Terri Terri Burning Bright

A mad science stage magic fantasy

Content warning: this story is based on the fantasy that stage magicians with real powers are - without most of the audience realising - actually sawing, impaling, transforming or vanishing their assistants and volunteers for real, but with the aid of magic that prevents the subjects suffering any lasting harm and which transforms their experience into one they can even enjoy, in a twisted sexual sort of way. This particular story also has bad language from the outset.

Terri allowed the magician to lead her towards the imposing metal contraption in the centre of the stage.

What the fuck had she volunteered for?

It was a table, of sorts, though that word hardly did it justice. For a start, it was massive. The steel top was a good eight feet long and four feet wide, if she was any judge, raised to around chest height by two chunky metal legs, one at the centre of each long edge. The nearest leg sported a hand crank wheel clearly intended to pivot from its current horizontal orientation to an upright one. The whole assemblage was solid-looking, stained with rust and goodness knew what else. The grungy industrial look was further enhanced by oversized rivets and metal bands at strategic locations. All in all it suited the mad scientist’s lair look that was the theme of the show down to a T.

Terri stopped just short of the device, her stomach clenching. From out of the wings, the magician’s hunchbacked assistant staggered. Without a word, he took hold of the wheel and tried to turn it. The mechanism juddered a few times, then with an ominous creak the slab slowly rotated until it was upright.

Now, for the first time since asking her name, the magician spoke. “Take your shoes off please, dear, and stand with your back against the slab.”

Terri bridled internally at being called ‘dear’ but decided against calling the magician out over it. It was probably just his way of getting into character, she thought, and of establishing her position in this scenario as a passive creature willing to submit herself to his mad experiments. So instead of saying anything she meekly kicked off her low heels and backed up against the thick metal slab. The chill of the metal quickly seeped into her shoulders and backside through the satin of her ‘fancy evening out’ dress, in stark contrast to the heat of the stage lights blazing down on her from above.

“Ankles between the posts, if you please,” the magician prompted her. Terri looked down and saw she was standing between two pairs of short rods. She quickly widened her stance, slotting her ankles into place. As soon as she’d done so, the magician took her left hand and guided it so that her wrist was between another pair of posts at waist height. Seeing that there was a similar set on her other side, she positioned her right arm herself.

No sooner had she done so than the hunchbacked assistant handed the magician two metal straps, which he placed over the posts at her wrists, securing them with a twist of a locking nut. Terri moved her arm experimentally. There was a barely enough slack to move her wrist forward or back half an inch or so. Certainly not enough to withdraw her hand and escape.

A cold feeling on her left ankle told her that the magician’s assistant was restraining her down there too.

With all four of her limbs now secured, the hunchback staggered off. He returned with a curved metal strap larger than the previous ones and a heavy box-like metal cover a foot or so high and a maybe eighteen inches across. He set down the box then reached up to place the strap across Terri’s neck, the ends slipping over two more posts just above her shoulders, while the magician held her hair out of the way. This strap was a looser fit, not even touching her bare neck, but she was sure it would very effectively stop her from leaning forward.

Now both men picked up the box cover, placing it carefully over her stomach. It was a pretty snug fit, pressing in on her at both sides as well as against the flat of her belly, but still giving her room to breathe, a process she was very aware of as her nerves mounted.

Once the last nut was in place, the magician grasped the cover and tried to shake it, demonstrating it was fixed very securely indeed. He did the same for the straps around Terri’s ankles and wrists, and the one around her neck. Then he turned to the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “seekers of wonder in this new industrial age of ours, let us begin.” He paused. “Tonight you will have the honour of witnessing the first demonstration of my new invention, the Photonic Lance.”

As he spoke, the hunchback was busy wheeling out a large table on which sat a glass globe pierced by two black rods, the tips of which were a couple of inches apart. From the other end of each rod a pair of coiled wires led down to serried ranks of large batteries on a shelf under the table. The assistant positioned the apparatus some dozen feet in front of Terri then fitted a silvered reflector to the back of the globe before disappearing again off stage.

“The Photonic Lance, ladies and gentlemen,” the magician continued, “is a development of Faraday’s battery arc lamp, taking the intense light produced by that device and focussing it into a beam strong enough to cut through steel, let alone the flesh and blood of my test subject.”

“She,” he said, gesturing at Terri, “is bound securely in place, as I have shown you. A mere precaution, in case she should decide her life is worth more than the honour of participating in my demonstration and earning herself a place in the scientific annals for all time.”

The assistant had now returned, carrying several dinner plate sized lenses on metal stands. He positioned those in a line between the arc lamp and the cover over Terri’s stomach.

Terri’s mind was beginning to race. Was the beam going to appear to shoot right through her? Was she going to appear to be cut in two? The magician hadn’t given her the slightest hint of what she was meant to do to work with whatever mechanism generated the illusion. What if she did something wrong? What if she somehow messed it up in front of a live audience? What if - and she shuddered at this - she somehow managed to hurt herself in the process?

She was suddenly distracted from her spiralling thoughts by a judder. Looking to one side, she saw the hunchback was locking the table in the upright position. That done, he gave her a creepy ‘thumbs up’ gesture before hobbling back over to the magician.

The pair now made a show of checking the alignment of the arc lamp and lenses, then the magician grasped a large lever behind the lamp and made ready to pull it with one hand, while extracting a pocket watch from his waistcoat with the other.

“As soon as I throw this switch,” he said, “a beam of light hotter than the sun will shoot towards the test subject. By my calculations, it will take ten seconds to burn through the metal box over her midsection, a mere second to burn through her, then another ten seconds to cut through the slab behind her.”

He paused, then slammed the switch down. There was a brief hum then Terri instinctively closed her eyes as the lamp burst into brilliant light.

“One!” the magician cried out. “Two!”

Terri gingerly opened one eye. The beam was narrow enough not to blind her but the glare was still uncomfortable. She squinted and looked down at the cover over her belly. Where the beam struck it, it was glowing, and the glow was spreading.

“Three! Four!”

She could feel the warmth against her belly now. By the time it the magician reached seven, it was burning hot.

This better not leave a char mark on my dress, she thought to herself. It had cost damned near a week’s wages!

“Eight!”

The metal around where the beam struck was beginning to bubble, Terri noted. Cool special effect, she thought, impressed by the visuals despite the lack of consideration the designer had given to the comfort of the volunteer. If it got any hotter, she might start to blister!

“Nine!”

She tried to distract herself from the mounting pain by thinking through what the prop designer might have done to give the impression of the light burning though her and the slab behind her. The slab might well have its own light source hidden inside, to generate a beam coming out from behind her, but no, that wouldn’t be very spectacular. Surely the magician would want, once he’d helped her out of the apparatus, to show a hole burned right through the slab despite the lack of hole in her middle. But she’d not seen any sign of a removable hole-shaped plug as she’d stepped up to the slab. So what...

“Ten!”

Terri screamed. Or at least someone screamed. Somewhere. She wasn’t sure of anything, really, except the excruciating pain that surged through her and turned her nerves into rivers of fire.

She passed out.

* * * * *

“Sixteen!”

Terri gulped air for another scream, but the pain had gone. Instead, a small patch centered on her belly button felt numb, as did an area just above the small of her back. Her limbs tingled, but it was almost pleasant.

“Seventeen! Eighteen!”

She was alive. And not bleeding out. That was good.

“Nineteen! Twenty!”

She debated whether to cry out that something had gone wrong, but the moment she tried to open her mouth she found that she couldn’t.

“Twenty-one!”

The was a rustle from the audience and several gasps, but not many. Terri guessed the majority believed the light that must surely now be emerging behind her was an illusion, as she herself would have done had she not been strapped to this slab, experiencing the reality for herself.

The magician turned towards Terri and winked. Her mind raced again. He knew what had happened to her? And he was OK with it? He wasn’t going to abort the (non-) illusion?

It seemed not, for the magician now turned again to face the audience. “What you have seen is a marvel in its own right, and has a myriad of industrial applications,” he said. “But that is not all. With a simple adjustment, my invention can widen the hole to the size of a side plate!”

He moved to the first of the lenses and gingerly moved it forward a few inches. The beam emanating from the series of lenses gradually widened.

Terri felt, as well as saw, the results. The numbing in her middle gradually spread. The tingling intensified, generating a warmth that pooled between her legs.

Oh God! she thought. I’m getting turned on! It was embarrassing. Maybe not as embarrassing as the other reason she might’ve felt warm down there – that in her fear she’d pissed herself - but still pretty embarrassing nonetheless. And it was definitely arousal she was feeling. The tightening of her nipples and the heat coursing through her cheeks told her that much. And not just a little, but seriously aroused too. Don’t let me come, she thought. Not in front of everyone!

To her relief, the sensations levelled off once the numbness was covering half of her belly. She was still well short of her peak and was just about able to keep her breathing under control. The magician let her stew like that for a handful of seconds, then threw the switch the other way, cutting the power. The hunchback scuttled over to unlock the table. The magician joined him and turned the apparatus until Terri was facing the audience straight on before stepping to one side.

“As you can see,” he said, “the Photonic Lance has drilled a hole some nine inches across through the steel and the test subject. In exactly the time I predicted, too.” He paused for a moment. “Only one thing did not go as planned. I fully expected this to be fatal for my test subject, but it appears that the beam cauterized the wound, saving her life. And saving me from having to bribe my way clear of a murder charge, not that that would be difficult with all the money this invention will make!”

He turned on his heels and moved out of sight behind Terri. Moments later, the audience laughed. Terri guessed he was waving at them though the hole in her middle. Then Terri felt something wriggly moving inside her – no, through her. The laughter turned to gasps. She looked down and saw the magicians hand protruding from the cover over her belly, his hand waving cheerily. Each time he moved, it jangled her nerves again, and the jangling went straight to her groin. She closed her eyes, willing herself to maintain control.

Then everything started to move. Distracted as she was, it took her a moment to realize that the hunchbacked assistant was rotating the entire table apparatus round in a slow circle, the magician keeping pace so that the audience could see from all angles that his hand really was passing all the way through her. The motion set her off even more strongly, but thankfully she was already facing the back of the stage when her climax finally struck and she came apart.

* * * * *

Terri took a bow. The audience were clapping like mad. This close to the front of the stage, the front rows of the audience could easily see right through her. And to win over the doubters, the magician had invited up a second volunteer - Sandra - to check up close that she really did have a hole through her belly.

Of course that had been after she’d been released from the apparatus. First the magician had lowered the table to the horizontal, before removing the cover over her. The assistant had pushed an annular metal plate under her back while the magician shoved a flanged steel tube through the hole burned through her gut. Then he’d pushed bolts through the holes in the flange, driving them through what remained of her middle to mate with the plate under her. It had tickled, but not too badly.

The magician had removed her restraints, then, and had helped her from the table. Looking down, she’d seen a the metal-lined edges of the hole through her middle. She’d not been able to resist reaching in to check it for herself.

That was when the magician had invited Sandra up to verify what had happened to Terri. The redhead had been slack jawed at the sight, logic warring with the evidence of her eyes. Terri had almost snickered.

But then she’d realized the damage done to her dress. She was almost ready to explode when the magician slipped her a credit card, whispering that it had a £2,000 limit to cover the damage. And there’d be that much again if she’d come back tomorrow evening to do it all over again.

Terri had nodded discretely.

So here I am, she thought, bowing to the audience again. A convert. A believer. A newly-paid up, freshly-minted magician’s assistant!

THE END (for now)