Blind Allie 1:1

About eighteen months or two years after the events which terminate this story, when search was made in that cavern for the body of Olivier le Daim, who had been hanged two days previously, and to whom Charles VIII. had granted the favor of being buried in Saint Laurent, in better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrézarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.

[Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), Volume 2, Book 11, Chapter 4, “The Marriage of Quasimodo”]

“So, after all that he just falls apart?”

“What were you expecting, Allie, some sort of apotheosis?”

“He was christlike.”

“He was a freak.”

Quasimodo’s pitiful exit left Allie feeling more eviscerated than usual. She was the one who had suggested after the fire that they read the novel in class. She thought—or she assumed as she wended her way through the chapters—that the author would end the story by celebrating him for the guardian angel she believed he was. Instead, Quasimodo fell apart in tragic yet predictable fashion just like an ordinary skeleton.

Allie knew a bit about being a freak. She was not a typical skeleton. No, she was a mermaid skeleton with chickpeas for eyes. Pretty much no one at school tormented her about it, thank heavens, especially not her friends on the swim team. After all, they depended on her to propel them to glory in the 100-meter relay at every meet.

Her fishtail gave her an obvious natural advantage in the pool, but her eyes were her secret strength. Convex and encapsulated in impermeable translucent skins, Allie’s big garbanzos added buoyancy and all but eliminated eye socket drag, a perpetual source of frustration and barrier to greatness for the anatomically normative skeletons on the team.

“Everyone has their superpowers,” said a dead priest once from the other side of the screen. “Consider yours God’s gifts.” Those reassuring words stuck with Allie long after her first confession, and she tried at every flip turn to live up to them. Etched in the occiput of her cranium, they were always in the back of her mind.