Caged Beasts

Nobody wanted to play with the kid with the lazy eye, so he made ‘friends’ with the girl with the birthmark that covered her chin and the boy who had leg braces. They didn’t actually like each other very much, and the only thing they had in common was the shared affliction of being ‘freaks’. Regardless, they were forced by both nature and gym teachers to make up their oddly shaped triangle. Braces couldn’t run, so he’d stand awkwardly at the side, Lazy-Eye couldn’t throw, since he had poor depth perception, and nobody would pick Birthmark for their team.

In high school, Braces had his callipers taken off and went on to join the football team, Birthmark lasered off her namesake, and Lazy-Eye shed his patch. They were free.

Then Birthmark got acne, Lazy-Eye’s voice refused to break and Braces’ sexuality got him kicked out of the football team and into school musicals. They were back together at the lunch table, finding comfort in familiarity, and resentful belonging in knowing that at least they were better off than the poor ugly bastard they were eating lunch with.

Birthmark went to a local all-girls college, Braces to a local all boys, and Lazy-Eye worked at the gas station around the corner. Birthmark’s acne cleared, and she covered the scars with make-up, Braces found a decent boy to be with, and Lazy-Eye became supervisor within a couple of weeks.

How soon it was that they were chained again, as Lazy-Eye lost his job and knocked Birthmark up, while Braces got AIDS. There they were, living in synoptic apartments, seeing each other’s garbage and dirty underwear strewn across the halls. Every day they’d witness each others’ misery, as Braces went to the clinic on a morning, Birthmark to the basement with a basket of cloth diapers and Lazy-Eye out to find a job. Steadily things got better, as Birthmark’s baby went to school, Lazy-Eye got a job in a steel works, and Braces went into remission.

Fate’s cruel hand twisted them again into a fist, as Lazy-Eye lost one eye in an incident while welding with the other badly burnt, and was back in his eye patch, Birthmark’s kid got hit by a car and was suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage, and Braces was locked up in hospital with pneumonia. United in pain and in hospital, the three watched each other, though Lazy-Eye couldn’t see too much. Birthmark was in psychology and urology, as she continually pissed herself whenever she went near a road, Braces steadily sunk deeper and deeper into illness, and Lazy-Eye had regular checks on his ocular development.

Then Braces couldn’t fight anymore and died from a combination of Aids-related pneumonia and sudden skin cancer, Birthmark stuck her head in an oven, leaving nothing but a Braille note, and Lazy-Eye fell off of a bridge into traffic when out walking with his guide dog. Free at last.