70 - Tale of the Sideshow - The Illustrated Woman

Jason rose from where he sat slowly. He wasn't drunk, but he wasn't drinking any more either. He shuffled with the easy grace of a blurry bigfoot caught on camera, and swept up a candle and returned to his spot.

"I told you about how some people make themselves oddities. How it isn't as easy as it used to be. Even back around the turn of the century, a full-body tattoo might not be enough. The quality of the tattoo, the imagery, the artistry—that's what attracts the punters, draws them in, holds their attention. How do you do that in the era of social media, when everybody shows off their new ink? Well...let me tell you about

THE ILLUSTRATED WOMAN

The Boss didn't find her. She found us. We were on our last day in Dagon's Hollow, and I had noticed her. Hard to miss. She was dressed in a light grey burqa, head-to-toe. I couldn't even tell if it was a she, except that the voice was distinctly feminine. Her hands, when she gave me the money, were encased in grey gloves of the same fabric.

She bought her ticket like every other punter, but she wasn't watching the acts, she was watching the set up. Security, safety, showmanship. I noticed her notice. Even at the late show, when I was busy doing my Freak Fucker thing, I could tell she wasn't there to get off like the other punters.

A part of me thought 'cop.' Yet another, weirder part of my mental machinery said she was something else. She gave that feel, she held herself apart in the way that reminded me of the Leech Girl, the Alligator Girl, the Trouser Snake. People who knew they were different. I had caught myself standing in the same way.

I wasn't surprised when I found her staying after, when there was only mopping-up to do. The ladies noticed her. I stepped forward, still in my harness, tired, spent, but ready to step in.

"I'd like to talk to them. And you," she said.

The Boss stepped in behind her.

"You may," the old woman said. "But first, you'll talk to me. In my office."

The Boss's trailer was smaller, older than the others. She didn't travel in luxury; most of the folks in the sideshow had nicer trailers. Yet there were decades of memories in that trailer. Photos of people I didn't know. Bottles of wine I'd never seen her open. The Boss gave me a flick of her eyes, and I knew I was included in this interview. I grabbed a towel, gave a nod to the wife, and headed out behind her.

The ladies squeezed into the small seats around a folding table. I stood near the door. Not a big man, but I can loom when I need to.

"My name is Lamya," she said, her voice that odd cadence I associated with folks whose first language is Persian. "I am an exchange student. I would like to join your sideshow."

"Exchange student," Boss said. "Visa issues. What exactly do you hope to contribute?"

"I have dual-majored in ancient languages and mathematics," Lamya said. "Studying certain patterns. How they affect the brain. There are books here, very old and rare books, that resist being read. Illustrations that affect the mind, the way the brain processes data. I have copied certain sections from them. Extrapolated new patterns from them."

"Tattoos?" the Boss said. A flicker of interest. "Show me."

Lamya glanced at me.

"This may be unsettling," she said.

Then she pulled off her glove.

In the back of your eye, there's a spot where the optic nerve attaches. No rod or cone cells there to perceive light. It's your blind spot. The one everyone has. The spot they cannot see. Physically impossible.

Try as I might, I couldn't see Lamya's hand. It was like my eye swept right over it. I knew from context clues there was something that. I had—not the impression of a hand—but the impression of a presence. Of something my brain was refusing to let me see. Like I processed the information and it decided that information was not for my conscious mind to know. Maybe it was protecting me. I don't know. I do know that I had just completed a full after-hours show, and my cock was suddenly standing to attention, tenting the towel I'd wrapped around my waist with painful intensity.

The Boss said something in a language I didn't know. Something like Arabic with Tourette's. They were words that sounded like obscenities, spoken in the dry rasp of a woman who could and had told Southern mafia and Aryan Nation types that the best part of them ran down their mother's thigh, and that if she had been there she'd have licked it out and ended their pathetic life before it began.

The woman in the burqa answered in the same language. Her voice shaking a little.

"Interesting," the Boss said. "We'll need to see the rest."

Lamya's hand shook. It made my eyes water, pupils unable to focus.

"That might not be safe."

"Then," the Boss said. "We'll need to find out what is safe."

It took two weeks. Striptease lessons. The carpentry for her stage was pretty straightforward. Three elaborately framed mirrors around a central pole, lights, smoke machine, curtains. I wasn't sure exactly what the problem was with Lamya's tattoos. The Boss was willing to play it her way, though. Lamya would come out in a kind of hooded and veiled cape. She would dance. Flash the audience. Just glimpses. It wasn't all like her hand. I caught flashes. A nipple. A smooth buttock covered with writing like little tentacles. A glimpse of dark labia with golden runes that made men spontaneously cum, hot little spurts that came as a shock.

I don't think I was developing an immunity, but I think the bits and pieces I saw as she developed her routine gave me an overall impression of her body. She wasn't a dancer by nature, but a scholar. The first week left her winded after a few minutes. We had to work on her endurance, her strength, her balance, her body encased in tight-fitting exercise clothes, with hood and veil and gloves.

The veil was the one part she never took off. The ultimate mystery, maybe. I wasn't sure, but I sensed—it was the one thing she was most careful about. In our own trailer, Xochi and I talked about it. Her hand was on mine, playing with the curly hairs on my chest, the hairs on her arm twining with them.

"Are you going to fuck her?" she asked bluntly, in English. She was getting better.

"Not that kind of act," I said. We were married, but Xochi knew what kind of show she had joined, and knew too what my part in it was. We had married without any real illusions. I can say honestly I was always faithful to her in my own fashion. She didn't seem to mind, as long as I was honest with her, and I was.

"She's lonely," Xochi said. "Maybe you should."

Turns out, the Boss had similar ideas.

We were in Colorado for a spell. The strippers had been teaching Lamya how to lapdance. The Boss wanted to try and add her to the real after-hours show. After I fisted the Giantess and the Trouser Snake had done his little egg trick. Lamya seemed uncertain. She hadn't really been that close to me, or to anyone, for a while, I guessed.

So we practiced a good bit. In the real act, I'd be in my Freak Fucker makeup, in a straightjacket, tied to a chair. My cock out so that she could gyrate on it, tease it, give the punters something to focus on besides whatever ancient fractal was patterns on her ass, the one that made women swoon and men's balls ache. I had felt that myself when she backed that thing up, her tattooed booty hotdogging my prick, trying not to spatter my jizz all over her hieroglyphic tramp stamp until the right moment.

Once, during practice, it slipped in. I wasn't trying for it. She did it herself. Those hot walls closed on me, tight as a glove. I heard her gasp. Felt her grow still. My eyes were narrowed to slits, and my dick leaped inside of her as my abdominal muscles clenched and unclenched.

"You keep that up," I said, glad I'd worn a condom, even for practice. "You're going to catch a load."

Well, that did it. She sank down on me fully. Her hands on my thighs. She twisted on my dick with an acrobatic flourish—which does not feel as good as it sounds—and she pressed her lips on mine, through the veil.

For the first and last time, I caught a shadowy hint of her eyes.

The condom exploded inside of her. Completely blew out. It shouldn't have ripped, but the **** of my ejaculation was instant and painful, as thought someone had just jammed a pencil in my dick, only backwards.

She pulled her face away and staggered back, her pussy drawing the broken condom with her, trailing cum on the floor.

"I'm sorry," Lamya said. "I—I won't do that again."

Well, we had the adult discussion after that. About Xochi, our marriage, what I did with the others in the sideshow. Wasn't trying ot hurt her, just wanted her to understand. We all treated her other like family, but I guess in some way were like a polycule, too. I didn't want to be unfair to anybody. Didn't want to hurt anybody.

Turns out, neither did she.

Our first debut for the big act was a disaster. Not because we did anything wrong, but because a punter decided to be a jackass. We were gearing up for the final act. They had me in the straitjacket, tied me to the pole. Lamya danced in, her cape around her body, nothing visible until she flashed the audience. Her dance was perfect—I could see the reactions of the punters, only three of them, two of them older gentleman with too much money and jaded sensibilities, and a younger one, a Middle Eastern man with dark eyes that looked like potential trouble.

If I'd been thinking, I'd have used a tearaway straitjacket. Something I could be out of in a second. As it was, I could get out of it, but it would take eight minutes and a dislocated shoulder.

Not enough time.

She was on my lap, just the tip of my cock inside of her. Teasing, bouncing her butt up and down. All the squats she'd been doing, it was really shaping up. But the younger man jumped out of his seat. Launched himself on stage, and pulled off her veil.

I couldn't see what the three in the audience saw. I was aware of a flash of heat, an explosive wall of hot air that thrust her all the way onto my cock in one motion and made my dick hit something inside of her so hard that it bruised the tip of my glans.

The two older guys must not have seen it clearly; they only had heart attacks. The one who'd torn the veil—

It was like he just fell apart. Wet chunks of steaming concrete, a statue that had cooked itself from within. Nothing like organic tissue left, just white stone billowing out from some chemical reaction. Unbalanced as he was, he hit the stage and just exploded into chunks.

"The Boss didn't see it happen. She never stayed for Lamya's performances. But there were changes made, after that. A better veil. A breakaway straitjacket. Actual security. Too expensive to pay off cops for that sort of thing all the time. But the show had to go on."

Jason held the candle. The story had felt like a confession. Like he had played with fire, and someone else got burned.

"Anyway, that's how I met my second wife," he said, before blowing out the candle.