THE SMILE OF THE DEVIL

CHAPTER ONE

The leaves danced to the evil song, and the black night sky was the setting for that sinister scenario. David looked around in shock, his gaze blurred by an unnatural fog. It seemed that the world around him turned at a frantic pace, and he had nothing to hold on to.

A sour smell of death and decomposition hung in the air, like there was a battlefield.

A long line of men and women paraded, wearing black hoods that covered their faces and leaving only their naked bodies to reveal their sex. They sang that sad melody, indecipherable words repeated again and again.

A prayer.

The children hugged together, also naked and soaked in urine, dirty with earthy and grunge. Waiting for a cruel fate already written and lived a thousand times.

There was a large bonfire, which prevented those present from suffering too much from the cold, but David trembled, freezing and frightening, enclosing the naked body in his arms.

A woman's hand grabbed one of the children by his hair, dragging him against his will at the center of the scene. His eyes were black, clouded by a veil of tears similar of ice. The woman squeezed his testicles until he screamed in pain. David closed his eyes, but those screams were part of that ceremony, part of him, and none of the present could escape.

They called him to the altar, set up simply using a garden table and a white tablecloth.

David was struggling to stand on his feet, but two men with an obvious erection helped him walk that path of death. He saw the child crouched on the ground, more or less the same age of his.

He did not cry, he did not scream. Not anymore. He had lines of blood that drew a pentagram on his stomach, his nails torn and his genitals swollen and purple.

David waved the knife posed in his hands by the black mass officer. He could not see, the voices mixed in his head and only those eyes remained, staring at him vacuously, without any vital spark.

"Kill. Kill. Kill. "

They pushed him, touched him, grinning and barking like wild beasts.

The boy was dead.

How could one kill someone already dead?

He sank the blade in the child's stomach many times, and the splashes of blood wet his face. A sick frenzy took possession of him, as if something evil had penetrated his body.

They laid him down on the ground, and a man's dark shadow appeared behind him. He felt the dirt and the blood burn his throat, while the sex of the man violated him with fury, until he felt himself broken.

He called God, but no one answered.

Dave woke up sweating, disoriented and with a strong sense of nausea. He hit the alarm clock, which sounded "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. He felt a terrible taste on the palate, something he did not remember ever having tried before.

Dirt and blood.

He tried to get up, but lost his balance. His breath was missing, as if he were locked in a cage made of flesh and muscles.

He trembled. Why was he trembling so much?

There was something dark, sick and repulsive in his nightmare, but the details faded inexorably, as if a wind of sanity swept them away. He vaguely remembered a ceremony, himself as a child stained with blood. What had he done?

He knew it was just a nightmare, but it seemed that evil had stuck to his body, like an insect that feeds on blood. He took deep breaths, one after the other, using a regular rhythm. He felt his anxiety weaken, and managed to get out of bed.

He had to go to school, listen to classes, talk with friends. Everything seemed so normal, so ordinary, almost boring.

Nightmares began with the month of December, at the approach of Christmas. He had always loathed the festivities, even as a child, even though he had no particular bad memories.

The past Christmas of Dave seemed to be an empty simplicity but with a nostalgic hint. He went to the church holding his father's hand, as did many other children, and unwrapped gifts under a bare tree, with sparse branches and few red decorations. Santa Claus, ribbons and plastic apples. The evenings were spent at the table, with Uncle George and his wife Sarah. He played with his cousins, Alex, Meredith and Susan. The oldest of them was older than he was only by two years. Sometimes other guests arrived, families with young children.

Dave was overcome by a strong migraine, and he realized that his memories were blurred, as if covered by a muffled haze, like a white cloud. He remembered the routine well, but many of the details seemed to have disappeared. It did not remember the Christmas cards, the warmth, the hugs. As if those memories were just the painting of a happy family, without any emotion that accompanied it. Simple colors, still smiles, soulless figures in the background.

The only emotions were consequences of the nightmares. Dream-like visions of blood and impotence, images so real that they left him trembling, frightened like an animal in the presence of a big hungry predator. Sometimes he felt physical pain in his limbs, in his stomach, even in his private parts, as after having had violent sex, or at least as David imagined it to be. His only kiss, exchanged with his girlfriend in elementary school, did not offer him much to build on. He was suffering from anxiety and morning sickness, and constantly had the feeling that his body wanted to expel something that hurt him like a blade.

Paul Karofsky, Dave's father, sat in the usual armchair, facing the TV. He had a newspaper in his hands, at which seemed to look absently, as if his mind was distant. He watched David go down the stairs, and nodded to him. The boy had the briefcase on his shoulders, and wore his Letterman jacket.

"You won't have breakfast?", asked the fifty-year-old man, with graying hair and a well-groomed beard, with shades that were still dark.

Dave shook his head, trying to look normal and not disgusted at the thought of swallowing something.

"No. I'm already late. "

Paul shrugged. "As you wish then."

Dave was hit by a puff of frozen wind, leaving the house, and regretted not having covered himself more.

"It's so cold!"

It seemed like his body was covered with needles. He ran his hands over his bare knees, until they reddened. He could see his breath hovering in the air, like a blanket of smoke.

"It's too cold, Daddy."

"Move! What are you waiting for?"

The angry voice of a man sitting behind a red car, and the sound of a klaxon, awakened David from the previous torpor. He realized he was in the middle of the street, motionless, as if petrified.

What was it?

It looked like the scene of a horror movie, but much more real. A child who looked a lot like him, perhaps too much, the sound of the wind, the cold that penetrated into the bones.

Was that scene part of his nightmare?

Dave felt dirty, like after a long illness. He shook his head. It was just a bad dream, nothing else.

It happened after the hour of letters. Dave met him in the corridor, among many faces that looked all the same. Kurt Hummel. The agility of a gazelle, a melodious voice and two blue eyes that resembled mirrors of crystalline water. The delicate posture, which revealed his sexuality, the hair of a hazelnut color and the pale skin, slightly rosy on the cheeks. Sixteen years and a still childlike innocence, almost ethereal.

He caught his eye like every day, passion and anger hit him like an earthquake, shattering his defenses.

He did not want to think he was a homosexual, he could not even afford the doubt. David was a massive boy, who loved football and action movies, so different from Kurt, whose best friends were girls and always dressed up perfectly. His father would not accept a gay son, and his friends would make his life a living hell. The ground under which he walked was crumbling, as were his certainties. He hated himself for allowing that weakness, for letting that infatuation mean more to him than just a passing phase.

If he had remained silent, no one would have noticed, but those contradictory feelings of hate-love had become too deep, too harrowing, and for Dave it was impossible to hide them and go unnoticed.

He saw Kurt walking with his head held high, those light eyes and long eyelashes that struck his heart. It would have been so simple if he had been a girl, but he knew he liked Kurt also because he was not.

He pushed him hard, until he fell to the ground. The few students turned to look at him, perhaps with a little compassion for Kurt, but one look from Dave demotivated them from intruding.

He did it so often. Push Kurt, insult him. He could not hurt himself but he could hurt Kurt, and imagine himself suffering the same punishment. It was a pain that left no scars, a pain from which it was easier to get away.

But it hurts, this Dave knew well.

He had to run away, hide, pretend not to be guilty. Since when did he hate himself so much?

He was a simple boy, who loved animals and never refused to help a friend. He had been a shy child in the past, who liked airplanes. He imagined them flying, hovering in the air and disappearing on the horizon.

Yet everything had been destroyed so easily.

"Hey!"

Dave, alone in the boys' locker room, turned and saw Kurt, angry, without fear, with his fists closed and his eyes fixed on him. Two blue irises that made his knees tremble so much.

Kurt knew it was a lost battle, that Dave could hurt him, but he did not hid or avoided that confrontation. It was a turning point, and both could not deny it.

"I'm talking to you!"

Kurt was a boy, a man more than he was, and Dave liked that.

He liked him because of that.

"The girls' locker room's in next door."

He feigned indifference, but his heart was beating so hard that it burst into his chest.

How would a heterosexual boy react? How would a normal boy react?

"You like it, you disgusting faggot."

He knew that voice. He had heard it so many times that he could have imitated the cadence, but he could not place it, or associate it with a face, as if it was lost in time.

The hooded man seemed to eat him, devour him in his privat parts, and Dave felt a sharp, burning pain between his legs. He looked down and saw his erect penis disappear into the man's mouth.

He wanted it to stop, but his body moved forward to accommodate that violence.

He sobbed, feeling a tingling shiver through his limbs from tiptoes.

"You like it, admit it!"

And he cried, and cried.

"What is your problem?"

Dave returned to the present. It was Kurt's voice, McKinley's boys' locker room, its smell of sweat and floor bleach. Reality.

He had to throw up. Was he that child?

They were doing some ... things. Things that no one sane of mind would do to a child.

He himself could not have imagined something so revolting.

"Excuse… Excuse me?"

Yeah, Kurt was there. He did not know if it was a dream, or if it really was reality. He remembered waking up, going out. He had seen one of those visions even when awake during the journey from home to school.

And then at that moment, again.

"What are you so scared of?"

He loved Kurt's voice, even when he assumed this high and delirious tone.

It seemed like a gap was opening in his stomach. A black chasm without ending.

Disgusting faggot.

It was not true, it could not be true.

"'Sides you sneaking in here to peek at my junk?"

He put his shoes in the locker, trying not to focus on Kurt's eyes, on that absurd situation, on the vision. His head hurt, as if someone had hit him with an ax.

"Oh yeah," Kurt forced him to look at him again. He had a delicate nose and thin lips, of the color of roses. "Every straight guy's nightmare, that all us gays are secretly out to molest and convert you. Well guess what, Hammerhawk? You're not my type"

Obviously not.

Dave did not think it was possible to physically experience so much pain, but he was sure he would faint. The room turned, and his sight blurred.

"That right?"

His smile looked like mocking Kurt, but it hid so much insecurity. He had to apologize, beg for forgiveness, yet his anger rose in him like a wave. He was not gay. What this kid was think of doing, causing him doubts?

He wanted to be him, he wanted to have him. And at the same time disappear from the world.

Did they call it faggot in the past? Yes, in the locker room, joking with friends. Nobody gave that much thoughts. Yet Dave imagined of something farther, more obscure. Something about which he could not focus his attention.

"Yeah. I don't dig on chubby boys who sweat too much and are gonna be bald by the time they're thirty"

Yes, Dave was playing football, and he had never been a thin guy. It would not have been called fat, but it was certainly burly. There was nothing effeminate about him.

Yet Kurt, so delicate and graceful, was challenging him. He was so close. Dave felt his breath tickle his cheecks. He smelled of vanilla, of clean.

He had to disappear. His head would have broken out, he would have gone mad. He did not know what could happen, he did not want to find out. It could became too late to come back.

He threatened Kurt with a fist. His eyes were swollen and just wet with tears. He did not know if it was the fault of anger or pain.

"Do not push me, Hummel!"

He guessed that Kurt would have fled, but he did not move. His gaze remained on him, angry and provocative as he had never been. Brave as a soldier facing a battle.

"You gonna hit me? Do it!"

No. No. No.

"Don't push me!"

That child, that vision. He liked it. He could not be a victim, it could not be him. It was a disgusting faggot. Gracile, with no possibility of defenses. So different from him now.

"Hit me, 'cause it's not gonna change who I am. You can't punch the gay out of me anymore than I can push the ignormaus out of you."

He felt like dying. If that child was not a victim was a ... executioner?

"Get out of my face!"

What had he done?

"You are nothing but a scared little boy who can't handle how extraordinarily ordinary you are..."

His lips joined Kurt's, without Dave having the slightest conception of what he was doing. He was still not sure it was real. The taste of Kurt, soft, sensual, so right. Of a naturalness he had never known so fully. It reminded him of the words of the songs he knew by heart, the furrow of the pillow on which he slept every night, the scent of the shampoo with which he washed his hair.

Kurt. He wanted to say that name only once, just this time.

Everything would have been perfect if the other's face had not been twisted by fear and surprise.

Dave wanted those lips, again. Just for a moment.

An executioner.

Kurt pushed him away, covering his lips with his hand.

An executioner.

From his throat came a strangled sob, like a cry.

An executioner.

It was then that he saw the blood. Hot liquid that came down his nose, leaving a red stripe that Dave wiped with his hand.

"This is ... blood?"

It was red, of the color of evil. Had he seen it a long time ago, or was it just an illusion?

He stopped breathing. The room did not have air. He seemed to be in apnea and looking around, lost in the blue ocean and sure he had to die.

"Karofsky?"

Kurt's voice had become thin, almost worried. His eyes were wide, his mouth open. He was sure that Kurt did not even know what was happening.

Dave turned pale, wiping the blood that came out copiously again. He went out of the locker room, slamming the door, without looking over his shoulder.

He leaned against his car in the deserted school parking lot. Students who had physical education could be heard in the distance, but there was nothing around him but a prison of metal. Dave threw up, his stomach seemed to be on fire.

It had been a kiss. His lips over Kurt's, the smell of vanilla. The vision of a child violeted while he had an orgasm.

He shuddered in terror and disgust, remembering how real and tangible that feeling of pleasure was, despite those images being the most excruciating and sick one could imagine.

Dave was a virgin, yet he thought he knew what it felt like during a penetration. He did not know how it was possible.

His body was in pain, he himself was hurt to the core. He did not know what it was, he did not know why he had those visions but he was sure something in him was profoundly wrong.

"Karofsky ..."

Dave saw Kurt in front of him, this time at a safe distance.

"Help ... help me ..."

It was a prayer too.

And then everything became black.