Мракобесие: начало

“I turned it off. Don’t worry.”

George nodded kind of reflexively, rather mechanically than approvingly, and the guest smiled pleasantly, alluringly, but scarily. This happens when those who are smiling are strong and powerful leaders: their smiles lure and scare at the same time. Other weaker people sink in this smile losing themselves.

“Don’t you recognize me?” The man was genuinely surprised.

“I’m…N-no...” George stammered again.

“After all, I am the one who helped your flowers to spring, I was still with you all the time, everywhere. The one you were waiting for, and I felt it in every smile, in every breath... Didn’t you recognize me, the one you admired while reading books about me?”

Having found his kerchief finally, George was wiping his wet face, lips and hands. And shooking his head.

“You’re lying!” the guest said a little sharper. “You did recognize me. You did, but you’re scared. I don’t need anything from you, don’t be scared...” He continued again more tenderly.

George looked at him rather with distrust, tilting his head to one side, continuing wiping his face, sweating with fear, and wondering how he was still conscious.

“Yes, I recognized you,” a few moments later the man admitted quietly.

‘This ca

ot be happening, this is nonsense,’ George kept repeating to himself.

The guest nodded gravely.

“It’s a pity that it took you longer than I expected.”

“But I haven’t called you for a long time, I haven’t thought about you for a long time ...” George said timidly. “And it seemed to me that you were completely different ...”

“As what?” He smiled ironically in response. “With horns, hooves and a tail? I didn’t think that you are so stereotypical. But I can easily arrange both the first, and the second, and the third, and even more...”

That sounded ominous.

“But why did you come now, when all my childhood desires have stepped aside? Now that I don’t call you anymore? And why didn’t you come when I was desperately calling for you?”

***

“Hey, Siegelman*! How’s your Jewish mommy doing?”

The young man froze as soon as the words of his classmates reached him.

‘They’re going to beat me again,’ he thought indifferently, carefully putting aside an old worn backpack which there was nothing to change with. ‘If they tear it, I’ll have to carry books to school in hands. They’ll definitely take them away just like in the past year, when they hid a backpack of a girl from a parallel class.’

‘Lord, how did you endure it?’ He sighed hopelessly, turning to face his tormentors. ‘Why don’t you send the heaven’s punishment on them?’

“Look!” the boys laughed, obviously enjoying themselves. Though, now it was not so much fun to pull him up. They hadn’t noticed themselves when he became indifferent and endured their ridicule in silence. But at first it was much more fun. “Mommy’s Georgie has already prepared for a just smackdown.”

“If you don’t have time for me at all, God, at least send Devil for him to challenge them too...” The young man said, hardly moving his lips, unconsciously taking a few steps back, as if retreating from danger.

“That's right, Siegelman, fear and run! You dared to walk my land unpunished!”

Joey always believed that everything belonged to him: the girl that Georgie liked in the fifth grade; a school diary with excellent marks that he took without asking in the last quarter of the semester to erase Georgie’s last name and show his parents; pocket money that Georgie had been putting off for two years to buy his mother beautiful shoes; his new jacket for which his mother had been smiling to Uncle Peter for so long; a friend that they intimidated so much that now he was afraid to even say hello when he passed by along the hall.

“What to turn, God, if both cheeks are already beaten?” Georgie questioned i

ocently, taking another step back.

And the enemy was approaching confidently.

Another portion of punches and Georgie is lying at the entrance to the schoolyard. The backpack he tried to protect from insatiable Joey was messed up outrageously without any hope of recovery.

Covering his head with his hands (mother always said that first of all, he should keep his head), the young man was absently thinking about the name “Joseph” which his enemy’s friends had shortened to sonorous “Joey”. It has the same roots as Siegel’s family. So why did Joey have everything that he could only dream of when Georgie couldn’t even protect himself?

George looked briefly at the uninvited guest and again plunged into memories of his youth and childhood like in a tub of cold water.