This guy was a beast, he'd eat you up in a single bite. One hit and my whole head was ringing. He pulled me up and hit me again, twice. Whamo! Kablamo! Old fuckface Hinkley was there watching with his hound, he did nothing. Lenny Tabasco, Donnie Weaver, all the Motherfuckers saw this cunt turn me into lasagna and they just stared. Louie Frizell was actually smiling; I mean, yeah sure, I've fucked his sister but geez!"

"You... you must have seen something, a clue, what was he wearing? What book was he reading?"

"I dunno, 'Alexander' something, from that movie we saw."

"Alexander Unleashed."

"Yeah. This cunt grabs me by the collar and goes 'Libras can't fight for shit.'"

"You're a Libra? I always figured you for a Leo."

"Libra, with Ascendant in Gemini. The guy shook me, realized my brain was quiche and went. 'Stay away from the Balagans. Next time you so much as look at my baby girl, I will blow your fucking brains out.' I'm done."

"Fil, the lady paid you half in advance."

"I'm out! Geez, look at this, the prick broke my tooth. Motherfu..."

His cousin hung up.

Edmond sighed, staring at his soup. Outside, the wind blew across the Central Park trees. He could hear the ma'am gossiping in the kitchen with her daughter Kitty about the son's upcoming wedding. What was he gonna tell her now?

The doorbell rang.

"Edmond," The ma'am called. "Door!"

Straightening his suit, Edmond walked toward the door.

"Tiramisu, caramel cupcakes and profiteroles fowr Ms. Kitty Reid-Tinsley," a green-haired Asian girl in glasses stood before him holding an Arnaud's pastry paper box. Her swollen left cheek and bloodshot eye hinted at a background of violence and the makeup added a good five years, but Edmond couldn't picture her as more than fifteen, sixteen tops. Still, it wasn't in his job description to question Arnaud's hiring practices.

Edmond extended his hands to receive the package and the girl sneered.

"Fuck out of my way, Alfred. Lady specifically asked fowr hand delivery."

"Of course..." he rolled his eyes, familiar with Mistress Kitty's shenanigans. "This way, please."

He ushered the girl into the kitchen where the two mature women sat chatting over a cup of Twinings English Breakfast Tea.

"Arnaud's pastries? Oh, Kitty, what am I ever going to do with you?" the elderly woman raised her eyebrows. "You've heard the Doctor, no sugar!"

"I didn't order anything..." her daughter defended herself. "I honestly didn't."

Sensing an upcoming argument, Edmond left them to their own devices and retreated to the living room.

Watching him leave, the teenage girl placed the package on the table, cocked a hand on her hip and extended the other at them.

"That will be twenty-eight bucks fifty cents, cash."

Intrigued, Kitty reached for her purse while the elderly one opened the paper pastry box.

Inside, a huge dog turd stared back at her.

"Whu... what is the meaning of this?"

The younger woman turned to look and the delivery girl grabbed her arm, twisting it. Kitty screamed in pain.

"That's your dinner, bitches."

The attacker shoved her forward, landing Kitty's face on the table inches away from the pastry box. The elderly woman scrambled to close it and remove it from the table, placing it on the kitchen island.

"Ms. Reid, is everything alright?" Edmond rushed into the kitchen, alarmed. He was greeted by a yellow Taser staring at him. The teenage girl signaled the butler to join the women.

"P-please..." tears began to stream from Kitty's eyes. "Just t-take the money..."

"I down't want your fucking mowney, bitch!"

The elderly woman noticed the girl's speech impediment, but something else caught her eyes. The sneer, that obnoxious little mouth.

"You're... you're the assistant mechanic..." she stuttered. "The girl in the garage..."

Hyeon looked at the gray-haired woman.

"You? You're the one who hired Ranta?" she probed the older woman. "Owf course! Ricky's rich Grandma Reid! Eliza... Lisa.. Isa..."

"My friends call me Izzy. You may address me as Mrs. Reid. Please leave my daughter alone," the woman straightened up. "I'm the one you want."

"I should have known... you've been a naughty girl, Grandma Izzy."

"Yes, I hired Mr. Ranta to teach Tommy Balagan a valuable lesson. Yes, I would do it all over again," she stared in defiance. "I've had it with people like him taking whatever they want. The Reids protect their own."