Incomplete Floor

     Annette and the other girls had to catch themselves when their potion wore off forty minutes before Howard would have normally woken them up. The four girls met up near the golden elevator. Sinopia stretched her arms up, commenting, “Wow! I thought being trapped as a statue all night was going to be a lot more boring, but I hardly remember anything from last night.”

     “That’s the funny thing about the human consciousness,” Sable explained, “it’s really good at cutting out the boring parts.”

     “I’m genuinely impressed though Sable,” Maya said, “My body feels extremely well rested. I thought we were going to be really stiff from being stone all night.”

     “Well, you didn’t really have any muscles to keep stiff,” Sable explained, “so obviously you’re going to come out feeling refreshed.”

     “Did anyone see anything?” Sinopia asked.

     “I did…” Annette said, looking grim, the other girls looked at her expectantly. “Sometime during the middle of the night, I saw the bellhop come out of the elevator and gave a secret knock before entering and exiting a secret room.”

     The three girls looked in horror at this revelation, Maya managing to get out a, “D-Dudley did?…”

     “I don’t know what we’re going to find, but today’s the last day we can explore this floor without Howard being able to stop us,” Annette said seriously, “I remembered what the knock was, and about where he did it, and I’m going to go tonight. I don’t know what I’m going to find, so if anyone wants to come with me, meet here after the last rehearsal. And don’t say anything about this to anyone.” The girls nodded in silence, before departing for breakfast.

~~~

Dining Room

     The mood of the group of contestants lightened up when they entered the dining room and found their magicians already waiting at a table, the magician’s split apart so that the girls could sit next to their respective magician. “Alright girls,” Frankie smiled, “We’re going to handle this just like it were a regular morning meeting at Automagic. Give me a status report of what you two did yesterday and what you’re planning on doing today. To mix things up from yesterday, we’ll go clockwise this time. So, Jess and Maya, what happened?”

     “Yesterday Jess and I spent most of rehearsal time just cutting me up and using a restoration orb I had enchanted in order to give me some more practice in restoring myself. Then, we did a little duel using some enchanted swords for some fun.”

     “We may have gotten a little carried away,” Jess explained, scratching the back of her head and laughing a little bit, “At one point I may have stolen an arm from Maya to help me out, and things sort of escalated from there… And Maya wanted to practice restoring herself without the orb, so it took us almost an hour to split apart and get the right parts back. But she managed to do it all by herself!”

     “Today we’re probably going to focus a bit more on restoration stuff and start practicing the trick I actually had in mind,” Maya explained.

     “That’s great to hear!” Frankie said, nodding her head.

     “Sable and I have been steadily working on getting her comfortable in front of larger audiences using Howard’s creepy mannequins,” Trina explained, taking a sip of coffee before continuing, “I think we got to about fifty at one time without you freezing up?”

     “Y-yeah,” Sable blushed, silently glad that Trina had taken the initiative to explain their progress.

     “Of course, she was still stuttering a little bit, but once you get past a certain point with crowd sizes they all sort of start blurring together,” Trina waved her hand around, “So we’re probably going to work up to like… 500? Maybe 1,000. Then we’ll just focus on really ironing out the trick for Saturday.”

     “That’s good to hear. And Sable,” Frankie gave her a soft smile, “If you’re still feeling uncomfortable performing with your own face, I’d just like to remind you that the focus of the challenge is performing the most complicated trick you feel like you can handle for Saturday. You shouldn’t feel obligated to push yourself off the deep end if you don’t feel prepared to. Which goes for all of you assistants,” Frankie looked around the table to make sure that they understood her point, before looking expectantly towards the next group.

     “Well, after playing with Rocky for most of yesterday-“ Annette started.

     “It was research actually,” Zoe interrupted.

     “Anyways. Rocky’s really warmed up to Zoe, so he should be all good on that front for Saturday. Now we just need to focus on working with him so he can learn the forms, timings, and transformations for Saturday.”

     “And make sure you know all the stuff you’re expected to do,” Zoe added.

     “Yes. That too.”

     “Seems like you’re on top of it all,” Frankie smiled, turning to the last group, “and what have you girls been up to?”

     “Julienne and I have been working hard to develop a good trick idea… but we’re a little nervous its going to come off badly to the audience…” Sinopia explained, sounding slightly less confidant than she had been in the competition thus far.

     “Well, what is it?” Jess asked.

     “It’d hardly be a good magic trick if we revealed what it was going to be before tomorrow,” Sinopia said.

     “That’s really what we’re going to be working on today,” JJ said, “Is mostly just trying to figure out a way to make sure the audience knows what’s going on without making them feel alienated if they don’t.”

     “Well, I wish you two the best of luck with that,” Frankie grinned. Breakfast appeared moments after they had finished their report, and Frankie announced, “Alright girls! Dig in!”

~~~

Incomplete Floor

     Thankfully, the routine of rehearsal had gone off mostly without a hitch. All of the magicians could tell that their assistants seemed a little distracted during rehearsal, but chose not to act on it since some valuable progress was being made. There were still a few shaky things, but those issues could hopefully worked out in some morning or afternoon rehearsals. Dinner had passed by uneventfully, and the girls had waited with anticipation to meet up on the Incomplete floor once more.

     Under the cover of darkness, the girls met up on the incomplete floor. Annette was a little shocked when she was the last one to arrive, commenting, “If I had known everyone was going to come, I would have scheduled it earlier.”

     “Well, we could hardly let yourself potentially get kicked off the show alone,” Maya smiled, “This way, if Howard wants to punish one of us, he’ll have to punish all of us for snooping around without his permission.”

     “Alright then,” Annette grinned, “Let’s get this over with then.” The girls followed behind Annette, who led them to where she had seen Dudley knocking on the wall the night before. She performed the knock she had seen him perform, a long nock, followed by a short nock, a short pause, a short knock, then two more long ones. Just as she had seen last night, the wallpaper broke free, and the girls walked into the room on the other end.

~~~

The Mysterious Room

     The room itself was in shambles. In some ways, it had elements of the bedrooms they were situated in in the hotel, with a kitchenette, a living room, and a hallway leading to some other rooms. However, the kitchenette was absolutely disgusting looking, with dishes piled high in the sink and an equally as overflowing trash can. The pillows of the couch in the living room were in disarray, with some tossed across the room towards the hallway. A variety of different blankets were tossed around willy-nilly.

     “What is this place?” Sable asked, being sure to watch her step so as to not accidentally step in something gross.

     “It seems like a hotel room… But I thought Howard said the rooms on this floor weren’t ready to live in yet,” Annette rubbed her chin in thought.

     “Um… Guys! You might want to look at these!” Sinopia said, pointing to some photos on the wall. The girls looked over, and their jaws nearly dropped at what they saw.

     The pictures were of Howard Weiss in his prime. He gave off an air of confidence and fortitude that the older Weiss only had given hints of. Almost every photo featured at least one of his many assistants, but it was the two photos in the center that had really thrown them off. The significantly older one that was browning around the edges was of Howard standing in a formal tuxedo, a woman who looked exactly like the woman in white was wearing a wedding dress, the two locking lips in a very intense kiss. The other featured Howard Weiss, trying his best to hold back tears as he held a pale little baby girl in his arms.

     “What!?” Maya gasped, “Howard was married!?”

     “And he has a kid?!” Sable screamed.

     The girls were suddenly thrown off by the sound of something dropping to the floor behind them. They quickly turned around, and standing there was the spitting image of the woman in white in the aged photo. She was still disturbingly pale, her long black hair heavily contrasting with it, but they realized what they had thought was a white dress was actually a white blanket that she had wrapped around herself. “Oh no,” she said, absolute horror in her voice. Her voice was slightly deeper than any of the contestants had expected it to sound, “You can’t be here now! D is going to stop by any moment with my food-“

     As if on cue, the sound of knocking could be heard outside of the room. “Shit! Quick! Get in the practice room! We can talk when he’s gone!” The woman in white commanded, rushing over to push the girls down the hallway. The door shut behind them, plunging them into darkness.

     “H-Hey D!” The voice of the woman in white said.

     “Evening Nora!” The voice of Dudley could be heard, “I brought your favorite, Spaghetti and Meatballs!”

     “D! I’ve told you a thousand times! Just because it’s my favorite doesn’t mean you have to give it to me every other day!” The feminine voice complained.

     “Alright, alright! I’ll make sure to get you something different tomorrow- Nora! What have I told you about leaving the plates in your sink! Your room comes with a dishwasher! Just put them in and reuse the plate!”

     “But isn’t it just easier to make the staff do it? They do it for everyone else and they can do it much easier with magic!”

     “You know Mr. Weiss doesn’t like wasting their time doing that when you have a dishwasher!” Dudley raised his voice a little, in a familiar manner, before sighing, “Look… I’ll take them again. But I swear! This is the last week I’m doing this!”

     “Thanks D! You’re the best,” the feminine voice said.

     “You know it,” the sound of dishes being moved could be heard, “I’ll go drop these off quickly, then what movie do you want to watch? I heard that they’re rerunning ‘Winona and I’ on the art-film channel.”

     “Y-yeah! That sounds good!” The woman in White responded a little too quickly.

     There was a palpable silence, before the cheery voice of Dudley replied, “Alright! Be back in a moment!” The sound of the door opening and closing was accompanied by the mysterious woman giving a sigh of relief.

     She rushed over to the room they were all held in, opening the door and revealing what looked like a similar rehearsal room to the one that David Angel had in his mansion, a large mirror against one wall and wooden flooring. A variety of props were pushed to one wall, but they all seemed to be either broken, or in a state of such disrepair that it probably would have been dangerous to actually use them. “Now, I’m sure that you all have a bunch of questions.”

     All four girls began shouting questions at her, causing the woman in white to wince slightly, “Stop!” She commanded, her voice silencing them, “Look! D is going to be back any moment now. I appreciate you all finally finding me from my clues, and you should come back later when D isn’t acting like a lapdog, but you all need to leave now.”

     She helped lead the girls to her door, them all still stunned at the whole situation. Just when they had finally found some answers, they were once again being stopped at the door of unraveling everything. “W-wait!” Maya managed to ask right before the woman was going to close the door on them, “Can you at least tell us who you are?”

     The woman had all but closed the wallpapered door, but opened it again, saying, “My name is Nora Weiss, and I’m going to be a world-class assistant one day!” before shutting the door on them, leaving them confused and in the dark.

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     “How to describe ‘Winona and I’?” An elderly looking gentleman said during the commercial break, “Well… It’s probably one of the best examples of magical nihilism put to film.”

     The screen cut to another film expert, a woman with slightly graying blonde hair, “Released in the late eighties, the movie follows two aspiring assistants going on one of the largest magical binges put to film, in a recreation of the sort of squalor that many people found themselves in during the late sixties and early seventies.”

     The screen cut again, to a slightly younger looking female film critic, “I remember back when I was going to film school, my friends and I used to try and do the ‘Winona and I’ magic game, where you tried to match the tricks they performed on themselves when they do them in the movie.”

     The screen cut to an elderly fellow in a white suit, “Of course, I’ve heard about the magic game. You still hear about the one or two cases a year where someone tries it and inevitably starts suffering from magic overuse.”

     The screen cut to the slightly younger female film critic from before, “So… If i remember it right, and you’ll have to forgive me if I miss any since there’s something like forty different tricks on a single person in this one hundred minute long movie. It went, cut off head, disintegrate body completely, reform body but flattened, inflate body into a sphere, shrink the sphere and transform into a ball, transform ball into head, regrow body, teleport around five times, bend your body at an impossible angle, transform into a snake, detach your fangs into nails, turn human again, stab the nails into your breasts, reabsorb the nails, squish into a suitcase, get cut in two while still in the suitcase… and then that was usually where I would end up passing out, so I don’t remember the rest as well.”

     “I think there’s a point near the end, where you have to feed your own foot to somebody else in the room, and then eat there foot,” A younger looking male critic said, “but I think that if you felt too uncomfortable doing that, you could just disappear the limbs instead, but do it twice?”

     “It really was interesting, seeing magic portrayed in film right before magic really started to enter the mainstream around the world,” Another film critic swap, this time the elderly gentleman from the beginning. “Of course, magic was being done all over the world in the sixties and seventies too. Just that it wasn’t paraded about as openly and fragrantly as this film does.”

     “I really appreciated the nihilistic aspect of it all,” A British sounding female critic said, “You see too many Hollywood magic stories where everything turns out fantastic in the end, and the world is hunky-dory. Getting the chance to see a story from the perspective of two people who used magic to cope with their horrible surroundings was simply genius.”

     “We now return to ‘Winona and I’ on the Art Movie Channel’s special feature on magical films.”