Magic Shorts: She Lost Something

"I need a volunteer from the audience to experience something unique," called the magician. His four assistants were on stage. The most of the active of them was the one who had opened the show by participating in a guillotine illusion and now her head hung in front of her chest supported by her braids tied together behind the stump of her neck. Another was sitting beside herself on a bench; her lower half fidgeting by crossing and uncrossing it legs, while her upper half sat three feet away resting on her severed waist. Stacked in the front corners of the stage were four open-fronted boxes containing the sections of a third unfortunate assistant. The fourth assistant had been a leggy blonde, but now pestered the upper half of the halved woman for treats in the form of a small white terrier.

Given the "mishaps" that had befallen his assistants, it was unsurprising that the response from the audience that at the start of the show might have contained dozens of potential volunteers was so thin.

"You, miss, in the fourth row, please come and join me on stage." The magician picked out the only member of the audience with her hand up. He would have much rather have chosen the taller and more slender red-neck in the purple dress sitting next to her, but the brown-haired girl in the orange sweater and glasses would have to do.

The volunteer rose and the girl next to her tried to stop her. The volunteer said, "It may be my only chance to get up there and find out what is really going on." She pushed by a tall skinny guy and an ugly lady in a grey dress to reach the aisle.

The volunteer arrived on stage, pausing having climbed the steps to get a good look at the legs and upper torso of the assistant who had been partly stacked there. There was the usual round of introductions, then the assistant wearing her head as a necklace brought the beginnings of whatever the magician had planned for the volunteer.

The first item the assistant handed to the magician was a bundle of straps. "Would you mind putting this on please," the magician asked handing the volunteer the straps.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's a kind of chest harness. You can put it on over your sweater and I'll adjust it so that it fits. It may seem a bit tight once that's done, but it is necessary to do the trick safely."

The volunteer looked at the halved assistant sitting on the bench and received a half smile, which she thought was meant as encouragement to go with the flow. She took hold of one strap and dropped the rest. The bundle resolved itself into a cupless bra; a strap for the base of the ribs, shoulder straps and narrower straps going between them. She shrugged and then put her arms through the shoulder straps and nestled the chest strap against her ribs under her breasts. The magician took the loose ends of the chest strap and buckled them. The volunteer discovered that he was very serious about his use of the word tight. He next adjusted the shoulder straps, pulling them tight; in the process he revealed the bust that had been hidden under the bagginess of the sweater.

The volunteer was asked to do a turn so that the audience could see that there was no funny business with what she wore.

The headless assistant handed the magician a second set of straps, which he passed on to the volunteer explaining that it was meant to go round her hips then he would adjust it to fit properly. This bundle seemed a belt from which hung, by pairs of adjustable straps from either side, to smaller belts which were connected by a smaller non-adjustable strap.

"How do I get this on?" the volunteer asked.

"Hang it by belt piece, so that the buckle will be behind you and put your feet through the smaller loops and pull it on like a pair of shorts, then I can do it up and adjust it a bit."

Sceptical of the point of this, the volunteer held the harness as suggested and put her Mary Janes through the lower loops. She drew them up her legs held out so as not to lift her mini skirt and then settled the waist strap against where the waist of her skirt was under her sweater. The magician went about tightening the straps until the belt was very tight and straps round the volunteer's thighs were at the same level as her skirt's hem. The connecting straps between the thigh and waist belts were adjusted to lie up the front and back of her thighs holding her skirt in place.

The assistant handed the magician two metal rods and left the stage. He asked his volunteer to turn her back to the audience so that he could fit the rods where they could see what was going on and assure themselves that there was no funny business.

She turned and the magician slid the rods through leather tubes on the backs of the shoulder straps and guided them down to similar tubes on the vertical rear straps of the hip harness. With both rods in place he fitted something to keep the rods in place.

While the magician fitted the rods, the dog, that was a transformed assistant came over and sniffed at the volunteer's knee socks. The volunteer found a dog treat and dropped it into the terrier's mouth. The dog seemed delighted and ran round the stage once then returned to the half assistant on the bench towards the back of the stage.

The magician turned the volunteer as the assistant returned with two boxes, carrying them by handles. She rested one on the floor and displayed its partner to the auditorium. The box was open at the end opposite the handle with deep 'U'-shaped cut-outs in two of the other opposite pairs of sides. The remaining sides had a couple of catches at the edge of the open end. This box was put down while the other one was displayed and seemed no different.

The magician and assistant took a box each and approached the volunteer from either side with the open end forward and the cut-outs top and bottom. The magician called for the volunteer to raise her arms so as not to be in the way of the boxes. With the volunteer's arms aloft, the boxes met round her middle. Keeping the edges pressed together the magician held the handle in one hand and did up the catches on the front of the boxes and the assistant fastened the ones on the back.

The volunteer's hands were guided to the handles on the ends of the box round her middle and she was told to hold it still so that the top was below the chest harness and the bottom was above the belt strap of the hip harness. The assistant went on another errand while the magician helped the volunteer find the position that had the box level and between the harnesses.

The assistant came back carrying two blades marginally smaller than the upper face of the box around the volunteer's middle. Each blade had a narrow wooden handle and a hole in it that would match the holes in the top and bottom of the box through which the volunteer's body passed.

"You're not going to do what I think you're going to do, are you?" asked the volunteer.

"I think we are," answered the magician, "so hold still and everything will go to plan and nobody gets hurt. Of course, if you shout out and we'll stop."

The magician accepted the first blade and inserted it gently into a slot at the bottom of the box.

"I felt that!" squealed the volunteer.

"Good, because we wouldn't want you going away with the impression that we are using fake blades, would we?" The magician withdrew the blade a fractional amount and then slammed it through the box and the volunteer.

The volunteer gave a yelp of fright, then smiled. "I thought that was going to hurt, but I didn't feel anything," she commented.

"In that case, you probably won't mind if I do it again, will you?" said the magician.

"If it's as painless as the last one, I guess not," admitted the volunteer.

With this less than ringing endorsement the magician lined up the second blade with a slot near the upper edge of the box and pushed that through with as little effort as the lower took and less reaction from the volunteer, who gave a lesser yelp of surprise.

"Well, that's the dangerous part done. Shall we see what we've achieved?"

He and his assistant reclaimed the handles of the box, asking the volunteer to raise her arms again. They released the catches that they had fastened, but held the ends pressed together.

"So, what do you think has happened?" he asked the volunteer.

"I reckon that my body is through the holes in the blades, so when you pull the boxes away the upper will probably fall down to the lower one around my waist."

The magician and assistant pulled slowly on their halves of the boxes. At first nobody could see anything because the stage lighting did not penetrate in the narrow gap between the boxes. Then as the gap widened they realised they could not see the volunteer's orange sweater. They were applauding before the gap had widened enough for the blades to be released from their slots in the box. They were applauding the complete lack of content of the box.

The box halves became wide enough apart that they no longer supported the blades and as predicted the upper blade fell. It fell onto the lower blade and they bother toppled forward and down onto the stage floor in front of the volunteer with a metallic crash.

By this time the whole audience was on its feet. Both the magician and the truncated assistant stared at the volunteer with dropped jaws. The only person in the room not astounded by what they had caused was the volunteer, who only knew that the blades had not stayed round her body.

After a few moments enjoying the applause, the volunteer took in the shocked expressions of the performers and asked, "What's happened?"

"We seem to have lost something of yours," said the magician.

"What?"

"We've lost your middle," clarified the assistant.

The volunteer lower her arms and tried to find her middle, but found a gap where her middle should have been and the two steel rods holding her harnessed upper section above the lower section.

The magician quickly recovered from his initial shock and pulled out a cloth square which he waved through the gap in the volunteer. The volunteer giggled as if tickled when the corner of the silk brushed across the skin plateau across her hips.

"We'll get this sorted, once the show is over," the magician promised the volunteer showing her to a seat on the bench the other side of the halved assistant's lower half from her upper half. "You'll get to see the magic from closer. And I might ask you to help out a little later, because some of my assistants aren't able to at the moment."