Emotional Vampire Royale

Without going into too much embarrassing detail, a major portion of my life has been spent battling vampires. Not the Ann Rice, Bram Stoker variety. I'm talking about the emotional vampire.

The emotional vampire is someone who feeds off the emotions of others. They usually crave a particular emotion, such as anger, sorrow, pity; and they will go out of their way to generate that emotion in others. The more insidious are able to effortlessly manipulate complex situations to their advantage, creating oceans of the needed emotion. Frequently these incubi and succuba are very charming, and can appear carefree until they are ready to strike.

For a time I was something of a emotional vampire-in-training. I didn't realize it, in part because I was struggling with depression. My emotions of choice were pity and anxiety, and the brilliance of my personal strategy was that if I was unable to generate sufficient amounts of pity, I could internally generate an almost inexhaustible amount of anxiety. Then I stopped, and that's another story.

Today I find myself smack dab in the middle of an emotional vampire feeding frenzy at work. It's bloody, verging on operatic in scope and try as I might I can't seem to avoid it. Not for lack of trying. But, being a former incubus myself and a prime provider of emotional sustenance to such creatures in the past, I'm not only attractive to these vampires, I seem to attract them. In this particular case, like Van Helsing himself, I am unafraid and have met one of the old-time vampires at work. My job sort of requires that I deal with these messes, but usually they are on a much lower level with neophyte vampires. The current work situation however can be described as nothing less than a skirmish between good and evil. While I'm not the focal point of this grand tragedy-in-the-making, I have reached the point where I have to declare my allegiance. Choosing incorrectly promises much gnashing of teeth and howling in lakes of emotional fire. Aligning myself with the ultimate winner should be the entre into paradise.

I, quite simply, do not overstate. Let the games begin.