We Are All Vampires
VII — Emotional Sucking and the Arrogant Vampire
← Karl Swainston / We Are All Vampires
Another red flag advertising the presence of a vampire is that the creature will delve deeply into your emotions. They will, however, have no interest in the emotions themselves; their interest is merely a tactic to elicit evidence of where weaknesses lie.
The vampiric creature will probe through your emotions for weakness. The victim will often find the vampire very considerate and attentive to their emotional narrative. They will feel that the vampire cares because of their interest.
The vampire cannot feel emotions like any normal being. They are bereft of emotional content in their lives. This is why they find emotional narratives interesting. It is something new to them.
In eliciting emotional narratives from their victims, the vampire waits for the negative to appear. This will be their opportunity to seize the ‘limelight’, be the saviour and be superior. Once the vampire has honed in on this emotional weakness and focused all its attention on the subject, the vampire will hijack the whole scene and use it to their advantage.
The vehicle for this hijacking is the conversation. The vampire is an adept creature at controlling conversations. They have the unique ability to block out what any other person is saying and only bring their thoughts to the conversation. Because they possess this intense self-focus on what they deem suitable, they can often come across as quite persuasive. The more persuasive the vampire becomes, the weaker their victims become. They will rule the conversation for their own ends.
If the conversation is in danger of veering away from the vampire’s control, they will use all means and powers to deflect it back again.
The vampire has an extraordinary ability to pinpoint with exactitude and identify the slightest chink in their victim’s armour. They can dismantle the slightest failing and utilise this to bring down the victim’s whole character.
The vampire is always significantly critical of others. They will pick up on the actions of others and find fault with how or how something has been done.
By nature, the vampire is a negative creature, and finding faults is a negative occupation.
Seeing fault is not complicated; it is one of the most straightforward occupations in the world.
‘Criticism comes easier than craft.’ as the adage goes. The vampire is a master of such common practice. For the vampire, finding fault is a must.
In the first instance, the victim will be sucked of positive energy; in the second, the vampire will feel invigorated by its powerful act. The creature will feed off the deterioration in its victim’s character. There will be no remorse or conscience from the vampire because, as we will see later, the vampire does not possess these exemplary virtues.
The vampiric creature will not settle for the odd negative comment but will spew out a barrage of them. Each outburst of negativity will make the vampire feel superior. Even if the fault is minor, the vampire will magnify it, making it almost life-threatening. It will be a battalion of attack by the vampire to make this happen. The creature needs to feel superior; it needs to express superiority.
This experience is harrowing for those living with or working with the vampire.
The result is that, in an intimate or business relationship with a vampire, the victim’s confidence and self-esteem will become destroyed.
Being exposed to a vampire can be a very uncomfortable condition. In any form, there will be no happy conclusion of being in a relationship with a vampire. Vampires need to continuously feed their appetite, and they will possess no sympathy, empathy, or thought for others.
This is an entirely regular activity for them to manifest their true desires. Even when they have been found out and revealed for what they are, they will not succumb to apology because, in their mind and eyes, they have done nothing wrong.
The vampire will twist around the whole circumstance and make it appear they are the victim in a relationship now in ruins. The ‘pestering friends...the victim...the in-laws….’ all are at fault, but not the vampire.
The vampire is never wrong. Everyone else is wrong, but not the vampire. They possess such elevated egos of themselves that they cannot possibly be the culprit in the disaster and debris that lay around.
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About Karl Swainston
Karl Swainston is a writer and storyteller whose work is forged from a life lived across the North of England and far beyond. Growing up on a Leeds council estate in the 1960s, Karl's journey was anything but linear. By the age of thirty, he had already lived a dozen lives: from the rigors of grammar school to a degree in Latin, a stint as a fishmonger, a period of discovery living in Marseille, and a return to the hustle of London. Whether working as a postman, a builder, or competing as a county-level chess player, he was, above all, an avid reader—constantly documenting the world around him. This restless spirit continued into his professional life. Karl later taught in Bradford, where he ran a specialist unit for 244 of the most excluded students from across the region—young people whom even the local Pupil Referral Units could not accommodate. Working alongside his old friend Malcolm, Karl spent his days navigating the volatility of Bradford's most aggressive and dysfunctional teenagers. Throughout his life, Karl has been an avid runner and has always shared his home with a rotating cast of beloved dogs and cats—companions who have been constant witnesses to his work. As a writer, Karl's range is as expansive as his history. He works across a wide breadth of genres, including fiction and short stories, autobiography and memoir, biography, non-fiction, and metaphysical writing, as well as providing sharp commentary, opinion, analysis, and essays. Whether writing about his years managing the Harrogate Arms or offering insights from his current adopted home in South East India, where he lives in a simple village with his dog, Bambi, Karl's voice reflects the full, untidy, and deeply human breadth of life. He continues to draw on the rich, decades-long tapestry of his experiences to tell stories that matter, proving that no matter where you live, the human story remains the same.
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