Wild Magic Party - Ann and the Grumpy Magician

The magician on stage doing his act was the featured act of the evening, he had made it big and started an international career, although rumour was that he had got his first break and started his career near here.

Ann, in common with her fellow waitresses, was too busy to be pay much attention to what he was doing; that was until it happened.

What happened was that Ann caught a foot in a discarded steel ring. In the moment it took her to save herself from falling flat on her face two things happened. The first was that she wondered what kind of idiot drops steel rings on the floor where people might trip on them; and instantly came up with the answer: A magician. The second was that she dropped the plate of food she was carrying.

This drew the attention of a lot of the audience and the magician on stage.

"Hey, you!" the magician bellowed. "Didn't you hear that this act required memory and concentration?"

"No, sir," replied Ann. "I was busy doing my job. If some idiot had not left something for me to trip on, I would have been quiet."

"Come up here!" the magician commanded.

Ann did not want to go up on stage, but found that she was moving in that direction. She tried to resist but found that it achieved nothing, because she was being levitated a couple of inches from the floor. She even banged her toes on the steps as he floated up her onto the stage.

Meanwhile, he was issuing orders. He pointed at Hannah and ordered her to clear up the mess that had been made; Hannah set about her task, because she had heard about this magician's temper. Beth, the other waitress, he called to help punish Ann. Beth did not know any better than to obey and trotted up to the stage, to do whatever the magician wanted her to do. The magician's assistant had the misfortune to appear in the wings at this moment and was sent to fetch the "Wicker Maiden".

Ann had arrived on stage and was soon followed by Beth. The magician began haranguing Ann about disturbing a magician at work, but she was giving her own tirade about magicians leaving things lying about and not clearing up after themselves. This was not improving the magician's mood at all. He began waving the nail-gun, he had been using as part of the act, about and as his irritation increased he put it against Ann's hip and fired it.

Ann winced as one might when hit in the hip with a nail-gun and hearing the pneumatic hiss of it going off. But then she giggled, instead of the expected pain, it had tickled. This took both the magician and the waitress by surprise. Beth had not seen what had happened to pause the shouting match between her friend and the big-name magician.

Assuming that he had hit one of the gaps in the strip of nails in the gun that was the heart of what he had been demonstrating before the interruption, he fired another nail into his opponent, next to the previous one, which could be seen sticking out from Ann's hip half an inch. The second firing of the nail gun had no effect, as this was a gap in the nail feed for the gun, but the third fired in another nail and produced another giggle from Ann.

At this point Ann remembered Terry's promise of no pain and concluded it was working, so continued to lambast magicians in general for the slovenly ways and lack of consideration for their victims, whether they be paid assistants or more criminally audience volunteers. This tirade was broken at various points as the magician emptied the rest of the nail gun into Ann's body. Beth was shocked, but assumed that there was some trick that Ann was in on.

Having no luck in stopping Ann's rant by nailing her body, he used the last nail under her chin nailing her lower jaw and tongue to the roof of her mouth.

"I think she's said more than enough. Now it's time to properly punish her for interrupting me. And you are going to help me," he said pointing at Beth.

While the magician had been nailing Ann, the assistant had brought onto stage a body shaped casket made of wicker and a tall pot of swords, then made her escape.

The magician opened the upright casket and floated Ann backwards into it. She struggled ineffectively. He then slammed the front shut on his victim.

He turned to Beth and instructed her to pick a sword and thrust it through the wicker casket.

Beth continued to assume that this was some prearranged trick and not wanting to anger the angry magician any further, by not cooperating, she picked a sword. She thought that if she did this slowly, it would give Ann more time to do whatever she had to do to avoid the sword. She flexed the sword, which was long and thin, like a fencer's épée. The sword seemed solid. She thought about asking where she should put the sword, but the magician's expression discouraged her from asking the question.

She placed the sword into a gap in the weave of the casing and pushed. The tip slipped readily through the gap and encountered some resistance. For an instant, Beth wondered if Ann was still inside the body-shaped wicker, but dismissed this as ridiculous and pushed against the resistance. Suddenly there was no resistance and Beth stumbled forward until the hilt stopped at the wall of the device. Beth peeked round and saw the tip of the sword protruding out the other side of the wicker coffin. She heard a noise from inside the cabinet that might have been someone trying to laugh with their mouth nailed shut; it came out as a snort.

Ann heard the magician instruct Beth to keep inserting swords into her encasement. Each time a new sword went through she snorted the giggle that could not get out of her mouth, but she also felt the nail holding her mouth shut loosen. As the last of the swords went through the nail dropped out and she laughed as if she was being tickled.

Beth was shocked to recognise Ann's laugh from within the multiply pierced casket. She squealed and ran off the stage and through the hall. Hannah chased after her, because she could see that Beth was shocked by her actions and needed to be reassured that everything would turn out right in the end.

The magician tried to rip open the wicker casket, but had to remove all the swords first.

"Are you an airhead or a blockhead?" the magician asked as he opened the cabinet to reveal the unharmed and still giggly Ann.

Knowing that she could not be hurt, Ann defiantly said, "You choose."

The magician moved the still immobilised Ann from inside the wicker device and called for a hammer, a nail and some string. This arrived quickly and the assistant who handed the items over retreated back to the wings just as quickly.

The magician opined that Ann was both a blockhead and an airhead. He tied a length of string to the nail and then inserted it horizontally into Ann's nose, before tapping it a few times until only an inch of the nail remained outside her nose. "You are definitely a blockhead. Now hold onto this," he instructed handing her the end of the string tied to the nail.

The magician drew a flat-bladed sword that he had not been wearing moments before and swung it at Ann's neck. The entire room heard the squelchy crunch as the sword passed through. What happened next was not something any of them had ever seen.

Ann's head, instead of falling off or flying across the stage in the direction of the swing that had decapitated her, began to float upward until it reached the end of the string at which point it tilted to face downward.

"Now get out of my sight!" said the magician.

Cautiously, Ann left the stage. Gabriel bustled up to her. "I guess we'd better try to fix that, so you can get you back to work, because I'll need to borrow Hannah on about twenty minutes and Beth can't do it on her own."

"I'll be glad to be back to normal," commented Ann.

"Sorry, you'll have to wait until he's calmed down for that. He's always restored the results of his temper tantrums before, but never before the end of the evening. I'll have to make it so that you can work and we'll get him to sort you out after."

With a little help from another man the string attached to the nail sticking out of her nose was passed under one arm, tied to her ponytail, passed under her other arm and retied to the nail. This lead to the stump of Ann's upper neck floating and inch above and two inches to the side of the stump of her lower neck.

"Sorry, but that's the best we can do without risking your head floating away. And we'll get you fixed later; we may even persuade him to pay you some sort of compensation."