There were, depending on whether you counted asses or heads, either two or three other people in the Freak Show who were like Fred. Fred liked to make sure he always counted heads; lots of times Luke and Mathew talked about themselves like they were just one single person, but they got real pissed when other folks did the same. Fred wondered sometimes if all Siamese twins were like that, so close to one another that they almost seemed to work like two halves of the same brain, or if Luke and Mathew were special on account of the way their heads were exactly separate; maybe they did share some of their brains together, the same way they shared a stomach and one set of legs. Fred didn't know.

"People like Fred" meant real and legitimate Freaks with a big F. Not just normal folks who'd developed some freakish talent, or who'd done something to themselves to make it look like they were freaks. There were enough of those people around the Show – contortionists, snake handlers, human pin cushions, people who swallowed swords or who ate fire easier than Fred ate corn dogs – and some of them were real good folks, but they weren't really Freaks. Hell, even the bearded lady could shave her face and blend right in with the audience, no questions asked.

For the true Freaks – Freaks by birth and blood and not just by choice – there was only Fred and Luke and Mathew, and the kid. There had been a couple other real Freaks in the show over the years, but talent had a way of moving on from this gig pretty quick. The Boss could be a real pain in the ass to deal with, though Fred didn't know much about that personally; the guy had tried to chew Fred out once, but just the one time.

People said Fred had a bad tempter, and he guessed it must be true, or else people wouldn't say it so often. Maybe it was just because he was nine feet tall and at least that big around, but all he knew was that when he started shouting other people tended to shut up real quick.

So it was the four of them, but sometimes Fred wondered if there was more to them than just being Freaks. Well, not "just" because Fred liked being a Freak. Was proud of the fact, even if it hurt sometimes... but when the Boss added Todd to the Show the kid brought back a lot of questions that Fred had already talked to death with Luke and Mathew.

He was just a little thing, that kid, four or five years old maybe, and twisted up all crooked in the spine. And he was awful skinny, too. He didn't look like much, but he could jump like no body's business, like there were rubber bands in his legs or something. And that tongue of his... there really wasn't any way to explain that tongue.

The tongue was the same sort of thing as Luke and Mathew's heart, which glowed neon blue like a bar sign through the skin of their chest. They had an idea that their heart was the sort of thing that might get them into trouble, if folks knew about it, and Fred agreed. It was better to keep that type of thing under wraps, which was the same reason why he tried not to let on how strong he really was.

People expected to see giants and fat men in Freak Shows, so Fred didn't surprise them much at all; in fact, they liked him especially, because he was sort of two type of Freaks mixed in one, which made seeing him a real good bargain. And they expected to see Siamese twins, so Luke and Mathew were in the right place. Hell, people even expected to see lizard boys, so even if the kid was something particular odd (and even if, in Fred's mind, Todd had something more in common with a frog than a lizard anyway) but audiences accepted him because they figured that most of what he could do was just some sort of cheat anyway.

But showing off the tongue would have been too much – would have been dangerous, the same way it would have been dangerous for Fred to pick up a car while folks were watching, or for Luke and Mathew to go on stage without hiding the glow of their heart under layers of clothing. Even the Boss understood that. He never minded anything that would help him make money, but he told the kid to just keep his tongue to himself.

There had been something shady about the way the Boss got the kid – Fred had an idea that Todd had been bought, not hired, and that made you wonder what the hell sort of parents he'd had to look after him – but he was happy to have the kid around. It sort of made the four of them feel something like a family, adding the kid to the Freak club, though granted they would have taken one hell of a weird family photo.

Anyway, Fred liked having people who were littler than him around to look after. He made sure that no one picked on the kid and saw to it that the Boss didn't work him too hard. Both he and Luke and Mathew tried to make sure the kid kept clean, too, even if that was usually a losing battle – Fred had never seen a kid that loved mud that much. And they tried to make sure Todd didn't eat things that wasn't food, though that was another uphill slog, because the boy would put almost anything into his mouth.

Maybe that was why he was always getting sick. The kid wasn't healthy – there was a pallor tinged with green to his skin that never went away, even after they'd gotten him fed up some – and he wasn't strong, but he was a funny little thing. Funny, but never mean, or at least not when it came to Fred or to Luke and Mathew.

Freaks had to take care of each other, after all. They all understood that. To Fred it felt almost something more like an instinct than a thinking thing, and he knew it was the same for the others.

So that was the way things were for a couple of years in the Freak Show, up until Erik Lehnsherr showed up and told Fred more about himself in five minutes than he'd been able to figure out in a lifetime of wondering.

And after that, Fred's family had gotten a whole lot bigger.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The line about counting heads vs. asses was shamelessly stolen from Katherine Dunn's fabulous novel, GEEK LOVE. I highly recommend it.