Fetish Magician 2A: The Claustrophile: Hannah: Part 2


I pressed upward against the lid of the box and it lifted, until it reached an angle where it slid from the side of the crate and clattered to the floor. I unfolded myself from within the box and looked round in the hope of seeing Tom; I knew he had to have been there, because the padlocks had been removed and there was a glass of water a few yards away on the floor. I could not see Tom.

“Have yourself a drink of water!” came the instruction whispered in my ear.

I stepped out of the box and went over to the glass. It looked clean and the water was still; it had stood there long enough to have settled. I picked it up and sniffed it, before I took a tiny sip, to see if it tasted right. I was feeling quite vulnerable, not only from being naked in an unknown place, in the presence of a man I had yet to meet in the flesh, but I had the feeling that I had been dragged through a small hole into a locked box (not that the actual feeling of that event was unpleasant) which meant either my mind was playing tricks or Tom was playing tricks; either way something odd was happening.

As the few drops of water trickled down my throat, I realised how thirsty I was and the water tasted exactly like it did at home, which probably meant the Tom had run the water before filling the glass so that it was fresh water in the pipes. I necked the remainder of the glass and felt a lot better. It occurred to much later that if Tom was the magician he claimed, he would have methods that would allow him to do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted without resorting to something as crude as drugging a glass of water.

There was a slightly clearing of a throat, then Tom said into my ear, “Time for the next piece of magic, Hannah. Please shift the crate to the back of the circle, near the speaker; we will need the space of the next thing we are going to do. If you pop the lid inside the box and then slide it, you should not have too much difficulty.” There was a missed beat, then as an after-thought, “Oh! And the glass can go in there too.”

I stowed the glass in a corner of the crate and picked up the lid and slotted that into the crate diagonally, so that it was neat and not going to smash the glass. The crate was not particularly heavy, but instead of pushing it, I decided to pull it. At the circumference I left it straddling the line and stood in a casually attentive pose to indicate I was waiting for more instructions.

I did not have to wait long. “To your right, you’ll see a low platform with a flattened box on it.” I nodded that I could see them. “Position the platform in the centre of the circle, you may have noticed a chalked ‘X’, that’s the centre. Take the box too.”

I picked up the box to get a look at the platform. It was not much; just a square of plywood with some batten attached around the edge like a rail and some stubby feet underneath. I bent down to drag it, but it did not turn out to be as heavy as I had anticipated, so I picked it up and carried it to the centre of the circle. As I was nearing the centre I let go of the box, so that I would have two hands to place the platform in the correct position; I know some doms who will ‘punish’ their subs under any pretext; Tom did not seem to be one of those, but placing the platform as centrally as humanly possible would please him I hoped. I carefully placed the platform and adjusted it, trying to be quiet and going so far as to lean over the platform to check that the chalk mark showing the centre of the circle was visible through the hole in the centre of the platform.

“Good. I applaud your precision,” Tom’s still disembodied voice praised, “but it only really needed to be over the cross; the cameras have sufficient depth of field to catch everything. If you continue to take as much care, I may see if I can teach you a trick or two.” I was liking the way Tom was dealing with me; he praised, which made me feel I was doing things right, he explained, at least some of, why he wanted what he wanted, so his instructions did not feel arbitrary or capricious and he offered a reward for continued ‘good behaviour’; although why I might want to learn a trick or two, I could not see at the time, but then I did not know what trick he would eventually teach me.

Satisfied with my placing of the platform he moved on to the next thing to do. “Now, I assume that you know how to set up a box by tucking in the flaps in turn and then tucking the corner of the last flap under the first.”

“Yes, Tom,” I answered.

“Ok, assemble the box so that it has a base and place that base on the platform; you’ll find that it fits neatly inside the rim on the platform; that way it won’t fall off, unless it gets pushed too hard.”

I picked the box back up and opened it into a square tube. A glance inside told me the correct way up, but I paused a moment to consider if it mattered. I decided that even if it did not matter to Tom, it mattered to me. I turned the shell of the box over so that I was initially folding the base flaps and began tucking. I would like to flatter myself that I made a tidy job of the final tuck; I have seen people make a mess of that tuck and bend one of the flaps so that the inner part is bend up and takes up excessive space in the box or the outer part is so badly bend that the box does not sit straight. Given that I assumed I would end up inside this box, having a flap jutting up inside the box would be quite uncomfortable.

With the box assembled, I held it a short way above the platform and dropped to allow its weight to help set the creases.

“Good.” It feels good being praised, even if the thing you are being praised for is something you could probably do in your sleep. More instructions followed. “Now, you will have seen that there was a pot of sticks and a step ladder next to where you got those items from.” I nodded. “Bring them to near the box! In fact, place the stepladder directly next to the platform and fold down the top flap on that side so that it is held down by the ladder.”

It took no time to drag the steps and the pot into position and folding down a flap from the top of the box and catching it against the side of the ladder was no problem, once I had worked out which way the steps unfolded.

“Now, I want you to pick a stick from the pot and check it out. Describe it too!” Tom whispered in my ear. His tone said that he was letting me see what I was going to be involved with, rather than filling time or trying to frighten me.

At the pot I took a moment to assess if any of the sticks sticking up from the pot was any different from the rest; beyond barely detectable differences in grain pattern none of the sticks stood out. I picked one at random. The stick I picked was a little over half my height, smooth, straight and was thick enough that I could not quite close my fingers to my palm around it. There was only one thing that marred it, which was that someone (presumably Tom) had tried to whittle one end of the stick to a point and not made a particularly good job of it; I guessed that it was just sufficient to puncture a cardboard box.

“Well, it’s wood and it’s round. It’s a round wooden stick a bit longer than my leg and someone has tried to sharpen one end.” I hoped that Tom did not take this as disparaging his stick sharpening skills.

I suddenly put together what the plan for this scene was; I was to get into the box and the sticks were to be poked through the box all around me. The box was quite big, but was it big enough to accommodate me and the full number of sticks in the pot? Tom would need to know exactly where I was in order to avoid touching me. Maybe I would need to tuck myself close to the first few sticks to give him space for the rest; I felt sure that if I needed to do that he would let me know.

Back to the stick. “I guess this needs to be poked through the cardboard of the box and I suppose it is sharp enough for that, but I doubt it would spear anything more substantial, but it might scratch if it was run across skin.” Was I being too critical? I felt the need to comment on the roughness of the edges between the whittled faces of the ‘point’. I hoped he would take it as a suggestion that I did not want the points to come too close.

“Good summary!” More praise; either he had not spotted the implied critique of his improvised spears, or he was ignoring it. “Now it is time for you to get into the box and crouch down or sit down as you like, you just need to have you head below the edge of the box. Once in the box, topple the ladder away from the box and fold in the top flaps to make a top, in the same way you did for the base.” As I took my first few steps up the ladder, he added, “I would suggest that you take a position that you find comfortable or at least easy to hold, because you may be in there for a while.”

The actual getting into the box was a little difficult as it was deeper that my heel to crotch measurement, but I managed it with a minimum of pressure between my legs and no damage to the box; the folded edge of a substantial box is surprisingly strong. Stood in the box, I pushed the handle at the top of the step-ladder until it over-balanced and watched it collapse flat when it hit the floor.

I took hold of the flap I had folded down and drew it up and over me as I squatted down in the box. In turn I pulled the other flaps on top of the preceding flap until the last flap was pulled down. It was tricky getting the outer corner of the last flap inside the loose corner of the first flap, but I managed it without bending either too severely.

Tom asked if I was ready to continue, so I answered that I was going to be a little while finding a position that I could hold easily. I ended up sitting with my back against one face of the box with my feet braced in the opposite corners and my knees close to my chest. “I’m ready,” I said, adding a note of doubt by appending the phrase, “I think.”

Anyone would be doubtful if there were sitting in a box expecting someone to pierce the box with a lot of sharpened sticks and hoping that the person with the sticks was skilled enough to miss them. What if there was some kind of accident and Tom got too close and I got scratched? What if Tom’s aim went wrong and he accidentally tried to spear me with one of the sticks? I dismissed this, because I still had this feeling that Tom would do me no harm, and I doubted if a stick would be capable of more than giving me a painful bruise before stopping.

It went quiet. In the quiet, I heard a couple scuffs of shoe against floor and then a couple of scrapes from the direction of the pot of sticks, then another foot-scuff; closer this time.

I was feeling very tense, expecting that a pointed stick would coming through the box without warning; I had resolved that if I could help it I would not scream.

Suddenly a totally unexpectedly the question, “Are you ready?” came through the earpiece in my ear. I nearly screamed, but found enough control.

“Yes, I think so, Tom,” I called back, hoping to project something other than surprise, but my voice came out squeaky.

“I shall count three and then do it.”

I began to wonder if waiting without knowing when it was going to happen was better or worse than having a countdown. “Ok,” I whispered, partially hoping that he would not hear me.

He was not planning on waiting for any acknowledgement from me, because he was already counting.

When he reached three, everything changed.

I heard the expected pop as the pointed end of the stick pierced the thick wall of the box. I barely had time to notice that the sound of the puncturing had come from behind me, when I felt the point hit me in the back, between my shoulder blades. This development was shocking enough, but was compounded by the feeling that it was going through me and the extra feeling of it bursting out of my chest. Curiously, I noted that once the tip was through me, it slowed while retaining enough impetus to pierce the opposite wall of the box.

It took me a split second to gather these feelings together and work out that I had been penetrated with a wooden stick, but that tiny fragment of time seemed to stretch as if it might be the rest of my life. I was stabbed through the chest and it took maybe two seconds to calculate what to do. I yelled my safeword, “RED!!”

As this word found the air outside the box and the airwaves beyond the earpiece, the sensation of being penetrated was repeated, but this time I was transfixed through the small of my back and out through my belly.

I shouted “Red!” again.

After my shout, the silence was oppressive. What was Tom going to do? I had told him what ‘red’ meant, but would he remember? Assuming he remembered, would he actually stop? He should have stopped after I had called ‘red’ the first time. Now I was speared twice in a box in a disused warehouse; I was totally at his mercy. I have never felt so vulnerable in my life.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” he asked. His voice showed surprise.

Two questions; the first was the perfect question when ‘red’ is called, the second seemed redundant. I was speared by two sharpened sticks through chest and guts, of course I was hurt.

Another part of my brain questioned why I was analysing what Tom had said, instead of answering the question that mattered and getting the situation sorted out; presumably by getting me out of there and into an ambulance on my way to hospital.

Prompted by this side-thought I answered, “You only went and speared me through the chest and then again through the guts after I had called out.” There was some relief in saying what was wrong, because it made it Tom’s responsibility to sort out the situation.

I expected him to leap into action, but instead he said, “I’m sorry about the second one, but it was underway before you shouted and I could not turn it aside, because it might have ended up somewhere worse. So, are you hurt?”

Now was not the time to apologise for not responding to my shout the instant I made it; making excuses only magnified the offense I felt. And such a feeble excuse too; where could be worse than through my abdomen? And asking the same stupid question again? Angela had warned me about Tom’s vanilla-ness; was I going to pay a dreadful price for not properly heeding the warning?

My temper was beginning to boil. “What do you think, bucko? You just speared me through the chest and the guts, what do you expect?” I shouted.

“I expect you to have a wooden stake through your chest,” came his reply; this meant that he had deliberately speared me; I was dealing with a maniac. He added, “But I don’t expect there to be blood.” Had he missed all education and common-sense? If he expect to deliberately spear someone through the chest and guts and there not be blood, he believed in magic. “Is there any blood or pain?” he asked. Maybe, he really believed in magic.

I was given pause by this thought. If he believed in magic, perhaps he had reason to. I moved my hand to where the stick exited my chest. It felt like I would have imagined it would feel, if I had ever thought to imagine being stabbed through the chest. I also felt some wet droplets. I raised my hand towards the opening in the top of the box where the flaps did not quite meet to see if the moisture was tinted with red; it was not, probably just perspiration.

“I don’t feel any blood. Well, not yet anyways.” I was not discounting the possibility that the stick was stopping the blood leaking out, but there was the problem of internal bleeding. Then why was I not feeling faint? I immediately put that down to adrenaline.

“And you won’t, unless you find something in there to cut yourself on. That’s blood sorted.” He dismissed the lack of external bleeding, just like that; no thought to internal bleeding at all. Then he continues, “So, do you feel any pain, or are you just thinking you should feel pain because of your situation?”

Is this man an inexhaustible supply of stupid questions? “Is there a non-painful way to be speared?” I sneered.

I was not expecting an answer, still less an admission. “I’ll admit most people feel some small amount of pain at the start of a penetration or cutting, but that usually goes away quite quickly.” He was expecting me to feel some pain and he did not warn me?

“Are you in pain now?” More stupid questions! “If you are in pain now, then being a magician’s assistant is not for you and we might as well give up.” This gave me enough pause to analyse my situation.

My situation could be summarised as sitting in a box in an abandoned warehouse, with two wooden spears through my body. This set of circumstances should involve lots of fear, bleeding and pain.

But I was not feeling fear, I could not tell why, but was discussing my situation with the instigator of that situation without jabbering or screaming. In fact I was feeling quite lucid, not a state associated with fear, except where the lucidity is a product of the ‘fight or flight response’. But I was waiting, possibly too long, for my current predicament to be sorted out.

I had already established that I was not bleeding, but I felt the exit points of both spears to check that I was still not bleeding, despite every thought in my head assuming that bleeding was a normal consequence of being pierced with a piece of wood.

I turned my thoughts to the pain part of ‘things there should be lots of’, and started by noting again that I was not screaming. I tried to move slightly, but the stick through my chest was not permitting that and the tiny bit of movement I managed put pressure on the edges of the entry and exit points, so I decided that, in the interest of not causing bleeding to occur, I would stay as still as possible. Then I noticed in retrospect that there was no pain associated with the attempt at moving.

I thought back to the actual event of being penetrated the first time and tried to think what I had felt at the time. I remembered the pop of the point coming through the outside of the box; surely thinking about where to expect the stick to go cannot have distracted me from any pain I felt when the point of the stick began burrowing through my back; but I could not recall any pain, even from the evidently high speed impact with my back. I had to conclude there had been no pain.

“I don’t think I’m in pain, but it is certainly uncomfortable, but I guess that is something to do with having my movement limited by being skewered inside a box. In fact, come to think about it, I did not feel any pain at all; not even when the skewers hit me in the back. I suppose that it was just the shock of my situation talking.”

“What? Did you really feel no pain?” He sounded incredulous.

I made a, kind of, affirmative ‘hm’ noise.

“That may make you my perfect assistant. That is, if you feel you want to after we’ve finished today,” he said.

Did he sound impressed? I had not thought about what would happen after this morning; at the moment I was more focussed on the surviving the next few minutes. Moving my mind to consider the longer term was a bit of a stretch. I had enjoyed how I was being treated, but the afterglow of being locking in the previous box, which was fading, died the moment the stick went through me. I just could not think of the future at the moment.

“So, you stopped everything; what happens next?” he asked. He evidently had no clue of what to do once he was not in charge or in his area of expertise.

I decided that he needed to know the general rules and then move on to the specific. “In general, if I am in a life-threaten situation, or one risking potential harm, you get me out as soon as possible; otherwise you wait for me to ask to be removed from the situation or to be told you may continue, possibly with some restrictions on how far, how fast or intensely you can go. In the current situation, which, it seems silly to say, does not seem to be life threatening, you wait for me to decide whether I want out or to continue and then act accordingly.”

Internally I questioned why I was teaching him generalities, when he had done nothing to address my specific predicament.

“I thought it would be something like that, but being new to this kind of thing I thought I had better ask.” It was good that he knew that he was a novice in these things and was willing to learn the proper way to act, rather than making assumptions that could cause trouble. “Does this mean you are undecided about what to do at the moment?”

“Well, yes, kind of,” I admitted. “I think it’s more that I have a few questions, before I ask you to continue; if I ask you to continue.” What was I thinking? Was being speared twice by someone who failed to stop immediately I had shouted not enough? Why was I even thinking about continuing with this, which, it seemed, would lead to further spearings.

“Ok, ask away; I’ll answer as best I can.” His voice carried a blend of enthusiasm and caution. Did he like that I was asking questions; hoping that this indicated that I could be persuaded to continue and perhaps become his assistant? Was he worried that I might decide against continuing depending on what he answered?

“That’s as much as I can ask.” I acknowledged that I could not expect total disclosure at this stage. I moved on to the questions I felt I needed to ask. “So, how many sticks are there? And will they all be going through me?”

“There are a dozen sticks left in the pot and the plan was that they all end up in the box.” He was talking about what he planned to do, rather than what he would do, which meant he was prepared to accept that I did not want to continue, if I did not like his answers. He moved smoothly on to the second question without prompting. “Inevitably, a few will go through without touching you, but the plan was that they be used to increase your tension while you wait for the next one; to enhance the experience, based on the thought that some of the enjoyment of the magic is the anticipation. And there is the consideration that if all the sticks went through you there would seem to be a gaping hole within the box where you could be, thus reducing the visual effect of the illusion.” He was back on his home ground; where he knew what he was doing and why; that boosted my confidence in him.

“I suppose that makes sense,” I commented. Now I had been told what the plan was, thought I had better move onto my predicament. “Given I have a spear through my chest, how come I’m still able to breath and will I still be able to speak at the end?”

“I know it sounds like a cop-out answer, but breathing with a stick penetrating your chest is just a property of the way the magic works. It seems that magic exists to allow the magician to do what he wants, while protecting the people he does it to from harm. I guess that means I could not kill anyone with magic, but, maybe, I could kill someone by not using magic; I don’t know and I’m not about to try it to see what happens, and there’s always to possibly the magic might stop me doing something like that anyway.”

If I could trust what he was saying, I would not come to physical harm from his magic; which was a relief. But the fact that he seemed not to know the limits of the magic was disquieting, because it left open the possibility that he might find the magic’s edge and harm someone, perhaps me, by stepping beyond. Fortunately, he seemed to be confident that he was within his magical limits, which I hoped meant that I was safe, for the moment.

I decided that I needed to concentrate on the moment, so I reminded him of the second part of the question he had been answering. “And speaking?”

“I had no intention of doing anything to stop you speaking, but I could if you want;” he replied. Good! That he was not thinking of silencing me; but giving me the option of doing it if I wanted it; was that really so good? “All I’d need to do would be put a stick through your neck or jaw; you might be able to make some noises, but it would not be intelligible.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, thank you.” I tried to remember if at any point I had mentioned how safewords work if the person is gagged or otherwise cannot speak. I hoped both that I had and that he would not put me in a position that I needed to find out; that would be a breach of trust.

“What would happen if one of the sticks got twisted?” I asked. Where had that question come from?

“Erm.” He seemed as surprised by the question as I was. “I guess that might be uncomfortable, because it would lead to bits of you being turned against other bits of you. I suppose, if there was a joint in between, there is the possibility of dislocating that joint. The good news is that it’s not going to happen, because the cardboard of the box will hold the sticks in place so it will not move unless stupidly large amounts of force are used.”

“That’s good to hear.” Then putting things together I thought, ‘that’s not what I meant!’ “I meant what will happen if the stick is turned around its longways length.”

“Oh. I get it now. I don’t think that would do anything; you might feel something as the wood moves against whatever it’s touching, perhaps like wood against skin, but inside you.”

“Is it ok if I try it, Tom?” I asked.

“Of course, if you want to.” I raised my hands to the section of the intruder in my chest directly in front of me, so that I could turn it. He continued, “But if something starts going wrong, you have to let me know, so I can try to fix it.”

Good that he was taking the responsibility for the situation I was in, after all he had planned it. I had only commissioned it and perhaps given him too free a hand.

I put my hands round the dowel and turned it; the sensation along the path of penetration was pleasant. It was like the pleasantness of stroking a smooth piece of well-worn wooden furniture, but the wood stroked you back and inside.

“I was going to offer to twist the rod for you, but you seem to have gone ahead on your own.” I wondered whether he was saying this because he was aware of my limited mobility and thought I might find it difficult to turn the spearing wood or because he felt guilty about putting me in this predicament.

“I figured that if I tried and didn’t like it I could stop quicker than you, because I’d know to stop quicker,” I rationalised out loud.

It was not easy turning the dowel, but I managed to move it some. The sensation was nice enough that I carried on, first turning it one way with one hand and the back the other way with the other.

“It looks like you like it,” observed Tom. “How does it feel?”

I was at a loss as to how to describe the feeling, but I said, “like you said, the feel of smooth wood against whatever it’s touch internally; I wouldn’t have thought it felt so nice, but if you have a unique chance to try something, jump at it, I say, because you won’t get another and at least you’ll know what you’re missing. I must say it feels best where it passes through my left tit; why would that be?” Why did I tell him that? It was true that it feel subtly different; like the difference between touching your forearm and somewhere more erogenous.

“I don’t know. I didn’t even aim for your breasts; I intended to come through your upper chest, but it is difficult to be precise when you can’t see the target.” I almost felt glad that he still seemed to be on the defensive, but that was a detail I could have done without.

“I guess you’re right,” I conceded; it must be difficult to spear a person in a box; like shooting fish in a barrel.

I was beginning to lose track of how much time I had sat here calmly, and not-so-calmly, discussing the fact I had been harpooned, but I still seemed to have full use of my senses; with the possible exception of common sense. Being speared by Tom did not seem to be as harmful as the initial concept would imply and the turning of the rod once it was through was surprisingly pleasurable.

Time to exert the power of the sub, with a ‘you may continue, but…’

“Well, I think I’m ready to continue, but I would like you to give each rod a twist once it’s in; like a pleasant experience to counter the shock of being speared.” As an afterthought I added, “And you could tell me where to expect the stick to go through, that would be a help, too.” The hope being that I would be able to brace myself or have a moment to prepare myself for the impact and mitigating some of the down-side of being a human pin-cushion.

“Twisting the sticks after the penetration I can do easily, but to tell you where the next stick is going through could be more difficult and, as I’ve already said, my aim is not very precise, but could tell you where the stick is coming from and its direction; would that be ok?” He was willing to make concessions and aware of his limitations; both good things. But best of all he was not just saying, ‘I can’t do that,’ but he was offering a compromise.

“If that’s the best you can do, it’ll have to do.” I tried to sound as if I was letting him get away with something, rather than appearing pleased that he was acting as I had hoped he would act.

I heard him take a step towards the pot and the scrape as he took out another of his sharpened sticks. Another step, this time, towards me and my confining situation.

“So something like this?” he asked and, without pause to allow reply, then went on, “Left side high, straight across, three, two, one.”

While he was counting, my mind was a-whirl trying to interpret what he meant by his description of where the stick in his hand was coming from and which direction it was going. By the time I had got some idea where it was coming from, it was already passing across my line of sight, a few inches in front of my eyeballs. I gave a short squeal of surprise and then said, “You don’t need to count so fast, it’s not a race; I need a little more time to know what to expect.”

He did not comment, but twisted the stick across my field of vision, which was close enough that I could not easily focus on it. He seemed to be able to turn it about four rotations in each direction, whereas I had only managed only a single rotation. “That looks ok,” I mumbled to myself.

He evidently took this as consent because the next thing I felt was a stick being thrust though my thighs and the pleasant rub of stick rotating in muscle. Ok, he had announced it was coming and I had the opportunity to tell him that I was not ready, but I did not. The next few I greeted with an involuntary grunt and a sigh as each was rotated with whatever part of my body it was immobilising.

Tom surprised me with one of the ones in the middle, by an origin, but no direction, and then after the count there was the pop of pierced cardboard below my right ear. I had a moment of panic where I thought that he was going to break his promise not to put a stick through my neck; this seemed confirmed when I felt the tip of the stick touch my neck. I was relieved when it stopped there and was quickly withdrawn and rethrust through the box passed my ear.

With ten sticks though me and another three through the space in the box, I had lost count. My arms and legs were skewered and unable to move. He said, “Final one! Right side low rear straight across.” After the count, which gave me just enough time to work out that it would be going through my hips, right to left, he thrust it through. It seemed to have a downward angle and about halfway it added the sexual feeling that I had just experienced a while ago in another box. I also felt the judder as spear scraped the edge of the platform as its tip left the box. My groan at being pierced took on a higher pitched tone.

As he placed his hands into position to spin the rod, the tiny movement felt so good I let out a small squeak. This did not stop him, but I did not want it to. As he turned the wooden rod through my hips I must have made a noise he did not recognise as a heartfelt moan, because he stopped and asked, “Are you alright?”

“I will be,” I said. “Just keep doing that for a while,” then added, hoping I did not sound as if I was pleading, “Please.”

As he turned the stick through my crotch the sexual feeling grew. At one point he seemed to add some side-to-side motion which felt even better, but, regretfully that did not last long. Later it seemed that the stick pressed more lightly or more strongly against whatever it was pressed against and in very little time after that the build-up broke the dam of my self-control and I screamed the orgasm to the box and the entire space surrounding it.

He carried on twirling the stick; I had to ask him to stop. I then relaxed, allowing my weight to be supported by the rods through me, which in turn were supported by the walls of the box.

I sat panting, while there was some activity outside the box.

My chest had stopped heaving against the three sticks through it and I was breathing nearly normally, when he asked, “Are you ready for the next part, Hannah?”

What next part? Surely he was not planning to do more to me while I was impaled inside this cardboard box. “I’m not sure. What is the next part?”

“That’s the part where I pull all the sticks back out again so you can get out of the box; does that sound ok?”

Of course, it sounded ok; in fact it sounded better than ok. In an effort to sound like I was not particularly worried about my multiply-penetrated state, I said, “Well, it wouldn’t be much of a show, if I just stayed in the box, would it? Unless you’ve got a second assistant ready to go; up your sleeve or somewhere.”

“Sorry, no second assistant in the wings to take up the slack, so you’re going to have to come out of that box.” Was he joking?

“Not a problem, but before you get on with it, one more question.” Was I procrastinating? Did I really need to know? “What will having the sticks removed feel like?”

He seemed happy to answer my question. “I don’t know. My best guess is that they will feel much the same as they did when they went in, except that you won’t have the impact of the end of the dowel rod hitting you before it goes through and there may be some sensation as your body closes up around the hole the stick made, or whatever it does.”

“Back up a bit. You don’t know? What do you mean, ‘You don’t know’?” When your life depends on someone knowing what they are doing, ‘I don’t know,’ is not what you want to hear. I was now far from the relaxed state I had been enjoying minutes before.

“I mean that I don’t know what sensations you are likely to experience, because I’ve never been penetrated by anything and I’ve never done it to anyone else before, so I’ve not had anyone to ask.”

“Are you telling me that I’m the first person you’ve ever put in a box and rammed sticks through?” I was feeling the edge of panic and trying not to fall in.

“Yes, and you are only the fourth person I’ve ever done magic on; Annie was the third. The first two were girlfriends, who I only ever sawed in half and put back together and then got dumped by.”

I did not need to know about his former girlfriends; at the moment I felt they would be perfectly justified in leaving him. But I thought about the video of Annie’s show and realised that the only things that had passed through her were blades and the pin, which Robert had not got a good shot of.

“And what happens if you’re wrong and, say, the hole the sticks made don’t close up and I start bleeding to death?” I asked.

“It won’t happen like that.” He sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, but did I detect some vagueness in the statement.

“Happen like what?” I challenged.

“Even if the holes don’t close up, which I am confident they will, you will not bleed, because the magic will prevent it.”

“So, I might end up with a set of three-quarter inch holes through my body, instead of bleeding to death. That is such a comfort.” I did not feel comforted in the slightest and I let it show in my tone.

“Let’s put it this way. I have divided three people into two and there has been no harm done (other than my girlfriends leaving me) so trust me that a simple spear box will go any worse.”

Get over injured male pride; they left you for reasons and I guess they were to do with the magic.

He was equating sawing a person in half, which he had done before, with putting me in a box and filling me with wooden sticks, which he had never tried before. “What? That made no sense.”

“Why don’t I get you out of there and if there are any consequences I did not anticipate, we’ll deal with them, then we’ll talk, ok?”

“That may be the best idea either of us has had this morning.” He even seemed to have the priorities in some sort of reasonable order.

Each stick he took out provided a brief wooden through flesh pleasantness and some relief at being less immobilised. There was also the clatter of the sticks being dropped on the floor. Moments after the last spear had been extracted and discarded, the blade of a knife came through the side of the box, slicing down near the edge and across the bottom. Tom pulled open the flap he had made and looked in.

I sat still for long enough to be sure I could not feel blood flowing from where the spears had been and that I did not feel faint from internal bleeding. I took the process of checking that I did not have more holes than I started with slowly, to avoid straining anything that might be harmful. I ran my fingers over my breast where the first rod had exited and was happy to find that I could not tell the exact point, because there was no damage to the skin, but I planned to check myself in a mirror once I got home, to spot any bruises; Angela had mentioned bruising, but I could not quite remember the context.

I got up satisfied that I was not letting light through, and stepped out of the wreckage of the box.

“So now we talk, right?” I was thinking that I had better tell him what I wanted. I felt thirsty again, despite having drunk a large glass of water a few minutes ago. I wanted something to drink. “But first I’m feeling thirsty, have you got anything more interesting than water to drink?”

He seemed momentarily stunned that I was not ranting at him about the events in the minutes since my last drink. “Erm, yes,” he said. “Well, I’ve got tea-bags and instant coffee in the van and a kettle, but I don’t keep milk, because it goes off so quickly.”

Tea and coffee were not the level of interesting I was after. “I was think something alcoholic, perhaps.”

“No. No alcohol.” He seemed totally committed to this stance. “It is a very bad mix with magic. I feel that if your judgement is impaired you could end up doing something you might seriously regret, more than getting a tattoo while drunk.”

I glanced at my hip where the inscription ‘Dave’s Who’ was inked; evidence of a drunken tattoo session that had been so bad that even in a barely coherent state I had stopped it before the final two letters were started (I still had only the haziest recollection of who Dave was; I had toyed with the idea of adding a question mark, but never had the courage and opportunity coincide).

While some of the deeper levels of my mind speculated on the possible regrets possible with magic, my conscious mind returned to the conversation. “In that case, I’ll have the tea, please. Two sugars if it’s a cup, three if it’s a mug.”

“Sorry, but I don’t carry the sugar either, because I don’t take it, myself.”

I gave him a look that I hope implied that sugar might be the only thing that could prevent me scratching his face off. “I might have picked up a sachet or two of sugar or sweetener in my travels, I could see if I could find something,” he added and made for the exit door.

I threw a thank you after him and went to put my clothes back on; I was not planning to wait for my tea naked.

For want of anywhere else to sit, I sat on the platform where the wrecked remains of the box still sat. I did consider sitting in the car, but the key fob was nowhere to be seen (presumably in Tom’s pocket) and that would mean leaving the chalk circle; having been told not to leave the field of view of the cameras, it seemed wrong to disobey.

I was getting bored after a minute or so, so I got up and started to pick up the sticks that Tom had impaled me with. Maybe I just wanted the place to be tidy; maybe I wanted to discover something about the sticks that told me that I had not really been impaled but it had just felt like it (enough like it to fool me).

Most of the sticks were inside the circle, but a few had rolled a little way beyond the chalk line. I used other sticks to reach far enough to roll then to positions where I pick them up without crossing the line bodily. Why was I not having the guts to step over the line, pick up the stick and step back?

I returned to the platform, once the sticks were all stowed in the pot. I had heard Tom return to the office area and the clatter of cups and the noise of a kettle being boiled. I looked at the remains of the box; probably in hope that it would reveal more than just the entry and exit holes caused by the sticks. It occurred to me that the tricky part of the trick had been removed or destroyed when he had ripped the box open. The raw edge of the cut did not give me much hope that this could have been the case.

A scuff of shoe on concrete announced Tom’s return and he soon appeared bearing two mugs. He handed me one, which smelled of old teabag, but no less welcome for that, then sank to sitting cross-legged facing me. He was taller than me so when he sat his eyes were almost level with mine.

His smile showed that he was not looking forward to trying to justify his actions with the sword box and that he was relieved that I was still there. I had not occurred to me until that moment that it would have been the perfect moment to leave. I took a moment to wonder if the chalk circle would have stopped me if I had tried.

I took a sip of the tea. Its flavour was not enhanced by the mix of sugar and saccharin that had been used to sweeten it, but it was warm and wet, so a second sip soon followed.

He sipped his drink and glanced round. He evidently noticed that the sticks had been picked up and returned to the pot. He smiled slightly and then frowned; I guess he had spotted the sticks that had been beyond the circle had also been retrieved. His face briefly displayed confusion; I waited for him to ask for an explanation of the fetching of the sticks from beyond the circle, but no question came.

“So, we talk?” he said in a tone that said this was going to be a difficult conversation that he did not anticipate it going the way he hoped. I was uncertain what way he hoped for.