Villainaire

All villains have something in common.

Not blood.

Not power.

Not cruelty.

Those are merely hobbies.

The real commonality is narrative.

From psychopathic serial killers smearing blood across walls like a narcotic signature,

to narcissistic autocrats smothering lives like they were pocket change fed into a vending machine called glory,

all villains have one thing in common.

They believe they are the victim.

The wound.

The injustice.

The tragic exception.

And somehow,

simultaneously,

they believe they are the Messiah.

The cure.

The chosen one.

The correction.

The reluctant saviour history simply hasn't thanked yet.

That is the trick.

No one wakes up and volunteers to be the monster.

Monsters are what happen when presumed victimhood develops delusions of grandeur.

Monsters are what happen when imagined crimes stop seeking justice and start seeking authorship.

When grievance acquires a microphone.

When self-pity discovers empire.

When suffering ceases to be an experience and becomes an identity with expansion plans of a multinational conglomerate.

And everyone else?

Everyone else becomes scenery.

Props for storytelling.

A spouse becomes character development.

A friend becomes exposition.

A stranger becomes collateral.

A grave becomes an asterisk.

The judiciary becomes democratic inconvenience.

Because once you are both the victim and the Messiah,

other people stop being people.

They become evidence.

Obstacles.

Special effects.

Supporting cast in a redemption arc they never auditioned for.

And that is perhaps the most frightening thing about villains.

Not that they lack humanity.

But that they reserve all of it for themselves.

All villains have something in common:

they build cathedrals out of their wounds, crown themselves patron saints of suffering, and mistake a crime scene for a standing ovation.