"Rise and shine, toots. We've got another long day ahead of us."

Roberta opened her eyes to see the dwarf just inches from her face, and a feeling of dread weighed her down. Every morning, the high school dropout regretted having run away from home at age eighteen to join the carnival. But then, in a small mid-western town in 1963, every other option was pretty much a dead end. Little did she know that the enchanting world she had known as a kid would be filled with criminals, lowlifes, and scumbags. Her fateful decision had been more than four years ago, and she knew there was no way that she could return to normal society now.

The tall, statuesque blonde stuck her feet out from under the bedcovers. She was made to wear fetish ballerina boots at night, to force her feet to maintain a high-heeled position, and now her tendons had shortened to the point where she could not place her feet flat on the floor. The dwarf unstrapped the shoes and worked them off her feet, replacing them with horseshoes that had metal arches that supported her feet in their unnatural position. Strips of double-sided tape placed along the metal arches held the horseshoes in place.

The young woman stood up carefully, ignoring the leering gaze of the dwarf as he dressed her nearly-naked body. He pulled off her panties and tossed them on the bed before putting a loincloth on her, the crude six-by-six-inch piece of brown leather held in place by a strip of rawhide that tied at the back of her waist.

"What bra shall we wear today?" he sneered.

"Something decent," Roberta sighed.

"Decent it is-- if you don't feel like eating tonight."

Roberta knew better than to protest. They had variations on this conversation almost every week, but he always chose a bra he liked, always something revealing.

It was a lacy open-cup model, and the woman sat down in a chair and stuck out her arms rigidly so he could put it on her. He obviously enjoyed fondling her full breasts as he adjusted the undergarment, and she had learned to suppress her discomfort, so he wouldn't enjoy that, too.

"Ah, you look lovely as ever, Chestnut. Relax a minute; Fanny will be a little late today." Fanny Flame, the aging alcoholic stripper, did Roberta's make-up. It was always too garish, and she hoped to learn to do it again on her own, someday.

The dwarf lifted himself up onto the bed and sat down.

The woman rolled her eyes. "You don't have to stay."

"So, when are we going to get married? It's not like you're going to have any other prospects. Unless you like anonymous sex with perverts."

She blinked back tears. As if he hadn't hurt her enough...

"Just get me some breakfast."

There was a fumbling at the door of her trailer, and a fiftyish woman in a faded bathrobe and smoking a cigarette stomped in. She was obviously suffering from a hangover. She cracked a smile and shuffled over as the dwarf left.

"Let's get you done, sweetie," she said in a rough voice.

She pawed through Roberta's cosmetics, then pulled a chair over and started working on her face. She dabbed at the woman's tears before hurrying through the procedure.

"There you go."

Roberta turned to the mirror above the bureau. She looked like one of the circus clowns. But no one would care. They didn't come to see her face, pretty or not.

After she left, the dwarf returned with some scrambled eggs, toast, ham, and orange juice, which he patiently fed to her. When she was done, she sat as he carefully wiped her lips with a paper napkin, then waited as he went to the wall for her bridle.

She didn't know where they got it or who had made it. All Roberta knew was that she hated it. She sat patiently as the wooden dowel was wedged between her teeth and the leather straps were tightened and buckled around her head.

When the dwarf finished, he combed the tangles out of the long blonde hair of her mane and tail, draped a robe over her shoulders, and clipped reins to the bit rings that dangled below her chin. As Roberta stood, he gathered the other ends of the reins in his hands and gave a gentle tug. "Showtime."

The young woman followed the dwarf out of her trailer and down the steps, wincing at the bright sunlight and the cheerful sounds coming from the fairground rides. The dwarf closed and locked the door, then led her over to the circus tent.

As they passed behind the huge painted banners, Roberta looked up at hers, a lurid illustration of a horse with a human head, made visible with the sun shining from the other side: "SEE CHESTNUT THE HUMANICORN! Wondrous Freak of Nature!"

The "humanicorn" wondered what people would really think if they knew this freak of nature was more man-made than natural. If only she hadn't gotten drunk that one night. If only she hadn't insulted the dwarf when he had tried to be friendly. Perhaps then he wouldn't have drugged her drink a month later, and brought that surgeon back to her trailer...

They had kept her drugged while she healed, and that lessened the shock of what had been done to her. Of course, all the other workers helped keep her prisoner here, and had prevented her from going to the authorities when she had regained full consciousness.

The other circus freaks were already there - the fat lady, the human skeleton, the two-headed boy, the half-man/half-woman, alligator man - but it was she that everyone came to see. They didn't have long to wait.

"Hurry! Hurry! Step right up! SEE the most aMAzing FREAKS of nature EVER collected under one TENT! Just ONE dollar, folks! ADULTS only, please, for this ONE-of-a-kind SHOW!"

They all took their places on their small stages, each illuminated by a single light. Roberta carefully climbed the steps to hers. The dwarf followed, tying each of the reins to a small ring on each side wall of her tiny stage before leaving, so that she was held in place, like a horse in its stall.

The surgeon had amputated all her fingers and toes, reshaping what was left into hoof-like appendages. He had also grafted skin from her head onto her lower back, so that she eventually grew a tail of long dark-blonde hair. And he had re-shaped her ears so they were more equine. But that wasn't the worst part. No, far from it. As a final bit of perverse surgical alteration, he had cut a hole deep into her forehead, glued a carved ivory tusk directly to her skull, and then let the wound heal shut, turning her into a human unicorn. A humanicorn. The dwarf had had someone make the bridle and pony shoes, and kept her head shaved into a mane, completing her look.

There were gasps of horror as people shuffled by. Penny did not want to disappoint. She reared back as if fighting her reins, let loose with a frenzied whinny, and pawed the air defensively with her arms, then swung her ass sideways to show off her real tail. She finished off by lowering her head and swinging it back and forth, showing off her unique appendage, an eight-inch coiled spike. The reactions ranged from stunned silence to squeals of disgust.

She had to repeat this bit of play-acting dozens of times a day, while the other performers barely had to do anything. And that wasn't the worst part. Late at night, after the midway had closed, any local citizen with enough money could pay for a "pony ride" in a private trailer, fucking her from behind as they jerked at the reins. She usually had to do one or two a night, though sometimes it could be as many as six or eight. The dwarf had objected, mostly out of possessiveness rather than chivalry, but he had been overruled by the carnival's owners, who knew a good money-maker when they saw one.

Lately, she had been hearing things on the radio about women's rights, and something called the feminist movement, calling for equal freedom just as the Negroes had been doing. The sixties certainly seemed to be a time of change, and Roberta wondered if she had somehow missed out by foolishly running away that one fall night.