 My name is Sam Battenin, and I am the author of Malignancy of Love, Narcissism Revisited. The following piece of short fiction describes the process of swindling. How a conman, a scammer, lures his prey, infiltrates his victim's mind, converts him to the cause in a shared psychosis, tune in, and watch the process unfolding. Swayed in luminosity, we steer with measured competence our amber drinks in long-stemmed glasses. You're weighing my offer, and I'm waiting for your answer with a hushed endurance. The armchairs are soft, the lobby is luxurious, it defeats five-star hotels. I'm not tense, I've anticipated your response even before I made my move. Soon, your temples sheathed in perspiration. You use the outfit's thick paper napkins to wipe it off, and I'm watching. You loosen your tie. You pretend to be immersed in calculations. You express strident dissatisfaction, and I feign recoil as though intimidated by your loudness. Withdrawing to my second line of events, I surrender to your simulated rage. The signs are here. The gestures. The infinitesimal movements that you cannot control. And I lurk. I know the definite look. That imperceptible twitch. The inevitability of your surrender. I'm a conman, and you are my victim. Swindle is unfolding here and now, in this very atrium. Amid all the extravagance, I'm selling your soul, and I'm collecting the change. And sharpened, like a raw nerve, firing impulses to you, receiving yours. An electrical chemical dialogue consisting of your smelly sweat, my scented exudation. I permeate your cracks. I broker an alliance with your fears, your pains, defense compensatory mechanisms. You see, I know you. I know you. And now I've got to meld us into one, as dusk gives way to nights. You trust me as you do yourself, for now I am nothing less than you. I am you. Having adopted your particular gesticulations, I even nod approvingly with every mention of your family. I know you do not like me. You sense the danger, your nostrils flare, your eyes amuck, your hands are so restless. You know me for a bilker. You realize I'll break your heart. And you know, and I know, that we both are choiceless. You comprehend this. You see, it's not really about money. Emotions are at stake. I share your depths of loneliness and pain. Sitting opposed, I see the child in you, the adolescent. I discern the bleeding sparkle in your eyes, your shoulders stooping in the very second that you decided to succumb to me. I'm hurting for what I do to you. And I'm hurting for what I am about to do to you. My only consolation is the inexorability of nature, my nature, your nature, the world's nature, in which we find ourselves in not of our choice. And still, we are here, you know. So, I empathize with you. I empathize with you without speech, without motion. Your solitary sadness, your anguish, your fears. I am your only friend. I am the monopolist of your invisible cries, your inner hemorrhage of salty tears, the tissues scar that you have become, that has become your being. And like me, you're the product of uncounted blows, which you sometimes crave. I've been abused, you've been abused. Being abused is being understood. It's having some meaning, forming a narrative. Without abuse, your life is nothing but an anecdotal stream of randomness. And I deal the final overwhelming kudigrass that will transform the torn sheets of your biography to a plot which will imbue your life with meaning. It isn't everyday someone meets a cheat. Such confident encounters can render everything explain. Don't give it up. It is a gift of life not to be frivolously dispensed with. It is a test of worthiness. I think that you qualify. And I am the structure. And I am the target that you've been searching for and seeking. And here I am. And now, we are bound by money. And we are bound by blood. In our common veins flows the same alliance that dilates our pupils. We hail from one beginning. We separate it, or later unite again. At once, in this hotel, this late, and you exclaim, I need to trust you like I do not trust another soul. You beseech me not to betray your faith. Perhaps not so explicitly, but both your eyes are moist. Reflecting your vulnerability in my advantage. So, I gravely radiate my utter guarantee of splendid outcomes. No hint of treason here. Concurrently, I'm plotting your emotional demise. It's your request, not mine. It is an act of amity, of mercy, to rid you of the very cause of your infirmity. I am the instrument of your delivery, your liberation. I will deprive you of your ability to feel, to trust, to believe. When we diverge, I will have molded you anew. You will be much less susceptible, much more immune, much stronger, the essence of resilience. This is my gift to you, and you are surely grateful in advance. Thus, when you demand my fealty, you say, Do not forget our verbal understanding, and when I vow my loyalty I answer, I shall not forget to stab you in the back. And now, the terms completed and understood, Let's go to the transaction. I study you. I train you to ignore my presence, and argue with yourself with the utmost sincerity. I teach you not to resent your weaknesses. So, you admit to them. And I record all your confessions to be used against you to your benefit at a future date. Denuded of defenses, I leave you wounded by embezzlement called contemptible exposure. And in the meantime, it's only warmth and safety, intimacy of empathy, the propinquity of mutual understanding. All these I provide. I provide. I only ask of you one thing. The fullest trust. A willingness to yield. I remember having seen the following in an art house movie. It was kind of a test. To fall, spread ego from a high embankment, and to believe that I will be there to catch you and break your little plunge. I'm telling you that I'll be there. Yet, you know I will not. Your craving is none of my concern. I only undertook to bring you to the brink. And this promise I fulfilled. And now it's up to you to climb it. It's up to you to tumble into the depths of your own abyss, not mine. I must not hold your crash. You have to recompose. It is my contribution to the transformation that metastasized in you long before we met. I do not feel responsible, or guilty, or blame-worthy. But you are not yet at the stage of internalizing these veracities. You still naively link faint geniality to constancy, intimacy and confidence in me and my deeds, proximity and full disclosure. You are so terrified and mutilated that you can't evaluate. You cost me merely a whiskey tumbler and a compendium of ordinary words, how cheap you are. One tear is enough to alter your allegiances. You are malleable to the point of having no identity. You crave my touch, my affection. And I crave your information, your unbridled faith. So here is my friendship, here is my caring, my tenderness, my amity. Here is a hug, and your parent, and your shrink, and your body, your family, whatever you want. So go the words of this in the audible dialogue between us. Just give me your utter, blind trust, but limited to one point only. Your money, or your life, as you prefer. I need to know about your funds, the riddles of your boardroom, commercial secrets, your skeletons, some intimate detail, a fear, a resurgent hatred, the envy that consumes you. I don't presume to be your confidant, our sharing is confined to the pecuniary. Don't worry, I love you into the relief that comes with much reduced demands. But you are an experienced businessman. You surely recognize my tactics. You employ them too, from time to time. Still, you're both seduced and tempted. The only condition of maintaining independent thinking. Well, almost independent. There's a tiny crack in your cerebral armor, a chink. And I'm there to thrust right through it and into your heart. I'm ready to habituate you. I'm ready to inhabit you. I'm in full control, let's say. So where's the threat? And truly, where's the threat? There's none. There's only certainty. The certitude I offer you throughout our game. Sometimes I even venture, I say, I'm a crook to be avoided. And you listen with your occidental manners, head tilted obliquely. And when I'm finished warning you, you say, but where the danger lies? My trust in you is limited indeed, but it is there. So I lurk, awaiting your capitulation, inhabiting the margins, the twilight zone to excrete and paranoia. I'm a viral provision, invading avaricious membranes, preaching a gospel of death and resurrection. Your death, your rising from the dead. Assuming the cultures of my host, I abandon you, deformed in dissolution. And there's no respite, not even for a day, not even for a minute. You're addicted to my nagging, to my penetrating gaze, instinctive sympathy. You're haunted, and I don't let go. You're engulfed, cocooned. I'm a sawmaker of eerie insight, unselfish acumen, your body's snatcher. I wish you need myself for your minutest needs. I thrive on servitude. I leave no doubt that my self-love is acceded only by my love for you. So I'm useful, when you are a user. I'm available, when you avail yourself. But haven't you heard that there are no free lunches? My restaurant is classy, the prices most exorbitant. The invoices accumulate with every smile I give, every word of reassurance, every anxious inquiry as to your health, every sacrifice I make, however insubstantial and imaginary. I keep accounts in my unstated books, and you rely on me for every double entry. And the voices I instill in you, you say to yourself, he gives so much of himself through though largely unrewarded. And you feel ashamed, you feel compelled to cope and save you. It is a seed of Trojan guilt. I harp on it by mentioning others who decrypt me. I count on you to do the rest. There's nothing more potent than egotistic love combined with raging culpability. In your mind to do it is a wish. It is your wish that I embody and reify and ultimately possess. And so the vice is tightened. Now it's time to ponder whether to feed on you at once or to scavenge your remains. You're already dying. And in your mental carcass, in your cadaver, I am grown, an alien, invoking your immunity as I want to do. And doing it will further make you ill. Conflict will erupt between your white cells and your black cells and twin abodes of your awakened feelings. You hope against all odds that I'm a soulmate. And how does it feel, the solitude? Feels horrible. A few days with me and you cannot recall how it was. But I cannot remember how it feels to be together. You cannot recall the solitude. I cannot recall our togetherness. I cannot waive my loneliness, my staunch companion. When I'm with you, eat prosperous. And you must pay for that. I have no choice but to have scorned with your possessions, lest I remain bereft. With utmost ethics I keep you well informed of these dynamics and you acknowledge my fragility which makes you deserous to solve my wounds. It is your fault and your fault only that you are here. But I maintain the benefit of your surprise, the flowing motion. Always at an advantage over you because you are interchangeable. I, on the other hand, cannot be replaced as far as you are concerned. You are a loyal subject of your psychic state while I am a denizen of the eternal hunting grounds. There's no limits there, no boundaries. Only the nostrils quivering at the game. The surging musculature, the body fluids, the scent of decadence, the rush of adrenaline. Sometimes, I admit, the prey becomes a predator, but only for a while. Admittedly, it's possible. You might still turn the tables only, but you don't want to. You crave so to be hunted, the orgiastic moment of my proverbial bullets penetrating your willing flesh. The rape, the violation, the metaphoric blood and love you are no longer satisfied with any compromises but your own disintegration. You want to die having experienced this eruption once, this climax. For what is life without such infringement, if not near ripening concluding in decade? What sense does men, apart from beasts, is our ability to self-deceive and swindle others? The rogue's advantage of a quarry is his capacity to have his lies transmuted till you, the victim, the prey, believe them through. And so, I trek the unpaved pathways between my truth and your delusions. What am I? Am I a fiend? Am I perhaps an angel? A weak, disintegrating apparition or a triumphant growth? I'm devoid, devoid of conscience in my own reflection. It is a cause for mirth. My complex is binary, to fight, to flight, well or ill, which would have been this way or I was led astray. I am the blinding merceness that never sets, not even when I sleep. It overwhelms me too, but also renders me far-sighted. It taught me my survival, strike before your struck, abandon before your trashed, control before you're subjugated. Okay, so what do you have to say to all this now? I told you everything. You haven't said a word. Perhaps you knew it all before. You grasp how dire my need is for your blood, your pain, the traumatic coma that will follow. They say that one's death bequiths another's life. It is the most profound destination to will existence, to your pining duplicate. It is an intercourse, physically unplump and short. My face is uncontrived and smiling. When I'm serious, I'm told I'm like a battered and deserted child. This provokes in you an ancient cuddling instinct. When I am proximate, your body and your soul are unrestrained. I watch you kindly in the artificial lighting of this magnificent vestibule, bounces of my glasses. My eyes are cradled in blackened pouches of withered skin. I draw your gaze by sigh sadly and rubbing them with wary hands. And you incline your body. You gulp this fecant libation. You want to shield me. You become protective and you sign the document. You sign the document and then leaning back, you shut, exhaust the dyes. There is no doubt you have realized your error. You know it's a mistake. There is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do about it. The exhilaration of the prey, the exhilaration of the hunt. It's not too late. The document lies there. It's ready for the tearing. But you refrain. You do not touch it. You will not do it. Instead, you ask another drink perhaps. And I smile. My chubby cheeks angelic. My wary glasses sparkle. And I say no thank you.