Democracy

fight

Driar clearing is loud. There has got to be a crowd of at least 50 people just hustled within the trees. Dorian sits on a log in the middle of the clearing, watching the people surrounding him. I walk up to him.
"It's 4."
"It is." He nods, stepping to his feet. The crowd cheer louder. I take a step back mimicking Dorian's own action.
Harriet counts to three and then the crowd begin to scream. Dorian comes forward quickly and I put up a guard. As he attempts to throw a punch, I hit him. He recoils a little but doesn't seem to be hurt very much. In a single second, he has hit me twice. I step back, mostly out of surprise than pain, and I laugh under my breath. He growls and leaps forward trying to punch me again. I grab his fist and hit him hard in the chest causing him to stumble back clutching it but he recovers and comes forward again speedily and tackles me to my feet. I roll over him and stand myself up again. Looking back to him, I realise that he took my knife from my ankle. Lunging forward to retrieve my knife, I watch as he darts past me causing pain to slice through my arm after the knife. Before he can step away and finish his move, I have a hold of his arm and I grip it until he drops the knife before I spin to pull it behind his back breaking it. He screams and head butts me so I let go. Dizziness overtakes me for a few precious seconds and when I regain a level head he is tackling me to the ground and punching me repeatedly in the face. I can taste blood. My eye is watering. There is a piercing sting throughout my face. But I pull my hand up to hit him in the side and when he tilts to the side, I take advantage, curling my body so he falls to the ground beside me and grabbing his red-stained fist and putting it under my knee as its my turn to hit him. Soon his face is a mess of red but he continues to struggle. I stop when pain splinters through my leg, I look down to see my own knife stuck in my leg. Pulling it out, I stand up in a moment and put my foot on Dorian's face. His arm comes up and his hand wraps around the wound in my leg and begins to squeeze, multiplying my pain massively. I cry out but stop myself and lean down plunging the knife through his hand and once again into my leg. He screams. I pull the knife out. He screams louder. When his hand hits the ground, I leave him, choking, for a while.
"Come to Chedwar house to receive your position, Mr Peters." He manages to nod before I take my foot away from his throat and he begins to cough and splutter. I walk toward my group, trying my best not to limp, which is extremely difficult as the pain courses through my leg. "6 o clock, Dorian." I call behind me as I reach Chuck. He claps me on the back and seeing me stumble a little continues to help me walk by draping his hand across my shoulders.
We ignore the crowd who are cheering for us. When it finally grows silent, I turn to Fern.
"You never told me he was any good." I state. They shrug.
"You have to admit, it was more fun to have a challenge." I shrug and they laugh.
"He did a good fucking job of ruining my leg," I laugh.
"Don't be a pussy, Luke," Harriet says. "It's just a scratch." I laugh through my teeth. "It'll be healed by the time we get home." I nod. She's not wrong.
When we reach home, I go downstairs to the doctor and clean my wounds. The stabbing wound is almost all gone when I clean it. The black eye will stay for a day or so though and the cut on my lip will leave a little scar.
When I walk into the sitting room and Dorian sees me, he gives a little gasp of surprise at my recovery. It seems he hasn't gone home yet. His shirt is still bloody and the piece of his jacket that is tied round his hand is blood crusted and his face is coated in dried blood. I don't mention his untidiness to him.
"You put up a good fight, Dorian." I tell him, unsuccessfully managing to keep my surprised tone out of my voice.
"So did you," he says slowly. "Can I just say, before you start ordering me around, that you do not scare me and you will never scare me and the likelihood is that I will make a crappy dealer?" I sit on the sofa opposite him. I watch him for a second.
"I didn't think you were, and yes, I never think you will be, not if you aren't already. I've been reconsidering my offer for you to become a dealer." He sighs with relief a little at my last statement and begins to get to his feet. I push his back down into his seat. "I have another offer." He rolls his eyes. I hesitate telling him, not when he looks like this. "First though, my doctor will clean you up and you can get changed. Come on." I say, getting to my feet and leading him to the door. He watches me, confused but gladly follows behind. It's when we are walking down the stairs that I remember his broken arm. It clicks back into place. He hisses at the surprising change but then shakes it and let's it lie at his side once again. The blood is easily cleaned up but underneath are an extravagance of cuts and bruises. His black eye has healed to be much less severe than this morning's but the fresh bruises- they are more purple and black and blue than a child's painting of the night sky.
Underneath the blood sodden rags in his hand is a small hole through which the knife had went. He chuckles when he sees it, but winces when he holds it up to the light and the light shines through. I pull it back onto his lap and wrap it in a bandage soaked in antiseptic. "You're stupid. You know that? Your shirt? What good would that do?"
"You're the one that stabbed me!" He cries out but laughs a little. The room falls into silence. "The shirt stopped the bleeding."
"And it filled the wound with germs. And I only fucking stabbed you because you chose to fucking fight me." He pulls his hand out of mine and holds it up in defence.
"You were offering me a job I didn't want and I knew you would have forced me to do it anyway. Plus I thought you'd be crap at fighting without your..." he pauses and begins to wave his hands at me, "your... your freaky magic shit." I laugh.
"You thought wrong." He shrugs. Why does everyone keep shrugging at me? Why do I let them?
"Apparently, we all think wrong," Chuck says, entering the room. His voice is hostile, his stare too. Obviously, he's confused; we agreed to make Dorian a dealer, nothing else, and I'm going back on any plans we made.
It's Dorian's reaction to Chuck that makes me realise that Dorian was being friendly to me, he was looking at me, he was laughing, and he actually talked. But now, perhaps in reaction to Chuck's own hostility, he has hidden his eyes and become quiet. I shove Chuck out of the room, following after him.
"What are you doing?" He hisses. "You said, you said to us all, that he'd become a dealer, just a dealer, then we'd get rid of him. What are you doing know?"
"Do you know that Fern said the same thing about Harriet and Harriet said exactly the same thing about you?" I tell him. He pauses, then a look of shock runs across his face. Then annoyance.
"You're not?" He sighs and then growls a little, angry. "He's nothing. All he did was fight you, and he lost! Come on Luke, he gave Fern a black eye!" I barely listen to what he is saying, having already made up my mind, but I nod along anyway and when he ends his speech, I shrug and I quickly dart backwards, pushing the door closed.
Dorian looks up at me but when I meet his eyes, he lowers his head, shy.
"If you're going to work for me, that..." I pause running my finger over the air in front of me letting it ripple until the waves hit the centre of his body. "That needs to stop. Even if you won't do it for anybody else, look at me properly." His head rises up so his eyes meet my own, maybe a little below, but close enough.
"If I'm going to work- am I going to work for you?" He questions. Having observed him carefully, I realise that the boy has no nervous ticks, maybe he isn't nervous, which would suggest he's used to this sort of thing, or he just refuses t o succumb to nerves, or he can just hide his emotions very well. Overall, I conclude that he is almost impossible to read. Perfect.
"Hopefully you will accept the job offer..."
"Wait, what? I thought you said that if I lost the fight I'd have to work for you." He interrupts.
"Don't interrupt me," I break his finger which he does not react to. "I have a completely different offer- a kind of instant promotion- just because your fighting skills and general attitude impressed me." I pause, watching him. When he notices, my looking at him, he raises his broken hand holding it out for me to fix. I roll my eyes a little and click his bones back into place. He lowers his hands. "I want to give you a job like Harriet's and Chuck's and Fern's," he frowns a little at the name Fern, not recognising it, but otherwise remains expressionless about the opportunity I am giving him. "I want you to manage some of the dealers, help to recruit, and to give your opinion on matters concerning the company. I want you to be in all appearances, and in all truths, my friend." He raises an eyebrow. Then his mouth drops open a little. How cute.
"There would be money, a pretty decent salary actually, you would be rich in a couple years which really beats the alternative." He looks up at me.
"Being poor?"
I stare at him for a little while before shrugging. I may as well tell him the truth.
"Death."
He raises another eyebrow and finally shows his nerves with a large gulp of air.
After a while of silence excusing the mechanical whirring of his little brain going round and round within his head like a hamster ball, he nods.
"Okay. I'll take the job. But my father will always want me at his house by 10, usually I can get out afterwards but I need to be there just for five minutes." His condition is a strange one. But I let it be, since Harriet still visits her grandmother for a day every month and Chuck still goes to the theatre twice a month which means he's gone for most of a day. Fern never really had any conditions, I think they were desperate to leave their old life behind. Fair enough.
So I nod to accept his condition and I tell him to piss off and be at school early tomorrow. Then once he's left, I head off to the others to tell them the news.
In addition, we also agree to hang Keiran and the others up tomorrow. So we go work on the bodies. They're sent off to be left in position by 8 before school started.
In the morning, we find Dorian at the end of the lane. We'd all decided to walk in together rather than drive to check on the bodies. When we eventually get to their position, a police line has already been set up and other people on the way to school are standing around, crying, talking or just generally staring.