Erica put up her hand, when the magician asked for a volunteer; I know she tends to be the attention hog of our group, but this seemed a bit extreme, even for her. With her bouncing about with excitement, it was difficult for the magician to ignore her, so he invited her to be his volunteer for what was to be the first grand illusion of the show.
When she got there, he asked her name and had to cut her off, once she had told everyone that she was Erica, she was there with a group of friends (we dutifully cheered in support), she was a student on a marketing course at the local university, but was born halfway across the country.
He asked, “Do you know what you volunteered for?”
“Not exactly, but I do remember that you said that I would be the 'poster girl for audience volunteers', if I did this.”
“And what does that mean to you?”
“Don't really know, really, but I'm guessing that you'll put me in a box with rollers on the front. Then you'll turn the rollers and poster of me will come out, while I hide in some compartment in the box. That'll make me a 'poster girl' and allow you to show that the box with the wringer on the front is empty. Then you'll feed my picture back through the rollers and I can emerge unharmed. After the show someone from the theatre will give me the life-size picture of me as a souvenir.” None of us that knew her in audience were surprised that she was viewing this a chance to get a poster of herself.
After a pause from the magician, he said, “Nice idea; I must try it some time. But that is not what I meant. Are you still feeling adventurous?”
“Um, ok. Will it hurt?”
“Of course not. I wouldn't be able to keep Jenny as my assistant if anything hurt. And I wouldn't get any more volunteers if they thought you felt any pain at all.” He added in a stage whisper he added, “Except, maybe, some masochist, but I don't want to deal with that kind of thing.”
“So, what will I need to do? I hope it isn't anything embarrassing.” We all knew that Erica had no idea about embarrassment, especially when she was attention seeking; some of us speculated that if a camera crew turned up and asked her to strip for a live news show, she would be down to her underwear before you could blink.
“No, but you will be asked to change into a different outfit later in the show, but that will be in private, backstage. And in a minute I will ask you to get someone from the audience to write a symbol on the back of your hand; don't worry it'll only last a few hours after the show, less with soap and water. First we need to measure you against the prop, then while you get an identifying mark from the audience, I'll adjust the apparatus to fit you.”
This seemed to be the cue for a stagehand to bring a four foot long piece of four-by-four with a square wooden plate attached to one end by metal brackets. His other hand carried a canvas bag with heavy stuff in it, which thudded on the stage when he put it down. The magician accepted the timber and stood it on the plate in the centre of the stage. He reached into the bag and pulled out a cushion which he dropped onto the part of the plate behind the upright hunk of wood. The next items he pulled from the bag were a large set-square and a carpenter's pencil. “Ok, Erica, please kneel on the cushion and lean against the back of the upright, so I can measure how tall it needs to be.”
Erica followed the instruction to get on her knees and fidgeted a little when the magician laid the set-square against the wood so that the metal part jutted about half an inch above her shoulder. He used the pencil to draw a line on the wood, which he quickly continued across the front and down the other side. He returned the tools in his hands to the bag and pulled out a large handsaw.
Erica instantly got flustered, rose from her knees and back-pedalled two steps. “You're not going to use that on me, are you? I hope not!” her voice squeaky with fright.
“Of course not! I'm going to cut the top of the wood so that it's the right height. Take these pens and have someone in the audience write a symbol on the back of one of your hands and show it around (especially the front row) so that everyone can recognise it. While you do that, I'll get the top off this; to shorten it to match your height and fit the extras that will be needed.”
Erica came to me to write something on the back of her hand. I wrote the Chinese phrase for 'gregarious' using a different colour of pen for each of the symbols. She was soon showing my handy-work to as much of the audience as she could.
Meanwhile, the magician sawed the top off the four-by-four and fitted something made of what looked like iron to the top. It also sounded like iron when he hit it while banging in a nail with a hammer to hold it in place.
He invited Erica to return to the stage and give everyone a look at what had been drawn on her hand. While my friend was making her way back, Jenny, the assistant, came onto the stage with a box and took the canvas bag of tools away.
“Ok, Erica, none of this has been very magical so far, but it's time to change that. Please return to the position you were kneeling in when I took the measurement, but be careful of the two metal rods sticking out the back, just kneel with the neck between them.”
“Oh, no! Wait a moment!” said the magician. He picked up the cushion and brush some sawdust from it. “We can't have you getting dusty knees.”
He helped guide her into place. With Erica in place he took one of her hands and placed it against the pillar of wood she was kneeling behind. Before she realised what he was doing, he shut a clamp over her wrist and tightened a wing-nut to hold it in place.
“Hey! What gives?”
“I'm just helping you stay in position, so that we know exactly where you; that way when we perform the magic you won't get hurt.”
“I suppose that's fair,” she said in a tone that suggested that she did not think it was fair to any degree. “I've just noticed that you haven't told me what magic trick you will be performing on me.”
The magician stood in her line of sight and nodded to the box that Jenny has deposited on the stage.
“Oh,” she exhaled, “I can see why you want me to stay still. It's that trick where the box is put over the assistant's head and then filled with dagger blades and when the front is open her head has vanished and there are only knife blades in the box.”
The magician, who moved out of Erica view, shrugged, then bend down to clamp her other hand to the side of the wood. With Erica secured to the upright lump of wood, he picked up the box and lowered it over Erica's head. He clipped it to the iron frame, then opened the front so that we could see Erica's face; her smile looked a bit forced to me. We could not see it at all well, because it was at the back of the box, so was not well lit.
As the magician re-closed the doors in the front of the box, Jenny returned to the stage with a rectangle of metal with a narrow wooden handle on one of the narrow ends. He took the blade and briefly measured it against the box containing our friend's head; it was as long as the box was deep and as wide as the box. With his other hand he knocked on the box and asked, “Erica, are you ready to experience some magic?”
While the reply was not that clear, I am pretty sure that Erica replied, “I guess so.”
The magician took the blade behind the box and appeared to line it up with the rods the jutted either side of her neck. Held the blade with one hand and raised the other with three fingers up. At second intervals he curled a finger to his palm. When he ran out of fingers, he pushed the blade forward, apparently through Erica's neck. I noticed that there was a sliver of metal poking out under the front of the box. The hall went into a shocked silence after someone screamed.
The silence was broken by a voice from the box, saying, “Something just touched the back of my neck. What's happening? I thought I heard someone scream.”
The chatter that rose in the audience was cut off when the magician reopened the front of the box. There was Erica's face, better lit than before. At first I thought something about the lighting had changed, but quickly noticed that it appeared that Erica's head was in the front part of the box instead of the back. This did not square with her shoulders not having moved, other than a limited shrug as she questioned the situation.
“The magic is done,” he told her, “Let's get you released, so we can get you changed into the outfit you'll need for the illusion that you will be involved in later.” He released her hands and asked her to shuffle back on her knees so her shoulders did not collide with the rods supporting the head box.
It took Erica longer than I thought she would to notice that her body was moving back, but her head was not moving. “There's something not right here.” The assistant crossed the stage and helped Erica to rise from her knees, at the same time as the magician pulled the blade from the base of the head box. He lifted the box from the top of the wooden pillar.
Few of us knew where to look first for trickery, because it appeared that a headless body was standing unsteadily dressed in the dress that Erica had been wearing, while Erica's head was perched on the top of the lump of wood that she had been kneeling behind. After the gasp of shock, we all clapped and cheered what appeared to have happened; I had witnessed it and I could not find an explanation other than the magician had beheaded my friend and left her head on a short wooden pillar, while his assistant guided her headless body into the wings.
Once the shock of seeing herself being led away faded, she did not seem to believe it, but waved and a look of shock at the realisation of her situation dawned. The hand she waved was the one with the symbol I had written on it; confirming that the body was hers. Her discomfiture at her predicament soon melted when she also noticed that she was the centre of attention; her preferred place in the world. As the audience's cheering began to quieten, she asked, “What happens now?”
“The show continues and you get to watch from closer than the front row. In the meantime, the rest of you body will guided to somewhere to change into the outfit for the other illusion that you will be involved with. Sorry, I need to give you this so that if we need more cooperation than a pull on the arm will achieve we can ask you directly.” He held up an earpiece and slid it into her ear.
Before he could continue with the show, Erica asked, “How does this make me a poster girl?”
He picked up a rectangle of cardboard on which was printed, “POST 'ER GIRL”, which cause some amusement in the hall.
The show continues with Jenny being levitated and then quick-changing into a one-piece swimsuit style thing. She then climbs into a large cardboard box, which the magician rapidly pierced with a haphazard set of wooden rods.
I took the chance to approach the stage and whisper to Erica. “Are you alright? How is it done? What's happened to your body?”
“It does take a bit of getting used to; not being able to turn your head much and your body sitting in a comfy chair backstage. As to how it's done, I haven't a clue. I feel sure you got a better view of what happened than I did.”
“Do you want me to do anything for you? Not that I can think of anything you could want,” I offered.
“Sorry? What was that? Someone just put something velvety in my hand and told me it was time to change into it. They said I should undress completely, because panty-lines and bra-lines will show up on the outfit. I'm going to need to concentrate if I'm going to get changed blind without any help. Wish me luck!”
I crept back to my seat and relayed to the rest of the group that Erica seemed to be fine with her current peculiar situation.
On stage the cardboard box was riddled with a couple of dozen wooden rods; I could not see how Jenny could have avoided all of them. A hand waving a white flag reached from the top of the box. The magician looked at the two remaining rods in his hands, then jammed one through the side of the box, causing Jenny to withdraw her hand rapidly. The final rod was thrust downwards through the top of the box. With his hands free, the magician began to drag the wooden rods, that he had spend the last couple of minutes shoving into the box, back out. Soon the rods were in the container that they had be grabbed from and the box torn open to release Jenny.
After the bows for the sword box routine, Jenny rushed into the backstage area, while the curtains closed and the magician performed a giant three card trick for a bloke from the audience, who was fooled at every turn.
When the curtain reopened, the stage was mostly empty, except a couple of chairs, couple of things that looked like microphone stands and something about six foot long and several inches in diameter. The magician arranged the two chairs side-by-side and then addressed Erica. “This is the illusion you changed into a different outfit for. You have had explained to you what we plan to do, right? And you're alright with it?”
“Jenny explained what would happen.” Erica cut herself off with an expression of frustration on her face. “She explained through the earpiece; it's a bit frustrating not having hands to help explain things. She did not explain how it would be done though. Do I need to do anything to make it work? Or something? She also said something about being given an option at the end.”
Jenny returned to the stage guiding Erica's body. Erica had changed from the dress she had been wearing into a dark green velvety bodysuit and some matching ballet slippers. We could tell that it was Erica by the writing I had done on her hand, which along with the other hand and her ankles were the only skin showing; where her neck should have been there was no neck-hole, but the fabric stretched over the stump of her neck.
Jenny in her matching red outfit guided Erica's body to sit in the chair that the magician had positioned in the middle of the stage. Once her body came into her view, her body's movements seemed to increase in confidence. Erica sat in the chair and obeyed when told to sit straight and still with her hands on her thighs.
The magician and the assistant moved the stands to either side of Erica and a little forward, then lifted the cylinder and clamps the ends to the stands. There was a small amount of adjustment until the cylinder hid Erica's shoulders. Then they pull on something and draw a curtain down from the roller covering Erica from her vacant shoulders down to the base of her ribs, so that her legs, lower torso and fore arms are never hidden. Jenny took the other chair and placed it back to back with the one Erica was sat on, then sat on it. The magician went behind the partial screen and stood beside the chairs. He placed his hands either side of Jenny's and seemed to turn it 180 degrees, so that while her body was facing away from us, her head was facing us.
The magician stepped away. Then Erica's body stood and followed the magician, but Jenny's head was mounted on the place where Erica's head and neck should be. She made a show of the writing on the back of the hand, making sure that the front row could confirm that it was what they had seen on Erica before she had been beheaded. She then had a word with Erica. “Could Sarah, please come forward and check that her drawing has not been copied or altered.”
I went up and declared that the writing was as I had written it and took the chance to verify that Erica's small heart-shaped tattoo was also in its usual place an inch above her wrist. The face above the body was recognisable as Jenny's and could not have been Erica's by any stretch of the imagination; hair colour, eye colour, nose shape, shape of chin were all different.
Magician and assistant thanked me for verifying that it was indeed Erica's body with Jenny's head. I turned to Erica's head, still mounted on the post. “Would you like me to stay for the next bit?”
“Yes, please. Partly because I don't know what the next bit is.”
Hearing this, the magician said, “What's next is really up to you. We could return your and Jenny's head to the correct bodies and then you go backstage to change back into your own clothes.”
“That sounds good.”
“OR we could continue a more exciting version of the show, because I'll have Jenny with your body and Jenny's headless body to help keep things moving.” On the cue, Jenny's body stood up from the chair and turn to face forward (except for the lack of a face). “And to sweeten the pot, if you help out with the rest of the show, we'll let you keep the bodysuit that you changed into, as a kind of 'Thank you'.”
Erica seemed in two minds about the prospect of lending her body to a magician's assistant, but was tempted by the idea of adding the bodysuit, which suited her body very well. In the end she said, “Well, I did volunteer, so I might as well commit to the bit and keep on being a volunteer. But you have to promise me that I get my body back as good as new.”
“I can't promise 'as good as new', but at least as good as when you first set foot on this stage.”
“That'll have to do, I guess. Hey, in the interest of making sure you keep your promise, do you have something that my friend Sarah can help with. That way she'll be around to make sure I get back what is mine.”
“Ok. Sarah, welcome to the team. You won't be doing anything arduous; just some light fetching. My people backstage will know what I need and hand it to you. It will be a lot easier than dealing with a headless assistant back there; and Jenny can go and relax in her dressing room.” When Jenny heard this her body stood and headed for the wings. I had been volunteered. I made my way up to the stage and Jenny, sat on Erica's body, gave me a quick briefing, while the magician filled in the gap with a linking rings routine with hoops made of garden hose.
The rest of the show went by in a flurry of activity, but I got to see another member of the audience levitated on a back of a chair. I helped when Jenny was cut in two inside a pair of wooden boxes where she had allowed herself, actually Erica's body, to be strapped to the two halves of the table.
The slowest part was when the magician could not get a volunteer for the guillotine illusion so I got nominated to be the volunteer. I'll swear that time slowed down so much while I was locked in the stocks, that it felt like a week and I could draw every detail of the patch of stage floor I could see from memory. I was glad to be let out of the stock only having embarrassed myself by screaming when I heard the blade slide down the tracks, but consoled by having heard other screams at the same time; I think one of them came from Erica.
After the guillotine was an illusion where Jennica, as the magician had referred to his body-swapped assistant a couple of times by that point, was loaded into a narrow vertical cylinder of plexiglass, which filled with smoke. When the smoke cleared, she was gone. She reappeared in a large box that I had wheeled onto the stage and helped the magician to show empty, moments before.
“That's nearly all we have time for, except for the finale of our show, during which we will restore our post 'er girl, Erica, and have a bit of fun along the way.”
I saw Jenny's headless body pushing a tall cabinet, so I headed for the steps down to where the audience were seated. The magician rushed after me and asked, “Where do you think you're going?”
“I thought you wouldn't need me any more, because Jenny has come back to help.”
“I think you've got the wrong end of the magic wand. She needs restoring too, so I'll need some extra help. And as you're already here, you might as well lend a hand to make sure that this goes smoothly.”
I turned back and received a guiding shove into the wings where I was met with a stagehand, who told me to push another tall cabinet onto the stage.
“Why can't you do it?” I asked.
“Normally I would, but the boss likes to use a volunteer to help where possible; something about the audience identifying with them better. So, park this about five feet from the other one, then come back for the trolley of other stuff.”
I pushed the cabinet onto the stage and returned for the trolley, which I returned to the stage with.
It was not until I was back on stage that I noticed the cabinets were colour-coded. One had the corners coloured red and the other's were green. As I approached Jenny's body was stepping into the red-coded cabinet, while Jenny was stepping Erica's body into the green one.
“Great, Sarah, you're just in time to close the doors on the ladies. Maybe, you can shut Jenny into that cabinet, while I close this one.”
Jenny showed me how to close the simple latches to shut the segmented door. I soon had her shut into the cabinet that seemed to be made of four cubes stacked. The magician was quicker than me at the job, and surprised me by clashing a couple of metal sheets that he had pulled from the trolley of equipment I had brought on. He handed me one of them and told me to follow his lead.
He lifted his blade to a slot in the side of the top cube, then waited for me to do the same. This took longer than I expected, because the blade was heavier than it initially looked. “Ok, on the count of three push it through!” the magician instructed.
He counted to three, which gave me time to wonder whether this was a good idea. I concluded that if I could cause harm to his assistant he would not allow and guess the Jenny would duck down, somehow, to avoid getting a blade through the neck; I was not totally convinced that there was enough room for such a thing. On three I pushed, expecting the blade to sail through unimpeded. About half way through I felt some resistance, but it was too late. I must have reacted to the momentary thought that I had really slammed a blade into someone's neck, because I heard murmurs of worry from the audience. I rationalised that there was probably something to give the impression of hitting something, to get this reaction from whoever they got to fill the role of helper. I pushed through and when the tip of the blade emerged from the other side and the handle on my end bumped against the side of the cabinet, the magician handed me a second blade and told me to insert it in the slot below the one I had used. That one went in with no resistance; I was relieved.
When I was handed a third blade and told to push it into the top one of the middle pair of slots, it occurred to me that, if this was real, I would be cutting my friend's body in two, while she watched from her place on that post. I became worried that she might resent me doing that to her body. I located the blade in the slot and then looked over to Erica's head, in the hope of something that would decide me.
She was smiling and gave me what I interpreted as an encouraging nod. My guess was she reasoned that the sooner this was done the sooner she would have her headless body and her detached head reunited. I shoved the the blade in, meeting more resistance, as a few members of the audience were noticing my hesitancy and starting a chant of “Do it!”. Soon a fourth blade was placed in my hand with the instruction to put it through under the third.
The fifth and sixth blades came with instructions that resulted the cabinet effectively being divided into four stacked cubes. When I stood up from pushing in the lowest blades in, the magician had a box in his hands; it looked light. “Time to unstack the cabinets,” he directed as he placed the top section of the cabinet he had been subdividing on the floor near the front of the stage.
I placed my hands either side of the top box of the stack that I had divided. I lifted, but it was heavier than I had expected and slipped from between my hands and landed back on the stack at slightly twisted angle. I could have sworn I heard a “Whoa!” from inside the box. I now had a better idea of the weight of the box and succeeded in lifting it and transferring to the floor next to the two boxes from the other cabinet that were already there. The next box was even heavier, but I managed to carry it forward without dropping it. The magician brought forward the final detached section from my cabinet.
The magician paused to accept the applause of the audience for dividing his assistant and a member of the public into four pieces each. “Let's put Jenny and Erica back together!” He grabbed a box and took back to the stump of a cabinet that he had divided. I tried to remember which of the boxes before me contained the piece of the cabinet that he had taken from the stack I had divided. He returned to get another box for his stack. Seeing my indecision, he pointed at one of the remaining 5 boxes and said, “That one!”
I was not sure, but I did as I was told and transferred the heavy box to my stack. It was not until I had placed the section on the bottom of the cabinet that I noticed that this one had red corners instead of green. I looked at the magician, who was stacking a green section on the red section below. He spotted my confusion, smiled and slow winked at me. He knew this was not going right and was happy about it; so this must be intended. He pointed to another of the boxes, then went for a final one to finish his stack, before collecting the final box to complete my stack.
“Ok, I think we'd better check how we've done, before we pull out the blades; it wouldn't do to switch Jenny's hip and her chest.” He began opening a smaller door in the main door of the bottom section of the cabinet he had divided. Inside were a couple of red clad shins supported on red slipper-clad feet. The next box up proved to be empty. The following box showed Jenny's face with an expression of mock anger. The topmost box contain a green-clad pair of hips.
“I think there was some confusion,” offered the magician as an excuse to his assistant. “I suppose we had better check what's where in the other cabinet, so that we can get this right when we rebuilt you two. Go ahead, Sarah, and open up the inner doors on your cabinet!”
I started at the bottom too. The door revealed the expected shins and feet, wearing the green velvety leggings and slippers. The next door up exposed a red-covered chest, there followed red hips and a green upper torso.
“We had better reconstruct Jenny first, so could you please shut the top door and put it aside, then shut the next door and pass it to me when I'm ready.”
While I unstacked Erica's chest and stood waiting with Jenny's hips, the magician closed and unstacked the three upper components of his cabinet. He took the box from me and placed it above the shins and feet dressed in red. He reopened the box's inner door and then pulled the blade from between the two parts. It seemed as though a shiver of pleasure passed through the exposed lower legs. The next section containing Jenny's chest was asked for after I closed it. I passed the heavy box over and watched with he located it onto the lower half of the cabinet. He opened the hip section and pulled the blades separating the two parts free. The legs and hips quivered again.
He leant down to pick up the part that had been to top of my cabinet and thus had the green painted edges that did not match the red painted edges of the cabinet he was constructing. I was about to point out his error, when the fact it contained Jenny's head and was about to be reunited with her body, stopped me.
The magician opened the inner door over her chest then removed the blades separating her head from the rest of her. She shuddered and then reached out to open the door covering her face. The magician pointed at one of the remaining blocks from the cabinet he had dismantled and told me to start the stacking with that, while he took the other one, which, by the way he lifted it, was the lighter of the two; so presumably the empty one.
While I stacked my two assigned boxes onto top the open box containing Erica's legs, Jenny released herself from her cabinet and did a somersault across the stage, which seemed to definitively demonstrate that she was no worse for her recent predicament.
At the same time the magician pulled the blade from the bottom of the box he held and lowered it over Erica's head, then reinserted the blade. He brought the box over to the cabinet I had finished rebuilding. With the headbox placed on top he arranged me and Jenny on one side and himself on the other and told us to pull the pairs of blades out on the count of three. Jenny took the lowest blades, I took the highest blades, while the magician readied himself to extract the middle blades.
On three we pull on our respective pairs of blades. I heard some moaning from the cabinet. Jenny dropped her blades on the floor and in the process of standing up, opened each of the inner doors so that audience could see that Erica was in one correctly ordered piece.
The magician took a little longer to open the main doors and help Erica to step from the cabinet. He and Jenny gathered us up to take bows at the front of the stage while the curtains close behind us. “Thank you for being such a wonderful audience and special thanks to Erica, for being this evening's 'Post 'Er Girl' and Sarah for her help throughout the evening. I wish a happy rest of the evening and a safe journey home.”
As the audience rose to applaud us, Jenny said to Erica, that she should hang about for about five minutes after the show, to get her clothes back.
While we waited for the members of the crowd to leave, which seen slow on account of many of them asking Erica how the illusion of a head on a post was done, I stayed with Erica; our friends said that they would get in the drinks at the bar next door and wait for us there. A stagehand brought a bag and also handed over a voucher for a ticket to a show, because she had not had the best seat in the house.
As we were leaving the theatre, I took my chance to ask what it felt like and how it was done.
“Most of didn't feel like much, especially after Jenny took over my body. But when the blades left my body near the end, it felt good; like 'well worth the inconvenience' good. I won't be telling you how it was done, until you tell me how the guillotine blade passed through your neck and didn't even leave a mark.”
My reply was, “It been quite an intense evening.” she nodded her agreement. “I think we need to wind down with a nice glass or two of wine.”