Jacob {Arrival at the Zoo} <fragment>

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

PART I.

And just like that, Jacob fell into the deepest fixation, when we had finally arrived to his vacant pen. It was with that big heavy green door, that led to the court ordained place where he supposedly belonged. An environment where he would be fed and properly taken cared of.
         Where he could be gawked at by the endless crowds of people. That was his destination, far away from the others while maintaining a view of each other.
         The stocky one, from "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb", the pair of zoo workers that were forced by their boss to do a third shift, the short and angry one opened the steel—laminated slab wide open. With a final brisk tag from his knee and body weight. The nerve-cringing moan of the hinges—a tooth-grinding lament—sent a ghoulish chill down our spines. The sudden relief came only when the door abruptly hit the tired gray rubber stopper fixed to the base of the wall.
         Automatically, the other custodian, 'Muscle Head'—who had Jacob restrained by a brutish fistful of filthy brown pajama cloth—tossed the boy, lopsided, inside.
         —"It felt to me there was a bit of disgust there in his body language. I couldn't imagine why."
         Jake was possessed; in a full blown trance like state. He managed to actually escape everything that went down in a sort of manner. You know? The child was in the angriest, eyeballs in the back of his skull convulsing kind, of mesmerized while hypnotized mental jailbreak. Lost in the drab crudely maintained door from the minute we forced him into his "enclosure."
         From the dim ankle height orange led-lit, through the tomb like concrete halls, and after three sharp turns. We stopped.
         A sense of slumber, of the whole zoo asleep as well as the building we stood in. A thick vibration of sleep a fog filled the place. Seamlessly we exchanged dimensions some how and we all stood under a blaring white neon lit, "unknown."
         That boy was just some place else; comfortably numb. Perhaps he was a billion leagues away, or he was capable of phasing off to a pocket outside of time, unbothered with what we were doing with him.
         Jacob was assigned two zoo approved handlers, though by the time they finally came to pick us 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 the shady corners, under the seats, or tossed in the back. Making its own brand of awful.
          A gut-wrenching stench, a mix of our circumstances reeked the five-hour windowless van trip, over to the zoo.
         It was obvious that they just moved their lazy pork asses at their very last convenience. It was close to eleven o'clock at night! Both transport workers became irrelevant, ripped from this plane of existence, as far as the brain of this weird kid was concerned.

Poof!
         I assure you, they ceased to exist in Jacob's mind. At least I finally came to the realization of how the boy's mind kind of worked. How time became a concept quite different for him.
         Jacob remained lost within the metal slab, knowing it would form the final piece keeping him away from the hostile, panic-driven, and cruel pack of social animals. Selfish jackals who swear themselves as human! What a joke, what a sad, sad joke...
         His eyes were washing themselves in waves into the dullness of this cold gate plastered in a vomit green, rubber paint. Noticing how tall it was, how the darkness draped down one side of it.
         A big swoosh of air made the kid flinch! We all took it head on.
         A loud bang thundered immediately after! It echoed as violently as well as unexpected in the minds of all of us!
         Out from the deepest dark it seemed to have belched—a harsh, stern command barked, a frightening call into attention.
         —It was the unpredictable hurt, from a stepfather's leather belt. Shouting so much yelling. Mom becoming cold distant. One sided hugs. It triggered a lot in the kid.
         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 inside.
         Naturally, it just stopped. Swiftly replaced by the sound of dry metal in a toothy grinding, a brisk hand stabbed the shaft down to its lip, and then came the chaotic thrashing of keys, that gave away to silence.
         —Jake's lack of life experience.
         —His belief in the crude half-baked promises that spewed out of her foamy edged mouth, while her thick leathery hands always shook so much they stole all the boy's confidence. Her words felt so long ago, unreachable in Jacob's mismatched eyes.
         —Almost a lost from the boy's memory, a disappointing cry from mother's flayed and pipe burnt fingertips; she promised but, never came back as herself. The kid suspected the hypnotic maletrom 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!
         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...
         Jacob began to doubt, was it a door really or another enclosure shielded from the world just as some animals enjoy the perks safe in a pen? He stood strait, pulled his hood behind his head, and faced the direction that scared him from even glancing that way. Where people will be.
         One hundred and eighty degrees. The crackling of his warn down, barely held together, naked foot showing, plastic pajama feet scuffing the ground was the only sound that flooded his ears. He saw the darkness behind an enormous plexiglas window extending from wall to wall. I watched him turn his head to the right side of his environment. Popped a squat, and scanned his surroundings.
         I stayed a good while that night, by the time I was finished I slouched in the Uber seat. I was emotionally drained while I watched how the sun pierced the horizon. A totally vacant drive home, while I dredged over what just went down.
         I had asked an old fellow in the lobby, after leaving the boy, for the monitoring station. First he made sure he presented himself properly. So, I was informed he was from Nigeria. A janitor, his mop and bucket made that clear to me. I saw he had Down Syndrome, he told me his name was "Obi", and gave me a big smile with his head thrown back.
         "I! I will show you." the eighty three year old man announced to me, as he left his mop leaning against the wall, and just began walking. I followed his beaten-up tired work boots down the hall that scuffed with every step he made.
         Once Obi closed the door I was alone in the hum of computers. Boxes slumped sadly forgotten in the dark of one corner. Ancient metal and plywood desks on the opposite walls. I pulled a chair over to where the screens where. I ran over and over what I saw in observation center.
         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.
         I 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.

         I lost track of Jacob a few months.
         The boy apparently had adapted in a peculiar, way. Enjoyed when people shuffled by. Prudently far and glass barrieded away from him.
         In reality, his "P.J.'s" became too small. Jake could see his filthy naked feet, and pinched him all over. His nest he built in the far right corner of his cage was comfortable...
         Time.
         The absolute state, the very essence of 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 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.
         I 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 content telling him his name meant "God's Heart" of "Father's Heart" in Nigeria. Said to him "You're lost white boy! You don't belong Jake-up! you just don't"
         Lisa's drabby eyes popped out from the 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 Mother's dead. Ok? Em, O.D I suppose."
         Quickly as she appeared she was gone. The door locked.