Wild Magic Party - Penny and Jean

Penny looked at the email and wondered how the organisers had got her address, not that an invitation to a party of any sort was unwelcome. It seemed, reading between the lines, that the magicians were holding a post Halloween party to show their appreciation of their assistants and volunteers. Penny checked her diary, then zapped back a reply to act as an RSVP.

When she met Jean later, her friend was excited; she had received an invitation to the party too. They agreed to organise so that they went together, to save on taxi fares.

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On the night, while they waited for the taxi, Jean asked Penny what her costume was for the party. "I'm going as a Genie; it's a Jeanious idea!"

Penny sighed, as it was not the first time she had heard that pun (or even the fifth), "Why do I need a costume?"

"Because it said at the bottom of the email 'Costume required'."

"It's supposed to be a thing to appreciate us for taking part in the magic, why should we go to any more effort than turning up? Besides, I'm all costumed out from the end of last month. I want to go to a party as me, not pretending to be anyone else."

Jean looked over Penny's outfit, a long sleeve scoop-necked top in a blue turquoise, purple trousers and  pair of pale grey gym shoes. Noticing a lack of a bra strap or hint of one, she asked, "Are you wearing anything under that?"

"Of course, I am. I'm guessing that there will be plenty of chances to volunteer to be involved in some magic, so I'm wearing as little as I can underneath and remain decent if I have to take off my outer clothes to be involved. I found a properly strapless bikini on the internet so there aren't any side straps or shoulder straps to get in the way of anything a magician might want to do."

"If they ask you what you came as, you could say you came as a yoga instructor and pull off one of your flexi-things or, I don't know, stand on your hands and scratch behind your ear with a toe. Do you want to see my Jeanious genie costume?"

Jean opened her long coat and showed her costume. The top was a bikini cover in sparkly gem-like stuff and there were gauzy sleeves that disappeared down the sleeves of the coat; Penny guessed they reached Jean's elbows, because there was no sign of a cuff at the end of the coat sleeves. Underneath was a similarly jewelled pair of bikini bottoms under a see-through gauzy sarong, which, instead of hanging down to Jean's ankles, had been gathered to the side and fed into the spout of the Aladdin lamp hanging from her waistband. The gym shoes on her feet looked out of place.

At the raising of Penny's eye brow, Jean pulled a pair of curly-toed slippers from a coat pocket. "I didn't want to ruin these on the way there, so I'll change into them once we get there."

The buzz of the taxi-driver at the door prevented further conversation as Jean put her slippers back into her pocket and closed her coat, while Penny grabbed a coat to guard against the chill of the night.

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At the entrance to the venue, they showed their invites. After flashing her costume Jean was let in, but the guy on the door queried what Penny had come as.

"Can't you tell I've come as a yoga instructor?"

"Normally, I wouldn't let you in without a proper costume, but I happen to know one of the magicians was wondering, out loud, if we would get someone that suited his trick. If you're willing to try out a variant on the bed of nails, I'll let you in."

"Where do I sign up?" While Penny was not too keen to lie on a bed of nails, but she wanted to get in and the challenge of a variant of the nail bed, was too good to refuse.

"No need, you have an 'unwritten contract', which with magicians is just as good. So be careful how things are worded, or they may come back to bite you."

The girls followed a bodypainted waitress to a table where their nameplates were. At the bottom of Penny's nameplate, in small glowy blue letters, was 'Reserved for Charlie'. When she asked the guy on the other side of her from Jean what this meant, he told her that it meant when Charlie called for a volunteer, she was to volunteer, and the other magicians were requested not to do anything to her, until then, that would impede her ability to volunteer.

"So, I've volunteered to volunteer for someone called Charlie. I've never heard of him."

"I gather he's quite new to magic, but not too bad and will be better once he gets a few proper performances under his belt," said Penny's informant.

"So I volunteered to assist a novice magician?"

"I wouldn't worry; if things go awry there are enough experienced magicians about tonight to sort you out."

"That's good to hear," commented Penny, who was then interrupted by one of the waitresses in bodypaint wanting to take her order.

While Penny and Jean ate and drank, they watched a few acts on the stage.

The old gentleman who seemed to be the master of ceremonies went to the stage to announce that the next act would be a promising newcomer, doing his first act for an audience of magicians.

"Please welcome, Charlie Penn!"

Penny knew it was her time, but noticed that one of the waitresses made herself scarce, to the point that she dumped the plate she was carrying in front of the person who had ordered it and ran off.

The person who came onto the stage looked as unlike a magician as Penny could imagine; he wore clown shoes, baggy red trousers, an blue shirt with orange spots that clashed with the yellow braces that held up the trousers.

Penny's heart dropped, not only was she promised as an assistant to a novice magician, but he was a clown too; could things get worse?

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, usually I'm Charlie Penn the Clown, but tonight I'm Charles Pennington. You'll have to forgive the outfit, but it's my only magicianing outfit. I didn't even know I would be performing this evening until a suitable person arrived. I gather that person is called Penny. Could you show your appreciation for Penny, as she comes up. And Penny, if you could bring a friend, because I will be needing a bit of help with what we are going to be doing."

Penny stood up and received applause for just doing that, she grabbed Jean's wrist and dragged her along until it was evident that Jean was going to follow without needing to be dragged the whole way.

It seemed that Charles was a bit disappointed by his volunteer; she was very casually dressed and did not appear to be in costume at all. The friend she had in tow had made more effort with her costume, but he was unsure if he wanted the competition from a real genie.

"So you're Penny and this is your friend...?"

"Yes, this is my friend Jean, and she thinks that her genie costume is a 'Jeanious' idea." Jean pouted a little at being denied the chance to reuse the line for a completely new audience.

"Jean is obviously a Genie, but what did you come as, Penny?"

"I came as me," Penny stated. "But that doesn't seem to cut it round here, so I'm saying that I came as a yoga instructor." She threw herself into a hand stand and then moved her legs into the lotus position, before lowering them to the stage, then unfolding herself to a standing position again.

The slight frown that had occupied Charles' face, evaporated under a sense of relief that showed. "Now I understand," he said to himself. "You'll be perfect for this, especially if your friend helps out a bit. So as a yoga instructor you know a bit about meditation, right?"

"I said my costume was a yoga instructor; it doesn't mean I know the stuff a yoga instructor would know."

In a whisper, Charles said to Penny, "Please play along or I'll have to hypnotise you, which isn't my best thing, and you'll miss most of the magic."

"Ok, I can do meditation," Penny stated; she put up her hands to shoulder level as if surrendering the point.

"Good, I would like you go into a light meditative trance when I tell you, so that you are suitably relaxed for this." He rushed into the wings and returned pulling a trolley with a wooden cover. "You will, of course, have heard of the bed of nails. Well, this is the bed of glass shards, which should present no problems if you are properly relaxed." Charles removed the cover and tipped the top of the trolley so that the audience could get a good look at the bed. It appeared to be a lot of glass shards embedded in a clay-like base so that the fractured edges were facing up and approximately at the same height. "Some people might worry that the shards might fall over, but that can't happen, because the synthetic compound in which they are placed has been cured for more than a week and has gone totally hard. Please feel free to check that the glass and the compound are not going anywhere, but please be careful, because the edges are very sharp."

Penny and Jean approached the shards and cautiously tapped the mounting compound and tried to wriggle the shards. The compound was as hard as fired clay and the shards did not budge.

"As a demonstration of the sharpness of the edges take this balloon and this apple and drop them anywhere on the bed." Jean went first and dropped the balloon on the middle of the bed and sprang back slightly when it popped on contact with the up-jutting glass. Penny dropped the apple from a height of 12 inches and it embedded itself onto the edge of a piece of glass. Charles removed it.

"Now we need to lift you onto this bed of glass shards, because if you were to try to get on without assistance you would be almost certainly end up with a lot of cuts as you move against the sharp glass edges. So, Penny, please, for a short time, go into a meditative trance and remain rigid, while your friend, Jean, and I lift your body and lay you on the bed of shards?"

"Won't that damage my clothes?" queried Penny.

"Good point," agreed Charles, "Assuming that you are not going to be totally naked, maybe you should take off your outer clothes, especially as this will work better if it is your bared skin against the glass, because fabric can slip."

Before the magician had finished speaking his thought, Penny was pulling her top over her head and down her arms. She tossed to a back corner of the stage and noted that a stage hand collected it. She  then slipped off her shoes and socks and pulled down the pants. The audience cheered Penny's willingness to strip off in the cause of magic.

"Wow!" said Charles, still early enough in his magical career, was astounded by how willing volunteers are to do for a magician things that they would not consider doing for anyone else.

It took the audience some time to take in what Penny was left wearing. It appeared that all she was wearing was a couple of triangular patches on her breasts and another one of the junction between her legs; none of these deep blue patches had any clear means of support, but they stayed in place.

Penny decided to get things back on track, even if her destination did not thrill her at this stage. "When you've quite finished staring, maybe we can continue with what we were doing before your mouth dropped open."

"Sorry," said Charles. "Where were we?"

"You were expounding on your plan to get me safely onto your intimidating-looking bed of glass shards."

"Was I? Oh yes, so I was. The plan is that you meditate and go rigid and relax, then Jean and I will lift you onto the bed and you should be able to lie there without injury."

"Wait a moment, do you want me to go rigid or relax, I can't do both."

"I would like you to be rigid in body with your arms by your sides, but relaxed of spirit. Can you do that?"

"I guess I can try. I'm only pretending to be a yoga instructor, so I shall pretend to meditate and let you sort out the details. Do you want my eyes open or closed?"

"I think closing your eyes will help you," said Charles.

Penny closed her eyes, put her arms beside her body and tried to think rigid happy thoughts. She felt somebody take hold of her shoulders and tip her backwards. She tried to resist the urge to bend her body and was rewarded by Charles saying 'Good' while he muttered something nearly inaudibly and totally unintelligible. As the angle of her body reached about forty-five degrees, she felt the familiar touch of Jean taking hold of her ankles and lifting her to be horizontal. The slight clues from her inner ear and the movement of air against her skin, told that she was being moved, but did not help to know precisely where she was.

Charles kept a constant flow of instructions up, guiding Jean to help him place Penny on the bed of shards. The final instruction was to let go of Penny and be careful not to cut her hands as she stepped back from Penny's body resting on the sharp glass edges.

Charles shone a torch through the area between Penny above and the compound holding the glass below, to show that there was no other means of support.

"Penny you may relax your body a bit."

Penny felt her body relax and be supported. Support was most easily noticed at her major joints; ankles, knees, tops of her thighs, wrists, elbows, shoulders, mid-back, base of her neck and back of her head. She felt the magician pressing on her, but the support remained as good.

"Penny is now lying on the bed of glass shards and so long as she does not move the pressure exerted by the shards will not be enough to puncture her skin."

The audience applauded, more to encourage the new member of their group, rather than being impressed by what he had just done, although some considered the glass shards a nice little innovation.

After a few seconds, Charles asked Penny, "Are you alright there for a while?"

"I guess I'll have to be, because there's no way I can get off this thing unassisted, but I don't find it uncomfortable, as such, I'm just worried that I'll move in some way that will get me a laceration."

"If you stay as relaxed as you are now, you'll have no problem, when I come back to you to demonstrate how safe you actually are."

The colourful magician turn to Penny's friend, Jean, and said, "I suppose you're expecting a bit of magic for yourself."

"Not really," replied Jean. "I came up, because Penny picked me to come up and help, but a bit of magic might be nice. Were you thinking of anything specific?"

"I thought I might help improve your costume," suggested the magician.

"Why? What's wrong with my costume?" Jean's tone indicated that she was mildly offended by the suggestion that her costume could be improved upon.

"As normal costumes go, it is as good as I've seen," Charles said trying to calm Jean. "But with a little magical help if could be fantastic."

"So what are you going to do?" cautious Jean asked.

"I'll just adjust a couple of bits so that you'll look like what a Genie should look like. Ok?"

"Ok; so long as that's all you plan on doing." Jean suddenly remembered the warning they had been given at the door about unwritten contracts with magicians, but also knew it was too late now.

"Would you mind unhooking your lamp and giving it to me, please."

"Um, ok. but why? And don't move too far away, because you'll pull the fabric out of the spout and spoil the effect; it took me nearly forever to get it all in there." Despite her reservations Jean undid the loop that held the Aladdin lamp that hung from from her waistband.

Charles accepted the lamp with a thank you and said, "I wish that you, Jean the Genie, go into the lamp."

Jean imagined that their might have been a puff of smoke, but all she felt was the ground opened up and dropped her into a tight fabric tube which she slid down. The audience saw the puff of smoke and watched as a smokey image of Jean was drawn into the spout of the lamp.

Jean looked around. She was not in the hall any more. Where she was appeared to be a large round room with a high ceiling and floor curved up to meet it some distance away, the floor seemed hard, but not totally stable. She looked down at herself to see if anything had changed and did not detect any difference.

The audience applauded the manner of Jean's disappearance. Charles bowed and then held up the lamp in his hands and rubbed it.

Jean, who was just getting accustomed to standing on the unsteady floor of the huge room, felt something change again and, when the smoke cleared, she was back on stage standing next to Charles the magician. The audience again saw something different; upon being rubbed smoke issued from the lamp and this coalesced into Jean.

As the applause faded again, Jean said, "That was quite neat; vanishing me to somewhere, then bringing me back. But what did it have to with improving my costume?"

Charles seeing that she was looking at him, cast his eyes down her body and then back up.

Jean took the hint and looked down. She discovered that she could no longer see her legs, despite being able to feel them. Further examination revealed that her legs dissolved somewhere mid-thigh into a drift of smoke that led to the lamp. She tried a step forward and moved forward after a fraction of a second delay. A step backward had a similar delayed response. "You seem to have vanished my legs somehow, but they still seem to work to move about with and I can still feel them. I guess that now that I'm a proper looking Jean the Genie, I have to grant you a wish, or is it three?"

"That's ok," said the magician, "especially as I used one wish to get you into the lamp and changed into a genie. I'll keep the other two in case I need them. Shall we see how Penny has been doing while we've been distracted?"

"I'm doing fine," said Penny. "But it is getting tiring trying to remain relaxed and still. And some of the glass is feeling like it's beginning to dig in."

Charles stood behind the trolley and placed a hand on Penny's belly and gave a gentle experimental push. "I think you can do something impressive before we lift you from the bed of glass shards."

"Ok, if I must, but can you make it quick, please."

The first thing that Charles did was to enlist Jean's help in lowering the top of the trolley to knee-high, from its original about hip-level. Then he gave Jean a white cotton towel to lay over Penny's belly while he 'went to fetch something'.

The something he returned with was a ventilated concrete block and a sledgehammer. The audience made a small noise of anticipation, but the first Penny knew of this was when the weight of the block was placed on the towel. A downward glance gave her a glimpse of the concrete and her mind immediately jumped to the right conclusion. "You're planning to break that concrete block on my belly with a sledgehammer, even though I'm lying supported by some sharp glass edges and nothing else." Penny could feel the pressure where her skin was in contact with the glass increase, but nothing was cutting into her.

"You'll be alright, if you don't flinch. So, I suggest that you close your eyes until this is over, then we'll lift you off the bed and send you both back to enjoying yourselves."

Penny closed her eyes and found the suspense of waiting for Charles to break the block was almost more than she could stand. Then she felt the shock of the impact and heard the twin thuds as the two main parts of the block hit the stage on either side of her, along with the patter of smaller fragments of concrete rained down onto the floor.

After the shock of the blow transmitted by the block, she felt the shards below her bite. The glass cutting into her dispelled her fake meditation and she moved, causing other supporting edges to cut into her and the already cutting pieces to cut further, until she felt the compound into which the glass was embedded stopped her descending further. She screamed her shock and the pain of each cut as it began, but was soon feeling the massage feeling of the glass blades passing into and through her.

The hall remained totally silent for about three seconds, until they heard Penny say, "So, you've cut me to pieces with a bed of glass shards, what's next?"

While Charles was still stunned by the situation, Penny was checking that she could still move her fingers and toes.

Charles muttered under his breath, "I wish I had a plan for this."

Jean said, "Your second wish is granted." Then she put her hand to her mouth as if she had not meant to say anything.

Charles the magician was suddenly moving with purpose. From the wings he dragged something eight feet tall. It seemed to be a stand for a complex set of bars at the top from which several cords of various lengths hung.

"Ok, Penny; this might be a bit uncomfortable while I'm doing it, but it will allow you to carry on enjoying this evening, then you'll be back to normal in the morning, as will Jean, of course." This was the first confirmation that anything had happened to Jean that Penny had received beyond the implications she had drawn from the audience reactions.

"Jean, I need more help from you if you don't mind. When I ask for a part of Penny slide it out from between the glass, being careful not to cut yourself, and hand it to me. We'll start with her head."

Jean pulled Penny's head from the glass spike that had penetrated it from behind and in response to Penny's grateful smile gave her a peck on the cheek before handing her over to Charles.

Penny felt the magician touch something to the top of her head, which penetrated. Most of the audience could make out that this was a small eye-screw about half an inch in diameter. There was some fiddling to tie the eye-screw to one of the cords hanging down, during which some audience members spotted that Charles let go of Penny's head entirely, but still managed to appear to be holding the disembodied head. The magician then screwed another eye-screw into the base of Penny's neck; this one was linked with another one. The other one was screwed into the top of Penny's shoulders and chest, so that they hung loosely below her head. In this way, Charles reconstructed Penny connecting her together with interlinked eye-screws at the joints and attaching the cords from the complicated arrangement of bars above to some of those joints.

"Jean, are you any good at puppetry?" Charles asked.

"I don't know, but I guess I'll find out."

"Yes, take this see what happens." The magician handed Jean a device that looked like a smaller version of the bars at the top of the frame from which the articulated sections of Penny hung.

Jean looked at what she had been handed and then moved one of the bits and Penny's arm rose, because the corresponding part of the device on top of the frame move and pulled the cord attached to Penny's wrist.

"We'll take Penny backstage so that you can get a bit of practice in, you both can return to the party after that."

They left the stage with Charles pushing the frame from which the Penny marionette was suspended and Jean, after a small false start, drifting along behind.

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It did not take long for Jean to get proficient at controlling the Penny puppet, then Charles vanished the frame and the device above, without making the strings attached to Penny's joints disappear.

"Go and enjoy the rest of the night. You were lovely volunteers," said Charles.

"But," said Jean, "you've not used your third wish, and if I'm going to be back to normal in the morning, it seems like a waste."

"Good point. Give me a moment to think." The magician muttered to himself for what seemed to be a while. "I've got it. It took some working out, but here goes. I wish that Jean be able to grant a non-world-altering wish for Penny and another for herself."

Jean said, "Your third wish is granted." She looked a little embarrassed, to have spoken without meaning to. "I thought that wishing for more wishes was not something you were allowed to do."

"True, as far as I know, because that would lead to potentially infinite wishes. What I just did, was to split the wish into two less powerful wishes. And we know it worked, because you said the wish was granted."

"So, we get one limited wish each, right?" asked Penny.

"Yes," agreed Charles, "We'll that was my intention."

"May I use it now?"

"I don't see why not, but that is between you and your Genie, Jean."

Penny thought for a while and then wished, "I wish for the duration of this wish to be able to separate myself into as many or few pieces as I desire and at the end the duration to become whole again."

Jean said, "Mini-wish granted." She still blushed, despite becoming more used to the role was taking her over once on a while.

Penny put on a expression that indicated she was concentrating, then suddenly feel in a shower of marble-sized pieces that quickly accumulate in a pile on the floor and just as suddenly was restored into a one piece Penny.

A stagehand came up to the couple and handed Penny the pieces of her costume, she had taken off on the stage.

Penny re-dressed, Then said to Jean, "Let's go back to the food, the drink and the magic." But she did not move. Then Jean raised the puppet-frame that Charles had given her and got Penny walking in the direction she wanted.

As Jean manipulated Penny back to their table, Penny asked, "Aren't you going to use your limited wish?"

"Maybe later, we'll see."