Ahs: Freak Show Characters

On the night of Mom's birthday, as she was making a wish under the moon, Dad suddenly leaned close to her ear and whispered something. My usually cautious mother, who valued her life above all else, turned around after hearing those words and jumped straight into the pack's silver pit. The silver pit is deadly for us werewolves; only those with a death wish would go there. After her death, countless pack members questioned Dad about what he had said. Someone even offered a million dollars in exchange for those words. But he remained silent. Until the day of my mate ceremony, Dad showed up. He walked up to my fiancé and whispered something...

My name is Margaret Turner. After my daughter, Sarah McDowell, becomes pregnant, I am shocked to find that I can hear the thoughts of the baby in her womb. "Grandma, please don't let Mommy get the prenatal checkup! If they learn I'm a girl, Dad will make her get rid of me. I don't want to die!" I can't believe what I'm hearing. Knowing that my son‑in‑law, Jeremy O'Brien, works at a hospital and can use his connections to learn the baby's gender, I do everything in my power to keep Sarah from being examined. But three months later, doctors confirm that Sarah's baby has a congenital deformity and is fated to be born disabled. Sarah is devastated, and guilt consumes me. Suddenly, I hear my granddaughter's voice again. "It's all because of Dad. He cheated with that nurse and returned home soaked in her cheap perfume. As soon as Mommy breathed it in, I was fated to come into the world deformed. Poor Mommy…" Rage explodes inside me. Without a second thought, I storm into Jeremy's workplace, determined to catch him in the act. I don't expect to walk in on a critical heart surgery he is performing. My intrusion throws the room into chaos, and the patient dies on the operating table. The patient's family loses control, and they cause a violent scene in the hospital. In the mayhem, Jeremy is killed on the spot. When Sarah learns what I've done, she is consumed by rage and declares she wants nothing more to do with me. At that moment, my granddaughter's voice echoes in my mind once more. "Mommy is heartbroken and needs time to heal. Grandma, please don't make things worse. Mommy will be okay after she rests." Hearing this, I force myself to stay calm. But that very night, word arrives that Sarah has thrown herself into a river and ended her life. Shattered by grief, I eventually make the same tragic choice. As my final breath fades, my granddaughter's chilling laugh echoes in my ears. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day her voice first crept into my mind.

My cousin, Sonia Sanders, only trusts OmniGo Maps, or OmniGo, for everything. While waiting for the bus during a trip, the bus that we are supposed to get on pulls into the station. However, Sonia grabs my arm and says, "Amanda, OmniGo says that our bus is only arriving in another ten minutes. This is not our bus!" I watch helplessly as the bus pulls out of the station, ultimately making me miss my flight and forcing me to pay double the price for another ticket back home. Once, after work, Sonia sees the green arrow on OmniGo and floors the gas pedal at a road intersection. She says confidently, "OmniGo says it's supposed to be a green light! That means this traffic light is wrong!" I look at the red light in horror. Before I can stop her, a vehicle driving ordinarily past the intersection crashes right into our car. In the end, my legs have to be amputated, and I become wheelchair-bound, while Sonia only suffers a mild concussion and a fracture. One rainy day, Sonia calls me an Uber to go to my follow-up at the hospital, but she sets the pickup point at a location that is flooded a third of a mile away. I try to change the pickup point to my home, but she snatches my phone away and says, "OmniGo says that this pickup point is highly recommended for disabled people to board. You can't just change the pickup point as you like!" As a result, I fall into a puddle, wheelchair and all. Sonia doesn't even turn back to look at me and leaves me behind. Because of the rain and the prolonged soaking of my wounds in the dirty puddle, I develop a severe infection, which then leads to multiple organ failure. Despite being rushed to the emergency unit afterward, I ultimately die from the infection. When I open my eyes again, I realize that I'm standing at the bus station again. Sonia taps on her phone and leans closer to me, showing me the details on her phone. "Look, Amanda, OmniGo says that our bus isn't arriving for another ten more minutes."

I rush into work this morning and accidentally send the car photos meant for the dealership into the medical intern group chat. The new intern snaps at me. "Dr. Tyson, why are you sending me pictures of my car? Are you jealous and trying to steal attention?" I stop short and ask if she has mixed things up, because the car is mine. She fires back with a whole stack of photos of herself driving a G-class with one hand, plus videos to prove the car in my picture belongs to her. She even tacks on a snide little jab. "You're a shameless, broke wannabe. You want any spotlight you can grab. You think a picture of a car is going to make you the lady of the Reed family?" I frown and turn to my husband, Jackson Reed. "Since when does the Reed family have a second lady of the house?"

My sister-in-law, Sabrina Linskey, never hides her hatred for me. Yet, on my daughter Elena Satchwell's birthday, she does something I can never imagine. She gives Elena a dress, claiming she had sewn it by hand. She calls it a blessing for Elena's health and safety. I let her ease the dress onto Elena, relief washing over me as I convince myself that Sabrina finally understands the importance of upholding peace in the family. But Elena's skin begins to fester, until even the lightest touch makes her flinch in pain. That's when I realize Elena's fate has been swapped with Sabrina's son's. Mom and Dad, along with my brother, know all about it. Elena, beyond saying, eventually dies. I, too, am killed the moment I uncover the truth. But when I open my eyes again, I return to the day Sabrina arrives with that dress for Elena's birthday.

My husband's first love was scalded by boiling water. To punish me, he forced me into a customized steamer half my height, turned the heat to its highest setting, and sealed me inside. "I'll make you feel the pain Jessica suffered a thousand times over!" Trapped in the suffocating space, my breath came in ragged gasps. Heat seared my skin, and my body felt as though it would melt. I sobbed, begging him for mercy. "Please! I'm going to die!" But he didn't look back. Holding his beloved in his arms, he walked away. He even locked the door after he left the room. "Don't worry, you won't die. This is the only way you'll understand Jessica's pain." Despair swallowed me whole. I screamed, my voice raw, but the boiling water beneath me splashed up, scalding my skin, stealing even the strength to cry. He left the country with Jessica that same night. A week passed before he finally remembered my existence. "That wretched woman must have learned her lesson by now. Let her out." What he didn't know was that the water had long since boiled away, the heat had faded, and inside the steamer, my corpse lay rotting—swarmed with maggots.

On my husband's birthday, I poured my heart into preparing a feast and selecting the perfect gift. Yet, he didn't come home. Instead, I received a picture message—a snapshot of him at the hospital, standing outside the OB-GYN ward, his hand resting tenderly on his childhood crush's belly. Beneath the photo, a message read: [The best birthday gift and a symbol of our decade-long bond.] Furious, I called her. "Don't you know he's married?" Before I could say more, my husband snatched the phone and lashed out at me. "Yvonne just wanted to share the joy of becoming a mother. Why are you overreacting? "Yvonne and I have been best friends for over a decade. Your petty jealousy is disgusting!" I once believed his busyness was for our future, but now I knew—he had been busy supporting the girl of his dreams through her pregnancy. Clutching my own stomach, I bit my lip to stop the tears from falling. Ten years of love had drained away. It was time to let go.

The day my mom was beaten up for being a mistress, I slammed the family crest into my dad’s face. I had been studying abroad, and on my return flight, I came across a video. The title read, [Richest Family’s Heirs Defend Their Mom and Beat Up Mistress.] In the video, my mother was wearing coarse linen clothes while my brothers surrounded her. They were punching and kicking her. They even tore her clothes and cussed her out as a shameless mistress. Her eyes were teary as she desperately tried to explain. However, she was only met with mocking laughter. A stranger in haute couture stood shielded behind them, and she sweetly said, “Alright, I know you’re doing this for me, but we don’t need to waste our time on ungrateful people.” The surrounding guests showered her with birthday wishes and praised her for her graciousness. “This is the grace befitting Mrs. Roth! Do some people really not own a mirror at home?” “A mistress dares to call herself Mrs. Roth? Doesn’t she know the entire Roth family was built on her assets? Which part of her looks like a lady?” Hearing them call her “Mrs. Roth,” I clenched my phone, and the screen reflected my icy expression. I had only been away from home for three years. How did I not know that I had acquired such a despicable “mother”?

Under my parents' request, I work as the finance officer in my childhood friend, Julius Sanford's company. But the moment he goes on a business trip, the new intern, Lizzie Dalton, rushes into my office and demands that I process her reimbursements. As I stare at the pile of receipts that come from luxury stores, all I feel is shock. "Lizzie, I can only use the company's funds to reimburse business expenses. Why are you asking me for reimbursements when all you did was buy clothes and bags of your own?" But as soon as my words fall, Lizzie splashes a cup of coffee at me instantly. "I'm the lady boss of this company! The company's funds are my funds too! Don't think you can just reject my receipts just because you know my husband!" I do my best to suppress my fury as I dig out the company's policy and reiterate, "No, I seriously cannot do that. The company's cash flow must be reflected in the books." Seeing as I refuse to yield to her no matter what, Lizzie calls Julius on the phone and begins whining to him. "Babe, since when do I need to ask your childhood friend for approval if I want to buy something I like for myself? Or could it be that she's acting so assertively because you two are secretly having an affair?" Julius panics and tells Lizzie that he has nothing to do with me. After that, he quickly releases an announcement on the company group just so he can defend Lizzie. "Lizzie Dalton is my wife! She's the second boss of this company other than me!" After that, Julius tags me in the group. "Hey, finance! You're not my mom here! I don't like you, so please stay out of my private matters! "I'd like nothing more than to let my own wife spend my own money! If you don't like that, you can pack up and leave!" Once Julius makes his stance clear, I change my tune and reimburse Lizzie the expenses she's claimed. But one week later, Julius finds himself staring at the list of debts that's 33 feet long when he returns from his business trip.

On my wedding day, my groom's sister, Nadia Lawson, wears an elaborate ball gown and comes on stage to snatch the emcee's microphone. Before all the guests, she arrogantly says to me, "Can't you see the princess is here? Why didn't you curtsy and greet me? You deserve to be punished! Get on your knees and prostrate yourself before me as an apology!" My expression sours at her insolence. I turn around only to see the indulgent expressions on her parents' faces. The groom, Bowen Lawson, says dotingly, "We spoiled Nad silly since she was a child. You are her sister-in-law now. Don't make things hard for her." I am so mad that I can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. The clown thinks she's a princess, asking me to kneel before her? Ridiculous.