My name is Daisy, twenty-one, born and raised in a small New Jersey town, now a sophomore on the east coast. I'm not one to keep a diary, but I just can't hold it all in anymore. Since I don't dare to tell anyone face to face, I figured at least writing about it could make me feel better.
The thing is, I got myself into some serious weird stuff. Nothing actually bad, I guess. Just... weird. I'm finding myself doing things I would never have thought possible - not just for me, for anybody - and I don't even have the slightest idea how I'm doing it. Things that make me question my very notions of reality, of the laws of nature, and sometimes my own sanity. I'm talking weird, magical, freak-show kind of things, like having my head separated from my body, being burned alive, impaled, sliced to pieces, and that barely scratches the surface. I'm a part-time magician's assistant now, so it's all supposed to be stage magic - that is, illusions - but... no way. Just no way. I mean, illusions are just that: illusions. They're not real. They don't happen - it only looks like it. It looks like it because there is a trick, a secret, something that I, the assistant, should do without being seen, like slip through a trapdoor or behind a mirror or whatnot. But no, none of that. I've never received any training. I don't know any secret. All I do is stand in whatever box or contraption I'm told to, waiting for the blades or spikes or whatever to do their job. And damn, they do it. I can feel it. I can feel everything. The feeling is absolutely real, except somehow, thank goodness, it does not hurt. The sharp, cold metal makes its way through my body, and if there's any part of me that's supposed to come off as a result, well it does so. For real. Call me crazy, but I can swear on a stack of Bibles that it all happens for real. No illusion, no matter how sophisticated, could ever be realistic enough to deceive the assistant herself, right?
So I came to this simple conclusion: magic is real. Magic is real, what's being done to me is real magic, and everything I thought I knew might seriously need reconsidering. Either that, or what I think I'm experiencing is, somehow, not actually happening. Maybe I am hallucinating. Maybe Adrian, my boss, is actually a hypnotist who makes me live those things in my mind. At this point I can't rule out anything. After all there is no recorded evidence of any of my performances, at least not that I know of, and when I think back to them they do seem a bit unreal, like something in a dream. Plus, like in a dream, I don't quite act like myself when I am on assistant duty. It's like I become somebody else. I'm not nearly as scared or worried as I ought to be, I take everything in stride. Including the nudity. Yes, nudity. You see, ours is no ordinary magic show: it's an adult show, solely performed at a very exclusive, very high-class, very secret club downtown on a monthly basis. Not that we actually do anything, on or off stage - I would never go that far. And the nudity is not gratuitous, nor is it the highlight of the show. It isn't the magic element that is an excuse for nudity, it's other way round, if that makes any sense. Simply put, apparently Adrian's... powers, or whatever... can only preserve your body, not your clothes, and there's only so many cuts you can take before anything you might be wearing flakes off in many little pieces, so why bother in the first place.
For example, take our newest number, the French-cut Lady (you'll get the meaning of the name in a minute... Hint: nothing to do with hair). It opens with Rose and Violet wheeling me out from stage side on a two-tier trolley, like a fine dining dessert, and at first I'm wearing a loose white crepe dress, mid-thigh with spaghetti straps, and matching high heels. By the way, Rose and Violet are Adrian's two other assistants, and those are their real names. Together we form the Magic Bouquet trio. Cool, huh? Anyway, I was saying that in the beginning I'm fully dressed, and so are Rose and Violet, respectively in a red and blue version of my own outfit (as the rhyme goes). I'm lying on one side, propped up on my elbow. Behind me, pressed against my hips, is a square box almost entirely made of perspex, except for one side that is taken up by a grid of blades.
Rose and Violet spin the trolley a full turn, then Adrian walks up to me and helps me off. We do a little tango, during which he takes off my shoes and I shed my dress, revealing my completely nude body: I have no underwear on. Funny how I'm almost blushing as I write this now, while on stage I'm just fine with it. I've never done anything of the sort before, I had no idea I had it in me. I mean, I took dancing lessons in high school and I did some theatre acting, so I've never been one to suffer from stage fright, nor am I generally a shy person. But still, before taking up magic, the only ones to see me naked had been my boyfriends.
Back to the point: Adrian sweeps me off my feet and carries me back to the trolley, whereupon Violet opens the lid of the box, allowing for me to be eased inside. It's a tight squeeze. I wrap my arms around my legs and press them against my chest. My head is forced down on my knees as the lid snaps shut. I'm trapped with no escape, my right arm and hip against a grid of razor-sharp blades.
From the bottom tier of the trolley, Rose picks up a square perspex panel that has four rods attached at the corners, like a stool or a coffee table. She holds it up high for the audience to see, then hands it over to Adrian, while Violet picks up my dress and shoes and deposits them underneath me, on the now vacant tier. Adrian sets the four-legged panel down to my right, with its feet touching the respective corners of the blades grid. He applies a gentle pressure and the grid clicks free, sliding for an inch or two into the box and nearly biting into my flesh. My heart pounds faster and faster. By now I'm sweating and my breath is condensing on the inside of the box. The audience looks like nothing more than a darkened blur of heads.
Adrian calls upon me to wave bye-bye, which I do to the best of my ability, flashing a smile that probably nobody can see. Then I close my eyes, and it's not too long before the blades get pushed all the way through the box - and me.
Now, I don't think I'll ever be able to fully describe how it feels, something like that. But let me try anyway. My insides give me tactile sensations like my skin would. As if the blades were being passed on me, rather than in me. Except they are obviously in me, and my brain is complaining "You shouldn't be able to be touched there." I already said it doesn't hurt, but don't get me wrong: it is intense, very intense... and may I say, almost in a good way. Like a fire that freezes over right after burning me, and then I get shivers of relief rippling all through my body.
My eyes are still closed, I haven't moved a muscle. But something is different. If you could get closer, you would see it clearly: you would see the thin grooves all over my body, where the blades have gone through. I am not in one piece anymore: I am a stack of slivers and chunks of a woman, held together by some unearthly, esoteric force.
Adrian accepts a round of applause with a bow, then raises one hand to call for even more attention. He walks behind the trolley and reaches under the top tier, right under me, to unlatch the trapdoor that the cube is built upon. As I fall through the gap I lose whatever semblance of integrity I still retained: my body crumbles to pieces that rain down on the bottom tier, rolling and tumbling and scattering all around, and my self-consciousness goes absolutely haywire. This is yet another feeling I will never be able to explain properly. Suddenly I am one and many at once, my overall body surface has been multiplied by several orders of magnitude, and my brain is desperately trying to piece together this massive amount of tactile information, recalculating my inner body map over and over again. I am a jumble of body parts that touch in countless random combinations. Some of those parts usually end up on the floor, and Rose and Violet take care of collecting them all. Once they're done, Adrian takes off his cape and drapes it over me. It's just a split second - blink and you'll miss it - then he yanks the cape away and there I am in one piece, smiling, with my dress and shoes back on.There. I've finally got this off my chest. It does help to write about it... maybe I should do it again.
Am I insane? Is magic real?
Time will tell, I guess.