“I want you to show me a magic trick,” said Laura. She reached and refilled her glass of wine and kicked her flats off onto the carpet.

“Uh oh,” I said, “What did Alicia tell you?”

“That you all used to mess around with body magic. And that I should ask you to show me.”

I cracked a knuckle, and grinned, reaching over to take the wine bottle and fill up my own glass.

“All right then,” I said. “Let’s start with this question — what do you already know about magic?”

Laura just shrugged a bit.

“Pretty much nothing,” she said. “I mean, Alicia said I would like it.”

My name is David. I was visiting the city for the week, but Alicia had put me in touch with her friend Laura, and gotten me a place to stay. Whether that meant Laura’s couch or bed, I wasn’t sure. Seemed like Laura wasn’t sure either.

As hinted at, Alicia was an old fling that’d I’d kept up with. And she’d been really into the magic stuff. Should’ve figured that she might recommend that to Laura, or at least talk about it to her.

“You ever try it before?”

“Nope,” she grinned. “But I’m ready to be impressed.”

She smiled at me kind of sideways. I squinted a bit at her. She was a hard girl to read, that was for sure. The sort of person who was outwardly flirtatious, but also a bit guarded.

“All right then,” I said. “You don’t seem like the sort of girl to freak out over this so…”

I got up from my seat and looked around for a good Obscura. One of the principles of magic is that if someone is watching it directly, you cannot make a change. Things have to be covered up first. Really, just a bag or cloth or something will work.

I found a tote bag on her kitchen table, and came back over with it.

“Just sit up straight for a minute.”

“Alrighty,” said Laura, setting her wine glass down on the coffee table. She straightened her back, allowing me a nice view of her slender frame. She had a pretty face, high cheekbones and dark blonde hair that was slightly curly. A nice body too. Well, anyway. It was time to get to work.

I placed the tote bag over her head and made sure it went all the way down to her shoulders.

“What’s this supposed to do anyway?”

“You’ll see,” I said. With the Obscura in place, I started to concentrate on the Field and the Change. The other two parts of a magic spell. Good thing her apartment was a modern building. Sometimes stone or metal can block the Field. One of the reasons places get haunted is they have a Source inside them and the Field just bounces around inside there, magnifying its effects.

“Shouldn’t you be saying some magic words or something?” said Laura. “Ladies and gentlemen and that stuff.”

“There’s nobody else here!”

“Well, whatever. Your presentation sucks.”

“Abracadabra!” I said. “You happy now?”

I went back to sit down again.

“Are you gonna do something or what?”

“Oh I already did a moment ago, you can take the bag off if you want.”

Laura removed the bag from her head. Then she sort of froze. I tried casually to take a sip of wine, but I guess the gesture was lost as she was now facing the wrong direction. Her hands let go of the bag and started to feel around her face.

“What the fuck?” she said. “My head is on backwards!?”

“Impressed yet?” I said, a bit sarcastically.

“Uh, hell yeah I am. This is awesome! I need to look in a mirror.”

She got up a bit awkwardly, first trying to walk backwards where her head was facing, then trying to turn the other direction.

“Want to help me?” she said. “This is a little tricky.”

I followed her, helping guide her around her furniture until we were looking at her bedroom mirror.

“This is awesome,” she repeated, looking at her reflection. “Can you take a picture with my phone? We need to send this to Alicia.”

“You know it’s funny,” I said. “She couldn’t stand having her head on backwards. Just liked to have it detached.”

“You mean it comes off?” said Laura, suddenly yanking at her head.

“No, not that easily,” I said. “But we can do that, sure.”

“Do it!”

“Are you sure?” I teased. “Think about what you’re asking…”

“Please cut off my head,” she said, giving me a wink. “I wanna see what it’s like.”

I went and returned with the bag we’d used a minute ago.

“You should sit down on the bed,” I said.

“Sure,” said Laura. She was grinning broadly, unable to contain herself. “Can you please do the magician thing and announce what you’re doing?”

“Fine,” I said, half-mockingly, throwing the bag over her head once again. “Ladies and gentlemen of the audience, I will now remove this young woman’s head from her body!”

“Yay!” said Laura, inside the bag.

I took a grasp of the handles of the bag, concentrated on the factors I needed to, and pulled up. I watched her body flop backwards onto the bed.

“Wait,” said a voice, from inside the bag. “Did you just do it?”

Instead of answering, I set the bag down next to the bed, and let her head roll out of it. She came to rest on her cheek, mostly facing into her covers.

“Ay cahn’t muv,” she said, her voice muffled by the comforter.

I picked her up to sit on her neck, turning her to face her own body, then brushed her hair out of her face.

“I can’t move at all!” she re-iterated. “Oh shit, so I’m only a head now?”

“You seem to be talking just fine,” I teased.

“I thought I’d be able to carry my head around,” she said.

“Doesn’t usually work that way,” I told her. “Or at least, not under normal circumstances.”

“Can you pick me up so I can see my body?”

I obliged, picking her head up under her chin, and turning her to face her headless body on the bed.

“Woah,” she said. “It is possible to feel my body then? How does that work?”

“Well,” I began, “There’s a lot to explain about that, but basically you need an external source to keep the connection between your head and body established. The magic is not coming from me, I’m just focusing and using it. But I could link you back up using a copper wire and a simple binding spell.”

“That went a bit over my head,” she said, giggling. “But what kind of wire do you need?”

“Honestly anything, if you have an old phone cord or charger we could probably use that.”

“Seriously? Okay, there’s a junk drawer in the kitchen.”

She directed me into the kitchen where we found a landline phone cord. I used a knife to pry off the connectors, grabbed a bit of tape, then took her back to her bedroom. I set her head down on the pillow.

“Magic with a phone cord and tote bag,” she mused. “Very resourceful.”

“Hey, it works!”

I focused on making a simple type two binding then taped the cord to the back her neck on her body, then picked her head up and made the same type of connection on the cut section of her neck.

Her body twitched a bit.

“I felt something!” she said. “But it was just a twinge.”

“Hang on,” I said, pushing the tape a little flatter. “The connection is probably just…”

Suddenly, I was grabbed by the body on the bed, and pulled down on top of her.

“Oh!” she said, from her perch on the bedside table. “There it is.”

I looked at her and grinned a bit. So apparently, probably, this was going to be that kind of evening.

“Sorry,” she said, letting her grip loose a bit. “Can I pick myself up now?”

“Sure, just as long as the tape stays in place,” I told her. I got up off of her and her body sat up, then patted the space where her head had been attached for a moment, then awkwardly reached to pick her head up off the bedside table.

“This is so odd,” she said.

“Before you stand up,” I told her, “Your balance is going to be way off, just FYI.”

“Okay, can you help me then?”

I stood up first and helped her to her feet. She moved around unsteadily for a second.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s like… whoa.”

I caught her as she started to shift sideways.

“A lot of your sense of balance has to do with your inner ear,” I said.

“Yeah, I know— makes sense that this would be hard. Does anyone get used to it?”

“Sure, with practice. I knew one girl who never had her head attached.”

“Was it connected with an old phone cord too?” she said, picking up the cord to inspect it.

“Well, there are actually wireless relays that you can build, or even replace your head with.”

“Hold up,” she said. “Replace my head?”

“Well, it would take more stuff than we have here,” I told her. “But yes, you can replace your head. Usually people use it to try on a different head, but sometimes you can use other stuff too.”

“That,” she said. “Sounds really, really cool.”

“We can visit a magic studio if you wanted to try it out.”

“Tomorrow maybe,” she said. “But first, can you use my phone to take a picture?”

“Sure thing,” I said, catching her again as her balance shifted. “It’d be a lot easier if you went and sat down.”

“Help me get to the living room,” she said.

We snapped a few photos, a few of Laura holding her head a few of her head by itself, and a few of her body without a head. Finally she seemed satisfied, and sipped at her wine again.

“So,” she started, handing her head to me. “Thank you for cutting off my head by the way.”

“Uh, no problem.”

“I’ll be honest, when Alicia first told me about this I really, really wanted to try it.”

“She told you details?”

“A few of them. She said you can do magic, and that she’d spent a whole weekend with her head off, only I didn’t realize that meant she was well, only a head.”

“Well, we did take her head off,” I started. “But the whole weekend was really spent without a head.”

Her eyes lit up, and the expression on her face showed pure excitement.

“Oooh…”

“But,” I continued, “That’d mean you wouldn’t be able to see, hear, taste, or smell… so communication becomes pretty tricky that way.”

She paused for a long moment, her face showing careful consideration.

“Well,” she said, handing her head to me. “Let’s begin things this way.”

Her body reached over, and then pulled the cord free from her neck. Her body slumped back over onto me.

“Now,” she said, looking up and meeting my eyes. “I’m just a little helpless head. What are you going to do with me?”