“What’s in the bag?” asked the ticket guy.
“A human head,” said Lisa.
He laughed. “It’s to your left,” he said. “Enjoy the show.”
She waited until the movie started, then I heard the purse unzip. I was picked up unevenly and plopped in her lap. We were up the the back row. There was pretty much no one in there anyhow, and the previews had already started.
“So what happens if someone sees us?” I whispered.
“What do you think happens.” She raised an eyebrow.
“Anything could. I mean, they might start a witch hunt.”
“Are you calling me a witch?”
I thought about it a second. “Well, you kinda are one, aren’t you?”
She rolled her eyes. “If I was, I’d so turn you into a frog right now.”
I don’t remember a whole lot of the movie. I spent a good deal of it turned around while we made out. The rest I was happily tucked in her lap. It was pretty comfortable, really. I mean, there was a stretch where I wasn’t really too worried even about her restoring me. I guess I was just starting to realize that I was really, really into this girl and so what could I really be uneasy about?
The movie ended and the lights came on. I guess there was that.
Everyone started packing up their things, but Lisa didn’t move. I tried to look up but my head was tilted forwards so I couldn’t see her. But I could see the two girls in front of us turn as they got to the steps. One of them saw me, I’m sure of it. Her eyes looked right at me, before, embarrassed, she turned away.
“You see?” said Lisa, once everyone else had left. “Most of the time, people don’t even notice.”
“Most of the time?”
“Yea, well. Sometimes they do. A little bit. But really, if you saw it, what would you do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yea, that’s the same with most people. They don’t know what to do, so they do nothing and pretend it didn’t happen. And the people who notice and actually ask you, they’re usually prepared to accept any explanation at all, even the truth.”
“Okay.”
“So are you ready to get un-disappeared?”
“Yea.”
“Alright. First, when we get back, I have another trick for you.”

“So first things first. Let’s get you back to normal.”
“Finally.”
“Hey, don’t give me any attitude. I’m the magician here.”
“I was just kidding.”
“You better be. Ready?”
“Yea.”
She set me down on the pillow, right where I was when she’d vanished my body that morning. For a moment, she just looked at me blankly.
“Okay,” she said. And that was that. I sat up.
She laughed, biting her lip. I quickly figured out why.
“Where are my clothes?”
“That wasn’t on purpose. I swear.” She sounded somewhat less than sincere. “But at least you have a body again, right?”
“Yes. So uh, thank you. Can you pretty please bring back my clothes?”
“What if I take mine off instead?”
“Deal.”
She unzipped her jeans and shimmied out of them, and then threw her t-shirt over her head. Just down to a bra and panties, she turned and went over to a drawer in her desk. She got out a pair of stockings and some gauze gloves that easy extended almost the length of her arm.
“And, gentlesir, for my second trick, a magical striptease.” She pulled on one of the gloves then the other, followed by the stockings. In another moment, she popped off her bra and spun it around her finger before letting it drop to the floor. I smiled. She grinned, then held up a finger to signal I should wait.
For a moment, she just gazed off into the middle distance. Once she’d come out of it, she started to run her hands over her body, making slow circles. I noticed that the sleeves and stockings she’d put on seemed to have vanished.
“So you can magically disappear clothing too.” I said. “That’s pretty neat.”
“Wait. Check this out.” She pinched the top of her left thigh, and in one smooth motion, peeled away her whole leg. I’m not sure how else to put it. But after only a second, she stood balanced on only one leg, the other one hanging loosely from her hands, as if made of the same gauzey fabric as the stockings. She flung it at me, but it stopped in the air and floated down onto the bed.
“Ta-da!” She stripped off her right arm and dropped it over her shoulder. Now down to an arm and a leg, she hopped over to the side of the bed and sat down, then reached and pulled on her toes. Her leg slid away suddenly and easily; she let it drop to the floor.
“You have to do the last one,” she said, turning to offer me her arm. I obliged, taking her hand gentlly and reaching up to peel off her upper arm. It came off easily, like a long leather glove, and still felt warm as I held it crumpled in my hand.
“Can you still feel these?” I held up her crumpled arm.
“Not once I take them off. It’s too distracting. But okay. Just one thing more.” Her eyes pointed down at her underwear.
“Right,” I said. I sat up and held her back against me as I pulled her panties over what was left of her legs - about six inches, ending in smooth, flat stumps.
“There are condoms in the nightstand,” she said.

So I speak from experience when I say this — after being totally helpless for hours on end while you’re carried around as a bodyless head, nothing can really compare to the exhilaration of having your body back. And if that feels pretty good, sex right away sure doesn’t mess with your buzz. Nor does your partner’s sudden reversal from a power-craving control freak into a helpless toy.
That was her word, for the record. “Alright,” she told me, “I’m you’re toy for the night.” I think that was the hottest thing I’ve ever heard.
We went for four rounds, a personal best, before we both finally went to sleep for the night. I woke up to find I’d slept through most of the morning. And that Lisa still didn’t have any arms or legs.
“Oh hi,” she said, once I was finally awake. “I was just wondering. Do you have any limbs you could spare? I’m all out.”
“I thought you were the magician,” I said.
“It’s true. And I also have to pee. So you can either help me to the toilet, or gather up the rest of me from the floor.”
It took a minute, but I eventually found her legs and arms, still transformed into the gauzy gloves from her trick the night before.
“How do they uh… how do they go?” I asked.
“Just give me a second. Sit me up.”
I propped her up onto her butt. She looked at the gloves and stockings like she was mad at them. Then, like it was, I don’t know, magic, her arms and legs were back. They were not, however, attached to her.
“Now stick me together. And don’t mess them up or you’ll be sorry.”
“How sorry?” I asked.
“Oh, you don’t wanna ask a magician that question.”
I actually did, but then realized that I really did have to be at work at least some point during the day. So I put everything back where it belonged.

It was that evening that I got a text: “Want some magic lessons?”
My reply: “Hells yea.”
I got over to her place around nine. She handed me an open beer almost as soon as I got inside.
“Trying to poison me again?” I asked.
“Nope, just trying to be nice to you before I start making pieces of you disappear.”
“And that’s how you’re gonna teach me magic?”
“How do you think I learned it?”
“You studied it?”
“You’re damn right I studied. I used to vanish everything but my head and a hand to turn pages, that was how I used to study.”
“Is that what you had in mind again?”
“Finish your beer first.”
A few minutes later, that was done. We were ready to begin.
“Now, we’re going to start with the easy stuff. Making something reappear, after it’s been disappeared. Take off your pants.”
“Is that… what?”
“Just do it.”
I wasn’t very good at telling her no. Especially to that sort of request. I kicked off my shoes and undid my belt. My pants dropped to the ground.
“And your boxers.”
“I might as well just be naked, huh.”
“Might as well.”
“Are you gonna…”
“I’m the teacher.”
I shrugged. In a moment, I was totally nude.
“Now, there’s two steps to learning how to do this. One is the command word. Ordinarily, commands require months and months of repetition and practice to get them just right on your own, but I’m just going to tell you what to say. And the other component is to have an incredibly vivid and strong idea of what you want to happen.”
“And how do I do that?” I asked.
“That’s not going to be a problem.”
She took a blanket from the couch and covered up my lap. She got that look of hard concentration again, and I had a moment to think oh shit as I realized what she was gonna do. I raised up the blanket, but it was already done.
“You stole my dick!” I shouted.
“No, I vanished it.”
“Well whatever! Give it back!”
“That’s your first lesson.”
My cheeks flushed and for some reason, I brought my hands to my crotch to cover up … nothing. I was like a ken doll. Or, for that matter, a barbie.
She whispered a word in my ear. “That’s the command,” she said. “Think it. Think it so hard. Make it the only thing in your mind. Then picture what you want, only don’t just picture it, envision it, become it, believe you have a cock again.”
“If I can’t do it, will you bring it back?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“Because you need an incentive. Try it.”
I did. Nothing happened. I did, again, and again nothing. And still, after that, nothing. I focused only on the word she’d told me, trying as hard as I could to purge everything else, then thinking of … well, getting back what had gone away. And it still didn’t happen.
“What’s the matter?” she finally said, teasingly.
“I don’t think I can do it.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I’m no good?”
“Right. But you’ll get better with practice. That’s lesson one on magic. It’s not easy. It’s fucking hard. It takes years, and years of harry potter school, and even then you sometimes make mistakes. Like maybe you vanish your boyfriend’s cock and forget what construct you used, and then, well, you’ll probably never see it again. But that’s okay. Look!”
She got a shoebox from under the table and opened it for me. Inside was a pink vibrator.
“It’s okay?” I said. “How is this okay? Are you saying you forgot where you put it?”
“Yea, but look again.” She put the lid back on the box and then picked it up again. Inside was… well, there it was. She picked it up in her hand and I could feel her fingers wrapping around me. I gasped.
“I thought you were serious.”
“You’re still not getting it back yet.” She did something. And it — well, it started vibrating. As it would.
“Oh god,” was all I managed to say.
“Like that?”
“Um… yes.”
“What’s the matter?” She held it up in front of her face, licking her lips. I was pretty much unable to speak. My hands instinctively went to my crotch, even though there was nothing to grab.
“You,” she paused, and popped it into her mouth, just the smallest bit, “distracted?”
Taking it all the way in to her mouth, she held it there for a moment, wrapping her arms around me and then lowering herself to her knees. Suddenly, it was back where it belonged. She smiled up at me, and finally, clicked off the vibration. I exhaled.
“Wow, you have no idea how intense that is.”
“Oh really? Think I’ve never tried on a penis before?”
“I um… wait. What?”
She laughed. But said nothing else.
Well. I wasn’t sure where to go with that. But it seemed she was.
“Relax, it was with another girl.”
“Oh.” I tried to imagine it, but then decided, maybe not.
“But on with the show. I have one more surprise.”
“C’mere.”
She took my hand and led me into her bedroom and sat me down on her bed. She started pulling my shirt up so I raised my arms, grinning. She stopped there, with the shirt over my head.
And then everything kind of went dark.
Imagine, for a moment, that all your senses just stop. Everything just goes away. No sight, not even the color black, no noise, not even silence. It all just … wasn’t there.
And then, just as surprisingly, there was something. There was the feeling of skin on skin, her body on mine, as if in some abyss. I felt her hands in mine. She guided them up to her shoulders to feel what I’d already, almost guessed, if I’d had only a moment to figure out what was still real to me.
She’d made our heads disappear.
Her hands slid down my body as mine found their way around her back. I pulled her close to me, savoring just the feeling of there being someone, anyone in this abyss along with me.
Then I felt her click on the vibrator.