In the Blood

by Lisa Unger

I clutched my little pen case covered with smiling matryoshka dolls. The nesting doll, a self inside a self inside a self, my own personal symbolism.

That’s what they do, psychopaths. They figure out your language, your currency, your needs, your dreams and fears. Then they figure out how to use those things to get what they want from you.

the psychopath doesn’t have an inner life—no attachments, no feelings, no self-doubt, no regrets. Psychopaths just have their own desires, and a single-minded focus to achieve those desires—whatever they happen to be.

I think we draw people into our lives. It’s as though we broadcast our deepest needs, and certain people hear the signal somewhere in their own subconscious and heed the call. For better or worse, we attract our teachers, our allies, and sometimes even our nightmares. Some of us have louder signals. Some of us have more sensitive receptors.