Part 5: Sarah Jane and Waffles
We now have a family in full.
The two (Cyrus and Susan) hit it off instantly, they got along great, of course, and they were married after only three months. Not long after they gave birth to a baby girl they named Sarah Jane...
Who grew up to be a beautiful... flower or possibly cactus, though she featured a distinct lack of resemblance to either parent. She was born with a rare disease that required her nasal passages to be removed, preventing her from breathing through her nose and resulting in an impossibly nasal voice and deep, strained breathing.
Sara Jane was loathe to leave her friends in Boston, especially her ardent (but deaf) suitor Oliver and her best friend Lynette. Sara Jane, due to her inability to breath correctly, is absolutely terrified of running water any deeper than a small creek. She can also sing better than a cat being tortured (as her father describes it) and has ambitions of appearing in musicals when she is older, woefully unsuspecting of the heartache this will bring later in life.
Her father, not content with a family of women, pressed on figuratively and literally to enrich the family tree, hopefully this time with a male heir. His wish was granted like in those movies where you try to make a simple request but the vindictive genie fucks you over by twisting your words around and making a mess of everything.
The boy was born Cyrus Jr, or "Waffles" as his schoolmates called him, due to the waffle incident which will not be discussed here. He was black. His mother blamed it on a skin disease she constantly referred to as "melanism", though Cyrus suspected deep down in his heart that the doctor had just given her a vaguely scientific word to use.
The boy was also a monster, weighing 15 pounds at birth and only growing from there. By the time of this story, he was over six feet tall and could jump nearly twice that. He was the fastest runner in town and lived to make his father proud, but never achieved the validation he so desperately pined for.
Cyrus would not be dismissed. He was determined to have a child who looked like him and was not a hideous freak, but in this he failed miserably. They would regret this last shot at parenthood most of all because this child was a damned abomination.
They named it, uh... Baby, because the doctor was unable to identify the gender. The doc's explanation was that it had another rare disease which completely wiped its face clean of all features and instead replaced them with horrible, bright red pimples. Its gender remains a mystery, as its parents are too scared to go near it; instead, they just leave it in the wagon and hope that the condition is not contagious. It's amazing that the child has survived as long as it has.