Further Outside her Comfort Zone

By Vaughan

Once again Karen was nervous, not quite the same as before, but still nervous. She stood at the kerb outside what looked like a warehouse unit, where the taxi had dropped her. She had only met Ian Charles once before, when he had done three things to her that should have been fatal and had her strip naked into the bargain. That afternoon had taken Karen outside her comfort zone and she was not sure at the moment whether she wanted to leave that comfort zone ever again. But, she had agreed to come to a rehearsal and she was a woman of her word, so here she was, partly spurred by the fact that he had called her up this morning to confirm she was coming. She was wondering how she could let him down easy, because she liked him on their short and strange acquaintance.

She approached the red painted door to the left of the closed shutters with trepidation and tried the handle, secretly hoping that it was locked and she could go home. It opened easily, showing a dim concrete block corridor/hallway with three doors each painted green.  The first on the left bore a rectangular sign of a stick man, she deduced that these were the toilets.  The next door had a plate on it that read “Office”. And the final door at the far end had a “No Entry” sign with the text “No Unauthorised Access”.  She stepped inside and closed the outside door quietly.  

Before she could call a timid “Hello …?” a familiar voice called “Karen? Is that you? I’m in the office. Please, Come in!”

She paused before opening the office door, not sure what she might see. The office was neater than she had expected; a desk with a scatter of paperwork and packs of cards, two filing cabinets, a computer and three chairs. On the chair behind the desk was Ian looking much the same as he had for the audition.

“Hello Karen.  You made it then?”

“Yes, the taxi dropped me outside and the unit is clearly numbered.”

“Good, good! Shall we get down to business, then?”

Karen paused. “Um, I not sure how to say this, but I’m having second thoughts about taking the job.”

Ian was taken aback.  “Can we discuss this?  You seemed so right at the audition; Bright, sexy (in a cute way) and I thought we got on well for such a short time of knowing each other.  Was it something I said?”

“No, of course not,” Karen replied, “You were a perfect gentleman in word and deed. I’m just not sure I’m ready to be a magician’s assistant, particularly a naked one.”

“Did the tricks hurt or make you uncomfortable?”

Karen paused in thought for a few seconds, before saying, “The guillotine didn’t hurt, it was peculiar being a head and a separate body. The push the lightbulbs through thing was a bit hot, but as they went through it was actually quite nice, but when the bulbs came out; that was just weird; not unpleasant, just weird. And the being cut up was also pleasant enough once I got over the fact I was cut into fourteen pieces. I think the most uncomfortable I was was when I was impaled on the lights and couldn’t move, but it wasn’t a strain and didn’t hurt; I just wouldn’t want to stay like that for too long.”

“Is the worry about the nudity?” asked Ian.

“I suppose it could be. I’ve never been naked in front of more than one person at a time and always someone I knew and trusted, until I met you.”

“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” Ian queried, a little shocked, but concealing it well. “We seemed to get on so well at the audition.”

“I didn’t mean it that way!” exclaimed Karen, “It’s just that every other person who has seen me naked, since I left school, I have known for at least a month, not just ten minutes.”

“So, I get the impression that the nudity thing is bigger than it first appeared.” Karen nodded. Ian continued, “How about we put the idea of naked or even topless shows on the back burner until you feel ready; just concentrate on you being my assistant for the time being. How does that sound?”

Karen considered the proposal. “I’m still not sure, but maybe we could give it a go and see what happens.” She paused then asked, “Did you have anything planned for this afternoon?”

“I had nothing set up, but I was going to suggest you try on the costumes, see if they fit or need adjusting. I was then going to show you the show me and Becky used to do; so you knew what to expect when we did a ‘Normal’ show. And after that, if there was time, I thought we could discuss the more sexy shows and workout what we’d be doing.”

“I kind of thought that you had that kind of thing planned.  I suppose it won’t hurt to at least look at the first two parts of that plan.”

Ian had to rewind what he had last said to work out what Karen meant, but readily agreed.  “So, let’s go and look at the costumes that Becky wore before she left.” He stood and came round the desk and headed for the door.  Karen followed him through the office door and the “No Entry” door; about two steps into the space beyond she stopped and breathed “Wow!”

The space seemed to be twice the size she had expected and on three floors, with a freight elevator next to the office and an empty area with a low platform. It was also cleaner and warmer than she expected.

Ian pointed to a curtained off area. “All Becky’s costumes are stored over there.  Try a few and see whether they fit, can be altered or need to be replaced.  I’ll go and get some of the illusions for you to, perhaps, try.”

Karen pushed the curtain aside and entered the small area beyond, the curtain fell back in place. The cubicle was furnished with a dressing table and chair, a full length mirror and a rail of costumes.  The rail held maybe a dozen costumes from a couple of bikini sets, a tuxedo one-piece and a red velvet stereotypical magician’s assistant outfit, through the quite elegant little black dress, to the impossibly flouncy and exaggerated señorita flamenco dress that seemed at least 2 sizes bigger than the rest.  Karen approached the rail and riffled through, mainly looking for a label that told what size Ian’s ex-fiancée had been. The only label she discovered was a discreet label in the little black dress, which indicated it had been purchased from a locally well-known high-end fashion boutique. Karen wondered why Becky had not come to collect an obviously expensive and well-made dress, then she had the thought, “if you suddenly find out that your boyfriend is a ‘pervert’, you don’t drop by his ‘torture dungeon’ to pick up a few things”.  The thought gave Karen pause, then she thought she was being silly and it probably belonged the Ian as part of the magic show.

Karen decided that in the absence of size labels she would have to try something on.  She picked out the little black dress, undid the zip and draped it over the back of the chair.  She then put her head through the curtain and called out, “Ian?”

A rumbling high above stopped and he called back, “Yes?”

“I thought I’d let you know that I’m going to try something on, so please don’t come while I’m changing.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” came the faint reply, “but it’s only fair to say that sometimes we’d have to share a dressing room. But I guess it’s a question of we’d find a way to cross that bridge if we ever got that far.”

After pause, Ian called down, “Which costume are you going to try? That way I can bring down a couple of illusions that are suited to it.”

Karen poked her head through curtain and yelled, “I'm going to try the little black number.”

“Excellent. If that fits, everything else should, with the possible exception of the bikinis, but they should be easy to replace. I'll be down in a few mins.”

Karen concentrated on getting out of her skirt and blouse and into the dress. As she was admiring how the dress complimented her figure in the mirror, the noise of the freight elevator descending intruded into the changing cubicle.

As the elevator slowed and then halted, Karen stepped from behind the curtain. In the silence that followed the elevator's landing, she heard Ian give a deep outward breath. Then he said, “I thought that Becky looked good in that dress, but it could have been made to measure for you.”

Karen also liked the way the dress made her feel; sexy, without flaunting it too much. She had some minor quibbles about the dress, but they were very minor. She expected that with time she would get used to the way the cap sleeves touched the tops of her upper arms. The fact that the dress ended higher up her leg than any of the dresses or skirts she owned, she felt she would have to roll with; in a knee-length skirt you could sit down anyway you liked, but in a dress that barely reach mid-thigh you had to learn to sit carefully if you did not want to flash your knickers at anyone watching.

“If everything in there fits as well as this does, there will probably be only minor adjustments to make, and I know a women in town that can get those done," Karen offered.

She looked at the contents of the lift and saw an upright cabinet, another box and stand with a big-screen TV on it. Ian asked her to help by wheeling the upright cabinet to the area behind the backdrop of the platform and then out onto the platform. He wheeled the other device there, showing her the way. Behind the back drop there was a clear area at the top of a ramp. Ian dumped his piece of equipment there and held open the divide in the curtain with the obvious intent that Karen push the other device onto the stage.

"If you were a gentleman, you'd do more and offer to push this the rest of the way," Karen commented.

"True, but on stage, I'm the magician. The assistant does most of the moving stuff about so that I can concentrate on entertaining the audience. When you're not the centre of attention by being part of the magic, your job is to unobtrusively move things to where they're needed. Of course, off stage I'll be as considerate as I can."

Karen pushed the thing that she was pushing out onto the rehearsal stage area and waited for Ian to come through.

Ian arrived. "We've checked that most of the costumes will fit. And I have brought down a couple of illusions for trying out later, if we get that far. If you go and fetch the chair from the dressing room I'll set up the video and I can show you what me and Becky used to do. Then we can discuss where we go from there. Ok?"

When Karen returned with the chair, Ian had plugged the TV in and switched it on. "This a compilation of the illusions Becky and I used to do. Just watch and I'll try to answer your questions after. I'll be in the office doing some of the paperwork that seems to have piled up since Becky left me." He stuck a DVD into the side of the screen and handed her the remote. He offered to dim the lights, but she declined the offer.

The things she saw on the screen amazed her, but were not things she had not seen before on the assortment of magic shows and specials that she occasionally caught on TV. She noted that the blonde assistant did not dress in anything more revealing that the red velvet basque and fishnet tights; she wondered why there were bikinis on the rail, because Becky did not seem to wear them. She also noted that about half the time  Ian was the centre of attention on the stage, either doing smaller magic or some minor magic with an audience volunteer (although in one instance, the volunteer did not seem particularly willing); Becky was mostly absent from these parts except to hand something to Ian, or take something away.

The big thing she noticed was that none of the illusions she had been part of for the audition were represented on the video compilation. The guillotine was there, but it was used on a gentleman from the audience and his head remained firmly attached to his body. The light-spiker was not on the DVD, but there was an illusion where Becky got into a box on a table and a set of metal spikes was rammed through the box, but when Ian opened the box panel, which had Becky's hand sticking out of it until the very last moment, the box was shown to be occupied by nothing but spikes; Becky had disappeared. It appeared that the most pieces Becky was divided into was seven, in a tall cabinet which was rotated horizontal and then sliced into seven sections, which were seperated by pulling the end ones out so that the bar that supported the cabinet expanded, leaving spaces between the sections; Karen also noticed that only three of the sections had bits sticking out.

As the DVD ended, Ian returned from the office. "How come office piles up so quickly?" he asked the world in general.

"Probably, because you allow it to pile up, rather then dealing with it the day it arrives. I guess, Becky used to handle a lot of the paperwork for you."

"I suppose she did, and I never appreciated how much it helped. Well, that's water under the bridge; I'll just have to get into the routine of doing it on a daily basis, or something like that. But I didn't come back out to talk paperwork or my failings as an administrator. What did you think?" He nodded towards the TV.

"The illusions were amazing. The other stuff, the sleight of hand I mean, was very good too; was that really sleight of hand or did that involve magic too?"

"Most of the sleight of hand is skill and digital dexterity, but I do sometimes use real magic to assist when there is a move I am struggling with. Please don't think I'm using  magic as a substitute for skill; I'm using to keep the moves looking effortless until I can get the moves to be effortless by practice."

"But the big stuff is all magic, right?"

"Unless, you already know how to do some of the tricks by the illusionists' methods, which I'm guessing you don't, I'll be teaching you how to be part of the magic."

"So, that thing," she said, pointing to the cabinet she had wheeled onto the stage, "that  would really crush me down to about yah high?" She held hands up one about a foot above the other.

"Exactly, by which I mean, it would crush you down, but probably not exactly that high. I gather from fellow magicians that some people are more compressible than others and the more compressible a person is the better assistant they will make. Do you want to give it a go?"

"Does it hurt? Becky looked as though it was quite painful."
"That was pure acting. I once asked Becky if she would stop making it seem like such an ordeal, but she said it evoked a sense of connection from the audience, because she was acting out the seven stages of grief, or something like that. No-one ever complained about it, so I just let her get on with it."

"Ok. I assume that I'll come out the same size as I went in and I won't be chopped to pieces or have things shoved through me while I'm in there."

"Exactly. I'll only be squeezing you down as far as is comfortable and restoring you to your original dimensions; any other size and you won't fit in the dress so well, which would be a waste of a quite expensive dress. The same goes for dividing and penetrating, it would damage the dress, but not you, unless I got it enchanted to be safe from magical damage."

While he was talking Ian stepped up onto the stage and held out his hand to assist Karen in stepping up there too.

Once she was on stage and taking a closer look at the cabinet than she had while she was pushing it to its current position, she asked, "Is there any chance I can get to see what's happening to me while it's happening. You had a mirror at the audition.

Ian facepalmed and leap back down from the stage. He soon had the TV facing the stage and a couple of prods of the remote later the screen displayed Karen's cautious circling of the prop there. A few adjustments brought the image into sharper focus. He then returned to the stage.

Meanwhile, Karen was inspecting the squeezing cabinet. The two sides were a bit over six foot tall and about two inches thick, presumably to hold the whatever mechanism controlled the moving up and down of the base and the top. Karen's surprise was at how narrow they were front to back; the distance between the front and back edges was about eighteen inches, but the blinds that comprised the front and back faces of the cabinet were inset an inch in from the edge that left very little room inside. The top, which she could not see well, because even in her medium heels it was only just below eye level, consisted of a neck hole, with the front part housing the roller of the front blind. The roller for the back blind was housed in the base.


Ian approached the cabinet and leaned down to unhook the front blind from the bar at the front of the base, which had a pair of toe-holes. As he lifted the blind, so that the tape measure marks disappeared into the roller at the top. Karen came round to have a look inside. There was not much to see. The base, it was now obvious was a tray with a roller at the back, the toe-bar at the front and some attachment to the mechanism in the side walls; most of the detail was lost in the matt blackness of the interior. As Ian pulled the front of the neck stock away, Karen spotted something lying in the base-tray.

"What's that?" she asked as she reached forward to pick it up. To her it seemed like a pair of rollers attached by a blind and one with the front part of a neck stock.

For a moment Ian seemed to be unsure, then he remembered. "That's an alternative blind I was working on, but I didn't get to try it, before Becky left. I don't think she would have liked the artwork either. Why don't we try it out? If it works well, we can get the artwork changed if you find it is not something you like."

"How does it change anything from what I saw on the DVD?"

"As I said the picture is different; I commissioned it before I suggested that the show have a sexier version to Becky. And more importantly, it has hand-holes in the middle; hence the need for two rollers."

"Does it make any difference to how the crusher, or whatever you call it, is performed?"

"Other than that you'd need to put your hands through the hand-holes before we get to the squishing bit, no."

"Ok, why not?"

Ian placed the original blind aside and waved Karen into the cabinet with the double rollers, but stopped her before she did, to request that she remove her shoes.

"You're going to be ok with being in bare or stockinged feet most of the time you are on stage, aren't you?"

"I guess so." The unspoken question of 'why?' hung in the air.

"Great. It's just that people like to see real feet sticking out of cabinets to assure them that the assistant is really in the box, but also on some stages heels make a lot of noise."

"I can see that, but what about if I step on something hard and hurt myself, wouldn't that be bad too?"

"Becky had some ballet slipper type things, which she wore backstage. Maybe we could get you some."

"That sounds like a solution. I suppose you want me to get into the box."

"Of course, but it is good to think about and discuss these other things that come up, before they become a problem during a show."

Karen stepped into the cabinet, turning as she entered so that she was facing forward. She then shuffled forward so that her toes emerged through the toe-bar at the base of the front. While this may have been what was meant to happen, it was necessitated by the stock at the top not being at neck level. Ian made an adjustment of the level of the stock until Karen could place her neck into it.

"Of course, for a performance we'd have that pre-adjusted to the right height, but I still think you made a better job of getting in than Becky ever did. I always felt that stepping backwards into the box was a bit lacking in grace."

Karen thought back to what she had seen on the DVD and found she agreed, but internally pointed out that stepping backward into this cabinet would always be awkward, because there was not only the height of the cabinet from the floor to think of, but also the height of the toe-bar too and perhaps the thickness of the base-tray.

Karen suddenly found in herself a desire to be a better, more graceful and adventurous magician's assistant than Becky had ever been. For a fraction of a second she wondered if that determination would take her to places she would not have considered before, but she also knew that if the journey there was taken in small steps she would get there.

Her moment of introspection had given Ian time to fit the stock-end of the double blind; she seemed to have reacted without noticing to his instruction to raise her chin. He placed the thumb of one hand on the blind by the neck stock and drew the other end down to about her waist height.

"Could you stick your hands through the holes in the blind so that they are visible out front?"

Karen checked the image on the TV to see that an inch or two above where two circular holes for hand to go through. She could also see why Ian felt that Becky would not be a fan of this blind; the image she could see was a naked female torso, improbably well endowed, with arms positioned to end where her hands were emerging through the fabric of the blind. Becky had a generous bust, larger than Karen's, but not as large as depicted; was this exaggeration for effect, to flatter, or to match some breast enlarging effect that Ian might have come up with? She decided not to ask.

With her wrists in place, Ian pulled the rest of the blind down to the toe-bar where it was quickly attached. Karen noticed that there was more blind still wound onto the roller in front of her face than could be explained by having enough extra blind to accommodate a taller assistant. A glimpse at the TV showed an excess of blind on the bottom roller too. It also showed than the full image on the blind was entirely naked; she did not find this troubling as Ian had said that the image could be changed.

"So, why the extra blind on the rollers? It can't all be to allow for having a taller assistant, especially as you specified a height in the ad."

"The original idea was that it gave some flexibility if you want to raise or lower your arms a bit."

"Won't that muck up the picture?"

"Try it!"

Karen lifted her hands against the resistance of the bottom roller and watched as the torso furled into the upper roller and the naked legs extended, until, with her hands just below the top, the bottom roller stopped. The image, visible via the camera and TV, showed Karen's head perched above a naked crotch on a pair of impossibly long legs ending in her toes poked through the toe-bar. "That looks weird. I guess it explains the extra blind at the bottom, what about the top? Surely it doesn't need all the blind that's there."

Ian stepped forward and took hold of Karen's hands. "No that's so that I can do this." He pulled her hands down to waist height again. "Now relax a bit, or this won't work." He pulled on her hands, once more, lowering them down to the bottom of the cabinet until the palms rested on the lower roller and Karen could feel the tip of her fingers resting on the tops of her feet." Ian stood up from the squat he had adopted during the process of pulling Karen's hands down.

Karen got a view of the cabinet on the TV; directly above her toes were her hands at the base of the naked torso with a giraffe-like neck leading up to her head. She smiled at the ridiculousness of the picture, then she began questioning how her hands were five feet from her head, when they had never been more than three feet away before.

"How can I reach down there and my head still be up here?" she asked

"I stretched your arms a bit, but don't worry, I'll make sure that they are back to their normal length before we finish."

"But I thought this cabinet was suppose to scrunch me down not stretch me."

"It'll do that too and if I had brought the part that does it, it could also twist you. I can go and get it if you like."

"No, thanks," she said quickly, to forestall him abandoning her with her hands somewhere around her ankles. "I think we'll leave the twisting to the purpose built apparatus that I saw on the video, for the moment. I'm still trying to get used to the fact that magic seems to be real, without overdoing it or going to fast. My dad used to say, 'Don't test the depth of the water with both feet.'"

Ian paused to make sense of the saying, then said, "Probably wise, unless you know you can swim."

"Good point, but I'm not even sure if I'll like the water."

"In that case, it's time to paddle in the relatively safe shallows of being squashed down." He leant down and lifted her hands from their low position to about waist-height, so that the image on the blind lined up with the body behind.

"'Relatively safe' sounds like some of the stuff might be dangerous."

"Anything is potentially dangerous if you don't know what you're doing; it's possible to drown in an inch of water, but it does take a lot of stupidity or malign 'help' to actually do it, but the danger is there. The deeper the 'water' gets, the greater the danger is, but most sensible people try not to get out of their depth."

He moved to the handle on one side of the cabinet, took the tension and released a catch.

"So, what is going to happen to me when you turn the handle?"

"This handle will lower your head down towards your hands, so try to keep your hands in about the same position they are now. And the other handle will raise your feet towards your hands."

"I get that; I saw it on the video. But what will be happening to my body and legs and stuff?"

"I don't know how to describe it. I did look once; never again, it was unpleasantly weird, even by a magician's standards. The important thing is that it won't hurt and you'll be back to normal when you're back to your usual height. Here goes!"

Ian cranked the handle one turn and it made a ratcheting noise. Ian stopped. "You're not supposed to scrunch your body up; you're suppose to let the machine do its job." A quick adjustment and he turned the handle back, raising Karen's head to its former position. "You need to let the machine shrink you down and not bend your body and push your bottom against the rear blind. When you're ready we'll try that again."

"I was only doing what felt natural."

"I understand, but this is magic and you'll need to set you mind to doing stuff that does not seem natural once in a while. Are you ready?"

"Yes, I think so. I'll try and stay standing straight."

"Good, We'll try again." He turned the handle and she felt the neck-stock press down on her shoulders. After the first turn, during which she felt it was hard to resist the urge to bend her body to lessen the pressure on her shoulders, the next turn was not uncomfortable for the pressure from above, but the feeling of the dress round her body wrinkling up; it felt tight across her chest. This feeling faded as the third and fourth turns were made. Ian set the catch on the handle. "How was that, for you?"

"I don't know how to describe it other than weird." She peeked over the edge of the stock and saw the tips of her fingers, which she knew were waist-height, because she could feel her wrists touching just above the waist band of her panties, but they were an inch or two below her chin. The view via the TV confirmed the situation, but Karen had a feeling that the image visible on the blind, did not entirely match the reality behind the blind. She flexed her knee and was surprised to see the picture on the blind deform slightly as her knee touched it at about where the knees on the painted legs were.

While Karen had been considering her position, Ian had crossed behind the apparatus. He waved at the camera over her lowered head; this seemed more a part of the performance of the illusion for an audience, than any attempt to draw Karen's attention. "I've shrunk you down a bit. Are you ready to be shrunk from the other end?"

"I don't see why not." Her tone expressed more uncertainty than her words.

"Ok. You'll be tempted to bend your knees. Try to resist that; we don't another false start like last time."

"I'll try, but no promises."

With the first two or three clicks of the ratchet noise, she felt the pressure down her legs build, then she felt the hem of the dress touch her leg just above her knee, an inch or two below where it had reached before. This distraction meant that she did not notice that the compressive force was no longer as uncomfortable as it had started out. Four turns of the handle later, she peeked over the edge of the stock to see her fingers and toes all so close that she had difficulty in focussing on them.

"There you go, you are squashed down to about a foot tall, which is about the smallest I ever got Becky down to, but I think you could be squashed another inch or so, if your hands weren't in the way."

Karen's competitive streak made her suggest, "Why don't I pull my hands in and see if you're right?"

"That would be great, if I didn't want you to see yourself in your shrunken state. Just hold your hands straight out!" He leant in from the side of the cabinet, so as not to obstruction her view. A couple of clicks later, he was drawing the blind, its rollers and the neck-stock away.

For a moment, Karen goggled at her image on the TV; her head appeared to rest on the backs of her hands, which in turned rested on the three inch high toe-bar through which the front of her feet protruded; there was no body or legs visible. "That's, kind of, cool." She tried to look down her foreshortened body, but could only see her fingertips and toes. A further look at the TV picture showed that any details of what might have happened to her body was lost in black dress against black cabinet interior. "Can I get out of here like this?" She was curious about how her body and legs still connected the parts she could see.

"I think you could, but I don't think today is the best time to be experimenting with the possibilities. And I don't think you'd find it a pleasant experience either; With your legs so short you'd not be able to move much and I suspect that you would end up falling over, because you don't have your arms to help you balance. It's probably best if I just refit the blind and get you back to you former height, so we can try something else." he paused a moment in consideration. "I think we'll use the tape measure blind, because it will be a fuss to thread your hands back through the other one. So just fold your hands across your front and we'll have you back to normal in a jiffy."

The reversal of the shrinking proved more pleasant than Karen anticipated; she expected that she would be stretched back out from her compressed state, with the consequence that there would be pulling on her feet and neck. The reality of the matter was that as the constraining tray and stock were moved back to their original positions, her legs and then her body expanded to fill the space made available.

When Ian released the blind and pulled the stock free, Karen stepped from the cabinet and struck a pose that showed she was none the worse for her time compressed to a fifth her usual 5'6". She had taken the second or two while Ian was raising the blind to check that she was not dishevelled to an indecent degree, only to find that everything was where it had started.

Ian smiled at Karen's dramatic stance and then moved the cabinet to a back corner of the stage area.

"So, what did you think of that?" he asked.

"Well, it wasn't uncomfortable or anything like that. I guess I wouldn't mind doing it on a regular basis. But I suppose I'd need a few more goes to get used to it and then a few more to polish the performance a bit. You and Becky did it as a 'torture the assistant' kind of routine, but I've seen it done as a 'this is how we save space for travelling' routine."

"I expected that all the stuff we'd do for a performance would need rehearsal, both to get used to what happens and to get the performance right. And, of course, if you have suggestions for angles on the routines we can talk about them; but given you are not an experienced assistant or hardcore magic aficionado, the fact that you have noticed that 'compress the assistant for travelling' is a thing probably means that is a bit old hat, but we can always try it out in front of an audience, once we get out of the studio, and see how it plays."

"I haven't totally decided I really want to be an assistant, but if all the stuff I saw on the DVD is as straight-forward as that and doesn't hurt for more than the guillotine did, I think I'll be persuadable. It'll get me on stage where people might see me; I hear that being seen working onstage can increase your prospects of getting a role elsewhere much better than a ton of auditions."

"Ok. So, this is a stepping stone in your career?"

"That was the original plan; but if I enjoy it and there seem to be long-term prospects of making a living at it, I think I would be easily persuaded to stay. I don't feel at this stage I want to close off all my options. Of course, while I'm working with you, I'll do my best; there's no point in turning up if I don't."

"Good, so having tried out one illusion, would you like a break or shall we move on to the next one. The one I brought down requires that we trust each other."

"Well, I'm not feeling thirsty at the moment. So, what was that box you stowed back there?" She gestured in the general direction of the backstage area.

"It, goes by various names; mostly the 'substitution trunk' or 'metamorphosis'; which is what its originator, Houdini, called it. It's a kind of magic assisted escape effect."

Ian was behind the curtain and dragging the box forward through the gap in the backdrop.

"I think I know the one, but summarise it for me, so I know if I got the right one."

"Ok," he said, pausing to arrange his thoughts. "In a nutshell, I tie you up, put you in a bag in the box, which gets locked, then I stand on the box and raise a curtain. You appear in my place and lower the curtain and release me from the the box, the bag and the stuff I tied you up with."

"That was the one I was thinking of. I can see where we need to trust each other; I need to have trust that you'll get me out and you need to trust that I'll release you afterwards, right?"

"Something like that. Or we could do it the other way round; you tied me up, then I release you when we've switched."

"That sounds like the chicken and the egg, but I think that at the moment, I'd rather be releasing you, because I'll need get you out of there, to continue the show, unless you plan on teaching me some tricks I can do on my own."

"Oh, yes. I plan to teach you the linking rings and the cut and restored rope. This will mean that I can leave you on stage entertaining the punters, while I do some stuff backstage, like prepping a trick or a costume change."

"So, you're planning on trusting me with a few tricks of my own."

"Why not? If I trust you to let me out of the box, why shouldn't I trust you to learn a few small tricks?"

"It occurs to me, that if you can get into the box just like that," she snapped her fingers, "then you can probably get out just as easily."

"Of course, I can, but there will be people that doubt I properly was even in the box, if I don't physically get out of it. There are some magicians, with more assistants than sense, that do a variant where they tied up assistant one and after the switch she is on top of the box and releases assistant two from the box and the magician appears at the back of the auditorium. The only magic I see there is assistant one getting out of the box, where assistant two was already hiding, to help her out of the chains."

Recognising that Ian was having a bit of a rant about magic needing some internal logic, even if it defied the laws of biology and physics, Karen decided to bring the conversation back on track. "So, how tied up will I be?"

"Oh, just your wrists shackled, generally, if you're in the box first; most of the time, I'll do the same when I go first, but sometimes I'll go for the strait-jacket; I can usually milk getting into that for a few extra minutes of fun."

"Just shackles? I'd have thought that you'd have gone for ropes and chains and stuff."

"Impressive as that may seem, they take a long time to get into place and get out of once you get released from the box, which risks boring the audience; and a bored audience is not the kind of audience you want, they start noticing things and lose the sense of wonder that they came to a magic show for in the first place."

"Shall we get on with it? Or were you wanting a cup of something before we continued?"

"Let's get on with it." He opened the lid of the box, which he had already positioned in the middle of the stage and locked the wheels. From inside he pulled a big red bag and a metal thing. The bag he tossed to Karen.

"What am I meant to do with this?" she asked.

"During a show, depending on the presentation we were going for, you would either help an audience member inspect it or demonstrate to the audience that it is a well made bag with no tricky seams or hidden stuff. For now, just check it yourself and get used to handling it, there's no point in delaying getting used to how to show stuff to the audience and, in some cases, how not to show stuff to the audience."

Karen shook out the bag and found it was about three feet wide and four feet deep, made of a soft thick cloth in scarlet. A look inside confirmed the impression that she already had that there were two seams; one along the bottom and the other up the side and these were solid and double stitched. She made an attempt to turn the bag inside-out, but found it too bulky to succeed. The main other thing she noticed was that the mouth of the bag was surrounded by a draw-string threaded through a fold of cloth there. A quick tug on the string, a piece of soft rope about a quarter inch in diameter, assured her that it was sewn in, preventing the possibility of it accidentally coming out.

"That seems like a very solid bag, to me."

"That's because it is. Just drape it over the edge of the box, so that the open end hangs outside; it'll make it easier to get you into it once I've got these on you."

Karen dropped the bottom of the bag into the box leaving the drawstringed end hanging down the front of the box. She eyed the metal in Ian's hands, trying to workout how they were supposed to work. It looked like a rectangle of thick wire, but the two smaller ends were curved; on this loop of heavy-duty wire were hung four short lengths of chain. "How does that work? They're not like any shackles I've ever imagined."

"The idea is that your wrists are held on to the ends of the loop by these chains, padlocked at the back of your wrists. That way people think that you can't reach the padlocks because the nearest one is at the back of the wrist and the far one is at the other end of the shackle, so out of reach."

"Ok, that makes sense. But I don't know how to pick the padlocks anyway, so, even if I could reach them it would do me no good. Unless you're going to tell me that they have a quick release mechanism, but I don't see how that would help."

"There's a trick to getting out of these, but I'll not show you, but if you work it out before you are out of the box, I'll give you a bonus; I'll take you to lunch on me."

"And if I don't?"

"You'll just feel a bit stupid for not getting it; no other penalty. So, hold out a hand!"

She held out a hand and he pressed a rounded end of the wire loop against it. With his other hand he moved one of the short chains to rest over her wrist. He then pulled another chain towards the underside if her wrist and hooked a small padlock into it, before lifting the lock to hook it into a link on the upper chain, then snapped it shut. "Not too tight?"

Karen took hold of the loop and pulled her hand back. She tried to narrowed her hand and tried again with a similarly lack of success. "Not too tight, but tight enough it would seem.

"Good, now hold that hand up and bring your free hand up to the curve on the other end."

The second pair of chains were soon padlocked together forming a bracelet holding Karen's wrists the length of the wire loop apart. She experimentally tugged on them and tried squeezing against the loop with no increase in the freedom of her hands.

"Still not too tight? And not pinching? Becky complained that sometimes they pinched, but I never worked out what I was doing wrong to get it to do that."

After another couple of tugs in various directions, she conceded, "No pinching or excess tightness, but I don't think I'll be getting out of these without help."

"Excellent. Now to get you into the bag. It might get a bit stuffy in there, but you'll not run out of air; I made sure that there was sufficient ventilation." After a brief pause for thought, he added, "Do you want to walk round for a moment to get used to being shackled, before getting into the bag? Not having independent use of your hands can effect your balance."

Karen took a couple of steps and felt that balance was harder, but not difficult. "I think I'll be ok. So, the next stage is to get into the bag, right?"

"Yes, there are two ways of doing this."

Ian was about to say something more, but Karen interrupted. "How can there be more than one way of getting into a bag? You stand outside the bag, you step over the rim (or whatever you call it), then you or someone raises the rim."

"The two main ways are you get into the bag, you get lifted into the box, or you get into the bag which is already in the box. Each method has it's pro and cons. Most magicians seem to prefer the bag in the box method, because it is quicker and less of a problem than to get the person in the bag into the box. The minor downside being that some folk seem to be suspicious that the bag has been switched for a rigged one, whereas if the person in the bag gets in in full view of the audience, there is no doubt. Of course getting into a bag in the box can be a challenge to do with safety and grace."

"And these things won't help." She shook the device on her wrists.

"I'll hold the top of the bag open for you and you can put a hand on my shoulder as you step in. That'll help steady you and if we had an audience, it would make it clear that you weren't out of the shackles either; not that it would be a good idea to be out of the shackles before you were in the bag."

Karen stepped up to the box as Ian arranged the bag ready for her to get into. As she raised her leg to step up over the edge of the box and into the bag, she blessed the shortness of the dress, because it would have made life more difficult if it had been longer. Getting her other leg in was easier, because she was working from higher up, as her standing leg was in the box, instead of on the floor.

"Ok, time to duck down so that I can close the bag, and you get a chance to work out getting out of the shackles."

"Should I squat or sit down or kneel, or something else?"

"What ever works best for you, with a couple of provisos. The main one being that you should be completely within the box so I don't bang you on the head when I shut the lid. We'll have to practice this a few times over the next few rehearsals, so you'll get a chance to try out several positions and we can see what makes the transition easier and you find most comfortable."

With the draw-string pulled tight it was dim in the bag. Karen tried to feel for the locks on the back of her wrists, but without luck. Then it went darker with a thud. The lid was shut. Karen tried to turn her wrists, but the chains were to tight to do that and her arm did not want to flex that way either. She even tried saying, 'abracadabra' under her breath, in case that had any effect, which it did not seem to.

Then it got lighter in the box, but still dim. "I just thought; would you like to do a costume change?"

Ian heard Karen's muffled, "Huh?"

"We could have you come out in a different costume to the one you went in with."

"I'm having trouble with these wrist-thingies and I'll be in a bag in a box with no head room or leg room. Do you think I'm in a position to change costume, when I'm not even in a position to scratch my own back?"

"You wouldn't have to do anything extra; the magic would do it. All you have to do is decide which costume to change into. I thought that as this is a start of rehearsals we might as well get used to doing the whole thing."

"Ok, the red magician's assistant number. I can wait while you fetch it."

"No need. I'll just make sure that it appears on your body." The inside of the bag went dark again as the lids was re-closed.

Karen continued her futile attempts to remove her wrists from the chains. She felt the box being turned round, but in the dark she did not feel queasy. Then she heard something being placed on the top of the box and the sound of Ian climbing onto the box.

Ian raised the curtain that he had placed on the box before climbing up. In a loud voice, in order to be heard by Karen, he shouted, "One, two, three."

As the curtain fell, bouncing off the lid of the box on the way down, it revealed Karen standing atop the box. She looked a little stunned and was blinking in the sudden light. She took a half step to find her balance before she fully realised where she was and stood rigid for a moment to ensure that she did not fall off the top of the box.

She looked at the image on the TV; she was now wearing the fishnets and red velvet strapless top of the magician's assistant outfit she had seen on the rail earlier. She told herself that she looked good in it, even if it showed a lot more leg, more clearly than she would normally and the tops of her breasts seemed unduly prominent. She heard a thump from within the box and remembered that she was supposed to release Ian. Careful she climbed from the box; she did not want to snag the tights.

The catch holding the lid shut was locked by a wooden peg, which came out after a short struggle. The catch sprang up and Karen lifted the lid. From inside the box rose the top of the bag from which hung the knotted drawstring. The knot soon succumbed to Karen's fingers and Ian raised his hands through the opening made. He gave a rotating move with his arms, which fully opened the mouth of the bag which slid down his body, now clad in a slightly creased dinner jacket.

"Well, that went pretty well for a first time. There only seem to be a few corners to smooth there, but nothing a bit of practice won't put right." He presented his shackled wrists to Karen, with the obvious intent that she should unlock them. In response to her puzzled look, he said, "The keys are in the concealed pocket on your hip."

As she fiddled the keys from the pocket, she asked, "I thought you said that you could get out of those easily. Why do you need me to unlock them?"

He made a quick gesture and showed his hands to be free then reversed the gesture and his hands were once more held in place at the ends of the wire loop. "I can, you see, but releasing the cuffs from the newly emerged person is part of the performance."

As she undid the padlocks, Karen observed, "That was a very quick move, I didn't even see how you did it. I guess I'm not getting lunch paid for; today."

Ian took the released wrist shackles from Karen and dropped them in the box. "How about if we do another illusion, but this time we see if we can get you to expand your comfort zone, because the sooner we can get you ok with doing the more risqué stuff, the sooner we can start charging more for a show and you can start making more money."

To Be continued.