Story for Kurvy Kate 2

It was the Halloween season and being the nearest night to actual Halloween, Magic Night at the Gala Ballroom was running a promotion; half-price entry for turning up in costume. I was dithering about whether it was worth the effort and discomfort of an evening in a costume that had only grown tighter over the last few years, when my mobile rang.

I checked the display; it said 'Mr Jackson'. Who is Mr Jackson? Only one way to find out. I answered. "Hello?"

"Hi, Kate," said a voice that I could not quite place, but he obviously knew who I was.

"Sorry, I can't talk. I'm getting ready to go out."

"To the Gala Ballroom?" he asked.

I nodded, struck temporarily dumb by the fact this stranger knew my plans.

"Good! Would you like to come up on stage again?"

Again I nodded; even before it occurred to me that he must have seen the previous adventure on the stage of the Gala Ballroom and thus had seen me nearly naked. I blushed at the delicious memory.

"Great! Were you planning to come in a costume?”

At last, I found my tongue. "I was just trying to decide, when you called.”

"Good! I called soon enough.” He asked me to wear my most colourful clothes, lots of different colours if possible, and a long coat over the top. He told me he didn't want to see them before time and the forecast said it would be cold. “I'll make sure that the staff at the Ballroom recognise that you are in costume, so you don't miss out on the discount. I'll see you there!" He hung up.

I stood there for nearly a minute trying to process the conversation I had been a part of. Who was Mr Jackson? Why was his number in my phone? How did he know my plans? How had he known I was nodding in answer to some of his questions? It was Rod-erick, wasn’t it? I looked round at the curtains closed against the encroaching dusk. Had I really volunteered to be on stage again? What would happen? What was I going to wear?

I opened my wardrobe and picked out the most garish items in there. It's Halloween; nobody cares what you wear on Halloween. I chose the orange blouse and a blue and white striped calf-length skirt, because it did not clash with the blouse as much as the green one. Then there was the matter of what to wear underneath. I chose a red bra and green panties thinking these were more Christmas colours than Halloween. My underwear drawer is short on orange and purple items.

Once dressed, I took stock of my image in the mirror. I looked bright and cheerful. Ok, the buttons on the blouse were pulling a bit; I had not worn it for at least a year, maybe two. I assured myself no-one would notice. I took up my longest coat and wrapped myself in it. On the taxi journey to the Ballroom I wondered what I had let myself in for.

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The time before the show went very similarly to the previous time I had volunteered. I met Rod-erick in the same room; he asked me if I still wanted to be his volunteer and explained that he was Mr Jackson and used Rod-erick as a stage-name when things might be deemed child-inappropriate. Then he shook my hand and told me that he looked forward to seeing me on stage. I have a sneaking feeling there was also a gap in my awareness of the short meeting, but could not be quite sure; I don't know if that is better or worse than knowing that you missed a few minutes.

I went for a calming drink to find that the magician had paid for it, and my interval drink too, if I wanted one.

Back in the Ballroom I chose a seat near the edge, but further forward this time. The show up to Rod-erick's act just before the interval was much the same fare as before; some of the amateurs that I had seen before had improved (if not by much) and others were as mixed as ever. The thing I noticed was that everyone who hadn’t made the effort at Halloween-theming was wearing an orange bow-tie. One of the amateurs commented that the show's management had insisted he wear it.

Finally it was the act that I was anticipating with a mix of excitement and dread. Rod-erick came on pushing a glass tank containing some snakes. I hoped that they would not be part of what he planned for me. He calmly picked up each of the five snakes from the tank, put its tail to its mouth and briefly covered the head and tail-tip with his hand. Each ring he made this way appeared to be metal with a green scaled finish. He performed an elegant routine of linking rings, before dropping the rings into the glass tank where they returned to being snakes.

He was mostly dressed as usual in an immaculate black suit, but his shirt was orange and his bow-tie was purple. He called me to the stage, while he explained that I had been asked to volunteer for a second time, because he had enjoyed working with me and I had appeared to enjoy working with him. He told the audience I had not been in any way coached in what he was planning. I confirmed that.

There was a brief interruption as the stagehand brought forward a piece of apparatus under a cloth and took away the snakes. I was glad that they were nothing to do with me.

Rod-erick asked me to take off my coat and hang it on the coat stand that the stagehand had hurriedly placed at the edge of the stage. While my back was turned he whipped the cloth from the apparatus and joked to the audience that he had hoped that I might be in costume. I’d have made an excellent belly dancer apparently. I hung up my coat and returned to the middle of the stage which was now occupied by a chair built from four-by-four timber and covered in leather straps.

I’d seen things like this in museums with medieval dungeons and on kinky art websites. “Oh my god!” I thought. It looked very sturdy.

He invited me to sit in the chair and rest my fore-arms on the arms of the throne-like structure.

Predictably he began to strap me into the chair, starting by buckling the leather over my wrists and upper-fore-arms. While he restrained me he told the audience "This device I usually use to make people vanish and reappear and I also use it to perform the 10,000 Volt woman." I knew different when he said he had planned to perform that. I still felt complimented when he said, "Kate would have been a superb 10,000 Volt woman.” Had he read my stories on that kinky art website!

He fitted a lap strap and gently moved my feet so that he could fasten my shins to the front of the chairs legs. He light-heartedly complained that now he would have to spend the time entertaining the audience with changing my costume, instead of displaying the miracle of the electric woman. He finished by putting a strap around my neck, which was tight enough to ensure that I sat back in the chair. I didn’t feel in any danger of being strangled but its grip on my throat felt sweetly threatening. I was certainly trapped!

Why did I allow a near-stranger to strap me to a chair in front of an audience? I assume that it was something to do with the hypnosis and some peer pressure thing to cooperate with the magician. How was I feeling about it? I felt a bit vulnerable, because I was sitting with my knees spread facing the audience. I hoped my skirt was long enough and nobody could look up it and see my green panties. I was also wondering how he planned to entertain the people with my costume change when I was hardly able to move more than an inch, let alone change costume. Then a further worry reared its head; what costume did he have planned? Oh no, not the belly dancer?

With me thoroughly immobilised, he and the stagehand lowered a hoop with a curtain over me and the chair and made quick work of releasing the ties that held the curtain to the hoop.

"To get Kate into a costume we first need to get her out of what she's currently wearing. Will you need a bit of help with that?"

I looked at him; not to ask him what kind of stupid question he thought that was, but to determine whether he wanted me to ask for someone to help or challenge him to do it by magic. I guessed that he was after some challenge. "Some help would be nice, but where is the costume I'm supposed to change into?" I had not noticed anything that might be a costume anywhere on stage.

"It'll turn up," he assured me. "In the meantime let's get started, before this lot turn ugly." He scanned the audience and stopped at someone dressed as Frankenstein's monster. "It looks like they've started already." Which got a laugh.

As the reaction quietened. The magician lifted the curtain. Once I was out of view, I heard a cooing noise, then a flapping as feathers brushed my face. A movement made me look up to see an orange-coloured dove perched on the hoop at the top of the encircling curtain. Rod-erick shook the hoop to get the bird to move on, while the audience were putting two and two together about as fast as I was.

I could now feel the coolness of the leather straps across my fore-arms and the pressure at the back of my neck where my collar had been had vanished. A glance down confirmed that my blouse was gone, leaving me bare above the waistband of my skirt, except for my red bra. If you believe in magic my blouse had flown away in the form of an orange dove; I wished I had a better explanation, but I did not.

Rod-erick lowered the curtain which had hidden the transformation from the onlookers and a fair number cheered at the confirmation of their assumption of the result. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the dove perched on the coat rack. I tried to get out of my bonds, with the expected lack of success. Rod-erick favoured me with a smile.

The curtain did not remain lowered for long, for which I was grateful until more feathers brushed my face. Looking up I spotted a blue dove with white wings. In anticipation I looked down to check my skirt; it was no longer there. Another shake of the hoop sent dove to the coat rack. Then the curtain descended to exposed me in my underwear still strapped to the seat. I was surprised at the warmth I felt from the applause. Maybe it wasn’t entirely due to me blushing from the top of my head down.

Rod-erick raised the curtain again and I heard the audience laugh. Did they expect the little clothing I had left to fly away too? That was the obvious joke, one worth implying of course. I prayed it was only a joke and my costume change was imminent. I felt my tits drop without my bra’s cups to hold them. I saw a red dove briefly rest on the hoop before fluttering off. Oh well, it wasn’t the first time I’ve been displayed on stage like this; although last time I had the chance to cover myself.

Maybe he wouldn’t lower the curtain and it would be enough for the audience to know I’d lost my bra? They’d seen the red dove, they didn’t have to see my bare breasts, did they? Would he lower it just enough for them to see the humiliation on my face? It occurred to me they might like to see my face after Rod-erick had apparently taken my knickers too. I was sure they’d love to see more and strapped as securely spread as I was, there was nothing I could hide. (I’m going to admit I felt a little tingle in my rose when I thought of this!)

He lowered the curtain all the way. The audience loved that! They cheered and whistled. I dream of moments like this, when my darkest kinky fantasies come to haunt me but the reality is terrible, it’s so much more intense. I felt my skin flush hot and my naked breasts ride my ribs as I breathed through my fear. “Please raise the curtain, please!” I prayed.

Eventually he did. He looked over the top of it at me and I could see him think “Want to know what’s going to happen next?” as if I wasn’t already sick with dreading it. The strap round my neck prevented me from shaking my head properly but I tried to. I tried to express “Please don’t do it!” When he smiled at the audience a chant of “Off! Off! Off!” began, started by some young male humorist no doubt.

Then Rod-erick shook the curtain, feathers swept across my face and a green dove climbed effortlessly upwards. I knew I’d lost my knickers. A huge round of applause erupted from the auditorium.

I could hear Rod-erick asking the audience whether he should lower the curtain. Even knowing my vote would not change whatever the magician had planned, I shouted that he should keep the curtain up. To my explicable terror and inexplicable excitement, the curtain began to lower.

He stopped once my head was visible. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch what you said." Did I catch a gleam in his eye that said what he had planned was going to happen no matter what I said? Or was I starting to get paranoid that he might push me too far? and, worse I might enjoy it?

I reiterated that I did not want him to lower the curtain, because the promised costume had not arrived. I told him that the costume I was in at that moment was an entirely inadequate Lady Godiva costume, because while my hair is long, it is not long enough, and certainly not blonde enough, to carry off that.

To a moan of disappointment from the audience, he curtain was raised again. A motion against the light above drew my attention. Two new birds were perched on the hoop; a big black one (a Halloween-appropriate raven) and a smaller white one (a magic-appropriate dove). The raven dived down the curtain stroking down my body with its wings and landing on my thighs. The dove made a hopping flutter and landed on my head.

For a brief moment, I could feel claws on my thighs and head. I was distracted by the descent of the curtain. As the hoop landed on the platform under the chair, I felt the relief that I was wearing something, although I did not know what and was a little worried about how modest, or more likely immodest, it might be.

A look down told me that I was in a dress that might be black satin with some white accessories, although exactly what these were I could not tell at that point. So, not the threatened Belly Dancer costume! The skirt of the dress was worryingly short as this costume did not seem to come with underwear. I was glad to note that while the hem did not reach my spread knees, it was wide enough to sag between my thighs and prevent anybody looking up it.

I noticed that the skirt was not properly on my body; I could still feel the wood of the chair under my arse and how the air stirred by the raven’s wings had cooled the sweat between my thighs. I was reminded that I had not been given another pair of knickers!

It was a bit of a thrill to be pantie-less and feel free air between my legs, but there was the danger of accidental exposure. At least I was the only person who knew; then I remembered that Rod-erick would know too; what would he do with that knowledge?

The magician set about releasing me from the straps holding me in place and I was soon standing in what I discovered was a 'maid outfit'; basically a black dress with a white pinafore-apron and a lace headdress thing on a hair-band.

The stagehand took away the chair and the coat rack with its avian passengers, while Rod-erick took me forward to the stage's edge to show my costume to the crowd. They seemed evenly split between those who appreciated the magic and those who would have liked to have seen more of me without it.

"Now that we've gone to the effort of getting you into a costume, would you like to take part in my main illusion?" he asked.

Thinking that there could be nothing more terrifying than my near brush with naked public bondage I said "Yes." Maybe I should have thought about it a bit more or asked some questions.

At about this time I discovered that instead of hanging down my back, my hair had been changed and was now up in a pair of symmetric ponytails. I reached up to release them, but the magician told me that having my hair up out of the way was important. I took him at his word that the change of hairstyle was important for the big illusion he planned. Yes; I trusted a magician that had just removed all my clothes; I blamed the hypnosis, even as I suspected that there might be no hypnosis involved. Rod-erick couldn’t possibly know about my susceptibility to erotic intoxication, could he?

"Do you have any idea what illusion you have just agreed to take part in?"

"No. I'm thinking that that's a bad thing, right?"

"That depends." Was he being evasive? "What illusion would you like to be involved in?"

I paused to consider how to respond; I was aware he had some sort of plan; was I supposed to guess at what he might plan or should I give in and help build the tension in the mystery? Did he want me to suggest something I might like to be involved in?

"Maybe, I could help you produce some doves. On second thoughts, not doves, but perhaps a rabbit or a cute dog."

"Does that sound Halloween themed?"

"Um, no. I suppose you're angling to saw me in half, or something like that." I had watched a few videos of what seemed an endless supply of different sawing a woman in half illusions. I tried to pick the most innocuous. "I think I'd be ok with the one with the bow saw or if you want to ramp it up, the version with the jigsaw."

"You've got the right illusion, just the wrong version. Allow me to demonstrate!" On cue the stage hand pushed forward a small circular platform with a post on the back and some attachments on the post and platform that I did not immediately identify.

I did not get much chance to study the apparatus, because as the stage hand turned to fetch the next bit, Rod-erick was guiding me to stand on the platform with my back to the pole; it took a bit of fancy footwork to avoid scraping my shins on the two things sticking up from the base. I end up standing over the two short posts with metal semicircles at the top.

I felt spread open. The elevation of the stage above the auditorium meant that anyone in at least the first row was certain to be able to see up my dress. I convinced myself the stage lighting and the black fabric of my skirt would hide my rose in shadow. His movements around me caused currents in the air as the raven had. I could feel them brush me. I felt brutally exposed.

Bending down, Roderick guided my shins into the semicircles, and closed another pair of semicircles mounted on rods from the post at the rear. These locked in place with a click that I heard, but the audience probably did not. The movement of air up my skirt, while Rod-erick worked constantly reminded me of my vulnerable position.

The magician had me raise my arms and swung in another pair of larger semi-circles around my middle. You might have expected these to be tight on me, as I'm plumper than most people expect of a magician's assistant. Ok, the waist restraints were tight enough to prevent me moving much and there was about an inch gap at the front and back, but it seemed that this was intentional, because of the click as they locked into place in that position.

Rod-erick had me move my hands down again, leading to my fore-arms being clamped in cuffs that stood out from the interrupted ring around my middle. Then another broken ring was clicked into place around my neck, tight, but not threatening to cut off circulation or breathing.

He dramatised my predicament by wheeling me round the stage, back to where the chair had been.

Fixing me rigid was plainly going to be a feature of my appearance as Rod-erick’s assistant. I thought of medieval tortures where maidens were distressed by their restraint in iron and heavy wood. I knew how the unfortunate girl felt having stumbled into the mad scientist's laboratory and found herself strapped down on some sort of operating table. I’d dreamt of those too and this reality was no less exciting. I felt like I was actually doing it! My powerlessness felt gorgeous and so sexy. I tried to deny my arousal. If he’d given me knickers I’d have felt safer but the idea that he knew how precarious my nakedness would make me feel made it worse. Anyone who looked up my skirt would know what was going on in my head. Oh god!

The stagehand returned with a clear plastic shell which he and the magician fitted to the post so that half was one side and the other half on the other; the slight gap between the two halves lined up with the spaces between the more direct restraints around my middle and my neck. I was beginning to get an idea of what was planned; I was horrified by the thought, but delighted at my powerlessness to avoid it.

There was a pause, then I knew something had happened by the intake of breath from the audience. I was not left in ignorance for long, because Rod-erick came into my limited view carrying a chain saw with what, at first sight, seemed an absurdly long blade. He glanced at me to make sure I was looking, before he place the machine on the stage floor and pulled on the rip-cord. After an initial buzz, it chugged as he carried it about the stage with careless abandon.

I realised then why I’d been restrained before I had any real clue how bad this would be. A chain saw? A real live, running, fucking chain saw! I thought “Fucking hell!” several times; might have shouted it if the initial terror had not clamped my jaw shut.

I was wondering what I should be doing; should I be trying to escape my bonds? Should I be protesting my, by now obvious, fate? Then another implication of Rod-erick's plan hit me; I was naked under the flimsy dress and using the saw on me would likely destroy the dress, leaving me naked, restrained and on full view to everyone in the audience; I could only hope that the restraints at my neck and middle would be enough to hold it in place.

Where were my priorities? I was worrying that I might be naked after being attacked with a chainsaw! Shouldn't I have been worried whether I would survive? And perhaps thinking that being totally exposed might be a small price to pay to be able to walk away in one piece.

The magician was now standing behind me and gunned the chain saw. There was a moment when I saw the idling tip of the blade come into view above me, then the teeth on the chain whirled and I felt the headdress ripped from my head and bounce in two parts down the inside of the outer tube and against my back. I felt a few strands of my hair tug my scalp as the chain caught them.

I screamed a scream that I feel sure was not only heard throughout the building, but made everyone who heard it stop in their tracks. Most importantly, Rod-erick stopped and withdrew the fearsome saw.

He came round to stand where I could see him, with the chain saw still in his hand, puttering. "What was that for?" he asked.

“I’m scared. I’m really fucking terrified. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I cried, and I mean cried, as in tears.

The audience loved that. Didn’t it make the drama so much more real if the hapless heroine, me, was genuinely scared out of her mind? They knew I couldn’t be acting.

“Have faith Kate my dear. Have I hurt you yet?” he asked. No he hadn’t, but what if something went wrong? “This is real magic, it’s not simply an illusion, there’s no prop to fail or slip of the hand to risk. It’s real!” he assured me. The audience were stunned silent by that and up on the edge of their seats, I’m sure.

How many times have I tried to explain to my playmates, and my lovers, that I didn’t want them to do it, I wanted them to be able to. I meant that I wanted to feel helplessly at their mercy and unable to prevent them imposing their will on me. It thrilled me to pray that they wouldn’t subject me to whatever horror they thought of but I needed to be threatened with it.

Maybe that might make sense if I explain that Rod-erick’s chain saw and his wicked intent to use it on me felt as much terrifying threat as I could handle. But I’d be safe wouldn’t I, because the magic would save me? I had to trust him in the same way I ached to trust my lovers. I’ll never explain how filthy that need makes me feel. I was intoxicated worse than ever. I was sure he could read my thoughts and the magic was definitely real when he asked. "Would you like to make this truly sexy?" I was breathless with lust, he knew I was. I managed to nod.

He returned to his place behind me and lowered the chainsaw. I saw the nose of the blade appear between my shins. He revved the engine, to threaten me? “Are you sure?” he asked. The audience were speechless. I answered “No.” but I’m sure he was reading my mind and he understood my thrill.

I tried to recall what being cut was like from my previous experience on this stage. I remembered the pleasant warm tingle that the blades had imparted as they went through, then I called to mind the pricking or pinching sensation that had preceded it. How much crueller would the painful preamble to the nice feelings be from a chain saw? Would the good part be better? Did I want to expose the sensitive places between my legs to the bite of the saw that throbbed in his hand?

I remembered that as the blades had sliced me before, the painful part had become more mild and the pleasant tingle had become more pleasant; as if he was getting accustomed to my reaction to being sliced and mitigating the sharpness of the initial sensation. I was in a position where I had to trust him and the magic he wielded.

Thinking about my previous experience, made me hopeful. I said, "I mean, Yes, I'm sure." I tried to state this in as positive a fashion as I could, so that everyone in the room know that I had submitted to my fate, but even to me my voice sounded a bit squeaky.

By cutting me from behind Rod-erick offered the audience an unimpeded, full frontal view of my distress. They were enthralled and so quiet they did not distract from the rattle of the saw blade in the gap between the two halves of the cabinet as he located it straight and true.

I was in panic. I tried to gasp frantic breaths through clenched teeth. I felt my finger nails digging into my palms and forced myself to find the faith I needed. I tried for all I was worth to believe I wasn’t going to die a horrible, gory death. No one had paid to see that!

The saw caught the hem of my dress first. I couldn’t hear anything above the noise of the engine, I just felt it grab the fabric. I felt the pressure on my shoulders as the blade dragged my uniform down. First tight down my front; the only thing preventing the onlookers from seeing the state of my nipples was the pinafore. Then the saw pulled dress down my back as far as it would move and wedged it between my arse cheeks. Shredded bits of cloth spat out of the front of the cabinet in a cloud of black fluff.

“Fuck it’s real, it’s happening!” I thought. I want to scream those words, but I could only scream nothing except my raw primal terror.

As Rod-erick eased the saw upward I expected searing pain as the saw skinned me and ripped away my tender flesh. I’d never known fear like that. I closed my eyes and prayed.

He held the blade at an upward angle such that the whirring teeth would tear into my rose first. My blood would spray out onto the stage as my genitals disintegrated, wouldn’t it? I dared not look. I might have stopped breathing.

It didn’t hurt. At first I was so bewildered by that I didn’t realise I was being cut in half. I felt intense, high frequency vibration as the initial sting developed into a deeper sensation. I felt it inside me and then it reached my pleasure trigger.

I looked down but I couldn’t see anything through the flailing shreds of tattered dress. He had to be reading my mind, he knew what I was feeling. He couldn’t see from behind me but he knew what he was doing to me and held the saw still in just the right place. Nothing with batteries in it compares with a magic chainsaw. I knew I was going to come.

It was surreal, serene, blinding and beautiful. I felt owned like a rag doll, helpless yet cared for. I was lost for ages as the chainsaw fucked me.

For a while the drama seemed remote. Dizzy and drifting, I was amazed I could be distracted from something so wild. I opened my eyes to expressions of disbelief on the faces of the audience. “I’m OK!” I wanted to tell them, but I’m certain some of them might not have accepted that.

Rod-erick carried on upwards. When the blade reached my pubic bone the force of it pushed me hard towards the front of the cabinet but my restraints held me. I stayed pressed against them as he worked his way through my pelvis and up my spine.

The vibration wobbled my belly and I could feel the chain in my guts. I could see when I looked down how high the nose of the blade was. I should have been screaming in agony but there wasn’t any.

When he reached my chest I heard the saw’s engine note change. It needed more power to cut through my spine and my breast bone together and the vibration then reached a new intensity. I felt my tits shake and jarring transmitted up my neck to rattle my brain in my head. I didn’t like that and begun to get scared again.

It must have taken considerable physical effort to push the saw upwards through the more substantial part of my upper body.

By the time it reached the base of my neck my vision was blurred and confused in orgasm’s afterglow anyway, I lost my ability to think straight. For some reason I thought of my teeth. Soon the chainsaw would chop my jaw in half and I worried my teeth might chip!

Think straight? Nothing about this was straight, except Rod-erick’s precise handling of the saw. I suppose he didn’t want to damage his magic cabinet!

“Hold your head up straight and face forward.” he shouted. He needed to aim between my eyes and didn’t want to damage those either.

I could smell the lubricating oil on the saw's teeth as I began to see different sides of the flat of blade. I felt my hair pulled, then the blade disappeared from sight.

For a moment I experienced oblivion. My last remnant of sense was swamped by the noise and the stress of the chainsaw fighting its way through the top of my skull, then suddenly it all went quiet.

Rod-erick took his finger off the chainsaw’s throttle and I heard the audience gasp in shocked appreciation above its gentle tick over. Then the saw was silenced. I tried to express my relief that the ordeal was over, but I discovered that having your voice-box sawn through means that you cannot speak. I had a moment to consider if my two halves were still separate.

The audience made a collective intake of breath, cluing me in to the fact that something was happening behind me; it seemed that there was more of this trial to come. With a little concentration (which was just as well, because I had little to spare) I could hear something moving behind me. If I could have spoken I would have demanded some information about what was going on.

There was the grind of metal on metal, then something pressed against my spine. The metal was wiggled slightly then pushed forward through the gap that the saw had opened up through me. A metal edge emerged into my field of view from between my eyes, followed by something clear. As it passed through it rubbed what remained of my genitals, sending brief thrills up my body. Rod-erick and the stagehand spend a few seconds flipping catches that were intended to hold things in place.

"As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, Kate, here, has been sawn from top to bottom and divided in two." He turned to me. "I know you can't speak, what with you mouth and throat divided in two, but please could you do something to show the rest of the audience that you are still alive?"

I did my best to wave my hands, which was not easy, because my forearms were held in place, then I made an OK sign with one hand and a thumbs up gesture with the other. The audience cheered and applauded.

He returned to addressing the spectators. "There is just one thing I need to do before you go for your interval drinks."

I thought that he was going to put me back together so that I could rejoin them and go for the interval drink that he had paid for on my behalf. I was wrong.

My vision suddenly became a jumble of images my brain's halves could not make sense of. It was a very disorienting effect of seeing different views with each eye. By the time I comprehend what each eye was seeing, I was looking across the front of the stage and seeing half a vertically divided woman, dressing in a black dress with the tatters of a white apron hanging from her trapped fore-arms.

It took me a little while to internalise that my two halves had been seperated and now stood facing each other on the front corners of the stage of the Gala Ballroom.

Rod-erick returned to centre stage, while the stagehand disappeared into the wings. "I shall leave Kate here (and there) for you to admire until the end of the show. Feel free to come up during the interval to check that what appears to have happened is really what has happened. Sadly, she can't speak with you, but if you ask her the right kinds of questions, she may be able to answer by way of hand gestures."

The magician stepped backward as the curtain closed.

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Not even Picasso could paint this! The two halves of my severed brain struggled to make sense of the view from my two separate eyes. Unless I closed one, the theatre and those members of the audience who came up onto the stage to inspect me disappeared in a mess of angles and colours.

The first person up the steps from the auditorium was the stage hand. He told me that he was there to guard me, but he also brought the drink I had ordered. It was in a tumbler with a straw in it. He opened a small hatch in the plastic shell and fed the straw and then the glass through to have the straw in my mouth and the tumbler sat on a small shelf inside the hatch. At least I was getting my interval drink; well half of me was.

The stagehand allowed the audience to look at me as closely as they wished, but was anxious not to let anyone try to touch me. He explained I was in a magic place, distinct from the real world. This would be corrupted if physical contact broke through to it and I couldn’t be restored if that happened.

Only the brave audience members came up. I could see I looked like a human biology text book. The magic saw had sliced me cleanly and I knew that it only looked like an ordinary one. It hadn’t made a stomach turning mess of me at all. My guts hadn’t fallen out; they remained in place as if Rod-erick’s cabinet had closed some invisible membrane around me.

The scientific amongst my inspectors were awed by the opportunity to see inside my mouth, my oesophagus and where my lunch had gone after that. They watched my lungs breathe and my heart beat, enthralled. One man was particularly impressed with my bifurcated sex organs. He shamelessly knelt beside each of my halves, intrigued to see where sex went.

I was enthralled too. I looked at myself astonished, believing without doubt that Rod-erick’s magic was real.

I thought of Rod-erick’s control over me, how precarious I was because I depended on his skill to give me my normal life back. If he could do this to me, what else could he do? I was still frightened, erotically that is!

My wrecked dress was simply that. It was in ribbons and slid off my single shoulders, down my single, separate arms and allowed anyone who wanted to enjoy a good look at one of my breasts, one of my thighs or one of my buttocks, from the inside!

I spent some of that interval wondering about whether I would get my clothes back; if, perhaps, the birds my garments had become might be released into the wild. Would I be returning home in the shredded remains of this costume? It would take more than a few safety pins to hold it together enough that it would stay on me. And there was not enough fabric left to keep me decent.

As the interval was coming to an end and most of the people had left. I saw a man standing behind the half cylinder that held my right half. I could not see much detail with my left eye from that distance. He waved at my left half across the width of the stage, then said to my right half, "Katie, you are braver than I thought. I was thinking that your words in chat were the bravado of anonymity. I see that there is more to you; so when we meet properly, I think there will plenty of intriguing possibilities for us to explore." He waved again and walked away.

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The second act was predictably a mess; my presence distracted most of the wannabe magicians and the professional in the second act tried unsuccessfully to get me involved in a card trick. After the curtains closed Rod-erick and the stagehand came out and wheel my two halves through to backstage and back to the room where we had met earlier.

My halves were put in the correct relative positions and the dividing blades slowly pulled free; I could feel them being dragged through my sensitized parts. Then the restoration hit me and I zoned out for a short while; long enough for the magician to remove the shell from the apparatus. When I began caring what was happening around me again, Rod-erick was releasing the shackles that had held me upright and the dress and apron were whole again.

"Thank you, Kate. You were fantastic. I'm sorry I don't have a rose for you this time; they can be difficult to get hold of this time of year. Instead you can keep the costume, because I'm unlikely to find anyone that will fill it as well you have." He handed me the head-piece, which was also in one piece. "I hope to see you again some time." He left, blowing me a kiss before he closed the door behind me.

I picked up my clothes and stuffed them into my bag. I took a bit of time to get used to being in one piece and hoped that any interested members of the audience that might have hung back to talk to me about my experience had given up and gone home. I also wondered if my internet friend might have waited behind and would meet in the bar or the foyer.