Tired: Psychopaths. Wired: Narcissists!

by Thomas Pluck
Anyone else have psychopath fatigue? What scares me more than someone without conscience is someone with a conscience who can subdue it to get what they want. It bothered them a lot to strangle their spouse and children and dump them in an oil field, but they couldn't run off with that sexy millionaire otherwise. Eggs in the omelet, you know? And the worst are narcissists.

At Left Coast Crime, we had a great discussion at Josh Stallings's panel "Writing Dark Fiction with Heart." Narcissists make great villains in psychological suspense stories because we've all seen them in school, or at work, and social circles. They weaponize people against each other for their own benefit. They can be the worst kind of bully, the emotional kind. The one who gaslights you, turns your friends against you, and gets away with everything because they take advantage of sympathy.

I said that we need to move past the stereotype of the "big bully." Most bullies are of the emotional kind. Physical violence is rightfully unacceptable in society, but many bullies know how to use this to their advantage, especially the narcissist bully. They tease and humiliate their victims, who may be physically larger and easily taunted. Then when they get a reaction, they can tell on the teacher and get their victim suspended from school, or hated in the group for being "crazy." Did you see how she went nuts on me?

I got this a lot from a kid in fifth grade who whispered fat jokes until I yelled at him to stop, and then was punished for disrupting class. Mrs Macaw never believed that Pranav could say such things. I had to be exaggerating.... stay after class and learn to behave, Thomas. It's a classic narcissist move, turning everyone against their chosen victim. Congrats, you've been gaslighted. The target can the subject of the narcissist's envy, or they can see them as a convenient stepping stone for rising in the pecking order, or they can be grooming them as a toady. Or they can be practice.

I grew up with a drunken narcissist, I know the game. I don't hold it against the suckers who fall for it. I still fall for their bullshit now and then, they are good at what they do, and writers are suckers for a compliment. They start by "negging" their victims, belittling their accomplishments, or taking credit for them:
"Hey, you only got that nomination because I was disqualified, and I told them to give you my votes."
"Congrats on that award! When I wasn't nominated, I created a secret voting campaign to make you win."
"You should let me have that position you were given, you're just going to be nervous and mess it up. I'll pave the way for you."

Stuff like that. It's as pathetic as it sounds, but it works on us when we are vulnerable. Look at what scumbag Ryan Adams did to young women after he told them he "made their careers." The victim can't talk to the people who've bought into the lies, because they are the "crazy" enemy who is "attacking" their friend with accusations. This is the same weapon all abusers use to silence their victims.

Another way narcissists gaslight people is to offer to "shake hands" when they owe you an apology (which you will never get, because they are never wrong; their ego is paramount, and you wounded that ego by not buying into their false self-image). This way you look like the bad guy by refusing to make peace. Abusers do this all the time. "I just want us to be a family." This way they can claim victimhood, which to them is "winning."

Here's an example:
A drama llama wanted to "have it out" with me at a bar once. Saturday night may have been declared all right for fighting by Elton, but one thing I have learned in fifteen years of fight training is how to not get into a fight. This may not make for exciting stories, but it's a good skill to have.

Because there's no way to win a fight.

Fights are generally performative masculinity, like bower birds dancing for mates. They accomplish little. Especially when you are the big guy, and you have nothing to prove, and therefore nothing to win. For example, if Goliath broke David's neck, no one would be talking about him today except as a monster. But little David with his sling, even if he stood up to the big galoot only to be squashed like an insect, would be the hero. This plays right into a narcissist's martyr complex.

Even if it's a "debate" or a heated discussion, it can only be used against the narcissist's target. That's how abusers operate, they create scenes of drama to gaslight their enemies and show themselves as the aggrieved victim to people they haven't hurt yet. The narcissist needs an audience, the ones who tell their victims how nice they are, so if they hurt you, it's your fault, you must have misunderstood.

That's why trolls like Ben Shapiro want to "debate" real journalists and politicians, to legitimize their bullshit careers. They might as well be asking someone to "step outside". If you take the fight, you roll in the mud with the pig. If you laugh at them for the joke they are, you are "cowardly". They love games like this because they have everything to gain, and their target has everything to lose.

And unlike in fiction, there is rarely a moment of exposure where the bully and narcissist is exposed for what they are. People have too much invested in them, they go down with the ship. It's why the flood of articles exposing pathological liars in power accomplish nothing. They usually self-destruct and drag down others with them, and often have a track record of abject failure (or bankruptcy) and backstabbing people who supported them once they can no longer be used.

Try not to be one of them.

Scapegoat by Adam Howe and James Newman

On March 29, 1987, a momentous event occurred in the world of professional wrestling.  I'm talking about Wrestlemania III, which took place before over 90,000 people at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.  The main event featured WWF champion Hulk Hogan defeating then villain Andre the Giant to retain his championship belt. If you liked or followed professional wrestling to any extent during this time, you were aware of Wrestlemania III; it was the high point of the 1980's pro wrestling craze.  It also figures as the backdrop for the new horror novel I just read, a collaborative work from Adam Howe and James Newman called Scapegoat.

Mike Rawson, one time metalhead from West Memphis, Tennessee, has married and had a child. He has settled down in a small town in his home state.  For a little rest and relaxation, though, he's agreed to go on a road trip with his two high school friends and former bandmates, Lonnie Deveroux and Pork Chop.  Lonnie has an RV, and on March 29, 1987 he's set to drive the three of them up to Michigan for Wrestlemania III, which he and Pork Chop especially can't wait to see.  They all have free tickets waiting, courtesy of the guy Lonnie is delivering a shipment of counterfeit wrestling merchandise to.  In the RV with them, they have plenty of beer and hard liquor, and there's also a bottle-blonde woman named Cyndi, wearing shorts and a HULKMANIA tube-top shirt, who Lonnie knows from his local bar.  Cyndi seems ditzy at first, but we'll soon discover she is really named Rhonda, and she's an undercover FBI agent working to track the counterfeit merchandise to the main guy behind those operations.  Neither Lonnie nor Pork Chop, still adolescents in every way except their actual age, are the brightest guys in the world, and it doesn't take family man Mike long to regret having signed up for this ridiculous trip.

Because of snarled up traffic on the interstate, the group takes a  detour through the Kentucky backwoods.  Anyone desperate to get someplace might make such a move, but the reader knows, from what we've seen earlier, that something awful, a grotesque ritual, has been going on in this area. Mike himself has his doubts about the route they're taking: "Mike muttered something about how he'd seen enough horror movies to know nothing good ever came from a shortcut through the woods."  And Mike's instincts are right.  As the day wears on and the group's prospects of getting to the Silverdome become dimmer and dimmer, the quartet run smack into a teenaged girl whose head is shaved and who's carved head to toe in religious symbols.  She's oozing blood from the wounds all over her body.  Horrified, the group decides to help her, laying her down in the RV, but that only makes their situation worse. She has escaped from a crazy religious cult, and the cult and its insane leader will stop at nothing to get her back.  As far as they're concerned, if they don't get her back and she is not sacrificed in the way they deem necessary, an ancient evil that's been contained for centuries will be unleashed on the world. Hunted by the crazies, Mike, Lonnie, and Pork Chop, led by FBI agent Rhonda, wind up in the fight of their lives.

I've been a fan of Adam Howe's for a while now, having read and really liked his two previous books - Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet and Tijuana Donkey Showdown.  Like those works, this book mixes horror and a lot of humor just about perfectly.  How a British guy who lives in London captures so well, in story after story, a certain slice of trashy Americana (and from different eras) I still can't quite understand.  And though James Newman, who lives in North Carolina, is new to me, it's clear that he too is in his element: he has a long list of horror novels to his credit.  Whoever was responsible for what in this book I don't know, but I do know that this collaboration works. The writing is polished, the pace fast, the jokes irreverent and funny.  Gore is wonderfully abundant in the manner, say, of a Lucio Fulci film. Action and characterization are in balance.  Mike and Rhonda you root for throughout, and even dopey Lonnie and drunken fool Pork Chop take on depth as the menace around them intensifies.  And the cult itself?  Believe me, its members are suitably frightening and off the wall, but that doesn't mean that everything they believe will happen can't possibly happen.  

At the end of the book, Adam Howe talks about some of the movie influences behind Scapegoat.  And indeed, if filmed by someone who knew what they're doing, this would make ideal B movie fare.  As a novel, Scapegoat is a fun, compulsive read, a horror thriller with energy to burn from the tag team of Howe and Newman. 

It's from Honey Badger Press and you can get it here. 

NEW #METOO CRIME FICTION ANTHOLOGY ANNOUNCED

Hard-hitting, timely short stories give voice to feminist movement

Acclaimed fiction author Eryk Pruitt (Dirtbags, What We Reckon) has announced that he is editing a #MeToo inspired crime fiction anthology with ten of crime fiction’s top authors. The collection, expected out in October, 2019, promises to “give voice to a serious problem affecting society.”

Dennis Lanana’s “Not On My Watch” features a kick-ass female protagonist who tells her boss #TimesUp when he crosses a line. Joseph T. Miller showcases a kick-ass female protagonist in his short story “Cook Your Own Dish Best Served Cold.” And Thomas Catton brings a fresh, new perspective with “One Of The Good Ones,” about a well-meaning man who is falsely accused of something horrible.

“We have to accept that, in 2019, women have a place in fiction,” says Pruitt, who was nominated for the prestigious Anthony Award in 2018. “We are so lucky to have found ten authors who can give a voice to a demographic and a situation who have previously been kept silent.”

Joe Peterson, whose story “Femme Fatale Attraction” features a kick-ass female protagonist who turns the tables on a man with whom she had been carrying on an affair. While many people think this story may mirror an actual event in his person life, Pruitt is quick to shrug that off.

“You have to separate the art from the artist,” Pruitt says. “If we held people accountable for all their past actions, then we’d have no one eligible to tell the stories of these kick-ass female protagonists.”

So far, no one has responded to Pruitt’s offer to publish the anthology.

“Traditional publishing may not be ready for a hard-hitting anthology full of kick-ass female protagonists,” says Andrew Heyrman, whose story “Murder in Stilettos” features a kick-ass female protagonist who turns the tables on a catcaller who crosses a line.

Pruitt will not be fazed. “Readers are ready. Crime fiction has been silent for too long. Time’s up.”

The New Mystique will be released in Fall of 2019, in advance of Bouchercon, the crime writer convention held in Dallas, Texas.