"Now get me a beer! Better be fucking cold!" Bobbi Ingerman hissed at Gloria as she scuttled down the narrow hallway, new memories emerging from some hidden recess in her mind.
She wasn't Gloria Vanapolous anymore. She was Carol Ingerman, daughter of Jonathan Ingerman and Bobbi Bolstrum, which she now knew as her parents, but the clinging memories of her previous life told her that this was wrong, that Rob and Big Jon were the bullies of the high school that Gloria...Carol barely attended. And was always on the edge of expulsion from.
But her parents were older, not teenagers, and Bobbi, mom, definitely wasn't a guy!
The handful of photos that hung on the stained walls of the small single wide trailer confirmed the new memories: A couple of photos of mom and dad when they were in high school some thirty years ago. Short stack mom's perpetual scowl and mane of wild red hair sitting above two large pendulums barely contained by a crop top, arm wrapped around dad in his varsity jacket. A picture of them getting married, mom in a cheap thrift store veil and low cut dress, dad in a dress jacket that was obviously loaned, a court magistrate behind them. A picture of herself as a infant, then another one that had clearly been taken just a few years ago as Glo...Carol scowled at the camera outside a bar.
'I...Why is this happening!?' The part of her that was still Gloria said as she stopped to stare at the photos before taking in the rest of the small domicile she now/always had lived in. The 'living room' was little more than a pile of trash, pizza boxes, beer bottles, cans, fast food wrappers and more ashtrays and cigarette butts. The brown curtains that at some point in their lives had been white were pulled tightly shut, while a long, threadbare couch and a decrepit looking recliner dominated the rest of the room. An old box TV, one that still had a VHS deck and a DVD player sat lifelessly in the far corner. Carol's memories knew that it didn't work most of the time, not that anyone in the Ingerman 'home' ever bothered to watch it.
"Don't make me come get it myself, you stupid cunt!" Came the harpyish cry of Carol's mother, and Gloria's fragile train of thought stopped dead in it's tracks as the 'new' part of her took over, a spike of fear forcing the girll's new body on a familiar path through the garbage and into the attached kitchen, which was in no better shape. Carol reached the buzzing fridge, opened the door to the unwelcome smell of food gone bad, and pulled out a bottle of Brier's, mom's favorite brand.
"Coming, mom!" Carol called out, her voice croaky as her heart tried to leave her throat. Her mother was not to be crossed, Bobbi Ingerman, back when she was a Bolstrum, had always been trouble. Her body blooming at an early age, using it to her advantage and royally destroying anyone that got in her way. High school drop out, frequent patron and employee of bars in the local area, chain smoker. She only barely cleaned up her act when she met Jon Ingerman, a football star that had more than a bit of a bad boy streak. They'd hooked up, and then mom got sent to women's prison for two years for assaulting another girl that had flirted with Jon, and during a conjugal Carol had been conceived.
Nearly all of Bobbi's pregnancy had been in prison, under watchful lock and key. In the back of her mind Carol knew she had the same prison system that she herself was narrowly avoiding to thank for not being born some booze baby retard. Not that it had saved her from other things, given Bobbi hadn't been much of a mother, doing just enough to stay on foot ahead of having her 'welfare ticket' taken away.
As she made her way back through the living room and down the hallway, where her mother waited in the doorway of the trailer's 'master bedroom', she subconsciously rubbed the cold beer bottle on the scar where, during one drunken night when Carol had been little, the little girl had accidentally knocked over a lamp while playing, and Bobbi had beaten the shit out of her, snapping her arm to the bone and forever instilling within the girl a deep fear of her mother. There had been plenty of other beatings, some deserved, some undeserved, but Carol knew that her mother was a woman to be feared above all others, even if what she was now was a short, overweight hag.
"Here, mom" Carol said, reaching her mother at the end of the hallway, who simply grabbed the bottle and turned back into her darkened bedroom.
"Slow as hell. Should have had your dumb ass aborted when I had the chance" Bobbi said, turning and sneering at her daughter. Carol shrugged off the insult, adding it to the mountain that had accumulated in the eighteen years of her life.
"Sorry, mom" Was all she could say, looking down at her feet like she was supposed to. 'I guess she's too tired or hungover. No slap' she thought to herself as she waited for her dismissal.
Bobbi stared at her for a moment before grabbing hold of the door with a fat, meaty hand, "Just get the fuck out of here and go to school. Or better yet, follow in my footsteps and get a fucking job and start helping pay the bills. Should just throw your skank ass out for freeloading"
"Okay, mom" Carol said, and for a long moment she expected another tirade of insults, or physical abuse to come flying her way, but with a disgusted sigh, Bobbi Ingerman simply slammed the door in Carol's face. From beyond the door the teen could hear her mother crack open the beer and mutter "Just like her fucking father..." before Carol turned and made her way back to the tiny closet that was her room in the tiny trailer.
Gloria resurfaced as the teen entered the small bedroom, which was littered with a handful of beer bottles and stank of cigarette smoke, dozens of butts filling up an ashtray on the smallest bedside table Gloria had ever seen sitting beneath the window. The Carol part of her mind told her she should get out of there, and Gloria found herself drifting over to the closet, pulling out a pair of jeans that had seen better days and the most conservative top she could find; which was a black t-shit, one of the few that looked like it wasn't for sleeping in. Quickly changing clothes (and discovering that she was right at a D cup bra size), Gloria/Carol pulled on her sneakers and left the trailer, exiting out into another world that was both alien and familiar.
The Shermer Fields trailer court. Little more than a tornado bait collection of run-down trailers, the Fields were skid row. It was quiet this morning, but that wasn't anything unusual. Most of the inhabitants of the Fields were much like the Ingermans; poor, and perpetually drunk or high, living in squalor because they simply could not hold down any sort of real job for longer than it took to get a paycheck or two.
With a sigh that saw the Gloria part of her personality slip back beneath the mental waves, Carol made her way towards the trailer park's entrance.
'Maybe the bitches will be there' She thought, her small group of equally...financially disabled lackeys that grouped together not out of any particular like of each other, but because it was easier to get what they wanted when they stuck together. Carol at least hoped that Marcy Collins was there, she was the one with the car after all. As she walked, the last words of Bobbi floated back into Carol's mind.
"Just like her fucking father..."
Carol barely knew the man who had given her the height, the athletic build and slight Nordic features that poked through her mother's genetics. At best, her earliest memories were of a phantom that drank heavily and largely ignored her, and then as a name of a child support check. He and mom were not divorced, but it was clear whatever marriage they had was long over. Carol hadn't even seen the man in four years, the last time he had shown up had been for a day, long enough to sleep off a hangover before he was gone again. Carol knew he was still in the local area, that she had half-sisters somewhere out in the world. That her mother had ruined whatever career her father had hoped to have in football by turning him into an alchoholic and trapping him for good after the fateful conjugal.
Luck seemed to be with Carol as she rounded the last trailer and saw Marcy sitting there in her rusting green car. Giving the bulldog faced girl a short wave, Carol marched across the gravel and, with a painfully loud creak of the ancient car's doors, settled into her 'friend's' vehicle, which smelled exactly like Carol's bedroom. The two exchanged a quick hello, and then they were off to school. Carol stared out the window at the world passing her by as her thoughts lingered on her father.
The thought of being like him made Carol bristle, the old familiar anger surfacing quickly and easily. Not just at her father, but her mother, her life. Herself. Much as Carol tried, she couldn't escape her mother's words. Violence came easily to her, the pent up emotions from a non-childhood of neglect and abuse, falling into the same spiral that had trapped her mother and father. Carol wanted to be better, to be more than she was, but all she had been able to do thus far was stay one head above the rising water of life; grades that were just high enough to pass and keeping her business at school away from school. And mostly away from the cops.
That is, until that fucking Tammy Ackerton had squealed about Carol vandalizing Mr. Kirkpatrick's car after the old fool had given Ingerman detention for being late to class. Again. The little pig had been Carol's favorite target in life, the mousy little thing and her pushover personality. Carol's constant verbal and sometimes physical abuse had led to girl into stress eating, making her get fat and miserable. And that faggoty little nerd she went out with...what was his name?
"Bill!" Gloria said as she drifted further and further away.
"Ackerton's fucktoy? Why you talking about him?" Marcy's gravel voice asked.