Monica and Keisha volunteer again

Sam the Superb was not exactly living up to his billing, because while he did the usual stuff with great competence, he failed to add that extra sparkle, his assistant while pretty lacked some of the charisma that might have made up for Sam's lack of whatever it was that would have taken the performance to that extra level. His two black-clad stage hands were not helping either as they were often late with props and on one occasion got in the way of the performance of the trick. Still Sam soldiered on as the audience watching the show from the seating arranged before a make-shift stage in the park dwindled.

"For my final illusion,"; before he could continue there was some derisive cheers from a bunch of lads occupying the rearmost row of seats. "I shall need the help two young ladies from the audience, who know each other well." Some slightly more positive cheers at the prospect of seeing some more pretty faces on stage.

Sam looked at his sparse audience. 'Slim pickings,' he thought. 'I hope I can get those two girls in the second row to volunteer, they look just right.'

Out loud he said, "Would you two mind volunteering?"

They looked at each other and simultaneously shrugged and rose to accept being volunteered, seemingly with a good grace and a light heart.

The magician Sam encourage the remains of the audience to show their appreciation for his two young lady volunteers, while his assistant went to guide them to the stage.

They were soon stood either side of Sam and he asked them to prove that they knew each other quite well by introducing each other.

The white girl introduced her friend as Keisha, a student at the local university studying law in her second year, then the black girl introduced Monica as also a student studying marketing and her flat-mate. The lads at the back seemed more interested in their T-shirts and jeans and trainers, which flattered the curves on both women.

Introductions made, Sam commented that they were not quite attired for helping out with the magic he had planned, and offered them the option of going off-stage and changing there or changing on stage with the help of some magic. His volunteers noticed that he seemed to really want them to choose changing by magic; presumably because if there was any more lull in the show he would probably lose what little audience remained.

"We'll go with changing here, so long as we aren't going to end up in only our underwear or less," said Monica, confident that she spoke for Keisha too.

While Sam arranged the two friends back-to-back with their hand holding and their fingers interlaced, Sam's assistant, Debbie, brought out a pair of large hoops connected by a tube of fabric. When the volunteers were positioned to Sam's satisfaction, he and Debbie lowered the rings over Monica and Keisha. The top ring was raised to above the girl's head-height and, after a token amount of shaking, lowered again.

The girls felt that something had changed, so while holding the pose they had be put in, they looked around to see what had changed. The discovered at about the same time as the audience noticed that their lower garments had been changed. Monica, who had been wearing black jeans, was now wearing blue trousers that sparkled in the later afternoon sun; what the audience was not privy to was that she was now bare-foot and the leg of the trousers that they could not see was sparkling red. Keisha on the other hand while also bare-foot, seemed to be wearing red sparkly trousers, although the audience did not notice that the leg away from them was clad in blue sparkly fabric.

A brief moment was allowed for applause, then Sam said that he had not allowed quite enough time for the complete costume change, so he and his assistant raise the curtain again and almost immediately dropped it. The volunteers were revealed to be wearing red and blue tops that contrasted with the trousers. It soon became apparent that the costumes were not separate pieces but each a single garment from ankle to neck and down to each wrist.

It was now time to turn the audience's attention to the cabinets that the stage hands had brought onto stage. Each cabinet appeared to be the same standing on a base-board with several wheels. On top of the crude wooden boxes was another board supporting what could only be a head box. The crate-like wooden section seemed to be held together by numerous clips; the ones down the centre at the front were open. The only other obvious features were four holes; two at the base of the crate and the other pair a little over half-way up; the obvious function of these was feet and hand holes. The stage hands tugged on the sides of the crates and a gap opened up in the middle of the apparatus.

"If you ladies would step into the boxes then we can begin the process of amazing the rest of the audience, who have been good enough to stick around for the finale."

Keisha eyed the boxes with an uncertain demeanour, but Monica was soon sliding her body into the gap between the separated halves of the illusion, ducking under the edge and raising her head through a hole in the top board so she was facing out of the head box. Keisha not wanting to seem less courageous than her friend climbed into the other box.

The boxes were moved closer to the front of the stage and the audience invited to move closer, so that they not miss any of the wonder that they were promised would soon follow.

The sides of the crates were pushed together and the volunteers asked to put their hands and toes through the hand and foot holes. It was also revealed that there were some holes that showed the legs and chests of the friends, which showed that each had left leg matching right chest and right leg matching left chest. The cabinets were turned and more holes opened to show that the mismatched nature of the costumes was not only top-to-bottom and left-to-right, but also front to back.

Most of the audience had moved up to the first couple of rows and as they turned their attention back to the stage, they saw the stage hands bringing on two trolleys supporting some very large blades. Sam stepped forward and gave his final instructions to the volunteers. "You should feel nothing unpleasant through this illusion, but if you do, call out and we will fix things. Otherwise please be quiet and enjoy the ride."

There was a tapping noise as each stage hand demonstrated the solidity of the blade he was about to transfer to Sam or Debbie. The audience could not see much because the magician and his assistant seemed to be inserting the big blade through the back of the crate. The volunteers could see less because the only open face of the head-boxes was the front facing the audience. They both briefly felt something pressing against their spines, but that went away in no time. The audience saw the edge of the blade emerge from between the sides of the cabinets wooden halves. As they applauded this development, the stage hands supplied a second blade each to magician and assistant and the edge of this soon emerged next to its partner. Neither volunteer felt anything, but they heard the scrape of metal on metal.

A third blade was held up by the stage hands were much smaller and when Sam took his, he inserted into the base of the head box from the side, where it seemed wide enough to cover the full depth of the box, but only long enough to cover half the box's width. Debbie followed the same procedure. Monica and Keisha did not seem to notice that they had been half decapitated.

With the help of the stage hands, the sides of the crates, that matched the side the neck semi-blades were inserted, were pulled away from the other side leaving a gap that the magician and his assistant could squeeze through; which they did. In the meantime the stage hands brought forward a couple of low platforms and transferred the separated halves to them. Acting on instructions the friends waved and twitched their hands and feet, which the audience could see were sticking out of separated boxes. After a turn to show the exposed sections of costume at the back, the removed sections were each returned to between the boards of one of the cabinets, but judging by the fact that thigh-windows showed matching colour, they had been return to the wrong cabinet. This was further confirmed when the audience realised that each cabinet was showing a black hand and foot and a white hand and foot. While this realisation was dawning, the blades were removed from the cabinet and a great deal of clipping and unclipping of catches was happening.

The next blades to be offered up to the cabinets, after Sam had given his volunteers an few encouraging words about how great they were doing and that they had passed the first stage of the test. Keisha had asked how many stages there were to the test, but was politely ignored.

These blades were inserted from the volunteers left side to out the right side of their respective cabinets. And an extra half neck blade was put into the back of the head box. Soon the audience could see the openings in the backs of the cabinet and when the cabinet backs had been replaced, a complete rotation of the cabinets told those that were paying proper attention that the back halves of the cabinets had been swapped. The dividing blades soon went the way of the previous set, back to the trolleys. And then there was another round of clipping and unclipping.

The last set of blades took both performer and stage hand to insert, because they went in horizontally just below where the mismatched hands stuck through the hand-holes. Whether to speed up the procedure or for some other reason, the two blades were pushed through each cabinet together.

The lower halves of the cabinets were manoeuvred on to the transport platforms and rotated to show that all parts of the lower half of the costume match, despite the feet that poked out the front not matching. Finally the inevitable swap was completed and the blade pulled free, followed by still more clipping and unclipping of catches.

Once the sides of the cabinets were far enough apart the volunteers were invited to exit the cabinets, to be greeted by the audience's enthusiastic applause. Soon Monica and Keisha realised that their previously quartered costumes were now completely the same colour; Monica in blue and Keisha in red. It took them a little longer to discover that neither had matching hands or feet.

Sam soon ushered them into the costume changing ring, while the stage hands moved the cabinets and blades out of sight. He soon had them back-to-back, as before, and with Debbie's help raised the rings for a short period, that probably amounted to the total of the previous two times. When the hoops were lowered, both girls were back in their clothes. And it was evident that the mismatching went a lot further than just hands and feet; each woman had a black arm and a white arm, also their jeans had been rolled up to expose more mismatched flesh at ankle and shin. The clincher was that each of them had a corner of the opposite coloured skin just below their neck and down to the low neckline of the T-shirt.

Sam announced the end of the show and told the volunteers that he had better get them back to normal. After a quick glance between themselves, they agree that while being piebald was cool on a temporary basis, it was not something that they wanted to be a permanent thing.