Freakshow

Chapter Two

The sun hit my face like a steel-toed boot to the teeth. I yawned, rolled over, checked my clock and saw that I was late for work.

And immediately remembered I didn't have work anymore. Not since last week. So technically I was late for job hunting, and me not being an early bird meant that I rarely got the worm. I resolved to try harder at this employment thing. Starting right away...well, as soon as I completely woke up.

I rolled off my futon and stood on the balls of my feet, stretched and sniffed my armpits. I grimaced. Today smelled like a good day for a shower.

It had also been a week since I'd caught my boyfriend Jason and my best friend Becs in his bed. I checked my phone and saw the inevitable texts from the two of them begging for me to reply, forgive, understand.

I wasn't capable of doing any of those things, so I hit delete and went on pretending they had been hit by a meteor or something.

I couldn't completely slough them off though. I hadn't realized how much I'd depended on my best friend Becs until she was gone. And I hadn't realized how much of a distraction Jason had been until he no longer filled the empty spaces in my life, my head and my bed.

I was lonely, horny, and starting to worry about my money situation. Clearly there was a reason I didn't like getting up in the morning.

I had a quick shower, shaved my legs and pits, and scrubbed my greasy hair until it squeaked. Being stingy on soap and shampoo sucked, but I couldn't afford to waste much these days and my hair suffered or it.

The cut on my arm was healing nicely at least. I could still remember the look on my office manager's face when she caught a good look at exposed muscle and dripping blood. I'd been fired...sorry...let go in record time. Most places at least tried to wait a few days to fire me after a brutal injury or the realization that I was different.

I half-heartedly picked at the scab and wondered how long I could hold out given my current circumstances. I had a small amount left in my savings. That gave me a solid month to survive before I had to be moved out or find employment.

Sometimes my life overwhelmed me, depression kicked in and it felt as though my body was simply convincing my mind to give up. I should have, by all means, given up years ago. The day I was born really.

I'd come into the world with congenital analgesia, the inability to feel pain.

As a baby I'd chewed through my own tongue a few times, bitten my lips almost completely off, and broken bones more than once or twice.

Mine was a strange case though, I could feel everything else, touch, tickles, kisses, just not pain or heat. For some strange reason those particular receptors had been damaged somewhere along the line as my DNA had knitted together and created me inside my mother's womb.

The one thing I did miss was my parent's touch. The gentle comfort of a hand on my shoulder or my dad pulling me into his arms for a bear hug. I felt so detached from humanity now, and didn't know how to reconcile it.

My parents had been killed in a car accident when I was thirteen, and I'd been raised by my older sister who had been nineteen at the time. She hadn't spared one chance to let me know how much of a burden I was, or how terrible it was that I was even alive.

My sister had blamed me for our parent's death even though logically I'd had nothing to do with it.

I'd left home at seventeen, never finished high school and never went to college in spite of my love of reading and an uncanny ability to retain information.

I'd moved from Moose Jaw to Vancouver and had ended up in Richmond a few months back.

I was now in my twenty fifth year and was completely, utterly, devastatingly directionless. I felt as though I were living in an alternate reality, just inches away from the real world. How did all those people do it? How did they manage to live normal lives and work and eat and fuck and feel?