RE: Trailer Trash 49 pt 5 (Patreon)

   The four Moore boys had plodded home through the cold from their bus stop together, weary from a school day but lapsing back and forth into serious discussion over what they wanted for Christmas. It was a difficult thing to talk about, because they wanted so many things, but basically already knew everything they would be getting this year. Everything with the exception of one new revelation; that apparently Tabitha had a present for them this year.

   “I can’t tell you, ‘cause it’s a secret,” Joshua couldn’t help but feel smug.

   The experience at the roller rink made them all want roller blades, which then prompted the topic of getting hockey sticks. It went without saying that they always wanted more video games and action figures—they were boys. A new bike would have been awesome. The four boys shared two bicycles, and only the newer one had the kind of handlebars you could have another kid sit on to tote them around—no matter what, one of them was always going to be running behind them, stuck on foot.

   They trudged up the porch steps and into the warmth of their grandma’s apartment, shedding backpacks and then their winter coats into the big typical heap near the door. Next, eight beaten and battered sneakers were kicked and wrestled off and nudged into the edge of the entryway pile. Grandma was working on mac and cheese for supper, and after a few minutes of four children clambering for the kool-aid pitcher from the fridge, drinking, setting their empty cups all across the counter—to grandma Laurie’s exasperation—the boys were all swatted away and shooed out of the kitchen.

   They trooped over instead into their room together—when it became clear that their stay would be semi-permanent rather than a long visit, the sewing machine stuff and laundry and old storage from the study was transferred to grandma Laurie’s room so that the boys wouldn’t have to camp out in the living room every night. A beat up and blocky old wooden bunk bed from a yard sale took up the left side of the room, while a brand new metal bunk bed from the mattress store in Sandboro dominated the right side of the room. The bottom bunk of the metal one was a futon bed, and when it was folded out it reached all the way across to touch the wooden bunk bed opposite, eliminating any remaining floor space.

   Both of the beds had ladders, and the narrow confines of the room meant the pair of bunk beds were something of a tiny jungle gym for the boys to play around on. Their dresser had been forced into the scant space left to put it, despite that meaning the bottom half of their window was blocked off. Because Joshua was still the shortest of them all, a third of his mattress space on his bunk was occupied by their toy bin and boxes of their stuff that wouldn’t fit anywhere else. The crowded area was as messy as it could be with toys and clothes, scattered books and magazines and papers—the simple lack of space meant there really wasn’t room for too much clutter to even exist.

   “Just tell us,” Aiden whined.

   “It’s a secret!” Joshua said again.

   “Is it a Nerf gun?” Sam asked, rummaging up to his shoulder through the toy bin to fish for the smaller items that sifted through towards the bottom.

   “Yeah, we need more guns super bad,” Nicholas said.

   It was true—the boys’ arsenal was in a sorry state. Their dad understood, and usually got them a pair of new guns each year, but with him gone and their grandma still against buying them ‘awful guns,’ they hadn’t been able to replace any of the broken ones or the ones whose darts went missing. The neighborhood kids nearby like Kenny and Liam and their friends all had tons of Nerf weapons. While some borrowing and lending was expected when they wanted to equip everyone for a super huge battle at the park playground—that still meant the other kids kept the best picks for themselves.

   No one felt quite so poor as the kid stuck with some cheapo second hand gun and one or two crooked foam darts that barely managed to fire a few feet away.

   The four brothers shared ownership of their Nerf Eagle Eye—a big heavy bolt-action contraption that maybe once had a laser scope—both the batteries and battery compartment cover were missing, as well as all but two of their darts for it. They had one Nerf bow and then one generic brand dollar store-version of a Nerf bow, but over a dozen foam arrows, because at one point they’d had a dollar store bow set for each of them—those ones broke a little too easily. Their only halfway decent gun was their Nerf Ballzooka, for which they still had nine of the original ten balls for ammunition.

   “It’s—well, no, it’s not a gun,” Joshua’s expression soured. “I did ask. She said she didn’t think of that, but maybe next year?”

   “Lame,” Aiden scoffed. “Bogus.”

   “You’re lame,” Nicholas argued. “Not like you’re even getting her anything for Christmas!”

   “Yeah, she didn’t even havta get us anything,” Joshua scowled at his ungrateful brothers. “But—she actually got each of us something.”

   “Like what?” Samuel asked again, fishing out one Ninja Turtle after another from the toybox. “Action figures?”

   “Probably something stupid,” Aiden rolled his eyes. “Like she sewed us a stupid sweater with grandma on the machine. They always used to be in there doing stupid stuff with it.”

   “Wait, for each of us?” Nicholas perked up. “Definitely action figures, then. Right?”

   “Nope, but I’m not telling,” Joshua smirked. “But, it was expensive.”

   “Expensive?” Samuel looked up from the toy bin.

   Each of the boys exchanged glances with each other—Joshua now had their undivided attention.

   “How expensive?” Aiden asked, shoving Joshua’s shoulder.

   “It’s a secret,” Joshua grinned. “But. Like, eighty dollars.”

   Their room exploded with commotion at that, because that was a huge sum of money. Forget an action figure or two or even an action figure-sized vehicle, eighty dollars was all the way clear into big playset territory! Each of the boys couldn’t help but ache with longing at the thought of some of the pricier-looking big stuff in the Toys-R-Us advertisement pages. After all, aside from their Bruce Wayne Manor playset, the biggest thing they had to play with with their figures was their old Fisher Price castle from forever ago.

   “Wait wait wait, shut up,” Samuel quieted down his cheering brothers by holding both hands up. “Is it something separate for each of us? ‘Cause then, if she spent eighty dollars total, that means it’s really just, what, twenty-five bucks spent on each of us like individually.”

   He was the oldest of the boys, and they couldn’t argue with his math. It was a sobering thought for each of them, but not altogether bad news, either—twenty-five bucks for a toy just to have for themselves was still really good. The question was, what did Tabitha get them? They’d already snooped through grandma Laurie’s closet and found their Christmas presents from her there, so in a lot of ways that fire of excitement had already died down to embers of impatience, since they obviously weren’t allowed to open them yet.

   Their parents were both in jail or prison or whatever, so they knew they had to expect less stuff than normal for Christmas. Grandma had told them they could look forward to a letter or a card from their mom and dad, but who cared about letters or Christmas cards? Not boys their age, and Joshua wasn’t even all that excited about driving out to see their dad for a visitation soon, either. Yeah, he wanted to see his dad, but he wasn’t all that excited for it.

   “So—what is it?!” Nicholas threw one of the pillows from the bed across the room at Joshua.

   “It’s a secret. So, I’m not telling,” Joshua answered with a proud look, then putting on his best wizened, cryptic smile. “ She said it’s like a Tamagotchi, but not a Tamagotchi.”

   “What is it?!” Aiden pushed Joshua again.

   “Ow! Quit it.”

   “Like a Tamagotchi, but not a Tamagotchi…” Sam mused, trying to imagine what it could be. “So it’s like a little thing… one for each of us.”

   “Mighty Max?” Nicholas guessed. “It’s probably like a Mighty Max.”

   “Or Z-bots,” Aiden perked up. “Or Star Wars!”

   “Maybe,” Sam said, leaning back over the toy box again and pulling out a stormtrooper head. “But… does she know we’ve already got one?”

   Many different toy brands jumped on the Mighty Max compact craze and introduced transforming playset toys. Their plastic Micro Machines Stormtrooper Action Playset head folded out into to reveal a few tiny little Death Star scenes inside, with space to put a fighter ship at the top, and then the bottom was a trash compactor zone with a little dial that could make it open and close.

   “Right, that’s probably what it is,” Aiden nodded in understanding. “We saw last time in the toy section; there’s a bunch of different ones. So it could be one of those for each of us. Like, Boba Fett opens up into Cloud City.”

   “It might not be Star Wars ones, though,” Nicholas said. “Could be Mighty Max, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Alien or Predator or anything, really!”

   “You’ll have to wait and see?” Joshua gave them his most obnoxious knowing smile and a big shrug—before being buried by thrown pillows and wadded-up bedcovers as his brothers tossed everything they could at him.

   He felt a little guilty at getting their hopes up, but there was no way he was not going to take advantage of finally being the one to know something that none of them did. It was okay if the Christmas presents from Tabitha were just off-brand cheapo Tamagotchis instead of something neat like a new Nerf gun or a bunch of Mighty Max sets for them. They’d never had Tamagotchis before anyways, so it wasn’t like they’d know the difference from the expensive official brand ones.

   Just having one that’ll be MINE will be super cool, Joshua thought as he struggled to toss the pillows back at his brothers—it was futile, because they were just grabbing them and throwing them back at him even faster. Grandma’s always griping about how we have too many toys, but it’s only like A LOT of stuff if you consider it for like, one kid. Four of us being told to share… well, it’s not even that much, really.

   No one really learns to hate the word ‘SHARE’ like a kid with three siblings—let alone being the youngest one.

/// Admittedly lot of name dropping / retro product placement in this one, but it's intentional. As I went back and forth chewing on the different Ch 49 sections, I decided I wanted a strong contrast point to the POV bit with Mr. Moore's frustration with 90s kid materialism.

I had half a section written up somewhat in this vein that I scrapped, because putting this in Hannah POV just didn't hit like this with the boys does. Hannah's gonna get whatever she wants for Christmas and then some--it's a very different vibe from the kid who knows they'll be having a tight Christmas and has been forced to share or have hand-me-down toys most of their life.

Sorry for the writing delay, I've been struggling with the AnimeCon finale and then I had a few days of power outage and a few days of cleaning house / kind of winding down from power outage stress where just nothing got written.

Fiddling with the back room breaker box lately trying to get my other kitchen outlets back on, we discovered that sometimes it trips off an exterior breaker box that I'm not supposed to have access to. It's supposed to be only for the park manager people to access, but after the two real electricians in town turned up their nose at working on a mobile home this old, I managed to get a retired electrician to come out and take a look. We unscrewed this exterior box on the pole between the nearby trailers and got my stuff turned back on.

Super nice guy in his late seventies, didn't want to charge me for an easy fix, just asked for gas money (and I also gave him my last spare copy of RE:TT after we got to talking, he said his wife will love it). He did warn me not to get caught fiddling around with the exterior box, but since then I lost power again and the exterior box was the only thing that managed to get the lights back on here. Afaik now it's just an unfortunate combination of bad/old wiring that's tripping the box, and even though the solution is on the park side of the breaker box stuff, since the problem itself is on the privately owned trailer side, it isn't something I can have the park people fix.

Basically just a wait and see, the Q4 check from Aethon is due soon and then I'll be able to see what kind of money I'm working with to either do repairs here or move elsewhere.

Full RE: Trailer Trash chapter 49 should be soon, I'm trying to rewrite the tail end of the chapter to feature Bobby because I think he'd be perfect for concluding a mostly melancholy chapter on a brighter or more optimistic note.