How I Got Out of That Box

After an interval spent on the front of the stage, trapped in the steel and glass box, sipping vodka and tonic through a straw and talking to strangers about my predicament, we heard the announcement that the show would be starting in three minutes and advising the audience to be in their seats.

Three minutes later, David the magician walked forward as the curtains opened and welcomed the audience back. The next trick was his signature trick, that Brian had mentioned during our taxi journey to the magic show. He asked Yvette, the lady doing the sign-language interpretation for the deaf, to pick a volunteer from the box containing the names of people who had volunteered before the show.

The chosen volunteer was Daphne, who was in her late thirties. She looked good in her calf length dress. After a bit of introduction and some rigmarole a card was chosen. Daphne was asked to mark the card with some lipstick, which caused a bit of a hiatus, when she darted off stage and back to her seat to get her make-up bag. Lipstick in hand she returned and marked the card. David took out a opaque cloth bag and placed it over his head, before asking that Daphne show the card to the audience with the help of Derek, the theatre's cameraman, who was there to provide close-up views, so that the small acts of magic were not lost on the full theatre. On the big screen at the back of the stage and the smaller one above Yvette's signing position, the image of an Eight of Clubs with the red letters DJ written across it in lipstick. She was asked to return the marked card to the deck in the magician's hands, then take it and give it a shuffle. She was then asked to throw the deck at him, but he was deliberately slow about adding the 'on the count of three' to the instructions until Daphne had showered him in cards; she looked a little embarrassed, but the audience enjoyed the gag.

David asked her if her card was face up on the stage. She came closer and said that her card was not one of the face up cards. He took the chance to bumble about a bit, then stood on a card and had Daphne pick it up, sight unseen, before he removed the bag from his head. The volunteer was asked to reveal the card to the magician and the cameraman, and, by extension, the rest of the audience, then confirm that it was her chosen card.

The card Daphne revealed was the Queen of Hearts, and she put on a sad face when she said that it was not her chosen card.

"What do you mean you didn't pick the Queen of Hearts? It's always the Queen of Hearts." He paused of half a second, before stooping and picking up another card, seemingly at random, from the floor by his feet. "That is, unless it's the Ace of Spades."

Daphne saddened her face and shook her head denying that the Ace in the magician's hand was her card. The audience erupted in a mix of laughter and applause. I got the laughter instantly, because you rarely see a card trick where the 'randomly' selected card is not either the Queen or the Ace. It took me a moment to get the applause; he had picked the intended card from the scatter of cards on the floor without any apparent hunting for it.

"Ok, I give up! What was your card?"

"I picked the Eight of Clubs," Daphne stated.

"The Eight of Clubs? Who in there right mind picks the Eight of Clubs? How would you expect me to find the Eight of Clubs?"

"Erm, you're a magician; isn't that kind of thing magicians do? (Find the selected card) It's not like I chose it deliberately; I was as surprised as you to find an Eight of Clubs. If it had been the Queen or the Ace, I'd have thought you were cheating; forcing me to choose a particular card."

David took a moment to consider how to rescue the trick. "How do I know you aren't lying about which card you chose, to make me look bad." The audience giggled. "Did you take a copy of the card or write it down somewhere?"

"Of course not. I handed the card back to you; and what would I have written it down with?"

"The 'what you'd have written it down with' is easy; you've got your lipstick. And, maybe, you sneaked another card from the deck and hid the signed one away and then handed back the sneaked one."

While she asked where she might sneak the card to, I could see that she was feeling something that gave her slight pause.

"What about your stocking top? You hear about ladies hiding things there."

Mention of the location made Daphne glance down at her left thigh, indicating to me that whatever feeling had made her uncertain was centred there.

"But, I'm not wearing stockings." She was right judging by the bare shins between the calf-length hem of her dress and her heels.

"Humour me!" The magician said.

Daphne looked a little embarrassed, but she turned sideways to the audience and started to pull on her skirt. She blushed deeper when she noticed that Derek, the cameraman, was displaying the manoeuvre on the big screen. I think that she might have had a fit of modesty, if she had not noticed me still trapped in the box in nothing more than my underwear. She lifted the hem to reveal her card held against her thigh by a garter. She took the card from her leg with air of puzzlement; how did that get there? The audience cheered.

"Now, we know you lied about hiding the card on your body, I bet you wrote it down too!"

"How could I? And where?"

The magician shrugged, "On the seat of your panties for all I know," making it seem like a throw-away remark.

"I couldn't have," Daphne protested. "I'm not... erm, I just couldn't have."

"Prove it!" David demanded.

Daphne frozen for about three seconds in indecision, then turned her back to the audience. She lifted the rear of her dress to expose her buttocks, without panties. She squealed with shock and surprise when she saw on the big screen her buttocks with lipstick marks in a different hand from her own; on the left a figure eight and on the right a trefoil shape.

As the raucous adulation from the audience faded, Daphne was returned to their number after being thanked for her participation and being told that she could keep the garter.

Next was an illusion where David folded out a small box that sat on a table and his wife, also his lead assistant, Corinne stepped inside only to have it folded back down to its smaller size, of about a foot in each direction, with her inside. As if this was not amazing enough, the magician the stuck swords through the box, one in each direction. He pulled the swords back out and asked the audience if they had seen something like this before; the response indicated that they had, although it was a new one to me. "Time to step it up a notch then," he decided and called into the wings for the extra equipment he wanted.

His daughter, and second assistant, Loren, entered carrying a square metallic blade which was about a foot and a half in each direction. With this blade he divided the cube in half in each of the directions. He then canvassed the opinion of the audience about whether that was good enough; most seemed to think so, but a few seemed to still be dissatisfied. The magician took this as a challenge and pushed the blade through the box again, but this time forcing it diagonally through the top, front and left faces, each time turning the table to show the leading edge of the blade emerging from the other side.

He handed the blade back to Loren, who exited with it, then he unfolded the box again. He held a hand over the box and Corinne reached up and used it to help her stand up in the box, still wearing the cheongsam-style dress she had been wearing when she entered the box.

"I'm guessing some of you think that Corinne wasn't inside the box when I put the swords and blade through it." During the pause he left for a response there were a few called to the effect that his assessment was accurate. "Then how do you explain this?"

The magician snapped his fingers and dress gradually fell from Corinne's body in triangular patches, until she was stand there in the underwear she had been seen wearing in the first act. She then stepped out of the box and lightly jumped from the table, before taking the table with her back stage.

At this point I spotted him winking at me, which I took as a cue to make a fuss about still being stuck in a box. "Hey! What about me? Being stuck like this isn't all that comfortable, you know!" And it wasn't. I was crammed in this box with my head, hands and feet on the outside through holes that were too small to get them through in the first place. The only good thing about it was that the insides of the holes around my shins, wrists and neck were padded, so I was not in direct contact with the metal, except where I sat on the base of the box in my panties, which provided little in the way of insulation from the cold steel.

"I guess we had better get you out of that box." His manner was of one who was considering if there was any downside to not bothering. "That's a bit of a puzzler." Now appearing to have no plan how to get me out. "Any ideas?" he asked me.

"I don't even know how you got me into this box; I, kind of, blinked when it happened. But couldn't you reverse what ever you did?"

"Just reversing it is not an option, and neither is taking an angle-grinder to the posts below the padlocks, because that would not solve the problem that your neck is through a hole smaller than your head and that sheet of steel is a bit big and heavy to reasonably be termed a necklace."

He mimed having an inspiration. I was not sure that his grin indicated that I was going to like what he had in mind. "Sorry, but it will take a little while to get the necessary equipment together, but at least I have a plan. While I am marshalling the bits I need, we will continue with the program as planned. I have taught many skills to my daughter, so please welcome Loren as she shows you her take on the Chinese linking rings." He stepped back between the curtains as they closed. From the wing opposite Loren emerged carrying five steel rings. She was dressed differently from when she had appeared at the beginning of the first act. She was dressed as a Goth Punk; distressed black jeans, that were tight enough to look painted on, and a baggy t-shirt with a wide neckline, but held up by pentagram of straps. Her skin seemed paler than before and her hair darker.

"These are the Chinese linking rings. They are steel rings, but they are not Chinese or linked." She demonstrated the lack of linkedness by dropping them individually from an upraised hand to the other at waist-height. She commented that the rings were made in Norway from meteorite iron. She also demonstrated that the rings were solid by coming across to me and rapping the rings on the lid of my containing box and then having me tug one of them until I feared that the box might move. Back at centre-stage she showed a few standard tricks causing the rings to link in various combinations until the five rings were in a chain. Then things started to go wrong, because suddenly there was ring linked through the rips in her jeans and another into the straps of her top, except it was obvious that these mishaps were intentional while appearing to be accidental. She soon managed to have a ring round her thigh without ever putting it anywhere near her feet, this was connected to the ring through the rips at her opposite knee, but also linked to a ring that had become entangled the one looped through the straps of her top and also the ring round her neck, which I do not remember her putting over her head at any point.

Her next move was to try from her hunched down and constrained position to remove the rings and the entwined clothes. Despite her predicament, she managed to remove her jeans, a feat in itself, even without the rings, but still had the ring around her thigh, but now the opposite thigh, and the ring that been through the artful rips was now tied into the laces of her sneakers. She attempted to free her upper body by removing the T-shirt, resulting in the ring that had been through the neck straps of the T-shirt was now looped through the shoulder strap of her bra, the neck ring remained in place and the one that had connected the thigh and shoulder rings was now also hooked into the her bra, between her small breasts.

In this tighter predicament, Loren did her best to walk off stage. As she entered the wings there was a clatter of steel hitting the floor. For a moment I wondered if she had tripped and landed on the rings, but a ring rolled onto the stage and she came chasing after it, completely ring free. She picked up the ring before it toppled and took her bow.

The curtains re-opened. There was group near a guillotine. The first voice we heard was Jasmine's; she was a black girl about Loren's age (late teens) who had been introduced, when she had appeared at the beginning of the show from an empty glass box, as Loren's friend and a spare assistant. "Why do I have to do it?" she was asking.

"Well," the magician reasoned, "I'm the magician, and I need Corinne and Loren for the finale, besides Loren is busy changing."

"I thought I would be just bringing stuff on and wearing the costumes. I haven't been trained in any of the magic stuff," the assistant protested. We all knew that this was not quite true, because she had done an appearance at the beginning of the show.

"Consider yourself promoted. You've been pestering me to be in an illusion for the last month, so now's your chance."

"But I thought that I would get some training in what to do before I would need to perform it."

"Well, this is what they call 'on the job training'. All you have to do is lie down on the bench" I could understand why she seemed reluctant. I was also puzzled how this related to getting me out of the box I was trapped in.

Jasmine with a resigned attitude, dragged her feet to behind the guillotine and lay on the bench behind.

The magician said, "No. Not that way up, we need you to be on your back, or you might get hurt."

"But I don't want to watch the blade coming at me. I don't want to go to heaven screaming."

"Two points there," he said. "One you won't going to heaven today (or to hell for that matter); you'll be staying here. And secondly, you won't see the blade, but you might feel it a bit as it severs your neck."

David lifted the upper part of the stock enough that the audience and the cameraman could see her turn over and push her head between the stock's two parts. Corinne supported Jasmine's head, while the magician trapped her neck in place. Loren entered carrying a two head-sized boxes. She handed one to her mother and crossed the stage to stand behind my box to wait for the next stage.

Corinne pulled a panel from the box and put the box over Jasmine's head. Once it was in place, David released the blade. I heard a squeak of shocked surprise from the box, but I do not think the rest of the audience did, judging by their gasp and a few screams at the unannounced use of the guillotine.

The magician turned the guillotine, while his wife stepped back from it, still holding the box and quickly re-fitting the panel. On the bench behind the guillotine lay Jasmine's body which went all the way up to the frame of the stocks, but nothing beyond. Corinne said something to the box and the body on the bench lifted an arm and waved, possibly a bit nervously.

Corinne came over and placed the box on the steel plate in front of me and pulled up a panel that faced the audience. There was a moment of stunned silence, then the crowd applauded.

I wondered what had caused this reaction, until the magician's wife turned the open side of the box in my direction so I was face to face with Jasmine. Her smile had an underlying uncertainty to it, which fitted with this being her first time as a disembodied head.

There was a soft tap of something being placed on the small amount of steel behind me. This was swiftly followed, by the sensation of something brushing against my hair and then the edges of the second box that Loren had been holding slid into my peripheral vision.

I did not have much time to think about it, before the open front of the box was closed and then I felt a pricking at the back of my neck and the little light that had been seeping in under the edge of the box was cut off; and so was my head, if Emma's telling of what she saw was accurate.

Shortly afterwards, the front panel was lifted and I was face to face with Jasmine again, except I was now facing the opposite direction. Then the panel at the base of Jasmine's head box was pulled out by Loren. Jasmine's expression seemed to combine confusion with puzzlement. I was not paying much attention as my bodily sensations faded; while it was a relief not to feel the constrictions around my wrists, neck and shins, or the beginnings of cramps on my calves, going totally numb was not a pleasant sensation, partly because it comes with the implied threat of all over pin and needles.

The box containing my head was turned to face the audience. I was almost overwhelmed by the applause. They did not last long, because Corinne slid a panel in front of my face. There was a sensation of being moved which ended with me facing upwards. There darkness inside the box became less intense as the panel that gone through my neck was pulled away, but the box was being pressed against something solid. I heard a clank and then the slide of metal against metal. Soon bodily sensations faded in, but instead of being in a cramped sitting posture with my hands trapped forward. I could feel that I was lying on my back with something holding my neck in place.

The box surrounding my head was pulled away and I had to support my own head, allowing me a view of where I was now and hear the enthusiastic reaction of the audience to my head being revealed from the box. What I could see was a wooden stock then two beams leading up to a blade hanging above my neck and beyond that the lighting rig of the theatre.

David's head came into view, as he lifted part of the stock to allow me to wriggle down the wooden bench I was lying on and sit up, once my head was clear of the stock. The movement of the clothing I was wearing told me that I was not in the bra and panties that I had been wearing. I looked down to see what I was now wearing, partly hoping I was back in the dress I had arrived at the theatre wearing. What I saw was a greater shock that any change of costume might have been. It was not my body, but Jasmine's still wearing the pale blue leotard she had been guillotined in.

I lifted my hand in front of my face and noted how the palm was paler than the arm it was on the end of, or the back of the hand, but it was me controlling it. I stood up to protest the situation, but was taken by surprise by how easy I found moving in this body of someone nearly twenty years my junior. I almost danced for joy at being in control of such a slender and athletic body; I try to keep fit, but Jasmine's body was gymnastically fit.

David and Corinne came in to flank me and lead me in a bow, before saying I should return to the audience and watch the rest of the show. Then David and Loren pushed the box containing my body, surmounted by Jasmine's head, off stage. I had a moment when I wanted to protest that they were taking my body away and another when I saw my body as others see me and thought I looked good for my age.

By the time I was back in my seat, Corinne was part way through the next routine. It was a 'Find the lady' routine using cards that, instead of bearing the usual graphics for Queen of Hearts and King of Clubs, had pictures of Corinne as the Queen of Hearts and muscular male models on the two King of Clubs cards. As the routine progressed the pictures on the cards seemed to drop clothes as clues to which cards were kings and which the queen, as the clothes were dropped the images on the cards lost those items of clothing. In the end the queen was in a red G-string and the Kings in black posing pouches. In a final flourish, the two cards where the kings were supposed to be were shown as blank, while the queen card showed that queen wrapped in the embrace of the two kings.

Then a second interval was announced, and I spent most of it fielding questions from strangers about how my white head had ended up on Jasmine's black shoulders; most of which I did not have adequate answers for.

I wonder if they'll find some way to re-unite my head and my body during the third act, because I don't want to make my friends wait for me, before we can go home, because while being in the body of an athletic woman twenty years younger than me is exhilarating, I would like the body I grew up in back; besides, going home with someone else's body would feel like stealing.