Naturally Freaky

The Freaks

Gallant rose early the next morning. It was his day off, and he was eager to get some fresh air before he had to share it with the rest of his fellow carnies. Next to him, Siobhan was still sound asleep. Gallant softly kissed her forehead and edged out of their sleeping bag. She didn't stir. Gallant threw on a pair of jeans and his beat-up leather jacket over the grey tee shirt and boxer shorts he had slept in. Tucking his glasses into his jacket pocket, he walked out into the chilly morning air.

Outside, Gallant could see his breath, and it made him feel sad. He wasn't cold—that was the beauty of leather jackets—but the steam he saw coming from between his lips brought back a wave of memories that made him long for a cigar. Gallant had started smoking at a young age, so long ago that he couldn't a remember a time before he had his first smoke, and since then he had rarely been seen without a cigar hanging from his mouth. When he met Siobhan, however, all that changed. Gallant would never say that she made him quit—no one could make him do anything—but she had advised him to, and so he had sacrificed the habit to make her happy. It seemed silly to him that, of all his dangerous, life-threatening hobbies, she should be worried about tobacco use, but nevertheless, he showed his respect for Siobhan by eliminating this particular cause for concern. The others, however—the fire-eating, the deadly escape tricks, the explosions—remained as prominent as ever.

Slowly, Gallant began to realize where he was inevitably headed at this early hour. Leaving the main circus area behind, he made his way to the trailers where the freaks were kept.

"If it isn't the Frog Man!" a familiar voice exclaimed. A whole trailer of freaks emptied out to greet Gallant, their mutated faces smiling widely. The freaks didn't get a lot of company from normal people; then again, Gallant himself wasn't exactly normal.

Gallant smiled back at all his old friends standing around him. "Long time, no see," he said, pulling Lola, the Gorgon woman, into a loving hug. She kissed his cheek, and the bluish snake-like tentacles that grew from her scalp copied her as usual, pecking away amiably at Gallant's face. "How are you guys?"

"We're just as lively as ever, bub," the voice who had greeted him before answered. "It's you we're worryin' about."

"Pete!" Gallant threw his arms around the old man and hugged him hard. All six of Pete's arms wrapped tightly around Gallant, nearly snapping his ribs. Gallant made a sound of something like surrender, and Pete loosened his grip, giving Gallant a last, forceful pat on the back.

"Ye never could take a real hug," Pete winked, which didn't work so well with only one eye. Pete's other eye (or empty socket; no one had ever seen it) was concealed behind an eyepatch. He had a number of other injuries—including three missing hands that had been replaced with hooks—all of which he cared for in a pirate-like fashion. He never spoke of how he acquired his wounds, but the freaks imagined it would be an interesting story to hear. All they could know for sure was that, in this day and age, Pete was not a real pirate, although he certainly looked the part. Most of his teeth were missing, but his beard was often in the way of his mouth. He kept his grey hair long and wild, tamed in part by a black bandanna. Sometimes he even wore an entire pirate's outfit, but today he settled for a simple shirt, a pair of pants, and worn-out leather boots.

"I'm just out of practice," Gallant responded, raising one corner of his mouth in a smirk. "A few years ago, I could have taken you, no problem."

"Is that so?" Pete questioned in amusement. Then he paused for a moment, as if pondering whether Gallant's claim was really so unbelievable. "A few more years, ye might be a match fer me once again."

"Time flies," Gallant said. "Creeping up on the old triple digits, huh?"

Growling, Pete corrected him, "I'll be sixty-four in a month or so. How 'bout you, kiddo? Creepin' up on puberty?"

"Just turned twenty-seven."

"Good age," Pete said with the utmost seriousness. "Coming from an old fossil like me anyway. How's yer girl?"

"Siobhan's great," Gallant answered. "Good as gold."

"She always was a kind-hearted lass," Pete said. "Beautiful too. You're a lucky man, Froggy."

"I sure am," Gallant agreed.

"Have you finally asked her to marry you?" Lola asked.

"Marry me?" Gallant repeated incredulously. "No, no, there's no time to get married. Besides... do you really think Siobhan would marry me?" He posed this as a rhetorical question, but it somehow begged a reply.

"Of course she would!" Job and Kit, the teenage conjoined twins, said together. It was almost silly to think of them as separate people when they shared one body and practically shared all their thoughts, but separate they were. "It's been—" Job began a sentence, one that Kit was going to finish. They did this often, and while it was cute the first few times, it quickly lost its charm. "—nine years!" "By now—" "—it's a miracle—" "—she hasn't—" "—asked you!"

Everyone laughed, and Gallant said, "All right, all right, enough about that. I want to know more about you guys. What have you all been up to these days?"

"Oh, you know," Lola began. "Just enjoying stardom." She laughed, gesturing toward the run-down trailers that housed the freaks. They didn't live the most extravagant lives—in fact, they weren't even being paid for their services, except in food and shelter—so most people would wonder what they stuck around for. From what Gallant had gathered while he was living with them, the freaks liked the feeling of acceptance they got from being around each other, a feeling they would never get trying to lead a normal life. There was no real work in the circus for them, only a few hours of countless strangers' staring and prodding and dehumanization, and then back to their simple lives. They had it pretty good, Gallant figured, and to be quite honest, he kind of missed it.

"We miss you, Frog," Lola added. "It's too bad you couldn't stay."

"What can I say?" Gallant shrugged. "I'm too normal for you guys."

"Sorry again, Frog," the usually-quiet leper, whose birth name had temporarily escaped Gallant's memory although he could never forget his nickname, spoke up. "You know I didn't mean to get you kicked out." Gallant had been dismissed from the circus only because they were running out of space, and though none of the other freaks were at fault, the Toad Man would always blame himself. His logic was that the circus saw no purpose for featuring two amphibious freaks, and that his far more apparent disfigurement—lesions that coated his skin like the warts of a toad—had won over Gallant's slightly mutated but easily overlooked left foot that had only three toes with webbing between each one, vaguely resembling the foot of a frog.

"It wasn't your fault," Gallant insisted. "Besides, I'm better at my new job than I was as one of you guys."

"We know!" Job and Kit exclaimed. "We heard—" "—about your show." Gallant wished his friends could have seen him perform, but they were forbidden to leave their designated grounds, lest they unintentionally scare some young and impressionable children.

"Whether ye be scarin' people with yer mutant foot or scarin' 'em with yer dangerous stunts," Pete began, "we'll always think of ya as one of us."

Gallant smiled at the old man. "I'm honored to be considered a freak."

"Aye, we're a bunch of reg'lar freaks o' nature," Pete chuckled.

"Nah," Gallant smiled. "I like to think of 'naturally freaky' as a much more friendly term."
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Blehh, this chapter sucks.