Author's Note: Penance's critical opinion notwithstanding, this chapter does not imply thatI believe 'Conan the Destroyer' is in any way superior to 'Conan the Barbarian'. The latter is a classic sword-and-sandal revenge story (with James Earl Jones as the bad guy!). The former is a dumbed-down slapstick mess written only to please squabbling kiddies.
Penance only prefers 'Destroyer' because he's (mentally) 12 years old, and thus his taste in movies is objectively terrible. Kids kinda suck, that way…
…Well, at least his taste in music isn't quite as bad...
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"Living Easy Without Family Ties"
Philadelphia – 1984
The blast of the orchestra brought him to his feet. Penance spun about, reeling in the darkness. His pulse dropped off when he looked up at the screen, blinking sleepily: it was just the movie's opening credits. He wagged his head and brushed a few stray crusts of sleep out of his eyes. His little freak-out made some of the other movie patrons turn around, looking back at him with quizzical frowns. He quickly slumped back down into his seat. He was nestled in the back row, hiding in the far corner of the theater.
It was already the next show time. Penance had fallen asleep during the end credits, and those wage-slave teens manning the cleaning crew must've missed him. They probably overlooked the boy in their single-minded zeal to get the whole theater as clean as possible.
Penance smirked. Given that the soles of his shoes were about to peel apart on that horrible, sticky floor at any given step, that explanation was about as plausible as his constant excuses for why he never seemed to grow out of his clothing. They were never any good, really; the best he could ever do was say that some doctor in his past had diagnosed him with "something called a 'glandular disorder'." That explanation tended to work out just fine, until he actually saw any doctors, who without fail never found any problems in any of Penance's glands. And, unfortunately for the boy, medical care around the world just seemed to keep getting better and better. He could remember a time when kids never even got to seea doctor unless they were dying, or in horrible and blinding agony. In fact, it usually had to be both.
Ah, those were the good 'ol days...
He scratched at his head, still waking up, and he looked over at Galabeg; the macabre fox's head held a silent vigil atop the boy's backpack.
"What're you looking at?" Penance grumbled under his breath.
Despite the rude awakening Penance left the theater in high spirits. The movie was great. It was much better than that previous film, 'Conan the Barbarian'. Now, that movie wasn't too bad— it had good special effects, and the story was okay— but it was all so darn serious all the time. This one— 'Conan the Destroyer'— was a lot more fun to watch, and it had some seriously great scenes. There was that part where Schwarzenegger tried to make friends with a camel, and it spit up on him, so Arnold knocked it right on the head with his fist and the big animal just fell straight down to the ground. It was hilarious! Penance couldn't stop laughing at it, and he was giggling long after the scene ended.
Of course, the best part of this movie was that it actually had a straight-up adventure story: rescue the princess, defeat the evil queen, all that junk. It was perfect, really. Conan had his little ensemble of quirky characters, there were some wickedly dangerous wizards, and then a big ol' demonic monster to fight at the end. Come on, that's all you really need in a story! In that first movie everyone acted so serious every step of the way: Conan had to spend this huge amount of time recovering from being crucified on a tree (which was kinda gross, too), he took forever mourning his dead girlfriend, and he spent a bunch of time all bug-eyed, staring at the camera, trying to pray to some ridiculous ancient god. Even when he cut off James Earl Jones' head at the end of the movie, and it rolled down these giant stone stairs, everyone was just standing around him like: 'okay, what now?' It was so darn somber! When Penance first saw that movie he hoped someone would trip on their shoelaces and tumble down those stairs, maybe; anything to lighten the mood!
Seriously, nobody likes a story where the main character just aimlessly wanders around all the time being angsty; it gets old really fast.
With the theater behind him Penance took to wandering down a nearby alley, head bowed in angsty contemplation. He was completely out of money now; that theater ticket took a real bite out of his remaining wallet, and he spent all the rest of his cash on a box of Good & Plenty.
The boy's head rose; he looked at his backpack, glaring at Galabeg's lifeless marble eyes.
"'Cause I wanted them," he growled. "What? I can have a treat, can't I?"
The fox's head bobbed about aimlessly as the boy walked.
"No," Penance said. "The money wouldn't do me much good, anyway. What am I gonna spend it on? And it was useful. It helped put me in a good mood. You're the one who's souring it!"
He shook his head as he walked, staring at the broken asphalt beneath his feet.
"No, Galabeg: I'm not being careless! I'm not a robot either. I like to be in a good mood. That helps me be more alert. When I dothings that put me in a good mood it can helpme make good decisions and survive. You wouldn't know about that, being a dead chunk of some stupid fox's head. Seriously: as I recall: you took an arrow in the neck, Galabeg: why do I even take any advice from you, again?"
The boy skidded to a halt. He put his lip in his teeth and looked back at the fox's head, blinking uncomfortably:
"Uh... look, I'm sorry..."
Suddenly the boy blinked; he wagged his head and quickly nodded, cursing under his breath:
"Ah, that's right," he mumbled.
The boy rooted through his backpack, digging deep into the bottom of it, and he finally found what he was looking for: he pulled out a worn leather dog collar. It was studded with very small spikes all around the edges, and for all purposes it looked like a very ordinary collar. Only a few places along its rim, where the leather was completely worn away, betrayed the thing's secret: its insides were not all treated leather, but it was instead a thick metal band, at least a centimeter deep. Penance wordlessly wrapped the thing around his neck and tightened it snug against his throat; he could smell the rot of fading leather rising off the thing, as well as the harsh sting of mothballs. The boy looked back at Galabeg:
"I'm not being careless," he repeated. "I'm just a little forgetful. It's... it's been awhile, you know? Since we've been on the road, I mean..."
He looked forward, shaking his head:
"Let's just...let's get our bearings and find someplace to go, huh?"
"You already are 'someplace'. You're in the wrong place, kid."
Penance's muscles tensed. He examined his surroundings: the narrow alley had opened to a small courtyard. The buildings all around him towered many stories in the sky, but everything was tarnished with blight. Boards graced most windows, and glass dotted the ground. Graffiti graced the brick walls, and the building entryways were either shut tight and chained or busted open, exposing vacant caverns of absolute blackness beyond.
The voice that challenged the boy came from one of these dark maws, and soon the speaker strutted into view: it was a teenage boy, about 16 years old. He was black, very tall, with a small scar on one cheek. He glared at Penance with a pair of sea-foam eyes, and they were narrowed to vicious little slits.
"You're a long way from home, li'l honky."
Penance spun about: another body emerged from another decrepit hole in the wall. This speaker looked younger than his friend— maybe 14 or 15— but he was all muscle from his calves to his shoulders, and a far stockier build.
Penance examined the two older boys, drawing a cautious semi-circle to put as much distance between them as possible:
"What do you want?" He asked.
The taller boy cracked his knuckles, and that harsh sound echoed in the alley:
"Let's start with all your cash, punk. Then we'll see if you got more'n just textbooks and highlighters in that backpack."
Penance answered this with two words; they were not particularly diplomatic.
Penance took a few steps back before bumping into a body behind him; he spun about and discovered a third person: this one was a girl, also black, and perhaps 16 years old, with deep brown eyes and jet black hair done up in tight cornrows against her skull. Behind her head, however, she bore a surprisingly thick ponytail set in what appeared to be a luxurious French braid. Freckles dotted the milk chocolate skin beneath her wide eyes. She was tall for her age, and very thin, with something of a gymnast's build to her body. The state of her ratty clothes revealed the tough way she lived, however.
Excellent hair care notwithstanding...
The girl looked down at Penance's Orioles team shirt; she flashed him a very unsavory grin:
"Baltimore?" She scoffed. "What're you wearing that trash around here, for? Don't you know this is Phillies country, kid? Now, not only are you in the wrong part of town, you're not even wearing the right team jersey!"
Before Penance could react he felt the two boys gripping his arms, pulling him down against the ground. The girl got to one knee, at eye-level with him:
"Cute collar, though. Heh! You're kinda like a li'l dog that's gotten very, very lost!"
The older boy looked up at the ponytailed girl:
"Whaddya think we should do with 'im, Whip?" He asked.
The girl smiled, narrowing her eyes:
"I don't give a shit about baseball, really, but I still think the little schoolboy here needs to learn not to go steppin' where he doesn't belong," she said. "Hold 'im down..."
The boys held Penance against the ground as the girl— 'Whip'— dug through the pockets of his shorts. Penance wasn't having any of it:
"Don't touch me! Lemme go!" He struggled from side to side, trying to kick the girl with his legs, but this only seemed to amuse her.
"You should relax, schoolboy," she said. "Some people would pay good money for this..."
One of Penance's legs found the girl's chin; this sent her reeling backward, and half a second later he felt one of the boy's fists slamming against his head. It made him see neon lights for just a brief moment; under other circumstances it might've been rather pleasant.
The boy was about to give Penance another knuckle to the skull when the girl got to her feet and barked at him:
"Forget it!" She growled. "No money in there, anyway." She looked at Penance's backpack and motioned to the boys: "Gimme his backpack," she demanded.
Again Penance struggled as the boys removed his backpack, but this time it was the girl who wouldn't have any of it; she promptly lodged one sneaker in his crotch, as hard as she could kick.
At least Penance hoped that was as hard as she could kick.
They rather easily got his backpack off as Penance writhed on the ground, hands between his legs.
"Bet that'll teach you to stick to the schoolyard, li'l punk!" The stockier boy grinned.
Sirens suddenly sounded along the street beyond the courtyard; all three of the thieving kids' heads alerted to the sound, like a herd of deer spooked by a hunter's footsteps. Cop cars were closing in somewhere nearby, almost certainly unrelated to this little shakedown, but they weren't going to push their luck.
"Gimme!" Whip called to one of the boys, who threw Penance's backpack into her hands. The boys quickly disappeared into the ruins of the blighted building, while the girl stood over Penance's writhing body.
"Can you walk?" She growled.
Penance looked up at her, teeth on edge. He nodded.
"Then walk the hell outta here, schoolboy. Don't you ever come back here. Or anywhere else that even looks like 'here'. You got that?"
He didn't answer her; instead he focused on grinding his teeth.
Whip raced off, darting into the alley from where Penance had come. For a few seconds the boy just lay there in a tight ball, stewing in pain and rage. But then his eyes widened, and he drew a sharp breath:
"Galabeg!"
He was on his feet and chasing after the girl in an instant.
At first Whip looked back at the pursing boy with a mildly amused smirk, but as Penance's feet pounded pavement, and he actually began to gain on her, the girl's amusement turned to frustration. She raced up a rusty fire escape, climbing the floors as quickly as she could. Penance couldn't manage this quite as fast as she could, but he kept up nonetheless. The building was five stories tall. By then the girl's lead was good enough that, once she got to the roof, she had enough time to run all the way to one side, build up speed running back the way she came, and leap right off the edge. The adjacent building was slightly lower to the ground, and while the gap was sizeable, she managed it by the skin of her sneakers.
Whip tumbled along the adjacent rooftop, and she came to rest against the rooftop door. By the time she got to her feet she could see Penance standing atop the other building, staring at her with dagger eyes.
"No hard feelings, kid," she shouted, waving the boy's backpack in the air while grinning.
She turned to open the door, but then she caught sight of the boy out of the corner of one eye: he was slowly walking backward, still facing the large gap between buildings.
"Hey!" She barked. "What're you doing, kid?"
Penance continued walking backward.
"Hey, kid! You can't make that!" She yelled. "It's too far for you! What're you, insane?"
Penance ignored her, still walking backward.
"It isn't worth it, kid! Go home! Jesus, it's just a backpack! It's not worth dying—"
He took off running.
"No!" Whip shouted.
Penance leapt quite gracefully off the edge of the roof, and he soared majestically through the air. It must've been quite a sight. Until, that is, he came up short, slammed headfirst into the other building's fire escape and then flopped through the air like a rag doll, heading straight down. He landed face-first on the asphalt below.
"Oh, my god!" Whip screamed from the rooftop. "Oh, god! God!"
The rooftop door opened with a loud squeal. He could hear the girl's panicked footfalls through busted windows as she raced down the deserted building's stairwell. It wasn't half-a-minute later that she burst through the street-level door, looking for the spot he fell.
He wasn't there, of course.
As Whip stood there, knees knocking together like bowls of Jell-O, Penance came up beside her and forcefully ripped the backpack from her shaking hands. This made her jump, and she bumped up against a nearby dumpster. Her breaths came in ragged gasps.
Penance glared at the girl with iron eyes. The remains of a wicked nosebleed graced his upper lip, and a small trickle of blood still flowed along the edge of his mouth. The boy wiped the latter clean in one deliberate motion with the back of his hand.
"You can't have the whole backpack," he snarled. Slowly, the boy unzipped the outer compartment, freeing that macabre fox's head from its place. Penance wedged Galabeg into the front collar of his shirt, where the thing's black eyes could just barely peek out over the fabric. When he was done he held up the tartan backpack:
"Now do you want it? It's got all kinds of really cool things in it: three pairs of white socks, I think, and four pairs of underwear. Bet you'd look great in 'em!" He snarled.
Whip still breathed hard; her brown eyes trembled as she struggled to process the scene before her.
"Don't want it?" Penance said. "Then fine. Now leave me alone..."
Penance quickly shouldered his backpack and stalked off. He expected the girl to follow him, and he wasn't disappointed:
"Wh— what was that? How— how're you still—"
"I didn't fall all the way," the boy didn't bother turning around. "I was grabbing at the fire escape railings as I went down. So I didn't end up hurt. No thanks to you—"
"I saw you—"
"What, you think you saw me fall the whole way down, or something? Guess that means you're feeling guilty, huh? Got a conscience, thief? I could've died, chasing you. For all you know, at least. Well, I hope you feel extra rotten for that. Extra!"
Whip stopped walking; she called out to the boy:
"Well: at least tell me why you have all those clothes in your backpack, kid."
"'Cause I don't havea home to go home to, that's why."
Whip almost let the boy out of earshot; finally she called out to him:
"Look: I'm sorry we jumped you. We, uh, I assumed that you're just some spoiled little brat, come to the wrong side of the tracks..."
Penance stopped walking; he shook his head, snarling:
"Apologize to my balls!"
"Then turn around and drop your shorts."
The boy's head jerked a bit, very involuntarily. When he looked back at the girl he could feel the blood flushing over his cheeks.
Whip laughed, crossing her arms and shaking her head:
"Look, kid, don't be in such a rush to run off. You gotta make sure you're not hurt from that fall—"
"I'm not—"
"And when was the last time you had anything to eat?"
"None of your business—"
"Well, look: I've got some stuff at my place, if you want—"
"You are feelin' guilty," Penance scoffed.
"Hey: you aren't getting anything else anytime soon, are you? With no cash on you, an' all..."
"I'll make do," he growled. "I'm tougher than I look."
"Not sayin' you're not. But..."
He rolled his eyes, and again he faced away from the girl. This was a fine, bloody little mess: he makes it into a new city, and immediately the whole thing's a write-off, right away, because somebody spots his little 'talent' firsthand. It was what Penance called a 'sour patch': where his attempt to blend into a locale was doomed to failure before it even began. It wasn't the first time he'd suffered this, and in this case it was almost entirely irrelevant; he was never going to linger in Philadelphia too long, but he'd hoped that he'd get at least a year or two of a 'breather' here, living as a vagabond street urchin, until he could put together some kind of 'long term' plan.
He wasn't looking for another family— foster or otherwise— for anytime in the immediately future. The pain of leaving Martha was still too raw, and it'd be raw for a long time, too. If history was any indicator (and it was) then Penance would likely stay on his own for at least a decade, or even two. Of course it wasn't just the hurt of his old relationships, or the agony of beginning a whole set of new ones— knowing from the start they're doomed to that vicious three to four year lifespan— but there was also a more selfish reason hidden behind it all:
He absolutely couldn't stand another round of elementary and middle-schooling. Again: not for another decade, at least. It was always the price he had to pay if he wanted to live his life with any semblance of normalcy. And it was always worth it.
But still: he had his limits. Right now he didn't need anyone. It was him and Galabeg, and that was a scenario he was quite used to. Of course he was; it was just the way he rolled. It was certainly the easiest way to live, and in a way that made it the best, as well.
Yup. It absolutely was. Really.
He didn't need anyone else, right now. Not at all.
The first thing he had to do was worry about how to get the hell out of Philadelphia. Penance shook his head, looking back at the girl her:
"Anyway, I'm not interested in your charity, so..."
His voice slowed; the boy looked down at one of the pockets on Whip's faded blue jeans. A crumpled pack of cigarettes peeked out from the denim.
"Uh: what're those?" He mumbled, motioning with one hand.
Whip looked down at her pocked:
"Oh, yeah: I don't actually smoke. Found these in a storm drain, half filled. I plan on tradin' 'em for—"
"What's the brand?"
"Camels. Why—"
"Gimme one," Penance mumbled.
Whip squinted at the boy:
"Uh, look: you're just—"
Penance held up a finger:
"You say that I'm just a kid? I walk. If you say that smoking is bad for me? I walk. If you don't give just one cigarette? I walk."
The girl stared at him for quite some time. Finally she sighed and reached into the carton, removing one cigarette. When Penance came up to her and took it she shrugged, showing him her bare hands:
"You can have the cigarette, but I don't have a lighter. So—"
The boy pulled a lighter out of his backpack and started it with one flick. Whip shook her head as Penance lit his cigarette:
"I'm going to hell, aren't I?" She mumbled.
"Dunno," the boy muttered, shuttling smoke through his nose. "I'm starting to think you might be kinda nice."
"Anyway, c'mere." Whip motioned with her head, leading the boy down a bank of serpentine alleys.
Penance followed her at a distance, eminently enjoying the cigarette between his lips. When he looked down at his neckline he was met by Galabeg's dead eyes; the thing still peeked out of the front of his shirt.
"Shut up," Penance mumbled, again blowing a mess of smoke through his nose. "I can have a treat, can't I?" He looked back up at the girl ahead of him, who was waiting at a dark crossroad in the serpentine alleyway. "Besides: it's not like there's any rule about kids taking cigarettes from strangers, is there?"
There was not, Penance knew. He'd learned as much from all those school presentations he'd suffered through across the years. Turns out it was only candy you had to really watch out for. And Penance would never even think of taking candy from a stranger.
Unless it was a Good & Plenty. Maybe.
