The Magician
The magician knows that what they are doing is by way of sleight of hand. They don’t pretend otherwise. But they create an illusion of the magical, of the supernatural, of the special.
This Magician stood at the stage, with his ravishing assistant Rhiannon, and he marvelled at the faces of the stunned children and teens. It never ceased to amaze him that after all of these years; he still had the power to wow.
Rhiannon jumped inside the crate. The Magician put a saw through the middle of the box and split the box into two. He put Rhiannon inside one of those cages you get at the zoo, threw a sheet over the cage, then pulled the sheet back and Rhiannon vanished. The Magician then reversed the trick and Rhiannon was back. The Magician was an artist. The crowd yelled and cheered.
“Thank you… thank you…” The Magician said.
The Magician was also a local man named Lawrence. He ran a local butcher shop. He volunteered within the community. He didn’t have children himself and he lived in a big house on Bunker Avenue – the house had six bedrooms and its own wine cellar. Five to six times a year Lawrence painted his face white, wore a purple robe, hired a local girl from the newspaper (or online as the times move) and performed for all the kiddies in the area. Lawrence was likeable, generous with his time and kind… People in the community trusted Lawrence…. They trusted Lawrence and loved the Magician.
After the show people thanked Lawrence personally and complimented the Magician. It took Lawrence a whole to differentiate between the two after the show. He hugged all the kids and they all adored the Magician.
After that, he was back to being just Lawrence again.
Plain old boring Lawrence.
But Lawrence could still conjure up his own magic tricks.
Rhiannon sat on the sofa with a margarita and complimented Lawrence on his big big house. She had those innocent, hungry eyes that the girls sometimes get. Lawrence snuck up behind her with his ‘magic’ saw. He’d slipped back into that purple robe and put the black eyeliner over his eyelids. This performance didn’t have an audience...
Lawrence’s first magic trick was the sleeping spell, it was cast in the margarita. It wasn’t magic of course, it was sleight of hand (and twenty five crushed lithium pills). The next magic trick was sawing in half, except it wasn’t in half, it was in about twenty seven separate pieces. And then there was making the girl disappear. That would involve quicklime and concrete. But the real magic was convincing the agency that the girl simply never turned up and probably ran off somewhere else to find a new job…
The Magician was loved by the community for his sleight of hand and false conjuring. But it was Lawrence that really made people disappear, twenty seven of them so far… Twenty eight after Rhiannon…
