Freaks and freaks

Step right up, folks, see the oddity. The oddity that has astounded entire villages from here to Penmaenmawr, from the North Stack to the South Stack, from that old Roman brick in the ground to this one over here. Just two quid gets you five minutes to stare, to gawk, to judge this freak, this human personification of what is wrong with our children — and speaking of your children, best keep them away, lest they become freaks themselves.

“What made you do that to your face?” Gwyn Jones says to me today. I kept pouring his pint, trying to figure out what was wrong with my face. “You ain’t got yourself enough holes, you have to poke more, do you?”

I should know better. I should shrug. I should wipe down the bar somewhere else. But instead I said, “They help me pick up the signals from my mother ship.”

Like a UFO, it flew right over his head. “Your mother didn’t need decorations, did she, Gaz?”

“Sure didn’t,” Gaz agreed. Gaz would agree if Gwyn commented that England sure was an all right place, and Wales did all right by losing to them.

“How many you got on you, anyway, girl?” Gwyn drained his dregs, froth clinging to the stubble dirtying his droopy face. He elbowed Gazzer hard enough to make him dribble. “I hear they put metal in all kinds of places the sun can’t reach.”

“Nor you, either,” I snapped, yanking his new pint away. I ignored his stupid face, with its candy-less baby expression, turning to pour the grog down the bloody drain.

“Look at this, a homeless pint.” Taid Gwion lifted the glass from my hand and returned it to Gwyn. “Last one. Bron’ll be callin’ for you if you don’t get home soon.”

I scowled at him, hoping my mascara was still black enough to make me fierce. I hate thinking I’m fierce, then looking in the mirror and discovering my makeup has melted in a pathetic wad down my face.

Taid winked. “He’s less troublesome on the soup than off.”

He patted me kindly, as though I were still fifteen, still needed that fatherly comfort I lost when my parents’ car went into that mad tumbling spin on a deserted road in Peru. Two years gone, and the only things that’ve changed here are the colors of my hair and the number of decorations I've managed to sneak onto my body.