The Evil Eye of Cain

The Biblical Cain felt entitled and justified in projecting his hatred for Abel and showed no remorse for his evil actions even when it resulted in murder.

The modern-day cruel cainist is similarly cold and insensitive. He talks about tragic events with no emotion in his voice or revealed in his eyes or on his face. He turns to something new as soon as possible, unless, of course, the event nets him attention or allows him to escape responsibility.

Upon meeting Cain for the first time, many have remarked that they felt ill at ease in his presence, but could not pinpoint exactly what was wrong. Regardless of his charm, intellect, gregariousness, and humor, he falls short of making others feel comfortable and safe. Something is off—a half bubble off plumb.

It is his false self that misses the mark with authentic people, but due to his high-leveraged manipulation skills and his cleverness at hiding his pathology, it takes time to become fully aware of the distortions and inconsistency or to accept that anyone would act that petty, cruel or cold.

The Evil Eye

A cold-blooded glare often accompanies Cain’s cruelty. “Some people respond to the emotionless stare of the psychopath with considerable discomfort, almost as if they feel like potential prey in the presence of a predator,” writes Dr. Robert D. Hare, Ph.D. in his book, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us.

I experienced the “evil eye” when I landed an interview in a small town, population under 2,000, with a supervisor I will call Charles. His mean, beady eyes literally sent chills down my spine. All too soon, I found Charles’s devious deeds matched his spooky gaze.

For example, in the early 1990s, I wrote a booklet about emotional child abuse to sell in bulk to all state governmental social service agencies. Simultaneously, I returned my name to the State’s hiring register for a social worker position because editors were working off their inventories and sales in writing were dismal at best. I simply needed money to keep a roof over my head.

During my initial interview with Charles, he held up my booklet on emotional child abuse and asked if I were the author. When I said “Yes,” he maintained piercing, knife-like eye contact that looked straight through me.

“Do you know what I usually do with stuff like this?” Of course, I had no idea. With one sweep of his arm across his desk, my booklet landed in his wastebasket. His action stunned me. I saw no point in his rudeness since I had never met him. Of course, I did not know then that he was a cruel cainist. I did not even understand cainism.

Driving ninety miles back home in the August sunshine, I actually shivered, thinking of the spitefulness that pierced through his pupils like fiery daggers. When friends and family asked about the interview, I said, “I will not get that job. That man did not like me.”

Unfortunately, cainists can spot a trusting, easy to fleece casualty within seconds. As Martha Stout wrote in her book, The Sociopath Next Door, (2006) “…a person who has no conscience can instantly recognize someone who is decent and trusting.”

He called the next Tuesday, asking me to start work the following Monday—six days to find adequate housing in a small town about which I knew absolutely nothing. I owned a house ninety miles away and had to deal with that long-term decision, too. He knew all that.

That was the second red flag that I missed. He was in control. And because he was charitable enough to provide me a job, he felt entitled to make things difficult. I had not yet started to work for him and already I felt oppressed, controlled, pressured, and humiliated. However, I had made an agreement with myself that I would take the first position offered because I was desperate for income. Therefore, I accepted the position, hoping my impressions of his hostility were wrong.

Unfortunately, they were spot on.

An Enabler’s first reaction is often the right one. For instance, Charles was so pitifully unprofessional; he gossiped about and ridiculed other employees behind their backs during our staff meetings, especially an overweight supervisor.

My co-worker, who had a serious drinking problem, would disappear for hours and no one knew where he went. When it was time for him to co-lead a group meeting with me for our unemployed clients, he always disappeared and the responsibility for leading the group fell solely on me. Charles acted oblivious to this guy’s behavior. He was using me to avoid supervising the employee with a drinking problem.

I desperately wanted out of that hostile work environment, so after completing my six-month probation period, I asked for a transfer to my hometown where I had family and some friends. I had sold my house in the big city, and with the increasing street drug problems, I wanted to work in a smaller town.

Charles had given me a glowing review, actually telling me, “You are almost perfect.” He thought I could not leave his county for a year. When the State approved my transfer, he went into attack mode, torturing me every day of my last month there. Those thirty days seemed like a year.

Unlikely as it might seem, one of my new bosses, whom I will call Willie, was a best friend with Charles, the cruel cainist who I mistakenly thought I had left behind. The two of them talked every morning on the telephone, plotting Charles’s revenge, while Willie conspired to conduct the cruelty in the county where I had transferred.

How could this possibly happen?

A former co-worker from the first agency called and warned me: “Watch your back. I hear them plotting against you, and it is not good.”

He had that right. It was just like walking in a minefield every day with constant harassment and deception. Willie would conveniently forget to notify me of employee meetings, and then berate me when I failed to show up. He crossed boundaries constantly; co-workers told me he rifled through my desk drawers while I was in the field making home visits to clients.

What is almost too ironic to consider is that he also did a poor job of supervising a male worker who drank too much just like at the county I left behind. It was like living the movie Groundhog Day. This worker sat in a bar several days a week, drowning his sorrows, while his clients received surplus funds because he failed to cut checks based on a state-mandated austerity program. In the meantime, Willie wasted even more of the state’s funds, filing through my desk drawers hoping to nail me for something when I was making every possible effort to do error-free work.

Charles and Willie were chest-thumping, cold-blooded cainists out for the kill simply because I had transferred and made Charles fanatically angry.

When I stood up against Willie’s bullying and walked out of a staff meeting, he wrote me up for insubordination, then docked my pay and suspended me from work on two occasions. It was a living hell every day. I gained sixty pounds in a year and suffered unbearable anxiety, insomnia, and elevated health issues. I walked off the job after three years of abuse. I couldn’t win as no one wins against a Cain. That was my first lesson in understanding that one should never underestimate the destruction of a cruel cainist.