How I Scared A Psychopath

by Daichi Mizuhiro
(Japan)

We were a group of 8 people, and I happened to sit next to the guy whom I figured out was a psychopath. He is slightly older than me, and expected in general to be smarter than I am.

He had a meal ordered on the plane beforehand and knew it was his when the air hostess came to inquire. He swiftly suggested that it might be mine just to observe my reaction. At that time, I reacted by frowning and caught his microexpressions switching from surprise to excitement and a slight smirk at the corner of the mouth.

My next conversation was about choosing roommates. Although I don't recall much of that, he chose someone else which I figure was because he couldn't have controlled me the way he wanted to.

He quickly showed signs of dominance, promiscuous sexual behaviours, pathological lying and manipulation. It so happens that out of the 8 of us, he had managed to coerce the rest into his group and do his bidding. He chose his posse and his woman by using his superficial charm.

He usually would manipulate people into doing things, and I fell for it only once, but I quickly caught on to his act.

We proposed meetings to discuss what was going wrong. Usually what would happen is that he wouldn't pause once in what he said, so I cut to the chase and kept talking without breaking pace.

I noticed that when he was having a conversation, he would insert some facts which would seem so incredibly impossible but the way he would do it would tend to convince everyone. When he learnt something, which comes easy to him, he smites down each and every one to study their reactions to different situations.

I am a person who wouldn't assert his dominance over others but who exudes it by the way I talk and I choose my words carefully. I also have an intrinsic ability to read micro-expressions and deliver sentences based on the present emotions. I carefully consider and pick the words which are relevant.

He never gave off his aura to me to scare me in any way because he knew I couldn't be a prey. In comparison, when the people in his group finally understood after 4 months or so what was going on, he had already enticed his woman with total dominance and she would obey every word he uttered.

The scariest part is that another group of 7 joined us 1 month after we first arrived and he had managed to convince them by fabricating and exaggerating facts about me.

They would still be in his group if one of the new guys hadn't succeeded in making him spew out his fantasies without foundation about me. They realised instantly.

Not being able to manipulate is a challenge, but is not enough. There needs to be an instinctive factor which would repel him. And it so happens that I am physically stronger than him. I once or twice hit him hard and expected the usual reaction which is to hit back or complain. But he walked away, as if a wolf has had its tail cut off.

About the posse itself, it would seem that his very presence would tame them. When he was exposed, they told me that they saw a flicker of a predator in his eyes, and half of them cried for 10 minutes in fear... and that was in a room of 14 people.

Trying to be forgiven was another card up his sleeve, he had managed to convince everyone except me... and to this day he has a different way of talking to me.

I don't hesitate to assert my dominance by using an individualized expression which I reserve for the trumped, which is a mixture of a smirk on the corner of my mouth, a smile which passes the general opinion as genuine and a slight squint of the eyes. I look closely at his face and mannerisms when he loses, and when he looks at my face, something boils inside him but he doesn't show it.

Several people have told me that he exudes a predator's aura, but I'm happy that he stays away.