Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

There are monsters all around us—people who have to hide because the world can’t bear to see them for who they truly are. They’re good at keeping secrets, the monsters. Sometimes, too good.

No one talked about their past without things getting distorted—and without consequences. There were always consequences.

“The good ones, though”—she sighed—“the good ones are magic. It’s like, when you finally let go, release your problems to them, they take some of the pain away, and suddenly you’re lighter. Unencumbered and free to live your life.”

never considered the way fear could fill a person, weigh them down. I never knew fear had actual mass.

There were two sides to every breakup story.

“You understand, don’t you,” he said gently, “that sometimes people hide certain facets of who they are, who they were, from the people they love? Not because they’re willfully trying to hurt them, but simply because they’re deeply, deeply afraid that the one person they care about most may reject them.”

Our minds were tricky things, manipulators of time and space, coloring events with our personal palette of rage, fear, or desire.

“No one really knows what exactly flips that switch that transforms a basic psychopath from someone who merely cheats on his taxes to someone who commits more serious crimes.

Antisocial personality disorder combined with malignant narcissism and Machiavellianism forms what experts call “the dark triad”—a lethal combination of nature and nurture that creates a perfect storm in the human brain, compelling sufferers to destroy everything around them. And they do it with glee.