Inside the Mind of Sexual Predator

INSIDE THE MIND OF A SEXUAL PREDATOR

He is sitting at his study table hunched over an open laptop. The light from the screen illuminates his face partially. His eyes look like two points of light while his face darkens into the background as if it was a part of it. His wraithlike appearance looks still, almost peaceful, but only if you did not notice the hands typing furiously at the keyboard with exact precision. The taut muscles of his forearm and shoulders have the furiousness of a blacksmith of the bygone ages. However, his face is serene and intelligent, not the face of a brute. There is not a single pulled muscle that betrays any sign of effort while his fingers type. His face, not unsurprisingly, looks like the kind that can adapt any emotion with the same ease as it takes for it to remain neutral under heavy stress.

The click-clacking from the keyboard begins to slow down and within a few seconds, it comes to an abrupt halt. His eyes faze out from the screen………he is thinking about something. Perhaps, it’s something related to his past. He wonders about it every now and then. But, he has never talked to anyone about it. Staring into space, he purses his lips and brings his attention back to the laptop screen. He looks a little restless. However, that subtle anxiousness does not stay on his face for a long time. In a flash, his face returns back to the obsidian calm that is eerily similar to a still-water lake in its serenity; or more accurately, to the crushing water at the very depths of an ocean.

He minimizes the document he was working on and opens up an Internet Browser window instead. He logs into his Facebook account. The NewsFeed opens up with photos of people vying for his attention. He brushes the images aside. They don’t interest him. Normal people never really interested him because they had nothing of value to him. He clicks into the search box and types --

Priya Sharma

Priya’s profile opens on his laptop. She is a brunette with wavy, wind-blown hair that has the obviousness of having been given a lot of attention to make it appear natural. She has light-brown, almond-shaped eyes, a sharp nose and full lips. It is apparent in her rather low-neckline top, that she is generously endowed. Her beauty, in simpler words, is the kind that causes a fair share of her male peers a few restless nights. A few girl colleagues, perhaps, have had restless nights too. After all, the intensity of lust is only ever matched by jealousy.

He stares at her profile picture for a few seconds going over its various aspects. His eyes linger at the abundant cleavage on display. While he stares at the bulging curves, his face has an imperceptible smile, a faint crook at the lips. He begins to think about the time when she used to work with him in the same office. It was her first job and she was dazzled by the professionalism in the office of an American Bank. He, on the other hand, was disillusioned after his years of employment. He knew how things worked and how superficial the charm of this office really was. But, he enjoyed looking at the her naivety; her attempt to hide the fact that she was impressed with something as minor as stylized paper cups at the coffee vending machine. His nonchalance at the same thing should have been considered glib. However, when she looked at him, she never came to that conclusion. Instead, she wondered that if he really is used to this, how rich would he be? A question he, on purpose, never gave a straight answer to. Mystery is always better than the best reality after all.

He was just a rung higher above an entry-level position. But he was too intelligent, rather well-read and very ambitious to be sated being friends with the people at his level in the firm. He swiftly made friends (and was on a first-name basis) with some of the top honchos there.  He, it seemed, was a part of the uber-cool office culture that Priya desperately wanted to belong to. He smiles when he remembers how she had followed him around under the guise of hanging out with his female friends. She had tried to ignore him on purpose a few times just to give the impression that she was not interested. He remembers how thin her disguise was and he had obviously seen through it; the same way he saw through everyone around him.

He smirks with an almost arrogant smile while he recalls the night when she had blushed after being overwhelmed by a stream of almost inappropriate compliments from him. They were leaving from an office party in a cab when he had innocently started talking about her eyes, her hair, her lips among other things under the guise of being a little drunk. But, there was nothing innocent or disorderly about his perfectly timed compliments. He knew what he was doing.

She had reported her colleagues at work to HR for action that were considerably less offensive. But, she was never going to report him. He could have done things a lot more inappropriate and she would have only feigned embarrassment. He remembered the guy, at office, who was disciplined by her boss after she had complained. Her petty complaint was that he messaged her too often and here she was, in the cab, blushing at inappropriate compliments. She was helplessly in his grasp and completely unaware of it.

But, he had failed. He had hooked the fish with flawless precision but idiotically fumbled with the rod and dropped it in the sea. He scowled as he remembered the problems that he had faced then. The impossible choice that he had to make and the repercussions that followed. It was the hardest thing he ever had to do and he was not himself for months. He frowns with irritation when he realizes how he had blown his cover sky high. The carefully constructed visage of authority and control he had developed was ruined in the unfortunate days that followed. He had squandered his moment with Priya……..in a terribly pathetic fashion.

Today, he looks at her picture again. She looks just as juicy as she did then. She is a dainty thing with curves at all the right places - exactly the kind he likes. He stops browsing at one of the photographs a friend of hers has uploaded. She is wearing a beautiful traditional sari in it which shows off her body in the most exquisite way possible. He muses that she always knew how to pose, especially when she used to ask him to take her pictures. He wanted to do so much more than just obediently take pictures of her. He wanted to capture all her curves in his camera. He wanted to ask her to pose in more seductive ways. There was an office table in the break-room where she had asked him to click a picture for the first time. He wouldn’t mind if she had decided to bend against the table while he clicked a few pictures. In fact, he wanted to take her from behind while she was bent at that table; while she looked at him in helpless pleasure and exhaustion. He would have enjoyed controlling her like that.

But, he had fucked it up.

Irritably breaking out of his sexual fantasies, he gives his full attention to the photograph. He realizes that she looks ripe and ready, just as she was ready in the cab that night. His eyes narrow and his lips thin into a flat line. He whispers with dry lips “I won’t fail this time Priya”. His barely audible whisper has the undertone of a promise and a threat. If only she could hear this whisper, she would run the other way like her life depended on it. But, she won’t hear it. Not before it is too late to run.

He decides that it is time to act. His fingers, which were limp all this time, jump back into action like a furious animal lunging at its prey. He opens up a chat window, types “Hi” and clicks on Send. The availability icon besides her name goes green 5 seconds after the message was sent.

Twenty minutes later the following message is visible in the small chat window on his screen:

He: I missed you.

Priya: I missed you too.

He never contacted her in almost a year. And within 20 minutes of a web-chat after a year of inexplicable lack of contact, he is able to convince the unsuspecting girl that he has missed her.........quite badly. But, the fact that this girl could not see the glaring contradiction in his behavior and the things he said is not scary. He has always had a way with words and emotions. He understands the transition needed to propel a conversation in the direction he wants. So, it would be an oversimplification to call this transition alarming. In his world, this is usual. However, the twisted smile on his face while he does this usual act can fill anyone with dread.

His conversation with Priya veers off into the direction of old friends that they had in office. She is bitching about her best-friend/competition that she has in office. He is only half-listening to her while trying to form a perception of her. This is an exercise that he has perfected over the years. Whenever he talks to someone, he builds a perception of them - a mental image of sorts. As he understands them better, he adds more and more qualities to it. The perception is never complete because understanding someone perfectly is impossible. But, when he gains enough insight to create a decent perception of the person, he knows exactly where the sensitive areas are, the places where applying pressure will give him the result he needs. And then, he knows exactly how to manipulate them. A surprisingly large amount of people do this ­- analyze others. After all, you do not have to be a sociopath to be good at reading people. However, it’s his clinical precision in this process which makes him so lethal and better than everyone else.

Priya has lived with conservative parents and limited freedom all her life. She has very little say over how to spend the money she earns. Most of it is either used by her family for expenses or kept aside to save for the dowry when she gets married. She hasn’t seen the life outside her protected shell or prison of “home”. And she, like every other person, longs for it. She wants to know what is out there, in the rest of the world that she hasn’t seen – in other countries. She is small-town minded girl who grew up in a metropolitan but never got the opportunity to see the culture of a metropolis, or its lack thereof. She is, however, disillusioned with her city and the awful, apathetic crowd of a developing nation’s capital. So, like every other middle-class Indian, her dream is to leave all this behind and start afresh in another country. He realizes that this is the point he will use. If he applies the right amount of pressure here, he can get her to perform to his tastes.

While she drones on about her best-friend and how she is just a back-stabbing bitch, he gradually changes the tone of the conversation with half-questions and platitudes. Soon, they are talking about places that he visited while he has been in USA. She, just as he expected her to, asks him about Manhattan and how the city really is. He starts with the excitable monologue of how glamorous and enchanting life is in New York. He mentions a few exciting/funny incidents he had while he was there. Most of these incidents are actually subtle plot lines from the numerous TV series he has seen. Most of these incidents involved him vowing rich guys and girls from Mahhattan. Now you, reader, are probably assuming that he loves to brag. But, that is not true. He hates lying just as much as the next person. But, he understands its purpose. He is lying about Manhattan because Priya’s favorite show is Gossip Girls.

Gossip Girls is an over-the-top teen soap that focuses on a group of extremely wealthy, privileged, label-obsessed young people who like to drink, take drugs and have casual sex. The show is basically about everything she is not. The characters, however, are exactly how she is - superficial and mean. Also, the characters live in Manhattan.

Consequently, it makes perfect sense to regale her with stories about Manhattan. After all, her fascination with everything glamorous is her biggest weakness. And so he sends her into frenzy with his over-the-top stories about people in Manhattan and the yatch parties he attended. He is smiling while talking about one of these imaginary parties and the goof-ups that happened. He isn’t smiling at the fact that this was so easy for him. Lying has always been easy for him. He is smiling because he has intuitively grasped almost everything he needs:

She is a glamour-seeker with a penchant for beautiful things. She cannot be won with attention. She gets enough of that where she works - all the guys clamoring over who is going to help her first every time she asks for it sometimes even when she does not ask for it. In fact, giving her attention would be a silly mistake. She will perceive you as desperate and weak. After all, superficial people often confuse honesty for weakness. And she is nothing if not superficial. and

So, he decides he is going to ignore her. But, not too much. Just enough to ensure that the she is hooked, like a fish in a small lake. And he is going to send her gifts; expensive gifts. An overtly expensive perfume(Chanel perhaps) or a slightly bold designer dress. The gifts will be the final blow to her resistance against bad decisions and she will be eating out of his hand in no time. He smiles a full smile for the first time since the conversation began and types into the window -
 

I might visit India in a few months. We should meet.

THE END