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 became fixated on the heavy green door. The stocky zoo guy nudged it wide open with a last brisk jerk using his body weight. The nerve cringing sound of the hinges, a tooth grinding lament stopped as it hit the wall.
         Automatically the other custodian, 'Muscle Head', encharged of keeping Jacob restrained, to the big log it meant his fist full of brown pajama cloth, then he tossed him inside.
         _"It felt to me there was a bit of disgust in his body language. I couldn't imagine why."
         Jake was in a trance like state, escaping in a sort of mesmerized mental jailbreak. Lost in the drab crudely maintained door from the minute he was put into his "enclosure." From the dim orange led-lit concrete halls, the sharp turns, and that sense of slumber of night thick in the air. Next thing we all were in a blaring white neon lit unknown. That boy was just some place else, comfortably numbed.
         Jacob was assigned two zoo approved handlers, though by the time they finally came to pick us up you could see the double shift written all over 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 in 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 if this weird kid was concerned.

         Poof!
         I assure you, they ceased to exist in Jacobs' mind. At least I had came to the realization on how the boy's mind actually worked.
         Jacob was still lost in the metal slab, knowing it would form the final piece keeping him away from the hostile, panic-drivin, 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 it had belched, like a helid stern command barked, a scaring call into attention. I noticed the loud raw threat must have came out of some unknown, it shook Jacob to the bones.
         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 fromm deep inside Jacob .
         Naturally, stopped at the enclosure came the sound of dry toothy metal 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 assumptions that spewed out of her crusty edged mouth, while her thick leathery hands always shook all the boy's confidence away. Her words felt so long ago, unreachable in Jacob's mismatched eyes.
         Almost a lost cry from mother's repeated almost flayed pleas of innocence_ maybe, or more likely, just mom's naivety, an endless belief taught or she left to rot hidden away somewhere inside of 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 an enclosure an animal pin? He stood strait, pulled his hood off his head, and faced the direction that scared him from even glancing that way.
         One hundred and eighty degrees. The crackling of his warn down, barely held together, naked foot showing, pijama feet scuffing the ground was the only sound that flooded his ears. He saw the darkness behind an enormous plexiglass window extending from wall to wall. I watched him turn his head to the right side of his environment.
         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 realbase of a civil right to a reasoned complaint! Never did it make a low, almost, a barely, faint whisper like tone, of a statement he was just a kid that gave up on the adults in his life and decided to hide inside his bear onesie. Clad some way in a moment, despite he was unable to remember, far, far away lost in a safe place.
         I lost track of Jacob a few months.

          Jacob apparently adapted in a peculiar, way. Enjoyed when people shuffled by. Prudently far and glass barrieded away from him.
         In reality, his PJ's became small. Jake could see his filthy naked feet, and it was tight 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? O.D I suppose."

         Quickly as she appeared she was gone. The door locked.