49 - Tale of the Sideshow - The Headless Woman

"Now this story," Jason said, as he took a few steps to secure a candle. "This one you might have trouble believing. Not that some of the stories I've said haven't stretched the limits of what people might believe. After all, there's a limit to human oddities. A limit to surgery and body modification. An area which pushes the definition of what is human at all."

He sighed, shoulders slumped.

"The is the tale of

THE HEADLESS WOMAN

I've mentioned before that the Boss had a nose for talent. I don't know how she found some of the folks who joined us over the years. Not everyone joined, of course, and many who did join didn't stay—it's a hard, nomadic life, and not everyone likes to perform in front of folks. Some folks might think the Boss could prevail on Dr. Gyges to make human oddities—how hard could a conjoined twin be, after some of the surgeries Gyges had accomplished? But that kind of thing doesn't work. Most folks just won't go under the knife easy, and the folks that do are usually not right in the head. The Doc, for her part, wasn't interested in random surgeries like that. Only ones that fit her particular narrow area of focus.

Which isn't to say that Dr. Gyges didn't give the Boss an idea. I think the success encouraged the boss to expand her idea of where to look for human oddities.

I remember driving up a mountain in Kentucky during a thunderstorm. There was an abandoned army post up there, not on any of the local maps, but not entirely forgotten; I had GPS on the truck, and it got all sorts of jittery when we got close, the way it does when approaching various military bases. I drove past a rusted fence, and up to the only building that had lights on. The Boss and I stepped out of the wet, and walked right up to the door.

In the old Universal films, they had wonderful labs for scientists. Bubbling decanters, racks of ominous-looking metal equipment, arcs of electricity leaping up, big dials and switches that when thrown might do almost anything. Don't get a lot of that these days, but I reckon that building inside was pretty close. It was immaculately clean, but everything was slightly old, every bit of metal seemed to have a patina or was flecked with rust, and there was no plastic anywhere.

The doctor was a younger woman in a white labcoat. She was short, underfed, skin dark. The sides of her head shaved, hair dyed silver and frosted with silver. She frowned to see us, and then smiled when the Boss made a gesture with her left hand, and made what I assume was the answering sign.

"Doctor Halcombe, I presume?" The Boss said, with that sound of dry amusement deep in her throat. "Well met. Can we see her?"

She was on a kind of table, laid flat, a sheet laid over her. I could see the small rise where the breasts and feet would be, make out the outlines of arms and legs. Except there was no head. The sheet just fell off, after the neck. With a theatrical flourish, Halcombe whisked the sheet off, and I stared at what I thought for a moment was the headless corpse of a woman.

Except the body breathed. I watched the breasts rise and fall with mechanical precision. I could hear a hum and hiss, and that was when I noticed that on the stump of a neck there was a kind of collar that covered the whole of the stump, and a little hole, about an inch in diameter, in the very middle of it, with smaller holes all around the rim.

"You've heard of chickens that survive with their head cut off?" Holcome said with a gap-toothed smile, eyes wide. Vibrant violet eyes that matched her hair. I later learned she wore contacts. "Same basic idea. The body normally can't survive this kind of trauma for long, but Lili here is a—medical oddity. We fitted her with a control and monitoring device. Plugs into her nervous system. Helps regulate signals so her heart beats correctly. She could live for years like this. Watch!"

From a shelf, Dr. Halcombe fetched a bottle of Ensure and a turkey baster. She filled the baster and guided it to that big hole in the center of the collar. Pushed it right in and squeezed the bulb. Something beeped from a large metal cabinet near the table.

"That's how we feed her," Halcombe said. "Ensure, baby food, pureed vitamins—everything she needs to stay healthy."

"And the act?" the Boss said. "We discussed that."

"Yes, yes. I'll show you."

Halcombe brought out her smartphone and tapped something. With a mechanical buzz like a dentist's chair, the table tilted, until the Headless Woman's feet touched the floor. With an odd, mechanical gait, she took two steps forward.

"I'll need a volunteer from the audience," Holcombe said, looking at me.

Well, I was the Freak Fucker, after all.

"Tell me what to do," I said.

"She can't move far from the machine. The wireless signal between the collar and the modem has to remain constant. Walk right up to her.

I did. When I was within a foot of her, I stopped. It was so strange, staring at the empty space where a head should be. She smelled of ensure, sweat, and body spray. I can't imagine she got any showers, probably just a sponge bath.

The arms rose and touched my chest. Patting gently, the Headless Woman slowly got down on one knee.

"She can't see you. Can't really think, no brain. But I've programmed some basic functions. Handjob, doggy style. That should be enough, right?"

The Boss said nothing. Just watched as the fingers went over my belt and to my fly. Working by touch, she unzipped me. Fished out my cock.

I've received some pretty mechanical handjobs before, from strung-out whores with no interest who could barely keep their eyes open. I've tried those vibrating onaholes you stick your dick into, and the sex dolls which are the same thing only bigger and more complicated. Yet I can never say I've experienced anything quite so profoundly unsettling as the headless woman's hand stroking my cock. It felt warm, it was real, but there was no passion in it, no skill, no perception. Just a steady, repetitive motion, one hand stroking, the other gently stroking the underside of my balls with perfect regularity.

Well, I got hard.

"Doggy now," the Boss said. So Halcombe pressed another button. On cue, the headless woman released my dick. She turned around in place, and dropped to all fours, ass raised. Presenting herself to me.

Well, it's a lucky thing I always keep a condom in my wallet, though I never imagined it for just some contingencies.

Once again, as I slipped my dick inside of her, I felt that profound sense of wrongness. This was a living being, but not alive quite as I knew it. There was no response as I began thrusting, no push back, no clamping of vaginal muscles. The headless woman didn't make a sound as I grabbed her hips and thrust in and out, sawing my dick out of a surprisingly wet cunny. Even when I pressed my right thumb against her asshole, something that usually elicited at least some response from any woman, there was nothing.

It took almost an effort of will to cum, and I felt frankly embarrassed when I finally filled the condom. My cheeks were red with shame as I pulled my prick out, the tip ballooned with my load. With the touch of a smartscreen, the headless woman stood back up, knees a bit red, some pussy-juice leaking down her thighs, nipples hard and skin a bit flushed, but no other sign to show she'd just been railed.

The Boss saw it and got an idea.

"Pour the cum down her top hole," she suggested.

Halcombe shot a glance at the Boss when she said that. I took the condom—hadn't tied it off yet—and upended it into the hole.

Something beeped agitatedly from the cabinet that held the control computer, or whatever it was, beside the table. Halcombe started to frantically tap at her smartphone. The headless woman shook like a dog. Jizz spat back up out of the hole. With a rush, Dr. Halcombe went straight to the cabinet and threw it open.

I don't know what I expected to see in there. A computer, certainly. Maybe a whole server rack. I did not expect to see a fishtank with a human head floating in it, leads and wires connected to it, blood circulating in and out. The eyes on the woman's head that floated there were filled with betrayal.

The Boss surveyed the whole setup critically.

"I don't know that it will travel well," she said after a long moment. "And we definitely need to work on her gag reflex."

"As I said, that's pushing belief a bit. Can such things be? You ask ninety-nine doctors out of a hundred, they'll say no. That kind of thing is beyond our current technology. Nobody can keep a headless body or disembodied head alive long, much less...well, do what we did. A lot of the punters who came to see that sort of thing insist that it had to be some kind of trick. And it was. Just not the kind they were thinking of."

So saying, Jason snuffed out the candle.