What do you do with a songless bird?
What can a songless bird sing?
Its feathers ruffled from captivity
Its wings won't ever taste the sky
Why do you cage a wild bird...
That can no longer be one?
Freak Show was the most popular circus in the country. The circus, instead of performing death-defying stunts and bone-breaking acrobatics, exhibits the plethora of creatures in it. It wasn't like a zoo, a zoo would be too normal. Freak show is a heaven for people with unique tastes. The circus showcases mutated humans. 'They were animals in human form' as the circus put it. There was a snake-man that would undoubtedly bite you if you got too close, a werewolf, a vampire, mermaids, sirens, harpies, and a vast array of other creatures. It was mythology, myth, superstition mixed in an ugly show with reality. The circus' most famous exhibit was, however, a bird.
The half-bird, half-man didn't move, didn't speak and didn't react to anything. If not for his ethereal beauty, he would be thrown out of the circus, however interesting he may be. His skin was sunkissed and free from scars, his eyes were the sky itself and his golden locks made it hard not to notice him. He sported a pair of dazzling wings from his back, the feathers in all shades of golds and yellows and oranges. They were always pressed to his back, they never spread. He was just a body without a soul, a broken doll.
His name was Alfred but he was never called that now. He is always jokingly referred to as America, his wings giving the people more incentive to compare him to a bird filled with freedom. How he wished he was.