After the Charity Dinner: challenge 1

By Vaughan


I helped Jack load his van by operating the tail lift; I was not dressed for anything more strenuous having dressed up for the charity dinner where I had watched Jack perform some seemingly impossible illusions with volunteers. I climbed into the passenger seat as he climbed in on the driver's side. We set off for his place.

After a short while, during which I assessed his driving skills and found he instilled enough confidence that conversation would not distract, I was considering my opening gambit; "How did you get into magic?" or "Do you often pick up women at your shows?" He pre-empted what I would decide to ask by asking, "What do you want to do first?"

My thoughts were a mess; 'do'? What were the options? Then context reasserted itself; he meant which of the challenges I'd written in the note I had sent to him during the charity dinner we had just left.

"I don't exactly remember the options." I was being honest; who remembers exactly what they wrote on the spur of the moment after a few drinks an hour or so before, especially if you do not expect it to become important.

He retrieved the folded, and now a bit crumpled, note from his pocket and handed it to me. I straightened it out and by streetlight read it.

The note read, "I challenge you to:-
Chop me up into as many pieces as you dare, OR
Run as many sharp objects through me as you dare OR
Squeeze me down as short as you dare OR
Vanish me for a short while
Please do not damage my clothes (even temporarily)
I will donate 1000, if you succeed.
Smiler."

I reread it out loud in the hope that hearing it would give some clue what to do or say next. It did not, so I resorted to the tried and trusted method of decision making, namely, 'Give the responsibility to someone else, so you have someone to blame if it all goes wrong.' What I actually said was, "You're the expert; you decide!"

He said, "OK, I'll do the challenges in the order that makes sense when we get to it. But I must say that they are a bit vaguely worded; like how long is a short while? And how do you know, as the challenger, how many pieces I dare chop you into?"

"I suppose I have left open the possibility that you might want to kill me, put me through a garden shredder and put a cocktail stick through each of the resulting fragments. But I think you wouldn't do that, because my friend knows I'm going home with you."

"I wouldn't do that for many reasons, foremost among which are that I don't have a garden shredder or that many cocktail sticks." I caught his smile by the light of a streetlamp, which were growing rarer as we drove.

"Where are you taking me anyway?" I asked as we were slowing down in an industrial area.

"There," he said as he pressed the button on the key fob dangling from the van's ignition key and pointed with his other hand. I followed the line of his finger and was startled to see a horizontal line of light. As the line grew wider, I realized that I was watching the opening of a shutter door onto a lit area beyond. When the door had opened enough, he drove in and parked. Two presses of the button later the shutter was rolling back down, keeping the night out and cutting off my easiest route of escape.

Jack leapt out of the van and darted in a direction I did not notice.

I called out, "Where are you going?"

He shouted back, "I need to turn off the alarms and check a few things. You can go up the stairs to my office; I'll meet you up there."

I slid down from the cab of the van and looked around for the stairs. Once I got past the van, they were obvious; leading up to a small landing outside a door to an enclosed area. The metal grid steps of the stair were a bit tricky in my heels, but I made it to landing and through the door without incident.

The office was evidently more than that; it seemed to be office/apartment/rehearsal area. In the far corner there was a freight elevator and the rest of that wall was covered by a curtain. At the opposite end of the far wall was a cubicle, which I guessed was a bathroom, of sorts. Flanking it on either side were a kitchenette/dining area and a bedroom area, comprising a wardrobe and a single bed, neatly made. Nearest me was the most office-y bit, which had a small filing cabinet with a printer on top and a high-end looking computer workstation. The only other furniture was a sofa, a coffee table and cabinet on which stood a 48" TV. The remainder of the area was empty wooden floor.

As I had been asked to wait in the office, I sat in the chair at the computer and waited.

I did not have long to wait, as a minute or so later, the elevator grumbled into life and shortly Jack was pulling back the grills and dragging some stuff I could not immediately identify into the area next to the lift.

"Do you want a drink? All I can offer is coffee or orange juice."

"A coffee would be great, black, 2 sugars, please," I replied.

As he moved towards the kitchen he said, "Why don't you make yourself comfortable on the sofa, coz I think we need to work out the rules for doing your challenges."

I went to the sofa and sat and while the coffee was brewing, he came over and placed two coasters on the table. Soon he returned with two steaming mugs of coffee.

I sipped the coffee; it was good. It also did the job of getting rid of the disinhibition caused by the alcohol I had consumed throughout the evening. I was sitting on a sofa with a man I hardly knew about to discuss how he was going to cut me up into lots of pieces and skewer me many ways; was I mad?

My silence and doubts were interrupted when he said, "As I see it with these challenges are worded we have four problems. Namely, what counts as 'as much as I dare'? How long is 'a short while' for the vanish? How do we avoid damaging your clothes? And finally what do we do about the monetary aspect of the challenges?"

"You sound like you have worked out answers to all these, but were hoping I had some of my own answers." He nodded. I continued, "I suppose as you've already paid the charity, I should pay you back for each challenge you succeed at. And the vanish should be at most a couple of minutes, kind of long enough to show I'd vanished before bringing me back, but that might be a bit difficult to prove as I'd be vanished at the time. The other stuff, pfft, I have no ideas."

He leaned back in his corner of the sofa with his coffee mug balanced on his thigh and said, "I thought you might say something like that, so I have these proposals. When it comes to the vanish, I'll video it and show you it afterwards; in fact I'll set the cameras up while I do the prep, so you can see the whole show, because I reckon it'll be pretty hard to tell how short you are while I'm doing it and same to numbers of pieces and sharp things."

I nodded my agreement.

"As each of my illusions has a natural limit of how far it can be taken, I thought if I get to that limit before you think I've gone too far, I win. But I warn you that I have some modifications that may be beyond how far you want to go."

Again I nodded my agreement. I took another sip of the coffee.

"In order not to damage your clothes, I can provide you with other clothes, which you could change into in the bathroom," he said casually pointing to the enclosed cubicle in the corner of the room. "Or you could to do the challenges naked." I took most of my self-control not to spray him with the coffee in my mouth. He smiled and his eyes said, 'I did not think you'd go for that.' He continued, "Or, if you don't think of a few creases as damage, I could change you into a more appropriate costume as part of the first illusion. How does that sound?"

"I may still be a bit tipsy, but you aren't going to get me naked, at least until I know you a lot better, and probably not even then. I like the sound of costume change as part of an illusion, but I get to check the costume beforehand and if the costume is not on properly by the end of the illusion, then that's a fail for the challenge, OK?"

"OK, agreed. And the money part of it I agree to, but at the end I'll make a counter-proposal."

"That sounds like it might be interesting."

"So, how soon do you want to start?" Jack asked.

"How about as soon as we've finished our coffees; the night isn't getting any younger and I'd like to be home in time for at least a few hours sleep."

"Ok," he said getting up and heading for the lift.

"Where are you going?" I asked. "I thought we were going to finish the coffee; which is as good as it is welcome."

"I'm just going to move the rest of the stuff into the lift so you can be choosing your magician's assistant outfit while I set up. I'll only be a couple of minutes." He shut the freight elevator doors and descended from view.

Three minutes later, the elevator whirred into noisy life again. As the lift clanked to a halt, Jack returned through the door, which startled me.

"Sorry, that I startled you, Abigail; Sorry Abi," he double apologised.

"No problem Jack," I replied. "If that's the most surprised I am before I go home my money is safe." I smiled.

He vaulted into his place on the sofa, picked up his coffee mug, took a long appreciative slurp and then smiled back.

I took another sip, then asked, "So, how did you end up as a magician?" because I was not sure I was comfortable with the silence.

"Oh, well, um, I started with a kid's magic kit, like a lot of magicians do. I found I enjoyed it, so I went to the magic store in the city, once I'd saved enough to buy a small sometime. The owner saw I had a joy in doing magic, so he took me under his wing and taught me as much as my pre-teen brain could absorb. He reckoned that when I turned thirteen I was nearly as good as any of the others he had encouraged; some of them work as professional magicians. He gave me a Saturday job, in the shop, demonstrating things to customers and making sales. One Saturday, before opening, he showed me how to operate the guillotine illusion; I must have been fifteen at the time. A few weeks later I borrowed it for the show he allowed me to do after work once a month; I did it wrong and chopped a woman's head off for real, but not knowing any better, I blagged it, as if were a proper part of the trick, and put her head back on. She later told me it was one of the best experiences of her life. My mentor, of course, was totally shocked, but paid for me to go to a school for real magicians, where I learnt how to do 'proper' magic for real and how to conceal the fact that it was real."

"Let me get this straight! You are claiming that you do real magic? So, when Mrs Archer's head seemed to be vanished, it really was vanished?"

"Yes, I am claiming to do magic for real and no, I did not vanish Mrs Archer's head." I raised an eyebrow. "Actually, I made her head invisible and left the arrows visible; it's easier on the volunteer. You may have noticed I didn't pass my hands through the space where her head was; there was a reason for that." I nodded.

I thought for a moment, then I asked the next reasonable question, "How am I going know you vanished me instead of just turning me invisible?"

"Trust me, you'll know, especially when you watch the video," he assured me.

I tried to take another sip of coffee, but the mug was empty. "I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be, when you are," I commented as I place the drained mug in the coffee table.

He drained his mug and slammed it on the table. "Well, I've got some prep to do. While I'm doing that you can pick your outfit to change into." He went over to the freight elevator, opened the gates and pulled out a six foot long rail of costumes. "I guessed at your size, but you should find that everything on the rail will fit," he commented as he drew the curtain from the wall to reveal it hid a wall of floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

A quick inspection showed that he had selected outfits in my size. After some riffling through the selection on offer I chose a little black dress; quite a contrast to the green gown I was wearing from the charity dinner we had been at earlier. As I tried it against my body, jack commented that it would look good on me and suggested I would be needing to select a pair of panties or bikini bottoms, because while the dress had built-in support for my bust it would not prevent me from feeling an intimate breeze. I went back to the rack and found a black lace thong that I thought would be suitable and quite a change from the white satin French-knickers I was wearing.

I held up my chosen dress and underwear, while he bustled about setting up three video cameras to record what happened. "Great, Abi, just lay them on the sofa. By the way, I need you to take your shoes off too, for this one, OK?"

I sat on the sofa and slipped off my heels. As I laid out the dress and under-garment, Jack said, "I'm ready to shrink you."

I looked at the area in front of the mirrored wall flanked by three video cameras on tripods. In the centre of the area was a large clear block of plastic on which had been placed a square wooden tray with a rim less than an inch high; on the mirror-ward edge there was a section missing about six inches wide. The only other item obvious was a sack lying on the floor beside the block.

"Ok, Abi, time for you to check things out."

I looked over the tray and the block and they did not seem to be anything other than what they seemed to be. As I picked up the sack, I asked, "What's the block for?"

"That is so that you don't think I am pushing you through a trapdoor in the floor; which I guess you'd consider to be cheating, despite this floor having no trapdoors."

I turned my attention to the sack; it was red, made of a soft, but opaque, fabric, the top edge, about four feet in circumference, had metal eyes sewn in at even intervals and the bottom was a sewn in leather circle, just short of a foot in diameter. This all seemed pretty standard for a magician's sack, but there were features that I had never seen in a magician's sack before; these were holes with leather surrounds, one pair side by side just above the bag's base and a second pair half way up the six foot length of the bag, one on either side.

"Ok, Jack, I've checked the bag. It seems ok, but what are the holes for? And why is it tapered?"

"The fact it is wider at the top than the bottom is easy to explain; it's because you are wider at the top than at the bottom. The holes are for your toes and fingers, so that you can see you are still there in shrunken form. I don't want you getting the idea that I have partially vanished you. But once you've been vanished for real, you'll know it's never happened to you before."

"So, you want me to get in the bag?" I asked.

He smiled, "Well, yes, but not just yet. Here's something else to inspect," he said, as he took the sack, exchanging it for a stock. "Besides, I reckon you will want to see absolutely every step of the illusion from every angle. So wait 'til I've started the cameras."

The stock was just a thin piece of wood, about a foot square, hinged into two pieces and held shut by a simple catch. Each edge had a set of three hooks along it. "This goes round my neck?" I asked as I opened it up and offered it up to neck.

"Yes," he confirmed, "but for the moment just close it up and rest it against the block. I'll get the cameras started then we can begin."

He pulled a remote from his trouser pocket and zapped the cameras in turn; each showed no change, except a small green LED on the front above the lens started to flash. There was no noise associated with the starting. I was about to query this, when he said, "They're solid state cameras, networked to my computer and I've got enough space that I could keep recording for days, maybe weeks, even when I add in my hand camera, which I shall be doing some close ups with."

"So how do we start?"

"With the formalities." He went and stood in front of the block and beckoned me to stand beside him. He addressed the mirror and said, "I am Jack, the Magician, and I have agreed to a set of four challenges from Abigail, who has agreed to participate in those challenges, details of which have previously been agreed. And these recordings are to help verify the completion or otherwise of these challenges."

"Now Abi, please introduce yourself and mention that you have not been coerced into any of this."

I paused to consider my words. "Hi, I'm Abigail. I have never met Jack before this evening. I challenged Jack to divide me, penetrated me, shrink me and vanish me. I may regret this, but he accepted the challenges and we have agreed how to judge whether he succeeds. I am doing this of my own free will and, I guess, if it comes back to bite me, it's my own fault. OK?"

"OK. Just one more thing. If you think I gone too far, or you don't want to go further, say the word 'Pineapple' and I'll stop and get you out with as much speed as is practical. But it will mean that I won that part of the challenge."

I considered. "'Pineapple'? Got it!"

"Shall we begin?"

"OK, where do you want me?"

"First, help me arrange the bag so that it lies in the tray and will be easy to draw up your body." This did not take long. "Now it's your turn. Step up onto the tray and place your feet so they are just inside the holes at the base of the sack!" I stepped up on the base of the sack and positioned my stockinged feet as instructed. He gathered the front of the bag and held it up at my knee level. "Hold this!" he said offering me the gathered sacking, "While I film you putting your toes through the holes, once my camera is ready. Of course." He picked up the mini camcorder that had been hanging round his neck and press a couple of buttons. "OK, Abi, shuffle forward a bit so that your toes are outside through the holes." As I endeavoured to do this while holding the front of the sack up, he filmed my toes in their stockings exiting the holes in the bag so there could be no doubt that the toes visible to the two cameras in front were my toes.

He drew the whole sack up to waist height and recorded me putting my fingers through the side holes.

"Now for the stock. Hold still and don't allow the bag to obscure your toes or fingers!" He made swift work of fitting the stock round my neck and adjusting my hair so that it was not through the hole. "I hope that's not too uncomfortable," he said as he set it so that one of the diagonals of the square stock was aligned across my shoulders. Then he lifted the back of the sack and hooked it to the rear of the stock. Methodically he hooked the rim of the sack to the stock, until the only visible parts of me were my stockinged toes, my fingers and my head.

"Now, I'm ready to start the shrinking, how would you like to be shrunk?"

"Actually, I'm having second thoughts, but I set the challenge so I will see it through," I replied.

"I think you misunderstood. Which way would like to be shrunk?"

"Now I know I don't understand. I assumed there was only one way."

He considered. "Do you want to be shrunk from the top down, from the bottom up or evenly?"

"I don't know. I, kind of, guessed you'd do it however you wanted. I'm not the expert here."

"In that case, I'll pick evenly; it may not be so easy for me, but it'll be easier on you."

He stood on the floor behind me and rested his hands on the stock round my neck.

"One last question; fast or slow?"

"I think 'slow'; it gives me more time to experience what you do to me and more time to say stop if I don't like it."

"Ok, here goes." He applied a bit of pressure to the stock, but not so much that I felt I needed to resist it.

After about a minute of the gentle pressure, I was about to comment that I had not shrunk much, when I looked in the mirror and noticed that instead of reaching up to place his hands on the stock, his head was now level with mine whereas before the top of his head had been level with my shoulder.

"Hey! You've shrunk me!"

"I thought that was the idea; 'I challenge you to squeeze me down as short as you dare'" he quoted.

"But I didn't feel anything."

"So what were you expecting to feel?"

"I don't know; maybe a feeling of being compressed or some kind of tingling. How should I know?" I countered.

"My experience of what assistants and volunteers report is that cutting produces a tingle or numbness at the site of the cut, vanishing is a warm sensation, penetration is a ticklish, but cool feeling, and shrinking results in a sense of tightness where normal sized bits are directly connected to shrunken bits. That's why I chose to shrink you evenly, because you shouldn't feel too much discomfort as most of your body is the same relative size to it adjacent bits. As you shrink more you will start to feel tight round your neck, your feet and your fingers."

While he talked about the sensations I might be experiencing this evening, he continued to apply the pressure and now the top of my head was level with his shoulder; I was beginning to feel a bit constriction around my neck. By the time, I had been shrunk so that the neck stock was waist height on Jack and my hands a little above his knees, I was noticing that tight feeling at the bases of my toes and fingers.

"How far are you planning to go with this?" I asked.

"As far as I can unless you say the word, in which case I'll stop." He was now leaning down to keep the gentle pressure on the stocks.

"And how far is that?"

"Well, I'm glad you asked, because this is about as far as I can go without a bit of help from you." By this time the neck stock was six inches above the tray; so my head was taller than my body. "If you are willing to go further, I need you to pull your hands into the bag. Of course, if you want out now, I win the challenge and you can change into the outfit on the couch, once I've regrown you."

"Ok, I'll pull my fingers into the bag. Speaking of that, how come it hasn't gone all baggy?" My fingers seemed very heavy as I moved my wrists towards my waist, but once there were in the tight feeling around their bases vanished and they seemed normal again.

He answered my question as he resumed the pressure on my shoulders. "You are not the only thing I'm shrinking; I'm also shrinking the bag, because if I didn't it would sag and hide your fingers and toes."

"I guess that makes sense," I admitted.

Just then, I heard a soft tap as the wood of the stock met the wood of the tray. My entire body seemed to be contained in the inch high gap between the stock and the floor of the tray with my toes sticking out the front. Jack started unhooking the rim of the sack from the stock and tucking into the corners of the tray, before twisting the stock around so that the edges lined up with the edges of the tray. He then went out of sight for a moment, returning with a couple of clamps which he used to secure the stock to the rim of the tray.

"I'm impressed," I grudgingly admitted, "I've seen a lot of magicians compress people, but never down this far."

"Thank you, but I have a little way to go yet."

For a moment that comment went over my much lowered head, then I managed to think of the implications. "You think you are going to shrink my head?"

"Precisely, but if you want me to stop you just say the word, in which case I win the challenge. Or you could let me do it in which case I win the challenge."

"Ok. In for a penny, in for a pound. Or maybe a thousand. Go a-head!" I paused reviewing what I had just said. "Maybe using the word 'head' at this point wasn't as funny as I thought when I said it"

He gave me an indulgent smile, which told me that he thought my pun (?) was as weak as I thought was. I followed his graceful movements, mainly in the mirrored wall, and he brought a trolley on four small casters, the bottom shelf was about ankle high and the top one, at his waist height. He parked this trolley beside the block and asked, "Are you ready for the next stage?"

"I don't reckon I be any readier if we wait."

He stepped behind me and took hold of the handles that clamped the stock to the tray and lifted me clear of the block. I almost looked like a disembodied head on a tray. He took me round to each of the cameras before coming round behind the trolley to give me a view of the evidently solid, wood-effect plastic surface of the upper shelf. He placed my head down gently.

He came round the front and asked, "How are you feeling?" I blinked at him; why would I be feeling anything other than tight around my neck and toes or nervous about the impending head shrinking. "It's just that some people feel nauseous from being moved about in a manner they can't control."

"Not me," I assured him, "I am a bit of a roller coaster junkie, when I can. It was thrilling."

"OK, I'll just be a minute tidying up. You'll be alright there?"

"I'm sure I'll be fine. It's not like I could go anywhere; even if I wanted to."

As he fetched a lower trolley and heaved the block onto, he said, "I do seem to have you in a bit of a helpless position, but you agreed to it and you should be calmed by the fact that your friend, Linda, knows who you left with and that I need to prepare for another gig in a couple of days."

My feeling was that I liked Jack, was enjoying his company and he had behaved like a near-perfect gentleman so-far.

The block was rolled to the edge of the area covered by the cameras, then he moved the trolley to the place that had been occupied by the block.

"Now to start the costume change." He announced.

"What does that entail? 'Coz I don't think I could remove anything in my confined state. And I don't think you ought to touch anything I'm not going to let you look at."

He used his camera to take a photo of my toes sticking out of the tray in their stockings, just three inches below my nose. His next move was to hook his finger around the strip of leather that separated the two holes in the bag from which my toes emerged and pull.

As he dragged the six-foot sack through the one inch tall hole, over my toes, I could feel the rub of the soft cloth as it descend down my body. It took me a few seconds to realise that the sensation was unmediated by my clothes; I had not only had my body shrunk to less than an inch, but now I was naked too; it seemed a small relief that only way to view my nudity was passed my toes. I felt naughty in a sexy way, like you might if you flashed someone, when they were not looking and there was only the minimal danger of them turning round and catching you. Soon I felt one of the rings that had been hooked to the stock pass under the sole of my left foot. Moments later the top of the bag dropped off my, now bare, toes.

He quickly took another picture of my toes so that I could not quibble that the toes that had started out were not the same set of toes there now. I think he may have been taking this challenge thing a bit more seriously that I had intended; but then I had had much to drink that evening and a single mug of coffee would not counteract all the wine.

He turned his attention to the sack, first picking it back up to show me that it was the sack I had started the illusion in. Then he fished around in the bag and drew out my green gown. "Is this the dress you were wearing when you arrived here?"

"Yes. But how?"

"Easy really. When I shrunk you I did not shrink the dress so that it just fell off you, but I had to wait until your hands were inside or your arms would have been in the way of it falling down."

"I see," I said not entirely sure I did see. "That would explain why when you pulled the bag out I could feel it brushing down my skin."

"Yes, and it explains these stockings." Waving them before draping them over my dress. "It also explains the bra." My strapless bra, still done up, duly made its appearance from the bag. "But I'll tell you that the panties were more difficult."

"How come?" I asked as my French knickers made their appearance on the pile of clothes over his arm.

He walked over to the sofa and carefully laid them along its back. "Well, if I'd just let you shrink inside them you the gap between your legs would have been too small to allow them to fall, so  I had to shrink the middle and expand the outside to get it to work right; it took a lot of concentration."

"I guess it would," I said to express some appreciation of the effort he was going to to make shrinking me a smooth and pleasant experience.

"Now it's time to make you even shorter."

He reached into his jacket pocket brought out some wraparound sunglasses, but unlike most they had clear lenses. Jack then fitted these to my face, one-handed, while recording everything with the hand held camera. I was a little nervous at first, in case he poked me in the eye, but with magicianly dexterity and not a touch out of place, he had them fitted in place.

"What's with the glasses?" I asked. "They're stylish, I guess, but how do they help you shrink my head? Won't they just fall off when my head gets smaller?"

"Just wait and see!"

The next thing he dragged from his pocket was a rubber skull cap, a bit like a plain swimming cap, which he soon fitted on my head so that everything above the glasses was covered. After that he wrapped all the exposed parts below the wraparounds with a soft crepe bandage. The only bits of me left visible were my toes, my nose and possibly my eyes.

He did another shot with his hand camera where he took pictures of me from all angles, until he was behind me for the second time. I heard the click of him stopping the camera, then began to feel him pressing on my scalp through the rubber cap; it felt quite relaxing, particularly after the strain of worrying about what was happening to me.

"You've got good fingers, Jack. But then I suppose I should expect that of a magician. That feels quite good"

"That's good, because it would need to be good or you would be feeling something quite unpleasant."

As he stopped rubbing my scalp through the rubber of the cap, I had a bit of a think about what he had said. I soon realized the unpleasant sensation he was speaking of. I could feel a tightness across my forehead and round my head just above my ears; it was like a benign headache, if such a thing was possible. When I moved from introspection to looking in the mirror I got a shock.

"What have you done with the top of my head, Jack?" I had looked in the mirror I faced and saw nothing above the top of the glasses.

"I squeezed it down the just below the glasses," he said matter-of-factly.

"Oh." There was not a lot more I could say. "How tall does that make me now?"

"Um, at a guess about 5 or 6 inches, but I still have a little way to go."

He placed his left hand spread across the top of my head, although it looked like it looked like it was spread across the top of the wraparounds on a pile of crepe bandage. He started to unwind the bandage, while applying the familiar amount of pressure to my scalp. As the crepe unwound the glasses sank towards the stock, until my nose touched the stock and the bandage was gone.

"You're down to just over three inches now. Do you want to go the last half inch?"

"It depends," I said. "Will it make it easier to get me back to my usual five foot eight? 'Coz you've definitely won this challenge." Then a thought crossed my mind, "unless, of course, I don't come out of this properly dressed in my selected outfit." I tried to smile but the twin tightnesses around my head, above and below the glasses stopped me.

"Truthfully, it won't make much difference, except if I don't do the last half inch, I need to be a lot more precise with the restoration, which will take less time with you squashed down. And I feel sure you don't really want to stay compressed any longer than necessary, right?"

"In that case you had better do it. In fact, you have just admitted that you dare flatten me another bit and I haven't said the 'P'-word, so carry on or fail the challenge." I felt I might be being a bit unreasonable, but I did not really want to give him the thousand I would owe him if he succeed.

"Ok," he confirmed and went to fetch the next piece of equipment. This turned out to be a board the same size as the tray and the stock and a set of four adjustable clamps. The board he placed over the upper rim of the glasses and the clamps he applied to each corner to hold the board to the tray. Next he released the clamps that held the stock to the tray; the stock rose a millimetre and pressed harder against my nose. He reached in, into the gap between the stock and the board, to undo the catch on the stock, then with a bit of manoeuvring extricated the stock.

He said, "I hope that will be a bit more comfortable."

I check my tightness levels and the tightness at my neck was nearly gone, so the only major tightness was above and below my eyes and round my toes. "Maybe, a bit," I conceded.

"Are you set for the last bit?"

"Could you stop asking if I'm ready? I'd use the 'P'-word if I wasn't ready. Just keep me informed of what you're doing, then get on with it unless I ask a question or say I want out, got it?"

"Yeah, got it. So here goes." With that he started adjusting the clamps at the back of the board and then ones at the front. After a few such adjustments, I realised I could now see my toes and another few adjustments later the edge of the tray.

"That's your lot. I can't squeeze you down any further."

I looked out at the mirror and all I could see on the trolley top was a tray with some toes and a pair of wraparound glasses under a board. "Can I have a better look?"

He came round the front and pointed the lens of the handicam at me and when he was satisfied with the alignment, he turn the little build-in display so I could see. There was not much to see really; my toes, with my nose resting between them, topped with the glasses through which I watched my eyes widen as took in the view of my pressed condition.

"That looks weird." Then I realised that 'that' was me. I corrected myself, "I look weird. How short am I, at the moment?"

He soon produced a ruler, which he offered up to the space between tray and board. "I make that two and a half inches, that's sixty-three millimetres. And I can't squeeze you any more without mucking up your eyeballs or you disappearing completely. So, I reckon it's time to restore you to your normal size." He paused for a moment, then smiled and added, "Of course, there is an ulterior motive for this. At this size you'll be a lot more difficult to poke lots of sharp things through or cut into a large number of pieces."

With that reminder of some of the 'fun' (?) I had to look forward to, he moved the trolley aside and brought in the centre of the camera arena a tall cabinet with paper panels for sides. These he quickly removed and stacked together at the rear of the six foot frame.

"What's that for? And why is it so big compared to my current state?"

"This is the cabinet I usually use to bring back an assistant that I have vanished, shadow box style, but I am going to use it to perform your decompression and dressing in one go, so it needs to big enough to hold the full size you, until I let you out. I still have a little prep to do, so bear with me."

With nothing better to do and not thinking of anything to say, I watched his preparations; he even turned the trolley a bit so I could see what he was doing directly rather than via the mirror.

He got a needle and thread and retrieved the outfit from the sofa. Using the needle he quickly tacked lengths of thread to the top edge of the dress at the front and the back. More lengths of thread were tacked in placed at waist height; these went through the fabric and also held the thong in place inside the dress. The upper threads were tied to the top of the frame holding the dress in the middle. Then the lower threads were tied to the uprights, which held the dress straight. He then got my shoes from under the coffee table and placed them on the floor of the cabinet.

He turned to me and lifted the tray from the trolley and placed it on top of the cabinet, making some adjustment to the rear clamps in the process. He then busied himself in replacing the paper panels on the frame; the last one being the one that hid the dress from the mirror.

He took hold of the front clamps in front and said, "Decompression in three... two... one." He pulled the clamps away. What followed happened too fast to properly register; I felt I was falling and growing at the same time and less than a second later I was in the dress and panties and hit my shoes. The speed at which I landed in my shoes tilted me forwards and I stumbled out of the cabinet through the front paper screen and snapped the threads supporting the dress. I took three steps before I got control of my momentum.

I turned to Jack who was smiling broadly. "Challenge one completed," he said.

"Not so fast, I need to check I am properly dressed. And I need to use your bathroom, because having my bladder squeezed after all I've drunk tonight just means I need to go."

I retreated to the bathroom cubicle, checked my state of dress and used the loo.

I emerged and grudgingly admitted that he had completed the challenge.

"I also feel quite good, in a sexy sort of way, not just some sort of adrenalin buzz from having survived being squashed to less than three inches tall."

"That's good," he said, as if not sure what to make of the comment.

"Did you know that your magic makes people feel good? Everyone I spoke to at the charity dinner said that they felt good, even if they were horrified by what you had done to them."

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I knew that there was some kind of pleasure effect with the magic or volunteers would probably be mentally scarred by the things I do, but I didn't think that it went as far as making it a nice experience."

"Well, the volunteers I spoke to seem to agree that they were terrified by the experience, but in hindsight the memory of the illusions were pleasant."

This seemed to be a revelation to Jack, and he was thinking about it.

After thirty seconds I said, "So, what's next?"