Fetish Magician 2A: The Claustrophile: Hannah: Part 3

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. It 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.

“Yes,” I replied. I wanted to work out what had happened and what I felt about him and the magic. He needed to explain himself, but I was not going to tell him that.

“What are we talking about?” he asked. Was he really that clueless?

“What just happened, where we are and our whole situation.” I was trying to give the clue that he needed to explain spearing me; particularly without having tried on anyone first. And if that turned out to satisfy me, we could discuss where we went from there; if I wanted to teach him about the ‘scene’ and allow him to teach me about ‘magic’.

“That sounds like a lot to cover.” He was right, perhaps without being aware how right he was. “Where do we start?” A sensible question.

“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 almost added some comment about how reckless he had been, but he looked down in his mug and I considered the possibility that I had come on a bit strong.

“You’re not going to buy, ‘I just knew it would work out’?” I shook my head slowly. I do not consider ‘That’s just the way it is’ to be an adequately explanation for anything ever.

He thought for a moment or three. “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 did not need a blow-by-blow account of his progress through the magical arts, but if it provided an insight that would allow me to trust him properly it might be worth something. Also you can tell a lot about a person by what they think is the important part of the story. “I think we’ll go for edited highlights. So you started with shoe-laces?” I thought I would give him somewhere to start and see where he went from there.

“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.” I could sympathise, because I was bullied by the other girls for being small.

“Ok, let’s see the shoe-lace thing!” A bit of non-threatening magic was not going to hurt.

He demonstrated by putting out a leg and hiding the shoe-laces on that shoe from sight for a few seconds. When they came back into view they were no longer the neatly tied bow, but each end of the lace trailed to the floor. I do not really know what I expected, except it was something with more pizazz. I guess he saw how underwhelmed I was, because he hid the laces from sight again and a few seconds later the neat bow was back in place.

I felt I had to comment, so I tried to say the kindest thing I could think of. “Not very flashy is it?”

“No, not at all,” he admitted, adding, “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?” Because it seemed, to me, that it is a long way from fiddling with shoe-laces to doing stuff that could potentially kill people if it was not done right.

“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.” Ok, so he could move things about with his mind; that was not life threatening. Besides why could he not write that way; lack of control or not being able to able the right pressure down the pencil? He went on, “But the turning point was when I joined an after school magic club.”

Now this story was getting somewhere. “Why? What happened there? Did you find a mentor or something like that?” I prompted.

“No; a mentor would have been a great thing to have.” No mentor; that meant he was self-taught. I missed the next bit; something about learning the magic tricks and it helping him not to be bullied. “And with each new trick I learnt I discovered that I could to the same magically; in most cases, less well and less reliably.” That last bit did not sound promising.

“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?” I was trying to cut this long story short and get to the meat of the issue.

“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.” So, he did not start on humans, but isn’t levitation just heavy telekinesis? I could imagine the sight of a dog struggling being lifted off the floor, especially with no obvious means of support.

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

“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 led step-by-step to you sawing a girlfriend in half.” I was having trouble imagining the route from canine levitation to cutting someone 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?” 'Not deliberate', did that mean accidental or something closer to unplanned?

“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." So it was unplanned, rather than an accident. "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.” I managed to suppress the smirk that nearly surfaced.

“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.”

I looked at him; at least he felt that he should be apologising for something like that. “And have you worked out how to apologise to me?”

“No. I not even sure an apology is needed." I was dumbfounded; I had said 'Red' and he carried on, of course an apology was 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.”

I guess he had a point, but needed to defend my point too. “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?” he asked.

“Erm, not exactly, but I did wonder what it would be like to do that Houdini illusion.” Maybe I had called it the wrong thing, so described it and what appealed about it. “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 is tied up in the sack. I wonder 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,” he pointed out.

“I guess.” It may have been true, but did not know where he was leading with this.

“You don’t seem convinced.”

I was not convinced, it suddenly happened to me without warning, then I remembered his comment about anticipation. I threw it back at him. “Well, like you said, part of the magic is the anticipation. I wasn’t anticipating anything in particular.”

“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 the tricky move is done.”

This sounded like an excuse to me, but my anger was cooling. I would concentrate on the future. No harm had been done, except to my confidence in him and I was coming to the conclusion that he might be able to earn that back.

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

“Yes, but I discover 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?” I enquired, because this seemed to be the crux of what I might be experiencing.

“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.”

He suddenly changed the track of the conversation. “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.”

I took me a moment to process this. Was I ready to continue? Had a dodgy mug of tea prepared me for what might be coming. I did not know; so I asked. “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.”