[UA] The Boy in the Box

[Stuart Anderson]

    I've got a thing I want to bounce around. I fairly
recently got a new job after having been between gigs for a
while. This situation has been kicking my ass and if I've
committed to something on or off the list that hasn't been
done, sorry, but that's why. But my first gig in my role as
an Advocate for the Arc was to represent the interest of
this young man from out in the Colorado outback. He has some
profound cognitive and physical disabilities. He'd been in a
foster home for a long time, and had some pretty challenging
self-abusive behaviors--head-banging, biting, that sort of
thing. His foster parents, through ignorance, ineptitude,
and the cruelty bred from that, had developed ways to deal
with the self-abuse that culminated in some of the most
dreadful abuse I've ever been exposed to. When he was
removed from the foster home, his teeth had been removed, he
lived in wrist-to-waist shackles, he slept in a plywood box
with a video camera in the top to "ensure supervision." the
list goes on, but it's ugly and beside the point. The point
is that I was in court, attempting to make sure that the boy
didn't *return* to the home. As obvious as it might seem,
legally, his placement away from that home was not a done
deal.
    The thing I kept coming back to in court was: why do
these people want him back? Why *this* kid? If they are pure
evil, as I had originally suspected, there is certainly no
shortage of children to abuse. They could get their ya-yas
on some other kid under less scrutiny. Was it a power thing
with the Dept. of Human Services? Maybe. The Dept had done a
pretty crappy job by this kid and maybe the foster parents
wanted to tear them down a few pegs, out of pure spite and
malice. But I could never get a read on them. There was just
nothing there. I finally had to acknowledge that they had
some twisted love for the boy. They were crazy as bedbugs
and should never be around children in any way, but their
motives weren't evil. The boy won't be going back there,
btw.
    Anyway--as with any profound paradox I encounter, when I
give it enough time, it eventually trickles down into my
UAverse. I kind of have this idea about a kid with more soul
than his disabled body can contain. I guess I'd write him up
more as a demon or a spirit form, with some limitations
around having a still living body. He can communicate
spiritually, if not cognitively. He can partially possess,
observing through the other and exerting influence, if not
control. He's a generally affable and good-natured soul,
maybe a little mischievous. But over the years he realizes
that his spirit is stronger when less connected to his body.
He begins to assume more control over his largely ignorant
foster parents. Like the old flagellants or sensory
deprivation explorers, he finds strength in things most of
us would find abusive. So he makes that happen, without
really realizing what he's turning his foster parents into
(soulless monsters.)
    I want to do a kind of coming of age story with this,
like Huck Finn or Catcher in the Rye. Partly to purge some
of the evil I got on me during this case, and partly cause I
think it's cool. But I need a loose thread for the PCs to
tug on, some way to get them involved. I think I want to
have the foster parents have become very bad, and the boy
can't quite reign them back in. He wants to keep them at his
side, but they have to stop some intolerable behavior--most
likely similar abuse to a different kid. He needs the PCs to
help, but can't effectively communicate. If it were a
one-shot, I think I'd set it in a farmhouse where some
convicts (the PCs) have hidden out. Kind of Jailbreaky. I
need a better campaign hook, though.
    There're plenty of X-files hooks where the boy's
abilities are manifesting as fortean phenomena and the
players investigate. That's cheap, though, and I want to
stay away from it. But I've committed the ultimate GM faux
pas of coming up with a story that isn't really about the
characters. Maybe that's what I want. What can the PCs gain
from the resolution of this story, other than observing a
bizarre coming of age? Any ideas? Do I have anything here
other than an icky and disturbing premise? You fellas are
usually pretty good at this.

_________________________________________________
--Stu
"He belonged to that particular race of men who
were their adversaries' greatest champions." Eco
http://www.users.qwest.net/~stuartanderson



_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua