Instead of a prison cell, I used a tent. I like to hike and backpack. I value a quality tent. I spent some money on this. It was certainly in my best long term interests to keep this tent intact. It’s not concrete walls and iron bars, but it was effective enough for a short term scene. My only way of unauthorized escape was to slash my way out and ruin the tent for good.
My captor for this scene was Ms Delia, and she called in periodically to screw with me. Having a phone kind of undermines the isolation aspect, but nothing’s perfect. I did use a landline handset, so no touchscreen or anything stimulating. And it’s not like I have anyone’s phone number memorized anymore.
The tent was locked by padlocking the zippers together with a combination lock. Prior to the scene I had reset the combination without looking, took a picture of it, emailed her the picture, then deleted the picture, and scrambled the dials. Once the shackle was locked on…..I had no way to open it myself.
She left me in there to stew for a few hours and then called to give me my challenge to get out. She gave me a task to complete before she went to bed, or else I would have to remain captive overnight.
My task was to sort out two bags of mixed bean soup. It was way harder than it sounds. There are ALOT of beans. You’d think this would be welcome stimulation in what would otherwise be total boredom. But it wasn’t. It was just boredom disguised. There’s nothing stimulating or interesting about sorting beans.
The confined space of the tent made it even more difficult. First of all, each pile of beans started to eat up valuable real estate making my confinement even more restrictive. Second, this was exhausting
I should have mentioned that all I had in there was a flashlight, so that made things even more difficult. But the most difficult part was the physical exhaustion. While doing this, I could kneel, sit cross-legged, or lie on my side. After a while stiffness and fatigue would compel me to change positions. Yet, after a while, the duration for which I could hold each position became shorter and shorter. I was barely moving. I wasn’t lifting anything. I wasn’t working up a sweat. Yet this physically kicked my ass, slowly, bit by bit, for 10 hours.
I did not finish the beans. I think Ms Delia was ready to go to bed, or I was out of minutes, or something because she let me off the hook pretty easily. In the future, it would probably be good to have a bank of minutes in reserve for occasions like this.
I had some water bottles, and a bag of dry lettuce. I also had a litter box. Luckily, in 10 hours, I didn’t have to use it. Nature took mercy on me. I just used empty bottles for #1. It was intimidating though….I didn’t want to know what it would be like to be locked in the tent with a full litter box.
So that was my first sort of real captivity scenario. It got to feel kinda dumb, and aggravating, and I felt really shitty about myself after about 4 hours. What kind of idiot signs of up for something like this??!!
After it was over, and my mental state returned to normal, it was really cool to reflect on the completely altered state of mind. Yes it was boring. Yes I had a few moments of spaz. Yes there were some real moments of despair. But it was also a really cathartic thrill. My whole world was in that tent. And everything that happened to me was under someone else’s control. It was really cool.
Locked Dummy 