Jacob Part 1. <fragment>

First Part of Jacob's journey, mistaken for some kind of rare marsupial, taken to a zoo.

P A R T   I.

And just like that, Jacob fell into a deep soul—wrenching fixation of sorts, the moment the trio made it to their destination. The driver, the tall thick one in a green overall, and a flared up pimple-red plagued back, obviously a steroid side-effect, flexed his stiff limbs. Shortly after they all stood in the light that flooded the hall from the open cage door.

         The moment the entrance was breached Jacob could only glare down the gullet of what intended to devour him next.
         The Marsupial was still fixated on the big green door, in his gut anxiety was in a whirl, he realized it was, his next home.
         Mom wasn't there.
         A path she promised they would both brave together; no matter what...
         

A quick moment beforehand, they arrived in a white van to that dark, dark place the judge called Zoo. Where a nice vacant cage sat in waiting, expecting a lost kid mistaken for a common animal. The entire situation was a perfect storm of chaos, abuse, neglect, to the point of being plane out bizarre.

         Muscle-Head had his arms spread wide open, like a gameshow host, or a circus Ringmaster would, presenting the generous abundance, it was packed full to the ceiling with emptiness, all for Jacob!
         The court ordained they were to take the "Rare Marsupial" to that place, 'The Zoo', where he supposedly Belonged. An environment where he would be fed and properly taken cared of.
         The zoo administrators obviously had figured- upon a stroke of genius, that there was profit to be made! Proper identification, sex, species classification took back-seat.
         It became an unspoken matter; besides, they could just find-out what the hell he really was later.
         The Zoo admin got busy making their business plan. The huge "Publicity Campaign!" was the first point on their charter for sure.
         A place where he could get gawked at by the endless crowds of people. Crowds after crowds of different kinds of stranger's disapproving or perhaps judgmental, screwed-up stares will gather in herds every day in front of Jacob's cage. That was his destination, safely away from the others! Where both continued having a clear view of the other.
         In Jacob's twelve or eight year old mind, he had begun to grow into accepting just how much he didn't fit in with people in general. He came to really apraze the magnitude in which he didn't fit.

         

How real it became for him, after his mother found enough coldness apparently within her, to let go of her son's hand that day, turned calm as everyone else while she disappeared into the crowd. " You know how we all have a self destruction button inside us all? Yeah, Obi like in a disastrous situation some people are brave enough to let themselves be killed so others can live. Right?" Jacob didn't have his hood on, you could see the night was rapidly bleeding out, and jake was drawing in the dirt using his left foot.

         "My mom had her self-destruction button already pressed for some reason. Its was like she had wrapped gray tape around, that button everybody has, the self-destruction button, she was her own hostage. Mom just thought it was her only way to hurt her father..."
         "I don't know why. She bled on everybody..." he exhaled into what almost was a sigh. "I am pretty sure she left a part of that craziness in me..." he said to Obi, and out into another random night.
         He had a stern, though overwhelming look of concern etched on his face as closing time was coming upon him. The kid hugged his knees on the same zoo bench, (form the c.c. footage studied) he became alone eventually but, he was shortly found.

         

T

he stocky one of the two men sent to pick him up, "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb" duo, both tired looking and obviously forced by a greasy rude boss to squeeze in third shift in!
         "Stumpy the Grouch", Jacob had nicknamed the smallest of the team. He angrily opened the steel-laminated slab wide. The nerve-cringing moan of the hinges—a tooth-grinding lament—sent a ghoulish chill down everyone's spines. The sudden relief came only when the door abruptly smacked the tired gray rubber stopper fixed to the base of the wall.
         Automatically, the other custodian, 'Muscle-Head', Jacob had a long habit of nick naming people thus making them less frightening.

         So, "Muscle-Head" was bestowed upon him by the child. He was the first thing that had startled the boy into that 'fight or flight' mode!
         He found a far corner at the police station. Taking refuge in a shady, burnt bulb, corner sofa. Stiff, it was itchy, and Jacob didn't mind the stains under deafening scream of "What's next?". A huge ape-like mug peered down upon him. Covered the kid in his shadow. Jacob  hugged his knees tighter and felt his huge hand around his right arm.
         He was in charge of containing the animal, and he had Jacob restrained all right! In a brutish fistful of filthy brown pajama cloth, is what he had. He instantly tossed the boy, lopsided, inside.
         There was a bit of disgust in his handling of Jake, a clear hostility in Muscle-Head's body language. 
         Jake was possessed; in a full blown trance, it could be easily observed.
         One thing though, I was watching a child, in a bear onsie, win! He managed to actually escape everything that went down, in a sort of manner.
         "You know?"
         Jake made some sort of a mental jailbreak. They carelessly tossed him into the solitude filled "enclosure."

         From the dim, ankle-height orange led-lit concrete halls, that seemingly went on forever. Their thumping steps resounded against the heartless concrete walls. They successfully made three sharp turns with their prisoner. Job accomplished! They made it to their destination, Jacob's animal pen.
         A "Backroom" kind of slumber rose from the ground. The whole zoo reeked heavy somehow of sleep.
         That boy was still someplace else; comfortably numb. Perhaps he was a billion leagues away, or he was actually capable of phasing off to a pocket dimension outside of time, unbothered with what they were doing with him.
                                                                                                                                                     
         Jacob was assigned two zoo approved handlers, though by the time they finally came to pick him up you could see the third shift written deep in the creases of both their faces. With their grimy clothes, exposed wild haired beer bellies, and the rotting take-out wrappers, soggy from a few too many lunches on the go.
         They were all festering in a heap. Crumpled into shady corners, under the seats, or out front just tossed in the back. It's foul odor mixed all day in the sun. Making its own brand of awful.
          A gut-wrenching stench, a mix of circumstances reeked the whole five-hour windowless van trip, over to the zoo.
         It was close to eleven o'clock at night when they got to the Police Station!
         Both transport workers became irrelevant, to Jacob. Considering what I have learned about the boy throughout the investigation, I'm sure he ripped them both from his plane of existence. All their brute strength, their rough mean faces, how much fear they made him felt, it was all ripped into a different dimension; as far as the brain of this weird kid was concerned.
Poof! 
         They ceased to exist in Jacob's mind. He was in control.

         

That was the predictable outcome, mom led her baby boy to experience. It made no difference to Jacob he prefered keeping away from the hostile, panic-driven, and cruel pack of social animals. Selfish jackals who swear themselves to be human! What a joke, what a sad, sad joke...

         His belief in the crude half-baked promises that spewed out of her, foam edged, mouth. Vivid memories of her thick leathery hands, they always shook, so much they stole all the boy's confidence. Her words, they felt so long ago, unreachable even in Jacob's head every day that came and went by.
         Almost becoming a lost event inside a boy's brain, a disappointing sobbing from Mom, instead of... well, what ever a resilient adult should sound like. Mother's long distance phone call and pipe burnt fingertips; she promised but, never came back as herself. The kid suspected the hypnotic maelstrom he was suffering so badly to be from mom's naivety, an endless urge to step off the ledge she was taught, she left a self destructive rot hidden wet and so very deep somewhere inside the boy!

         It was the unpredictable hurt, from a stepfather's leather belt. Shouting so much yelling.
         Later he felt his Mom becoming cold, distant. "It was like she was unplugged. I tried to make her feel better, Obi. All my efforts were in spite of her having erased my Dad!" he confided late night. The one sided hugs. It all shattered a huge part of the kid's soul.

         

A big sudden whoosh of air made the kid flinch! They all took it head on.

         A bang thundered immediately after!
         Out from the deepest dark it seemed to have been belched—a harsh, a stern command barked to the face, a frightening call into attention.

         The noise boomed down endless halls with the same intensity, bouncing off hidden snares of nothingness clawing dread down Jacob's heart, made the kid jerk up into a tight clam; muscle and  fear. Making his stomach curl from a thick deep horror that stabbed from deep down inside.
         Swiftly replaced by the sound of dry metal in a toothy grinding of a key in a lock, and an opening door.

         So many directions echoing back to the boy it undoubtedly was a large place. Why was the door slammed shut just like the adults did in their fits...
         He stood up straight, pulled his hood back, revealing his dark brown mess of a head.
         The crackling warndown plastic of his onesies' feet, scuffing the ground so loudly they woke the howler monkeys.
         He looked at the darkness behind an enormous plexiglas window extending from wall to wall.
         Obi's face was lit in a ghoulish light while he watched Jake's hood a bears head hanging from his neck as he smirked at the messy head of tangled hair. Jacob just popped a squat on the highest rock he was able to climb up to. There was a rock waterfall made at the far left side of the enclosure, and began to half sulk while he scanned the place.

         

The huge double glass doors were promptly used, that left Obi to make sure they got properly secured. A proud night custodian, he quickly began locking the front doors. Loud and proud announcing he was from Nigeria, any opportunity he got.

         A janitor as well, his mop and bucket made that clear. As clearly as he challenged Down Syndrome, happy, ultimately lost, independant, and he always introduced himself joyfully and with determination as told people his name was "Obi"; always with a big smile. He would throw his head back in pride.
         Obi, was no fool. An thirty-three year old migrant. He left his mop leaning against the wall, and he was walked, full speed towards the video shack. The rhythm of his bothered paces, his beaten-up, tired work boots down the corridor was the only racket that could be heard. Straight to the monitoring room.
         Once Obi closed the door he was covered in a veil of flickering light, a bluish and grayish hue covered the front of him as he looked up, in the hum of the computers. Boxes slumped sadly forgotten in the dark of one corner. Ancient metal and plywood desks on the opposite walls. He pulled a chair over to where the screens were.
         Watching the dingy yellowish monitors they had set up in rows. Three vertical and nine across, mounted on the back wall. The place reeked of mold. The image on the outdated screens was black and white. Grainy as hell.
         Obi knew Jacob wasn't any type of animal, no, he was no special marsupial! Jacob was a child. A boy born into a perfect storm. Tempered in a drama that didn't belong to him. Trauma, the violence, the abundance of rejection, well, the bottom line was he found himself to be unwanted.
         The filthy bear pajama had little to no real base to declare the kid some kind of animal! Never did he ever make a low whimper, not even a faint whisper, no attempt at all to say he was just a kid that gave up on the adults in his life and he decided to hide inside his bear onesie. Clad somehow in a moment he cherished.

*Missing Files: #3. and #14.

         

The boy apparently had adapted in a peculiar, way. Enjoyed when people shuffled by. Prudently far and glass barrieded away from him.

         

In reality, the kid had outgrown the dirty bear get-up.

Jake could see his feet, to him they appeared a tad oafish after quite a while of being hidden. They were filthy, and naked! His gesture makes me conclude he was a little startled how different they had become. It began to pinch him all over or dug into his armpits even chafed him on the crotch area. The boy had became convinced that his protection from Mom's freak-outs, his armor as much as a safe place in his eyes; where it never really mattered if Daddy was gone, it just didn't fit him anymore.

         

Time. It's a ravenous unescapable poltergeist out for all of us.

         The absolute definition of existence, the very essence of it, change. Hollow of mercy, love, sadness, where what follies of men, or women, wishes, hope, have no meaning in it's pass.
         Months had drawled into deformed creatures, weeks. Aware of the amount of time this confusion had wasted, so many dates squandered one after another.
         Days leaked into the next. Forgotten unperceived days that pile into one huge angry lump of doe.

         

It became plain as daylight to the child's eyes, the bear pajama deal was over. People gawking at him believing he is anything other than human, done.

         Obi, which filled the kid with contentment telling him his name meant "God's Heart" or "Father's Heart" in Nigeria. Said to him "You're lost white boy! You don't belong Jake-up! you just don't"
         Yolanda's drabby eyes drooped over her old lady glasses, her head appeared out his barely ajar door. Her gaze was as sour as always.
         She made him uneasy, rude, and rough in whatever he had to do with her.
         It was about five fifty in the afternoon, "Hi! Jake, umm, your owner's dead. Ok? Em, O.D I suppose."
         Quickly as she appeared she was gone. The door locked.