Ronald James Hughs

[Jelly]

Written: 7/19/2011

ronald james hughs

sex: Male
age: 42
sexuality: Heterosexual
occupation: Faculty; orderly.

eye color: Brown
hair color: Black
other:

Standing at six feet two inches and being rather broad of shoulders and muscular gives Ronald a rather intimidating appearance. An appearance that he spends quite a bit of time keeping together – it wouldn’t do to let any of the patients ever overpower him (even if it’s just a few of the men that worry him in that department), if they ever decided to try. He wears no piercings of any kind, nor any jewelry except his wedding ring, and that he tends to leave in his car along with all of his keys (locking his car has never been a high priority with him, it’s a real clunker anyways). He also keeps his hair short, but that is as much for common fashion as it is for ease and safety. However, he seems to have an everlasting bit of stubble that’s not quite long or prominent enough to be considered facial hair, but is almost always present.

As for tattoos or similar markings, his dark skin is relatively smooth and clear. He has a few scars here and there that he gathered growing up and through those regular little incidents that happen to people every day, but nothing extremely noteworthy or noticeable. His clothes are just the same: more simple and functional than anything. He tends to favor jeans or slacks if he must and simple solid color shirts – outside of his uniform. Fashion sense and wondering what’s in or out of style is left up to his wife. And considering he doesn’t do much that requires a formal outfit, the only one he owns is years upon years old, and only ever pulled out when he absolutely needs it.

likes: Power; things set in stone; looking down on people, figuratively and literally; working with his hands; “funk” music; cheap beer, nothing fancy or complicated; good black coffee;
dislikes: Children; small, dark spaces; silence; people with crazy hair styles or that wear obnoxious colors; cats; being called “Ron;”
fears: Loss of control; ever ending up like one of the patients or knowing someone who does; spiders; ever hurting someone he cares about (although most of those he works with – both patients and fellow faculty – are exempt from that);
personality:

Now, Ronald isn’t really that bad of a person. He’s a quiet one, certainly, so while he can be friendly enough to socialize with almost anyone, he tends to simply pass them by more often than not. To those that do get to know him, he can be agreeable and entertaining to spend time with, as long as he’s in the mood for social hour. However, the major thing most people notice when they delve into this person their befriending (or attempting to), is his determination to get whatever he wants. Whether what he wants is a beer and a bit of time to himself, or a pay raise he’s had his eye on, or the respect of anyone who thinks they have the right to try and insult him. He’s not a person that easily changes his mind, and those that try and end up pushing him too far alienate him for good.

When he doesn’t like someone, it’s obvious. And unfortunately for those at Lennox House, he has set himself stalwartly on disliking them all. It makes the time he spends there more worthwhile – as he can more easily use that as an excuse to himself and get exactly what he wants from them however he has to do that. It’s almost a case of cliché corruption of power: the fact that he can do something so he will. He keeps an eye out for anyone with the power to fire him and checks himself in their presence, but for the most part he doesn’t bother with behaving too well as an orderly – because how many people will want to work in what is really an insane asylum? A few, perhaps, but in his mind they can’t possibly get rid of him. Still, he won’t go out of his way to jeopardize his job if he can help it. The job is his, and along with that determination to have what he wants, he is possessive and protective of what he already has. His job, his wife and the life he has with her, and the freedom he has in the halls of the Lennox house. Everything that he refuses to lose.

family: Arthur Henry James, father, deceased; Maria Jean Scott, mother, whereabouts unknown; Grace Helen Hughs, aunt, whereabouts unknown; Alisha Jay Scott, half-sister, whereabouts unknown; Sandra Beth Hughs, wife.
history:

When sixteen year old Maria Hughs found out she was pregnant, the father an older student who refused even an ounce of responsibility for the child, she panicked. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), her older sister convinced her not to try and find any under the counter doctor who could help her get rid of the baby. They were few and far between in those times anyways, and most attempted abortions ended in the deaths of both mother and child. That same older sister helped her through the entire nine months of her pregnancy, including telling and dealing with their parents. And when time came for young Ronald to be born, she helped Maria set up everything she could with the adoption agency. After the whole ordeal was over, they returned to their own lives, and never really gave much more thought to the accidental son.

However, for Ronald, the adoption that his mother and aunt had been so sure was going to go through never happened; the other family backed out. And because the orphanage had seen how little the original family could care for him, they never notified any blood relatives and simply kept him with them. Although they tried repeatedly to find him a permanent home (or even a foster one), they had little luck, and Ronald spent his first few years blissfully unaware that there was anything better. That is, until around his ninth year in the orphanage, still not adopted, when a new boy joined them. As they were about the same age, they quickly bonded as young boys do, and Ronald’s new friend – a scrawny, redheaded sprout of a kid named Stefen – would tell him all sorts of stories of his family: both a mother and a father and an older brother and younger sister. He never went on to say what happened to them or why he was in the orphanage, but he was happy to brag about all the stories he had that Ronald had never experienced.

Ronald was admittedly jealous, and that only meant Stefen could lord his stories over his friend even more. And for once, he realized he actually wanted to be adopted. He wanted a family like Stefen described, and he wanted to get out of the orphanage once and for all. But that wasn’t going to happen, despite his sudden drive to impress any and all families interested in him. And when he was roughly twelve, Stefen was adopted, giving him only more reason to be jealous of his friend, the feeling quickly becoming a bitter one. The thing was, after Stefen left the orphanage, Ronald never heard from him again. So much for childhood friends.

The next six years went along relatively uneventfully for Ronald. At about the age of fifteen he began working in the orphanage to take care of the younger children, but that was the extent of any responsibilities he had or ‘family’ he might have had. At least as a child.

After his eighteenth birthday, he too walked out of the orphanage and never looked back. Although it probably would have been a smart idea for him to stay there to work, as he already had a position there that they mentioned they could pay him for, but he declined. Instead he pretty much lived on the street for a while, doing what little odd jobs he could find, managing to find enough to get him through his first few years ‘out in the world.’ Eventually he found himself a job working as a janitor in a small elementary school, as their long-time janitor was retiring.

As menial and lowly that position was, it paid him well enough to actually get a place to live and have a more ordinary life, so he dealt with it. In fact, it was through his janitorial job that he met his wife. Sandra was there as a teacher’s assistant, trying to work her way up to a full position as an elementary teacher, and through a rather accidental friendship and then relationship, the two of them got married and moved in together. Her parents didn’t exactly agree with the whole thing – they considered the year the two had known each other before exchanging their vows to be much too short a time – but they were happy, and Ronald had something of the family he had been looking for ever since his days in the orphanage. Although, working around so many young elementary kids (and cleaning up after them) left him steadfast in the notion that he never wanted any of his own. Sandra, on that other hand, did. But his argument was (and always will be) that she got to deal with other people’s kids on a daily basis, they didn’t need anything more.

Not too long after his marriage, Ronald quit his job at the elementary school. It was pointless and he was going nowhere in his life with it – and it was far too similar to his days cleaning up after and caring for the younger kids at the orphanage. Through his unemployed time, he again resorted to finding odd jobs or similar short-term things that could pay him, until he stumbled upon an opening for Lennox House. He applied there (partly to make Sandra happy), and when hired took the role of an orderly. He wasn’t too terribly interested in the job at first, but through the many years he spent there, he, well, blossomed in a way.

Although blossomed makes it seem like a positive thing, and it was certainly far from that. Enjoying the position of power he had in his simple job description, Ronald easily took advantage of it, and has grown to be something of a menace in the lives of the patients living there – although he remains on his best behavior around anyone that could get him fired. His home life changed little with this change in him, though, besides his and Sandra’s standard of living rising somewhat with another steady income supporting them. If anything, his job has become his stress relief, and he is often in a wonderful mood when he returns home. That is, unless he has an especially troublesome patient he has to deal with, or some case where someone higher up could find out about his abuse. Those are days that all those who know him outside of Lennox dread, and avoid him on.

vision:

For Ronald, Lennox is really just a raggedy old asylum, a place to work, a place to enjoy the power he has over the patients, a place where he really doesn’t care what kind of a person he is. In a way, his job as an orderly there is just as much of an escape as the fantasies of some of the inmates – I mean, patients – he watches over. As long as they’re behaving, that is.

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alias: Jelly
age: 18
experience: Going on seven years
come again?: Ad on THE Twilight RPG
other characters: None.