The Killing Game Read Online Free PDF Page B

focus.
    “I didn’t say
E
-ffect, Pendel,” I explained. “I said
Af
-fect. A common characteristic of someone suffering antisocial personality disorder – sociopathy – is a lack of affect. Can anyone tell me what I’m talking about?”
    Class was nearing its end and again the students had drifted to homicide investigation. Though most homicides were depressing sagas of love gone wrong or gang avengement or drug-driven slayings, everyone seemed fascinated by the Mansons and the Bundys and the Gacys.
    My question launched a smattering of hands, the majority of students pretending to study the array of cell phones, laptops, iPads and other electronic wizardry on their desktops. On my first day I had questioned the need for the gadgetry. It was politely noted that I had compiled digital photos and words in PowerPoint and was writing on a five-thousand-dollar interactive digital whiteboard.
    I indicated the nearest palm. “Yes, Miss Holliday?”
    “Doesn’t affect mean, uh, showing your feelings? So wouldn’t lack of affect be showing no feelings?”
    I nodded. “Affect is emotion displayed by facial and body gestures, laughter, tears. Show most people a fluffy puppy and they’ll ooh and ahhh and gush about cuteness. A sociopath views only an object captioned
Dog
. A puppy, a choking baby, a blind man in traffic, all carry zero emotional weight. Lacking a conscience, a sociopath feels neither guilt nor shame. Ditto for morality, responsibility, compassion, love … all as foreign as the topography of Pluto.”
    “Having zero conscience sounds like complete freedom, in a way,” Terrell Birdly said quietly, his legs crossed in the aisle. “There’s nothing to keep you from doing anything you want.”
    The skinny black kid with the heavy-lidded eyes could cut to the heart of an issue. “No boundaries.” I nodded. “It’s what makes the violent ones so dangerous.”
    “Aren’t they all violent?” Jason Kellogg asked.
    “Most are content to disrupt the lives of those nearest them through lies and manipulation. Only a few develop homicidal leanings, thankfully.”
    “Do they feel fear?” Birdly asked; another good question.
    “Heart-pumping, fight-or-flight adrenalin?” I said. “Most shrinks don’t think so. What socios do have, the bright ones, is a powerful drive to avoid negative results, such as incarceration.”
    “If sociopaths show no emotion, how do they get by?” Amanda Sanchez frowned, her round face framed by close-cropped chestnut hair. Her silver hoop earrings seemed large enough to pick up broadcast signals.
    “They can be superb mimics, training themselves to display correct emotional responses. Sociopaths are self-preservation machines and the better they blend into the crowd, the more they can accomplish. False emotions are their currency.”
    Wendy Holliday’s hand rose haltingly. “I might have once heard a notion, called functionalism or something like that, which says emotions are an evolutionary response to stimuli and are designed to keep people safe. Like smiling when meeting someone to show you mean no harm. Or displaying sympathy to create a bond. Sociopaths don’t only learn the rules of emotion to blend in, it’s essential for manipulation.”
    “Exactly,” I said, my voice curt. “See me after the class.”
    A moment of uncomfortable silence as eyes turned to Holliday, now shrinking in her desk. Another hand lifted.
    “Miss Lemlitch?”
    “I was just thinking that it seems a lonely life. Being a sociopath.”
    “The closest they probably come is feeling a lack of someone to manipulate. What we call loneliness can’t occur in a sociopath.”
    “I don’t get it. Why not?”
    “Normal humans define and mingle interior and exterior relationships. We experience the idea of Me, plus the broader concept of Us, the world of relationships and commonalities. Knowing the world of Us, the normal Me can feel loneliness when Us is lacking. Sociopaths exist solely in the