Chapter 21.5 - How I Was Born

The desire to destroy that last flame of goodness she represented was stronger than anything else. The sadness I felt for seeing her trapped in this world still untouched by the pain of reality was overwhelming. She didn't deserve to be here, didn't deserve to carry the weight of this life that I knew was a death in life, an endless suffering. Without saying a word, without a single gesture of warning, I got up and pulled her close to me. She didn't understand. She believed it was an act of trust, of connection, but I pulled her into the abyss of my own emptiness.

The knife, already in my hand, entered her body with ruthless precision. The impact was so fast that she didn't have time to scream, nor to comprehend. The blood gushed out, hot and thick, staining my skin, the wall, the floor. The brightness in her eyes faded in an instant, like a star going out in the vast emptiness of space. She tried to pull away, but there was no escape.

I watched her as her life drained away, as her body turned into a heap of flesh and blood, her entrails exposed, the flesh torn. But I felt nothing. No regret. No emotion. No pleasure. Just the emptiness, denser and deeper than ever.

When Clara's last breath escaped her lips, silence took over the room, heavy and suffocating. The sound of her death still echoed in my mind, but the sensation was the same as before. Nothing. I didn't find the peace I was looking for. I hadn't found the freedom I believed she would have in freeing herself from this life.

What was left was Clara's corpse, sprawled on the floor, her entrails scattered like a grotesque painting, something that could never be patched up. She, who still believed life could be happy, who thought love could heal, was now free. And the irony was that, by freeing her, she no longer suffered. She had found true freedom in death. She no longer needed to carry that burden, no longer needed to live in a world that slowly destroyed her. Because death, as sad as it was, was the only way to escape a suffering that life could never heal.

When the orphanage managers arrived, the shock was immediate. Screams echoed through the orphanage when the staff found me, covered in blood, with Clara at my feet, her disfigured body spread across the floor. They stood frozen, staring at me with wide eyes, unable to believe what they were seeing. I was covered in pieces of flesh, organs, and exposed entrails that no longer looked like part of a human being. Their screams were muffled by my apathy, as if I wasn't truly part of what was happening. They ran around, trying to understand the horror, but I didn't feel the weight of their words or the commotion. Nothing had changed inside me. I was still the same thing, the same shadow.

"You... you're a monster!" the woman manager screamed, but her voice trembled with fear. "What did you do?!"

The only thing I saw was Clara's face, her wide eyes fixed on me as if, somehow, she had understood me until the end, to the point no one else could reach. The light in her eyes went out, and the sound of her breathing disappeared like a candle being suddenly blown out. When she died, there was no pain, no regret. Just an empty echo inside me. If there was a lesson to learn, it dissolved as quickly as her life had gone.

They expelled me immediately, as if the orphanage itself knew there was nothing left to be done with me. There were no words of condemnation, no accusations. Just a violent shove through the doors, and the feeling of cold concrete under my feet when I was thrown outside. The staff ignored me as if I were a rejected animal, an aberration they could no longer offer help to. I didn't care. I didn't care what they thought, what they felt. Only the street remained, that old acquaintance.

I was back in the same landscape of decay I had known before. The sky was gray, heavy clouds that seemed to reflect the emptiness within me. I walked through the deserted streets, searching for something I didn't even know what it was. The city lights flickered, weak and failing, like the souls I crossed. I didn't see them as human beings. They were nothing more than shadows.

I never knew affection, never knew what it was to be truly loved. I always wished for at least a piece of tenderness, something, anything, maybe it was selfishness, I blamed my own hungry heart, which, even in its emptiness, still dared to beg for scraps of a love that never came, but I always gave all I could, and deep down, I only wanted the affection of others. I am like a bee that tries, in vain, to find a flower to pollinate, but all the flowers had already withered, tired of me, and I, alone, keep trying. Today, I carry invisible scars: I am the one who planted gardens in the hearts of others, but never harvested even a single flower for myself.

Each step I took in the streets was a deeper step into the abyss. The gazes of people met mine, but there was nothing left to see. When they passed me, some whispered, some looked at me with fear, but nothing seemed real. I was invisible, but at the same time, a monster in plain sight. The world around me was taken over by an emptiness that seemed to swallow everything around it, and I walked like a specter, floating between human scum.

I wandered for days, my body weakened by hunger and the remnants of my humanity. My feet were cut, bloody, and exhaustion consumed me, but I didn't know how to stop. I didn't know what rest meant. The world around me was a mass of rot, and I was determined to find an even deeper, more unbearable place, where my soul could sink without any further attempts at salvation.

It was on a nearly deserted street that I found the library. It wasn't a beautiful place, it wasn't a sanctuary. It was an old building, its walls covered in mold, and the entrance door creaked as if it were on the brink of collapse. But something about that structure drew me in, something insidious that called me back to the darkness.

I entered without hesitation. The library was silent, dark, as if time had stopped there. The smell of dust and old books filled my nostrils, but it didn't bother me. The darkness was what I sought. It was there I felt most alive, most real, most close to something. The silence echoed, filling the emptiness of my soul more suffocatingly than any word or human gesture could.

The librarian, an old and frail man, was there, hunched over the shelves. He looked at me, but didn't say anything. His expression was empty, like mine. He didn't need to speak. He knew what I was, he knew that nothing could touch me anymore.

I began to arrange the books, without hurry, without emotion. My movements were mechanical, and with every book I touched, it felt like a part of me was disintegrating, leaving behind a thin layer of dust. I didn't read, didn't think. I just organized, as if that was my only way of existing. The books were more than just words. They were echoes of something that had been, something that would never be again.

The librarian died after a few months. There was no farewell, no pain. He simply disappeared, like everything that was left of my humanity. I stayed alone in the library, the keeper of books, but still the shadow of a man who never was.

There, in the muffled silence of the yellowed pages, where words fade like forgotten memories and stories, now distorted by time, get lost in the abyss of indifference, apathy infiltrated me, taking over every cell, until I was no longer anything but the shadow of the man I once was. I was no longer a presence, no longer anything. There were no feelings, no yearning, no desire to fill the empty space that opened inside me, like an eternal abyss. I was a nullity, a worthless existence, wandering aimlessly, searching for a purpose I would never find. The books, once full of lives and experiences, became the only companions in this endless journey. But what was I seeking in them? A lost truth? A hope that I no longer knew what it was? No, I wasn't seeking anything. Only the echo of an emptiness that no longer tried to be filled, but consumed me like a flame without fire. For emptiness is not filled; it takes over and redefines us as the very absence of everything.