Magic Short 18 - The Girl in the Bubble


Nadia did not know why she put her hand up when the magician asked for a young woman to volunteer. She also did not know why the magician picked her; her self image was a bit lower than sometimes, because she had not found someone to take her to the end of term party.

As she made her way up to the stage, the magician's assistants were passing out clipboards seemingly at random to anyone willing to be handed one. Nadia spotted that they had an outline of a woman and came with a set of coloured markers.

Mikhail, the magician, asked those with a clipboard to draw a costume onto the female outline and be prepared to hand it back to the assistants in a little while.

Mikhail met Nadia as she arrived on stage and drew her to the middle of the stage. "Hello, what's your name, please?"

"I'm Nadia," she squeaked, because she was nervous in front of so many people.

"Please, give it up for Nadia," the magician encouraged the audience.

As the applauds subsided, he said, "I guess that you are still in school, do you mind if I ask which school?"

"I'm at the Gagarin High School."

"And have you ever participated in a magic show before?"

"Um, well, when I was six, my friend had a magician at her birthday party and he poured a jug of water in my ear and it came back out of my elbow, but nothing since."

"And what made you volunteer to be a part of this magic show?"

Nadia paused and tried to think of an excuse that did not make her seem self-centred. "I guess, I thought it might be fun."

"I know that I'll be having fun, and I hope the audience will have fun. I hope you will have some fun too. Do you know what you volunteered for?"

"I don't remember you saying, when you called for an audience volunteer, but I'm guessing that it won't be anything too serious, because you've got assistants to do anything dangerous on, because they're trained and I'm not."

"Ok," said the magician, "You're right that I don't plan to anything dangerous to you, but you and they might find it strange and if things go badly you might end up a bit embarrassed, but I'll do my best to make sure that does not happen."

"So, what's going to happen?" asked Nadia, thinking that if she knew what was coming she could mentally prepare herself or decide to abandon the magician and let him pick someone else or even use one of his assistants."

"I can't tell you that, because it will spoil the surprise. But rest assured that you won't feel a thing."

As Nadia asked what she was expected to start by doing, the main assistant, Alina, arrived at her side carrying a large latex sack.

"Please check out the sack. And at some point I'll need you to remove your shoes; now is as good a time as any."

She leant down to undo her shoes and looked at the sack to see what, if anything, there was to say about it. The white latex rectangle was a double thickness, that joined at the edges, the rear sheet seemed to have a zip-like seam up the middle and there seemed to something odd in the corners of the front and in the middle of the top seam.

As Nadia's shoes came off, Alina handed the sack to her and then carried the shoes to the corner of the stage, where they would be in sight, but not in the way. Nadia took the chance to take a closer look at the sack. It was thinner than she had initially guessed and the things at the corners and the top were short tubes; the one in the top was wider than the other four.

"Could you hold it up while I undo the zip in the back, please?" requested the magician.

Nadia moved to holding the top corners and Mikhail took the opener and opened the seam at the back.

Alina returned to the middle of the stage carrying a chair, which she placed facing the audience. Mikhail invited Nadia to sit, so that they could help her get into the sack.

Nadia sat, but the uncertainty that afflicted her was visible in her gestures. She was worried about this development, having a vision of being put into a box and vanished or having swords pushed through her.

Mikhail asked her to lift a foot and point it forward. Nadia did as she was asked. Mikhail draped the sack over her leg so that her foot went inside and then pulled the corner up so that Nadia's bare foot emerged through the tube in the corner. Soon Nadia was in the situation that both hands and both feet had been threaded through tubes in the corners of the sack. While her hands were being put in place, Alina had applied straps around the bases of her shins and tightened them so that the latex material was held tight against her skin. Almost immediately, a similar thing happened at her wrists.

"Nadia, would you please stand so that you can put your head through the hole in the top of the sack."

Nadia stood and raised her arms a bit, to facilitate ducking her head into the sack. She put her arms down again, without put her head in. "You aren't going to put a tight strap around my neck will you?"

Alina answered. "We will be putting a strap around you neck, but only tight enough to hold the latex closed around your neck; we certainly won't be tightening it enough to strangle you."

Mildly reassured, Nadia raised her arms again and ducked her head into the sack through the zippered seam and, with the help of the magician and his assistant, out through the wider tube in the top edge of the sack. This was a tight squeeze, but the latex was stretchy enough that as her head popped out of the end of the tube, she could feel it contract around her neck. The strap Alina applied around her neck did not seem to make the neck hole any tighter, but gave the impression of not allowing it to loosen. While Alina fitted the neck-strap, Mikhail tucked an errant fold of Nadia's skirt into the sack and pulled the zipper-seam closed.

"Now that you are sealed in the sack, Nadia, do you have any idea what we have planned for you?" asked Mikhail.

"No, sorry, not a clue. Am I being slow or is this something I won't have seen?"

"You're not being slow, because this is something that I don't think anyone else does," answered Mikhail, as his second assistant, Rosa, wheeled on a small piece of equipment that trailed a cable into the wings. "I just need to connect this and we can get started." Mikhail took a narrow hose from the equipment that Rosa had parked near Nadia and fitted it to a nozzle in the side of the sack.

"Are you going to pump up the sack until I can't move and then pop it making me vanish and have to come back from the back of the theatre?" speculated Nadia.

"Nice idea, and I could probably do it, but that's not exactly what's going to happen. But you were right about pumping up the sack to reduce how much you can move." The magician tapped a button on the side of the equipment and it began to burble quietly and the sack began to inflate.

Addressing the audience he said, "Far be it from me to distract you from watching the sack inflating around Nadia, but once the sack is inflated, Alina and Rosa will be coming around to collect the clipboards and the costumes that you have drawn on the outline, So if you haven't been drawing already, I think you have a few minutes to get something on the paper. The good news is that it does not have to be particularly detailed, as long as the general intent is clear."

Nadia could feel the pressure building and see that the sack was stretching outwards. The audience who were watching and not drawing, could also see that the sack was swelling and as it swelled it became less opaque. For a short period, Nadia found that the pressure around her was making it difficult to breathe, but after about a minute later her breathing returned to what felt like normal.

Shortly after, the magician stopped the pump and disconnected the hose. As the assistants went into the audience to collect the clipboards, the spectators were stunned to notice that the stretching of the latex sack had caused the material to became almost clear, but they could not see Nadia within the bubble that the sack had become. Due to a light from the back of the stage they could see Mikhail's silhouette on the back of the sack.

Mikhail began to roll the latex sphere around the stage, being careful not to bump Nadia's head, hands or feet, which were still clearly visible, on the stage floor. It took Nadia a little longer to notice that most of her body seemed to have disappeared, but she did; when she looked down towards her hand and could not see her arm leading to it.

It also became evident that Nadia's clothes had not vanished with her body, but were rolling around inside the bubble and sliding to the bottom whenever the movement of the latex sack was stopped.

The assistants returned with their stacks of clipboards and placed them on the table with the overhead camera that Mikhail had used to demonstrate some tricks with coins and cards earlier in the show. Rosa took on the task of removing all the coloured pictures into a single pile, while Alina came to take charge of rolling Nadia about the stage, so that her continuing absence from between her extremities was no longer in doubt.

Meanwhile, Mikhail went to the card table and the image of the green baize and the stacked papers appeared on the screen at the back of the stage. He showed the drawings of costumes that had been made, pausing to let the audience see what had been drawn. He tactfully discarded the one where there was a triangle over the groin and a pair of dots on the chest of the female outline.

He congratulated various other people on their drawings and asking them to make themselves known by cheering when their picture was shown on the screen.

He borrowed a man from the front row of the audience to select one of the pictures that had passed muster as being clothed, which included a few where the artist had coloured in the outline. The man was asked to check that the picture was one that had been cheered when it had appeared on the screen, then put it in an envelope and seal it without showing anyone else.

The magician took the envelope and fitted it to a clip on the end of a ribbon that descended from above. He told the audience that it would remain in full view until it was needed. The envelope was hoisted to about eight feet up and stayed there.

Mikhail returned his attention to Nadia as Alina rolled her to a halt in the middle of the stage. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I didn't expect to be saying this, but actually being a human balloon is fun, but I can't feel much, because my body seems to have disappeared; or gone invisible."

"How do you feel about getting out of there?"

"It sounds like a good idea, but I am a little worried, because I think I spotted my clothes are still in the sack, but not on my body."

"Don't worry about that, I'll make sure that you're alright." the magician said as he reconnected the hose and use a toe to switch the pump back on.

The latex bubble swelled slightly and then stopped. Mikhail pressed another button with his toe and the tone of the pump changed in a way that suggested that it was being more powerful.

The visual evidence of this increase in power was that the sack grew sharply straining its seams. As it grew, attempting to achieve being spherical, Nadia's head and hands appeared to move to more than her height from her feet. Then a patch of the latex bubble went transparent and there was a pop where every one expected a bang and the bubble disappeared, throwing latex shreds in every direction. As the hose from the pump dropped to the stage floor and a cut-out device in the pump silenced it, all eyes were on what may have become of Nadia, standing in the centre of the explosion.

Nadia took a step forward and then one back as she found her balance. Around her feet were the clothes she had been wearing before entering the sack, but she was not naked. She was wearing a purple latex catsuit, with an oval white patch on the front stretching from her groin to her upper chest, her hair was covered by an attached hood with a pair of cat-style ears on. There was also some make up on her face to add to the cat effect; a down pointing triangle on the tip of her nose and three black lines on each cheek representing whiskers.

Mikhail came forward and took Nadia's hand, guiding her back to the centre of the stage, as the crowd cheered.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"For a moment there I thought I had gone deaf; shouldn't that have made a lot more noise? And now my clothes don't feel right." The volunteer looked down and noticed that she was not in her clothes but a tight-fitting latex body suit. "Where did this come from? and where are my clothes?"

Rosa was picking up Nadia's clothes and putting them in a clear plastic bag, while Alina was signalling into the wings for the envelope to be lowered.

"I think I have an explanation for what you're wearing." He reached up, pulled the envelope from the clip and dropped it on the table in view of the overhead camera. With care not to appear to be doing anything more than reopening the envelope and drawing out the sheet of paper within, Mikhail got the sheet out of the envelope than handed the envelope to Nadia to rip apart and confirm that there were no other sheets of paper inside.

The magician flipped over the sheet and showed the audience, via the camera, and Nadia that the picture on the paper quite closely matched what Nadia was wearing. He then checked with the man from the front row that the picture was the one he had put into the envelope and asked the person who had coloured the picture to make themselves known, resulting in confirmation from the guy in the front row and a whoop and a wave from a woman about half way back in the auditorium.

Rosa handed the bag with Nadia's clothes to her and Mikhail suggested that Nadia might want to stick around after the show for a bit of help to get out of her new outfit, At which point she noticed that while the new costume pressed tightly all over her figure, she could not feel a zip or other fastener anywhere on the catsuit.