No Tricks

“All right, kids,” I say, holding the pen upright with two fingers. “Watch the pen very closely.” As I wave my other hand around in vague circles, I steal a glance at my audience, and suppress a sigh of disappointment.

Twenty or so kids, all of them somewhere around seven or eight years old, sit in folding chairs arranged before me. Here and there, a small face is pointed my way, an expression of rapt attention, verging on wonder, gracing their features. Most of them, however, clearly couldn’t care less. They slump in boredom, shift and fidget, roll their eyes, impatient to get to the next thing that might grab their interest. I guess I should be grateful their parents took away their smart phones and tablets, or I wouldn’t even be getting this level of involvement.

“Are we all paying close attention?” I weave my hand in circles around the pen, then with a quick motion, I make it disappear. “And now it’s gone!”

One or two gasps come from the crowd, even an impressed grunt, but I swear if there were crickets around, I’d hear them better.

Kids these days have no respect for how difficult it’s gotten to pull off a magic show.

They spend all their time plugged in, eyes glued to their screens, watching the most mind-numbing stuff imaginable. It makes them jaded, gets them believing that everything is an illusion. A trick. For them, there just isn’t any real magic left in the world.

I’ll admit, they’re mostly right.

Mostly.

See, I do magic for a living. At least, that’s what I call it.

I’m sure they’ve all seen this trick done on YouTube or wherever, and they’re convinced it’s all sleight of hand and misdirection, though I doubt they know what those words mean.

Sure enough, I get called on it.

“It’s a trick!” shouts one obnoxious twerp. “It’s tucked up your sleeve!”

“No tricks, young sir.” With a fixed smile on my face, I turn over both my arms, hands open and fingers splayed. I tug up one sleeve, then the other, shaking my arms. “I don’t see it. Do you?”

“You just dropped it… or something,” my not-so-erudite critic persists, lower lip thrust out belligerently. Well, maybe somebody didn’t get enough cake.

“Okay, how about something a little harder to hide up my sleeve.” With a flourish, I snatch up a top hat from my array of props. I place it flat crown down on the table, a table lacking a cloth or skirt or fringe, anything that might conceal a secret compartment beneath its surface. Then I set a cage on the table, one containing a plump young rabbit. This gets a little more attention, a few more faces actually turning my way. Amazing how the sight of a living animal can still impress today’s youth. Or maybe not. Either way, it’s a little depressing. “Who would like to see me make Mr. Fluffy-Tail vanish?”

All of three hands go up. Wow. Tough crowd.

Regardless, I remove the rabbit from his cage, my motions swift and smooth. I hold the bunny aloft, hovering him over the top hat.

“Now, watch closely,” I say, moving the complacent bunny in slow circles. Then I lower him into the hat and quickly spread my hands. A few of the kids lean in, eyes narrowing. Grinning, I sweep up the hat, turn it over and tap it, so that they can all see that it’s empty. I have to be quick about this part; I know what can happen if I take too long, and I’m not eager to go through that again. Finally, I set the hat down, reach a hand into its depths, and pull it out again.

Mr. Fluffy-Tail sits in my palm, as supremely unconcerned as a low-dose tranquilizer can make him.

“Ta-da!” I cry.

A few more gasps. A couple of ‘ooohs.’

Like I said. Tough crowd.

“It’s just another trick,” says my number one detractor.

Again, I plaster a false smile on my face. “There are no tricks in my show, young sir. Just magic.”

“There’s no such thing as magic,” the kid insists, hunching in his chair like an irritable toad.

My smile gets a little wistful as I imagine what I’d like to make disappear next. If that kid only knew…

You see, I can do magic. Well, one kind of magic: I can make anything disappear. No, really, I can. Not sure how or why, but it’s something I’ve been able to do since, well, as long as I can remember.

I just know that one day I got caught with something I shouldn’t have. I’d been told over and over again not to take my older brother’s baseball cards. Not sure why I was so fascinated by them; it probably had something to do with the way he made them sound so amazing. So, with every adult in the room demanding that I open my hands and show them what I was holding behind my back, I wished with all my might that I could make the little cardstock rectangle in my hand disappear.

And it did.

More or less.

I was like a little hole opened in the air, one that only I could see, a tiny, doorway leading… somewhere else. And I just put the stolen baseball card in it, sliding it out of my sweaty palm and into nowhere. Just like that, it disappeared. I got off scot-free.

Never saw the card again, of course; it took me a while to realize that if I left whatever I slipped through one of my little magic doorways for more than a few seconds, it was most likely gone for good. A few times I was able to get something back, but let’s just say the experience wasn’t pleasant.

Nowadays I’ve learned enough “real” magic to make it look like a trick, to keep people from realizing how I was really doing it. I mean, I’d never be able to explain to anybody that I could slip things in and out of our realm of existence.

So, yeah, coins, cards, pens, bunnies, and pigeons, all go in… and for the most part all come out. I try to avoid doing the “trick” on people. The stakes are a lot higher, let’s say.

Still, sometimes the temptation is powerful.

“All right,” I say, catching the loudmouthed kid’s gaze and holding it. “What would you like to see me make disappear?”

“Maybe you could make yourself disappear?” he suggests with a snide grin. “That’d be something to see.”

That gets snickers from a lot of the other kids.

“I could,” I say, gritting my teeth behind my rictus smile. “But I’ve already been paid, and I’m sure your parents want to get their money’s worth.” You know, I think I’ve had it with this punk; time to bend my personal rules a bit. “Tell you what: I bet I can make you disappear.”

This challenge makes him hesitate, his eyes darting back and forth, checking to see if this kind of thing is something his mom should put a stop to. But she’s on her phone, paying no attention whatsoever to what’s going on.

All the better.

A few of his friends egg him on.

“Do it, Freddy.”

“Yeah, Freddy, go on.”

Freddy realizes that he’s on the spot, and can’t back down without losing whatever he’s gained by being such a troll.

So, pugnacious look fixed firmly on his chubby features, he slides off his chair and stomps to the front, coming to stand right in front of me.

I experience the briefest moment of doubt, anxiety at what I remember from once or twice in the past. This might not be such a good idea…

Freddy senses weakness in my hesitation. “What’s the matter? Afraid your tricks won’t work?”

My eyes narrow and I purse my lips. Okay, that does it.

“Stand right here, young sir.” I gently guide the kid around the table, turning him to face the audience. He comes along readily enough, stands there with his arms crossed. I produce a large piece of black polyester, shimmering and smooth. Leaning close, I whisper in his ear. “Now, close your eyes and keep your arms close to your body. Got it?”

He snorts. “Whatever.”

I straighten, take the edges of the cloth in both hands, and hold it before the stubborn little punk, obscuring him from view. “And now…”

I waggle my hands, causing the cloth to shift and waver, the light playing across its surface in mesmerizing patterns. With the crowd of children focusing on the cloth, I make one of those special doorways, right at my subject’s feet. The kid doesn’t even have time to gasp before he’s gone, sucked down into who knows where.

I start counting as, with an exaggerated flourish, I whip the cloth aside to reveal that Freddy has indeed vanished.

Now that gets gasps and murmured ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from every tyke before me.

“Where did he go?”

“How did you do that?”

“Is Freddy all right?”

The kids are starting to get excited, anxious, and one or two of the parents are looking at me and frowning.

“Not to worry, not to worry!” I hasten to exclaim, still counting silently. I don’t have long to bring him back, but I can’t resist getting the full effect. “Freddy is still right in front of you; you just can’t see him.”

“Wow,” one kids in front says, his mouth hanging open. “That’s some trick.”

“No tricks here,” I say with a wink. “Just magic.” Okay, now I’m pushing it. Time to bring Freddy back.

I shake out the cloth once again, hold it up where Freddy used to be. Again, I wiggle and weave the fabric back and forth, sending reflections glimmering in the children’s faces. At the same time, I slip one hand into the doorway I created, feeling around. Sure enough, there’s Freddy’s hair… his face… shoulder… and arm. I grip the arm, feeling relieved—I can’t always be one hundred percent sure that what I put there will stay right where I left it—and start to pull him out. He slides easily at first, his size and weight rendered negligible by the properties of the place in which he currently resides.

Then he stops moving, as if something is holding him in place. I blink, pull harder. Freddy doesn’t move.

I was afraid of that.

Then I feel a tug. Yep, a tug. Apparently, something else is in there. It has a hold of Freddy, and it doesn’t want to let go.

You see, for all the time I’ve been doing this trick, I still don’t know too much about the place on the other side. But let’s just say that I think I’m not the only person who puts stuff there. And some of the stuff that is there… well, it doesn’t seem to be inanimate. Or particularly friendly. So, yeah, once or twice something like this has happened. I mean, Mr. Fluffy-Tail isn’t exactly my first bunny prop, okay?

Swallowing my sudden spike of anxiety, I take a firmer grip on Freddy, and pull harder.

The grip of whatever is holding him tightens, refusing to release its hold.

I’m not letting go of Freddy, despite my not being particularly fond of him. There’s simply no way I can explain to my audience—or Freddy’s parents—that I lost their son to some kind of extra-dimensional something-or-other.

Fortunately, I have a plan for just this situation. Obscuring my actions with the cloth, I slip two fingers into a pocket, pull out a pen. Taking careful aim, I drop it into the portal. It bounces off Freddy’s head and keeps going.

For a minute, I think that’s all that will happen. Then the hold on Freddy slackens; whatever has him is apparently distracted by my disappearing pen trick.

Taking full advantage, I pull hard on Freddy’s arm, yanking him away from whatever had him and pulling him out of the doorway.

I breathe a profound sigh of relief as I close the portal beneath the kid’s feet and whisk the cloth aside.

“Ta-da!” I cry, my voice a bit more strained than usual.

Again, more appreciative cries ring out, from an audience that has no idea exactly how amazing my magic feat really was.

Freddy opens his eyes, a puzzled frown on his face. He looks up at me, blinks a few times. His mouth opens and closes. “I disappeared, didn’t I?”

“That’s right,” I say. Thankfully, I know things are very different on the other side, and Freddy won’t have any memory of having experienced anything. It’s like there’s no time in there; from your perspective, you simply go in, and come out, with nothing in between. So I’m certain he won’t have any knowledge of being caught in a tug-of-war between me and… well, something else.

At least, I’m pretty sure.

Mostly.

Even so, for the foreseeable future, I’m going to have to think long and hard before I do any more vanishing tricks with precocious little children.

Freddy frowns, scratches his head. “Okay,” he says. “Maybe that was really a good trick.”

I manage a shaky smile. “There are no tricks in my show, Freddy,” I say.

“Just magic.”