Schadenfreude - or - a fictional account from the near future

The note below was found written, presumably in the author's blood, on the walls of a cell at the Coleman Federal Correctional Facility:

My dearest Barbara,

I feel I must give a full account and explication as to the rationale behind my silence over these past several hours. Indeed, it was only that long ago that you and I made our Odyssean voyage to this place from our own personal Xanadu in Palm Beach. I have much to recount to you.

Upon our arrival at this place I was immediately seized [please excuse the somewhat pedestrian pun] by the sheer size and scale of the estate and grounds. I am convinced that the owners – the Federal Bureau of Prisons, I am told – must have hundreds, nay, thousands of minions labouring from dawn 'til dusk at the Protean task of maintaining it. I must hope that the rumours of labour costs of twelve cents per man-hour are true; that would prove beyond any scintilla of doubt that those benighted labour unions have not yet succeeded in spreading their hateful and cancerous message to the peaceful and happy workers of this Utopia.

Imagine my astonishment, then, when I discovered that I will be expected and required to – dare I even say it? - share my accommodations with another gentleman. I daresay I find it quite beyond me that such a fine establishment – thousands of acres and such well-constructed buildings, if perhaps a trifle utilitarian in a Bauhaus sort of way – should want for rooms. I suppose there are some things about this place that I have yet to learn.

Upon my arrival at this fine estate, I was greeted, not without a certain degree of contempt, by a group of men claiming to be “correctional officers”. I found this nomenclature quite amusing when applied in my case; the last time anyone referred to your humble servant being in need of correction was when I was politely asked to quit the hallowed halls of Upper Canada College, my entrepreneurial flair at selling examination papers being, as it was, unappreciated by the educational staff of that heretofore-august establishment. But I digress: the aforementioned correctional officers, or CO's as they wish to be addressed, promptly exhibited their complete lack of even the most elemental form of decency by requiring that I disrobe in their presence. As you well know, dearest love, I am by no means embarrassed of my physique; indeed, in my sixty-third year I must say I am more than favourably impressed by my musculature, and even more so by the even white shade of my skin. When one CO made the request, I laughed politely and demurred, whereupon one of his colleagues drew an instrument which he referred to as a taser and brandished it in my direction. With my expert knowledge of everything that has ever been reported by those alcoholic wretches who claim to “work” in the North American media – even those stories not dealing with me and my vicissitudes with Dame Justice - I was aware of the potential of these tasers to injure my dignity and perhaps – O horror! - inflict harm on my person. Thus I reluctantly complied with the officers' poorly-worded, unreasonable and obtuse demand. Whereupon a group of men approached me and proceeded to ask me a series of questions about my physical and mental health. Mental health! Can you imagine it, my love? These plebeians could not possibly have any understanding of the force of my intellect. Were I to perform an auto-lobotomy – the temporal lobe, I think – still these so-called doctors would still not comprehend the depth of my mental capacity and acumen.

After the physical examination - which I must report was surprisingly invasive and completely medically unnecessary – I was presented with a new suit. As you know, dearest Barbara, although I am by no means a vain man, I do believe that a fine suit looks particularly resplendent on your Lord Black of Crossharbour. I freely admit, however, that I am not completely au courant, as you are, when it comes to the very latest styles from the Continent. The suit which was given me – completely without charge, I might add – is frankly quite odd. It is made of a stuff which must be of the very latest invention; when I asked the minion who presented it to me (in very simple words, of course) he replied that it was a material known to him as “poly-cotton”. This impressed me greatly; indeed, this new wonder material greatly resembles fine linen and is, if you will believe it, softer and more pleasant to the hand. Of course, upon donning the suit I stole (heavens! I thought I had banished that term from my vast personal lexicon) a glimpse of myself in a looking-glass and stopped for a moment to admire the fine figure of a man who looked back at me with Richelieu-like confidence. I was so pleased with my new suit of clothes that I immediately offered to buy one for every guest of the estate. At that moment one of the CO's guffawed in a Falstaffian sort of way and said (and I quote verbatim): “Y'all don't need to do that, convict (what an odd term!). The federal government (he pronounced it “guv-mint”) done already took care of that”. I looked around and discovered that my grotesque interlocutor's utterance was, quite astonishingly in my view, correct; all of the other guests were turned out in a similar fashion to my own - albeit with less panache, of course. Some of your fashion sense appears to have – what is the term the proletariat uses? - “rubbed off” on me, so to speak.

Thus suitably attired, I was escorted – with a colour guard of these bizarre and motley officers – to a small closet. The closet itself, where your humble servant finds himself writing these few lines to you, is an odd affair. It is the tiniest of spaces, obviously conceived to deal with the high heat and humidity of these latitudes, as well as the larcenous nature of domestic help the world over. Put more plainly – and, as Polonius said, brevity is the soul of wit – the closet is a mere six feet by six, and is built with sturdy solid walls and a heavy door of unadorned metal, with naught but a small crenellation by which to view the interior. Perhaps even more oddly, there is a small writing-desk (I note with some bemusement that one of the light-fingered knaves appears to have absconded with the inkwell already), two sturdy metal chairs and what appear to be two sailor's bunks cantilevered from the walls, but no clothes hangers or hooks. As I write this, a sudden epiphany seizes me. I note that there is a bidet, made of something resembling Sheffield steel, in one corner. Upon seeing this, it immediately becomes plain to me that this is no closet at all; it is indubitably a maid's room. It is now obvious that my escorts have decided to play a harmless prank on a new and presumably good-humoured guest.

My forbearance, however, is tested when I attempt to open the door. One of the Neanderthals has, no doubt inadvertently, locked the door to this cubiculum, this ascetic monk's cell. Surely he does not comprehend that this environment is stultifying to an intellect such as mine. Surely this behemoth must know that I shall recover from such a base insult and rise like the phoenix. I am not without humour, but when slighted my vengeance will be terrible.

While I wait for the rude mechanicals to remedy their colleague's great fault, I will cogitate upon how I might best occupy my time here at the estate. I am given to understand that many here are keen to meet me and learn from me, just as Odysseus's son Telemachus learned from Athena in the guise of Mentor. In fact, to continue my conceit of Greek metaphor, the directors of this estate have already recommended that I lecture my peers at my leisure on the topic of hubris, or to use the considerably less poetic but more generally understood concept, “pride goeth before a fall”. Apparently, even before my arrival here I have been put forward as something of a global authority on the subject. As is often the case with the greatest geniuses, I was unaware of the magnitude of my comprehension of the subject, but in any event I shall acquit myself of my duty with brio. I am told that the next topic under discussion will be the concept of poetic irony. I am convinced that I shall be richly compensated for sharing my not inconsiderable intellectual gifts with the other residents of this estate. I also look forward to sharing my thoughts on corporate governance with an audience which will, no doubt, hang on my every word as if I were the oracle of Delphi.

Once I have been esconced in my proper suite, my beloved Barbara, I shall arrange for you to come visit me. I regret deeply that the somewhat arcane rules for this estate do not permit us to be together. I shall endeavour to find out quickly who is responsible for this travesty, and explain why a woman of your breeding and exceptional character belongs here every bit as much as yours truly.

But soft! The motley fools have returned. They have another gentleman – if I may use that term somewhat loosely – with them. He is rather monolithic in appearance, and judging by his countenance I can only surmise that his mind is as small as those of the mindless journalists who have hectored us at every turn over these past years. His name, as I am given to understand it, is Tiny. How pleasant to learn that someone in this place does understand irony after all! Perhaps he is not such an idiot as his physiognomy might lead one to believe. I shall introduce myself and show him how charming a gentleman of my breeding and intellect can be.

At this point the scrawl stops. It is unclear whether the author's death was due to blood loss, or blunt force trauma at the hands of “Tiny”.