One of the Vampire's typical methods of approach consists in taking away from his victim time which the latter had intended to use differently. To take away another's time, the Vampire often resorts to small acts of rudeness, annoying the other in order to gauge his readiness for a transfer of energy.

How many times has it happened that we meet someone who, out of the blue, at the bus stop or some other public place, addresses us as though he knew us and immediately starts giving us his points of view, almost always negative and resentful, about something or someone? It's usually just somebody who feels like talking, to unburden himself, to find an audience for his appeals against the government, or the city, or urban transport, or today's young people. A harmless character, for certain. But, strangely enough, a person who generally has something rigid and peremptory about him, one who is little disposed to converse with others as equals, and who as soon as possible requires that we adhere unquestioningly to his point of view, making his approval of us conditional upon the degree of affinity between our opinions and his. No matter what political direction his ideas are oriented toward, he will expect us to share them, the penalty for not doing so being our devaluation. His aim, therefore, is to get our attention, not to converse, but only to have us confirm his views.

It's a perfect trap, because it leaves us only two possibilities: we can say he's right, out of flattery or because it doesn't cost us anything, and begin to mutter along with him against this or that person or institution, or we can embark on an impossible discussion with a person who has a preformed, and therefore indisputable, theory.

Now, the question to ask oneself is this: why when I am immersed in my own thoughts and my own preoccupations, when I am about to begin a difficult day of work, as I'm on my way to pay the taxes or bills, or going to a friend's funeral, must I be an audience for that person's show, devoting my time to him?

Not to mention those approaches we have already indicated in regard to the symptoms of vampiric aggressions. How many times has it happened that we answer the telephone and find someone on the other end who is doing a "survey" or who wants to "interview" us, only to discover, at the end of the "interview", that we have just subscribed to some ridiculous magazine or that some salesman will come to our home that very day to sell us something? Or how many times have we been stopped in the street by one of the individuals described in the preceding section who begins by saying: "May I steal a moment of your time?" The answer is no: you don't steal time, you share it freely, if anything, for the pleasure of sharing it, out of free choice or out of real necessity. But free choice or necessity are very different from adhering to a tactical demand, put forth only to gain advantages, be they psychological or practical.

Time is a precious, personal gift, which we receive at birth, when we enter into a dimension that is different from eternity, a dimension modulated and characterized by the existence of time which has, in fact, a limited availability. Time is a gift which should be used carefully and with respect, and shared with those who know how to respect it. A greediness for other people's time always marks the features of the Vampire. Perhaps he's an almost harmless Vampire, satisfied with reasonable amounts of time and energy. Like the bites of a mosquito. But nonetheless he's someone who can't help trying to manipulate other people's time.

In the short story The Building Manager, Massimo, the protagonist, is stopped almost every day by the caretaker as he is leaving to go to work. The latter entertains him by serving up actual "editorials" on the day's events.

More than once, sitting at the counter of the caretaker's booth, he had intercepted Massimo as he headed with broad strides toward the embrace of the new day, ensnaring his determined and hurried pace in the mire of an invariable "Have you seen this, Mr. Massimo?". "What's that?", Massimo would reply through clenched teeth, curbing his speed like a car driver at a traffic cop's signal. "What do you mean, what?", the caretaker would come back with, beginning at once to express his point of view on the event of the day. His themes were the three subjects on which he, like almost all the rest of the human race, believed he had the gift of an ever clear, original and courageous opinion, a judgment which went straight to the evidence of the facts: politics, justice and sports. Massimo, wanting to reciprocate the caretaker's cordiality while at the same time limiting the time of the diversions, had at first submitted to listening to those complicated sermons while restricting himself to little nervous coughs or insistent glances at his watch, even as his mind wandered elsewhere. But glancing at your watch when you are faced by someone whose main objective is to steal your time in order to assign it brevi manu to himself is a useless operation.

The matter gets complicated when the caretaker, as we have seen, insists on alternating between situations in which he takes pleasure in stopping Massimo by entertaining him with his sermons, and others in which, thinking to please the building manager (who never greets Massimo), he refuses to even greet him.

"Good morning!", Massimo said in a loud, clear voice in the direction of the two of them. The entire entry way of the building resounded with his greeting. The building manager imperturbably continued talking to the caretaker in a low voice. In fact, pointing with a pen that he had in hand, he began to indicate various places in the entry way where probably certain work or checks had to be made. The caretaker, on the other hand, was visibly embarrassed and half-glanced over in Massimo's direction, without however responding to his greeting, not even with a faint sign.
The next morning [...] the caretaker was at his post. [...] Massimo was about to greet him cheerfully, to let him know he wasn't at all annoyed with him about the lack of a greeting the day before, but the caretaker anticipated him.
"Have you seen this, Mr. Massimo?"
Massimo faltered. He couldn't believe the caretaker would have the impudence to drag out another one of his editorials, after the performance of the day before. But he did.
"Yes? You were saying?"
"I was saying, have you seen what rubbish?"
"Well, if I wanted to, I could see a lot of it. What rubbish are you referring to?"
This time the caretaker's scorn was directed toward the national soccer team and its manager. The editorial was more poisonous than usual. It seemed that the caretaker's frustration increased from day to day. His face got all red and every so often he would widen his eyes like a madman, staring at Massimo as though he were his accuser in a trial on which his very life depended. Massimo was at the same time irritated, embarrassed and touched by such unhappiness.
"They say that we have nonetheless qualified for the world championships. Great! Wonderful! And what will we do at the world championships with this team? Huh? Can you imagine those soft mozzarellas against Brazil? Huh? Or Germany? Huh? We might as well stay home! Right? What do you think?"
"Well, the world championships are another story. Remember '82? A few days before beating Argentina and Brazil, it was an effort to tie with Cameroon... Then we swept away Poland and Germany and won the title..."
The caretaker stared him in the face for half a minute, then glanced away and commented with evident scorn:
"Lucky you. You still believe in fairy tales". "Go on, go on", he concluded with a bitter smile on his face. "Go, or else you'll be late".
Meanwhile he was making a faint sign with his hand, as though to say: "move on, move on...".
Massimo, somewhat mortified yet somewhat relieved to have finally been dismissed, said goodbye and went away slowly closing the door behind him.

In Samuel Serrandi, the vendor of fake multimedia encyclopedias on CD-Rom whom we have already met uses the technique of drowning the person he's speaking with in chatter. Before landing his blows, and finally extorting the victim's signature on a binding contract, he weakens his resistance through a merciless manipulation of his time, alternating between tedious promotional drivel about his product and matters totally off the subject.

Not content, before dealing his customer the final blow, he goes back to digressing, inflicting on him the profile of one of his old high school teachers.

When he finally moves on to conclude the deal, the customer will already be exhausted by so much chatter and poisoned by that waste of time; he will feel he can't wait to get away from that invader, and will yield to his swindle at whatever price.