solitary hobbie

[nathalia]

Solitary confinement.

As he lay naked on the floor of in his small empty cell, Hobbie wondered when the sensory deprivation would kick in. He had spent a lot of time in these locked little rooms so that whatever claustrophobia he might have had had been cured before he realized he had it. He couldn't imagine how someone who felt great unease in small spaces might feel when locked in here.

After a while, you got used to it. At least that was his perception. Before the sensory deprivation kicked in, there was enough time to think about the recent events, feelings, plans. And it cost way less than a session with a therapist. Once or twice after his second sentence he had wished he could go into the hole for a few days, be by himself, and think. He had registered how sick it was to wish to be locked in a small cell only to be able to think, and that was one of the reasons he had never said it aloud.

He suspected the warden would come in to see him at some point, try to coax an explanation for his behavior out of him and it was his job to think of one now, because, honestly, he had no idea how to justify biting someone like he had done -- not even to himself. He knew he had done it and he knew that he had no plausible reason for it. "I felt like it," surely wasn't the answer the warden and Lawson wanted to hear. It even sounded bad in his head and there was no way he could convince anyone that he had needed to do it without someone thinking he had pulled a Vincent Mancini to prove to the other inmates that he had what it took, to gain respect.

He hadn't. He had been provoked and he had acted on it. He had done what he would never have allowed himself to do on the outside: he had let his feelings over some stupid thing get the best of him which didn't happen often in D.M. Hobszilauszski's life. It was a part of Michael O'Ryan's however.

He knew he had been crossing the line even before being assigned the job and this familiar setting had helped him get back in touch with the more antisocial side of him that he would not have dared to release on the outside world. Here, among killers, sociopaths and rapists however, he felt safe.