I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless

Host: The rain had not stopped for three days. It drummed endlessly on the rooftops, splattered across the windows, and gathered into pools that mirrored the neon lights of the city like fractured constellations. The air smelled of wet asphalt, tobacco, and regret.

Inside a dilapidated warehouse, flickering lamps cast broken halos on cracked walls covered with graffiti — faces, names, memories of those who had passed through and disappeared.

Jack sat on a rusted chair, his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, eyes fixed on the concrete floor as if searching for something buried beneath it. Jeeny stood by a window, her silhouette lit by the light of passing cars, her breath visible in the cold.

They were waiting — not for someone, but for something within themselves to be spoken aloud.

Jeeny: “Do you ever think about them, Jack? The ones everyone else calls monsters — the thieves, the liars, the murderers. Sometimes I wonder if they’re just mirrors, showing us what we hide in ourselves.”

Jack: (gruffly) “No. I think about the people they hurt. The bodies, the families, the lives they break. You can romanticize darkness all you want, Jeeny, but pain isn’t beautiful. It’s just real.”

Host: The light buzzed, a dying insect trapped in its own glow. Jeeny turned, her eyes dark, almost tender.

Jeeny: “Jean Genet once said he saw beauty in thieves, traitors, and murderers — a sunken beauty. Maybe what he meant wasn’t to praise the crime, but to see the human still trembling underneath the sin. Isn’t that worth seeing?”

Jack: “Genet was a criminal himself. He found poetry in his own guilt, because that’s the only way he could live with it. That’s not beauty, Jeeny — that’s survival.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s truth. Maybe beauty isn’t supposed to be clean. Maybe it’s what’s left when the mask is gone — when someone’s so broken they can’t pretend anymore.”

Jack: “You talk like there’s grace in decay. Like a man who kills for money still has a halo somewhere deep inside.”

Host: Jack’s voice echoed off the walls, sharp and tired. Outside, a siren wailed, then faded, leaving only the heartbeat of rain. Jeeny walked closer, her boots splashing through a puddle. The sound was soft, but it filled the room like a confession.

Jeeny: “You ever looked into the eyes of someone who’s done something unforgivable? There’s this silence in them — a kind of dark honesty. They’ve stopped lying to themselves. I saw it once, in a woman who’d set her own house on fire with her husband inside. She told me she didn’t want to be forgiven. She just wanted to be seen. And when I did… I swear, Jack, it was terrifying — and beautiful.”

Jack: (leans forward) “Beautiful? She killed a man!”

Jeeny: “Yes. And yet she was still human. That’s what Genet meant — that somewhere in the ruthless, the cunning, the damned, there’s a shadow of the same light that lives in us. It’s just buried deeper.”

Jack: “You call it light, I call it excuse. You want to see beauty in monsters because it makes the world less frightening. But some people choose their darkness, Jeeny. Not everyone’s a misunderstood soul.”

Host: The wind howled through the broken window, scattering papers across the floor — old blueprints, letters, and a half-burned photo of a man in uniform. Jack picked it up, stared, then dropped it again, as if the weight of memory burned his hand.

Jeeny: “Do you believe anyone’s beyond redemption?”

Jack: (after a pause) “Yes. I’ve seen what hatred does when it’s left to grow. I once knew a man — a friend, if you could call him that — who worked for a contractor overseas. We uncovered he was stealing from the project, siphoning money from aid funds meant for refugees. When I confronted him, he laughed. Said everyone was doing it. Said integrity doesn’t build profit. When I saw his eyes, there was nothing left in them. Just calculation. If there’s beauty there, I didn’t see it.”

Jeeny: “Maybe you didn’t look long enough.”

Jack: “Or maybe you’ve looked too long at shadows, Jeeny. Stay there too long, and they start to look like light.”

Host: The rain slowed, and a strange calm settled — the kind that comes just before dawn. The city lights blinked softer now, more human. Jeeny sat down across from him, her knees drawn up, her hands clasped around a mug of cold coffee.

Jeeny: “You think I’m naïve. But maybe what I’m saying is that beauty isn’t about being good. It’s about being true. The criminal, the betrayer, they strip away the pretense. When Genet called them beautiful, he was saying they’ve stopped pretending to be like us.”

Jack: “And that makes them beautiful? That’s twisted.”

Jeeny: “Twisted maybe, but honest. At least they don’t hide their hunger, their violence, their need. We do. We hide it behind laws and manners and comfort. But under it all, we’re still animals, Jack — elegant, terrified animals pretending to be pure.”

Jack: (softly) “And you think admitting that makes us noble?”

Jeeny: “No. Just real.”

Host: For a moment, neither of them spoke. The sound of dripping water echoed in the distance, rhythmic as a pulse. Jack stood, his shadow stretching long across the floor, fractured by the light.

Jack: “I don’t believe in romanticizing what destroys. I’ve seen addicts who would steal their mother’s ring for another fix, soldiers who smiled while burning villages. There’s no beauty there. Just damage.”

Jeeny: “And yet, you still remember them. You talk about them with the same intensity you talk about buildings or truth. Maybe that’s the beauty — the capacity to feel even disgust so deeply. The fact that you still care enough to hate means the world hasn’t gone numb in you.”

Jack: (quietly) “Maybe hate is just love turned inside out.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: The lamp flickered once more and went out. Only the moonlight remained, silvering the edges of their faces, softening the anger, the weariness, the unspoken recognition between them.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what Genet meant by ‘sunken beauty.’ The kind that’s been to hell and came back carrying its own ashes. It’s not something you want to glorify — it’s something you can’t help but see.”

Jack: (after a long silence) “You really believe there’s beauty in the broken?”

Jeeny: “I believe that the broken are the only ones who know what beauty costs.”

Host: Outside, the rain stopped completely. The first light of morning slipped between the clouds, touching the wet streets with faint gold. The warehouse, once a ruin, now glowed like a cathedral of dust, its imperfections illuminated — every crack, every stain, every flaw made visible and strangely sacred.

Jack looked around, and for the first time that night, his eyes softened.

Jack: “You know, Jeeny… maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s something in them — something that still fights to exist, even under the filth. Like a flower growing through concrete. Ugly, maybe. But stubbornly alive.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “And isn’t that what beauty really is? The refusal to die quietly.”

Host: The light filled the room now, golden, warm, and honest. Jack and Jeeny stood together at the window, watching the city awaken. In the puddles below, the sunrise shimmered — broken, fragmented, but beautiful all the same.

And as the world stirred, so did they — two souls learning, once again, that even in the deepest darkness, there lies a sunken beauty waiting to be seen.