I had survived (and financially thrived) as a waitress wearing her head as a necklace for one night. I had also semi-consented to being a headless and topless on the upcoming Saturday. I received an email from Jeremy asking whether I had considered it and what my decision was. I replied that I would do it if I had my hands-free (because I waitress), my boobs were not hidden (on Fridays and Saturdays I work topless), and that I had sufficient senses to carry on working (because you can't collect the extra tips if you aren't working).

His reply said that he had all my conditions covered and asked if I played video games. I said that I did, while wondering why he wanted to know. His reply was that I should meet him about ten minutes before my shift, so we could do some preparation work.

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I arrived early, as requested, so I could be ready, if the 'preparations' over-ran. Kendra, Sharon and Charity were there too. Jeremy knocked and walked in. While nobody really minded, because we were going to be topless all night, but we ribbed him to the point that he apologised.

He showed me a box which contained a plastic mannequin head wearing a VR headset and headphones with a microphone stalk. In the box were a set of gloves. He soon fitted me with headset and gloves; he adjusted the straps on the headset to be comfortable. There was about five minutes of calibrating the headset, with the help of the gloves. Once that was done he put everything back in the box. Before he left, he faced me towards the clock and waved his hand in front of my face, saying, “You'll do great.” He was allowing me to notice that the clock appeared to skip about twenty seconds. Then he departed leaving the box on my make-up table.

I asked if the girl's had heard what had be said to me while I was out of it, but they seemed not to have noticed, but there was a short time when he had been talking particularly quietly; they had not bothered listening, because they assumed that I was being told the secret of whatever Jeremy had planned for that night.

Some of the diners had been at the club on the previous occasion and asked if I would be doing helping out the magician again. All I could tell them was that I would be helping Jeremy, but other than that, all I knew about what would happen was that it would be a bit different, but I didn't know how.

After an hour or so of normal work, I was called up to the stage. The magician assured the audience that I was a pre-arranged volunteer, but I was in the dark about exactly what I was going to have done to me. My nervous smile confirmed that he was telling the truth.

“You stand up a lot in your job, right?” he asked.

“Yes, but I'm used to it, although maybe an inch off the height of the heels would make it easier.”

“The good news is that you get to sit down for this one.”

He rushed off stage for a moment and returned with a high backed chair in one hand and a cloth covered table, piled high under the cloth, in the other. The chair he dumped in the forward-middle of the stage, then placed the table a little over arms-length to the side. He straightened the chair and then invited me to sit.

I sat with care, because while I wear a short skirt for work, I did not want to flash my panties at the audience; I may be a topless waitress, but I'm not a teaser or a floozy.

Jeremy whipped the red cloth from the table. He picked up one of the pieces of wood that was stacked in front of something else taller which was still covered with a black cloth. He fitted the wooden piece to the top of the chair back, then asked me to sit up straight . When I did so, the back of my neck touched something. I turned to check what it was. It was the half of a wooden stock that he had clipped to the chair. Having some idea what was going to happen, I made sure that my neck rested in the semi-circular space and adjusted my hair so that it did not get caught between my neck and the wood.

While I fussed with my hair, he fitted front half of the stock. This was snapped into the first piece after he made an outward swipe from my neck with his hands, to make sure that there was no hair trapped between the two wooden sections. I tried move my neck, but the stock was not budging.

“Please don't move around too much,” Jeremy admonished, “because you might pull the assembly from the chair and have to support the box I'm building yourself, which could put your hands in danger. So, please be still and put your hands in your lap for the moment, where they won't be in the way of the audience getting a good view of your tits.”

While I fidgeted a little to get into a more comfortable position on the chair, he clicked posts into place on each corner of the stock. He followed this by slotting in panels with vertical slots between the posts to the sides and behind my head, before putting a roof on the box that surrounded my head, in two sections that matched sections of the stock, but without the neck hole.

His next move, after inviting me to wave goodbye to the audience, was to slide a panel in front of my face, completing the box. All I could do was wait for whatever happened next.

I heard some thuds at the front of the stage (later, from the CCTV, I discovered that he was stabbing a sword into the stage to show its solidity). The next thing I heard was a scraping noise immediately above my head. This was followed by a pricking sensation in the centre of my scalp, then everything went darker. While my head was inside the box that Jeremy had constructed around my head, while there was little to see, the slots in the walls let in some light. Now I could feel the pressure of the VR goggles on my face and the headphones on my ears; everything seemed darker and quieter. It was evident that the VR headset and the headphones were on, but they were not receiving anything yet.

Meanwhile back on the stage, Jeremy had pushed the sword down into the box until the hilt came to rest on the top of the box. This meant that a couple feet of sword should have appeared out of the bottom of the box, but it was not visible to the audience. I felt the chair rotate; this was him turning me sideways to demonstrate that the sword was centrally through the box, which was only a inch or two deeper than my head. This implied that the point of the sword had gone down through my neck and was resting somewhere amongst my internal organs. In hindsight, it would explain the cold stiffness I felt in my upper back.

The magician followed this up by shoving a multitude of knives through the slots in the sides of the box. Jeremy carried on with this until he ran out of slots and daggers to shove into them. His next move was to raise the front panel of the box. The usual thing to see at this point is that the space inside the box is filled with criss-crossing knife blades, with no sign of the sitter's head. The audience were surprised to see something head shaped in the box, with many knives piercing it.

Jeremy acted as if he had been initially shocked by this development, then appeared to be motivated by morbid curiosity. He carefully disassembled the head box to reveal the mannequin head stabbed with the knives and held in place on the top of my neck by the sword he had inserted through the top.

For a panicky moment he pulled the daggers from the head and then dragged the sword from the top, which allowed the plastic head to topple from my neck and smash on the floor.

He guided my hands to where my head should have been and I did my best to act shocked and concerned about my position; not difficult acting when you can't see or hear anything. I felt him place something like a necklace around my neck stump and adjust it, but when his hands strayed too close to my breasts, I patted them away.

A few moments later I could see again, but my perspective seemed distorted.

“How's that? Better?” I heard him ask.

“Well, I can see and hear again; that's something.” I also noticed that I could hear myself speaking faintly like a double echo.

“Do you think you could go back to waiting on the tables?”

“I think I need a few minutes to get used to being like this, but then it should be no problem.”

“Ok, I'll help you down the stage steps, then you can go back to work when you feel ready.” While I stood in front of the stage, Jeremy went back to his act, but not before praising my bravery and encouraging the customers to be generous with tipping me.

I soon discovered that I was seeing via a pair of cameras beside my neck, which were part of the necklace and hearing and speaking through the pendant of the necklace. In a few minutes I was back to moving around as I had the previous time that Jeremy had cut my head off, but it was easier, because my point of vision was closer to where I usually see from than that time by several inches.

The rest of the shift was much like my previous headless shift, with the added benefit of my head not being in the way of carrying things. The customers were very kind, solicitous and generous (I had to empty my tip pouch twice). Jeremy found me, once he had finished his act, to assure me that if I needed my head back all I needed to do was find him and ask.

At the end of the shift, I went back to changing room to change into my travel home-from-work clothes. Changing from the skirt and apron into some slacks was easy, but I realised that I would have a problem putting my top on, because I would either have to remove the necklace that allowed me to see and hear, or cover it up which was no better.

The other waitresses were curious and asked where my head had gone. I pointed out the box that had contained the mannequin head at the start of the evening. I wondered if I should get my head out of the box and put it back on my neck, like I had last time. I decided against, because Jeremy had implied that it was possible to get it wrong and I did not want to find out the consequences.

The rest were just leaving when the magician showed up. He apologised for being delayed by a table that had been slow in clearing out and were insisting that he do 'just one more trick' for the seventh time.

The process of returning my head to its proper place was as simple as putting it there, so that it lined up. It was a relief to be whole again and a surprise to feel how heavy my head was, after being without it for an evening.

Back in one piece I took off the necklace and the headsets, then dressed. Jeremy was still there. “Did you want to say something?” I asked.

“Just that, I hope you will be willing to try something else as a magical topless waitress next month.  Michael has booked me for another Saturday, but he wants a different illusion, because he says he likes his waitresses to smile at the customers, and you can't smile if you haven't got a head.”

“I don't see why not. So long as whatever it is doesn't make it too difficult to work. My day off is Wednesday, if you need to rehearse something.”

Jeremy look embarrassed, “Well I haven't got anything specific planned yet, but I'll be in touch if there is anything that you or we need to practice. Of course, generally, I am working with hostesses of private parties who don't have time to rehearse, so I need to make magic that can be done with almost anyone; although I must say that you have been a particular pleasure to work with.”

He bid me farewell and left.

Once I was fully dressed, I went to see Michael to remind him about the bonus I was due.