Character Study! Ben
Name: Benjamin Lei Nguyen (pronounced wen)
DOB: February 18th
Height: 5’8”
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Likes: Gambling, drugs, chicks, mind tricks, rap
Dislikes: Peanut Butter and Fluff sandwiches
Best Memory: Don’t have one.
Ben was born an only child to his American mother, Helen, and Korean father, Lei. For the first five years of his life they lived in Washington, DC; his mother was an interpreter for the Pentagon, and his father was a trucker for a lucrative trucking company.
When Ben was six, his mother was unfortunate enough to be included in a small - albeit deadly - bombing of the Southwest side of the Pentagon. She was only one of five that were killed in the explosion. Ben, being impressionable to begin with, never quite got over her death; instead he pretended that she’d never existed because it was easier for him to ignore the loss than to deal with it. Lei was unsure of how to breach the subject with his son, so he tried not to mention it around Ben. He noticed Ben developing aggressive tendencies; he was being accused as a bully in school and he would have frightening temper tantrums where he would throw furniture around his room in violent tirades. He decided it would be in Ben’s best interest if they were to move.
Lei found another company to drive for - a branch of the company he had worked for in DC - and he and Ben relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina. Ben was beginning to change for the better; his bullying had stopped abruptly after the move, and his tantrums had slowly subsided. He showed interest in his father’s work, and after receiving permission from his supervisor Lei took Ben along for a short run to Memphis, TN and back over a long weekend.
On the return trip, just outside of the Tennessee - North Carolina border, a heavy rain began to fall, covering the highway with a slick sheet of water. Lei told Ben to sit back in his seat and let him concentrate, and Ben watched the cars driving by outside the window, pretending they were his toys and he was controlling them. He saw one car, a tan Toyota, driving by them: The driver was a man in his late thirties, with blond, wavy hair and glasses, and he had a woman sitting next to him, and a young girl in the backseat sleeping with her head resting against the window. Her hair was so blonde it was nearly white, and Ben watched them drive ahead of them, momentarily wondering how anyone’s hair could be so strange and yet so pretty at the same time.
Ben doesn’t necessarily remember everything too clearly about what happened next. He likes to blame it on Colton’s father, who was driving the tan Toyota, although it wasn’t really his fault, either. In Ben’s deluded mind, the Toyota cut in front of the truck, causing Lei to break heavily, which forced the back end of the trailer around, causing the truck to jackknife because of the slick roads, and for years he found vindictive pride in thinking that Colton’s family had led themselves to their own demise.
What did happen, in fact, was just a tragic combination of poor conditions bad reactions, and horrible circumstances. As Ben watched the cars outside his window, the Toyota ended up falling a little behind the truck, and Lei was distracted by Ben’s sudden outburst of vroom - ! as he pretended he was playing with the cars. While Lei looked over at his son momentarily, a few yards ahead a buck had bounded out from the surrounding wood that lined the highway, causing everyone in front of the truck and Toyota to lock up on their breaks. Lei over-reacted, stomping on the breaks too quickly, and the trailer pushed the cab forward and wound up jackknifing. The Toyota crashed headlong into the passenger side of the cab (something Ben has blocked from memory permanently) before anyone had even a chance to react, and the three people in the car were killed instantly. The trailer ended up pushing the cab over the shoulder of the road and down into the ditch, jarring the driver’s side door and seatbelt together. The result of the crash of the Toyota into the side of the trailer had opened the gas lines and a fire had started in the hood of the car, soon to be igniting the gas that leaked from the trailer. Lei panicked, and he screamed for Ben to get out of the truck. Scared, Ben did as he was asked, promising he’d come back with help, and he escaped out the window of the cab.
In his fight with Finn, Ben made mention of the truck having exploded, which is not the case. If it had, there would have been several more injured than just the Walkers and Mr. Nguyen. Ben suffered what is most commonly known as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, although he was never properly diagnosed with it. The stress of losing first his mother, and then his father in such traumatic ways left him psychologically impaired. Unfortunately some of the foster homes he went to did little to alleviate his disorder, as he was usually sloughed off to another set of parents before he could even unpack. By the time he turned sixteen, Ben had had enough of foster care. He stole a bundle of cash from his foster parents and took off, first settling in Louisiana, and then migrating his way down to Edanomella.
As he aged, Ben’s PTSD had begun to dwindle, leaving him with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ days, something that Finn picked up on early on in their friendship. Claire’s refusal to date him, although gentle as it was at the time, still triggered some sense of loss in Ben, which began the cycle again. When he saw Colton again after so many years of blaming the Walkers for his own loss, he lost it completely. Ben’s lucidity decayed rapidly, and he began preying on anyone with weak minds to prove that he had control over his life. It was easy for him to pick up on Val’s vulnerability when she started visiting his drug-den, and he used what information she gave him in order to bind her to him. He used her to get to Colton, finding out through her that Colton frequented the bar where she worked, and he had mentioned a girl named Claire more than once while talking to one of the other bartenders.
He got Val to eavesdrop on Colton’s conversations more in order to learn his weaknesses, and he was more than pleased to hear that Claire seemed to be it. Ben had known about Colton’s ritual with having lunch with the other bartender at the diner, and he had watched them so that he could time his appearance just right. He utilized Val to stall Maritza at work so that she would arrive late, and he coerced Finn into going to lunch with him. He was the one that chose the seat just behind Colton and brought up the subject of Claire, making sure he kept Finn talking about her loud enough for Colton to overhear. Colton’s reaction to the conversation was everything he’d hoped for.
After Colton left the diner, Ben casually planted the name of the bar in Finn’s head hoping that he would eventually lead her there, and that Colton would be there as well. His plan worked perfectly, and Finn was completely clueless that he himself had helped in his own break-up.
Ben continued to use Val as a pawn in his game, siphoning information from her about the two, and continuing down his own path of increasing insanity. By the time Finn caught up with him in the Con, Ben had already begun believing that Colton wanted him dead, and that the reason he was doing all of this was to protect himself from the impending threat.
He has now been incarcerated for possession of a narcotic weighing over 10oz and is serving a sentence of a minimum of fifteen years or more with a fine of over $75,000. When he reaches six months stay, the prison will bring in the inmate social worker, who will discover and properly diagnose Ben for his disorder and get him the kind of counseling he needs. Although this discovery may lessen his sentence, (that is for the judge at the appeal to decide), he will remain in custody of the state until he is no longer deemed a threat to society.