Involuntary RPG Journal Entries

[FILTERED TO ALL OF TED'S FRIENDS - CORALIE, DEVON, LAUREL, SILJE, SETH, NOLAN, JONAS (and after some hesitation) SOL, REMY]

An exercise in futility, I suppose, but —

Is there anybody out there?

A day late and a dollar short, Ted — ! I'm sure it's what you're thinking. My sincerest apologies, truly; no prophet of doom am I. Still, better late than never, as they say...

A Brief and Lamentably Incomprehensive Guide to Surviving Solitary Confinement with One's Wits Intact, by T.W. Hackett
Survival is hedged on the trifecta of three familiar components: physical, mental, and emotional health. If the former two are not properly sustained, there is no hope of the latter. It sounds dreadfully trite, I'm sure, like something out of a self-help manual. But one needn't over-think the strategy — one will have entirely too much time for brooding and dwelling and rehashing, in fact, so it's best to keep the impulse at bay. Do first, get through the ordeal first, examine later.

1. Excepting those of us who can paint with our minds or recall films in exact frame-by-frame sequence, our bodies become our only source of diversion. Exercise frequently, as much as you can without excessive strain. It will help you sleep through the night, and sleep will be your best respite from the crushing boredom that typifies your waking hours. Sleep as soon as you feel drowsy; it helps to regulate your sense of time, and exhaustion preys upon the psyche.
   
   Eat all of the meals provided to you. If, like I instructed, you are exercising, you will be hungry, and the food will taste better to you. Eat slowly; dining is a diversion. Refusing a meal out of anger is never advisable — deprivation is only an offense to your own body, not your captors'.
   
   Perform regular ablutions, including dental hygiene, and keep your cell as tidy as you can. Filth and mess breed misery.
   
   
2. Stimulate yourself. If you can dislodge a shred of concrete to scratch against the floor, do so. Practice your maths, review multiplication tables, calculate tips and discounts. Recite — I don't care what — poems, scripture, political manifestos. 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' was always a particular favorite of mine. Sing – for who can hear you, to judge? Back when I was not permitted use of my hands, I became quite an accomplished folk singer. My young love said to me, 'my mother won't mind...'
   
   Masturbate well and often. There's no pesky roommate to scandalise.
   
   
3. If your fellow Vols should deign to visit you, remember that they are here to assuage your boredom and your anguish, and not you theirs. Don't waste your time on meaningless reassurances, or bother with any of their burning questions. Those can wait. Instead, touch them — remind your deprived brain of real, solid, alive human intimacy (how soon it forgets). Inquire about the outside — news, gossip, trivia. What the time is, how long you've been incarcerated.
   
   I have no further advice to impart. Best of luck, delinquents.

Forgive me my ignorance, but I do find myself both confounded and intrigued by last night's sartorial spectacle. What, might I inquire, is the purpose of such a contraption — beyond, I suppose, its aesthetic charms (supposing one were inclined to be charmed by such curious contrivances)? Is it a rig? Is it meant to be attached to additional apparatuses? And to what end? I'm certain I can't be the only one speculating — quoth the hippy, below: we are prurient creatures, in our nature.

Ah, welcome back to camp, you motley assortment of freaks and talents. (I'll let you quarrel and quibble and carp over the border lines of each, but I'm sure I know which side my bread is buttered on.) Presently I feel that dull midwinter ache in my bones, which typically comes as a reminder that youth is but fleeting and prophetically doomed to be squandered (on what or where, I shouldn't say, but have a look around, aye?). So I figure my birthday must be drawing ever nearer. Twenty-one! I shan't ever have been this elderly before. It's very peculiar. Tell me, am I sharing because I feel the need to connect, to see myself reflected in the inscrutable minds of others, or is this merely a ploy to assuage my own vanity?

I must admit, it's a more flattering interpretation of events than I've ever heard them. Trust the English to work in all of their favorite bits; the torrid homosexual affair with the ultimately jilted French drug-dealer, I think, was a particularly inspired reimagination of a traditional theme. Ah, the Daily Mail. You always deliver.

Will the good saints deliver us from all manner of screaming, moaning, banging, clanging, humping, jumping, and other such things that go 'bump' in the night...directly above, in 5E? Consider yourselves (and the saints) well supplicated. Amen.

I need a dentist.

Good morning, my fellow obliging and unobliging captives. I daren't waste much of your valuable time here, so if I may without further ado draw your attention to the following passage from today's communique:

After further observation of her behavior, it has been deemed necessary to transfer her from solitary to the on-site permanent detention center that is home to Vols whom we consider to be too dangerous for the student body as a whole.

You know what they say about a school-to-prison pipeline, I suppose. However it seems one could hardly blame them — an all-powerful force-field can't come cheap these days, it'll be far easier to house us all under one roof, so it would. Three guesses as to where it is!

Greetings, fellow "Vols." I am Ted Hackett, of Northern Ireland, possessor of what I believe the institution terms an "enhanced bite," which is to say it's of certain crocodilian properties. I do regret to be meeting all of you under such conditions; I am sure many of you regret having come to meet me at all — which, to forestall your stammers of protest (well-intentioned though they must be), I understand, so I do. Let me explain. You — most of you, that is — do not see yourselves as criminals. You also, most of you, may know that I have severed a person's limb through the exploit of my aforementioned jaw of unusual prowess. (Not unprovoked, I must detail, but perhaps an act of disproportionate retribution, to be sure.) Such a deed could be reasonably be conceived as criminal, you follow. So, we are not the same. You are decent, and thus "normal," and I am a delinquent, and as such plagued by any number of the pathologies of the mind.

Yet, troublingly, you are not normal, or so it would seem. We are not (if I may insert myself back into this collective unit, as an outlier once more) what any number of institutions of power (government, medicine, military) consider "normal" or even decent; cast beneath the shadow of fear of the unknown and the crimes of our fellow Vols, we've been homogenized under a single definition, bringing all of society's collective anxiety to rest on our shoulders. We, Vols, the unstable, the potential and actual criminals, the diseased. Which is to say, I suppose: welcome to the machine.