The theater curtains open, revealing Michael onstage center stage, and more curtains as the backdrop.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a very special show,” welcomed Michael. “Tonight’s show is unique, since I won’t be using my regular assistants.”
On cue, a wheeled cart entered from stage right. It was being wheeled in by a pair of female legs—nothing above them from the waist up. The legs were wearing a loose silver pleated knee skirt, stockings that matched their skin, and gold sandal heels. They were pushing the cart via a special belt that attached them to the cart.
The cart itself was a little shorter than the legs. Made of metal, it stood on four legs, one on each corner, one wheel on each leg, one brake for each wheel. It only had one level at the top, and on it was a bloody sack that seemed to be filled with spherical objects.
“No, tonight, I will be assisted by volunteers selected from the audience,” Michael went on. “No need to raise your hands. I can tell from up here who wants to volunteer.” After a snap from him, six spotlights shone in the audience, revealing six women.
“Come on up, ladies!” Michael invited. “Please wait with our magnificent stage director. He’ll help you all get sorted out.”
A couple of minutes went by. The legs had parked the cart beside Michael, right of center stage, all brakes applied, and a volunteer has just appeared from the wings.
“Ah, our first volunteer,” Michael said, exchanging hands, “and you are?”
“Abby.”
Abby was of about average height and slim build. She had medium-length brunette hair, and was wearing denim shorts, sneakers, and a tucked in loose-fitting top.
“All right, Abby, you’ve been briefed on how this will all work, right?”
Abby nodded.
“And you and the others have agreed to everything?”
“Mhmm,” she nodded again.
“Very good. For the rest of the audience’s sake, I’ll explain.” Michael gestured to the cart. “Ladies and gentlemen, this sack actually contains the heads of all my assistants—you’ll see them in a bit. Even Leia’s head is in here—those legs are hers by the way; I forgot to mention earlier. She can’t hear us right now, but she responds to touch.”
Leia didn’t react upon mention, but she did shift her weight onto the other leg.
“Anyway, tonight’s show is about putting our volunteers’ heads against my assistants’ heads. Each volunteer will do a challenge, provided by an assistant that she chose, and if she succeeds, she will win the assistant’s head for her personal and private use the next day, which is tomorrow. If she fails, however, she will participate in a deadly trick, lose her head if she hasn’t already, remain in the trick, and be put on display for the entire day the next day instead. Naturally, losing also means her head will take the place of the assistant she chose.”
“Any questions, Abby?”, asked Michael.
“Nope, I’m good,” she answered cheerily.
“Excellent, excellent,” Michael walked behind the cart, “okay, now, I’ll open this sack, and you point to your chosen assistant…’s head.”
He opened up the sack and showed it to the audience. Inside the sack were six other smaller, equally blood-stained sacks. Abby circled her finger around, eventually settling on one sack and pointing to it. Pulling the chosen sack out, Michael closed and put aside the big sack to make space on the cart.
“All right, Abby, you chose…” Michael trailed off as he placed the sack, mouth end up, on the cart. He pulled the mouth open slightly, and slowly pulled the sack down, using the object inside to both open the mouth wider and reveal the contents inside, “…Violet.”
True to her name, Violet’s hair was the first thing seen from within the sack. As the sack revealed more of her, the rest of her face came into view. Her eyes, though lifeless, looked tired, and her mouth had been gagged with a bright red ball secured by a strap around her head. Blood had trickled from her nose, and as Michael lifted her head up for the audience, some blood dripped from her neck.
“Okay, Abby, I want you to inspect Violet’s head here,” Michael said as he handed her Violet’s head, “and verify to the audience that that is a real head.”
Abby felt uneasy being handed someone’s lifeless severed head, but having seen the show before, powered through it nonetheless. “It feels like a real human head,” she said, gently poking and prodding Violet’s unresponsive face with her fingers. She turned Violet’s head on its side and stroked her hair. “Her hair’s so smooth, though, like…” A couple chuckles came from the audience, “what shampoo does she use? Mine’s not cu—ooh!” She saw something peculiar about Violet’s neck wound.
“What did you find, Abby?” asked Michael.
“There’s something in her throat,” Abby replied. “Let me see if I can get it out.” She pulled out a small rolled up blood-soaked piece of paper, inadvertently getting her fingertips covered in blood.
“Here, why don’t you see if there’s anything written on that paper, while I set down Violet’s head back on the cart,” said Michael, as he took Violet’s head from Abby. Now with a free hand, Abby unrolled the piece of paper and read the text on it, while Michael carefully set Violet’s head back onto the sack on the cart.
“It says…’PLINKO’,” Abby muttered.
“Ah, that means you got the Plinko Challenge!” said Michael, louder at the end to emphasize that Violet, through her severed head, had provided the challenge for Abby. “This is how the all the other assistants will provide their challenges, by the way,” he interjected, momentarily glancing to the audience to emphasize this point.
“What’s the Plinko Challenge?” asked Abby, looking a bit confused.
“The Plinko Challenge…” Michael began to say, quite triumphantly at that, and as he said that, the back curtains started to open, “…is a simple game with one drawback.”
The back curtains revealed a huge tilted board at the center of the stage. At the bottom eighth of the board were eight square boxes, colored alternately from left to right red and blue and sectioned equally. Above that, about three-fourths of the board were covered in pegs, arranged triangularly in straight rows, with a layer of clear plastic on top of the pegs. The last eighth of the board at the top was empty space. The entire board was about twelve feet high, when tilted around thirty degrees, and about six feet across.
Abby marveled at the sight of the huge board, while Michael continued his spiel. “The drawback of this wonderful game is that you can’t really incorporate a trick into it, much less a beheading trick, without inconveniencing both me, the magician, and the assistant, so to my dismay, the guillotine must be separate.”
On cue, one of the stagehands wheeled in a standard “bend-over” type guillotine, parking it opposite Leia’s cart. The two main uprights housed the lunette in the middle and the whole blade mechanism, with the blade currently locked at the top. The bascule, though fixed, has its own set of uprights to keep it parallel to the floor. The entire guillotine was mounted on a wheeled platform, and as a whole, it looked thinner and sleeker than its more historically accurate counterpart. Below the lunette, a long piece of white cloth acted as a sort of open drop chute which led directly into a rather large basket on the platform.
“You ready to get in there, Abby?” prodded Michael.
“I guess?” she replied.
It took a few minutes to get the challenge and Abby ready. In this type of guillotine, Michael has her bend over onto the bascule. Once she’s in place, he fastened the three belts on the bascule over her: one goes over her chest, under her arms; another goes over her waist; and the last one goes under her butt to make sure she can’t pull away—not that she could. After strapping her down, Michael secured her head in the lunette, making sure to not get any of her hair caught. For added security, he cuffs her ankles in a pair of steel shackles fixed to the base of the bascule’s uprights with bars. Finally, he produced some rope and tied her wrists tightly together, palms facing in. While all of this was happening, the technicians were busy connecting some wires from the giant plinko board to the blade mechanism.
“How are you feeling in there, Abby?” Michael asked as he tightened the last knot in her elbow tie.
“I can’t really move much in here,” Abby replied. She first tried busting her ankles free, but the blows only rattled the guillotine. She tried maneuvering her arms, but the wrist tie restricted that greatly. “I give up.”
“Don’t give up now! You still have a challenge to win,” Michael spoke, trying to brighten the mood. From the other side of the stage, a stagehand handed him a translucent plastic ball. “Oh, thanks! I almost forgot about this,” he said in a hushed tone, thanking the man.
“All right, Abby, here’s how your challenge will commence,” Michael began to explain. “First, I will put Violet’s head in this here plastic ball I am holding. Even though it’s plastic, it’s quite solid, and…” With a bit of effort and a popping sound, the ball opened into two halves, “there’s space inside, custom molded for Violet’s head to go into.”
He continued, “Second, the ball with Violet’s head inside will be dropped onto the plinko board and fall into one of the four boxes at the bottom. You, Abby, will try to predict in which color box the ball will land in. When you’ve made your prediction, I will climb up the ladder behind the board, and our technician, John, here will activate the detection mechanism. As soon as he gives the go-ahead, I will drop the ball.”
“Mhmm, gotcha,” Abby nodded in understanding, “and if I get it wrong?”
“Third and last, if you get it wrong, the blade will drop, you will be decapitated, and your head will take its place on the cart,” answered Michael. “On the other hand, if you get it right, you will be released from the guillotine and get to take home Violet’s head.”
“Any complaints or second thoughts, Abby?” Michael queried.
“I’m good,” Abby replied, “Though, I’m a little nervous.”
“Understandable,” remarked Michael sympathetically. “Let’s start the challenge, so the faster it gets done, the sooner you’ll be less nervous.”
With haste, Michael began to place Violet’s head into the plastic ball. The ball split into a front half and a back half. Using the big sack of heads as a stabilizer, he started with the back half, tucked in Violet’s hair the best he could into the provided space, and gently lowered her head in. After ensuring a snug fit, he made sure her eyes were closed and fitted the front half of the ball over her head. With a bit of force, the two halves of the ball clicked together shut. He showed off the finished ball to the audience, turning it around, so they could get a good look at the entire ball. Violet’s head, though a bit blurry, could be seen inside the ball. The bottom of the ball was noticeably flat instead of being spherical, and when it faced the audience, they could see Violet’s neck wound exposed, perfectly in line with where the bottom plateaus.
“All right, that’s enough showing off on my part,” declared Michael. “Abby, have you decided on a color?”
“I think it’ll land in one of the blue boxes,” Abby predicted.
“Are you sure about your choice? You can still change it before John activates the detectors.”
“Yeah, blue it is.”
“You heard her, John. She picked blue.”
After confirming Abby’s prediction, Michael produced a bright blue ball gag. He went back over to her, and standing in front of her head, fitted the gag into her mouth.
“Please keep your head down, Abby,” instructed Michael. “This is just a little something-something, so you don’t change your mind.”
“Hey, wait a min—” was all Abby could say before her speech was reduced to muffled nonsense. Michael made sure to move her hair out of the way before securing the strap around her head. After he was done, Abby flicked her head around to try and fix her hair.
“Here we go, folks,” Michael said, now carrying the plastic ball containing Violet’s head up behind the plinko board. When he reached the top, he checked on John, who was connecting the blade release on the guillotine to the detector wires.
“Hmm, looks like John’s almost done down there,” Michael commented. “Abby, do you have any preferences on where I should drop the ball?”
“EEEEREEFF FEEE!” Abby tried her best to say.
“Okay…, uh, I don’t know what you just said, so uh—oh, John’s giving us the A-Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen, here goes Violet!”
Michael dropped the ball above the fourth box from the left, a blue box. It fell through a row of pegs and directly hit a peg on the second row. It bounced off to the right, then left, then right again. With each ricochet off a peg, it seemed to be hitting the next peg faster. At the third to last row of pegs, it had bounced off from the right, putting it above the blue box it started from above. Down to the next row of pegs, it went left this time, putting it in between the center blue and red boxes.
With one last bounce, it fell through the last row of pegs and into a box. The theater fell silent for a moment.
Michael broke the silence, “It looks like the ball went into a—“. He was interrupted by the loud sound of a click, then another click. Then, with a quick woosh, the blade fell down the main uprights, falling in front of the lunette and chopping Abby’s head off. The shock of the chop jolted through her body, her arms having most visibly jerked. Her head rolled down the chute and into the waiting basket on the guillotine’s platform.
“Well, there you have it: the ball fell into a red box, and Abby lost her head,” stated Michael. “We put a microphone in the basket in case Abby would lose her head. Abby, you all right in there?”
“Uuurhhh…” a faint whimper could be heard from within the basket. Abby’s body began to show signs of life.
“It looks like she’s fine, folks.” Michael declared. Abby, meanwhile, continued to faintly whimper. Her body slowly writhed in its restraints, noticeably breathing faster.
Michael went over to the basket. He noticed that the flimsy yet effective chute had some blood dripping from the top where it was attached. There were also patches of blood here and there running down its length. With a quick swipe, he removed the chute cloth from the guillotine, the cloth itself seemingly being attached only by being clipped between the lunette and the bascule.
Using the bloodstained cloth as a loose swaddle, Michael gently lifted Abby’s head out of the basket, orienting her head upright and facing the audience. Unlike Violet’s, Abby’s head was still alive, but based on her expression then, it looked like getting decapitated wasn’t the most painless of experiences.
“Let’s all give a big hand to Abby, for being such a good sport!” cheered Michael. The entire audience gave her a roaring applause. After the clapping died down, he held up Abby to face him and whispered something to her. As he pulled her away, Abby’s face looked tired.”
“If you’ll notice, Abby’s head looks a bit sleepy right now,” Michael said, showing her face. “I’ve used some magic so that her head slowly becomes, in a sense, dormant.” Abby’s cheeks and jaw slacked as her eyelids drooped down, almost shutting her eyes. “She can still control her body fully, though; this is just to make sure that when our volunteers lose, they truly lose their heads.”
Michael went on to fully close Abby’s eyes as he placed her head on the cart, facing toward him, away from the audience, with the cloth under her neck. He proceeded to tightly wrap her head in the cloth, tying it all off in a neat little bow indicating where the top of her head was. He lifted up her head to show off that she’s been completely covered, except for her blue ball gag. The cloth wrap at the bottom of her head had a big noticeable patch of blood.
“The cloth wrap is for us to ‘package’ the heads of the losing volunteers,” Michael explained. “Plus, I purposely left her gag uncovered, so I know whose head it is,” he said, lowering Abby’s head to rest on his arm and against his chest.
With that, Michael went back over to the guillotine and gently lowered Abby’s head back inside the basket. Her body had calmed down, her chest heaving up and down slowly but steadily. No more purring could be heard from inside the basket.
“Like with the sack, this basket will contain all of our unlucky volunteers’ heads, so let me just pick this up…” Michael lifted the basket and carefully placed it onto the cart. He rearranged the contents on top so that the basket was on Leia’s end while the big sack was on his end.
“Now that Abby’s head is taken care of, we have one last thing to do with Violet’s head.”
Moving fast, Michael took the ball containing Violet’s head from the red box it fell into earlier. He put it on the floor of the stage, on her exposed neck wound. He then produced a large sheet of cloth from his pocket, and draped it over the ball, its spherical form taking shape in the center of the sheet. With a quick snap from Michael, the sheet began to rise from the ball shape, until it was almost as tall as Michael. Pulling away the sheet, he revealed a woman in a theater employee uniform, with the ball being her head.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back, Violet!” announced Michael.
The audience erupted in applause.
With the reveal, the large sheet vanished into thin air, and Michael took Violet’s hand as she bowed. Two quick taps on the ball around her head caused the ball to fall into its two halves onto the floor. After taking off her ball gag, Violet turned to greet Michael with a cheek kiss and a hug, then she turned back to the audience to greet them with a shy wave.
“Unfortunately, Violet won’t be staying long with us, due to the nature of tonight’s show,” Michael reiterated. “In fact, she only has one thing to do. Violet, if you would.”
Violet went over to Abby’s guillotine platform and unlocked the wheels.
“Ladies and gentlemen, another round of applause for Abby and Violet!” Michael said.
As the audience gave both Violet and Abby a standing ovation, Violet had turned the guillotine's platform around. With her hands firmly on Abby's hips, she pushed her and the guillotine to stage left and disappeared offstage.