Dandy was awful. An entitled rich boy with a personality worse than a cow pat and a twisted, macabre interest in the unusual. The most unfortunate thing…. He was your brother.

Due to said twisted interest, Dandy had taken a particular liking to the Circus. Your mother bended to his every will, fed into his brattish, childish personality. She paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on his little fixations— including his disgusting need for the Siamese sisters: Bette and Dot.

While Dandy and your mother were conversing with Miss Elsa, you had slipped behind the stage. The people of the circus intrigued you, but not in the same way as Dandy.

They had suffered many hardships, had to turn to flaunting around on a stage like a prize animal just to get by. And you, quite simply, wanted to know the people behind the differences.

You had discovered that Amazon Eve was incredibly motherly, that Salty and Pepper were like children in love, that Paul the tattooed man had found love and just wanted to be normal. They all just wanted to be treated as normal.

What you didn’t notice was Jimmy Darling watching from the sidelines, his eyes trained on you as you interacted with his friends unusually gently.

“You’re not like the one out there, huh.” Jimmy said softly, “your brother I assume? Real piece of work.” He paused, thinking, before hesitantly, as if afraid to be burnt by your rejection, Jimmy extended his ‘claw’ hands, “I’m Jimmy. Jimmy Darling.”