Jade is victim of a narcissistic pervert, here is her story...
In this final part, you will read the epilogue of this sad story… Hang in there tight.
Part 5 : The trap is closing itself…
Tonight, Jade is going to hand in her last copy. Wednesday will be the perfect day to get rid of it once and for all. Although the journey was strewn with pitfalls, she is happy to have made it to the end.
At 7:30 p.m., Jade connects for the call like every week but this time Patrick seems to be late. The situation is rather strange, because usually he is always connected in advance and ready to remind her of the slightest minute of delay. So she waits in the lobby.
5 minutes later, Patrick joins the call looking visibly disturbed by something since he doesn’t even take the time to greet her. Without going into too much detail, Jade asks him if everything is fine & even offers to postpone the meeting if necessary. He refuses.
She then begins to present him with the finishing touches. For 10 minutes, she scrolls through the slides and he listens to her attentively without interrupting her.
However, Jade will stop several times to give him time to ask questions but he will have none. Truly ? Yes, none. Really weird, I agree with you.
However, Jade says to herself “good, we’ll finish faster” and she continues. After 20 minutes, the presentation is over so she asks Patrick again to share his opinion. He first finalizes his notes.
Patrick thanks her for this “magnificent presentation” by saying that apart from 1 or 2 small elements for him “everything is great”.
Jade is greatly relieved to hear these words since it is the first time in months that she has heard him say something nice.
In reality, he is not that enthusiastic but rather tries to soften Jade.
It works because she smiles at him at the time.
Jade even replies that she can send everything back to him by email the next morning so that he can quickly move on to what’s next.
Patrick thanks her once again for her responsiveness, which he “appreciates a lot”, but it’s not so urgent after all. He tells her that she can “take her time” and send everything back to him on Monday.
On the other hand, he would like to invite her to dinner and asks her “what are you doing on Friday?”
Jade gives him a questioning look because she doesn’t really see where he is coming from. He never cares about her.
Patrick then adds “I think you’ve worked really well on this project and that we should celebrate it all over a good meal. I invite you, do you like it?”
Jade is surprised by this proposal. She, who did not even expect to receive any positive remark from him, finds herself facing an “almost nice” man.
She is flattered by everything she hears because Patrick even seems to be in a very good mood tonight.
Reminder: narcissistic perverts are very great manipulators who plan all their actions very carefully. So, do you really think he didn’t expect this reaction? As you can see, he did everything to provoke her… Let’s continue.
Jade replies that she has already made plans for Friday but thanks him for the invitation. Patrick was obviously already prepared for this eventuality. He had a strategy in place whether she accepted his invitation or not. As she declined, he initiates his plan B.
Patrick says “Ok, no worries” and even apologizes for asking him this question unexpectedly.
As she seems open to the proposal, he decides to offer her another date. A night when he knows she will be free. Do you know what day of the week he chose?
Exactly, on Wednesday…
Besides, he doesn’t really give her time to answer and takes the lead:
“After all these months of hard work, we can still take a break, right?
I think that’s good, I’ll think about the place and I’ll come back to you.”
Jade is taken aback when he bounces back so fast because she never imagined he would care so much for a simple dinner.
Reminder: Jade and Patrick have had meetings every Wednesday night for months. He deliberately forced himself into his routine for this ultimate goal.
Jade explains that she doesn’t usually do this kind of thing but that she will think about it, the night brings advice.
Patrick insists “anyway, do you have anything else planned besides our usual date? 😉” Yes, you read that right. He even dared to wink!
Patrick is more and more comfortable but Jade doesn’t pay attention. He is clearly on his good day and it would be silly to tickle him on a detail.
She prefers to cut this conversation short by ignoring the wink.
Partie 6 : The shocking realisation
On the weekend, she goes to brunch with a friend. Jade confides in her a little in the course of a banal conversation. She tells him how she has been struggling for months on a project but that “the end is near, thank God!”.
Her friend asks her to contextualize this comment because she had never told her about the said project. She begins her story but, to protect herself, remains very superficial.
For example, she is careful not to mention the dinner proposal and the inappropriate wink of the last call.
For Jade, it’s not worth talking about since “nothing happened”.
However, her friend still identifies several warning signs specific to a toxic relationship. Not having more details, she will tell him this:
“Beware if he invites you for a drink or dinner, these people are vicious and very patient to get their way.”
They move on but for Jade there was a click. When they part, it’s a lot of thoughts in his head.
Jade tries to consult a site to help victims of domestic violence but prefers to wait until she gets home to have more privacy.
At home, she finds several sites and then visiting one of them, she comes across a title that challenges her:
“Are you a victim of domestic violence? 10 questions to find out”
Just out of curiosity, she clicks and answers the questions.
➡️ 8/10 😲😲😲 What a shock.
According to the results, there is a good chance that she is a victim. But victim of what exactly? Patrick is neither her spouse nor her ex and even less a suitor.
The site redirects her to another page to specifically identify a category but she closes everything.
Here is the end of the story because we want to let your imagination complete the rest… Many stories of harassment, domestic violence, sexual assault often start with a proposal for dinner ‘in all good and honor’ and sometimes end in femicide because today women are in danger even in their homes.
This year, the 16 days of activism around violence against women had a particular angle, that of involving civil society in raising awareness. Chex Lisanga Vibes, it took the form of a short story based on real facts because these stories exist.
Thank you for taking the time to read our little story time. If you liked this one, don’t hesitate to share it around you and visit the 16 Days Feminist Campaign page for more info.
