So I've got this friend Mike. Mike can do magic. I don't mean that he bought a few sparkly props from a hobby store and read a book. I mean that he can actually do real magic; levitation, sawing in half, the whole Copperfield playbook. He mostly uses it to have lots and lots of weird sex, with a different girl every weekend, which pretty much says all you need to know about him.
   He's kind of become legendary in our neighborhood for his parties. People think of themselves as having made the A list when they get invited. They cancel other parties just to make sure they can attend. He always invites a half dozen or so of the most attractive women he knows and enough guys that nobody gets lonely for long. The party always starts with a weird magical twist on a typical party game, like Spin the Bottle where the girl spins her head instead of a bottle, or Twister with actual twisting, but it always ends up as a massive one-night-stand-fest. Single guys and girls show up to play with their bodies and make some commitment-free whoopee. It's never really been my cup of tea.
   As a friend of Mike, I'm considered an honorary member of his party list, but I'm really more on the edge of the action. All of Mike's other friends know me, but they know me as more of a spectator. I'm aware of what they get up to, and I know I'd be welcome if I ever showed an interest, but I'm not really that into games with "strip" in the name. Mike and his other friends are more of a casual crowd, and I was always looking for something more serious, which meant that I had to form my own social circle if I wanted to find a girlfriend.
   Eventually, I met a girl named Cassie, and we hit it off. We liked the same kinds of fun, we had the same tastes, and we made each other laugh. We went on a few dinner dates, but we were waiting to get physical until we both knew we were ready. I was pretty sure I was, and I suspected that she might be, so when Mike let me know he was planning another party, I let him know I'd be there, plus one. He slapped me on the back, grinned like the Cheshire Cat, and wished me luck.
   When I told Cassie about the party and asked her if she'd be interested, she answered with a resounding yes. As it turned out, she'd heard about them already at second or third-hand from some of her friends, and she'd always wondered what went on there. She assumed that all the stories couldn't possibly be true, but when I assured her that they all were, she trembled with excitement. When I saw that, so did I. I suppose she really was ready, after all. I advised her on what would be best to wear, and we cleared our schedules.
   When we arrived at the party, a lot of the guests were already there, and Mike was keeping them entertained and well-supplied with drinks. Cassie and I were wearing much fancier clothes than usual, but even so, I felt a little out-classed. Cassie was wearing short shorts, a low-cut top, and flip-flops with some shiny sequins and stitching in them, and I had on a button-down flowery shirt in rough silk and Bermuda shorts. The men at the party were all tanned and muscular and wearing shiny shirts, and the women's outfits ranged from skin-tight tank tops and skirts to halters and shorts that were little more than swimwear. They all greeted us cordially, though, and when Mike introduced Cassie as my girlfriend, they all congratulated both of us, which gratified me immensely. I have to admit that part of my reason for bringing Cassie to the party was so that I could prove to everyone that I was capable of finding a woman on my own.
   Once the rest of the guests arrived, Mike got everyone's attention and described the evening's festivities. The first game of the evening was going to be a sort of scavenger hunt, so he asked us all to form up into pairs. I obviously partnered up with Cassie, and we watched as the others engaged in various levels of flirtatious haggling to choose their partners. Once we had all paired off, Mike brought the women into another room, and after about ten minutes, he wheeled out a train of little carts, each covered with a cloth. He arranged the carts in a large ring in the middle of the room, and he whipped the cloths off of the carts, revealing the severed heads of all the women.
   "Gentlemen," said Mike, "your teammates' bodies have been disassembled into their component parts: torso, hips, legs at the knee, and arms at the shoulder. Their parts have been mixed together and hidden in the next room. For the first phase of this contest, you must sort out your teammate's body parts and bring them in here next to her head. Make sure you have the right parts. No fair swapping asses with some other girl, at least not yet." Everyone chuckled.
   He took a stopwatch out of his pocket. "Your time begins . . . now."
   We all crammed through the door into the room, and I saw where he had hidden the body parts: an honest-to-God ball pit, just like at Chuck E. Cheese's. I couldn't tell whether he had magically conjured it for the evening or if he had actually built one. I'd probably have a ball pit at my place if I had the space. We were going to have to sift through the stuff in the pit looking for our teammates' parts, just like on Double Dare.
   I stepped gingerly into the pit, to make sure I didn't step on anybody, but a couple of the guys dove on in like they were six years old again. Either they didn't really care who they bumped into, or they were hoping to bump into as many people as possible.
Most of the guys were sifting through the pit piece by piece until they found a body part that looked familiar, but I chose a more efficient strategy. I started stirring the pit with my arms, feeling for any areas that were unusually heavy. I was trying to find Cassie's torso first, then her hips, and then the limbs. Not only were the hips and torso the largest pieces, but they were also the parts that were wearing clothes, so I'd be able to recognize them more quickly.
   I pushed aside a couple of latex-clad chests before finding Cassie's top, and I brought it back to her head. Only three other guys had made any progress, and they had found random arms and so forth, but then most of them were busy feeling their teammates up in the course of the game. There would be plenty of time for that later. I had a contest to win, dammit.
   I was the first person to find my partner's torso and hips, but I started to fall behind after that. One of the other guys had the bright idea to throw the balls out of the pit into the corners of the room, and soon, we were all doing the same. As we emptied the pit of anything that wasn't part of a woman, the others were darting into the pile as soon as they saw a familiar shoe or tattoo. Part of what I liked about Cassie was her simple taste in accessories, but it certainly wasn't helping me here. A lot of the other women were wearing distinctive nail polish or jewelry, and their parts stood out a lot more than Cassie's. It reminded me of the end of Last Crusade, where Indy has to look for the least shiny thing in the room.
   Two guys had found all of their teammates' parts by the time I was finished. I was able to save time by keeping her limbs with me until I could bring them all in at once, but I still just barely finished ahead of everyone else. Once all the women's limbs were gathered inside the ring of heads, Mike stopped his clock.
   "Well done, boys. Now for phase two. Please rotate your teammates' heads away from the circle."
   Once all the women were facing away from their body parts, Mike went on. "The first part of the contest was up to the men, but it will be up to the women to finish the job. I will instruct your teammates to turn your heads around in the same order that they finished in, with the same amount of delay as when they finished. Once you can see your body, reassemble it as fast as you can, without any assistance. Once your body is assembled, step outside the circle alongside your head. The team that finishes first wins the prize. Gentlemen, take your positions."
   We all knelt down next to our partner's heads.
   "First team, go!" He restarted his clock, and the guy that had finished first turned his teammate's head around. I immediately saw her arms start to inch their way around inside the ring like giant caterpillars. The body parts were all laid out neatly so they were all visible, but the difficulty was that she had to crawl her arms over everyone else's body parts. Some of the other women looked like they were enjoying that part.
   After the second woman got started, I took Cassie's head in my hands. When Mike was about to give me the signal, I gave her a quick kiss, and then I snapped her head around when Mike gave the word. She had some ground to regain, but I could already tell she had the tactical advantage. The first two women were using both arms at the same time to be quicker, but Cassie only used one so she could tell which one was which. She got her right arm attached to her torso while the first two women's arms were still crawling.
   Once Cassie's arm was back where it belonged, she made good time getting the other one put back on. She was able to use her torso as an anchor while her arm provided the mobility. When the first two women saw her catching up, they started to hurry. As they wriggled their arms into position, Cassie reached her other arm, picked it up, and stuck it on.
   At that point, all the women were facing the ring and scrambling around for their parts. A couple of them were trying Cassie's strategy, but they were having a harder time of it since everyone was moving past each other at once. Cassie moved her torso around the circle gathering her legs and hips, while her competition had already attached their hips and were trying to walk on the stumps of their knees. By then, they had both assembled themselves enough that they could get in each other's way, and they were starting to throw other people's parts at each other, each trying to throw the other one off balance. A lot of the guys had abandoned the competition and were rooting them on, apparently deciding that the scavenger hunt was less exciting than headless, legless wrestling. I could see their point, but Cassie and I were playing to win.
   Cassie took advantage of the distraction to finish getting the rest of her parts in one place. While the game of keep away took place in the center of the ring, Cassie put her lower half back together, and then she lay down and pulled herself together the rest of the way like she was putting on a pair of pants. She slowly got to her feet and climbed over the cart, and she jumped into my arms as Mike declared us the winners.
   The other women reluctantly ended the battle royale and reassembled themselves. There was no prize for second place, so nobody was in much of a hurry. When all of the women were back together, minus the heads, Mike took me and Cassie into the other room for the bonus round, which turned out to be seven minutes alone while everyone else got set up for the next game. He told us that as it was our first time, and since he'd been friends with me for so long, he was glad we were the ones to win. He gave us a vague hint that this seven minutes came with a surprise, and then he closed the door and left us to it.
   Well, here was where I found out if we were ready. I didn't need to wonder for long.
Cassie stood in front of me. She held her head under one arm, and with the other hand, she traced a lazy circle around the severed edge of her neck and down to her cleavage. I moved in close to her and put my arm around the small of her back. With my other hand, I gently stroked her breasts through her shirt and kissed the nape of her neck. I was just starting to get into a rhythm when my leg fell off at the knee, and I collapsed on the floor.
   So that was the surprise. Seven minutes in heaven with random detachments to sweeten the deal. That Mike, what a joker.
   After Cassie got a good laugh out of the way, she tossed me her head while I lay on the floor, which was fortunately a little padded. While we kissed, her headless body picked up my leg and started tickling the sole of my foot. I started laughing uncontrollably, and I dropped her head. I suppressed my laughter as much as I could as I crawled toward her. She tried to stay away, but the room was only so large. I wrapped my arms around her legs and tried to wrestle her to the ground, but she got free of my grasp. As she ran back to the other end of the room, her arm fell off, the one that was holding my leg.
   I got my leg out of her hand and got back on my remaining foot, and I started tickling her neck. Since she still had both her legs, she was able to avoid it better than I was, but I got in a couple of good ones before my waist came apart. My lower half fell back on the floor again, and I wrapped my arms around her shoulders to keep myself from falling completely.
   With me occupied with trying to stay up, Cassie's severed arm gave up on tickling my foot and made its way across the floor to my hips. She went right past my other leg and started rubbing her hand against my crotch. We were still both fully dressed, and likely to remain so as long as we were in pieces, but I was certainly starting to get into the swing of things. I was about to start playing along when Cassie's torso fell off of her hips and landed on the floor, with me still clutching it. Since my arms were likely to fall off at any minute, I quickly undid my shirt and reached around to do the same for Cassie. I turned to one side and saw Cassie's head, eyes closed and breathing heavily, so I quickly grabbed it and pulled it close. I held her head to mine with one hand and massaged some part of her with my other. I wasn't entirely sure which part, but it didn't make much difference at that point.
   The rest of the separations came quickly after that, and before long our heads were lying in a heap, along with our other body parts. Anything of ours that was touching the other one was rubbing for all it was worth. It was the clumsiest lovemaking either of us had ever attempted, but it was definitely the most memorable.
   When the seven minutes were up, we helped each other get back together and dressed, and when we rejoined the others, we found them playing a variant on that pool game where people sit on each other's shoulders and try to knock each other over, except that Mike had separated each team into halves and swapped them, so a woman's torso was riding a man's legs or vice versa. A couple of the other girls were seductively playing around with each other's separated parts, since Mike's parties tended to attract the kind of women that like to attract men by making out with other women. It was working, too. They stopped what they were doing and applauded when we came back in, though. Mike congratulated us on our victory, and then we all got together as he announced the next game.
   Having already won once, Cassie and I were a lot less competitive the next time around and were more willing to get into the spirit of the thing with the others. Another pair won that time, but I didn't much care. I still called the whole night a win.
   The following week, Cassie and I met up with Mike and asked him if he could teach us some of his stuff. I thought that maybe we could help him arrange a party or two in the future, but my main reason was more obvious. Cassie had really enjoyed the games, especially the bonus round, and she wanted to try some of that in more intimate circumstances. Mike said sure, he'd love to have us help him out, and he always liked teaching people how to do the things he could do. Of course, he wasn't an idiot. He knew exactly why we wanted him to teach us magic. It was the same reason he used it so much himself. He didn't mind, though. He wished us the best of luck.