cybrpunk.com

The magician

This is a crosspost from DarknessWithin.net.

I remember one time when I was eight years old and my parents took me to a county fair. It wasn’t our county as ours didn’t have fairs worth mentioning but the next nearest one to us. They always had the best fairs with ponies, demolition derbies, funnel cakes, lemonade and my personal favorite: a magician.

Since as long as I could remember at that point, I was fascinated with magicians. My Dad always harrumphed and said it was all fake, but at least Mom encouraged my fantasies as a child. When I went to a see a magician, I’d hang on their every word and their every motion. I’d gasp at the appropriate times and clap like a lunatic at the end of the show. To me, magic was real and I knew that when I grew up, I would be a great magician too. That is, until the county fair.

You see, up till that point I had always been a spectator. Spectators are safe in their seats and safe in the knowledge that it’s just a show, no matter what their beliefs. That day however, the magician asked for a volunteer. As fascinated as I was with magic, for some reason I didn’t want to be a volunteer. Something about this man on stage sent my skin crawling up and down my spine when he looked at me. I did not raise my hand and tried to make myself as small as possible as the other children frantically waved their arms in the arms in the air while simultaneously making sounds like constipated monkeys. I would have crawled in my Mother’s pocket at that point if I could have. I watched the magician cover his eyes with one hand and make a grand gesture of pointing out at the audience and sweeping his hand back and forth across the crowd. And when his finger stopped while it was pointing in my direction I knew that it must have been one of the other children with their arms in the air that he meant. He uncovered his eyes and his eyes immediately locked with mine.

“Come on up, boy!” called the man from the stage. He grinned at me and the assembly of kids exhaled in a single disappointed sigh.

I looked at my Dad and he said “Go on up, boy” without even turning to look at me. He never called me ‘boy’. I swung my head around to look at my Mom and she looked all excited and started pushing at my back while saying “Go on dear, you’re holding up the show.” She knew how much I liked magic so she must have assumed that I would live for this moment. I told her I didn’t want to go but she pushed me hard enough to stand me up from the bench. Standing I felt the envious stares of every child in the crowd. Again my Mother started pushing me as the man on stage called out “Come on boy, you’re holding up the show.” I did a double-take between him and my Mom and I think I started shaking.

I’m not sure which was worse: the feeling I got that something weird was going on or the ridicule I would take from the other kids for ruining the show. I wanted to turn and run but I decided to be the brave young man instead and slowly trudged my way to the steps leading to the stage. As I mounted the steps, the crowd cheered for me as the magician called out “Let’s hear it for our volunteer!”

Now up until this point, I hadn€™t seen an assistant or anything of the sort on stage. Most of the tricks he’d done were pretty standard fare with nothing more than the props he kept on a small table to his right. However as I reached the top of the stairs I noticed that there was now a large box behind him that wasn’t there before. I know that he hadn’t moved and I didn’t see anyone else on stage but that box was now there and it was impossible to miss. It was the size of a large trunk and painted in bright purples, yellows and greens in mysterious patterns. I snapped my view to the edge of the stage near the curtain. I thought I saw something in the corner of my eye: something small and shadowy sneaking off backstage. Of course there was nothing there when I looked.

The magician gently grabbed my shoulder and turned me towards the audience. He spoke into the microphone and asked me my name. I just stared at him when he swung the mic to me but before I could say anything he brought the mic back to his own mouth and said “Chris, you say? That’s an excellent name!” He was right. Chris is my name but I never told him that. I looked out at my parents and my Mom just waved and smiled and my father barely nodded an acknowledgment. Maybe my parent’s talked to the man next to me before the show. That’s the only thing that made sense. The man started talking again.

“The trick you are about to see is a very difficult one to perform at such a venue. This is a common stage for all performances and I cannot have set anything up ahead of time. So what you will witness will seem very strange indeed. I will place this boy in the box you see behind me. I will then cast my magic spell and open the box and he will have disappeared!” At a gesture the colorful box behind us collapsed as the walls all fell outwards to reveal absolutely nothing inside. The audience “Ooooh’d” appropriately.

“I will then re-assemble the box,” again I found myself doing a double-take as I looked at the box again and saw it was completely whole again, ” and cast my spell to bring the boy back to us once more. Where will he go? No one knows, but fear not, he will return to us completely unharmed.” I remember wondering why no one else seems to have noticed the box. I also remembering that I thought maybe stuff was just going on behind me and I wasn’t noticing. Either way I wished I could be anywhere but on that stage at the time.

The audience clapped as he turned me around to face the box and opened the top lid. It looked pretty solid to me and I couldn’t even see the seams where it came apart earlier. The interior of the box was painted solid black. It looked ordinary enough on the inside and it was certainly large enough for someone my size to crawl in without too much discomfort. For a moment I had actually thought maybe everything was perfectly normal and that my overactive imagination had just gotten the better of me. I relaxed a bit and stepped inside. Nothing unusual. He told me to lie down, pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around my legs. He said it would help but with what he didn’t say. He turned to the audience once more and I could hear him speaking just above me.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you just saw young Chris enter the box. Chris, raise your hand up and wave to the people.” I did as he asked and hoped that I was waving in the correct direction. “Now if everyone will be as quiet as possible, I will begin.”

He looked down at me as he was closing the lid and he winked at me and said “Good luck.” My panicked thoughts started up again as the lid closed and the sounds of his voice became quite muffled in the utter blackness inside the box. I started feeling around the bottom of the box for any sort of lever or handhold or something to trigger my disappearance. I’d seen enough magic acts to have a basic idea as to how some of the tricks worked. There should be some panel or something that opens to drop me below the stage just before the box falls open again. I remember how worried I was getting and how frantic my clawing for anything was getting and I feared that when the box fell open everyone would see me curled up in the middle of it and the trick would be ruined. I stopped to take a breath and I could hear the magician’s voice from outside. Just barely at first but louder and louder as he kept repeating some chant over and over. I couldn’t understand what he was saying but I had the sudden sensation that it was getting cold. It was 96 degrees outside in the dead of summer and I was lying stuck in a box with no ventilation and I was shivering. I knew that if I could see anything that it would be my own breath fogging up the interior and my teeth began to chatter. And then all of the sudden the chanting from outside stopped. I heard a loud smack on the top of the lid and the world fell out from beneath me.

For an instant I felt secure in that dropping sensation as it meant the trapdoor I couldn’t find had opened and I would be hitting some hay bales under the stage. Except that never happened. I felt like I was falling for what must have been a minute before the feeling of falling gave way to an almost weightless feeling. I could make out dim shapes and glows in the distance but I couldn’t tell the length of any given distance I saw. I remember looking all around me and it seemed like I was falling through storm clouds so black that no light could get through. I even saw flashes of dim light in the blackness that caught my attention but it didn’t look like lightning. It was from one of those flashes that I saw the things that have haunted my nightmares for the past twenty years.

From every direction I saw patches of shadow twist upon each other until they formed what could best be described as a human shape. They were made of living darkness with long fingers ending in hooks and blades and long tentacles of shadow flowing wildly from what passed for their heads. They showed no eyes or mouth or anything else but they had no problem approaching me. Their bodies tapered out into long snake-like lengths of darkness that faded into the surroundings. And as they got closer, I realized that I could now see my breath.

They came from every direction and stopped within feet of me to get a better look. They were behind, above, below and in front of me and I floated there. I tried to speak but found I had no voice. I could feel my mouth and throat doing what I asked but there was an absolute absence of sound. The creature closest to me moved in closer and looked at me face to face. My gasping breath made tiny ripples in its cloudlike form and it raised a hand and touched my cheek with the back of one taloned finger. I could feel the pressure of its touch and I turned my face away. I’m not sure how but it was then I saw it’s head change shape ever so slightly so that it looked like it was smiling, even without a face. I looked around and saw the same thing on every one of the creatures. The one in front of me backed away just a bit and just floated there for a moment. That was probably the last sane moment of my life.

The creature before me raised a hand and pressed a knife-like finger against my chest. It slashed that single finger across my body and didn’t realize that anything had happened till I looked down. A long cut was visible diagonally across my t-shirt and blood was already staining the fabric. And with the realization of what had happened came the pain. I tried to scream again but still nothing happened.

One creature each took one of my arms and held them straight out while another two each grabbed my legs and held them out as well. Their claws and blades and hooks for fingers digging into my wrists and ankles shredded the flesh and ground against my bones. My silent screams continued as my blood flowed away in every direction. I felt a claw rake against my back and pain turned my vision red as it happened again. The creature in front of me slowly reached out a hand and pushed its fingers through my t-shirt and my stomach just below my lowest ribs. I could feel flesh and muscle being slowly torn as it forced it’s hand deeper inside me. My breathing became painful from the shifting inside my body. I could feel it wrapping it’s claws around my lower ribs and the indescribable pain was making me light headed but I couldn’t faint. I looked down at the arm sticking out from my chest and saw past that another claw tear open my calf and rip out a chunk of muscle and tendons just above my socks. I felt tearing in both my arms and when I looked I saw more creatures cutting with knife fingers or hooking and tearing away strips of flesh or hunks of meat. It was when the one in front of me put its other hand against my chest that I returned my gaze at its face. It still looked like it was smiling as it ripped it other hand free. The entire left side of my body felt like it was on fire as I watched the thing blindly stare at the handful of broken rib bones in its hand.

Looking at my body there wasn’t a single spot not covered in blood or gaping wounds. My blood was flowing and making in droplets in mid air and I watched as the things continued to tear me to pieces. They never touched my head or face so I was able to watch the whole thing. I saw the exposed bones in my arms twist and rotate as I struggled to escape. I felt every wound inflicted on me and even when the flow of blood stopped I still watched. I knew I should have fainted long before and I should have been dead by that point but somehow I was still conscious and alive. And just as quickly as they had started, they all stopped at once. The creatures at my hands and feet released what was left of me and they all floated away from me. I’m not even sure when they faded away and became one with the amorphous world I was in but they were gone just the same and there I floated in nothingness. I tried to move my arms and legs and felt nothing but pain. One of my feet was dangling by a shred of flesh and nothing more. One of my hands was bent complete backwards against my arm. I couldn’t even cry. I was in shock.

Then came the first noise I had heard since the smack on the lid. It was the faint sound of a man chanting that could have been coming from anywhere. The sound grew louder and louder as the voice repeated the words over and over and I saw even the slight dim light of this world start to fade. I distinctly felt like I was falling once more and the pain increased even more than I could have imagined possible. The chanting became even louder and more persistent and it felt like I was picking up speed. Slowly the pain subsided and was replaced by a horrible itching over my whole body. I pulled my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them and the chanting came to a crescendo and stopped. I felt a solid surface slam against my side as my fall abruptly stopped and I found myself lying in utter blackness. I could feel sweat roll down my neck as my body tried to adjust to the extreme temperature difference.

I was blinded by the sunlight streaming down on me when the box collapsed around me. As my eyes slowly adjusted, I saw the magician standing next to me with his arm outstretched towards me. I heard it when he said, “And here he is once more ladies and gentlemen! Safe and sound and completely unharmed!”

I was still clutching my legs to my chest as I saw the crowd burst into applause and cheers. Couldn’t they see what had been done to me? Couldn’t they see that I was covered in my own blood? And I moved my arms to see that they were completely intact. I sat upright and saw that I didn’t have a mark on me except for some minor tears in my t-shirt and shorts. And even those seemed to disappear as I continued to look myself over. The magician took me by the arm and helped me to my feet. I looked and saw my parents standing in the audience, clapping for all they were worth. They had no idea what had happened to me. They had no idea what I had been through. They thought it was just a trick. It was with that realization that I remember falling to the ground and that’s the last memory I have of my childhood.

I woke up roughly three years later after being in a coma that no one could explain. No one except me, but no one would listen. I had years of therapy and appointments with psychologists and psychiatrists. I still see a shrink today only not as often. Now it’s just to keep the medications up to date. I’ve never been able to hold a steady job or keep a relationship for more than a few weeks at best. No one has ever believed a single word I’ve ever told them regarding what happened to me. Even now I wonder if I’ve exaggerated any of the details because I’ve been told for so long that it never happened. I’ve traveled all over the country, by any means I could find, looking for that magician. If I ever find him, I’ll make him tell me what he did to me that day. If I ever find him, I’ll make him tell me what I want. The collection of knives and hooks and other tools I keep in my backpack will make sure of that. And the smiling face that will haunt his dreams from that point on will be mine.