Talented Man - Extract 1

The final show of the Halloween season was upon them; Halloween night itself. They had managed to sell out a small theatre for two performances and tonight was no exception, even the matinees had been quite full with Halloween falling on a Sunday this year. Marcus was buoyed by the success of the spooky season this year and the anticipation of something good in the near future, that had got him through the less good attendances earlier in the month.

The team pre-show ritual where they all said positive things to each other for the upcoming show had passed with the verve reserved for the last time, because after the show Elizabeth, Daphne and Nell would have some time before joining the Christmas shows that they were signed up for, Bjorn would have some free-time with Elizabeth, before rejoining Marcus and Kate for the winter season.

The show proceeded with an energy that stemmed from wanting to leave the show with great memories. The audience helped them maintain the energy all the way to the final illusion.

The curtain opened to reveal Marcus clad in executioners robes, but without the hood, standing beside a tall guillotine, from his hand hung a rope that went into the wings. Once curtains were fully open he tugged on the rope and Kate stumbled from the wings with the other end of the rope seeming be tied around her wrists. Marcus recited a list of evidence that she was a witch, which was a take on the illusions that she had, against the dictates of common sense, survived. He then pronounce sentence. "The finding of the court is that you shall have your head struck from your body, in accordance with the law."

Marcus pulls the rope that leads up the side of the guillotine and the rope that was slack between the uprights goes taut. With a little extra effort the wooden block that is attached at the end of the rope rises dragging the blade from within the stock. The diagonal edge of the blade rose into the bottom of the stock and passed visibly through the hole in the stock. The block and blade were soon dragged to the top of the frame and suspended there by means of wrapping the rope around a cleat on the side of the nearer upright.

Positioning Kate on the bench behind the guillotine while raising the upper half of the stock, had taken some rehearsal, but now it was done efficiently without it looking like Kate was cooperating. Marcus slid the upper stock back down over Kate's neck.

The script had Kate struggling, while Marcus unhooked the rope holding the blade from the cleat and began to count down from five. What happened this time was there was a pause as both performers felt that relief of the anticipation they had been feeling for the last month or so come to fruition. A lot of the audience felt the pause was too long, but could not understand why, but a few were feeling what Marcus and Kate were experiencing and wondered what the significance was.

Marcus put his hand on the rope and tried to continue where he had left off, but some background exhilaration stayed with him. Kate resumed her act of resisting being beheaded, while preparing herself for the physical jolt that came with the execution of the guillotine illusion.

Marcus began to count from five and as he said two, he released the rope. This was a shock to the audience, but totally expected by Kate.

The block-weighted blade, freed from its tether, slid with a metal-on-metal sound down the uprights towards Kate's restrained neck.

Kate was relying on at least one member of the audience to scream, because in rehearsals it had been determined that her scream was not sufficiently audible and sounded wrong, when it could be heard. She had schooled herself not to scream. She heard the tip of the blade enter the top of the stock and trigger the switch that powered the mechanism to move her neck out of the way of the fast descending blade, giving the appearance that her head fell into the wooden box that stood below. She did not feel the shock of the bench being pulled down dragging her body with it. Instead she felt the blade touch the back of her neck.

Marcus acted the scowl of satisfaction of an executioner's job well done, pleased that despite his and Kate's momentary lapse from character, there was a gratifying round of screams from the audience. As the wooden block giving the blade its fearsome momentum slammed into the top of the stocks, it registered in his mind that something was not right; the sound of the bench tipping to move Kate from harm's way, while giving the look of the harm having been done, had not happened. He was already doing his scripted move of leaning forward to lift the fake head from the wooden box to display to the audience, before putting it behind the blade. This would give Kate time to move back so that the bench rose to its former position and she could sit up and seem to have survived her beheading.

He looked into the box and saw two heads. A brief flicker of thought wondered why there were two, but he quickly concluded that this was a 'last show prank' and went for the more realistic looking of the two. He laced his fingers into the short blond hair and lifted. It felt heavier than usual; he knew he had picked up the wrong head. He turned it so that he could see what kind of prank head had been used. The face he turned towards him was his sister's with an expression of shock on it's face.

"What happened? And why are you pulling my hair," she said.

Marcus surprised and a little disturbed to have something that appeared to be Kate's severed head talk to him. His hand went slack and fell away from the head. From the corner of his eye, he could seen Kate's body shuffle back an inch or two and then make an attempt to sit up. The body had no head and his mind slid from the details of the severed neck.

The crowd in the theatre had at this stage overcome their initial shock at seeing Kate's head fall into the basket and began to applaud, not paying attention to the performers looking as if what had happened was not what was intended. The clapping intensified when they noticed that the decapitated head was floating in front of the magician with no apparent means of support. They began to cheer when the headless body sat up from behind the guillotine.

Marcus felt he was operating on some form of reflexive magician's auto-pilot as he made hand gestures to guide Kate's disembodied head between the uprights of the guillotine that had more that expectedly effective at its supposed job. As the head came close to the body, the body reached out and clamped its hands on either side of the head and lifted it from Marcus' control. While Marcus staggered back a few steps from the release of tension of controlling the head, Kate lifted her head and settled it back on her neck; all appearance of head and body being seperated ceased and Kate was able to show the audience an expression of relief before the curtains closed.

The magician and assistant looked at each other with a combination of shock and being glad that whatever that had been was over.

They did not get much time to think about it, because Bjorn arrived to remove the guillotine, so that Daphne and Nell could dance their final number to the last song of the show, which Elizabeth had already started.

Bjorn brought a normality to the situation with his whisper of, "What happened there?"

"We'll talk about it after the show," replied Marcus. He offered his hand to Kate to help her dismount from the bench. She seemed a little shaky, but managed to stand and walk into the wings, while Bjorn dragged the guillotine into the opposite wing. They stood aside to allow the dancers to get onto the stage and take up their positions on stage.

Marcus gave Kate a 'what the hell happened there' look and got a shrug from a reply. Then habit born of doing the same show forty times in the last month kicked in and they went to change into their walk-down costumes.