Magic Short 23: Caroline at The Club

Caroline stood out like a sore thumb. The few patrons of the club that bothered to notice her, wondered what someone so obviously square was doing in this very round watering hole. 'The Club', as it was known, was registered and licensed by the local authorities under a different name and the plain doorway that was the only public entrance bore another.

Caroline wore a business suit and blouse, but she had made concessions; the suit was scarlet, rather than her preferred grey, the suit's skirt reached mid-calf, instead of the shin length of her other suits. Under the suit her hosiery was stockings and a suspender belt, instead of tights and she wore a g-string rather than her more accustomed briefs. She was wearing three inch strappy heels, a good inch taller than she wore at other times. Despite these changes she was still the most dressed person in the establishment. A large fraction of the clientele, both male and female, were bare-chested and it became clear from the most cursory observation that the remainder did not have more than one layer and that was usually thin. All the bar staff were topless and the two waitresses wore nothing but a g-string and pasties from which dangled a small order pad on the left and a pencil on the right.

No-one had spoken to Caroline since the waitress had taken her order for a cheeseburger and fries from the menu that consisted exclusively of variations on the theme of burger and fries. Caroline sat taking the occasional sip from the beer she intended to nurse for the evening and once in a while taking a bite from the burger, which had surprised her by being of excellent quality and almost justifying its inflated price.

While Caroline sat she watched amazed but not excited by the acts that appeared on the stage. The first was a woman in a steel bikini who sent showers of sparks in every direction by applying the small angle-grinder to the metal of her skimpy costume. The climax of her act was applying the angle-grinder to the leather straps that held the metal plates of the bikini in place; a final ten seconds that Caroline suspected required more skill to avoid injury than the previous ten minutes of the act.

Act two was a hypnotist who pulled a girl from the audience and hypnotised her. She was wearing a costume that consisted of nothing more than some strips of leather to outline her breasts and crotch and enough added straps to hold these in place. Once hypnotise the young woman was told to be stiff and rigid and became a bridge between two chairs, then the hypnotist stood on her. Then with her returned to a more human level of flexibility, the hypnotist told her that she would feel no pain and insert needles and skewers through her until she resembled a pincushion; she seemed sometimes interested in and sometimes oblivious to this procedure. When he moved to reclaim the piercings, she smacked his hand away and returned to the floor of the club, shouting back to him that she would leave the piercings with the cloakroom attendant when she left.

The third act was a pair of strippers, costumed as a pirate and his wench. By the end of the first song, he was down to a pair of shorts and she was in a corset and g-string. The final notes of the second song found both strippers naked and the next three songs saw them engage in vigorous and athletic sex in a wide variety of positions until he climaxed onto her breasts and they departed the stage.

Finally the act Caroline had come to see. He pushed onto the stage a piece of apparatus, which he parked at the rear of the stage, before coming to the front of the stage to demonstrate his first trick. He inflated a balloon, suspiciously phallic, that he pulled from a pocket in his frayed denim shorts and took a long needle and threaded it through the balloon without it popping. He then demonstrated some metal bending, which highlighted the muscles in his arms and as he strained his chest muscles burst open the cropped t-shirt he had been wearing.

He then surveyed the floor of the club for a participant for the next part of his act. He made a beckoning gesture in Caroline's direction. She pointed to herself questioningly. He nodded that she was the one the gesture had been for and she shook her head; she had come to see the act not to be a part of it. He beckoned again, but more strongly, this was reinforced by some of the club-goers who had noticed the exchange, cheering the intent of the motion.

Caroline was about to decline the invitation a second time, when someone took a light hold on her wrist and moved to help her stand down from the stool where she had been sitting. She looked round to see who was being so presumptuous. The waitress who had served her, smiled and said, "Go on! It's just a bit of fun and if you do well, you could earn yourself an honorary membership of the club."

Caroline followed the waitress to the edge of the stage. She could not think why; she had come to see the act, not participate, and she did not want to be a member of this club, honorary or otherwise.

The waitress released Caroline's wrist and whispered, "Give him hell! He likes a challenge. And maybe I won't be called up for the final illusion."

Suddenly the waitress was gone. Caroline looked up at the magician; he was offering a hand to help her up the mid-thigh-high step. If she was going to participate, Caroline was going to do it on her own terms; she would act as the magician's adversary and not a compliant volunteer. He would pay for choosing her from all the available and willing others.

She assessed the stage in a quick glance; surprisingly clean and smooth vinyl. She turned her back on the magician's offered hand and put her hands on the stage edge boosted herself onto the stage sitting with her legs over the edge. With a hand on the hem of her skirt she pulled up her legs and stood; a manoeuvre slightly spoiled by the half step stumble caused by the higher than usual heels.

The magician modified his pose to put out a hand to greet his 'volunteer'. She looked at it with a sneer. He made a move to wipe it on his shorts, as if he had noticed that it was dirty.

"Do you know what you're here for?" the magician asked.

"Yes and no," said Caroline. "I know why I came to the Club; I came to watch a magic act. But I don't know why you asked me to come up on the stage or what I'm up here for."

"Any ideas? What do you think you are up here for?"

"Well, if the waitress is right you want me to check out that contraption of yours back there, before you call her up to do whatever it is that you plan to do to her while I watch at first hand and maybe help with the odd thing that you need more than two hands for. But I got the impression that she wasn't looking forward to it."

"Is that why you came up? To get a closer look at the magic?"

"I guess so," replied Caroline, "I was planning to watch, then you invited me up here."

"That stuff back there is for the final illusion. I have a bit of smaller magic that the audience will probably be interested in first. How adventurous are you feeling?"

"Adventurous? Not much at all. Why?"

"Well, I thought we could make a bet."

"What kind of bet? I don't usually gamble," said Caroline.

"Ok, we won't call it a bet; we'll call it a contest; of your observation against my sleight of hand. How does that sound?"

"You're going to bet that you can do a trick and I can't work out how you're doing it? That hardly seems fair."

"I would agree, normally, but this time I shall be repeating the trick multiple times. You go with the flow of the trick and when you have an explanation, if you are correct you win, If you are wrong we continue. If we get to the natural conclusion of the trick I win."

"Mmm! That's tempting, but how many times is 'multiple times'. I want to know that you aren't going to call the natural conclusion, because I'm getting close."

The magician in his tight denim shorts and bow tie stepped back and looked Caroline over. "I'd guess that you'd get eight to twelve times to watch the trick; maybe more if I am feeling generous. But you will have to go with the flow of the trick!"

"So long as you don't do something like blindfolding me so that I can't see what you're up to and cutting my hand off or something like that, I guess that will be ok. But if this is a bet or a contest or whatever, there is a prize and a maybe a penalty. What's at risk? And what is the reward?"

"If you win, you get to be the first person I have ever allowed to be on stage while I perform the final illusion on Betty (that's your waitress' name; they don't wear name-badges for obvious reasons)."

"And if you win?" queried Carol.

"Then you will be the second person, after Betty, to experience the final illusion. In other words, you will be the assistant in the illusion."

"But won't I need to be coached in how to do it, or something like that. I don't even know what it does yet."

"That's ok, because I can coach you about what to do if it comes to that."

Caroline looked out into the rest of the club, it seemed that not even a third of the people were paying any attention to what was happening on stage and most of those seemed on the brink of losing interest.

As she considered her options, she spotted Betty. The waitress smiled at her and then winked.

"Ok, but I'll warn you that I do observation for a profession. So what is this trick? And why do you think that this audience might want to see the same trick a dozen times?"

"It's a simple trick, all you have to do is watch carefully as I make a small piece of cloth disappear, then I will find it re-appeared in your clothes. The reason that this lot," he glanced sideways at the rest of the club, "will find it interesting will be that each time I find the cloth in an item of your clothing, you will remove that piece of clothing. I will keep your clothes safe until you figure out how I'm doing it or after you've helped me with the final illusion."

"I guess that's what you meant by going with the flow."

The magician nodded.

Caroline had little time to decide what to do. It occurred to her that even if she lost her jacket, blouse and skirt she would still have more clothes on than the majority of the club's denizens. It came down to a calculation of 'Can I spot the trick in three goes or less?'. Another thought crossed her mind; what if I can't fathom the secret? Can I get out with  my dignity intact?

"What if I start and then don't want to continue?" she asked.

"No can do. If you start, you must see it through to the bitter end, however that turns out. Don't get me wrong! I won't do anything to you, but I feel that these folks will feel that they can take their minor and petty revenges if you spoil their entertainment; I doubt you would get out of here with your clothes in such a pristine condition."

Caroline tried to weigh the risk and reward, but found that the courageous streak that had brought to the club in the first place put its thumb on the side of the scale marked 'Do It!'.

"Ok, I'll do it, but no funny business!"

"I can't promise that, because the 'funny business' is what magicians are all about, but I won't be cheating any more than I usually do, and that is what you're trying to spot. I think we'd better start doing, because we've been talking for some time." He strode to the device parked a the rear of the stage and equally quickly returned with a framed section of cork on which a square of red silk about six inches square, pinned at each corner. The hand holding the frame also contained a black marker.

"You'll be aware that magicians sometimes use things that can't be told apart to make it appear that object A moved from where it was to somewhere else, when in fact the thing that's in the new location is object B. So let's make it so that you can tell this cloth is the one that will be appearing in your clothes. I wouldn't want you thinking that I have been secreting extra cloths in your clothes. Do you want to sign it or get one of the people here to mark it and make it unique?"

Caroline opted to have a nearby audience member sign the small fabric square. She reasoned that if this went wrong it would be better if there was no evidence that she had been here. At the magician's behest Caroline choose a random person to write on the cloth and returned with a sketch of an elephant that consisted of eight or nine simple curved lines. The magician removed the pins from the board and asked Caroline hold the cloth while he put the frame back. She held it up for the onlookers to see, while being unclear why she was doing this.

On his return the magician said, "When you're ready, give me the cloth and I will vanish it into your jacket."

When he had the cloth, the magician made a hollow fist of his left hand, demonstrating that it was empty by pushing each of the fingers of his right into the gap. He then pushed the cloth into the entrance of the hollow before using each finger again to push it gradually further into the fist, with a  couple of further pushes after it had disappeared from view. Caroline knew where she thought the cloth was until he opened his left hand to show that it was empty. He made a show of the emptiness of both of his hands; making quick turning movements with the fingers spread.

Caroline had to acknowledge that the cloth was nowhere to be seen, but she was confident that it was not in her jacket, because he had never come closer than two feet since taking the cloth from her.

The magician stepped behind her. He then put his right hand round her to grab the left lapel of her jacket, pulling is forward slightly, and reaching round with his left hand to tease a corner of red silk from its concealment behind the lapel. The next few moments were spent teasing the cloth out, but Caroline could not see much because the magician's hands were getting in the way. He handed her the cloth and she displayed it with it's elephant sketch, despite feeling that showing the cloth and thus proving that it was the original cloth was not her job, but it seemed to be part of the flow.

When she looked round, the magician was holding out his hand for the cloth. "Unless you have a theory, it's time for the jacket to come off."

"How am I meant have a theory? I didn't know exactly what to expect and you did it where I could not see very well and your hands were in the way. I couldn't see exactly what you did, but now I have seen it once I'll have a better idea of what I'm looking for." She began to shrug off her jacket. "So, if I can tell you where the cloth goes from your hand and how it ends up on me I win?" The magician nodded confirmation.

Caroline stood for a few moments with her jacket dangling from her hand. The magician took it from her and dropped it into a basket that Caroline was sure had not been there when this had started.

The magician began stuffing the small cloth into his fist again. Caroline was about to protest that he was starting without her, but knew it would do no good; this was the flow of the trick; disappear the cloth, find it in a garment, remove the garment and repeat. Instead of telling him to wait she tried to watch carefully as the cloth was rammed into his fist with his fingers and thumb being used as ram-rods. A couple of extra pushes were followed by the opening of the empty fist. He displayed his hands twitching them back and forth with fingers spread wide. Caroline crinkled her brow; she had missed a chance to work out where the magician was hiding the cloth, but maybe if she observed properly she would see how the cloth arrived in her clothes and use that knowledge to discover where the cloth vanished to before she was down to her underwear.

The magician stepped behind Caroline again, the reaching round tucked his right thumb and forefinger into the waistband of her skirt, pulling it away from her skin by half an inch. Caroline looked down into the gap between the waistband and her skin and saw nothing. Then the magician's left hand came in and briefly obscured the gap and then it was pulling on the corner of the red cloth.

While the magician removed cloth in three short tugs, Caroline thought about what she had seen. She concluded that the magician was hiding it in his left hand, but she could not think how, because the magician had been making splay-fingered gestures with both hands, with no place to hide the cloth. She thought about whether he might be hiding it up his sleeve, before remembering that the sleeves, which had not reached a quarter of the way down his biceps, were now a rag thrown to the back of the stage.

The magician put the cloth into Caroline's right hand, then said, "Unless you have a theory, the skirt needs to go."

She looked at the elephant-adorned cloth, displayed it once more to the audience. She peripherally noticed that few who had had been watching were staring and they (the magician and her) were re-attracting of some of the attention of those that had drifted away while the magician had been persuading her to take part.

"I've got the beginnings of a theory, but I guess that isn't good enough."

"No, so the skirt needs to go, but if you tell me I'll be honest with you about if your conjecture is right or in the right direction."

"Since when has a magician been honest about anything other than that they are fooling you?"

"You have a fair point," admitted the magician.

Rather than hand over the cloth so that the magician could begin before she was ready, she put a corner of the cloth in her mouth and reluctant lowered the zip at the side of her skirt and allowed the fabric to drop to her ankles. The hem of her blouse covered her panties, but did not conceal the fact that she was wearing stockings and a suspender belt. Some of the people that had been paying attention made enough noise that others looked round to see what was causing it.

Caroline stepped backwards from the ring of fabric that had been her skirt and allowed the magician to pick it up and deposit it in the basket with her jacket.

She displayed the cloth again and then handed it over to the magician, who shook it out and made a grimace while pointing out the corner that was darker because it had been dampened in Caroline's mouth.

The magician stuffed the cloth into his left fist again with the same set of finger pokes from his right hand. With the cloth vanished, the magician displayed the emptiness of his hands and stepped behind Caroline. Reaching round with his right hand, he once more used his thumb and first finger to open a gap from which he planned to extract the cloth; this time it was the gap between the second and third buttons up from the blouse's hem, about level with her navel.

As he brought his left hand round, Caroline pounced and grabbed it by the wrist and tried to hold it where she could get a good look at it.

She could not see the look of panic on the magician's face, but she heard it in his voice. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to check my theory, that you are smuggling the cloth in hidden in your left hand." she was both relieved and suspicious when the magician stop resisting her grip on his wrist. He opened his fingers showing that his hand was empty, but Caroline did not want to be fooled by what she saw as the same trick for concealing the cloth in his hand as he used when he had opened his fist after each round of pushing the cloth inside. With her left hand on his left wrist, she stroked the hands on both sides in the hope of feeling some tell-tale edge or crease that should not be there and might indicate a hiding place for the cloth.

Disappointed that she could not find evidence for her idea, Caroline released the magician's wrist. He made a point of putting only his first and middle fingers into the gap that his right hand was holding open. Moments later, a corner of red fabric emerged from the gap. As the magician withdraw the rest of the fabric, Caroline felt the dampened corner trail across her belly.

"Time to lose the blouse, because I'm guessing that you haven't thought up a theory to replace your previous one yet." He took the piece of cloth to show it round the edge of the stage, leaving his 'volunteer' to remove her blouse and deposit it with the two other garments in the basket.

Caroline felt some embarrassment at being on stage in nothing more than her underwear, but it did not feel any more embarrassing than being the only fully clothed person in the club, she crossed an arm over her chest, partly to hide the fact that the bra did not match the g-string or the suspender belt, which did not match each other.

The magician came back from his tour of the stage's edge and whispered, "You should relax a bit; this is meant to be fun."

"If I relax too much I'll miss some tell-tale movement or something like that."

"Ok, reasonable point, but I more meant it like, 'the more effort you're spend protecting the modesty, that they don't really care about, the less concentration you'll have to spare for watching my every move."

Caroline relaxed a bit, and heard approving noises from the nearest members of the audience, which  unexpectedly helped her relax a little more; at least they liked what they saw, even if she felt they were seeing too much of it. She handed over the cloth and watched with ever ounce of concentration that she could muster, but still the cloth having been stuffed into his left fist and then tamped down, it was nowhere to be seen when the hand was reopened and both hands were displayed on both sides.

In a break from the procedure of the previous three attempts he paused and used two fingers of his left hand to whistle and then called for a chair. A side-effect of this was to bring more attention to the stage from the club-goers.

A mousey guy brought a chair on to the stage and the magician went to collect it. He returned swinging the chair and placed on the stage next to Caroline.

"What's that for?" she asked.

"It's for you to sit on; it'll make finding the cloth again easier for both of us. Please have a seat."

Caroline sat. She half-noticed that she made a movement with the hand that would have smoothed her skirt under her buttocks and thighs if she had still been in it. "Ok, now what?"

"I'll give you a choice. Left or right?"

"What difference will it make?" asked Caroline.

"Nothing much, but, you will get to make a choice and perhaps feel that your not being railroaded quite so much."

"Fine, Right."

The magician knelt down beside the chair and raised her right leg to horizontal, so that Caroline could see her stockinged toes. Supporting her foot with his left hand, he took a grip on the toe-end of the sole with his right hand with his thumb and fore-finger between the sole and her toes. The supporting left hand was removed and used to extract the cloth from between her foot and her shoe. Some of the audience cheered.

"Unless, you have had an inspiration, it looks like it's time to take off the shoes."

"Both shoes? Why? You only took the cloth out of one of them."

In answer to Caroline's question, the magician said, "I thought you would be more comfortable standing in your stockinged feet than with one shoe on and the other off, especially as they seem to be a bit higher than you are used to. So, go with the flow."

Despite being convinced that getting her shoes off in one go instead of two, put her at a disadvantage, she went with the flow. She handed each shoe to the magician, who tossed them into the basket, causing Caroline the mild additional concern that this might result in the transfer of the some of the tackiness of the club's floor to her clothes.

He helped her stand for the next round of the trick, putting the chair a little way back so that it was not in the way. The next round consisted of the same set of movements to vanish the cloth and a repeat of the pull and reveal that the magician had used on her skirt waistband, but this time with her suspender-belt.

As Caroline reached behind her back to unhook the belt, having detached the clips that attached it to her stockings, she came to the realisation that she was not any closer to discovering the magician's method. Then what the waitress had said to her came back, 'He likes a challenge.'

"Ok, now do it with the other hand," she said. Her thought behind this challenge was that it was likely that he would be less practised and less smooth using the opposite hands and possibly give away something, having failed five times to spot how he got the cloth into the clothes, she was now pinning her hopes on him fumbling whatever he was doing to vanish the cloth.

"What do you mean the other hand?"

"Well, you've been stuffing the cloth into your left hand; now stuff it in your right fist, it can't be that hard."

She saw that he was about to protest that it might give it away, but then his smile firmed again and he said, "Ok."

With a bit of a fumble the magician transferred the cloth to his left hand and made a fist of his right hand. He laid the cloth over his right hand and began to stuff it into the hollow inside his fist until it was out of sight and had been tamped down a couple of times.

Caroline's jaw dropped when he splayed the fingers of both hands showing no evidence of the cloth being there. While she struggled to regain control of her face, he stepped behind her and starting from her hip run his left hand down her left thigh until he had his thumb and forefinger hooked into the top of her stocking. He then reached his right hand round to pull the red cloth from her stocking top.

"Use the chair! It'll make it easier to take the stocking off. And this lot will like it better if you make a bit of a show of it. And it'll give you a bit more time to think about how I keep achieving this mini miracle."

Caroline went to perch on the chair to remove her stocking. As her hand approach the stocking top, she heard several people make approving 'ooo' noises. She decided to see if taking her time to allow for some thinking might be a good idea, especially if it appeared to get the audience on her side.

It took Caroline several slow seconds to slide her stocking down to her knee. She glimpsed people paying attention as the stocking was guided down the swell of her calve once she had straightened and re-bent her knee to get the stocking over that obstacle. It felt good, but intimidating to have the audience so fixed on her, not something that she felt in her day-to-day life. From the corner of her eye she caught the magician stuffing the cloth into his hand showing it had vanished and then pulling back out.

With the stocking removed, she accepted the magician's invitation to see the trick again. The right fist was made and the cloth was pushed into it by the fingers and thumb of the left hand; she wondered why he had not changed back to using his left fist, and concluded that he was either trying not to antagonise her, or he was showing off that he could do this trick equally well using either hand.

The cloth was again gone and he stepped behind her. He placed his left hand on her left hip and slid it down the thigh and across towards the stocking top on her right thigh where he hooked in his thumb and forefinger, before sliding his right hand down her right thigh to bring forth the red cloth. Despite her expectation, Caroline blushed as he touched her inner thigh and his left wrist rested against her g-string.

With no progress towards formulating a guess at how the magician was doing the trick, Caroline took teasing strides to the chair and with one buttock resting on the seat, she peeled the stocking from her leg. As she heard the approving sounds made by the audience, Caroline began to think about why she was doing this. It had started out as a challenge, but now she felt that she did not want to know how it was done; being the centre of attention for people who seemed to not blink twice at a bared breast was a thrill. Then the threat of the contraption parked at the rear of the stage came to mind; if she failed to detect the method for the cloth she was committed to being a part of the illusion with the mystery device; a prospect that the waitress who had helped volunteer her had not been looking forward to.

She picked up the previous stocking that she left draped over the back of the chair and bundled it together with the one she had removed over the last minute or so. The wad of nylon mesh sailed across the stage and landed in the clothes basket.

Doubt assailed Caroline suddenly after the enjoyment of the attention while she removed a teasing stocking. The magician had spoken of 'natural conclusion' of this trick. But how far would he go? How far would he expect her to go? She was a member of the audience; surely she was not going to be expected to get totally naked?

Caroline returned to the magician's side and concentrated on each hand movement; trying to discover the moment when the cloth was not where she thought it was. The disappointing result was that it must vanish from the fist some time between her last glimpse of it being push down there and the moment when the magician opened his had and spread his fingers to show both hands empty; certainly not enough information to base even the flimsiest conjecture upon.

He was back behind her reaching around her left upper arm, tucking the same two digits into the top  of her left bra cup. As her right hand reflexively rose to bat away the unwanted contact, the magician whispered in her right ear, "Go with the flow! Don't spoil it now!"

Caroline paused and looked down to see if there was really anything to object to. He had the fabric gripped between his thumb inside and the middle finger outside and the only contact with the flesh of her breast was the back of the top joint of his fore-finger. True, she, and probably he, could see her nipple, which surprised her by being erect, but he was not leering or groping. For a moment the gap between her bra and her breast contained only the magician's two fingers, then a moment later there was a corner of red cloth; the transition had been obscured by his probing fingers from his other hand.

The audience cheering forced Caroline to return from her concentration on the magician's hands to the consequences of not having concentrated sufficiently to spot whatever he was doing. The spectators seemed enthusiastic for the presumed follow-on from the extraction of the red cloth with its elephant sketch from the young woman's bra.

"You know what you need to do," the magician said under the noise of the crowd.

Caroline knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to make a bolt for the wings. But she suspected the person who had brought the chair on stage would be there to catch her and push her back onto the stage. "Is this the last one?" she asked.

The magician shook his head a fraction of an inch in each direction, letting her know that he intended to continue vanishing the cloth until there was nowhere to vanish it to. The audience reaction was also quickly sliding from joy at the prospect of watching the bra come off, to the beginnings of a chant of 'Take it off!'.

To forestall the chanting, she raised her hands and pulled the tops of her bra cups forward and looked in, as if to check that there were no more pieces of cloth or other magicianly paraphernalia.

With an unconvincing shrug, she turned her back on the audience and began to reach for the catches of the bra. The thought crossed her mind that it would have been easier if she had been wearing a front-fastening bra, but this was barged out of the way by the realisation that with her back showing, so was most of her bottom, especially as she was wearing the skimpiest panties in her wardrobe. Her hands diverted to cover her buttocks.

Most of the audience responded to this development with a groan, although there were at least two people that let out shrill whistles. With a conscious effort she modified the motion to a caress of her bottom which she slowly swayed. The hands rose to the hooks holding the band of the bra in place and in a quick motion unhooked them. The rear straps sagged leaving her rear view interrupted by the skinny waist band of her g-string, with most of the fabric that went down from there lost between her buttocks. The onlookers cheered.

Mildly exhilarated from overcoming this hurdle and gaining the audience's approval, Caroline turned to face them again. She then realised that there were other hurdles, such as removing the shoulder straps and finding the courage to remove the bra altogether. It took a little juggling to maintain a hand and forearm to hold her bra in place on her chest while alternating which arm was holding and which was sliding the strap from her shoulder or manoeuvring its elbow out of the strap.

She turned her back to the spectators, before removing the bra from her chest. She dangled the garment from an outstretched hand, while keeping the other over her chest. She turned to face the audience and dropped the bra into the clothes basket. Caroline turned away again, this time when she turned back she had a hand covering each breast. She was a little surprised to feel her nipples pressing into her palms. She juggled between protecting her chest with a single hand and a forearm and using both hands crossed or uncrossed for a short while. Once she felt that she could not deny the audience's desire to see her breasts unimpeded, she span on the spot dropping her hands to the sides.

"Are you ready for the next one?" asked the magician.

"That sounds as if it's not the last," commented Caroline.

"We'll see," replied the magician, not giving Caroline any confidence about what was meant to happen, especially as the only garment left on her body was her g-string, which did not cover a great deal.

While Caroline concentrated, the cloth was stuffed into the magician's fist and not there when he opened it. From his position behind her he pulled forward the scrap of fabric that was her panties and pulled out the red cloth.

In response to the cheer from the audience Caroline did her best to make a pleasing spectacle of removing her g-string. With the panties dropped into the basket, The magician held up the cloth once more.

"You can't do that! There's nowhere to hide it," Caroline said, but none of the audience heard because they were cheering the idea and many were wondering where it might end up.

Undeterred, the magician progressively stuffed the cloth into his right hand and then showed that it was not there. He went to stand behind Caroline and put a hand on each hip. He then began to slide both hands down the crease where Caroline's legs met her torso. Caroline was quick to catch on to the magician's target.

"You're not touching me there! The flow does not go that far." She grabbed then magician's wrists and pulled them away.

"Then how am I meant to find the cloth?" protested the magician.

"You're not touching me there. I'll find it if it's there."

"In that case, let me instruct you on how to find it." She gave him a sceptical look and then a small nod. "First you need to sit down facing the audience." He took a step away and moved the chair to behind her, then stepped off to the side.

Caroline sat on the chair at a slight angle with her legs clamped together.

"You need to face them properly and open your legs, so they can see that the cloth is not hidden on your thigh, or anything like that."

"I can't do that!"

"Of course you can. It's certainly not physically difficult. And it goes with the flow."

Caroline surprised herself by doing as she was asked, much to the delight of the audience.

"Good! Now put a hand made into a fist on that nicely trimmed pubic hair and stick out your first two fingers." When Caroline seemed to be indecisive, he added, "Use the hand you don't write with; it'll made the next stage easier."

Caroline followed the instructions and placed her left fist with her forefinger and middle-finger sticking forward.

"That's good! Now bring your fingers down and slide them between you lips, then when they are both in separate them a bit, maybe a fingers-width."

Bringing her fingers down to her labia and infiltrating them between, so that base of those fingers rested over her clitoris, felt perilously close to public masturbation. She felt aroused, but could not put her finger on why, particularly as everything about the situation struck the common-sense parts of her brain as being things she would never normally do, or even fantasise about.

"Excellent! Now with the other hand reach inside and pull out the cloth."

With slow deliberation Caroline raise her hand, then lowered it toward her other hand. In the process she spread the fingers and turned it over twice, in a mock repetition of the magician had repeated upon vanishing the cloth each time. Carefully she pushed the two fingers inside herself expecting not to find anything. The first thing she discovered was quite how aroused she was, with her fingers slipping easily into her well lubricate inner sanctum. Then the audience saw her face change from an expression of concentration to one indicating wonder; she had found a corner of fabric under her probing fingers. It took little time to grip it between her fingertips and pull.

Moments later the audience burst into applause of twice the volume that had greeted any part of the previous acts. Caroline had stopped when she had caught her first view of the corner of red cloth projecting between the fingers of her left hand. Cautiously she took a firmer grip on the red scrap and pulled; she could feel the cloth run over her G-spot, which increased her sexual feelings. By the time the cloth came free, the crowd were cheering and she was feeling the need for some private time by herself.

The magician made a presentation gesture towards his flushed volunteer sitting with her legs apart and holding a red cloth adorned with a sketch of an elephant.

He helped Caroline stand and whisked away the chair and brought forward the apparatus that had been parked against the rear curtain since he had been on stage. Despite her daze of mystification and euphoria, Caroline was able to pick out Betty and watched as the waitress smiled and blew her a kiss.

The magician took Caroline's hand a guided her to take a bow to the audience. "Are you ready for the next thing?"

"What next thing? There can't be anywhere else?"

"I mean the final illusion, all the stuff with the cloth is done; you can keep it as a souvenir if you like."

"I thought you were supposed to give me some coaching for that."

"Actually, there's not a lot for you to do. It's just a question of you standing where I put you and try to keep smiling."

"And why wouldn't I keep smiling? Is it something nasty? Is that why the waitress would rather I was doing it?"

"Betty is fine with the process; in fact she shows every sign of enjoying it. She doesn't like the result; she says the bonus for doing it doesn't cover the loss of tips for the rest of the evening. And Joanne moans about being left as the only remaining waitress, despite the extra tips."

"I guess I'm committed to this. I don't suppose it can be more nerve-wracking the stripping in front of a bunch of strangers. Do I need to get into some sort of costume?" Caroline asked hopefully.

"Betty does it in her work clothes," said the magician. This sounded ok to Caroline, until she remembered that the waitress' work clothes were a g-string and a pair of pasties. "So the illusion is designed to work with the assistant in minimal clothing; clothes would be in the way. Besides why keep the people waiting to see the last trick."

"I assumed that when you said 'some coaching' you meant you would train me how to do this, whatever this is, and expect me to come back to do it."

"And would you have come back?" enquired the magician.

"Fair point," Caroline conceded. "Let's get this over and done with then, before I decide grabbing my clothes and making a run for it is a better option."

She tried to work out what this equipment might do, while he guided her to one end of the short platform on which the structure stood. Her initial impression was of a table with a top at high-thigh level, with six legs attached to the upper surface by some unusual fittings that she could not take in in the brief time she got to notice them at all.

With slight encouragement from the magician she stepped onto the platform so that the fronts of her thighs rested against the end of the table. From here she spotted a new feature of the table top. It had three oval holes at the far end; one barely an inch from the far edge and the other two side-by-side about a foot closer.

Caroline's attention yanked away from studying the table top for clues to what was going to happen, by something touching her lower shin. Looking down she saw the magician fastening a strap above the prominences of her ankles and the strap appeared to be attached to the table legs by a short chain, no more than four links long. "What are you doing?"

"This is for your own safety," he assured her. "If I don't do this you might try stepping away at the wrong moment and hurt yourself. But you should find there is enough slack to move enough to get comfortable." He finished buckling the strap into place and moved on to the other one.

"Do I need to do anything while your doing that?"

"Well, you could bend forward and get yourself comfortable, so you're ready to be strapped in; it'll save a bit of time."

Caroline looked across the table and realised what the holes were for. Supported by her hands holding the edge of the tabletop and bending at the hips, she bent forward to lie across the surface. As expected her face lined up with the furthest hole and her breasts dropped into other two holes. With her cleavage pressing against the narrow piece of wood between the holes, she reached under the table top make sure that none of her breast flesh was caught against the edges of the holes, before resting her weight on the table. She was relieved to feel the edges of all three holes were lined with some felt padding, because she did not relish the prospect of resting on hard edges.

The magician finished shackling her legs and as he rose from his squatting position, he trailed his fingers up the backs of her legs. Even though she considered this taking a liberty with her constrained situation, she still shivered with the erotic tension it caused.

The next thing she felt was a couple of straps being tightened over the small of her back.

"I suppose you don't trust me to stay still," Caroline said.

"Exactly, but I wouldn't trust anyone to stay once they knew what was coming. You'd need to stay still while the magic is happening and afterwards until you are restored, the straps will help with that. And I'll need to hold your head still too." He put a strap over the back of her head so that she could not lift her head from the hole where her face rested. "Now for the last two restraints." He captured her wrists and drew them to her back about level with the base of her ribs where he fitted another strap tight around them.

"Hey! What's the big idea?" yelled Caroline, discovering that the movement of her arms was now very limited.

"It's so that you can't hurt yourself by getting your hands in the way and, of course, so that you don't hide your very nice tits, which might annoy the audience."

It surprised Caroline to realise that despite the opportunity, she had not covered or supported her breasts. "So, assuming you're done with the bondage bit, what have you got planned for me now?"

"I'm going to cut you into three pieces." Even with the light tone he was employing, Caroline instantly knew that this was exactly what the magician had in mind.

"And why on earth would I allow you to do that?"

"Because that's what you agreed to if you could not fathom the trick with the cloth. And you have some idea that it can be survived, if Betty has been through it and is still working here and not puzzling some detective at the morgue. And finally you are not in a position to prevent me from doing it; so I can do pretty much anything I please, so long I don't offend the club patrons, who are perhaps the least offend-able people in the county."

"But isn't cutting people in pieces dangerous?" objected Caroline.

"Betty has survived it eight times so far, which shows that, either it isn't as dangerous as you might think, or I'm very good at it. Before this argument starts going round in circles, shall we get started? Would you like to watch some of what happens, or just experience it and see the result?"

"Getting it over with sounds like a great idea, unless not doing it all is an option. But I don't understand what you mean by the other question; it makes no sense."

Caroline did not see the blade being brandished by the magician, but knew that something was happening by the sudden quieting of the audience. The first she knew about the blade was as it touched the back of her neck. She could feel its weight and the sharpness of the edge as the magician rested it in place while he moved himself into a better position to thrust it downward.

She heard the magician muttering something, then with a loud grunt, he pushed the blade downward through her neck. Caroline felt the sharp pressure on the back of her neck increase for an instant and then it was there no longer. She heard a crunch, which she could not identify. This was followed by an explosion of pleasure up her neck into her head and down her body. The erotic feelings that she had wanted to release, but had subsided while she was being tied down to the table, returned with their strength doubled.

The magician moved behind the apparatus to allow the audience a better look at what was about to happen. With a tap of his toe and the press of a button on the rear of the table, he released the connection between the head end of the table and the rest of the equipment. The magician tugged on a concealed handle, rolling Caroline's head a foot clear of her body. Caroline could sense the movement of her head and saw the section of the platform directly below move apart from the part of the platform where the middle legs of the table stood.

Based on this evidence, the volunteer concluded that her head had been parted from her body, but she refused to believe it, even after asking and being told that this was exactly what had happened. While the magician assured her that she was safe and would be reassembled into one working piece for when she went home, he also adjusted the fittings that connected the head end of the table top to its legs. First the table top was push forward relative to the legs and then raised to be vertical, in such a manner that her head was upright and facing the audience, while the rest of her was strapped to the horizontal table side on to the audience, which by this time was most of the people in the club.

The audience cheered this development as the separated end section of the table was rotated up to reveal Caroline's face with furrowed brow and breathing heavily. The head section was wheeled backward and turned until she could see the rest of her body; except that she did not believe that it could be that, until she shuffled her feet to get a little more comfortable and saw that her touching the table-leg to which her shin was shackled, with a toe coincided with feeling her toe touch something.

Caroline was beginning to entertain the possibility that what the magician had told her was not the entertaining lie that most magicians would peddle, but something close to the truth. Further exploration of her situation was put aside, when she felt the edge of a sharp blade resting across the small of her back.

As she changed her focus, she saw a rectangular blade perched on the back of the torso on the table lined up between the straps across its back. The fact that she was feeling the deadly blade was another nail in the coffin for the comforting idea that this was a trick. While Caroline tried to integrate the new evidence into her model of how the world works, there was another interruption.

The magician's muscles bulged as he drove the blade into the back of the body strapped to the table.  Caroline felt the increasing pressure as the magician strained, then the sensation vanished, but she heard a crunch, which had to be the blade being smashed through the spine.

The crunching continued as the magician rocked the blade to get it through the bone, but the volunteer was oblivious. To Caroline not much mattered because the arousal that had been waning was back with its strength tripled. Nobody was paying enough attention to see nipples grow hard or notice that flushing of blood to between her legs and her clitoris swelling. The audience were watching the magician complete cutting Caroline's body into two sections, move the upper section apart from the hips and adjust the apparatus so that the surface was vertical with the volunteer's breasts settling on the face they could see.

Caroline was in need of immediate release as sexual feelings ricocheted around the three parts of her body. Her mouth opened and without any thought from her said, "Fuck me, Big Boy!"

Even before the surprised expression melted from the magician's face, he was standing behind Caroline's buttocks with his denim shorts around his ankles and his penis engorged and condom sheathed. Against Caroline's expectation and hope, he did not plunge his dick straight into her, but he briefly waved the red cloth with the elephant sketch, then he tied around himself, before the crowd cheered his entry into her pussy.

Unlike the sexual acrobatics of the pirate and wench strippers, this intercourse lasted less than a minute, before Caroline received the release she craved and felt the magician's cock twitching as her vagina spasmed around it. She felt she needed to scream her release, but found that she could not because there was something in her mouth that had a musky flavour that she recognised as her own. In an effort to dislodge the obstruction, she coughed and then clamped her teeth on it as she glimpsed the redness of it as it left her lips.

The magician was quick to remove the condom and pull up his shorts, then he stepped across the stage to lift a corner of the cloth that hung from Caroline's lips displaying the presence of the elephant sketch.

The rest of the evening she spent in three parts, chatting to people that she would previously felt she had nothing in common with. The women all seemed to be some combination admiring of her courage and her body, jealous of her getting a chance to be part of the magic and disbelieving of her situation. The men seemed to concentrate more on her upper torso, making appreciative comments as they stroked, fondled or massaged her breasts. Her legs and hips had been pulled from the stage and left somewhere backstage; Caroline was a little worried about her lower half being abused until she felt a cloth being draped over them, which if the sensations were correct covered her at least down to her calves.

After a few minutes, Betty had come along with a glass and a straw. The waitress told Caroline to let anyone know when she wanted to go home and she would get the magician to put her back together so that she could go. Caroline's only request as this point was to have her hands release so that she could resist if anyone got too free and frisky with her breasts.

After about ninety minutes, as the interest in her and her breasts was failing, she asked to be reassembled. The magician and Betty wheeled the parts that were still in the public area through a door marked 'Staff Only'. With her parts re-aligned, the magician pulled the blades free, then he and Betty released the straps and shackles.

As she stepped from the platform, she hugged Betty, saying, "Thank you! If you had not encouraged me, I'd have missed out on a bizarre, but exciting experience."

Betty stepped back when Caroline released her from the hug and pulled a rectangle of laminated card from the waistband of her g-string. "This is you temporary membership card; it'll get you in until the secretary can sort out a proper card for your honourary membership. I hope you'll use it."

The magician brought the basket containing Caroline's clothes and handed her a card. "I hope to see you again, sometime. If you ever want to get in touch, it's on the card. Good bye, for now."