The New Girl

I think you’ll get where this idea originated

Cassie had no idea what she was doing.  Sure, her dance team had gotten the call for a dancer with exact measurement to meet a magic act at the local theater, and, sure, she had those measurements, but she still didn’t know what was up.

She found the magician onstage, fretting over the lighting at specific points.  As she introduced herself, he asked Cassie to do a complete turn. As soon as she did that, he waved her off, telling her that the other girls’ll fill her in on what’s expected of her.

Cassie knew a little bit about magic.  Ever since she caught her grandpa doing a pulling the coin out of the ear trick on her and saw where he had the coin, she’d been wise to what was up.  At least she thought she was.

As soon as she found the other girls, they told her she’d do.  She was replacing Sarah, who had decided to have a baby.  It wouldn’t do for any of them, but it was her choice, so they needed someone to fill in.

Cassie expected Meredith to tell her what the trick was all about, but all she said was to dance and look sexy, that the magician would switch her back and that she’d better remember the color of tube she got in.

Meredith gave her the costume she was expected to wear, and she thought this was the reason for the exact measurements, but she didn’t realize that all the girls had the same measurements.  It was a skimpy halter-top, skirt combo, skintight.  Cassie could breathe in it fine, but she had to loosen up some of the leather.

She noticed her outfit was all one color, as were the others.  That didn’t seem to strike her as very funny or flattering, but Meredith assured her it would all make sense.

And then the rehearsal came, and Cassie saw what Meredith was referring to.  The wheel was enormous, several feet across at least, with four tubes attached to it, each one a different color.

The magician took hers and Meredith’s hands, leading them to opposite ends of the wheel.  Cassie was told, by the stagehand, to climb inside the tube face up.

She breathed in as she got into the tube, then felt something clamp around her hips and her torso, keeping them firmly in place.  That’s not supposed to happen, she thought.  Her body was held inside the tube.

The wheel was rotated around, and the other two girls got in their tubes.  Cassie could only assume that they were trapped as well.

She thought she understood when the wheel was rotated, on a pivot, to stand partially on its end.  So, they were going for a ride, but Cassie had failed to notice something before then.  Each tube had a distinct fissure in it.  Cassie could only estimate where they were, at about waist height.

The stagehands pulled out a large ring of solid metal.  Cassie’s eyes widened in pure horror when she realized one edge of the ring was particularly sharp and the other looked very heavy.  She began to shake her head as the stagehands hoisted the ring into alignment with the fissures in the tube…

And then slammed the ring home.

Cassie almost screamed when she felt that stainless steel bisect her body.  She looked down, and, yes, there was something in her waist, something clearly cutting her in two.

But she didn’t feel any pain.  Shouldn’t there have been a lot of pain at this?  Shouldn’t she be feeling something wrong?

But she wasn’t.  She felt good.  She felt fantastic even.

She felt her bottom half move away as the stagehands started to rotate the wheel.  It felt so weird, knowing that her top half was moving the other way from her bottom half, but it was.  She could almost feel something as her top half came into alignment with the other girls’ bottom halves, but they kept going for about a minute.

Then they turned her back, and she felt something.  They pulled out the ring, but something felt very off.  Sure, she had been reattached to a bottom half, but it wasn’t hers. She knew it wasn’t.

As they got the girls out, Cassie looked down.  She knew these legs weren’t hers.  She could feel them so wrong.  But she could use them as if they were hers as the magician gave some final instructions for how they should dance.

He saw the look on Cassie’s face. “Oh, don’t worry darling, we’ll get your right legs back under you quickly.”

Melinda walked over to her. “I know it feels very odd, but you’ll eventually get used to it.  How’d you like your first trip around the wheel?”

Cassie could still feel that her legs weren’t right.  Something was still wrong, but they did promise to get her right legs back to her soon.

So, she turned, the only expression she could muster being a smile. “It was better than I could’ve expected.”