Magic Short 17 - Splitting the Difference

Susan wondered for the too-many-eth time how she had been talked into helping her brother by being his assistant in a magic act for the school talent show. She knew the answer, but it did not help her get over the fact that for the first time since he had been born, her kid brother was going to be in charge of her and calling the shots. She felt as if her place in her world was under threat.

She was also sure that he could win his section of the talent show with his magic act without her help; he manipulated the Chinese rings with slick efficiency and had the mind reading act down to the point that no matter what the person having their mind read thought of it would appear on the covered black board that had the prediction of that very thing.

Brian had a little bit of ambition and wanted to not only win the prize for his age group, but also the over-all prize for the best act of the evening. Given that he was fourteen and some of the competitors were nearly eighteen, this was a tall order. Brian had said that if he could get a grand illusion into the act there was a good chance that he would win. It seemed that he had managed to borrow an old and little used illusion from the guy that had been teaching him magic and persuaded his parents to support him in asking that Susan be his assistant.

Initially, the prospect had been a little bit of fun, but Susan began to get nervous about what was going to happen when she was being rehearsed in what to do for the mind reading and for the ring trick, but Brian refused to let her see the big illusion she was supposed to help him with. The worry increased when he gave her the costumes he expected her to wear for the act. The dress he wanted her to wear for most of the act was spectacular and he said, if they did well in the final rankings at the show, he would let her keep it. The other costume, which Brian had suggested she wear under the mid-blue dress to make the change quicker, was not what she wanted to wear; it was a one piece swimsuit in a colour between yellow and cream, it was padded to enhance her burgeoning bust from its A-cup to a large B-cup, but the worst thing was that breasts were outlined in black piping and the cup bore the letters 'L' and 'R' on the left and right cups.

At a week to go, Susan had asked her mother to tell Brian to at least tell her what she was letting herself in for. The result was unsatisfactory for Susan; he told her that he was planning on sawing her in half and when challenged that such a stunt needed rehearsing, he told her that it was the kind of magic that did not needed the assistant to rehearse, because it was a trick that could be done on anyone with no preparation. Susan suggested that Brian let her off being an assistant and pull someone from the audience, or possible one of the teachers. She was told that picking someone the right size would be difficult and he had already determined that she was the right size, and he still needed someone who was rehearsed for the rest of his tricks.

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On the night of the talent show, there was a flurry of activity, with Susan dressing in the dress with the swimsuit underneath for a last minute rehearsal, before their parents drove them to the school for the show. Mum did their make-up, while dad unpacked the props into the car. Susan asked where the sawing in half cabinet was, only to be told that Marcus, Brian's magical mentor, had delivered it to the school earlier in the day.

Brian was very pleased to discover that he had been allocated the final slot of the show; this did not please Susan, because she wanted this ordeal to be over and, for preference, result in Brian not winning, that way she could say that she tried to help, but return to being in charge.

They sat through several singers, the school rock band, a juggler and a comedian, who got dragged off the stage for telling school-inappropriate jokes. The last act before theirs was a ventriloquist, but they did not see her, because they were making their way backstage, to be ready for their act, although Susan viewed it has Brian's act that she had been coerced into helping with.

As Jennifer dragged her wise-cracking baby dummy off-stage she received the most applause of the evening so far. Then it was Brian and Susan's turn to impress.

Brian pushed on a tall cabinet and parked it at the centre-rear of the stage, before launching into his Chinese rings routine, where he started out with two rings unlinked then linked. He gradually handled more rings as Susan brought them individually from the side of the stage. The climax was when Brian made a globe, out of the six rings that he ended up with, and placing these over Susan's head, while she made goldfish expressions; something that Brian had thought of when Susan had derisively referred to the globe as the goldfish bowl.

The next section of the act was mind reading, which for Susan mostly consisted of her ferrying various glass bowls of paper pieces for the volunteer, Mrs McCafferty, the maths teacher, to pick several slips from and choose one once she had verified that the paper all had different things on. It seemed that Mrs McCafferty would be spending her fictional holidays in Denmark, eating spaghetti and water skiing; she would spend a grand total of £37.42 (the amount she had in her purse). With most of the blackboard on which this prediction was written revealed, the surprise at the end was that she would be going with someone called Jordan; this was not someone mentioned in passing during the patter of the act, but it was evident from Mrs McCafferty's slack jawed expression, that Jordan was somebody of significance to her.

During these acts, while she did well enough, Susan was not fully concentrating, because she kept catching the tall cabinet out of the corner of her eye and thinking it looked like no sawing in half illusion she had ever seen.

Brian began the last section of the show by implying that Susan had insisted that she get to do more than bring things on stage. He told the audience that he had come up with an illusion for her to star in, claiming that it was his version of the sawing a woman in half trick.

Susan missed most of this introduction as she was in the wings dragging the dress from her body and hanging it up. Then she waited in the wings while Brian moved the cabinet forward turning it in the process to give the audience a better look at it that she had been given in the previous weeks.

The cabinet stood on a low platform. It consisted of a pair of tapered legs sections and a rectangular body section and a wide head section. As Brian turned it, it became obvious that the cabinet only had a front and a back connected at the bottom by the base and at the top by the head box.

After the turn Brian had the cabinet positioned near the front of the stage, where everyone could see it and pulled out four metal rectangles the same height as the body section and a little longer than the cabinet was deep. He then called for applause for his 'Brave Sister Assistant, Susan'.

Susan walked onto the stage, buoyed by the enthusiasm of the crowd, and temporarily forgot her embarrassment at wearing the swimsuit. The cheers of some members of the audience increased when they saw what she was wearing.

"Ok, Susan, please get into the box. You'll probably find it easiest if you stick your head in and up through the hole into the head box and slide in sideways, because there isn't much room between the front and the back."

Susan was heard to complain that she would not need this advice if she had been allowed to rehearse the illusion before the show.

Susan's face was soon seen through the face hole in the head box.

"Alright, we need to get you positioned, so that everybody can tell you are still in there when I cut you in half. So, shuffle your feet forward and put your hands through the holes at waist height."

As Susan pressed herself forward so her toes and hands were visible through the holes in the front, it became obvious that there were another pair of holes further up that lined up nicely with her chest and made a feature of the swimsuit's cups and the letters emblazoned there. Brian saw his sister blush, so did not mention the breast holes, both because he knew that the judges would mark him down for being age-inappropriate and to spare his sister increased embarrassment.

"Great! You're in the perfect position, Sis. Now I shall close up the cabinet." He picked up a metal rectangle and slotted it into the edge of the body box; a manoeuvre that he repeated on the other side. He then turned the cabinet once more, "to show that Susan has not escaped and no-one has got in to help her." As the cabinet turned the audience could see that the body section was completely closed in, but the sides of the legs were still open so they could see Susan's bare legs. When Susan was facing the back of the stage, Brian opened a cover at the back of the head box to show Susan's blonde ponytail.

Susan was soon facing forwards again and saw Brian take up the third of the metal rectangles. He make an exaggerated effort to show that the metal was solid and then began to feed it into a vertical slot in the centre of the body section of the cabinet.

"What are you doing?" Susan squealed.

"I'm going to slice your body in half with this blade," said Brian.

"You can't do that! Besides that's the wrong way! Shouldn't you be cutting across?"

"Of course, I can do this; there's nothing in the talent show rules to say you can't cut your sister in half during your act. I know, I checked." he shoved the divider into slot a little further and her expression showed the whole audience that she could feel it touch her through her swimsuit costume. "As to which way I cut your body in half; just be assured that I know what I'm doing. Just be thankful I won't be cutting you completely in half, because I don't think I have the strength or the time to cut your head in half too. You'll still be in one piece, technically; only some of your parts will have a blade between them."

Susan looked cross-eyed at the top edge of the metal that was pressing harder against the midline of her torso, then it happened. The resistance to the pressure of the blade vanished, which came as a relief. It appeared to Susan and the audience that metal had slid into the cabinet; they assumed that there was some trick. Susan did not feel anything as the blade was pushed through the centreline of her body, until she tried to move within the box; she felt that there a resistance to any sideways motion she might try. Once she had digested the implications of this, her eyes went wide.

The audience noticed that change in Susan's expression which came at least a second after the blade had fully entered the cabinet. The delay subliminally indicating to the audience that this was a new experience for Susan. Her expression of shock and surprise, without pain, telling the audience that, did not entirely believe that the implied action of the blade passing through her did not hurt, but was inducing other unexpected feelings.

Brian picked up the final metal rectangle and began to align it with the slot next to where the first blade had gone in.

"What are you going to do with that? Isn't one blade enough?" asked a slightly panicked Susan.

"I'm going to do what I did with the last one; put it through your middle." answered Brian. "And one blade is definitely not enough, because while you can be a pain in your big sister way, I don't want to hurt you or spill your guts all over the stage. Besides doing anything too messy is against the talent show rules and I would probably be the one clearing it up, which would be icky."

Susan felt the new blade press against her midline, next to the line of resistance to lateral motion. It felt to her that it took less pressure to get the second blade moving through her body, which while a relief also made sense to some detached observer in her mind; it was, of course, easier to push a blade through a cut that was already made, than make the cut in the first place.

Brian turned the cabinet sideways to the audience. He first pointed out that Susan's legs were still visible through the open sides of the legs sections. Then he jiggled the edges of the blades that stuck out the back of the cabinet, directly below Susan's ponytail. Some of the people on one side of the hall could see Susan's queasy expression as she felt the drag of the movement of the blades inside her.

He turned Susan to face front again. While he was behind the cabinet, he unlatched the rear hook that held the two parts of the base platform together. Round the front he leant down and unhooked the front hook. Brian took hold of a handle build into the edge of the cabinet on one side and pulled. The other side of cabinet base stayed in place, while the side that he pulled came towards him.

Soon the cabinet resembled a capital 'A' with the two sides of the cabinet seperated but leaning towards the head box where they connected, there was even a bar between the two sides constraining the separation from becoming too wide. Susan's face, directly above the gap in her body looked astonished at what she was feeling even if she could not tell exactly what had happened to her at that point.

"I didn't know you could do the splits as wide as that, Sis," commented Brian.

Susan strained to see what her kid brother was talking about and discovered why the crowd were applauding. Her feet were about four feet apart and her hands and by implication her hips were two feet further apart than usual. "I can do better that that," asserted Susan. "Just let me out and I'll show you."

"So, that's not wide enough?" asked Brian.

"No," replied Susan, "I can go much wider than that."

Brian went behind the illusion and, with a wink to the audience, removed the bar keeping the two halves of the cabinet from separating further. For a moment he watched as the side of the cabinet that was free to move began to move further from the other half. As the top of the cabinet  went below his shoulder height he grabbed Susan's ponytail and used it as a handle to control the remainder of the cabinet's descent.

It took very little time until the sides of the cabinet were flat on the floor either side of the head box.

After Susan had made an offended expression at her brother's misuse of her ponytail, settled on an expression that uneasily combined wonder and shock, with being worried by her situation.

Brian came round, stepping over one wing of the cabinet. He looked down at his sister's face and said, "I bet you couldn't have done the splits that wide without my help," as he estimated that the distance between Susan's feet was between eight and nine feet.

"Ok, now get me back to normal, you little twit!" she demanded, appearing not to be grateful for the extended reach between her feet.

"If you insist," said Brian. He outlined the plan as he began to put it into action. "First I've got to get the cabinet back together. Then I'll need some help to get it back on its base, so I can pull the blades out and release you."

"Fine, fine!" his sister agreed, "So long as I'm back in one piece as soon as possible, that'll be great."

Brian lifted the end of the cabinet that had slid the furthest from the original central position and lifted it causing it to pivot about the head box. Soon, he had the half cabinet vertically above Susan's head, displaying her breast, hand and foot as the audience tracked up from her head near the floor. Brian was careful not to drop the half of the cabinet he had taken over Susan's head on the half that lay the other side. He then lifted the head box enough to turn it sideways, so that Susan's chin now pointed down her body towards her hands and feet.

Brian gratefully accepted the assistance of an adult from backstage in the heavy task of returning the cabinet to a vertical orientation, then asked that adult, a teacher he had seen, but never been taught by, to remain and help by taking the blades from him as he removed them from the cabinet.

As the two blades at the centre of the body section of the cabinet came out, Susan felt relief at being able to move sideways again, even if it was only within the confines of the cabinet. Then the dividers that made up the sides if the body section were pulled free and Brian gallantly took Susan's hand to guide her from the confines of the cabinet.

As she stepped out from the cabinet, Susan stumbled and felt that something was wrong, but also a huge sense of relief that the ordeal was over. It took a little while for the audience to notice that Susan's hands and feet seemed to have been switched to the wrong arms and legs. Susan's big toes were now on the outside of her feet and she soon noticed that her thumbs seemed to be on the wrong sides of her hands. She also later noticed that the letters on the swimsuit's bust appeared to have been swapped.

Before she could complain about it, Brian said to her, "I'll put you back together properly once we get home. In the meantime act as if this is normal and we'll get away with it."