The serial bad guy man is a bad pet. VIDEO
It was a phrase that had been whispered in the back of Kym’s mind for years, ever since the first time he’d heard it from a child in a schoolyard, wide-eyed and trembling as she pointed at a poster of him in the local newspaper. “He’s a bad pet,” she’d said. “He eats the ones who don’t listen.”
Kym had laughed then. A dry, brittle sound that echoed in the empty house. He’d thought it was just a child’s imagination, a metaphor for a monster that didn’t exist. But the truth was, the phrase had stuck with him like a splinter beneath the skin.
He wasn’t a pet. Not really. He wasn’t a dog or a cat or any creature that could be trained, fed, or loved in the conventional sense. He was something else. Something that had been born in silence and had learned to speak through the absence of others.
He had always been drawn to the quiet ones—the ones who didn’t cry out, who didn’t fight back, who simply… disappeared.
And now, as he sat across from the woman in the armchair, the rain drumming against the windows like a thousand tiny fists, he realized that he had been wrong about the phrase all along.
He wasn’t a bad pet.
He was the one who had been abandoned.
The woman had stopped crying. Her hands were still trembling, but her breath had steadied. She looked at him with a mixture of fear and something else—something like recognition.
“You’re not like the others,” she said softly.
Kym tilted his head. “Others?”
She swallowed. “The ones who come here. The ones who think they’re going to find answers. They always leave… different.”
Kym didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. He had seen it happen a thousand times. The hopeful ones, the desperate ones, the ones who believed they could change him. They would sit in that same chair, clutching their secrets like sacred texts, and then they would leave—changed, broken, or worse, gone.
But this woman… she didn’t seem to believe in redemption. She didn’t seem to believe in him either.
And that was what made her different.
“I didn’t come here for answers,” she said. “I came here because I had nowhere else to go.”
Kym studied her. Her eyes were haunted, but not in the way of someone who had been hurt. In the way of someone who had seen too much and had stopped caring.
“I know what it’s like,” he said. “To have no place to go.”
She looked at him, surprised. “You do?”
He nodded. “I was never supposed to be here. I was supposed to be gone.”
She leaned forward. “What happened?”
Kym didn’t answer right away. He picked up the journal from his lap and opened it to a blank page. He took out a pencil from his coat pocket and began to draw.
Not a portrait. Not a scene. Just a line. A single, continuous line that twisted and turned like a river searching for its source.
“I was a child,” he said finally. “Like you. I had a home. A family. A name.”
He paused, his pencil hovering over the paper.
“But I wasn’t supposed to be here.”
The woman frowned. “What do you mean?”
Kym looked up at her. “I wasn’t supposed to survive.”
She stared at him, her breath catching. “What?”
He closed the journal and placed it on the table. “I was the one who didn’t make it.”
The woman leaned back, her eyes wide. “You’re saying… you’re one of them?”
Kym smiled. “No. I’m the one who remembers.”
He stood and walked to the window, his reflection distorted in the rain-streaked glass. “They all come to me,” he said. “The ones who were silenced. The ones who were never heard.”
He turned back to her. “But I’m not here to fix them. I’m here to listen.”
The woman looked at him, her expression softening. “Then why did you take this house?”
Kym walked back to the armchair and sat down. “Because it was the only place I could be quiet.”
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, silver locket. He opened it carefully. Inside was a tiny photograph of a young boy with dark hair and wide, innocent eyes.
“That’s me,” he said. “Before I became… whatever I am now.”
The woman stared at the photo, her throat tight. “You’re not what I thought.”
Kym closed the locket and placed it on the table. “I’m not what anyone thinks.”
He stood again and walked to the door. “You should go.”
The woman blinked. “What?”
Kym looked at her. “You don’t belong here.”
She stood up, her voice trembling. “But I just told you—”
“I know,” he said. “But you don’t belong here.”
He walked to the door and opened it. The rain rushed in, cold and wet, soaking his coat. He stepped outside and stood on the porch, the sea roaring below.
“I’ll be here,” he said. “If you need me.”
The woman stood in the doorway, her coat dripping, her eyes searching his face.
“Will you listen?” she asked.
Kym turned back to her, his expression unreadable. “I always listen.”
And then he closed the door.
The woman stood there for a long time, listening to the rain and the waves and the silence that followed.
She didn’t leave.
She sat back down in the armchair and opened the journal.
And for the first time, she began to write.