Ann Steps from the Shadows

Ann was a waitress and she was very good at waitressing; she looked good, had a way for being friendly without being familiar and seldom dropped the food or drink. Ann had a problem; every job she had had, so far, ended in her being humiliated by a magician (not even the same magician). She decided that she would try a job that would lower her risk of being assaulted by a magician; it was a hard decision, because she liked the interaction with the public.

She got a job in a factory as an administrative assistant (shorthand for office dog’s body). The job was boring, but the hours were steadier and the pay was better than at the diners and clubs she had worked at. Because she did frequent errands to the working part of the factory, she had to wear the standard gear; hard hat, company sweat shirt, hi-vis jacket, trousers and steel toe-capped safety boots. After a couple of weeks she found the guys in the factory to be kinder and more respectful than most of her customers; she made some friends. She almost became one of the guys.

About a month into the job, she was invited to Martin’s stag do; Martin, a well liked supervisor, was due to marry Heidi, his long time girlfriend, the following week. Ann was a bit worried and asked what kind of event it would be. She was told that it would be a comedian and a couple of strippers and plenty of booze and snacks. She made up her mind to go; she felt she would like to see what guys were like when they let their hair down, besides she really wanted a night out. She did not reckon much to the entertainment, but a comedian would be harmless and the strippers were choosing to do it; she might even learn some moves for when she found a reliable boyfriend.

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The night of the stag do came round.

Ann had changed into clothes that were much more flattering than her workwear; white t-shirt, low cut enough to show a bit of cleavage, under a blue jacket, a matching knee-length skirt, stockings and strappy sandals with a smallish heel. She combed out her blonde hair, which she usually wore in a ponytail for ease of tucking under the hard hat, so that it flowed over her shoulders. With a hint of make-up she made the best of pretty features. Ready to go, she joined the guys who had offered her a lift to the venue of the night’s merry-making.

The venue was a backroom in a pub, with a bit of a stage at one end and access to a bar at the other. Most of the crew were there and a few of Martin’s non-work friends and relatives. Nearly all the men complimented Ann’s appearance, without being lascivious. There were three women there, Ann and two of the lad’s girlfriends there for an evening out and to keep an eye on their boyfriends.

The comedian, billing himself as "The Mighty Rod-erick" got things going with a few blue jokes and then revealed he was also a magician; the kind that appears to be incompetent, but is actually quite good (you have to be very good to appear that bad). He completely failed to even quieten ‘Foghorn Freddy’ the factory foreman, despite running a pair of swords through his neck.

Roderick introduced the first stripper as Martha. She was a stunner; an athletic black woman, with a good, if slightly top-heavy figure and some fabulous moves. Ann watched from the back, but the other girls took a more defensive position near their men. By the end of two tracks she was down to only a small g-string and rubbing herself across Martin’s lap, much to Martin’s embarrassment and the joy of his work mates.

The next stint by the comedy magician include more jokes that were not for your mother, a rope trick and a complete failure to remove Martin’s head with a head chopper under the guise of ‘future fidelity test.’

When a relieved Martin stumbled from the stage, the second stripper arrived to ‘arrest the groom’ as an unconvincing policewoman; she was a bit overweight, the costume had seen better days and she was wearing 5 inch heels that she was not in total control of. Her routine was not up to the standard that Martha had set, but the men enjoyed the spectacle and the girlfriends did not feel the same need to guard their boyfriends. As she left she finally lost her footing and stumbled, twisting her ankle. A couple of the men wrapped her in the dressing gown she had been putting on, picked up her discarded costume and helped her to find a taxi.

Roderick came back with more ribaldry and did the age-old bottle and glass trick, ending up with a lot more bottles than could really fit on the small table. After that Martha did another set starting out as a schoolmistress with a cane and ending up as naked as before, but having made good use of the cane to fend off the hands of the less responsible drinkers.

Roderick came back to the stage. "At this point it was planned to have another set from Janet, but she had to go home, so we’ll move on to my final act of magicianship." He opened the curtain and brought out a cube on legs. "Usual I would do this magic with Martha and Janet, but as Janet is unavailable, I’ll have to do a simpler version." Then he had a thought occur to him, his audience were quite sure that it was genuinely unplanned as Roderick had proved himself an appalling actor throughout the evening. "That is unless one of the ladies would care to rescue a magician in distress and help make the finale something to talk about."

Most eyes turned to Ann and the two other ladies present among the audience, but Ann looked at the rapidly retreating back of the barmaid who had been pouring her a drink a few moments before.

"You’ll do it, Ann, won’t you?" called Freddy and Martin in unison.

An expectant hush fell on the room. As she had been paying more attention to what she had anticipated would be her last drink before going home, Ann had not been paying much heed to what was happening, she said, "I’ll do what?"

"Help the magician," replied Martin, not knowing Ann’s history with magicians.

"I don’t know," said Ann, not wanting to let on that she was very nervous of becoming victim of another magician. She saw her work mates looking at her and felt guilty that she would be denying her friends something. "What is he planning to do?"

Of course, no-one knew the answer. In desperation, Martin said, "I don’t know, but he was planning to use that box," he pointed at the elevated cube, "and Martha and the other stripper. You’d be standing in for, er, I think her name was Janet."

"I don’t have to strip, do I?"

Martin looked at Roderick, who shook his head, to let Ann and Martin know she would not be expected to undress.

"And my clothes won’t vanished?"

Again Roderick shook his head; both in reassurance that clothe vanishing was not on the cards and a sense of disappointment as if he wished he had thought of making clothes disappear.

Now addressing Roderick, Ann asked, "Do you mind if I talk to Martha first?"

"Go ahead!" invited the magician, with a sweep of his hand from pointing to Ann to pointing at Martha, now wrapped in a black satin dressing gown from neck to knee. He was counting on peer pressure getting the seemingly reluctant Ann to do it, and if she did not do it and the trick flopped, he had a ready excuse.

"I’ll have a word with Martha; you keep Martin, Fred and all entertained, while I decide." The man cheered as if Ann had already agreed.

While Ann made her way across the room to speak with Martha, she heard several of the men say things like ‘I hope Ann does it’ and ‘You will do it, won’t you?"

Roderick returned from a hurried visit backstage and began a floating cane routine, in which the cane seemed to have a mind of its own; knocking the magician’s hat off, somersaulting over his hand when he made a grab for it, hiding behind Roderick’s back and general appearing to be disobedient.

"So, what did you want to know?" asked Martha as Ann arrived in the corner.

"You’ve worked with this bozo before, so what’s it like and what does he do?"

"Rod is the perfect gentleman, which is more than I can say for most of male ‘entertainers’ I’ve worked with; octopuses, you know, hands everywhere. I’ve been involved (I suppose you might say assisted) with his finale tricks since he started about six months ago. I’m usually teamed with Janet, because none of the other girls seem to think the extra money is worth it. I don’t know what he’s got planned for tonight, coz I’ve never seen this box before. But it is always fun, even if sometimes it needs to be undone afterwards, in private, and it feels good. I reckon you’d enjoy it and you’ll be the girl who rescued the show. If you don’t I bet you’ll get comments for weeks to come."

Ann was still in two minds.

"Give it a go; I’d rather do whatever it is with you than that fat trollop, Janet. You haven’t long to make up you mind, coz Rod is coming to the end of his stick trick."

Ann looked round and saw the cane do a triple somersault, almost touching the ceiling and land in Roderick’s hand. Part way though the adulation, he looked at Ann with a smile and then a question in his stare.

Soon the entire audience was looking at Ann with the same question; would she assist the magician? Before she was sure which way she was going to decide, Martha said, "She’ll do it." Martha took Ann’s hand and escorted her towards the stage area. Ann realized that she was going to do it and do her best to enjoy it too.

Soon Ann was on the small stage with Martha, the magician and the box on legs. "So, what do I need to do?" she asked.

"Just slip off your jacket, please and untuck your top from your skirt," instructed Roderick.

"I thought you said I wouldn’t be taking my clothes off."

"Leaving your jacket on will spoil the effect a bit, so I’d much prefer it off and I’m sure your fans in the audience would like to see the best of my trick." He played the guilt card again. "The untucking your top is a matter of safety and comfort; you might not believe me, but that is true."

Roderick allowed Ann to choose who looked after her jacket; she chose the guy who was going to drive her home.

While she pulled the hem of t-shirt from her waistband, she asked what else she needed to do. He replied that all she needed to do was follow instructions and enjoy what would be a unique experience. "And if you can continue acting as nervous as you have been, your friends will find it so much more amusing."

Ann asked, "Who’s acting?"

"That’s the spirit!" said Roderick, not picking up on the fact that Ann was truly worried about what was about to happen. He went into announcement mode. "Now for the finale of your entertainment, I shall perform my latest illusion with Martha and your brave colleague Ann."

As the crowd quieted, he drew forward the apparatus; Ann could see that the cube had a solid black top with a pair of neck sized holes spaced either side of the centre, two black opposite sides each with a pair of holes near the top and spaced evenly either side of the centre line, and the other two sides made of white roller blinds. Roderick rotated it so that the men got to see each side, he then placed it with the white sides front and back and drew down the blinds, to reveal the interior of the device. The inside of the cube seemed empty, but Ann could now see the bottom of the frame which matched the top, in that there were two holes directly under the holes in the top, but these holes were bigger.

"Right, this kind of illusion is nothing without someone inside. As you can see there is no-one there at the moment. So who is going in first?" Roderick hinged open a bar at the bottom of the front and pulled out a section of the base so that the nearest hole became a pair or semi-circular cut-outs. He also pulled a similar section from the top.

While Rod was preparing the apparatus for its first occupant, Ann and Martha were looking at each other; both trying to decide if they wanted to go first or second. At the point where the magician had removed the sections, Martha decided she wanted to see what was going on; she gave Ann a shove which caused her to totter backwards into Rod’s arms.

Seeing Martha’s action, but playing it as if he was being as incompetent as before, he said, "Great, Ann! That’s the spirit."

While Ann protested that she didn’t want to go first, Rod manoeuvred Ann backwards into the clutches of the half-circle cut-out, once he had ducked her head under the upper front edge of the box frame. Despite further attempts to extricate herself from her predicament, she was soon held in place by the sections that the magician had so recently removed; the upper section trapping her neck in place and the lower section, inserted by Martha, trapping her torso just below her waist. Martha then leant in and adjusted the loose hem of Ann’s t-shirt so that it was not trapped in the waist hole. Meanwhile, Roderick was re-closing the bar on the front.

"Doesn’t she look wonderful installed in my trick?" called the magician; the audience rewarded him and Ann with hearty expressions of agreement. "Now to put my second assistant into the box."

Martha’s face dropped; she had been hoping to see what Rod did to Ann, so that she might be a bit more prepared for this unknown illusion.

"You need to move your feet," he advised, as he began to turn the box. After a first stumble or two, Ann quickly got the hang of turning with the box. Soon she was facing the grey curtains the hung at the back of the stage, and waited there, while Martha was fitted into the illusion so that they were back to back. Martha’s entrance into the device was done with much more flair and included the discarding of her robe.

"You will have noticed the armholes in the sides. So, ladies, please put your arms out through these holes."

Martha found the put an arm out of each side as far as her elbows and then danced as best she could with her restricted movement. Ann could feel Martha’s bottom and shoulders pressed against her own, but was having difficulty finding the arm holes. Rod came to her aid by putting his hand in through the hole and guiding her arm out.

"Ok, folks, who do you want to be facing you while I do the magic?" Naturally, there was divided opinion, between their heroic colleague and the near naked stripper. Roderick once more turned the box on its wheels until Ann faced her friends.

"Let’s give the girls a bit of privacy." Rod went round the back of the illusion and raised the blind in front of Martha and then came round the front and raised the blind in front of Ann.

The box looked as it had before except that Ann’s head was visible at the top and her legs up to her waist, below, although the section above her knees was concealed by her skirt. Some of the audience could see Martha’s head behind Ann’s and her legs were on view to those who could see round the Ann’s.

Roderick went to the side from which Ann’s left and Martha’s right arms extended and pulled on a pair of handles on that side. It looked like he was dragging out a large drawer the height and width of the cubic box; also the arms sticking out of the side Rod was pulling did not seem to retract, the arms on the other side were pulled in.

"That felt odd," commented Ann to no-one in particular.

"It always feels odd, when Rod does his magic. So long as it doesn’t hurt, just go with the flow and it’ll turn out alright," replied Martha.

"Ok, ladies, move the arm that was pulled in through the hole so that it is across your waist!" the magician instructed. Ann and Martha complied.

"Let’s see what I have achieved," continued Rod, to his audience, lowering the blind on the front face of the cube. It took the audience a little while to realize what they were seeing, or not seeing. The sight they were presented with was the white blind at the back of the cube; uninterrupted by the presence of Ann’s and Martha’s bodies.

The men’s reactions to the fact that the body of the cube seemed empty of the pairs of torsos that had previously filled was mixed; some applauding and others calling for the return of either Ann’s or Martha’s bodies.

"What’s happened?" asked Ann, although no-one but Martha could possibly hear.

Martha’s reply was, "How should I know? Like I said, this one is new to me too. I’m guessing that the men think our bodies have disappeared, but I’m pretty sure they haven’t, coz while it still feels odd and being part vanished also feels odd, it’s a different odd."

Rod was calling for some calm from the on lookers. "Do you think that I’d vanish two good looking bodies such as Martha’s and Ann’s? I may seem a bit dim, but I’m not that stupid." He went to the inner cube that he’d pulled from the main cube and put his hand to the edge of the white blind that made up most of the front face and opened it with a cry of "Behold!"

What the spectators beheld was Ann’s white t-shirt-clad body from waist to neck, with her left arm sticking out through the wall of the cube and her right arm down her side and across her waist.

While the men cheered lack of absence of Ann’s body, Rod turned the whole device through 180 degrees and opened the blind on the other side to show Martha’s naked torso about 2 feet to the right of where it would normally reside. This drew more cheering and someone shouted that he would be willing to offer the detached body a good home.

"So what’s happened now?"

"I think," replied Martha, "that Rod has moved our bodies to the box on the side."

"What? How?"

"What? I think Rod shifted our bodies sideways. How? I haven’t a clue. And I’ll bet there’s more to come too."

This was not what Ann wanted to hear. Each time before when a magician had used her (in some cases abused her) it started out as a simple trick which got out of hand with embarrassing consequences.

"What happens next?" Ann asked more in hope than expectation, although she did have a nagging feeling that Martha knew more than she was telling.

Before Ann’s co-assistant could answer, a partial answer came in the form of Rod, who had moved behind the box while the girls talked, pushing the top of the cube downward. After the initial disorientation of feeling her head move, Ann was looking around to work out what was going on, and asking the same.

Rod called out, "The ladies haven’t been able to see what’s going on until now; so I thought I’d move their heads to a position where they can appreciate what I done for them."

By this time the top of the cube had been lowered about half way and Ann glanced to her left and got a shock to see her white T-shirt; she knew it was hers by the splodge of sauce that had squirted from an incautiously bitten snack. She tried to rationalise the obvious implication away, by wondering how Rod had removed her top without her noticing. This line of thinking lead to the inescapable conclusion that Rod had stripped her topless without her noticing and she did not want to think about that either. As the top of the cube settled on the bottom she had decided that, on balance, she would rather have her torso shoved to the side than consider the embarrassment of ending up topless in front of her new colleagues.

The audience were showing lots of enthusiasm for their new work mate in her unusual predicament. As they watched, some of her hair fell across her face; automatically Ann made a move to sweep it aside, but raising her right arm caused her hand to bump into the top of the box holding her torso. Her face expressed her surprise, and then she reached down uncertainly to brush the errant hairs from her forehead; she felt that she was in control of the limb she was using, but not entirely sure how the sensation of where her hand was related the where her head was.

Rod took the outer wall of the pulled out section off the box. "Now for another twirl by the girls," he announced. The magician turned the box and Ann and Martha moved their feet to keep balance. After showing everyone the only remaining wall on the box, Martha’s displaced nude torso came into view, next to her head which was directly above her legs. Rod continued rotating the cabinet; showing the two female bodies back-to-back, followed by Ann again, then once more the remaining side and finally stopping with Martha facing front again.

"Are you ready to go for a stroll, Martha?" Rod hinged back the bottom bar of the cube in front of the stripper and removed the section of cube in front of her neck. Cautiously, she stepped forward a step and wobbled a bit on the low heels from her school teacher costume, but quickly stabilised and walked round the cabinet, giving a wink to the further astonished Ann.

After Martha had been repositioned in the base of the cabinet and the stock sections replaced, the magician raise the top of the box back to its former position and removed the remaining side of the cube. A further rotation of the equipment followed; ending with Ann facing her friends again.

"As if moving the bodies of a pair of lovely ladies to the side was not enough, it’s time to add a further twist to this magic." Roderick was standing by the section of the double cube that contain Ann t-shirt clad body and Martha’s naked one.

Both the women could see that Rod was doing something with the section he was near, but could not tell what.

"What’s he doing now?" asked Ann, worried that something she would find embarrassing was going on; which of course it was.

"I haven’t the foggiest idea; I’ve never done this one before, either."

While the girls talked, Rod had turned the framed section on the side containing their torsos through 180 degrees and was pushing it back into the main frame of the cube.

Ann watched the top of the side-cube slide below the upper face of the cube where her neck was trapped and was anticipating the return of her body to its usual position; between her neck and her waist. As the drawer section finally slid into placed, both Ann and Martha experienced a pleasant, but odd, feeling; Ann assumed that it was her body reconnecting, but Martha knew, from her experience of Rod’s magic, that some skulduggery was afoot.

The crowd cheered as Martha’s exposed body slid into place between Ann’s remaining parts, but Ann thought they were happy to see her back in one piece; mostly they were happy to see Martha’s naked breasts ready to come back out of the device.

Rod went round the back and released the bar hold Martha’s stocks in place, followed by a signal that she could get out now. While Martha removed the sections that had restrained her most of the trick, the magician return to the front and began the process of releasing Ann; which he did deliberately slowly to give Martha plenty of time to get out of the back and notice her situation.

Martha was soon out of the cube and had realised she was now wearing Ann’s T-shirt; it took her a little longer to spot that this was because she was wearing Ann’s body. She waited behind the cube while Roderick was extracting Ann from the apparatus.

As Ann was finally stepping forward from the cube, with Rod holding the neck stock under her chin; mainly to delay the moment when Ann could realise that the naked torso her head was riding was not her own.

The magician finally lowered the neck stock, but Ann did not get the chance to discover her semi naked situation, because Martha darted out from behind the cube and leapt off the stage to begin dancing again.

The first thing Ann saw was that Martha was wearing her T-shirt, which she instantly realised meant she was topless, so she immediately clamped her arms across her breasts and flushed a vivid red.

"I thought you said my clothes wouldn’t vanish," Ann accused the magician.

"They haven’t," replied Rod and gestured towards Martha as she skinned the T-shirt from her body, revealing to all Ann’s white skin.

Ann saw this and the looked down to be greeted by the sight she had feared most; the breast she was hiding were not her own and neither were the arms she was hiding them with. She almost fainted and by the time she recovered enough composure to notice anything else, Martha had also removed her bra and was shaking her c-cups in Martin’s and Freddy’s faces.

Ann saw red and dived at Martha, during which Ann’s skirt and panties followed her T-shirt and bra, along with Martha’s thong, to the corners of the room. Soon the men had separated the fighting cats and were holding them back and trying to put robes on them without much success.

It took quite a while to calm the situation enough that Rod could restore the ladies’ bodies to normal.

Ann returned to work hoping nobody would mention the events of the stag do; she was thoroughly disappointed and soon the ‘banter’ became too much and she resigned and found herself another waitressing job.

She now knew that you not only had to beware of magicians, but their assistants were no better.