I Give Children Nightmares
(Written by Jaksim, via Reddit)
I’m a freak. In the literal sense. I was born this way. Doctor said it was a “rare skin condition”. Felt more like a curse. I was born with thick, scaly red scabs covering my entire body. My outer nerves were dulled; I could feel no pain or pleasure from touch. The early years of my life were a series of long stays at hospitals and clinics. I spent more time with doctors and needles than I did with my mother and father. It’s no wonder they left when they did. After that, the money dried up, and the doctors and needles went away.
That’s how I went from being a freak to being a homeless freak. I wandered around the Midwest for a couple of years, begging for food and sleeping under park benches. Kind of shit life you expect someone who looks as fucked up as I do to have.
Eventually, I took the only job that would take me. I worked in a freak show. It was your standard, old-fashioned deformed-mutant circus. There was a bearded lady, a grossly obese man, two dwarves who fought each other with swords, and a little polish boy who had four arms.
I was the lizard man. “Come see the lizard man – he’s covered in scales! Come see the lizard man – he can feel no pain!” That’s what freak show’s ringleader would call out before I took the stage. I wasn’t the main attraction, obviously. That was the kid with four arms. I was a side-show freak – too ugly for normal society, but not ugly enough for center stage.
I worked at that freak show for 15 years. There were certainly benefits to being part of the “ugly circus”, as we tended to call it. Pay wasn’t horrible. We got room and board. We got to travel the country. The other freaks didn’t care how ugly I was. I wouldn’t go as far as to call them my friends, but they were willing to talk to me, if nothing else. What people don’t realize, or maybe they do and I’m just too cynical, is that no matter how horrible our outsides are, our insides are the same as everybody else’s. What I mean is, even the lizard man gets lonely, and the other freaks were company. They made me feel a little bit less shitty.
There were bad parts of being in the freak show as well. The ringleader, Alabaster Consten, was a horrible little man. He treated us like shit, used to call us all sorts of fucked up names. He beat the shit out of us when we “got out of line” or when he wasn’t happy with our performance. Never bothered me much, the lizard man feels no pain. But the other freaks hated the man. We also had to do a lot of manual labor. As it turns out, freak shows don’t generally have a crew to set up tents, drive trailers, and clean up outhouses. So the freaks did it. It was grueling work, and I hated it.
But the worst part was performing. My act was pretty simple, and it never changed. I would run out on stage, and do my most intimidating roar at the audience. I’d act menacing and scare them a bit, probably for no more than five minutes. Then the two dwarves (German fellows named Randall and Goman) would charge out on stage and plunge their little swords into my rough exterior. The lizard man feels no pain. After a minute of grappling with the small warriors, they would hogtie me, then drag me off stage before beginning their own short duel. The crowd always met my departure with applause.
I was left back stage, where the bearded lady and the four armed kid would untie me (a task that was went quite quickly, given the number of arms). There I would wait, until the show was over, and I could start cleaning up the stage.
For years I think I tricked myself into believing I liked being part of the freak show. I tricked myself into believing it made me feel “useful”. Into believing that it gave me a “purpose”.
But I was just fooling myself. Although the lizard man feels no pain, every time those little dwarves delivered a slash to my rough exterior, I did feel pain. I felt the audiences hate for me – and that hurt. I probably could have dealt with their hate. After all, hate was all I had gotten all my life. A little bit more wouldn’t have killed me. But I could feel something else too. I could feel the audiences fear of me. When I became a savage on stage, I could feel the audience’s hearts drop. I could feel them start to sweat.
Once, there was a little girl in the audience. She was wearing a pink dress and had blond hair, all wrapped up in a baby blue bow. She was smiling when I entered the stage. She had one of those perfect never-disobeys-papa-and-always-eats-her-vegetables kind of smiles. But the second after I set my scaly foot on stage, she had no smile. The blue bowed girl cried when she saw me. She cowered when I roared.
The lizard man feels no pain. But her tears were like acid on my skin. Being a freak hurt in ways you couldn’t imagine. I hated being something that could give children nightmares. Scaring people hurt more than any sword those dwarves could have cut me with.
I don’t work at the freak show anymore. I left about a year ago. I’m writing this to tell you why. On my last day at the freak show, there was a man in the audience in a blue suit and pink tie. He had silver hair and the kind of glasses you imagine a plantation owner must have had. Rich, powerful men’s glasses. I first saw him when I took the stage to do my routine. I probably wouldn’t have noticed him except for one thing: Mr. Blue Suit Pink Tie didn’t look scared. He smiled when I roared, and he clapped when I tried to terrify him. He was fearless. And he was loud. At the end of my act, he yelled out, through a thick, cartoonish southern accent “Good show! Bravo!” When the next act took the stage, he greeted them with the same fervor. His demeanor never wavered.
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