Fetish Magician 2: The Claustrophile: Tom: Part 3

“So now we talk, right? But first I’m feeling thirsty, have you got anything more interesting than water to drink?”

“Erm, yes.” I was taken aback by this change of gear. “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.”

“I was think something alcoholic, perhaps,” she clarified.

“No. No alcohol. 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.”

“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, because I don’t take it, myself.”  Then I had a thought. “I might have picked up a sachet or two of sugar or sweetener in my travels, I could see if I could find something.”

“Thank you,” she said, as I departed to locate the makings of a cuppa, she seemed to head for her clothes.

I returned with a placatory offering of a mug of tea with two sugars and a sweetener tablet. Hannah was sitting in the remains of the cardboard sword box. She seemed to be passing the time by peeking through holes I had punched through the box. I was relieved that she was still there, as she had had plenty of time to walk away (that would be drive away in her car). I handed her the steaming mug and sat down cross-legged on the floor, which put our eyes at roughly the same level.

I took a sip of my coffee. A quick look around showed me that she had picked up all the rods that had so recently impaled her and returned them to the pot; this meant that she had left the chalk circle to retrieve at least three of them. Was I meant to point this out? Was I meant to go further than pointing out that she had disobeyed an instruction? Was I supposed to thank her for tidying up? I was confused about what my exact role in this situation; being Magician-in-charge I could handle, because I knew what I was doing, but I needed to convince her of that. She wanted something more and I was not at all certain what that was. Maybe talking would help make things clearer.

“So, we talk?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What are we talking about?” I asked.

“What just happened, where we are and our whole situation.”

“That sounds like a lot to cover. Where do we start?”

“How about, what gives you the right to put me in a box and fill me full of homemade spears, when you have never done that kind of thing before? And what made you even think it would work?”

I looked down into my coffee, because maintaining eye contact was becoming difficult and, put the way she put it, it did sound as if I had been reckless with her wellbeing and possibly her life.

“You’re not going to buy, ‘I just knew it would work out’?” She shook her head. “Do you want the full story of how I learnt I could do magic? And how I progressed from undoing shoe-laces by magic to today?”

“I think we’ll go for edited highlights. So you started with shoe-laces?”

“Yes, at school. I would cover the laces with my hand and they would do up or undo, whichever I wanted. It took me a long time to realise that this was not how the rest of the school did it. When I did work out that I was doing something different, I put in the effort to learn how to do it the normal way, because I already knew at that age that people who are different get treated differently and usually worse.”

“Ok, let’s see the shoe-lace thing!” she demanded.

We seemed to have switched roles, with her being in charge. I uncurled a leg with my neatly tied laces and put my hand over the laces. When I pulled my hand away a few seconds later the laces were undone. Hannah did not look impressed. I put my hand back and retied the laces.

“Not very flashy is it?” she commented.

“No, not at all. That probably saved my skin at school; I don’t think anyone noticed.”

“So how did you get from that to sawing people in half and spearing them?”

“The first thing to develop were my telekinetic abilities. I would pick up pencils and levitate them to where I wanted them. I never did learn to write that way. But the turning point was when I joined an after school magic club.”

“Why? What happened there? Did you find a mentor or something like that?”

“No; a mentor would have been a great thing to have. What I did discover is that there was a socially acceptable use for magic that wouldn’t get me in trouble. So, I applied myself to learning about the techniques magicians use and showed what I learnt to the other kids. Nobody really liked me that much, but then nobody bullied me either; I was the weird kid that the other kids would watch when I did the tricks I had learnt. The good thing was if I did something odd and someone spotted it, I had the excuse I was trying out a new trick I was learning. And with each new trick I learnt I discovered that I could to the same magically; in most cases, less well and less reliably.”

“So you just learnt the tricks and then found out you could do the real thing. So you progressed up to bigger tricks? And that lead to bigger magic?”

“Not quite, I learnt that there were bigger tricks and, as one does in their teens, I got ambitious and thought that I could do something like that. My first real magic with another living creature was levitating our dog, Samson.”

“Didn’t your dog freak out?” asked Hannah.

“I don’t think so, because he was asleep at the time; he did kick a bit as if he was dreaming and who’s to say what of his situation, a foot above his bed, got through to his dream.”

“So, that lead step-by-step to you sawing a girlfriend in half.”

“Yes, kind of. It’s not like that first time was deliberate, but by this time (I must have been sixteen or seventeen) I was supplementing my allowance by being a paid magician at parties and my parents were charging me to be driven to these parties (I suppose they didn’t have as much money as I assumed at the time, but it did ground me in the economics of the profession).”

“Ok, what happened?”

“Well, I had saved up enough to get my hands on a thin model sawing box and persuaded Bella that if she was to join the act that we could be together more for rehearsals and gigs and she could get some of the extra money I would be earning, because I could include a big trick in my show. So, one evening we got together to try it out. I taught her how to do the trick as it said in the instructions that came with the box, but when it came to the moment of truth her ankles got stuck in the foot stocks. I did not realise this until the saw I was using touched her waist. At that point I had the confidence in the magic that if there was a trick which I knew, I could do the real magic equivalent, so instead of stopping as any sensible person might have, I carried on. Bella was screaming blue murder, but I knew it was working by the lack of blood and the fact that she was screaming threats, not pain. So I proceeded as if I was doing the trick, but doing it for real; I even showed her her feet. When I had put her back together and let her out of the box, she hit me and stormed off. Thankfully, she didn’t tell people that I had sawn her in half; I’m guessing, because she didn’t have any scars to back up the tale.”

“Well, I can see why she would leave you. I guess you never saw her again.”

“We saw each other, but only at school and she never spoke to me again. I never spoke to her again either; I couldn’t work out how to apologise for something like that.”

She eyed me and asked, “And have you worked out how to apologise to me?”

I felt honesty was needed here. “No. I not even sure an apology is needed. You asked me to do a magic show with you as assistant, you must have had some idea what to expect, especially if you’ve discussed it with Annie.”

“It’s a bit different to fantasise about something and to really experience it, you know.”

“So, you’ve fantasised about being in magical boxes?” I thought that if I could adapt one of my tricks to fit her fantasy I had a chance of gaining an assistant; possibly even one I might get to rehearse with.

“Erm, not exactly, but I did wonder what it would be like to do that Houdini illusion.” I guess I looked uncertain, because she added. “You must know the one. The magician gets locked into a box, after being tied up and put in a sack. Then the assistant gets onto the box and raises a curtain and suddenly the magician is on the box and he opens the box the find the assistant in tied up in the sack. I wondered what it would be like to be the assistant and suddenly find myself inside the box; I guess I’d find it a kind of thrill.”

“Well, this morning you have already experienced suddenly being in a box.”

“I guess.”

“You don’t seem convinced.”

“Well, like you said, part of the magic is the anticipation. I wasn’t anticipating anything in particular.”

I wondered for a moment if I should mention that she seemed to enjoy the experience after the actual getting into the box, but I decided that would probably be a bad idea. “Sorry, I guess, that’s part of my non-magical magician training. There are various things you don’t do as a magician; chief among these is you don’t tell them what to expect. Not only does it give you a get out if what you expect does not happen, but it doesn’t let them know what they’re looking for when you do the tricky move is done.”

“So, you can do by magic any magic trick you know the normal method for?”

“Yes, but I discovered recently that I could do a little more than that. I can do the normal tricks as if they were real with the extras that that implies.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you must have seen how I made Annie appear for the show. That was inspired by a combination of a couple of videos I saw on YouTube. One was a TV show prank where they appeared to 3D print a person and the other was the appearance illusion where of some illusionist seems to be deposited as a screen with his image moves up. Once I had worked out how they could have been done, it was a matter of trying it, but doing it by magic.”

“So you know how those were done?”

“Not for certain, but, for each, I have in my head a design for the illusion that could work.”

“And the extras?”

“Both the original illusions imply that the body is not all there at some point in the process, so I paused during the illusion to show that it was true. And then there is the point that I’m not using a large machine just an arch and square of cloth and a dress.”

I looked into my mug and found it was empty. “Are you ready to continue? Now that you know I can do real magic and you will not be harmed even if it may get a bit uncomfortable. You will go home with all your limbs and in the right places.”

“So, because forewarned is forearmed, what are you planning to do with me next?”

“My plan is to put you into the box over there that you seem to so admire.”