Innocence.

He had stalked her for a long time before daring to approach her. She was sitting on a bench in the middle of the park and the faint yellow light of the streetlight made her look like a little angel. His blond hair was combed in careful loops on both sides of his head by two large white bows. The dress was a cheesy display of ruffles and pink lace, like that of one of those romantic shepherds more like princesses of the European paintings that were exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On his knees, a long staff decorated with a huge bow of the same color completed the wardrobe. When he was on his back he could not see his eyes, but they seemed big and innocent, the color of the sky over the prairies of Wyoming where he had been raised. That sky that was now flooded by the storm of tears while the shoulders convulsed to the rhythm of the weeping.

The bag with the generous booty of the "trick or treat" was forgotten and opened on the floor with some chocolates struggling to escape. He imagined that he had been lost by the hand of his older brothers in the chaos of Halloween (surely irresponsible teenagers more concerned about drinking a furtive beer under the cover of darkness than to watch over their annoying little sister). Soon the park would be illuminated with the light of the spotlights and would be filled with anguished cries of relatives and neighbors calling her by her name upon realizing her disappearance.

He looked around once more to make sure there was no one nearby who could thwart his plan and stepped out from behind the bush, licking himself in anticipation at imagining his infant naked body, the cologne smell of his hair, the warmth and smoothness of his body. his skin, life dying in those innocent eyes full of terror ...

"Hello, little one," he said sweetly, putting a hand on her shoulder. Are you lost?

Art used to interest them very little, but if you add a supposed history of violence, ghosts and corpses, they will attend mass anywhere.

The painting, lost for decades, had been donated to the Met by an anonymous benefactor and, given its obscure fame (and an intelligent advertising campaign based on it), had become a resounding success from the first minute.

It was said to be a bucolic and innocent representation of a very young Erzsébeth Báthory and that the author, apparently an old lover, although not proven, had locked his soul with black magic to keep her young and pure at his side even after dead. It is also said that, when the rumor spread, an angry mob assaulted the castle where it hid with his work and burned him alive, but that, when they tried to destroy the painting, the painting had disappeared.

"Absurd, stupid and wonderful morbid" thought opening the door of the room where the painting was, turned on the light and ... vomited violently on the floor and then run away to the cry of "Police, help, someone help me! "

"The Innocence" measured one meter sixty high by one twenty wide and represented a girl around seven years old dressed as a shepherd. The complete kit: golden loops, huge blue eyes, bows, ruffles, shoes completely inadvisable for life in the country, petticoat, crook and, to make it absolutely clear that she was a shepherdess, even if it did not look like it, an adorable sheep by her side more like a cottony cloud than an authentic sheep.

Under it, the body opened in the channel of a man in his thirties. His intestines were scattered all over the floor like a soft red carpet. The arms, nailed in the wall open in cross, offered a macabre welcome to the visitors and the head, separated from the trunk, was stuck in his neck in what, clearly, was a white crook with a huge pink ribbon.