Leonardo

She was a psychiatrist at a hospital for dangerous criminals. Calm-faced, precise with her words, she believed that behind every evil there is a motive that can be understood. One evening he was brought in — a serial killer they had captured after a string of horrific crimes that baffled everyone. But she, unlike her colleagues, did not see a monster in him… she saw a puzzle waiting to be solved.

In the first session he sat with his hands bound, looking at her with a half-smile and said:

“Do you think you’ll understand me? People are afraid of me, and you came to fix me.”

She did not shy away from his gaze. She knew that sentence was not a threat but a test. She stepped forward a little, looked at him with steady eyes and said in a calm, disquietingly composed voice:

“I won’t try to fix you; I’ll only try to know you.”

From that moment everything changed. Every session between them became like a dance between light and darkness. He recounted the details of his crimes with terrifying coldness, and she listened with an oddly intense focus, searching for any trace of the human within him.

Over time she no longer saw him merely as ill, but as a spirit so distorted that it provoked both pity and fascination. He began to enter her dreams, and she would sometimes wake with his voice in her head saying:

“You’re the only one who didn’t run.”

Then came the day the silence between them broke. He sat before her, staring at her face for a long time before speaking in a low, hoarse voice:

“You think you’re different from the others… but you were the only one who looked at me without fear. Everyone who met me saw a monster; you saw a person hiding behind the blood. You tried to heal me, but you didn’t realize you became my disease. I don’t need salvation — I need you. And when I lose you… I will kill to see you again, in faces that resemble you, in souls that are not yours.”

The doctor looked at him for a long time and said nothing. She knew that this con