The peculiar idea that it was Bub Engels’ mom inside the Halloween head cake giving out blowjobs and her giving Bub a blowjob along with the rest of you—without him even knowing it? That gave you a serious hard-on.

No one really knew who it was inside the head cake put on display every October for the Harvest of Horrors—a kind of blood and guts carnival they ran over at the community center for the week up to Halloween.

It wasn’t until that first Halloween after you were out of high school that you found out guys could get blowjobs from whoever it was inside the head cake.

For all the years you’d been going, you didn’t know. No one said there was anything like that happening.

When your brother, Sheldon, first told you about it a few weeks before, you told him he was full of shit.

The Harvest of Horrors had always been a big deal, with the usual attractions of a parking lot carnival—like rides, bounce houses, games of chance, and food carts. Off to the side, at the dark edge of the trailer court’s picnic area where the lights didn’t quite reach, stood a midway of sorts—eight or nine large army surplus tents, with different kinds of spook-house attractions set up inside. Different scenes, like crypts and dungeons and monsters and mad scientist labs—and, of course, the head cake—with lighted jack o’lanterns scattered around to mark out the path between the tents.

Shelly brought up the head cake business while you two were out raking leaves. He waited until you both raked your way to the back end of the lot, up against the cinderblock wall that separated the mobile homes of the trailer court from the alley.

It was, he said, the best thing going at the carnival, which had always been a big deal for this part of town.

You figured he was blowing smoke up your ass. Too much time reading dad’s pussy mags. No one ever said anything about it to you before this. To which Shelly pointed out, because it’s a secret, asshole.

To which you asked in return how the hell he managed to grow a secret asshole—and that turned into a rake fight.

October used to mean burning leaves, costumes, and raids on neighbors for tricks-or-treats. Now it meant randy fantasies of farm girls on hayrides, do-it-yourself booze, and Halloween-themed nudie mags Shelly found stashed in dad’s old Army barracks bag.

You’d pretty much lost interest in the whole carnival thing.

But—the idea of a secret source for oral sex hiding in plain sight amongst the attractions there at the carnival lit you up all over again.

Creepiest of all the displays had to be the Halloween head cake. It had been part of the carnival for at least seven years now. You were in junior high when it first showed up.

You never thought there was anything sexy about it. Just a cake with a woman’s face that would pop to life, with a hideous howl and carry on about how her husband had her murdered.

At the entrance of the tent, you could read the legend of the head cake written on a sheet of gore-splattered parchment, pinned to an executioner’s block with a bloody headsman’s axe.

The story was that the wife of an evil baron accused him of having his way with all the peasant girls of the village. To shut her up, he had her head cut off.

Kneeling at the executioner’s block, she swore she would speak out even in death.

The baron ordered her severed head baked into a cake as a warning to others, and made everyone come to the feast where he planned to serve it up.

When the servants prepared to cut the cake, the severed head came to life and howled her accusations all over again, naming every one of his conquests.

The villagers—realizing the baron was most definitely not a prince among men—threw him from the battlements to appease her terrifying spirit.

The inside of the tent was done up like an eerie, haunted royal dining hall, with tapestries, lanterns, and gleaming tableware, all lit with blacklight and candles.

The gruesome layer cake with a woman’s face—a bewitching woman, in life-like color frosting—sat on a platter placed at the edge of a heavy, oak banquet table. A white cloth, stained with rivulets of blood running from the blood-soaked bottom of the cake, covered the table.

Very cool.

It was hokey fun the way the face in the cake starts out still as death when you first enter the tent, then springs to life with a snarl the moment you get close enough to investigate, looking right at you, demanding to know if you’d come for a piece of the baron’s cake. Then she’d laugh like a maniac.

It was creepier’n shit.

No one knew for sure who was inside the cake. Or if they knew, they never said. Maybe someone guessed but kept it to themselves. Not knowing who it was made it a whole lot creepier.

Maybe your mom knew. She helped out that whole week, pretty much spending every night there. But she never said.

Still convinced Shelly was blowing smoke, you asked how he knew about getting blowjobs from the head cake if it’s such a big secret all these years.

He said Bub Engels told him about it last year. Bub found out about it the year before. Swears it’s been going on the whole time.

So, him and Bub getting blowjobs? Every single night? Right up to Halloween?

Yeah, he said, pretty much. The way Bub heard, it started that first year. Said a couple of guys the first night had a little too much of the witch’s brew, so when she asked if they’d come for a piece of the baron’s head cake, this one guy said yes.

She didn’t hesitate, telling him to come closer and have himself a piece. She opened her mouth, curling her tongue like she was summoning him.

His buddies were all thinking she’d make a joke of it, say she was kidding or something. Or he’d chicken out. But no. He pulled out his pud—stiff as a jack handle—and slid in like it was no big deal.

She starts making all kinds of yummy noises and he starts pushing faster and faster.

The other guys can’t believe he’s really doing it, and they can’t believe she’s really doing it, and he’s humping, and then—whammo—he fires his load, her clamping down, snorting, taking it all in, him flexing as he empties himself.

When he finished up, he was telling guys it was the best blowjob he ever got. So, of course, they all ended up taking a turn, telling her they were there for a piece of the baron’s cake, too.

They swore she took every one of them. Like it was nothing.

Guys were lining up. It’s like being in a secret club with a secret handshake. You say the magic words, and you are in.

You know Bub and you know Shelly. You snorted.

I didn’t believe it myself, said Shelly. Until I went that first time. I waited till it cleared out, then I went in, said I’m here for a piece of the baron’s cake and she sucked me off like it was the best thing she ever tasted. I mean, the absolute best place you’ll ever stick your dick. Long as you live.

Like Shelly had a ton of real life experience. But you didn’t say that.

Hey, don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself.

The last couple of years, you skipped the head cake, considering it mostly kid stuff. You went for the homemade hooch and the girls hanging out.

Now, learning the head cake’s giving out blowjobs? You really want to know who’s inside the cake.

Who cares, is how Shelly saw it. A blowjob’s a blowjob. If anyone figured out who she was, you think she’d keep doing it?

Of course not. But you still want to know. Pestering him about it got you both thinking through girls most likely to do something like that. You’d love to think it was someone you had the hots for back in high school. But Shelly said whoever it was sounded older. Like some of the women hanging out at the Horseman or out at the bowling alley.

Both of you got the same idea at the same time.

Bub Engel’s mom.

Bub’s mom was smallish, her bosom barely contained by the sleeveless tops she wore, and pedal pushers that cut her crotch into a perfect cameltoe—something you learned about from Bub—and kept her hair in a short, frosted shag cut—’blowjob friendly’—again, something you learned about from Bub—short enough so you could watch as she sucked you off.

Guys always said it would be a total wet dream having a mom as hot as Bub Engels’ mom.

You should only be so lucky.

Of course, if Bub heard you mention his mother in the same breath with any of the things you learned from him, he’d bust your skull open.

Everyone agreed Bub couldn’t see what was right in front of his face. His dad spent most days on the road, and his mom made herself a regular feature out at the bowling alley, rolling a few lines with the ‘midnight league’ and balling winners in the back seat of her Mercury Cougar.

Shelly thought that’d be the funniest thing if it was his mom, and Bub getting blowjobs from the head cake the last three years.

You said it was kind of creepy, getting blown by your own mom—but it made you hard all over again. You couldn’t tell if it was thinking about Bub’s mom who seemed the type, or your own mom who definitely wasn’t the type.