Eric Medina (ericthesheep) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2012-10-28 11:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | charlie, charlie and eric, day seven, eric |
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Characters: Charlie and Eric
Setting: Music room, late morning
The lack of a loud, obnoxious alarm that morning had put Eric in a wonderful mood. He’d been able to sleep in - no wake up call, no guards ordering him around, no cellmate, just him in his own room, in a real bed, able to wake up on his own. It meant that for the first time in six years, he’d slept in quite late. He cheerfully showered, then thought about getting food, but it would be such a chore to get over to the other block, and there was something else that had been calling to him since he’d found it yesterday.
Eric had a feeling that he’d be spending a lot of time in the music room. He’d always had an ear for music and a talent for being able to pick up new instruments easily - aside from piano, he’d never quite mastered that one, though he could pick out a recognizable tune easily enough. Although he had already spent a little bit of time in there last night, he couldn’t help but let it be his first stop now. Studying the instruments there, it didn’t take long for him to decide that the fiddle suited his current mood best.
After checking and preparing the bow, Eric brought the violin up to position and began to do a few warm up tunes. Nothing fancy - it was just a way for him to refamiliarize himself with the instrument. It had been so long since he’d been allowed to play anything that he knew he was rusty, but with practice, he was sure he’d be able to get it back.
Charlie had stayed on the sidelines of the morning’s events, though he had been aware of them. There was nothing he could do for the girl and he had to admit that yesterday’s events had shaken him enough that he hadn’t wanted to throw himself into the middle of things again so soon. He had watched for a while, and then he’d retired back to his room to play around with his guitar. He had belatedly collected it yesterday, and had been shocked to realise it wasn’t just a guitar. It was his guitar from home.
Unfortunately, that meant that it was complete with the same shitty, end of its life, E-string, which had lasted until about half an hour ago, when it finally gave up the ghost and died. Which was what brought Charlie to the music room, in search of either replacement strings, or another guitar that he could obtain a string from.
He walked in, guitar in hand and stopped in the doorway as he caught sight of someone in there and already playing.
Eric had begun to pace in a slow, almost absent-minded way as he played easy, very beginner things, in much too good a mood to get frustrated with the fact that it was going to take some time to get back to the quality he’d been able to play before prison. Six years would do that, he supposed, and so he just amused himself with Ode to Joy and Jingle Bells. He chuckled faintly as he transitioned into When The Saints Go Marching In, and turned to walk in the opposite direction, stopping short when his eye caught a guy in the doorway. “Hey there,” he said with a friendly smile, lowering the instrument.
Charlie cocked an eyebrow. “You know, it’s kinda the wrong time of year for those,” he pointed out, lightly. It wasn’t meant as a complain, but rather as an observation as he walked into the room and setting his guitar down on the side as he began looking for replacement strings.
Eric’s easy smile remained in place at the comment. “Yep,” he confirmed with a nod. “It’s been a long time since I played, though, figured I should start with the basics. Less chance of embarrassing myself that way,” he explained his reasoning for it even though the guy hadn’t asked.
“You play for long?” Charlie asked, opening a draw and smiling as he found neatly stacked packets of wire. Bingo. He sorted through, picking the one he needed, the shut the draw, heading back for his guitar.
Shifting the violin in front of him, Eric shook his head. “Long enough that it’ll come back to me in time, but not near long enough in the grand scheme. Been in six years, so it’s been awhile.”
“And I guess that you don’t get a whole lot of time with a violin. Yeah. What were you in for?” Charlie asked, sitting himself down and working on taking out the broken string. He kept his tone of questioning light, but he wanted to know what type of people he was dealing with. He’d been stupid his first day. And yesterday had been yesterday. Time to start taking things more seriously.
Eric nodded at the assumption, and when he was asked what he was in for, he seemed unperturbed. “Drugs,” he answered simply. “Made some stupid choices in college I’ll have to live with the rest of my life. Unless the mission statement of this place is to be believed, but I’ve only been here a day, so I’m not real sure what to think yet,” he added with a grin.
“You chose a shitty day to come in then,” Charlie said, skipping out on the fact he’d only arrived the day before that, and he’d spent most of his first day drunk out of his head. “Been one long rollercoaster of shit going down then, I guess.”
“Didn’t get much choice in it, but yeah, it was some crazy shit,” Eric agreed easily. “So, what’re you in for? How long you been here?” he asked curiously, tossing the questions back at the guy.
Charlie shrugged, dropping the broken string and starting in on inserting the fresh one. “Been here a while,” he said, going for vague, though he made it sound like an answer, rather than that he was avoiding the question. He had a whole lot of experience in telling people what they expected to hear. “And I’m in for a misunderstanding over what the law is. I thought one thing. They decided another. Shit happens - right?” he said, looking up with a smile that was almost a laugh.
Eric’s brows raised at the non-answers, but he just wasn’t sure he cared enough to push on it. Everyone was in for something, right? And he knew all too well how fucking unbending and judgmental the law was. “Imagine that, me too. Shit happens,” he agreed, matching the smile. He nodded toward the guitar the guy was changing out a string on. “That doesn’t look all new and shiny like the ones in here,” he commented.
“That‘s because it’s not. It arrived yesterday,” he said, easing the replacement string into position and moving on to tuning it against the other strings. “This is my baby. Had her for years. Didn’t think I’d see her again for a while, and then there she was, with my name on her.” He looked up. “Early Christmas gift, or bribe - you decide.”
Eric moved over to one of the bean bag chairs, sitting down on it and setting the instrument and bow aside gently as Charlie explained about the guitar. “Huh, wow. Yeah, I saw the mountain of gifts in the cafeteria yesterday. What was that all about? They do that often?” He felt like he still really didn’t know much at all about this place, but he figured he’d work it out in time. What was the rush?
Charlie shook his head. “This place had only been going for around a week. I think it’s too early to talk about ‘often’. But yesterday’s load was - they gave us a task to do. Everyone who did it got something - and those people who didn’t bother, got locked in their rooms until they did.” He rolled his eyes and started to tune the guitar properly with practiced hands.
The explanation seemed simple enough, and Eric nodded slightly at it. “Makes sense. They gotta remind people that they’re in charge still, right?” he said with a short laugh. “So, how long’ve you been playing?” he asked, nodding toward the guitar.
“Right - so, they treat us like five year olds, unless we do something really wrong and then they get us to put each other in the stocks,” he said, bitterly. “Definitely don’t get to forget who’s in charge.” Charlie knew that he sounded pissed about things, but that was fine - he was. Still, he wasn’t going to ignore a question from Eric just to be petulant. “Been playing half my life. Took it up when I was about thirteen.” He smirked a little. “Seemed like a good way of looking cool to girls, but I found I really enjoyed it for the music.”
Touchy much? Eric thought with raised brows. “So you don’t think there should be consequences if people do wrong? Or is it just them handing down the judgment that bugs you?” he wondered. He still didn’t feel like he knew enough about the whole situation to have a real opinion on it, but somehow he had a feeling that it wouldn’t be the last time the issue of crime and punishment would come up, so he supposed he’d figure it out then. “Ah, good long time, then. You really wanna impress the girls, you go for the drums,” he said knowingly, laughing a bit.
“Drums? Huh - I’ll remember that,” Charlie said, lightly and with a smile. One which dropped off his face pretty quickly. “Consequences is one thing. But when then hand down judgement from on high about supposed crimes and ask us to hand out the punishments, when they haven’t even told us what the supposed perpetrator has done? Just ‘this person has fucked up and now they have to do that’. That’s not cool. Neither is this thing they put in place where apparently you have a day to confess when you’ve done something wrong to get a lesser punishment, which has people confessing to shit that they’re not even after. Nobody knows where the lines are, what they’re looking for. It’s all bullshit,” he bit.
It was pretty clear that the guy had pretty strong opinions on this, and Eric’s expression was thoughtful as he listened. “Huh, wasn’t here for the confessions thing. Did either of them say they were innocent, though?” he wondered. It wasn’t the point of the thing, he was just curious. “I mean, yeah, guilty until proven innocent is a load of crap, but you figure they see all and know all...” He shrugged, not really wanting to get into a debate about it all. Maybe if he was high, but he wasn’t. “So, people confessed to shit they weren’t looking for? Did anything happen to them cause of it?”
“I figure that they see all and hear all and they can make it all up if they want. They have absolutely no reason at all to have to presume guilt. They could have just told us - hell, they could have just shown us what was done. But they didn’t. One of the people - he confessed, to going into someone else’s room. The other one - she didn’t say she was innocent, but she didn’t say she was guilty either. And now she’s dead,” Charlie said. “So I guess we’ll never know, will we? As for the people who confessed. No, nothing happened to them, just a ‘hey, that’s not what we’re looking for’ - but they still got people to admit to shit they otherwise wouldn’t have brought up. So in my opinion, that negates any explanation that they’re not telling us about things that people have done out of some fear that we’ll take the law into our own hands and retaliate.”
Eric was considering all that, trying to think of reasons why they wouldn’t have just told or shown them what was done when Charlie dropped that bombshell about Caroline being dead. “What? Wait - what the hell was that? She’s dead?” Eric asked, eyes just a little wide. Well fuck, it wasn’t that people dying in prison never happened, but this was a slightly different situation. “How?” he wondered. He shook his head, scrubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw. Shifting on the bean bag, he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. The rest seemed kind of unimportant in that moment, and he opted to hold off on going back to it until he knew more about the death.
“You didn’t know? Wow,” Charlie said, surprised. He had figured that everyone knew. “Apparently it seems she made it to the roof, then she fell. I don’t know what they’re gonna do about it, but it seems ‘immediately come in and sort this shit out’ isn’t on the list. I’m just grateful that we have medical staff here. Not that it does Caroline any good, of course, but it might leave her with some dignity.”
That was - well, fuck, that was some crazy shit. Eric wasn’t really sure what to make of it, and he shook his head at that. “Right, yeah.” Cause it was so dignified to try to escape prison, right? he thought, but he knew better than to say that out loud. “No, I didn’t know. Guessing it was on the other block? My room’s over here and I slept late. Just showered and came straight here when I got up since there wasn’t any obnoxious alarm waking me up this morning,” he explained with a shrug. He thought about the building, trying to figure out how she’d even made it up there. “Wait, we have medical staff? Like the real shit, or other convicts?” he asked, not that being a convict meant they would have lost their knowledge, but he thought it would be a good idea to know the which he was dealing with.
“Seems from looking through the journals that we have a doctor, maybe a couple of nurses. Not sure on that one exactly. Looks like they’ve all had convictions, so they’re here like we are. But still looks like they’re ‘the real shit’ as well. There’s a medical facility done in the basement, between the two blocks? Not had a reason to go in there, so I don’t know how good it is though.”
Ah, Eric figured he should probably do that sometime today, go through the journals and try to get an idea of who was here. He’d been lazy yesterday in that respect, though he’d spent a lot of time looking around and getting a feel for the place itself. “Interesting,” he said simply. With those answers out of the way, his mind jumped back to what they’d been talking about before, and he decided to ask one more thing about it. “So, how do you think they should run things as far as the whole crime and punishment thing goes?” he asked curiously.
Charlie considered that, then quirked a smile, leaning on his guitar. “You asking that because you really want an answer, or to make conversation?” he queried. He didn’t want to bore the guy with a fully developed answer unless he actually wanted one.
Eric grinned at the question, shrugging a shoulder carelessly. “I’m curious. Still trying to figure out what I think about this place, figure it can’t hurt to get other people’s opinions. So yeah, I really want an answer,” he replied.
“Okay then,” Charlie said, setting his guitar to one side and leaning back a little, propping an ankle up on his opposite knee. “First up, I think they need to be clearer about what does and doesn’t fly. People were confessing to fights and shit. Now, legally, that would be some kind of assault, but here they’re not cracking down on it - which, fair enough. Maybe no harm, no foul, but I think that if we’re expected to follow the rules, we need to know more about what those rules are. After that... If you read the welcome message they left, they’re really vague about what they expect from us. So I guess it depends on their goals. They go on about us leading a ‘happy and healthy life’. Which could mean anything as far as I can see it. But if they actually want us to get out of here and be able to make proper value judgments and really know right from wrong - which I would have thought was a pretty damn good idea - then they should give us a chance to actually do that. Don’t hand down punishments from on high with no explanation. Let us figure that shit out. Even if they set guidelines down for us to follow. Give us some control and if they need to ‘teach’ us how to exercise that, then that’s one thing. I’m not suggesting they leave us to it and let anarchy reign. I just think that they need to treat us like people and not dogs they’re training to the sound of a bell.”
It was a long answer, but Eric was attentive as he sat, taking it all in, considering it against what little he had managed to work out about this place so far. “That’s pretty sound logic, there,” he commented first, nodding slightly. “Yeah, a clear understanding of what’s acceptable and what’s not would be nice. I mean, I don’t really see myself doing shit that would put me in the stocks, but how can I be sure if I don’t know what would get that punishment? But yeah, all that shit about coming together as a community and all - gotta say I can’t really see that happening without a hell of a lot of work just from yesterday’s drama. I mean, everyone seemed pretty fucking torn on what to do, and it seemed like there were a few who weren’t going to listen to shit. Just made up their minds and that was that. But didn’t they give us some control by giving us the option of whether or not to go through with the punishment? I mean, yeah, they put the stocks out there, but they didn’t force us to put anyone in them. You called for a vote, and the majority seemed to be in favor of going through with it,” he recalled with a shrug.
“Sure - a lot of people voted to go through with the punishment,” Charlie agreed. “But how many of those people only thought that it was the right thing to do because they were afraid what would happen to them if they didn’t? The administration warned that there would be repercussions if the punishments didn’t go ahead. Now, fine - if you break rules, there’ll be comeback for that. That’s what happens. But when people start asking me to do something I wouldn’t normally do, that I think is wrong on a very fundamental level, and threaten me with some unknown punishment if I don’t comply? That sets my alarmbells ringing. Because I never want to be the kind of person who jumps to do something just because someone says so. That, my friend, is a very slippery slope. And ‘because they told me so’ is the worst kind of defence. That’s the kind of defence you find in dictatorships with the worst kinds of tortures and abuses going on.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Eric said first, nodding slightly. It was a pretty messed up situation, but he had six years under his belt of doing what he was told in the prison system, so having any kind of freedom of choice again was a bit of an adjustment for him. “I’m just not real sure how any of us can change the way they’re doing things. I’d think the only real way to do that would be is if everyone stood together to say, ‘No, this is wrong,’ and after yesterday? I just don’t see that happening. And I’m not sure I believe there aren’t people here who wouldn’t do a hell of a lot worse to someone than putting them in stocks for any actual or perceived wrongdoing.” He’d seen it in prison many times in the gang circles and such. Their consequences tended to be a hell of a lot harsher and far more permanent than any punishment handed down by the system.
“I don’t think any of us can change it,” Charlie agreed, not liking that fact, but having to accept it nonetheless. “And I agree that some people in here would do a lot worse to people. But surely that’s the behaviour they should be trying to change? The way I see it - the approach that they’re taking, all it’s going to do is educate reasonable, rational people not to think. It’s not actually teaching people who would overreact, or react what would be considered ‘wrongly’ not to do that - because it’s not giving them the opportunity to change at all.” He paused and shrugged. “I just don’t get what they think they’re going to achieve from any of this.”
And that, Eric decided, is what it all boiled down to, that they didn’t really know what the administration was looking to truly achieve in all of this. Sure, they could tout their propaganda about community and rehabilitation all they wanted, but it didn’t mean it was the true goal. “So maybe what needs to happen is getting everyone to look at the bigger picture. Kinda curious to find out what the consequences might’ve been if that girl hadn’t put them in the stocks.” He wasn’t a stir the pot kind of guy, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious.
“So, how would you deal with things?” Charlie asked, curiously.
Eric laughed at the question, shaking his head and shrugging. “I don’t know, man. I’m no kind of leader, more a go with the flow type, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see the way they’re doing things here is pretty messed up. But I don’t think it helps anything to put people in a situation where tensions, anxieties, and fears are running high and ask them to make a decision like they did yesterday. It causes people to make snap decisions rather than actually thinking it through, and it makes people less likely to listen to reason. If I thought everyone would go for it, I’d say call a town meeting or something,” he suggested with a grin that said he really didn’t see that going over well in a place like this.
“Oh yeah - that would go down well. Though, joking aside, I think that figuring out how we’re going to react next time, before ‘next time’ actually happens, would be a great plan,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, exactly. Couldn’t hurt anything to try to figure it out. Or, it could cause one big fight or riot or something and we all die, either way,” Eric said, chuckling even though it really wasn’t funny.
Charlie bit out a laugh. Sometimes even not funny things were very definitely funny. “Yeah, definitely,” he agreed. “Fuck - we’re so screwed, aren’t we?”
Eric grinned when the guy laughed as well. “Yep, pretty much. So, I’m Eric. Who’re you?” he asked, realizing it was something manners probably dictated he should have asked earlier, but oh well, right?
“Charlie - I’m Charlie. Nice to meet you, Eric. This place kinda makes things backward, huh?” he said with a chuckle.
“Yeah, seems like. And, you too,” Eric agreed easily. He stood up and went to grab one of the guitars in the room before setting back on the bean bag. “Guitar was the first thing I learned,” he said, pulling a pick out of his pocket that he’d snagged the night before, happy to focus on music again. “Got it tuned up right?” he asked, nodding to where Charlie had been changing the string.
Charlie nodded. “Yeah - for now. The new string’ll take a while to settle in.” He picked up his guitar and tried a few chords, happy with the tuning. “You wanna play?” he asked, tilting his head towards the other man, fingers still in place.
Eric nodded in understanding at that and then smirked at the question. “Hell yeah,” he answered pleasantly. Placing his fingers on the strings, he strummed a few chords out as he thought. “What do you know? Pick something and I’ll follow,” he suggested.
“Sure,” Charlie agreed, starting in on something classic, well known. He doubted Eric would have a hard time following, and if would do them both good to lose themselves in the music for a while. Let the shit of the day pass them by.
Eric did know it, and he fell into the music easily, playing along. His fingers were already a bit sore from playing so much the night before after so many years of not being able to play at all, but it was a good kind of sore, and he was happy for it. Whatever else went on in this place, at least there was music.