Julie and Mary Experiment

by Vaughan

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For those who have not read the first six episodes of my
story:

My name is Julie. I am a 5'7" blond, with a good figure,
aged 22. I have just become an assistant the magician James.
James has another assistant, Mary, a 5'7" black girl, who is
a bit older than me. Mary and me have been victim to several of
James' illusions and enjoyed them, after the initial shock of
some of the predicaments.

My new job seemed to be going well. Audition on Wednesday,
practice Thursday, Friday, and all the following week. The show
on the following Friday I did alone because Mary broke her arm.
The show was a success even with only one assistant.

On the following Monday I found myself alone at James'
warehouse workshop, where I got into a dreadful predicament and
was rescued by Mary.

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After lunch, Mary and I returned to the warehouse. We were
going to wait for James, who was buying materials for the
construction of more magic props and we were not expecting him to
come back quickly. So we decided to see what there was in the
dusty corners. After my near disaster of the morning, I felt
better about this exploration as we were both there to help if
things got sticky.

Mary made a bee-line for the guillotine that towered over a
pile of seeming junk. Mary said, "I've always wanted to have
a go at this, but James never got it out." Between us we
cleared an area around the guillotine and Mary found lump of clay
that fitted the hole in the stocks after some kneading. We raised
the blade and there was a click as reached the top about twelve
feet up. We let go of the rope and the blade, which was eighteen
inches long with the classical oblique cutting edge making it
longer on the other long side, stayed suspended over the stocks
which were only fifteen inches deep. We inserted the ball of
clay. I commented that it should have been a cabbage, to which
Mary replied, "If you want to go and find a cabbage, I'll
wait." We searched the structure for a release, it was a
tiny button in one of the uprights. It suspected that it was
inconspicuous so that activation of that blade might come as a
surprise to the victim and the audience. We pressed the button
and with a satisfying swish of metal against metal and thud of
the top of the blade being stopped by the stock, then there were
pair of quieter thuds as the two halves of the clay lump hit the
floor.

"It's my turn now," Mary told me. We lifted the
blade a little, wiped a small amount of residual clay from it and
checked that the edge had not been damaged or blunted. The blade
was still as sharp. I pulled the blade back to the top until it
clicked into place, while Mary positioned her neck in the stocks
kneeling on the floor. I fixed the upper part of the stock in
place.

"Are you ready?" I asked, addressing the back of
Mary's head.

"Of course, I am. Get on with it, the suspense is killing
me."

I pressed the button and heard the swish and the thud. I have
to admit I did not look until Mary said, "That was great,
Come on Julie lift the blade and get me out of here." I
turned round to see what had happened. Mary was still in her
former position with her head through the stocks, but also
through the stocks was the blade, about an inch visible above and
several inches below. I took the time to check that the blade was
still one piece by tapping it. It rang and Mary complained that
it tickled. I slowly withdrew the blade and from the noises and
sighs Mary was making the good feelings must have been
exceptionally good. I dragged the blade back to the top of the
uprights and then I tied the end of the rope round the cleat on
the side of the upright. I just knew Mary was going to challenge
me to have a go, so I thought be safe I did not want any
surprises.

Mary's first words when I released her from the stocks were,
"It's your turn now. I dare you to do it face up and watch
the blade sliding towards your neck."

I found the thought a bit worrying so I looked for an excuse.
I complained that I could not get into position. She countered by
dragging forward a low box for me to lie on. Defeated, I lay on
the box and positioned my neck in the lower stock and Mary
eagerly lock the upper stock in place. I complained that I was
straining my neck in that position, so Mary came round and
supported my head with one hand and reached for the button to
release the blade, she had already in untied it from the cleat.

I heard the click of the button releasing the blade and time
began to flow like treacle. The next half second is etched on my
memory. The swish of the descending blade, the inexorable
acceleration as it headed for my neck, the change of tone as the
tip of the blade entered the stocks, the sharp sting and
immediate gentle shower sensation as the blade passed through my
neck, the clacking thud as the trailing edge of the blade hit the
top of the stocks, the cessation of the rubbing sensation inside
my neck as the blade stopped, the feeling of horror as my point
of view changed as my head began to fall from the stocks under
its own weight and the tremendous relief when Mary caught my head
before it hit the floor.

It took several moments for me to realize that for the second
time that day my head was not attached to my body. I soon worked
up enough self-righteous indignation to tell Mary that I thought
she had tricked me and that she should get me back together
instantly. She asked me how she was to know that it would happen
like that and put my head down on a nearby case and told me if
that was my attitude I could put myself together and she stalked
off. By the time I had recovered enough to think of apologizing
Mary was out of sight, but I could hear her crashing about
nearby.

It took me longer than I had hoped to get my head back on my
own shoulders, because Mary had left my head facing away from my
body and I had to grope about to find where my head was. Once I
had re-united my parts, which felt wonderful and soothed my hurt
pride, I went to find Mary to apologize for hurtful things said
in haste.

When I found Mary, she had set up something in practice area
it looked like a low table with a large funnel stuck through it.
Under the table with the small end of the funnel resting in the
top was a Coca-cola bottle. I begin to apologize at the same time
she began to apologize. We both dissolved into laughter and
hugged. Mary said she had set up this trick to show she had no
hard feelings. I asked what was supposed to happen but she was
tight lipped and told me it was a surprise.

"Step up on to the table," she instructed, "and
go with the flow." She smirked. "I'll leave
instructions on how to complete the effect. Now step into the
funnel."

I put my right foot into to the funnel and checked my footing
and lifted my left foot over the rim. When my left foot touched
the inside of the funnel, I had the strangest feeling yet, it was
like the reverse of being bloated, as if I was not quite big
enough for my skin. A glance round showed me why I had an odd
feeling at all. I was shrinking. Then I slipped and slid down the
funnel up I fell the short way from end of the funnel to the
bottom of the bottle. I then began to grow again until I was
could not grow any more inside the bottle. My movements inside
the bottle caused it to topple and rolled across the floor until
Mary caught it and picked it up.

Mary stood the bottle back up on the low table and indicated
where the instructions were for the completion of the magic. She
then picked up a jug of water and started to slowly pour it into
the bottle. I was instantly soaked through. I started to worry
about drowning inside the bottle. I tried in vain to tip my
prison over, because Mary firmly held the neck. I soon discovered
that I did not have to worry about drowning because I was
dissolving instead. In moments I went from a dry woman in a
bottle, to a wet woman in a bottle, to woman with no legs bobbing
in half a bottle of water and finally a bottle of dissolved
woman. I could not see, feel, hear, smell or taste, but somehow I
knew what was happening to my watery essence.

Mary poured my dissolved body in to a glass. The next bit is
only a guess, but I think she stripped off and stood in front of
a mirror. The next thing I know for certain. She drank me. I
flowed from the glass, over her tongue, down her throat and into
her stomach. As I was absorbed into the lining of Mary's stomach,
I began to return to the world of normal sensations. The first
sense I noticed was sight returning, I could see out of Mary's
eyes and the view was a mirror reflecting Mary's now naked body.
Gradually my other senses returned. I felt like a passenger in
Mary's body. What she did next surprised me, I suppose I am still
a bit inhibited about that kind of thing. She began to fondle her
breasts and a whitish liquid began to flow from her nipple which
she caught in the glass. As the glass became half full the stream
dried up, I had the sudden feeling I was no longer sharing Mary's
body but alone in it. Then I realized what had happened. Mary had
introduced my essence into her body and the caused her own
essence to leave and the glass I had in Mary's hand held Mary's
essence. Now I understood the comment about leaving a note on how
to finish the trick.

I carefully put down the glass on the low table and picked up
the instructions. The note said to pour the contents of the glass
into the funnel and then cover the funnel with a cloth. I did
this, but as a precaution I put the bottle under the funnel to
catch Mary should she flow through. As it turned out putting the
bottle under the funnel was unnecessary because nothing flowed
through. I flapped the large cloth, that had been left handy,
over the table and guided it while it drifted into position over
the mouth of the funnel. Nothing happened for a moment and then
something moved under the cloth on the rim of the funnel. Nothing
else happened and I thought I heard a cry for help from under the
cloth. I whipped the cloth from the table. Where the movement had
been was a miniature hand gripping the rim of the funnel. Hanging
by the hand was a tiny version of Mary. I pulled firmly on the
hand and drew the small version of Mary from the funnel. She was
becoming heavier by the moment. By the time I had her out of the
funnel she was back to her normal size and weight.

"That was a close one, I nearly got reliquified.
Thanks," panted Mary.

I was about to tell her to relax when I realized something
significant about this scene I was part of. I was naked in Mary's
body and Mary was also naked in Mary's body. So where was my body
and my clothes. Mary went over to her clothes and started getting
dressed.

I stared for a moment and then asked, "Mary? Where is my
body and my clothes?"

She turned round, half way into her skirt, and started to
laugh. I could not see what was so funny.

She looked mock contrite and said, "I drank your clothes,
I'm sorry, but we'll find you some more. James always has some
spare clothes about. And you are in your body..." She then
really noticed that I looked exactly like her, probably down to
the last hair on my (her) head. "Oh Hell! That's not right.
You should be in your body."

"Well, I'm not!" I responded, petulantly stating the
blindingly obvious.

After a few moments pensive thought, she said, "I think I
know how to get you back. You take that cloth and lie down under
it I'll get something that will set you right."

As she rushed off the find the something, I shot the comment,
"It had better!" after her. I then lay under the cloth
and tried to make myself comfortable on the concrete of the
floor. I found that under the intense stage lights I could
faintly see the practice area through the fabric and in the
overhead mirror.

As I was beginning to get bored of waiting, I heard Mary
approach. When she came in sight I could see she was carrying a
rectangular board and two buckets of paint. She slopped white
paint onto the board and laid the still wet painted side on top
of me. I could feel the wetness as the paint-soaked through the
cloth. Having had my view cut off by the board. I was surprised
to feel the pressure of the board increase, it turned out the
Mary had stepped onto the board. After the pressure increased to
the almost the point of pain, my feelings became numb and I
noticed that the gap between the board and the floor was
shrinking. I was being soaked in white paint and flattened, I
hoped it worked. When I was completely flat, Mary lifted the
board and started slopping paint from the other bucket, which was
blue, onto the board and laid it wet side down on top of me. I
felt her weight for a short while. Then she stepped off of the
board and began slowly lifting it slowly off of my body using the
cloth that had covered me. I could feel myself expanding as the
space became available. At last, I was back to my normal size,
but was I back to my normal shape and color? I stood up and
turned to look at the nearest mirror to check. In my joy at being
back in my own body, I almost did not notice the beautiful dress
I was now wearing. The dress was the same blue as the paint Mary
had used. It was an off the shoulder dress that hugged my bosom
to great advantage and the skirt started just below and swept
down to my ankles, the skirt flowed and swirled wonderfully as I
moved. I quickly thanked Mary for getting my body back and for
the dress, which I had decided I wanted to keep.

She loved the dress too, she went to get another cloth and
more paint, so I could do it to her. She lay under the new cloth
and I laid the dry side of the board on her and then stepped onto
it. It was hard to balance until the edge of the board touched
the floor all round. I then lifted the board by the edge and laid
it dry face up next to the flattened Mary. I looked at the
buckets of paint and had an idea. I opened the blue, the red and
the yellow and poured some of each onto the board. I used my hand
to spread and swirl the paint, which I noticed joined but did not
mix. When the board was covered, I laid the freshly coated board
back onto Mary and stepped back on. Having stepped back off, I
used the cloth to raise the board and soon Mary rolled from under
it wearing a multi-colored dress of the same design as mine. She
seemed delighted and I was glad for her too.

I went off to wash the paint from my hand and Mary started
putting things back amongst the stockpile of illusion equipment.

When I had washed my hands, I found Mary struggling to get out
another illusion.

"What's that you're trying to get out," I asked,
eagerly lending a hand.

"I'm not sure, but it says on the label 'Two person
samurai decapitation plus' and I met James' assistant before me
once and she said she really enjoyed the samurai decapitation. I
never asked James about it, because he seems a bit secretive
about his past and I thought he might be offended."

As an illusion it looked very simple. It was a round platform
about eight feet in diameter with a six foot tall round column
about eight inches in diameter. The platform and the column were
decorated with Japanese designs and figures, except to places on
the platform that had targets marked by concentric circles. We
together managed to manhandle the thing to the practice area and
set it in the center of the mirror enclosed space.

Mary had found simple but unenlightening instructions. They
said that for decapitation use while dressed, for the full effect
use while nude. The directions also said that both victims should
stand on a target is a relaxed but upright posture. I was
slightly unnerved by the use of the word "victim" in
the instructions.

Mary and I discussed it for a while and decided to try the
decapitation and if it went well we could try the full effect.

We stepped onto the platform standing on the marks and waited.
Mary was about to move to see if she could activate the illusion,
when from the sides of the column a pair of samurai swords swing
up, swept round through half a turn and descended back into the
column. As the swords went round the column I saw the far one
sweep through Mary's neck and felt the sting and tickle of the
other one passing through my own. Both of us shied back a bit at
the sudden action with the swords, this slight motion was enough
to topple our now detached heads from our bodies. After the
realization that we had just been beheaded we both deftly caught
our falling heads. I tucked mine under my arm, as I was getting
quite used to being headless, and Mary followed my lead. We
examined each others severed necks and found that the cut was
covered by fresh skin, as was the cut at the base of our heads. I
touched the skin and could feel it both in my hand and in my
throat it was like the tickle that goes with a cough.

Mary was the first to speak. "Shall we try swapping
heads?"

"I'm game if you are. I could get quite used to your body
at this rate," I replied.

We stood front to front (but not face to face) and positioned
ourselves so that we could put our heads on the other's body at
the same time. On the count of three we placed our heads on the
other's neck. Instantly, the sexy feeling of restoration surged
through our bodies and the touch of my hands holding the sides of
my head became split into the touch of my body's hands on the
side of my head and the weight of Mary's head in the my newly
taken over hands. We disentangled ourselves and checked out the
result. The only things out of the place were our heads on the
wrong necks and other than the subtle change in skin texture and
the change in skin color you could not have told that they did
not belong.

"Shall we have a go at the full effect of the samurai
illusion?" asked Mary, already stepping my body out of my
blue dress.

"What have I got to lose, except for my head again?"
I replied. I found that the top of the dress seemed to be held
together by a single button, which I undid and Mary's multi-colored
dress slid gracefully from her svelte body. As I
stepped on the target marks, Mary was already in position.
Moments after I got into position the samurai swords swung back
up and began to turn, but they did not stop after a half turn, as
before, but continued rotating and dropped a step each half turn
so that we were cut in rapid succession through the neck, the
upper arms and below the ribs, through wrists and through the
hips and finally though the legs just above the knees. The swords
folded back into the column and after a moment, during which a
feeling of disbelief flowed through me, both Mary and me
collapsed into heaps of parts. After squeal of exhilaration at
the division and relief that my head had landed Mary's chest and
therefore had a soft landing. I was very confused about which
parts were who's.

I lay there waiting for something to happen. The first thing I
saw happen was my hands crab walking to the pile of body parts on
which my head rested. It was obvious that Mary currently had
control of those parts which she had been severed from. I
concentrated and my hands dug their way out of the heap of bits.
In the mean time, Mary had dragged out her (originally) arms from
my pile and attached them the hands and was scooting them back to
her side of the column dragging her elbows. By the time I had got
what remained of my pile of parts arranged so that nothing was on
top of anything else. Mary came back with her head on my upper
torso and walking on my hands at the end of her arms. She
connected her belly under my upper torso and hand-walked back to
her side to connect my thighs. By dint of walking the shoulders
of Mary's upper torso and guiding with her hands, I had managed
to reconnect my head to a set of shoulders. Mary came back
walking on the stubs of my thighs and carrying my elbows. She
placed my elbows in position and the fitted her lower legs to
herself. In short order with Mary's help, I had a complete, if
patchwork body.

"So, now we are patchwork dolls. How are we going to get
back into our own bodies? 'cause I don't fancy going out like
this," I said.

"We find something or if it takes that long, James can
sort us out," Mary assured me.

We both put a dress back on and the rolled the samurai thing
back to its place.

"What kind of illusion are we looking for to get us
back?" I asked.

"Oh it doesn't matter so long as we both can get into it
and operate it at the same time or maybe set it going and both be
victim. Oh yes and it needs to be at least a semi vanishing
illusion," Mary informed me.

We hunted among the stacks of props looking for an illusion
which might restore each of us to our own complete bodies. In the
end Mary found what she thought we could do with. So we dragged
to equipment to practice area.

What we had when we had assembled the stuff was four
person-sized Perspex tubes with doors in the side these were
joined together by a complex knot of fans and glass tubes of
every size, shape and color. The tubes looked like they had be
designed by a mad alchemist on hallucinogenic drugs and built
during an earthquake by a glass-blower with hiccoughs. While I
checked out the apparatus, Mary set up the video camera. I agreed
that we wanted to see what happened.

She pressed the record button and we stepped into two of the Perspex
cylinders. after about ten seconds the cylinders began to
fill with gray smoke. Quickly, all sensation faded, I had
literally vanished into a puff of smoke. After a short while I
felt the sensation of flowing and the passing of time. After what
felt like an hour but turned out to be three minutes. Sensation
started to return as I coalesced from in a different cylinder
that contained pure white smoke. As the smoke cleared I checked
out myself. I definitely now had white shoulders and hands, which
had been black before. I looked over at the other cylinder where
black smoke was clearing and Mary was checking herself. We opened
the doors and stepped out. Mary went to the camera and switch off
and we both went into the office to see what had happened.

After we had become smoke, we were drawn into the nightmarish
tangle of pipes and tubes circulating and crossing paths
frequently. Each the paths of our smoke bodies had cross Mary's
smoke had got blacker and mine had got whiter, Until the smokes
had been channeled into the other cylinders where we had
coalesced. What surprised us was that there was also flowing
through the tubes lumps of multi colored smoke and the
occasional puffs of blue smoke. It was then the we noticed that
our dresses had been scrambled while we were being unscrambled,
instead of Mary's being multi-colored and mine being blue, they
were both multi-colored with spiral blue stripes.

By this time it was five o'clock. So we put the smoke
contraption away and locked up. I gave Mary a lift to her place
and then I went home. That night I dreamt of decapitations and
weird clothes, but woke up refreshed and ready for work in the
morning, because we had a show booked on the Friday.

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To be continued ....