Pasta

 

It wasn't the first time Piotrek had done this. He held a can of black paint and, with deft movements, traced a large inscription on the wall surrounding the Kabaty metro depot. The inscription he was tracing (technically called an "outline") read: "MaKaRoN." Piotrek was good at it and knew it. Known throughout the city, he had left his mark in almost every part of Warsaw. He painted a lot and practically everywhere—on trains, in tunnels, underground, on apartment blocks, sometimes even on the sidewalk.

His current graffiti consisted of letters drawn in Makaron's characteristic manner. Jagged letters, sharp colors. Makaron—that was also his nickname, given to him by his friends ("dudes"—that's how everyone in his circle calls each other), and—as is often the case with nicknames—no one knew where it came from. Besides, in the state Makaron and most of his friends are in, memories are short. Makaron and his crew do two things in their lives (at least as far as he can remember): do drugs and paint graffiti.

There wasn't really a drug Piotrek hadn't taken. Marijuana, hash, acid, amphetamines, coke – almost everything available. However, he steered clear of heroin – in his environment, heroin use is frowned upon. Constant deaths, comedowns, drinking and taking drugs – Makaron is a typical Polish teenager.

Now, still slightly under the influence of a joint he'd smoked an hour earlier, Makaron was committing an act some call vandalism, which involves scribbling on the wall. He hoped that many people would pass by and that at least one person would briefly wonder, "Who is this Makaron?" Time would prove that no one would think of that question, because the next morning the entire wall would be repainted, and Makaron's work would be covered with a layer of bland white paint.

Today, Makaron paints alone. He usually does it in a larger group, as part of a team. Their painting often evokes organized special forces operations. Under the cover of darkness, the guys wheel ladders, ropes, and liters of paint, painting gigantic graffiti on the walls. This time, Piotrek is alone. He woke up at 2 a.m., feeling the urge to smoke a joint and get some shots in. So he did. His parents were asleep, of course, and as he got up, he heard his worn-out father snoring. He entered the kitchen, which reeked of cigarettes his father had smoked by the hundreds. There was almost no food in the refrigerator, except for a few slices of stale cheese. He drank some milk and returned to his room. From under the carpet, he dug out a small plastic bag, the size of a matchbox, stuffed with grass. He reached deeper under the carpet. This time, he found a larger, flat bag containing rolling papers and some tobacco. He mixed the tobacco and weed, placed it on a folded piece of paper with a practiced hand movement, rolled it a little, gently licked the adhesive strip on the paper, rolled everything, and the joint was ready. It took him literally a moment. He tucked it into the pocket of his baggy pants. He

pulled a backpack from the closet, which, when moved, made the characteristic, sweet, to a graffiti artist's ear, sound of metal pellets inside paint cans. He slung it gently over his shoulder, careful not to wake his parents, and quietly slipped out into the stairwell. Still inside the building, he lit a joint and confidently left the building. He wandered around the Kabaty subway station for a while and finally found a suitable spot to place his masterpiece. He had been toying with this plan for some time. He had drawn his graffiti on paper many times, perfecting the details.

He was just finishing up, making the final touches to his work, when he heard voices. He turned around, slightly startled. It was quite dark; the only light he had was a flashlight he'd brought from home. He immediately switched it off and began listening intently. He was afraid it was the police, as painting on walls carries a hefty fine. He'd been caught several times, and he'd escaped the police more than once. The wall he was painting on was high. Right next to it, or rather alongside it, ran a rampart, built for an (at least to Makaron) unknown purpose. To reach the base of the wall, one had to descend the steep slope of the rampart. When Makaron switched off the flashlight, darkness enveloped him. He couldn't see anything; the rampart was in front of him, and he couldn't see any lights. He listened intently. He could clearly hear footsteps. Fast. They were approaching him, someone walking along the top of the rampart toward him. After a moment, he saw a silhouette above him, a silhouette flashing against the sky and then disappearing. Makaron calmed down, thinking it was some drunkard. But despite everything, he decided to return, not along the rampart, but between it and the wall. He quickly finished the graffiti and walked away, making his way through the sparse bushes growing near the wall.

As he walked, he saw a light in the distance, right next to the wall. He got a little closer and spotted a small, dying fire, and by it some young people. He didn't know any of them. Makaron couldn't help but imagine trappers relaxing by the fire after a long day of traveling, eating roasted caribou. The guests were chatting, drinking what looked like vodka from a distance, and smoking grass. This didn't surprise Makaron much. Suddenly, he realized that a man was standing next to him, facing the wall, talking to himself. He was clearly vomiting. Piotrek quietly moved toward the embankment and crouched behind a bush. He waited until the guy had puked up what he was about to puke, then returned to his friends by the fire. While puking, the guy was talking about love. He was drunkenly philosophizing. He must have been pretty drunk.

Makaron noticed that the group around the fire had become more lively and began laughing louder and louder. They were shouting, and every now and then one of them would stand up, then sit down again. Every now and then, one of them would go to the wall to puke or pee. Suddenly, one of the seated men, a fat man, lunged at the man standing and knocked him to the ground. Makaron was terrified; he didn't want to witness murder or rape—he'd expected either. But suddenly, with horror, he noticed that everyone around them was laughing, even the man the fat man had attacked. Two others standing above them lunged at each other and began rolling in the grass. Makaron could hear roars of, "Stop, fuck, stop!" One of the fallen guys broke free and started running towards Makaron, laughing. Another fat guy from the crew caught up with him and tackled him to the ground right next to Makaron. Luckily, he went unnoticed.

"Shit, my spine," the fallen guy howled, his face contorted in pain.

"Yeah, right, what the fuck are you talking about?" the oppressive friend replied, and they both started laughing, which terrified Makaron again. They struggled for a while until the fat guy finally gave up and got off the guy. He walked with him back towards the fire. There, a surprise awaited them. Everyone else pounced on them and pinned them to the ground. Beneath them all, at the very bottom, was the guy who'd been complaining about his back. Everyone howled and laughed hysterically. Eventually, someone accidentally punched someone in the face, someone's glasses flew off, someone's back hurt, everyone argued, shouted at each other, and some of the guys (two to be exact) left, probably going home. They were simply offended.

Piotrek got tired of the spectacle of these unaware morons being spied on, and quietly climbed onto the embankment to continue their journey home, this time on the other side.

He hadn't gotten far before he tripped over something soft and, as it turned out, alive.

"I'm fucking asleep!" a dirty, ragged bum, who might have actually been asleep a moment ago, yelled at him. "Do you have to nudge me, or does everyone have to nudge me?" He propped himself up on his elbows, rummaged in his pocket, pulled out an old, dirty, and barely functioning flashlight, and shined it in Makaron's eyes.

"Junkie?" he asked suspiciously, looking into Piotrek's eyes. His stubble (the bum's, not Piotrek's) was indistinguishable from the rest of his drunken visage. His face was covered in a thick layer of grime, already ingrained in his skin.

"What a junkie! I went for a walk," Piotrek stammered in surprise. He turned to leave.

"Stop! I have business. You see..." the bum fumbled, "my name is Marek." He extended a dirty hand toward Makaron, its long, broken, and frayed nails scratching the palm of Piotrek's hand. Piotrek carefully shook Marek's right hand and looked him quickly in the eye – surely he had some business with him.

"So?" Makaron urged him. The bum clicked his tongue and continued:

"Do you know what they want to do with us?" he asked.

"What are they like?

" "Well, they, the government, the fucking thieves, do you know what they're going to do with us? They'll starve us all." Marek spoke calmly, slowly, chewing each word and spitting it out with considerable effort, accompanied by spit and remnants of some food. He panted for a moment and began looking around, for some unknown reason. Piotrek was about to give up and go home, but the bum wouldn't give up; he clearly longed for some kind of dialogue. He stank terribly, which was to his detriment – ​​Makaron didn't feel like talking to such a stinker. But he stayed for a while.

"They'll kill us with all those generators, turn us into ashes…" he finally said.

"What kind of generators, fuck? You must have had too much to drink today, huh?" Makaron asked.

"He drank, he drank, that's all you can pick on, they all do, including the police.

" "Sir, it's been a long time since we started the police, not the police," Piotrek reminded Marek.

"Oh, right, right, that's right, it's the nice... police who pick on me and curse me and pretend to be better than me and drive me around in those cars, the police station, the police station... Young man, what do you know about the life of a man like me? You're young! Only that Kaczyński keeps telling me I'm going to be rich, and I'm checking my pocket, you thieves!!! And my pocket's empty, I have no food, damn it, I eat dead dogs at the train stations, and then they're surprised I stink. I have no toothpaste, I don't remember what my toothbrush looks like..." Marek had clearly gotten more talkative, speaking faster and more confidently. "My wife left me, my kids won't admit their father, I'm starving and I'm fucking the dogs. Sometimes I'll buy a roll with begged money, I'll find some fucking food in the basket, but in the winter, young man – it's hungry, cold, it's shitty! Lord, everything's freezing! My fingers—he shows his thick, dirty fingers—are freezing!

" "What about those generators, grandpa?" Makaron reminded.

"Oh… Well, they're making them, they're building them to get me and kill me. I was in the army and they're looking for me because I deserted. They're making generators because they implanted chips in us, and they're looking for them with generators. They've already found more than one, they make energy fields in space, then they track me while I sleep, fuck, they'll finally track me down and blow me to bits with a moonbeam. They'll grind me to dust, a fucking hole, a hole in the ground left by Marek, that's all I'll leave behind!"

"What the fuck are you talking about, Marek? A hole, space, do you even know what space is?" Makaron asked with an ironic smile. He'd talked to this bum before, they were usually harmless, but now he decided to hear it out.

"Sir, space is energy, the government collects it and fucks up deserters from space, I tell you how fucking awful it will be when I sleep on my back like on my stomach." Marek was already utterly terrified. His eyes darted around the sky, searching for some giant cannon that would blast him from thousands of kilometers away. Visions of green and red rays locking onto him and killing him, completely destroying his body, formed in his shattered mind. He believed what he was saying.

Makaron, meanwhile, chuckled to himself, waiting for his grandfather to continue. But he only started mumbling something, about lasers, space, and giant rays. He mentioned something about a burning river, hell, and death, and rose to his feet. He began to pace near Piotrek.

"They'll find me, they'll definitely find me, I knew they would. You!" He pointed at Makaron. "You're definitely from the government, I saw through you!"

He began to run into the forest. Makaron saw him for a moment longer, pushing through the undergrowth and shouting something about green rays. Makaron began to laugh lightly and walk away. He could still hear the screams of the terrified drunk.

Suddenly, the sky lit up. Makaron looked up and was speechless. A green beam shot from the blazing fireball into the forest, tearing up a large section with a roar. Trees flew upward, throwing Makaron backward against the embankment he was walking beside. He felt a warm breeze on his face. Something sharp scratched his face. He looked at the ground and pondered. On the ground lay the severed paw of the bum Marek, the one who had scratched him with its ragged claws. The fireball vanished from the sky. Fire was visible in the forest, burning faintly. Makaron knew there was nothing left of his grandfather.

"They'll always get them..." he whispered to himself and walked away, pulling his hood over his head and shoving his hands into his pockets. His silhouette remained for a moment against the backdrop of the fire consuming the forest, then vanished into the darkness