The Conformity by Jacobs John Hornor

Author:Jacobs, John Hornor [Jacobs, John Hornor]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A shithole of a trailer park. Washed in gray light so that everything seems desaturated, like they’ve sucked the color from a television signal. The grounds are littered with moldering baby carriages, grimy refrigerators, bent bike frames, and dented, overfull trash cans. Trucks up on cinder blocks.

Every window is barred.

Hear crying children and televisions blaring and the barking of dogs, but there’s no movement and I see no one as I walk through the park. I pass a scaling sign that says Holly Pines Trailer Park, Inquire at #1 for leasing information. That people don’t even own these shitty house-trailers is appalling.

There’s one trailer, and I don’t know how I know but Shreve is there, inside. I know. Of all the trailers, his is the shittiest. It looks like a Conformity soldier has half hammered in the roof, and it sits crooked on blocks. Nearby a radio blares Lynyrd Skynyrd. I can hear a man coughing. Hacking. Bringing up sputum and phlegm. Spitting.

Hear the rhythms. A thrumming beat of a heart or a bass drum, and I’m lost because it’s Shreve maybe but Bernard too.

I approach the trailer, scared at what I might find inside. There’s a weathered black mailbox hanging beside the door with adhesive letters spelling AN ON.

I open the door. It gives a metallic squeal.

Inside, a television, tuned to some reality TV show, blasts noise in the close confines. I feel like the room is shrinking, like my head is brushing the ceiling. There’s fast-food wrappers and piles of empty vodka bottles and oversized ashtrays brimming with cigarette butts and the whole place stinks of fire and bacon grease and stale cigarette smoke.

“Shreve?”

Move into the trailer and on the one clean bit of counter I find a piece of paper. At the top it reads Child Protective Services and below that Vigor Ferrous Cannon. As I look up from the paper I find I’m not in the trailer anymore.

Gray cement walls and a metal door with a small, wire-crosshatched window. Turn back and there’s a shabby metal bunk bed with Shreve lying on the top bunk, whispering into a vent. I can’t make out his words but his voice is desperate, raw.

“Shreve.”

He starts, surprised. He looks at me strangely and then swings his legs over the side of the bunk.

“You can’t be here. Booth’s gonna be pissed,” he says. He blinks and says, “I never hurt you.”

“I’m here anyway. But you’re not.”

Conversation’s slipping away from me, now that it’s happening. I don’t have control over what I’m saying, or at least what I want to say comes out wrong.

“I’m not?” Shreve’s wearing an orange jumpsuit. “It’s prison, Ember. You never really get out.”

“Then how do you know me?” I’m still holding the piece of paper in my hand, and Shreve’s gaze goes to it and his brow furrows.

I hand it to him. He doesn’t look like he wants it, but he takes it anyway. Looks at it. Pain crosses his features, and he crumples the paper and throws it across the room.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.