Fetish Magician 3: A sleepover - part six



I took the opportunity of Milly showing off her lack of scars and general intactness to move this zigzag cabinet out of the way and bring out the next illusion. I hoped and anticipated that Milly would make an excellent showing at this one too.

"Ok, this next one is a bit different, but a bit the same. It does what it does in three ways and in order to demonstrate it shall be using two assistants and myself. So I have Milly obligated to be an assistant. I shall be using Angela's body with my head and I hope that Priya will consent to be my assistant again, unless someone else wants to try this." I waved towards the apparatus, which I had left covered in a blue sheet.

I suspected that Priya helping to perform the magic on her friends counted against her, as I hoped it would; no one volunteered to spare Priya her part in the next illusion.

"So, me, Priya and Milly will be demonstrating the three modes of this device. For reasons related to having a borrowed body and other reasons which will become apparent, I shall be demonstrating 'normal' mode. That leaves you two to decide which of you wants to demonstrate 'artistic' mode and which wants to show the girls 'gory' mode."

My helpers looked at each other; neither gave the appearance of having any desire to be involved with 'gory' mode. They were both thinking that they would rather be in 'artistic' mode. Then they began the calculations of what would happen if they did not decide between themselves. They glanced at me. I returned a smile. Both came to the conclusion that if neither of them volunteered, the audience would be given the chance to have their say; and that say would be for Priya to take 'artistic' and Milly would get 'gory'.

Seeing no way out, Milly said, "Priya can do the 'artistic' mode, unless she really wants to do the other one."

Priya, seemed relieved. "Thank you; I'm sure you'll be great in 'gory' mode." I agreed that Milly would probably react to the reality of her fate better than Priya would in her place.

While the girls did not cheer, there was a sense of released tension.

"Good, I'm glad that's decided." This statement not only showed my relief at not having to make the decision myself or throw it out to the audience, it also gave an air of finality.

"Priya, can you take this and plug it in over there, please." I handed her a plug on a long lead with a thick cable which led under the covering of the next illusion.

I went to the equipment and pulled the cover from it. On a base that was a knee-high metal table was a circular housing supported on one side by another section of table, knee high above the first. On top of the upper platform was an electric motor. I turned the device so that the audience could see through the housing and see the five-bladed fan it contained.

As Priya plugged in the power I flicked a switch and the fan blades rapidly span until they nearly became a blur. "The blades are traveling at about thirty miles an hour and a radius two and a half feet." I don't know exactly how fast the blades were travelling, so I picked a figure from the air to impress my audience that they were going fast. "Like most fans it has a safer side and a more dangerous side. I shall allow Milly to demonstrate." I picked up a cardboard tube that had been hidden behind the housing and tossed it to her. Milly caught it neatly and looked perplexed about what she was meant to do with it. "Try to push the tube into fan from that side," which was the side away from the motor. "Please do it gently, because we don't want to damage the fan, because that will make what we do with it later more uncomfortable."

Milly took a firmer hold of the tube and reached over to prod the whirling fan with the end. There was a noise and when she drew the tube back the noise stopped, but the end was a little distorted.

"Now try the same trick from this side, but don't grip the tube so hard."

Milly circled the table and make a prod at the fan from the motor side. She did not seem to expect the tube to be wrenched out of her hand and spat out the other side of the fan as shreds of card; she squealed.

"You could have warned me," Milly protested.

"I did, I told you not to grip the tube. If you hadn't let go quickly enough your hand would have been spat out the front there with the remains of the tube."

"Isn't that a bit dangerous?"

"It would be if I didn't have this safety device." I held up a semi-circle of black plastic with a pair of wires between the corners. Between the edges of the curve and its diameter were strips of stretchy fabric that did not impede putting things into the space between, but obstructed the view. "This fits over the fan housing and then things don't get pulled into the fan." I put the 'safety device' over the top half of the fan so that it could be seen that the fan was still rotating and then took another cardboard tube and put it through the safety device into the fan. There was a bit a noise, but not as much as when Milly had prodded the fan, then the tube emerged between the strips on the other side intact. I then pulled it back, and it was still unharmed.

Having demonstrated the efficacy of the safety device and that the audience could still see the bottom half of the fan turning, I raised the cover and shot the tube through causing another shower of thick cardboard fragments.

"Do you believe the safety device works?" I asked Milly and Priya, while including the audience in this speculation.

I had hoped for wholehearted agreement that it did, or some kind of grudging acknowledgement, but Milly said, "Well it seems to work for cardboard tubes, but we didn't get to check the tube to see if it was tricky in some way before you destroyed it."

I was thinking on my feet. "Would you like a more convincing demonstration?" I put the cover back in place.

"Yes," said Milly, in tone that told me she was not planning to get any nearer than she already was until the apparatus was shown to be safe. Priya stood next to her with an expression that told the same story.

"Alright, how about if I do this?" I pushed my arm through the cover until the elbow was within the cover and hand and most of the forearm were visible the other side. The first reaction was a scream of 'No!' from Angela as she surged to her feet, but she subsided once she had realized that it was her intact hand, not some destroyed and battered piece of flesh.

I pulled the hand back and showed that it was as good as new, to Priya and Milly. "If I'm going to demonstrate 'normal' mode better than that, I'll need the table that goes on the other side of the fan. It's just round the corner of the curtain. You might find it a bit heavy, so you had better both go." While they were gone I put a foot through the fan with no harm to the foot. Putting body parts through the fan is a tickly sensation as the fan blade cuts and the flesh restores only to be cut again.

I pulled the foot back and directed Milly and Priya in placing the table which was the pair of the one with the motor housing. It was soon locked in place on the other side of the fan housing.

I thrust my hand through the fan which could still be seen rotating under the table and then pushed my other hand through after it. Soon it was clear that I was intent on worming my head and Angela's body through the covered section of the fan. I made the duration that my head was in the fan as short as possible, because having your thoughts chopped up and re-joined in unpredictable ways is distracting, but once in a while it does cause a good idea. When I was lying across the two tables with the fan making my belly feel full of butterflies, I asked Priya and Milly to turn the whole apparatus to show that I was on both sides of the fan with it passing through my middle. At the end of the rotation I crawled from the fan and sat on the table to catch my breath.

As the impressed chatter from the audience began to die I asked Priya to get the next add-on for the fan while I helped Milly detach the extra table and place it against the back curtain.

Priya brought a large semi-circular funnel and a length of 5 inch wire-reinforced hose; the distinguishing feature of the items was that they were made of clear plastic. She apologised that she could not carry everything in one trip. She quickly returned with a clear cubic box a little over two feet in each direction. While she had been gone I had attached the funnel to the fan housing so that the half circle of the covering was lined up with the mouth of the funnel. Milly stood ready to clip the hose to the narrow end of the funnel. I directed Priya to settle the box on the floor and told Milly to connect the other end of the hose to the box.

"Ok, Priya, you're up, we are going to show them 'artistic' mode."

I stepped up on the back of the machine and offered a hand to help her climb up. Once she had been heaved up next to me, I said, "It's easy, just put your arm through and see what happens."

"But there's no way I'd fit in that funnel thing and the pipe thing is too narrow; I might be able to get an arm down it, but there's no chance of getting the rest of me through," Priya objected.

"Let's sit here," I cajoled, "and we can discuss it." I sat one side of the motor and patted the surface of the table the other side. Reluctantly she moved to side of the table edge furthest from the fan and sat.

I took one of her hands, as if I was going to have a sincere talk with her, but then with a sudden movement and increase in grip I shoved our hands through the covered part of the fan up to our elbows. What emerged from the other side was my arm wreathed in a puff of grey smoke which drifted away from the fan down the hose towards the box. Priya pulled her arm back and screeched at me, "What did you do that for?" then she noticed that her arm was shorter than it had been; it stopped with a smooth stump at the elbow. "You've chopped my arm off," she yelled. "Where's the rest of my arm? I want it back!"

I glanced at the smoke drifting down hose.

"You can't be serious," she shouted as the significance of my glance became clear to her.

"I'm very serious," I countered. "Why else do you think there is a mechanism for collecting the smoke? I could have let you drift about the room and dissipate into nothing."

"So how do I get my arm back?" she said in a much moderated tone.

"There are two ways; the dull and long-winded way and there's the entertaining way. The entertaining way is also quicker and less inconvenient for you."

"Let me guess. The quick and entertaining way is I go through the fan and become more smoke which collects in the box and when you open the box instead of smoke coming out I pop out of the box."

"That's the gist, but it's not totally accurate. For instance you may have noticed that the smoke your arm turned into was grey. That is because you weren't thinking pleasant thoughts when it went through."

"And you expected me to think nice thoughts while you jammed my arm through a running fan?"

"No, but I did anticipate that you might chicken out if you did not get started. And now you know what it feels like I'm hoping you'll be able to think the pleasant thoughts as the rest of you goes through."

I was about to tell Priya that the colour of the smoke depended on the thoughts you were thinking, when Marie, shouted out, "What did it feel like, Priya?"

Priya looked puzzled, it seemed she did not remember what having her arm put through a fan felt like. Then she surprised us all by putting her other forearm through the fan and producing a pale brown puff of smoke that was blown down the clear hose to the box. "Well," she paused to collect her thoughts, "as it goes through it feels like a lot of butterflies landing on your arm; a tiny bit tickly, but not at all unpleasant."

"And what about the smoky parts?" asked Marie.

"I'm not really sure. I know that they're not there and I can't feel anything, but it doesn't feel like they are actually missing." She paused and closed her eyes for a moment. "I think I can feel the walls of the box," she tried to point, but without hands it did not work at all well, "but it is a bit distant like I have thick mittens on."

She turned to me and asked, "So, what kind of nice thoughts am I meant to think as I get turned into smoke?"

"I don't know. It's up to you. You could try thinking about being with your friends, or having a sleepover, or watching close up while a magician does his stuff, or the lovely costume you're wearing, or whatever you like to do, or your favourite food. I could go on, but I think you get the idea."

Her expression darkened. "Thinking about that; what will it do to the sari?"

"I'm wearing a sari too, and there's not a thread out of place."

"Yes, but you weren't turned into a cloud of smoke on the way through."

"Trust me, it'll be alright."

She stood up and placed her foot on the edge of the table and gradually slid toward the cover. "You realise that if this goes wrong, you are in a lot of trouble. Not that I'll care, because I'll be somewhere in the atmosphere being called pollution."

As her foot and the hem of her sari got close to becoming smoke I reminded her to think nice thoughts if she wanted to be pretty colours of smoke.

She wriggled her foot closer to the cover and the rotating blades beyond. She did not look particularly steady so I invited Milly to mount the table and help keep Priya from accidentally falling into the fan.

With the extra support Priya put her leg into cover and smiled at the feeling as a puff of neon green smoke emerged and wafted down the hose to the box. She drew back to see the effect this had on the pleats of her sari; I looked like someone had taken some shears to the fabric, but had done it neatly so that there were no hanging threads. She slid back towards the fan and pushed the remains of her leg through until most of her thigh had manifested as several small puffs of blue smoke each of a slightly different colour.

Her next move startled me; she leaned forward with her hip a few millimetres outside the cover and pushed through her upper arm on the same side, resulting a puff of pink smoke that wafted down the pipe to accumulate with the other smoke.

Priya tried to stand to show her friends her limb-depleted state and would have fallen over, if Milly had not been there to provide some support. I turned the platform so that the fan was sideways to the audience and the funnel, hose and box remained visible. With what little cooperation she could offer we fed the remains of Priya feet first in small doses to the fan. I was amazed at the range and brilliance of the colours of smoke that puffed into the funnel and drifted down the hose to the box; which was becoming a psychedelic rainbow of smoke. I was particularly interested to note the inclusion of sparkles in the smoke as her hips went through the cover and internal lightning glow as I pushed her head through to complete the conversion to smoke.

As the last of the Priya-smoke cleared the hose, I removed the hose and covered the hole with a cap. I set the boxful of multi-coloured smoke that glowed and sparkled forward in the performance area so that the audience could admire it while Milly and I removed the funnel and the hose from the fan and stacked them against the backdrop. Then I asked Milly to find me a cloth.

When Milly returned, I addressed the girls. "While Priya looks pretty like this, we should not leave her like it."

Milly helped me shake out the cloth she had found, showing in the process that there was nothing hidden in there. We settled the cloth over the box; allowing it to drape over the side on the box to the floor. I counted to three and pulled the cloth away and threw it over the fan to land on the table next to the funnel.

The box remained where it had stood for the last few minutes, but instead of smoke-filled, it was filled with Priya fully restored and once more clad in her intact sari.

I let the wonder of transformation sink in with the spectators until they started clapping and then undid the catches holding the lid on the box, when Priya began to complaint that it was cramped inside the box, even for her small frame. Soon the box was consigned to the area in front of the backdrop.

"And now for the finale of the show proper, we shall be putting Milly through the fan in 'gory' mode."

Milly seemed shocked to be reminded that she was next, but quickly put on an expression of resignation, which included a fraction of regret at having volunteered rather than having to bow to the vote of the audience. Priya raised a smile, while still stretching to undo some of the muscular kinks that being crammed into a box for nearly a minute had imposed. The small audience was mixed as to what they thought of the prospect of a 'gory' illusion; I suspected that it depended on how friendly they were with Milly and how much they needed her help with the homework assignments Marie's parents would come home to find them working on.

"The change in set up is easy. There's a chute and a box; bring the box first." Milly went to fetch the box and moments later Priya went to help by getting the chute.

They were not gone long, but I had time enough to unhook a shelf from under the main platform so that there was somewhere to put the box when Milly brought it from behind the curtain. The shelf supported the twelve inch cube with the top level with the surface and its base a few inches from the floor. I flipped the lid from the box and pulled up the flaps under the lid to make three sides raised above the level of the box.

With the box set up and the main platform set at a slight angle to the audience we were ready for the chute when it arrived. It was a clear plastic sheet the full width of the fan at one end narrowing to narrow enough the fit between the raised flaps of the box at the other. We clipped it to the fan housing and hinged it down so that its end was over the inside of the box. The two inch walls down both diagonal edges lent it the rigidity it required.

Milly put these components together with what had happened before and the term 'gory'. She asked in a whisper, "Am I right? When I put a part of my body into the fan, bloody chunks will come out the other side and slide down the chute into the box." I nodded confirmation. "So what happens once I'm in the box, because it's too small for me to appear out of?"

"Yes, it's too small to appear out of, but don't worry, I've got that covered."  I had expected her to ask how, but she seemed to accept that she would be back to normal in time for bed. In fact she looked as if she was trying to plan what order of putting herself through the fan would be most impressive.

I was wondering, myself, how best to make this effective as they had already seen two versions. Milly climbed onto the upper table and took hold of her wrist and rammed her elbow through the cover into the fan until five gobbets of blood-soaked flesh and bone had emerged and were sliding down the chute leaving a trail of red. She stood back up and seemed momentarily unsteady, because she did not have the use of her hands; the right hand was holding her left hand by the wrist. Then she jumped down from the machine and took stock. She looked at the shattered remains of her forearm dangling below where she held her wrist and then the similarly ruined mess of bones, muscles and sinew partway up her upper arm. She made a face that was somewhere between disgusted and pleased with the effect; I was glad, as she seemed to be, that there was no dripping blood.

She then took her hand attached to half her forearm and showed it to the girls, who had delayed the beginning of the show to rewind a gory scene of a horror movie, most of them shrank back when presented with a live severed hand. She dropped her hand, which she had also discovered without prompting was still under her control, into Marie's lap and then in response to the host's scream of terror tried to get her hand to crawl from the lap. Seeing that her hand did not have the power and control to move and drag her severed forearm with it, she told Marie, "Look after my hand; I may want it back later!"

Milly turned her back and started back to the machine, giving me and Priya a wink. Marie now had a problem; did she leave the detached, but live, hand in her lap and run the risk of being distracted from the show by it moving, or risk the wrath of a vengeful Milly by trying to move it away; her face indicated that she would rather not touch the item in her lap.

"So, what else can we do to make the most of this thing?" she asked as she pushed the stump of her shattered arm into the fan and sent to more bloody lumps of flesh sliding towards the box at the bottom of the chute. This left a bit of flaccid muscle dangling at her shoulder among the shredded sleeve of her top as it seemed that the remains of the humerus had been ripped from her shoulder joint.

I was given a little more time to think of an answer, when Marie made a grunting noise and Fiona made a squeal of terror. It appeared that Marie had found the courage to pick up the hand long enough to toss it into Fiona's lap.

Milly stormed back to the sofas and grabbed her hand back from the lap where it lay. She made a comment about thinking that she could trust Marie and rampaged back to the fan to shove the detached hand through the whirling blades. She did this and with some satisfaction watched the bloodied fragments slip into the box, before noticing that the process had taken her other hand too.

"Now look what you made me do!" she accused. She climbed onto the main platform and sat on the edge of the table by the motor and swung her legs up onto the table and then into the fan. We all heard the pitch of the fan noise become unsteady as she wriggled to push her legs into the blades, almost clogging the outlet of the chute with chunks of meat and bone.

The tops of her thighs were soon chewed off by the action of the fan and she tried to wriggle forward some more, but it was not getting her very far with only her torso, head and a de-handed arm left. She struggled to lie on her front in the hope that it would allow her to lever herself backward with her remaining arm. This worked until hips were gone and pushing with her arm only succeeded in rocking her upper torso.

"Do you needed a hand?" I asked.

"Are you trying to be funny?" she snapped, but as I blushed at my unintended pun, she added, "I could do with some help. Finish me off!"

She put her arm by her side and lowered her head. I put my palm of the top of her head and pushed her body through the fan slowly to prevent the build-up of chunks where the chute's walls converged at the box. This continued until her chin reached the cover, when I stopped.

I picked up Milly's head and displayed it to the girls sat watching dumbstruck.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm going for a spectacular finish. It'll feel a bit weird and possibly a bit nauseating, but you can't be sick, so just go with it."

"I guess. You're the magician, you know what you're doing."

I hoped that she did not realise afterward how experimental I was being, but at least I had a plan. It took a bit of careful handling to get Milly's head to rest upright on my hand. Once this feat had been achieved I thrust my arm and her head through the still rotating fan. On the other side my hand remained intact while Milly's head fell from the hand in several lumps, leaving the hand coated in a red residue. As the last of the pieces dribbled into the box where they were being collected, I opened my hand to show two eyeballs. With the practice of years hampered slightly by this being Angela's hand, I transferred the eyeballs to being held between my fingers and then rolled them individually down the chute and into the box.

I pulled the hand back through the fan and went to wipe the blood from my hand on the front of the sari, but saw that there was no blood to wipe away.

I demounted the box and placed it on the floor then moved the device back and switched it off.

"Would anyone like to stir Milly's remains?" I offered. Priya took a look in the box but thought better of getting her hand messy by putting it in. I handed the box to her to hold while I folded down flaps at the top and flipped the lid that had be hanging down the front of the box back to the top. Then I went to fetch a table.

By the time I had returned with the table Priya was glad somewhere to put the box down. I had her place the box on the end of the thin table I had brought. I then began the process of unfolding the box from a foot in each direction to a foot wide by eighteen inches high, by nearly three feet deep.

I hovered my hand over the expanded box and made an upward motion. Milly took the hint and grabbed my hand to help unfold herself from within the box. As she stepped out of the box, I spotted that she was no longer in the costume of embroidered waistcoat and Indian-style britches, she had been wearing for most of her time as my helper, but was back in the dress she had been wearing when the show had started.

Milly jumped down from the table. "Is that it for the show?" she asked quietly.

"Well, Angela seems in no hurry to get her body back, so that's the main show over. There will be a few tricks later, maybe."

"In that case, I'm going home. Don't worry, it's not the magic (I loved that), but I don't need friends that suggest chopping me to pieces. Goodbye!" Milly walked from the performance area and out the door to the rest of the house. Angela rushed after her.

"Well, that's the end of the magic show proper, but until Angela comes back I shall be doing some small magic. So those that are interested gather round; those that aren't, just chat amongst yourselves."

I spent the next ten minutes at a table which I covered in cloth doing a coins and cards routine that I was working on. None of the spectators seemed to notice when coins that had previously been heads became tails, but I did and resolved to practice some more so that coins that were supposed to be the same coins retained their orientations, not only head to tails but the rotation of the bottom of the coins' images.

I had started on levitating small objects, when Angela returned. She talked with the girls that were not engrossed in the coins and matchsticks and scraps of paper performing an aerobatics display over the table and swooping through rings my small audience made with their fingers.

When I had finished, Angela announced that it was time for bed and they should all go and change into their night things. After some wheedling she told them firmly that it was not called a SLEEPover for nothing and that I might be performing a little more magic before they had to settle down; at that point she glanced at the wooden collar round Marie's neck held in place by three swords.