Fetish Magician 3: A sleepover - part two


"So, what do you want to talk about?" asked Milly.

"I just thought, as you seem to want to be in two illusions, because you took two swords, which illusions you would like to experience."

Her eyes flicked from side-to-side as if she was leafing through a mental catalogue. "I don't know, but if the magic is as real as it would appear to be, I want to be challenged, so I don't want to do a guillotine type illusion unless my head is chopped clean off (and I survive, of course). I challenge you to surprise me and make me admit that your magic is real, and not some very clever illusion."

I put out my hand and we shook on our bargain.

I did not know how I was going to keep my end of the bargain, but I smiled at Milly and let go. She nodded; I think she knew I needed time to plan something, so turned and said, "Don't wait too long, because pizza gets cold quick." She trotted out of the room.

I tidied away the props in the performance area and folded the various pieces of cloths from where they had been dropped; the blue cloths I stowed in the backstage area and the sari I placed on a tray which I placed on the remaining half of sawing table.

I went to the kitchen area to see if there were a few scraps of supper left and to speak to Angela.

I got her far enough from the girls that we could talk privately. "Angela, if I'm to keep my promise to involve everyone in an illusion, I'm going to need to lend you something of mine and borrow something of yours in return, then, once you've followed a few simple instructions, you can have yours back and I can have mine, so it'll be strictly temporary."

"But will it be 'interesting'?" she asked.

"I know I'll find it interesting and I hope you'll find it interesting too."

"In that case, I think I'm willing to give it a go."

Next I caught Marie and asked if she would like Jenny to come over. She said, yes, but told me that her parents weren't willing to bring her over from the other side of town or collect her in the morning, because, so they said, it was going to be more than enough driving her about getting her to rehearsals.  I asked if they would be ok if she got picked up and dropped off; she seemed to think so. I asked her to arrange, with Jenny's parents, permission for her to come along for the night and I would arrange that she arrive and get back home safely. She rushed off to talk to Angela and ring Jenny.

While we ate I performed small tricks for the girls under the watchful eyes of Milly; as she watched she changed expression when she thought she had worked out the trick of the small magic and in a couple of instances she looked totally puzzled and annoyed by it.

Angela told me that she had arranged with Jenny's parents that she could join the party if they did not have to deliver or collect her. I asked her to tell Marie to arrange for Jenny to be out of her house when she called again in about ten to fifteen minutes.

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In ten minutes, we were all back in the room and the girls were seated on sofas. Marie had been finding her collar with the swords through a bit unwieldy, so I had detached the handles that were causing it to be unbalanced and replaced them with padlocks so that the blades did not fall out.

"Welcome back," I said. "I hope you enjoyed your break. And now on with the next part where all of you will be involved at some point." I dropped a dagger I was holding so that it landed point-first and stood up in the wood of the sawing in half table.

As I watched several of my small audience gulped.

"Marie, please contact Jenny's mobile to let her know that we'll be collecting her soon." I did not stay to watch speed-dial at work. Instead I went behind the backdrop and brought out a triangular table with some panels resting on it. Back in the performance area I stacked these on the floor. I stood up a small stand in the centre of the table and then picked the first rectangular panel from the floor. While I fitted this onto the pegs on one of the edges of the table, Milly came forward and picked up the next one and held it ready for me to take. I had oriented the table so that a flat side was towards the spectators and the first side I fitted was solid and towards the back. Milly handed me the other plain side, which I fitted to the other side away from the audience. The last side panel, which I slotted onto the pegs at the front had a large opening covered by a see-through mesh. Each of these sides hung down from the table top. Milly lifted the final panel, which besides being heavier, was a triangle with a lip on the underside. I thanked her, but told her that I needed to do something else before I needed it.

I pulled a large yellow silk from a pocket and showed the assembled girls that it was plain on both sides. I scrunched it into a ball and as it unfurled while I opened my hands a dove emerged from it. There were polite applause. Milly looked astounded, even with her privileged view, closer and from the side, she could not see how I had got the bird into the folds of the cloth. I transferred the dove to the perch on the table and lifted the back walls into place, so they stood vertical and touched at the back. With one hand holding them in place and I lifted the front wall with its mesh window into place. Milly seemed to get the message and placed the lid over the lot, so that the weight of the lid and the lip on the lid held everything in place.

I left Milly cooing at the dove with the instruction that when I said, she should remove the lid.

"Is Jenny ready to be picked up?" I asked Marie. She nodded. "Good, where is she?"

"She's at the end of the cul-de-sac she lives on."

"Good! Tell her to hide behind a bush and sit down. Let me know when she's done that!"

"She says, 'Are you sure?'"

"Tell her that unless she wants to waste time being with her friends, of course you're sure."

"Ok, she's done that. Now what?"

"On the count of three I want her to shut her eyes for a few seconds. And you, Milly, can lift the lid back off that box."

The message was relayed to Jenny, then I counted to three.

When three was reached, there was the movement and the sound of the walls falling from the triangular box, then the girl sitting on the table asked, "What just happened?"

Marie surged forward, but suddenly stopped, when the realised that she was not in a position to hug her friend with sword blades sticking out of her collared neck. She said, "Tom, here, summoned you here or teleported you across town, or something like that. The important thing is you're here."

Jenny uncurled and almost fell off the table. Milly whispered to me, "What happened to the bird?"

"That's across town and will be flying to my home. Anyone watching Jenny would have seen her go behind the bush and a dove come out and fly away." Milly accepted this as meaning the bird was unharmed.

I allowed the greeting of Jenny to carry on for a bit. While most of the girls crowded round Jenny to greet her and ask how she had got there (a question she did not have an answer to), Milly asked me why I had done the bird thing in the first place. I told her that while teleporting something up to one hundred metres or so was not usually a problem, beyond that there are all sorts of problems such as change of direction relative to the spin of the earth and Coriolis forces to be compensated for and the easiest way is to send something back the other way as a counterweight and birds make a good counterweight as they are easy to handle and they come home without you having to go and find them. The sceptical look she gave me said that she did not believe a word of it and would be checking out if anything I had just told her had any basis in fact and physics.

I called my audience to order, reminding them that each of them, with the exception of Marie and Priya, was due to participate some magic and we ought to get on with it.

"Before we start there are a few loose ends to tie up. Priya and Milly are due to be my main helpers, but Milly doesn't have a proper costume and you all participated in shredding Priya's. So both those situations need to be remedied.

"First, Priya step forward!" I fetched the ring with the cloth drapes and placed it on the floor. Priya stepped into it, in her under-skirt full of sword rips and similarly distressed top. I lifted the ring to cover Priya and counted three and dropped it. Priya was still in under-skirt and top, but the evidence of their time in the sword basket was no longer there. Priya looked a little disappointed not to have the fabric of the sari in place. I asked Milly to bring the tray with the sari on it, stand outside the hoop and hold it above her head. I lifted the hoop and drapes one-handed and used the other to flick the end of the sari from the tray over the top of the ring. The momentum made it flow into the curtain-enclosed area. As soon as the last of the fabric left the tray I dropped the ring again. This time Priya was clad in the sari, despite there having been insufficient time for her to catch the cloth coming from above, and definitely not enough time to sort it out and wrap it tidily around her body.

As I guided Priya from the ring with one hand, I said to Milly, "Your turn," as I took the empty tray with the other hand.

"My turn?" she asked, "For what?"

"I'm in costume, Priya's in costume, so as someone who doubly volunteered, by twice sticking swords through Priya, you should be in costume too." Milly did not look convinced by this tenuous line of argument, but the rest of the girls made it clear that they wanted to see Milly in a costume.

"What costume do you want me in?"

"That's part of the magic; you decide. Just make it something magically appropriate!"

I led Milly to step into the ring and asked Priya to be ready to raise the ring to Milly's chin-level.

"Have you decided on something, Milly?" Milly nodded. "Ok. Priya raise the ring and count out loud to three and then lower the ring."

Priya followed the instructions, then there was a moment of dead silence as the girls tried to work out what had changed about Milly, which was nothing. To head off the mutterings, I asked Milly what she had wanted her costume to be and she blushed, but would not tell me, so I asked her to tell Angela. Angela met Milly part way and they conferred. Angela's expression showed shock at Milly's intended costume. "Was Milly's choice of costume, improper?" I asked Angela; she nodded.

"Ok, Milly come back and think of a costume that is less improper! Something a magician's assistant might wear or something that will complement mine or Priya's costume."

With Milly back in place, I raised the ring of curtains and Priya counted three. When I lowered the curtains again Milly was costumed in a waistcoat and baggy Indian style trousers that went from waist to knee. Angela looked relieved; she told me later that Milly's first intended costume was no costume at all.

I kicked the hoop aside, causing Milly to make a quick jump to allow it to pass under her. "Now it is time to start making good in my promise to get everyone who thrust a sword through Priya involved in an illusion. So the most prominent people, apart from Milly here (who I will deal with later), were Andrea and Heather. Please come up."

I sent Priya and Milly behind the back drop to fetch the cabinets marked 'M'. As Andrea and Heather came forward I moved to the front of the performance area; this was mainly to keep them facing the audience and not have them seeing the equipment that Priya and Milly would be wheeling out, before I was ready for them to see it.

I opened with, "I'm told you two are inseparable friends; is that right?"

"We are as near inseparable as makes no difference; if you find one of us, you'll most likely have found the other. So, yes," replied Heather.

"Well, this evening I plan to prove that you are not inseparable, by separating you both, but I also plan to prove that if you find one you've found the other as well."

I checked out the girls' clothes to determine what adjustments might be needed. Andrea was in a mid-thigh-length skirt and a T-shirt, just tight enough that the outline of a bra could be detected; this presented no problem, as the t-shirt and skirt could be tucked up and be removed from the danger to their integrity that the planned illusion presented. Heather's outfit would be much more of a problem; she was wearing a dress that did not quite reach mid-thigh and a pair of trousers too.

"This illusion that you are going to be in has the same problem that sawing Angela in half had; namely the possibility of damaging your clothes. Andrea's outfit will need a bit of adjustment to keep it safe, but yours, Heather, will need to be removed or changed."

I looked at Angela for support in this and she was still in her underwear, with her dress draped over the arm of the sofa she sat on. It crossed my mind to wonder what the pizza delivery guy had thought of that. While I was distracted by Angela, Heather had skinned herself of her dress and was tossing it to the side near where she had been sat. More surprising to me was that Andrea had removed her T-shirt in solidarity with her close friend. I tried to remind myself while I could look anywhere, there were some places it might make people uncomfortable if I looked too long. A quick glance confirm what I already supposed, that the two girls had similar physiques, but Heather was more developed in the chest. I could tell from where I stood that her bottom was more rounded than her friend's too.

"More bad news, the trousers will be in the way too." I caught Heather glancing at Angela, who, besides seeming quite comfortable wearing nothing more that bra and panties, gave her an encouraging smile. Heather's hands went to the waistband of her trousers and they were soon off along with her shoes. Andrea joined the disrobing.

While this had been happening Milly and Priya had wheeled out two cabinets and stood them symmetrically against the backdrop.

"Ok, we're set. Andrea and Heather are ready for what I have prepared." Andrea made a face that told me that she did not feel ready. "The cabinets are nearly ready and Milly and Priya are ready. Let's open the cabinets so that Heather and Andrea can begin their adventure together separately."

My helpers unlatched the five doors on the front of the cabinet and flung them open showing a plain black interior with a few silvery things included.

"Who's feeling more adventurous?" I asked. In response they both pointed at the other. "You realise that you're both committed to this?" After a pause I added to the audience, "Unless, someone wants to take your place." Nobody raised a hand.

Andrea stepped forward and into the cabinet that Milly had opened. "Good! Now, how about, you do to Andrea, what we are going to do to you in a few minutes?" Under Milly's watchful eye and my guidance, Heather use the silvery cuffs to attach various parts of Andrea into various parts of the cabinet; her neck in the topmost section, her right hand to the wall by her right shoulder, her left hand next to her hip, Andrea's left ankle was shackled to the lowest section and finally her right foot was raised to knee level and cuffed there with a small ledge built inside to support her foot. All the time every time Heather's eye met Andrea's she blushed as if she felt guilty about putting her in this situation or, perhaps, not stepping up faster.

"Now it's your turn Heather!" She looked disappointed; she must have hoped to see more of her impending fate before submitting to it. After a momentary hesitation, she got into the other cabinet, tucked down the ledge and adopted the pose which Andrea could no longer get out of. Milly and Priya worked together to quickly lock her in.

I asked Milly to fetch the other thing marked 'M' from backstage and helped Priya to rotate both cabinets, mainly as way of moving the cabinets forward to more central positions in the performance area, but with the side effect that the audience got to see all round the cabinets and assure themselves that there were no escape hatches or other funny business to be seen.

"You may be wondering why your two friends are restrained inside the cabinets. The first reason, is so that they are safe for what we are about to do to them; secondly, so that you don't think that they escape or curl up somehow; and finally so they don't get out when they see these." Milly rolled in a trolley containing sixteen blades that flashed and shimmered as they dangled by their handles. I pulled out two blades and tapped them together.

I asked Priya and Milly to close the cabinet doors starting at the bottom, but leaving the door displaying the close friends' horrified faces open. I handed them a blade each and got them to locate the edges into the grooves at the base of the top section. "Now, I am going to close these doors and you are going to immediately push your blades in, once I have secured the latch."

I did my bit and both Priya and Milly did theirs. The only result was a pair of squeaks from inside the cabinets. As these squeaks roughly synchronised with the tap as the blade handle made contact with the outside of the cabinet, it seemed, to me, reasonable to assume that sticking blades their my assistants' necks had not prevented them from making noises, which further implied that they must still be alive.

Milly's expression showed the relief of having done the logical steps and come to the same conclusion. Priya seemed to be enjoying inflicting whatever I told her to on some of the people who had been quite happy to stab her with swords, while she was trapped in the basket. Rather than linger about the process, I began handing blades to my helpers and the rapidly got to the point of having inserted a twosome of blades between each of the sections of both of the cabinets; at the neck, mid torso, high thigh level, and at mid-calf level. Between us we unstacked the sections and laid them out on the floor in front of the wheeled sections that it was implied contained the lower sections of a left leg each.

"Now that I have proved that Heather and Andrea are separable friends, it's time to put them back together."

Milly tapped me on the elbow and whispered, "No you haven't, you've only prove that you can lock them into cabinets and divide the cabinets."

"Milly, you are right, but go with it for the moment," I hissed back.

With some interference from me the cabinets were restacked; Priya needed some help getting the last section on the top of her cabinet.

I rapped on the cabinets and asked the girls trapped inside how they were feeling. The muffled response amounted to disoriented and strange, but otherwise fine. Then I asked my helpers to open the hatches in the doors, starting from the bottom, to show the audience that their friends were safe and still in the cabinets.

Opening the hatches in the bottom door, predictably, exposed shackled left feet. The surprises started at the next section up, which showed a left hand on Andrea's cabinet and a right hand on Heather's. I had Priya and Milly reach in to verify that the hands were real, which generate surprised exclamations from the occupants of the cabinets.

The next section opened showed Heather's face and Andrea' thighs and right foot. Heather's immediately relief at being able to see her friends in the audience was tempered by noticing that her head was a lot lower than it ordinarily was and a downward glance inside the cabinet, which showed nothing but dividing blade. I asked her how she felt. She said, "Not bad really; it's not all that uncomfortable once you get used to it, but I do feel a bit strange."

Fiona in the audience commented, "You look a bit strange too."

The next sections revealed Andrea's face and Heather's right foot. Andrea echoed Heather's assessment of her predicament; ok, but peculiar. Predictably the topmost hatches revealed Heather's left hand resting on her hip and Andrea's right hand and shoulders. Once more I had Priya and Milly check that the hands were genuine, leading to shocked expression on the Heather and Andrea's faces, as they worked out some of what had happened from the fact that my helpers were reaching above their heads to hands that the entrapped girls felt should be below their heads. I spotted Milly kissing Andrea on the tip of her nose and heard her whisper, "I guess you'll be alright."

"This won't do! We'd better get Andrea and Heather sorted in the right order. Close the hatches! We don't want them getting travel sick while we move them."

We unstacked the cabinets and spread the sections across the floor. "How are we going to get them in the right order?" asked Milly. Priya nodded that this was concern of hers too.

I brought to the front the trolley that had carried the blades and said, "Bring me the sections in turn and I'll take a quick look inside and tell you where to put it."

Milly was the first to present a section which I placed diagonally on the trolley and opened to show a right foot, which I told her to place on top of the base of Andrea's cabinet. We ran through the boxes which I opened to show the contents and then told the helper where to put it; some of these were placed on the floor, beside a cabinet to be put in place once the sections that belonged below had been located.

With both cabinets restacked, the blades were pulled and returned to the blade carrier. I gave my helpers the keys to the cuffs and told them to release the occupants of the cabinets, while I stowed the blades in the backstage area.

I hurried back, when Milly shouted, "Hey, Tom, you got something wrong here."

I returned to the sight expected, but still a little odd to see, of Andrea's head above Heather's chest on Andrea's hips and mismatched feet and hands. Heather was in the same, but reverse, situation.

I rushed forward and led my assistants and helpers in a bow and announced that I had proved that while Andrea and Heather were separable friends and that if you find one you will likely find the other.

"Marie's parents want my van off there drive in the next twenty minutes," I announced. "Which is not enough time to get the rest of you involved. I know some of you will be disappointed (some of you might be relieved), so I cooked up a plan to stay a while longer and move my van from the drive. And Angela has kindly offered to help me implement it." Angela's look conveyed that she was not expecting anything, but was curious to find out the plan.

"Angela, please come on up. Priya would you fetch the item marked 'G' and Milly get the stuff marked 'HM'."

When Angela was standing next to me, she asked what the plan was. "You know I asked if you would borrow something of mine and allow me to borrow something of yours?" she nodded. "Well now is the time."

Priya pushed the item marked 'G' from the backstage area. Despite it being covered in cloth it was obviously a guillotine. Rather than appear to be milking the suspense, I dragged the cloth down and helped Priya position it centrally in the area, pushing the mismade cabinets to the side.

This guillotine had some structure on the back, amounting to a bench at the right height that the victim could sit there and lean forward so that their body was horizontal. Despite her misgivings and wondering how this forwarded the plan to get the van gone, Angela stepped over the rail to sit on the seat. While she bent forward and I lifted the stock to hold her neck, Milly returned with another piece of apparatus under a cloth and towing a wheeled box.

"Isn't there a basket to catch my head? Assuming it is your intent to chop it off." Angela had spotted a flaw in the plan.

"That's the problem when you're planning is a bit fluid; sometimes things get forgotten. Right, we'll have to go for plan 'B',"

Angela made a move to lift her head from the lower part of the stock, but I continued to lower the upper part. "What's going on?" she asked. Her back strained in an effort remove her neck from the path of blade suspended at the top of the guillotine.

"We'll be moving onto guillotine plan 'B', not move the van plan 'B'." I suspect that even my reassuring tone would not compensate for the fact that the seed of hope had not borne fruit. "Milly, I need a hand here, please."

"How can I stop Angela getting hurt, when I haven't got a basket to catch her head when it falls off?"

"I guess there's something around here that'll do the job," offered Milly.

"Not enough time to waste looking for something," I countered. "Any other ideas?"

"I suppose someone could hold her head."

"Well volunteered," I congratulated. She made a move to go round the front and set herself up to catch Angela's head. I placed a hand on her shoulder. "Sit there!" I said pointing at the rail beside Angela's body. "You don't want to be in the way of the others seeing what's happening, do you?"

"But I can't reach round from there."

"Then reach over," I proposed. "Get a good grip on Angela's hair; I'm sure she won't mind, when the alternative is a nosedive onto a wooden floor."

Milly seemed about to point out the flaw in the plan, but I put a finger to my lips and she left it unmentioned. She did as I asked and rested her elbow on top of the stock. I touched blade release and there was the slide of metal against metal and a triple thud; the first when it hit Milly's arm, then when it hit Angela's neck and a final bump when blade hit the stops at the bottom of the runners.

There was a gratifying chorus of squeals and exclamations. I let the scene sink in for a few moments before starting to issue instructions. "Angela, scoot back a bit and sit up; you might as well be comfortable while I sort out the next part. Milly you can stay there for the moment, but for Angela's safety, lift her head over the stock and rest it in your lap; you might want to turn it and yourself a bit, so you can see what happens next. Priya, if you could hand me stuff from the box there when I ask for it; that would be great."

I discarded the cover from the 'HM', showing a frame that looked like a roman numeral two with an added board between the uprights. At the top between the uprights there was a deep recess with a rounded back. I did not wait for people to take it in fully, before sitting on the shelf and fitting my neck into the recess. Priya handed me a head-sized box which I fitted over my head, having placed my pirate hat to the side. Then I called for the blade; this was the bit that made me most nervous, because this was the first time I had ever attempted to perform magic on myself, but it felt right so I went for it.

I reached up and closed the front of the headbox then glided the blade into the slot in the base of the box. This was a nervous moment for me, as I had not done magic on myself before, but it felt natural as the blade pricked the front of my neck then kept going as if my neck was not there. With my head inside the box separated from the rest of my body, I reached up and pushed my head sideways along the upper platform of the frame.

"Milly, bring Angela's head over here and put it on the top of my neck!" The response from the room included one scream, indicated to me that they had not expected to hear from me until this was over. I heard the padding of Milly's bare feet approach the apparatus and experienced the feeling of a weight being placed on my neck stump. This feeling did not last long, because moments later all feeling of my body disappeared. I suddenly felt so totally helpless, that I nearly panicked; I was a disembodied head in a box and if the people there decided to this could go very hard for me. I felt a movement as Angela stood my body up.

There were more larger movements as I felt box containing my head lifted clear of the headmover frame, a few steps later, I felt the base of the box being rested on something. There was a moment when I felt dizzy as the blade supporting the base of my neck was withdrawn and then the box itself was lifted clear of my head. I was glad to realise at this point that I was not an isolated head, but I had a body. I was further gladdened when I was able to reach up with the body's hands and check that my head was securely attached to this body at the neck. It was a bit of a shock to see that the hands I brought up were slender feminine hands, despite this being the plan all along.

I gave myself little time to recover, before outlining the plan. Angela would put on my pirate hat and go and move the van to somewhere out of sight, but nearby. Marie would call the neighbour who had been asked to watch to tell him that I was going, but would be back in the morning to collect my gear; he would see my body drive the van away. I would continue performing until Angela had parked up the van, then I would bring her back by magic and we could have as much time as we needed for the rest of the magic I had promised.

Angela seemed fine with the plan, the only modification she suggested, was that she tuck her hair under the hat, so it did not show.

Soon the girls had waved off the van and Milly asked what was next. By this time I was feeling a bit vulnerable in just Angela's bra and panties, so I decided it was time for another costume change. I asked Priya and Milly to have a quick conference about what costume I should wear, then stepped over to the curtain ring and lifted it to neck level. As soon as they seemed to have agreed on some costume for Angela's body I dropped the ring to reveal to the audience my helper's choice of costume for the female me, and discover what they had dreamt up. The expressions on their faces showed that the magic had worked totally, producing the costume they had thought up, and that Angela's body looked spectacular in it.

I looked down to try to fathom what I was dressed in. The first good thing was I felt more dressed, which given Milly's attempt to take my show outside the parameters laid down for nudity, seemed to me to be a good thing. It seemed I was in a sari similar to Priya's, except mine was opulent in red with gold embroidery. I moved experimentally and discovered that the costume was practical in that it seemed to stay in place and not restrict how I moved as much as I initially expected.

"Ok, girls it's time for more magic with volunteers. This time it's you two are Artemisia and Tiffany. Come on down!"