The stage was probably the largest any of the contestants, save Holli, had ever seen before. It was easily three stories tall, with large red curtains that hung from the ceiling. The back of the stage was a large plain white wall, the only thing adorning it was the logo for the show ‘America’s Next Great Assistant’. The oaken floorboards of the stage cleverly hid a variety of trapdoors and elevators that David would regularly use in his shows, but were disabled for the purposes of this competition.
The auditorium that housed the stage was similarly three stories tall. Each story had rows upon rows of seats with red velvet seats that faced towards the stage. All except the front row of the main floor, where the seats were replaced with red velvet lazy boys for those who had paid for the best seats in the house. David and Amanda were already seated smack dab in the center of the front row.
As the contestants made their way towards them, David turned in his seat, saying, “Ah! Welcome everyone to my practice stage!” David got up, meeting the contestants half way up the aisle. “Now, you’ve all had your chance to practice, so normally I would say it’s time to go into the wings and wait for your turn to perform. However it occurs to me that it’s very likely that none of you have seen each other perform before. So, and I’m only doing this because Drake’s not here to say otherwise, for this competition you’re invited to stay out here and see how your peers perform.” This got some nods from Leela and Holli, which David took as a good sign, “Excellent. So let’s get this show on the road. Once again, the order has been randomly selected, so we’re getting started with…”
~~~
Cameron
“Hello ladies and gentlemen,” Cameron said. He stood center stage in a white dress shirt, black tuxedo, black bowtie, and top hat. A single spotlight shone on him. In his hands, he was shuffling a deck of black-backed playing cards. He came forwards and sat on the edge of the stage right in front of David and Amanda. The other contestants sat in the other seats that made up the center section of the front row. “Now David, as a magician, you know better than anyone how to check a deck of cards for any signs of cheating, right?”
“I suppose so,” David said, grinning.
“Excellent, so, I want all seven of you to go through the deck, find a card you want and keep it separate from the pile. Then, keep that card in mind and hand them all back to David so he can give them a proper shuffle before handing them back to me. And don’t worry about me peeking, I always bring my extra strength sleep mask wherever I travel,” Cameron said, puling a pink fluffy sleeping mask and placing it over his eyes.
David passed the cards around, eliciting a quick giggle from Amanda and Holli, a look of utter disgust from Ophelia, a look of confusion from Saffron and Jill, and a look of intrigue from Leela. As the cards were passed back to David, he made a show of giving them a proper shuffle, the cards passing magically from one hand to another in a variety of fashions.
Eventually, he was satisfied with his shuffling and made a short cough to indicate to Cameron that the cards were ready. He pulled off his sleep mask and continued, “Excellent, now as I’m sure you all noticed, this is not a regular deck of playing cards. I felt it would be much too easy to do a pretty standard card trick with just playing cards, so I’m using Tarot cards instead. Now, the fun thing about Tarot cards is that in addition to being much more interesting to look at than a standard deck of playing cards, they can also be used to tell the future.”
“Sadly, I’m just an assistant, and not a fully licensed fortune teller, so it’s not like my fortunes are going to mean much- whoops!” Cameron said, tripping on a notch in the floor and sending the cards flying across the stage. Cameron scrambled to pick up the cards, before quickly composing himself. “Well then, let’s get started with the fortunes. It’s going to be rather simple, I’ll pull a card, it’s going to be one of yours, I’ll point out who’s it is and would greatly appreciate if you give me a thumbs up to show I’m right, which I know I am. The next card will be your fortune. Unfortunately I’m only picking up one for each, because otherwise we’d be here for a while. So, first things first…”
David picked up the first card, chuckling, “Ah, The Magician. That’s a rather obvious one to pick Mr. Angel,” David gave him a thumbs up, indicating that he got it right, “I would think you would want to make it a bit more challenging for me, maybe pick one of the minor arcana cards, but alright. You’re future is… Wheel of Fortune. Looks like you’re a lucky man until the end.”
Cameron flipped the next card over, “See, this is what I’m talking about. The three of pentacles could only have been picked by Leela,” Leela gave a thumbs up from the audience, “And you’re future is… Two of Cups, looks like you’re going to make some good friends during this competition.” Leela frowned slightly at hearing this, but Cameron had already moved on.
“The Five of Swords would have to be Jill, yes?” Jill nodded in agreement, “Excellent, your future is… Oh dear. Three of Swords. Stands for loss. Not the sort of thing you want to see in competition like this one.”
“The moon must be for the lovely Mrs. Angel,” Amanda nodded. “Great and what better card would be for the moon than… Yep, the Sun. Stands for joy, which is lovely news with your own bundle of joy coming soon into the world,” Amanda rubbed her stomach, a smile on her face.
“Alright, moving on… The High Priestess was probably picked by… Ophelia yes?” Ophelia sulked, but still nodded in agreement, “And your card is… The Page of Swords seems like your going to be stubborn in this competition. Better be careful, don’t want that aversion to change to drag you down,” Ophelia’s mood seemed to worsen as Cameron winked at her.
“We got the… Queen of Wands for the lovely Holli,” Holli nodded in agreement, “and your card is… Strength. Pretty obvious what it means. Lucky you, looks like I’m going to have to keep an eye on you for this competition.” Unlike with Ophelia, Holli was appreciative of Cameron’s attempt at humor in his magic trick.
“And last but certainly not least, we’ve got our Page of Wands, Saffron,” Saffron clapped at Cameron’s impressive showing of card picking, “And you’ve got… The Seven of Swords, with stands for unknown opponents, which sounds about right seeing as how we’ve yet to have a proper chance to talk.”
The seven audience members, and several of the camera crew, clapped as Cameron took a bow. “Thank you all! But please try not to take these fortunes so seriously.” Cameron gave one more bow before walking off the stage.
~~~
Saffron
“Hi everyone!” Saffron said, she was in as skimpy of a two piece yellow bathing suit that could be allowed on television without having to get the censors involved. Her pert breast pushed hard against the fabric, however she strutted around with full certainty that they would not fall out. “I’ve been practicing this one forever, so I hope you enjoy it.”
From behind her back, Saffron produced three large machetes, the blade being nearly twice the length of the handle. She started slowly, juggling one or two, occasionally dropping one of the blades, but thankfully not hitting anything. Eventually, she managed to get in a bit of a groove, upgrading to using all three blades in her routine. Getting a bit more risky with her juggling. It started with a bit of light dancing, evolving to the occasional holding onto a knife so that she could throw up two at a time, eventually evolving to a fully fledged can-can. However, it was during this outrageous dance that Saffron lost her balance slightly, causing a blade to drop to the floor, and cleave straight through her foot. With a shout of pain, Saffron dropped the two blades she was holding to the floor, falling on her side.
Saffron sat up from her position on the floor, clutching at her leg, only to give a look of shock as she investigate the nub. She pointed her nub to the audience, only to reveal that rather than the muscle tissue or bone one might expect from such a severance, there was only a layer of pinkish, raw skin. She picked up her foot from the floor, examining it. She gave it a little rub on the sole of her foot, causing her to laugh and the toes to bend inwards.
Excited, she did her best to stand up, which was difficult with one of her feet missing, however she eventually succeeded. Reaching down, and using her now footless leg as a counterbalance, she picked up the other knives from the floor, and began juggling anew, occasionally throwing her foot up into the mix before her confidence grew and she regularly threw it up in the mix. When she grew certain, she threw everything up high except for one knife, jumped and did a complex motion in the air in order to cut off her remaining foot, and catch it with her other hand. She landed on her now level stumps, and continued to juggle the five things expertly in the air.
Saffron now had the biggest grin on her face as she through about what she was about to do next. Once again she threw everything in the air save a knife, taking it to her throat and cutting through it. She grabbed her head by her hair, and threw it up in the air too, eliciting a “Weee!” As she rose up to the sky towards the very sharp objects that were on their way down. This continued for another while, her face laughing and having a good time, before she repeated the action once last time, this time removing her left hand and flinging it upwards with the knife, before tossing that up too.
Saffron was now juggling with just her right hand, her body expertly catching everything that was falling downwards. It was a slightly ridiculous sight to see, this headless body pattering around on nubs doing a juggling routine that even the best juggler would be jealous of. Eventually, as Saffron sensed that the audience was getting slightly bored of this, she decided that it was time for her big finale.
She tossed everything high up into the air. The highest of them going nearly the full three stories of the auditorium. She grabbed her hand as it fell down, attaching it to her left wrist. Next her head fell down, which she caught and put back on her neck. For her legs, she expertly performed a handstand, the feet attaching directly to the ends of her legs, and as she dismounted, she got two of the knives in her hands, and the third one in her mouth.
With her act complete, Saffron did a little curtsey, before walking off.
~~~
Jill
Jill awkwardly stepped out from the side of the stage, approaching the center of the stage. She had her red hair in a ponytail, and was wearing a green sequined leotard. “H-Hi everybody.” As she reached the center, she looked down, and quickly realized that she had forgotten to bring the object she needed out. She rushed back to the wings of the stage, grabbed her object, and returned back to the stage.
“So, I will admit I’m pretty new to this, but I had this idea from all the lessons that my mom used to make me take,” Jill hoisted up the Accordion that had been the bane of her existence when she was a little kid, but she hoped would at least impress her other contestants.
Her hands began playing a melody slowly, working along the keys and holes as she pumped the accordion to and fro rhythmically. The magic didn’t seem to take effect right away, so she simply focused on making what she was playing sound good. Eventually though, the magic finally kicked in.
It started as a slight stretching, her body growing or shrinking a few centimeters with each squeeze of the accordion, but as the song continued, so did the effect. The skin around her center noticeably began to fold in upon itself in an accordion fashion. Jill found that she was starting to involuntarily suck in and blow air out of her mouth in order to match her body’s pattern to the wind-box.
By the 75% mark in her song, Jill was compressing to roughly the same height as her accordion, while stretching out to nearly a story tall when fully extended. It was at this point that Jill released the strap she was holding on to her accordion with, letting go of it when she compressed to the ground in order to start letting the magic wear off correctly.
Because she had stopped using the accordion, Jill was singing, her voice matching the tone and style of her accordion perfectly. The magic was wearing off at a much quicker rate to how it affected her, such that on the last note of the song, Jill was returned to her normal proportions.
“Thanks for listening” Jill huffed, out of breath from her transformation and singing.
~~~
Ophelia
The stage lights dimmed, enshrouding the room in darkness. From the sides of the stage, a dark fog rolled out. A single light began to slowly grow brighter, and from the fog a lone figure began to rise up. As the intensity of the light increased, the figure became more certain. It was Ophelia, wearing a long, flowing dress that was reminiscent of an all-black wedding dress. “Good evening, today I shall tell you the tale of the wolf and rabbit.” Ophelia said. From the folds of her black wedding dress, she produced a bottle of black liquid. She popped the cork off, and gave the audience a wicked look before chugging the contents.
As she stood there, the bottle dropping on the floor and shattering, her body began to twitch. He dress seemed to distend at points where it shouldn’t have, and depress in others. Her body began to grow taller, becoming more gaunt and angular. The only thing that didn’t seem to be affected was her head, which continued to rest on the top of her body as her arms split up and turn into branches, her legs fusing together and becoming trunk-like. Eventually, as the transformation continued, it was obvious her body was becoming a massive tree, reaching up about a story and a half from the floor of the stage. At the top of her branches, Ophelia’s hair engulfed her head, before seemingly flinging itself off of her tree body.
In mid-air, her hair once again seemed to shift, the strands becoming more feather-like, until it fully developed into the shape of a raven. In it’s clutches, it held an apple, the peel as white as Ophelia’s skin. The raven took a couple of laps around the theater, before unceremoniously dropping the apple onto the stage, and the raven landed a few feet away from it. From the trunk of the tree, Ophelia’s face grew out, although it was just as black and wooden as the rest of her body.
“Once upon a time, in a desolate forest, in the dark edges of Gaia’s beauty, there lived a glorious white rabbit,” Upon this line, the white apple began to shift once more, hair growing all over it. Several additional nubs began to form, until it was clear that the apple had transformed into a white rabbit, its eyes a glorious purple rather than the red one might expect from an albino rabbit.
“It lived its life like many others in the forest, in a constant state of fear from the Wolf that roamed around, looking for its next meal.” It was the raven’s turn to transform now, its skin distending and expanding in size, its feathers turning to a fine hair, its beak into a muzzle. Across one of its eyes, a purple scar formed, the eye turning white. The wolf itself was easily five times as large as the rabbit that stood on the other side of the stage.
“It was one fateful night, when the wolf came across our pure rabbit.”
The tree stopped speaking, as the wolf’s mouth began moving, a deep, raspy voice that sounded like a man's coming out, “Little Rabbit! I am afraid your time has come.”
“Wait!” The little rabbit spoke up, the voice noticeably Ophelia, however sounded as though it were pitched upwards, “You would not want to eat a little rabbit like myself!”
“What do you mean?” The wolf asked, getting up close to the rabbit.
“Well, I am much too little to feed a wolf as big and strong as yourself.”
“Alright then, and what do you think would be more filling to someone like myself?”
“There’s - There’s a family of moles that live not far from here. Six in all. They do not live that much further below the ground, you should easily be able to snatch them all in their sleep.”
The wolf seemed to ponder a moment, before finally saying, “Alright then, little one. However if I find you’re lying you will pay dearly for it.”
“Of course, sir Wolf,” The rabbit said, still trembling.
“And so the rabbit escaped,” The tree said, “However, that would not be the last time the two would meet.” Twice more the scene the two animals played was repeated, with the rabbit offering up a different family of creatures each time.
On the fourth time the rabbit and the wolf met, the scene changed. “Please Sir Wolf,” the rabbit pled, “I know of no more creatures for you to dine on, however I have been complacent in your destruction of my friends, would you please not spare my life one last time?”
The Wolf seemed to ponder this moment, before saying, “I am extremely grateful for your help, little Rabbit, however much like you I still must eat,” and the wolf lunged forward, dismembering the rabbit and ripping it apart before eating the various parts of the rabbit whole.
“And thus, the lesson dear viewers: Be careful when bargaining with monsters, that you do not become a monster yourself.” The tree and wolf began to melt down into the shadowy fog, before collecting together and rising, forming into Ophelia once more.
“Thank you,” she said, walking off.
~~~
Holli
“Hello everyone, I’m just going to be doing something simple today,” Holli said, taking a bow of respect towards the audience. Her hair was up in a bun, and she was wearing a blue dinner gown with gold floral designs weaving across it.
She wheeled out an empty flowerbed roughly the size of her torso before explaining, “Now, usually when I used to do this trick with Arnold, we would use fast growing bamboo, however because of a stipulation in my contract, I had to sign away my rights to any tricks we performed together. Thankfully, I think I found an appropriate work around.” She quickly planted some fast growing seeds before laying down on her back on the flowerbed. Almost as soon as she laid down, green sprouts had already started to sprout from the bed below.
“During my time away from Arnold, I’ve gone through hundreds of plants, but I finally found a plant resilient and stubborn enough to literally grow anywhere and through anything,” as she was saying this, the sprouts had finally managed to break through her dress, the top of the flowers still not fully grown. “Of course, I am talking about... Dandelions!” As she said the words, the top of the flowers sprouted open, the famous fluffy seeds exploding outwards by her words. In fact, more seeds exploded outwards than could have ever been produced by the number of flowers that had sprouted through her, obscuring Holli from being viewed by anyone.
Eventually, the seeds settled down, revealing Holli to be whole once again, with no signs of any puncture wounds in her dress. She stood up, Bowing and saying, “Thank you for watching.”
~~~
Leela
“Well, it looks like we’ve saved the best for last,” Leela said, addressing the small audience. She wore a sari that matched the style they wear for Classical Indian dances. “Of course, while Holli may be fine with going a bit more modest in what she chooses to show, I think it’s best to always go all in, and since this competition is focused around being a good assistant, I’m going to need a good magician to help.” From the floor, She picked up a large, red Indian scarf, the fabric more see through than its western counterpart, and she began to do a dance as Bollywood music began to play over the loudspeaker.
She used up the entire stage in her dance, swinging the scarf with her, the scarf lengthening as the danced continued, Every once in a while, Leela would appear in front of the scarf, dragging along besides her, but most of the dance was seen through the shadow of the scarf. Eventually, the song crescendoed until ending with a slam, the scarf falling to the floor. Standing there between the folds of the scarf, were two identical looking Leelas. As one approached the front of the stage, avoiding stepping in the folds of the scarf, the other gathered it up, “As you can see, this is my solution to having someone else do magic to me on stage.” The other Leela came back from offstage, wheeling in a cabinet just large enough to fit her. On the side facing the audience was a dry erase board, with an rough sketch of a woman. “Alright then, get in,” The Leela that had been talking to everyone commanded. The silent Leela did as she was commanded, pulling off the dry erase board before stepping in the cabinet and replacing it.
The talking Leela pulled off a dry erase marker that was connected to the cabinet, quickly adding an additional pair of arms to the sketch of the woman. As she pulled away the cabinet doors, the silent Leela stepped out, seemingly nothing changed about her, before unfurling a pair of arms from behind her back. She looked surprised but before she could do anything about it, the talking Leela had rotated the cabinet 180 degrees, revealing the other side had a matching dry erase board with the unchanged woman. Stepping inside, the quiet Leela worked silently, adding an additional pair of arms to this drawing, before pulling out a blue dry erase marker and going over the entire drawing with it.
When the talking Leela stepped out, her skin had turned a bright blue, contrasting greatly with her still very red dress. Just like her silent clone, she now had four arms as well. The two began to dance, as a voice over began telling a very abridged story of the love between the hindu Gods Parvati and Shiva. Just like with before, a large amount of this dance involved the use of a Indian Scarf that elongated and covered the stage. At the climax of the song and the story, the clones of Leela kissed, the scarf wrapping around the two.
As the scarf fell with the end of the song, Leela stood along on stage, completely normal once again. She gave a bow, before walking off the stage.
~~~
“Well then, that was all excellent,” David said, clapping his hands together, “Of course, since this was a rather last minute addition to the competition, the producers have told me that I’m not actually allowed to make this an elimination round, so instead I’m making it a reward round. The audience at home will be responsible for voting on who they think gave the best performance, and the winner will be given an advantage in the first real round of elimination. So, lovely Audience, get on your devices and vote!”
To Ophelia: “After seeing a sample of the type of magic you do-“ -quad2
Let me stop you right there. I do not do ‘magic’. What I perform are the ancient magicks passed down by our Foremothers and originally whispered to them by Mother Gaia. ‘Magic’ is just the bastardized term these modern day fools use in order to appeal to the uniformed masses.
To Ophelia: “You mentioned a spirit inside of you, how did you encounter this spirit, or how did you become a vessel to said spirit?” -quad2
We all have a Spirit of Gaia inhabiting us, although less and less of us are actually able to commune with said spirits. Thankfully, it is not impossible for females, and certain males, to learn how to get in touch with these inner spirits through a rigorous transformation and training process.
For me, it all started when I was around thirteen. Just like all girls this age, I was blind, and didn’t know the great power that dwelled within me. Thankfully, I discovered the great literature of our Foremothers in our local library, and became more in tune with the Spirit within me. I began changing my style to match what the Spirit desired, and as a reward it granted me more access to powers I am capable of as a Child of Gaia. Currently, I am still working through my training with a licensed coven in order to become a fully fledged witch. It’s a thirteen year process, and while my job as an apothecary is wonderful, I have found it difficult to balance the two. The cash prize from this contest should be enough so that I can leave my job and focus solely on my training.