Ted hugged his son tightly to his chest, and sighed deeply. He rejoiced in the fact that his newborn had apparently escaped the terrible fate which had forced him to live a life in the shadows, scorned and regarded as a freak. Regression towards the mean was apparently occurring in his genetic lineage, and his son would be the first in many generations of his family to escape the stigmata.
His brother, Ed, was perhaps more fortunate than Ted had been, for Ed could pass as fully equine. Ed could choose to whom he wished to reveal his condition and his human intelligence, and had found an appreciative and protective soul in Wilbur, who masqueraded as his owner. Still, Ted knew that his brother found it difficult to be trapped in that horse's body, lacking an opposable thumb to operate on his environment. Although fully capable of human speech, Ed could articulate his thoughts only to Wilbur, and at times anonymously to other members of the human race. Ed's terrible secret was at least protected by his appearance, that he looked to be one of the herd.
Ted had not been so fortunate, the manifestation of the mutation endowing him with both equine and human characteristics. He could walk about in the world of men only at costume parties, furry conventions, and on Halloween. His isolation and profound loneliness was hellish. He experienced every emotion and need known to man, so could he be blamed for succumbing to temptation, and engaging in coitus with that girl at the furry convention last year? She had found him attractive and funny, and wanted him physically. Ted had needs, he knew the driving male desire, so in those stolen moments had succumbed to temptation and been a stallion, experiencing momentary fulfillment and bliss.
The result of that union now rested on his chest in the dim light, the girl freaking when she asked him to remove his mask and he could not, fleeing shrieking from the room impregnated by him. Nine months later they would meet briefly again, the girl casting the apparently human infant at him and admonishing Ted never to contact her again. She referred to him as a "freak."
Ted knew, however, that he was a hybrid, a cross between a human and a horse who couldn't hide his condition as successfully as could his brother whom the world knew as a fictitious character known as Mr. Ed. Ted hugged his son Fred to his bare, manly chest with human arms in the early morning light as he pondered his solitary and lonely existence, tears welling up in the large eyes of his horse's head forever mounted incongruously on that human body...