Intimate Illusions 1: The Screen

It was my birthday, but I had to go to work (looming deadline and all hands to the pumps, you know the kind of thing). Before I went to work my wife said that she had organised a surprise for me that evening, so I returned home anticipating a beautiful meal or perhaps going out to see a show or a movie.

When I got home I was shooed upstairs to change into something comfortable and then fed steak, chips and mushrooms (a personal favourite), but I was surprised that we ate in the kitchen (on special occasions we usually eat in the dining room).

"Lovely meal, Love," I complimented my wife. She smiled. "But a beautifully cooked meal by you is not exactly a surprise; you're a wonderful cook."

She smiled again. "That isn't the surprise. The surprise is in the living room. I hired a magician to do a bit of a show for you, because I know you're really into magic."

"Has he brought an assistant? 'Coz you know while I appreciate the skill of sleight of hand, it doesn't excite all that much."

"No," she said. My face must have fallen, because she quickly added, "I'm going to be the assistant and your present afterwards."

"How long have you been planning this? And how long did you have to rehearse?" I asked.

"Oh, I've had it organised for months now, but they said I wouldn't need to rehearse, but they did send me a CD to listen to, which they said would help me. I listened to it, but I only remember the whale-song at the beginning and it telling me to wake up at the end."

"Do you need to change into a costume or something?"

"No, I'll be wearing this. The magician picked it out from my wardrobe." I looked and she looked wonderful in the white satin blouse with the slight ruffle either side of the buttons down the front; un-buttoned far enough to show a hint of cleave. Her black skirt reached to mid-calf. Her legs were bare down to her feet in a low-ish heeled sandals.

She took me through to our living room/dining room which had been substantially re-arranged. Most of the furniture had been stacked at the dining room end. The exceptions were an arm chair facing the dining room end and the dining table had been moved close to the wall near the chair. In the middle, between the stack of furniture and the armchair, stood a bar-stool, of the pad on a single pole type, and a small folding table that you might use for playing cards, set to the side a little. Directly in front of the stool and the table was a box, long and narrow set on the floor crosswise and just in front of the furniture stack was a big lamp on a stand pointing towards the chair. On the dining table was a stack of boxes of various sizes. On the stool sat a man in a well-fitting dark suit; he seemed to be in his mid-forties and would easily pass as a bank manager or something similar.

"This is our magician, Darling; he's called Derek. Derek, this is my husband."

"Pleased to meet you. I hope you will enjoy the magic I am going to perform on you wife." There was a pause during which I reached out and shook hands with Derek, but did not feel I had anything to say. "Shall we crack on?" continued the magician. "The sooner the magic is done the sooner you will get your presents." He indicated the boxes stacked on the dining table. He made a gesture inviting me to check them out. A quick inspection revealed they were all empty and open.

"They're empty," I commented.

"That's because I haven't packed the presents. I just need to set up a few minor things and then I can do that. If you'd take a seat and your wife can wait beside you until I'm ready for her."

His preparations did not take long. They consisted of pulling up the top of the crosswise box up to reveal a projection screen with a folding mechanism to hold it up and plugging in the lamp where the TV was usually plugged in. The lamp lit casting the shadows of the stool and fold-up table on the screen. He picked up two boxes; a small flat square one and a long one. These he took behind the screen and placed on the table.

"Mrs Jones, I'm ready for you now. Please come round that side of the screen and sit on the stool facing the screen." The indicated side was the side away from the table.

My wife went behind the screen looking a little uneasy and was soon sat on the stool.

"Please wave at your husband with your left hand and then put it out at an angle towards me."

My wife complied and once her arm was extended out to the side, the magician leant forward and took hold of the hand and then let go. "Oops, I forgot to ask you to undo your cuffs. Please would you do that, then put out your hand again."

When her arm was extended again, it was evident from the shadow cast that her cuffs were now loose about her wrists.

The magician reached forward again and appeared to turn my wife's hand over several times, which in the normal run of things would be impossible, but I am aware that done correctly such an illusion can be created with shadows. He then seemed to pull on my wife's arm and it seemed to get longer. This action was accompanied by a gasp from my wife.

"Are you alright, Darling?" I enquired.

"Well, I'm not sure," she said. She looked down at her arm and then up at the magician. "It looks like Derek is pulling my arm out of my sleeve."

From my side of the screen it looked like that too. The bend of her elbow seemed to be at the cuff and the bit of sleeve between her shoulder and where her elbow had been seemed to sag. Part of my mind was scrambling to find a 'normal' explanation, while another part was taking the 'magic' at face value; they were not arguing with each other, because they were both more interested in seeing what happened.

The magician reached forwards his other arm to support the emerged elbow until the arm, entire but unattached, was free of the sleeve, which sagged to my wife's side. He rested the apparent arm on the shadow of the longer box on the table.

"Mrs Jones, please try to move the fingers of your left hand."

My wife looked down at the cuff that hung against her hip and then towards the seeming detached limb on the table. The fingers at the end of the detached arm wriggled. She made a noise that indicated that she was a little spooked by this.

Derek picked up the loose arm with his hand round the fore-arm just beyond the wrist. He asked my wife to bend her elbow and hold it bent and to spread her fingers. The arm below his hand bend where I imagined the elbow should be and the fingers spread. The magician turned the spread hand relative to the bent arm and then pulled the whole hand away by pulling on the middle finger.

The detached hand he placed standing on its wrist on the smaller square box on the table. Then, having asked my wife to straighten her arm, he seemed to place the arm in the long box and went through the motions of tying a ribbon round it. Next he opened the smaller box, placed the hand in that box and tied a ribbon round that.

He leaned towards my wife and took up the apparently empty sleeve of her blouse and tied a knot in it, high enough that it held the rest of the sleeve out from my wife's body. She moved her shoulder and the sleeve swung a bit.

The magician picked up the two boxes from the table behind the screen and brought them out to the dining table. He placed beribboned boxes and picked another two of the same dimensions.

When he returned behind the screen, he put the boxes down. Then he reached down to the seat of the stool, which he appeared to rotate with my wife aboard. As I got the side view, there was nothing evident to show my wife was hiding the supposedly removed limb about her person.

After what seemed to be one and a half turns, the magician repeated the arm removal procedure; packing the detached parts in the boxes and knotting the freshly emptied sleeve so that it hung away from my wife's torso. The boxes were soon tied with ribbon and returned to the dining table.

He took back another two boxes; a thicker long box and one like a shoe box. Once behind the screen, he rotated the stool again; I could not tell where my wife's arms were hidden and I could not believe that they had been removed either. This time the rotation ended with my wife facing towards the magician.

At a gesture from the magician my wife raised a foot and he removed the shoe, then he reached up to place it on top of the screen. As I watched he turned my wife's foot so that it was pointing down while her knee was still pointing up. After a couple of more turns the foot detached and the magician placed it on the shoe-box sized box.

He returned his hands to my wife's footless shin, giving it a twist and a tug. Soon the knee of the leg was visible at the hem of her skirt. Derek asked that she flex her knee. When she did the skirt hem slid down her thigh and came to rest in the position it had been in before she had raised her leg. In the magician's hand was a detached leg. My wife was asked to re-straighten her leg and it was placed in the longer box on the table. The two boxes were soon decorated with ribbons and brought out from behind the screen and placed with the other ribbon-tied boxes.

Derek took a matching pair of boxes back to the other side of the screen and repeated the process of removing a leg from my wife. This resulted in two more ribbon bedecked boxes and more surprisingly the shadow of the skirt seemed to hang as a narrow line from the front of the stool, showing a complete absence of legs. The silhouette on the stool was just the profile of a head and torso; there seemed no place to hide the shadows of the missing limbs.

Derek returned to the far-side of the screen and seemed to be asking something of my wife; I could hear the tone, but not the words. She nodded.

The magician turn the torso on the stool a couple more times, as if he knew how sceptical I was that what appeared to be happening was the truth of the matter. I saw no clues as to how my wife could be hiding her arms and legs from casting a shadow on the screen. This rotation ended with my wife facing towards or away from the screen, I could not tell. The magician reached forward and towards her hip, then I heard the sound of a zip being pulled and saw the edge of the waistband of the skirt at that side sag a little. Then he reach for her neck as if he was cupping her jaw and the base of her skull and appeared to lift head and torso a short way. The effect was that the unzipped skirt slipped from my wife's hips and the fabric that had hung from the front of the stool pulled the rest of the skirt from the top and it fell to the floor.

Derek held the silhouetted remains of my wife above the stool for a few more seconds before lowering them back to rest on the pad of stool. These few seconds were long enough for me to notice the band of light that had formed between the bottom of my wife's torso and the top of the stool; this allowed me to discount the possibility that her legs were somehow hidden in the pad of the stool, which had seemed to be of a size that would have failed to hide much anyway.

The magician bent down and crossed the screen carrying the skirt that had so recently been about my wife's hips. He emerged from that side and hung the garment on the edge of the screen. He crossed in front of the screen and picked a pair of empty boxes from the dining table. He went back behind the screen and placed these boxes on the card table and began to turn the stool and my truncated wife some more.

This time she finished facing him and he leant forward and judge by the shadows began unbuttoning her blouse. Once unbuttoned, he turned her to face the other way and then took the blouse with its knotted sleeves from the silhouette. He brought the blouse round front and hung it in the edge of the screen, opposite the skirt.

Back behind the screen he unhooked my wife's bra, before turning her to face him and removing it. He hung the bra on the edge of the table. He seemed to take some time to adjust my wife to his liking so that the shadow of her breast was maximised and the erectness of the nipple was obvious. The magician then placed his hand so that the breast was lifted by the fingers of one hand and the other hand touched her near the collar bone and peeled the breast from her chest. My wife gave a gasp and whispered something to the magician. He balanced the detached breast on his hand and tweaked the nipple which seemed to become stiffer as she drew in a breath that I recognise as indicating some level of enjoyment.

The breast was packed into one of the boxes and the procedure repeated with the other breast. The boxes were brought out and placed on the table.

There were three boxes remaining on the table that had not been used. These the magician stacked and took back behind the screen. He placed the stack on the floor in front of the stool, so I could only see the top edge of the largest box with the other two on top. He then picked up the smallest of the boxes from the top of the pile and put that on the table.

The magician turned his attention back to my wife. He raised his knee and rested that against the pad of the stool. He then reached out an arm and place his fingers on top of my wife's head. The hand on top of her head made a turning motion which was evident in that the head seemed to turn, but the shoulders seemed to remain in side view; she made a 'whoa' type noise that I took to show she found this a little disorientating, rather than a desire to stop. Soon my wife's profile was visible where the back of her head had been and vice versa. The magician then reached forward with both hands and lifted the head silhouette from the shoulders. He took a few steps backward before lowering the head shadow onto the shadow of the box on the table. It seemed that my wife's head was looking at her de-limbed and de-breasted body; her expression seemed to change to show shock or surprise.

The magician returned to the knee against stool pose and rotated the shoulders to face backward while the hips remained in place. He leant down and lifted the large box and positioned it so that lay on his thigh and against the hips. He put a hand out and toppled my wife's upper torso into the box, before closing it and balancing it on the hips that were still on the stool. More ribbon was applied to the box and it was quickly added to the growing pile on the table.

Back behind the screen, it seemed to take very little time for the magician the pack the hips in the remaining box, tie it with ribbons and place it among the other boxes on the dining table.

He went behind the screen and turned the head shadow so that she faced the dining table and the picked up some cloth, which turned out to be our best table cloth. With the skill of much practise, he swiftly threw the cloth over the pile of ribbon-tied boxes, as the cloth settled it seemed settle directly on the surface of the table, with no evidence of the boxes under the thick velvet. Almost as soon as it had settled, the magician pulled it away again, show the table to be as bare as it had seemed under the cloth.

Returning to the other side of the screen the magician put my wife's head in the box on which it had been resting and more ribbon tying followed. His next move surprised me. He switched off the lamp that had been casting the shadows and lowered the screen, causing the blouse, skirt and shoes to fall off. The only apparent change to the scene behind the screen was the addition of a head-sized box on the card table.

"Thank you, for watching this performance, Mr Jones. And here is the second part of your birthday present from your wife." He picked up the box and stepped over the screen-box and handed it to me. "She said that you should take it upstairs to the bedroom and open it there, while put this place back the way it was and let myself out."

Not being one to ignore a request from my wife, I took the box upstairs, where I found a pile of other boxes strewn on the bed. I set about untying and opening the box I had brought with me. Inside was my wife's head; she was smiling.

"Wow! That was some show. What happens now?"

"Whatever you like my darling. But I know what I'd like to happen," she said.

"And that would be?"

"I would love for you to make love to me, while I'm in pieces and then put me back together in the morning before you go to work."

I pulled her head from the box and kissed her deeply, only breaking off briefly to tell that she was a wonderful wife. What happened after that is none of your business.