I dwell beneath. Not in cellars, not in dungeons, but under the thin crust of what you call life. I have not been exiled. No, worse: I have been tolerated. I am not misunderstood. I am understood too well, which is why you look away. You smell the rot under my smile and still shake my hand. You know what I am capable of, you’ve seen it, or felt it, and yet you let me pass. No punishment. No confrontation. Just your affective nods, your artificial warmth. You fear the truth more than the harm I carry.

I am evil. That’s not confession, it’s geography. I was born into this cavern and I chose to stay. What chills me is not my corruption, it is that no one tried to stop me. Once, I hoped someone might drag me into the light, burning me back into something resembling a man. But instead, they offered invitations. Applause. Polite disinterest. A silent pact: You don’t expose me, and I’ll keep my chaos quiet. They call it civility. I call it cowardice.

I feel nothing. Not for others. Not even for myself. My heart beats… mechanically, indifferently… as if it never belonged to me. Emotions come dressed as echoes, faint and directionless. I try to remember what it felt like to ache, to desire, to love. But all I find are the husks of those words, their meanings long expired.

And still, I ask: why haven’t you stopped me?

You praise empathy, compassion, morality. But when it matters, you retreat. You anesthetize yourselves with screens, causes, and empty words, hoping no one notices the moral vacancy behind your curated concern. You treat cruelty as an inconvenience, not an emergency. If I am a monster, I am not alone. I am the mirror. I am what festers when no one bothers to care enough to resist.

I’ve tried to feel. Believe me. I’ve clawed at the walls of this inner silence, hoping to draw blood. I’ve hurt others to see if guilt would rise like smoke. I’ve watched people cry, listened to their pain with the precision of a scientist, measuring the depth of my indifference. Nothing. Not even disgust. You think evil is fire and rage. You think it howls. But no! Evil is quiet. It sits. It watches. It does not flinch. It’s the stillness after the scream, the place where no echo returns.

They no longer expect kindness. That is how deep the dullness goes, not only in me, but in you. We are mutually anesthetized. I am not the only one underground, you are here too, just better dressed. And when I speak, it is not to confess but to mark territory. This interior, this echo chamber of unfeeling, is mine. And I ask again: where were you? Why didn’t you come for me? Why did you let me rot? Maybe you didn’t think I was worth saving. Maybe you weren’t either.

I am beginning to wonder if the human heart is not lost in a moment of violence, but rather in the slow erosion of feeling, a soft disappearance. One day you forget how to cry. Another day, how to ache. Then, finally, you forget that anything ever mattered at all. I suspect I’ve already reached that place. And if not, then I am close. Although some part of me still speaks. Still watches. Still writes, but why?

Perhaps I do not want salvation. Perhaps I only want to be seen in my ruin. Not fixed. Just noticed. Witnessed like a ruin in the desert, its architecture still intact, even if no soul dares enter. Perhaps this is not a plea. Perhaps this is a eulogy.