Magic Short 4: Headless Too.

Merwin was revealed as the curtain opened for her few minutes to impress the judges at the talent contest. She was nervous, but trying not to show it. She stood still waiting for the sound technician to start the CD of music that she had given him to play for her act. She hoped he was a good as his word about switching between tracks when he saw the cues that she had written down for him.

The few moments between the opening of the curtain and the music starting gave the audience time to take in the apparatus set out on the stage. In the centre was a narrow board held up on thin splayed legs; each forward leg held something; the one to the right had a flaming torch mounted in a holder, while the other one had peg from which hung some shiny black fabric. There were a couple of things lying on the board, but at this point it was not obvious what they were. Those high enough in the auditorium to see the stage floor could see a mat laid under the board. To the side and a little forward, was a single legged side table which supported a couple of large glass paperweights.

The music started. Merwin danced to a tinkly version of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. This made her the centre of attention, giving the spectators the chance to conclude that there was nothing special about her or her costume; the dress was a tight white garment that cover her torso, except for the neckline which plunged to base of her breast bone, giving glimpses of the inside edges of her breasts; the skirt part was a little longer than mid-thigh and raised as she span. Her feet wore ballet slippers.

She went to the board and pulled a section out to show a gap. The pulled section had a curved inner edge implying the presence of a circular hole in the board. Toccata and Fugue in D minor by J S Bach boomed out as she picked up a rectangle of metal with a narrow wooden handle on one of the short edges. She demonstrated that the blade fitted into a slot in the section she had removed from the board with plenty of blade length to spare. Merwin separated the two parts and placed then either side of the hole in the board. She ran to behind the board, then ducked under it to be in a kneeling position and rise up to slide her neck into the open section in the front of the board. It took little time for her to fit the section she had removed, trapping her neck through the board.

She reached for the other item on the board. This item consisted of four sheets of metal joined edge to edge in a row. Merwin set these up around her head on top of the board, so that the first three sheets formed the side, back and side of a box; the final sheet she hinged back to close later.

She took up the blade again and located it in the slot that audience knew was its intended home. As the Toccata reached a particularly grumbly part, she used one hand to close the door sheet across her face and then rammed the blade through the slot in the board. She heard the unified intake of breath from the audience as her body twitched.

The music went silent. All was still in the theatre; the audience did not dare to breath. Merwin was relieved to hear In the Hall of the Mountain King begin; she had not shocked the sound engineer enough to make him miss the cue. For the first few notes she stayed as still as she had been during the silence, then she reached to the burning torch and lifted it from its holder. Slowly, she raised the torch until her hands were level with the top edge of the box enclosing her head. She allowed it to angle backward until it was resting on the front of the box. In a sudden movement she dipped the burning head of the torch into the box and returned it to its holder on the leg supporting the board.

If took several seconds for the flames from within the box on the board to become visible, but they were soon raging from the open top of the box. This did not last long, then Merwin reached up to reopen the front of the box. Inside were a few flames licking up the metal walls and nothing else. The magicienne collapsed the box and moved it one side. The only things above board were the folded metal plates that had so recently contain Merwin's burning head.

She reached up and waved her hands through the space where her head should have been. They were clearly not encountering anything solid. She patted out the last of the flames rising from the blade and reached for the cloth hanging from the other front leg of the equipment. Her body displayed both sides of the cloth, before flipping it to drape over the place where her head had been. The cloth did not lie flat across the board, but seemed to come to rest over a shape that was about the right size to be a head.

The music changed once more. As the Blue Danube Waltz began, the shape under the black cloth twitched then rose. Her hands grabbed the corners of the cloth, seeming to take control of the floating of the thing under the cloth. The cloth was lowered in front of Merwin until it was floating in front of her between chest and hip levels. This concealed her shuffling forward on her knees.

Merwin took a step forward, standing in the process. For about half a minute her headless body danced with her head under a cloth floating in front of her hands.

There was a commotion in the audience as someone stood and shouted, "There's nothing under the cloth."

Merwin smiled to herself; she know how much courage it had taken her husband to call this out and had gone to particular lengths with the show's organisers to make sure that he would not be ejected for his planned intervention.

The music stopped. Merwin's dancing stopped. She held herself in a pose that implied the thought of 'How dare he?'

She stomped over to the one-legged table. The magician used the paperweights to anchor the cloth down. She cautiously releasing it from hands and held them over the hump of cloth, as if worried that her head might make an attempt to escape.

Hesitantly, she lifted the front of the cloth to show her smiling face. The audience greeted this revelation with great enthusiasm. She knotted the front corners of the cloth under her chin, before releasing the back corners from under the paperweights. She danced some more as the music resumed.

To finish, she raised the cloth covered head to shoulder-height and stepped under it. She then revealed her whole self, by pulling the black headscarf from her head.

The crowd cheered and whooped. Merwin promised herself that she would give the sound engineer a thank-you hug when she went to retrieve her music CD.