Late Night Sexy Show: New Assistant

The commercials ended and a brief flash of a nude female silhouette was shown with a short burst of saxophone and some heavy breathing. The Late Night Sexy Show logo is displayed over an image of a couple locked in an embrace and kissing passionately. The heavy breathing reaches a climax and is followed by a sensuous sigh.

The scene changed to a couch on which sat a smartly dressed man in his early forties and a similarly attractively dressed woman in her early thirties.

"Welcome to the Late Night Sexy Show," said the man, helpfully captioned as Martin Staithe. Beside him the women was Angelica Thrust, also captioned.

Angelica continue, "Later, we will talk to Heidi Seeque about that sky-diving sex scene in 'Mile High and No Plane'. But first, you may remember this."

A short clip of a man in his mid-twenties inserting a pair of blades though the middle of a clear box containing the trapped form of the show's 'frequently nude reporter', Mary Plenty, and then separating the two tables holding the boxes and the naked young lady into two. Her eyes are bulging with terror that she is trying, but failing, to conceal.

"That was from a few months again, when Mary Plenty, our 'frequently nude reporter', reported on Gabriel the magician, who was looking for a partner and assistant to improve his magic act." Martin had taken up the smoothly professional relay that characterised Martin and Angelica's presentation style.

"Despite the looks on Mary's face, we received a vast mailbag from people interested in becoming Gabriel's assistant. After some weeding out and a lot of interviews, Gabriel has found the assistant he wants and they have been practicing together for the last six weeks."

"So, welcome to the sofa, Gabriel and his new assistant, Annika. Welcome to the show both of you."

"Thank you, for having us," responded Gabriel.

The camera drew back to show on the adjoining sofa, the same young man from the brief clip shown just moments before. Beside Gabriel was a cube about a foot in each direction

"So, Gabriel, what did you think of the response to your hunt for an assistant?"

"It was phenomenal. There must have been several hundred people expressed an interest. It took me a whole week to narrow them down to the twenty I called and nearly another week to interview those."

"And why did you choose Annika in the end?" asked Angelica.

"Well," began Gabriel, "She's beautiful, and has done so much that equips her for the work; waitressing, stripping, nude model, so at home in front of the public with or without clothes. She also has a genuine interest in magic and illusion; she came up with our take on the illusion we are going to perform later."

"So where is Annika?" asked Martin.

"In the box," affirmed Gabriel as he picked it up by diagonally opposite corners and span it casually; thus showing all the faces to the camera. Each face was red with a two inch border of black and an inch by a quarter slot in the centre.

"We were hoping," continued Angelica, "to have a few words with her, before you perform your big trick later in the show."

"No problem! I'll get her out. Do you mind if I use you coffee table?" he said indicating the large glass topped coffee table that occupied the area between the sofas, as usual. The two presenters nodded puzzled assent. "In that case, could we lose the coffee mugs and scripts, please?" Angelica and Martin picked up their scripts and running orders and a studio technician whipped away the mugs, while Gabriel placed the cube on the glass sheet that formed most of the table's surface, but a little away from the honey-coloured wood of the frame.

He checked that the box was in the right orientation, before taking an edge of the top and flipping it over so that it hinged along an edge and fell to become one of the vertical faces of the cube, showing as white with black borders. With practiced ease he raised a small section, which had a common hinge with the lid and used two similar sections hinged at the adjacent top edges to hold it upright, by some unseen catch.

The next stage of the unfolding was to open out the two sides next to the now white face until they were parallel with their former positions, but hinged by their back edges. Immediately, Gabriel pulled the remainder of the box out between the two flaps so that the space in the box was nearly three times longer than it had been. More flaps were flipped and clipped; giving the box a bit more height.

Taking a comfortable stance, Gabriel held his hand at the top of the space now enclosed by the expanded box and waited for a moment. A hand emerged from the interior of the box and took hold of the magician's hand. He gently raised his hand and the hand from the box followed. Following the hand came an arm and a blonde head smiling, then, swiftly, the rest of Annika in a version of the white Marilyn Monroe dress. As Annika reached fully standing in the box, a breeze from inside the box blew the skirt up and she made some, deliberately failed, attempt to prevent the cameras from catching a glimpse of the matching G-string, before stepping from the box.

Gabriel maintained his hand hold to aid her balance until she had stepped from the table top. As she settled on the sofa, he rapidly refolded the box down to a cube and stowed behind the sofa.

Both presenters looked amazed. Angelica was the first to regain her wits and say something. "That was quite some entrance!"

"I'm glad you liked it. I reckoned that I needed to be produced in a magical way, rather than just being here, but it was Gabriel's idea to use the origami box. I am glad I didn't have to be in there too long, because it can get a bit cramped and stuffy if you are in there too long."

Angelica's jaw dropped for a moment, because she had assumed that Annika had, somehow, sneaked into the box once it was opened and had not entertained the idea that she had been in there all along.

Martin rescued the situation by asking, "Annika, why did apply to be a magician's assistant?"

"As Gabriel mentioned, I've tried a lot of jobs and found them all interesting in their own ways, but ultimately unsatisfying. When I heard about this it seemed a perfect match to me, with my experience and love of being naked; and a chance to indulge my creativity. I've always felt that magic could be taken that little bit further."

"Are you enjoying it so far; I gather you have already done a couple of shows."

"Oh, yes!" Annika answered with a broad smile, "They were totally awesome. I've never had such a wonderful response from an audience."

"So you are going perform your new illusion for us now, right?"

"Yes," confirmed Gabriel. "This is an illusion which we call 'Annika's Changing Room'."

"While they get ready to start," said Angelica, as magician and assistant stood and crossed to another section of the studio, "I'll mention that they have decided to call their act 'Unreal', because they are ANN-ika and Gabe-REAL." After a short pause, she added, "I give you 'Unreal'."

The view cut to a small performance area with a grey floor and crimson curtains and 'Moments in Love' by Art of Noise played in the background.

On the small stage Annika and Gabriel stood either side of an open apparatus. The frame of the illusion was black rectangle totalling just over three feet wide, just over four and a half feet tall and about eighteen inches deep. On the back of the frame were a pair of sliding doors, currently open so the whole thing could be seen through; each door was half the width of the frame and painted with black and white horizontal stripes. Magician and assistant closed the doors and rotated the illusion to show the outside of the door were similarly striped in red and black. The device was further rotated so the doors were once more at the back.

"This is Annika's changing room, but there are a couple of things missing. First there is the mirror." Annika fetched a piece of wood from the side of the stage. This wood was red and four and a half feet tall and eighteen inches wide and as thick as the frame. The top eighteen inches on one side were a mirror. While Annika slotted this piece into place, a frame thickness in from the frame on the right and the mirror facing inwards, Gabriel was retrieving another piece of red painted wood; this was also eighteen inches wide and the thickness of the frame, but it had two right angles eighteen inches from each other and the bottom end. "The second is a seat," he said as he inserted the section about a frame thickness in from the left.

"This changing room is big enough to fit Annika in, but because of the painted finish I insist she takes her shoes off before entering."

Suiting her actions to his words, Annika perched on the seat and unbuckled her shoes which she placed under the seat with care, then she turned so that she was sitting facing the mirror. The impression was that the space was quite small, but not cramped. She adopted a pose that had her feet on the floor of the cabinet and her bottom on the seat, but she leaned forward, as if looking closely in the mirror, and slightly twisted her torso to raised her right hand to occupy the space above her back.

"Annika may be an exhibitionist and enjoy being nude, but, like many ladies, she does not like being watched while she is changing. So I made a wall for her changing room."

Gabriel reached up and pick up a square tile from the top of the frame. He rotated it by opposite corners; one side was plain white; the other was black decorated with a pair of curved triangles in red and grey. With no ceremony the magician located a couple of pegs that stuck out from an edge into holes in the base of the frame and raised it to a vertical position, which covered everything between the mirror and the seat below seat-level. The two triangles turned out to be abstract representations of Annika's lower legs. Once this tile was in place and clipped there by means of a couple of small bolts, a next tile was pulled from the top of the frame. This tile showed a picture of Annika's knees and was soon situated above the previous one and covering a quarter of the remaining area. A third tile, showing Annika's bottom and inclined lower back, was added alongside the second one. The fourth tile, which would have shown her shoulders and head, but had a circular hole covered by some stretchy black fabric, was positioned above the second, hiding Annika's face from view. The final tile, with a picture of Annika's hand was soon completing the picture of Annika's pose and concealing her from view.

"As you can see, you can't see Annika at all, but she is paranoid that someone might see her changing, by opening the doors at the back, because they do not have a latch, so I had to come up with something to sort that out. This is what I worked out."

He leaned down and unclipped the lowest tile and removed it; there were no feet on view in the exposed space. Gabriel slid the tile back into the frame horizontally just below the second tile, so that it continued the seat to the mirror-board. Next he removed the fifth tile and returned it to the top of the frame and pushed the third tile so that it hinged back from its common edge with the second tile. The magician walked round the illusion and slid open the right door and with a little fiddling placed the tile he had grabbed from the top. From behind the illusion he hinged the face file down so that Annika's head pushed through the fabric covered hole. She smiled.

"Now no one can watch Annika changing." He opened the rear sliding doors and rotated the illusion to show all sides of the eighteen inch cube Annika evidently occupied. There were gasps of wonder and a brief scatter of applause and Angelika and Martin entered the performance area; they seemed to think the trick was over and were quite eager to continue the interviewing. Gabriel looked put out, but quickly decided to make the best of this unforeseen interruption.

"That was great," started Angelika, "but isn't it a bit tight in there?"

Annika answered. "Well a bit, but there must be about three times as much room in here as there was in the origami box."

Gabriel picked up the narrative, before either Martin or his co-host could ask another question, "The problem with this configuration is that Annika's head is outside her changing room and the rest of her is inside." He raised the head tile to the vertical as Annika pulled her head back through the hole, and then returned it to being the top of the cube containing Annika, but now without her head outside the box. "Now she can change in peace without fear of being observed."

An experienced cameraman and a bright editor caught the dumbfounded expressions on the two presenters' faces.

Before they recovered from their astonishment and hand emerged from the top of the box holding a piece of white fabric. Gabriel took hold of the cloth and pulled out the dress that Annika had been wearing just minutes before. The hand come out again; this time it handed over the G-string.

"Annika's idea was that she was introduced dressed formally and then used her changing room to get into something more casual." He held up a large T-shirt with the 'Late Night Sexy Show' logo on it. "Would you mind signing it? I'm sure she would be thrilled to have a signed T-shirt. Here I have a marker." He handed the nearly recovered presenters the marker and shirt, which they signed while making a remark about not usually signing items, to forestall the inevitable requests to have lots of other stuff signed.

Gabriel produced a pair of scissors. "Maybe, we could customize it a bit too." Martin made a couple of cuts in the newly signed T-shirt.

The magician tapped on the box and Annika's hand came back out and promptly retreated once handed the T-shirt. Almost immediately he lifted and removed to tile with the covered hole and dropped it on top of the frame, the back face, then the side and front faces soon followed and finally the base of the cube.

Martin was the first to recover. "Where'd she go?"

Gabriel's response was, "I don't know. I have asked, but, like a good magician's assistant, she's not telling." He smiled as he closed the doors at the back of the frame.

He reached for a tile on top of the frame and, as he rebuilt the wall on the front of the frame. With the wall build he enlisted Martin's aid in turning the whole apparatus around. The doors now faced the camera and instantly were pushed open from the inside. The doors had been slid back by Annika, who was now wearing the signed and customised T-shirt. She reached under the seat and put her shoes back on, while Angelica and Martin stated in awed tones how amazed they were.

Annika stood and the extent of the 'customisation' that Martin had performed on the T-shirt became apparent as the weight of the fabric opened the slash he had cut across the upper chest of the garment causing her breasts to become visible; this seemed to please Annika, who did a turn on the spot to show this off. As she turned the cut up the side allowed the hem to swing out affording a glimpse of her neatly trimmed pubic hair.

"So, what is next for Unreal?" asked Angelica.

"Well," said Gabriel, "we have lots of bookings, so we are going to be very busy. But life would be dull if we were doing the same things, no matter how extraordinary, all the time. We want to do some one off illusions as projects to keep our creativity flowing and would like to perform these for you and possibly with help from volunteers from your viewership."

"We'd be glad to have you back," Martin assured them. Turning to the camera he added, "And if any of you, viewers, want to volunteer to be involved in the sexy magic, let us know at the address we'll be giving at the end of the show."

Angelica picked up the presentation baton, "In the meantime, after the break, we talk to Heidi Seeque about the technical problems of that sky-diving sex scene from 'Mile High and No Plane'.

A brief flash of a nude female silhouette was shown with a short burst of saxophone and some heavy breathing. Then the commercials begin.