The Unrepentant

EvieBlack 3 stories

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Summary

They call me Adam. Not because it suits me. But because it doesn't challenge anything. It's the name you give a man you don't plan to remember. Easy to say, easy to file away in some cracked drawer of acquaintances you'll never call. I live in a city that never sleeps. But not because it's alive. It just forgot how to rest. How to breathe. Like me. Every morning, I wake up in a shoebox apartment with walls so thin I can hear the neighbors scream at each other and pretend they're in love. I brush my teeth. I pull on my mask. It looks like me, sort of. Just cleaner. Smoother. Palatable. It only smiles. Doesn't frown. It knows better. People don't like moods, they like stability. I walk down cracked sidewalks littered with yesterday's sins, past people who don't look at me because I don't give them a reason to. I wear my mask well. But underneath... oh, underneath it's a mess. Something rots. Something writhes. And I let it. I stopped trying to kill it years ago. They told me to "fix it," "fight it," "pray it away." But no one ever said, "Hey... maybe it's part of you." No one asked me if I even wanted to change. So I didn't. I just became. The monster beneath the mask. The man with a name so boring, no one ever bothers to learn who I really am. I am The Unrepentant. And this city, this purgatory, is my cathedral.