Joe Hendricks, a.k.a. The Great Mandragorum, urged the truck into the passing lane and put his foot to the floor. His effort was met by only the slightest reaction from the rented leviathan.
Shit.
It was not his habit to be late for a show, especially one as important to the client as this one. After their regular truck had blown a head gasket in Illinois, he'd been doing his level-headed best to push its temporary replacement to the limit.
At least the girls will get there tonight. I'll be lucky to get there by the morning. Kurnow will be pissed. I'd better call with another update.
He reached for his cell phone as a sudden bump jarred it off the dashboard and onto the floor. He leaned over to pick it up and heard a loud bang. He looked up just in time to wrench the wheel hard to the right. Two cars had collided in the middle of the road and he was veering to miss them as three more cars piled into the wreck.
He succeeded in running off the side of the road.
And then the truck flipped over.
Everything went dark.
* * *
It was several days after Anna's disappearance that Callie finally heard from her twin. Callie was walking in town, trying to decide on a restaurant for lunch.
Hey there, kiddo.
"Whaa?!!" Callie was so startled that she nearly toppled off of the spiked heels she was wearing. A passerby stopped to check if she was alright, though Callie suspected it had less to do with her sudden outburst and more to do with the very brief sundress that she wore. She ducked around a corner and into an alley before speaking again.
"Anna?"
In the flesh. Or rather, in your flesh, I suppose.
"Beg pardon?"
You can't remember where I went?
"Considering the number of simultaneous orgasms I was having at the time, I don't think I can be blamed for being hazy on what happened to be going on around me. You'd packed some bags. I figured you diddled me a bit and then slipped out while I was recovering."
Not so much "slipped out" as "slipped in."
"Now wait a second." Despite the superficial differences between the twins, they still thought quite a bit alike…and Callie was beginning to catch on. "What I thought was your hand was…."
Yup. Me. I climbed up your glory hole and snuggled up for a little vacation. Brought my pajamas, a reading light, and a pile of books...been havin' a great time.
"But you can't shrink." Callie's hand went to the talisman, presently an emerald stud in her ear.
Yup. I'm still wearing the controller. See?
Callie suddenly felt vertigo and her dress billowed out around her. She discovered that she was naked and surrounded by what appeared to be yards of fabric.
You can shrink. I'm still full size. Call it an extra-dimensional space, if you like. The talisman really can do anything to you while you wear it. Are we in town?
"Yes."
Callie felt vertigo again and she was once again full-sized. She readjusted her dress.
Good. Just got a call from Nina.
"Nina?" Nina had been one of Geoff's assistants until about six months ago. "Wait a second. A call?"
I have the cell phone, too. Didn't think you'd miss it. Listen, we don't have much time. An interesting opportunity has cropped up and we have to move fast. Time to catch a train....
* * *
Kurnow sat slumped at his desk, his head in his hands. The manager of Klub Xtreme, normally upbeat and cheerful, was about as morose as a human being could be. He'd spent months organizing this show, lining up potential investors who might be convinced afterward that the club was an enterprise worth backing. And now his main act was in the hospital with two broken legs and a concussion. And all of the Great Mandragorum's props and stage illusions were lost, blown to splinters in the same road accident that had injured the magician. All of his assistants, who had traveled separately, had arrived, but with neither magician nor props, they were useless. It was five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, four hours until show time, and the only other magic acts available on short notice were of the birthday-party-balloon-animal variety and highly unlikely to be able to put on the type of highly erotic show that Klub Xtreme would need on this night.
His forehead hit the surface of the desk with a clunk.
He heard a small voice. "Er….Mr. Kurnow?" It sounded familiar…one of Mandragorum's stranded assistants…Tina? Nina? He grunted assent.
"We all called around like you asked…and I was able to find someone who might be able to help us."
Kurnow looked up. Nina, a pretty black girl in colorful shorts and tank top, nervously shifted her weight from foot to foot like she'd bolt were he to make a sudden movement. Of course, then she would have collided with the woman who stood behind her. Kurnow sat up straight in his chair as the woman moved around Nina to offer him her hand.
She was gorgeous, dressed in a short green sundress that showed off her long tan legs and strained to hold in her large breasts. Luxurious chestnut hair flowed down over her shoulders. "Hi," she said, shaking his hand firmly. "I'm Callie."
Nina chirped in. "Callie and I both danced in Geoff Neville's traveling show."
"A dancer? I already have a room full of dancers. I need a magician." Then to Nina: "I'm hoping for your sake that she's here to get me a magician?"
Callie smiled and his heart nearly broke when she happily declared, "I am the magician!" Her smile faded as Kurnow's forehead made contact with the desk again.
His muffled voice rose up. "I don't suppose you have any experience as a magician, do you?"
"Well, no…not with shows…not as such….but…"
"No experience." He lifted his head. "Listen lady. If I don't give my investors and their friends a highly erotic, highly imaginative magic show in less than four hours, I'm going to lose this theatre, my house, and likely the shirt off my back. Now I have no doubt that you got erotic coming out the wazoo. And it is a very nice wazoo, I must admit. But I got no evidence you can do even the tiniest bit of mag…"
His voice faded away as he stared at her hand, which she had extended toward him as though to protect herself from his harsh words. She looked at her hand and started, as though she were as surprised to see the playing card in her hand as he was. Then she smiled. Soon she was producing card after card. It seemed a good trick, considering her dress was sleeveless. When she'd exhausted an entire deck, she began finding other objects…a cell phone from her cleavage, a bra from her mouth, an alarm clock from under the hem of her dress.
"Nice," he said. "But we're going to need some larger scale illusions. And while you've shown me magic and while you certainly have more erotic than you know what to do with, I need to see some erotic magic…"
She seemed to consider for a moment, almost as though she were having a silent conversation with herself. She turned back to him.
"For that, you're going to have to talk to my sister."
With that, she pulled her dress up over her head and was stark naked before Kurnow had a chance to appreciate the transition. Nina's eyes went wide and Kurnow made a small choking sound as Callie reached down and began fingering her pussy. After a moment's manipulation, it appeared that she had managed to grasp her very prominent clitoris between her thumb and forefinger. Casting an alluring look at the theatre manager, who had, without realizing, ceased to breathe for a moment, she slowly began to pull her clitoris upward across her belly as though she were unzipping a zipper. And like a zipper, passage of the clitoris seemed to open gap in her skin.
Slowly, she unzipped herself – first her belly, then her chest, between her magnificent breasts, up her neck, and finally up to the underside of her chin, where she stopped. Then her hands began pulling the skin of her face back, and her face, chestnut hair attached, fell back like a loose hood, revealing a short shock of black hair and a pale face that was otherwise the match of the one that had just fallen empty and limp behind the newly exposed head.
"Hi," she said, smiling. "I'm Anna. Pleased to meet you." She began quickly removing Callie's skin as though she were removing a one-piece ski outfit. Unlike Callie, she was clothed, wearing a short, tight black miniskirt and a corset. Before she had finished removing Callie, she reached down to remove Callie's shoes. She then slipped Callie off completely and placed the spike-heel shoes on her own feet. She stood up and draped Callie's empty skin over her arm as though it were a pair of panty hose.
"Anything else you want to know?"
It took Kurnow a moment to realize that she had addressed him. He had some time to compose his thoughts, though, as she looked to have remembered something and seemed to be fishing around for something inside of Callie's skin. Then, somehow, though it didn't seem possible (had anything he'd seen recently seemed possible?), she proceeded to extract two suitcases and a large duffel from within.
"Callie'd skin me alive if I left those behind," she confided to a stunned Nina, oblivious to the pun she'd just made.
Kurnow had gathered his wits. "You're right for the show, but it can't just be you and your sister up there. This has to be a big production – can you work with Mandragorum's girls?
Anna handed Nina the empty skin. "Here, try this on."
Nina looked at Kurnow, who nodded. Nina removed her shoes and began pulling Callie's legs on over her own. Callie's lower body slipped on over her shorts without showing any distortion. When she'd pulled Callie's head on over her own, Callie's face smiled. Finally, she was zipping her clitoris back down the front of her body, replacing it within her pussy.
Callie looked at Kurnow. "Yes. Yes we can."
She looked at Anna. "Hey there, sis. Nice shoes."
Callie turned back to Kurnow, who was goggling at her nude body again. "So are we hired?"
Kurnow nodded weakly. "Do you have any props?"
Anna hauled one of the suitcases up onto the desk and opened it. It was empty save a piece of paper, which she handed to him. "That's a list of common items that we'll need for props – you shouldn't have any problem getting a hold of those before show time. As far as more specialized props go, well…"
She paused, turning to pass her hand in front of Callie's face. Callie's expression relaxed and her eyes became dull and glassy. She opened Callie's mouth and removed what looked like a small marble, which she dropped down the front of her corset. Then Anna grabbed both sides of her twin's head and began to turn it. After passing the expected 90o, there was popping noise and Callie's head came off in her hands. She reached over and dropped the head into the open suitcase. A little quick work and the rest of Callie's body, broken up into twelve segments, joined the head in the suitcase. Anna reached down, picked the green sundress up off the floor and tossed it on top of the pile.
"I'm going to go down to talk to the rest of the girls and prepare for the performance. Please do not allow anyone to disturb us."
Then she walked out of the room, carrying the suitcase full of Callie with her as she went.
* * *
This will be fun. You think we can pull it off?
No problem. Real magic means not having to sweat the small stuff.
That's nice, but how do we do magic with multiple assistants without giving ourselves a headache trying to transfer the talisman from girl to girl?
Simple. We don't have to.
Huh?
You think that you're in little pieces in that suitcase just to impress Kurnow? I wanted to test a theory.
Theory?
Well, we know that while the control talisman is singular and immutable, the transforming talisman can take any form at the whim of the controller. And that the individual wearing that talisman can be transformed and manipulated in the same manner. These transformations can occur one on top of the other with no need to return to the initial form in between. Now both the individual and the talisman can be subdivided into any number of pieces. So why not subdivide the talisman and transfer it to multiple individuals, all of whom could then be manipulated separately and simultaneously?
That sounds like a great theory, but what makes you so certain that this can actually be put into practice?
Because Nina is currently a small cat's-eye marble nestled quite happily between my boobs.
And I'm in pieces.
At the same time.
Very, very nice.
* * *
And it was on that night that the investors in Klub Xtreme and their friends witnessed a show that they would not soon forget. But it wasn't the dancers who danced, alluring as they might have been, or the comedians who capered, though they were as funny as funny could be, who made the show a once in a lifetime experience for those who witnessed it. It was the magicians, a pair of twins, nearly identical in so many ways, magicians whom none in the audience, studied as they may be of the world of stage illusion and those who walked in it, had ever heard of. They gave no names and they told no stories…and for years after, those that became their ardent fans and admirers on that single night would try to seek them out. But they would discover nothing. As suddenly as they appeared, they had disappeared again…and those that saw them were left only with memories:
A beautiful woman wearing a dark cape and nothing else strolls out onto the stage. She unfastens her cape and swirls it around her, revealing when it stops that she is now two women. She steps away, gloriously nude, as her sister, her body obscured by the cloak, steps forward. When she whips the cloak away, she reveals that she too is naked, but unlike her sister is covered in tattoos. These are tattoos in full color of lovely women in revealing costumes. They coil around her limbs and across her magnificent body. Though they are part of her skin, they seem as though they could jump out onto the stage at any moment.
Which, as her twin passes the dark cloak, now become a black sheet, in front her, is exactly what they do. One pass of the sheet and a tattoo on her right leg becomes a dark-skinned beauty in a white bikini who stands up from where she sits grasping the magician's leg and steps aside so that the other magician can pass the sheet over her sister again. Girl after girl appears as the tattoos disappear, and soon eight beautiful women stand on the stage with the two nude twins.
Then, the nude magician, the one who had until recently been covered in tattoos, embraces her twin from behind. One arm reaches around, covering her sister's breasts while the other hand steals down to grasp her pussy. As the assistants drape the dark sheet over her, she is heard to say into her sister's ear the word "silver, please."
When the sheet is removed, the other twin is revealed to be alone again, but now clothed in a skintight silver gown that can barely contain her. She slides her hands down her sides slowly and smiles.
And then the show truly begins.
* * *
The magician introduces Katie and Clea, two lithe dancers who, she says, get on very well with one another. Katie is dressed in a bikini top and a stiff, oddly conical miniskirt. Clea wears an emerald snakeskin body stocking. She bends over backwards and puts her head between her knees to demonstrate her snake-like flexibility.
With a wave from the magician, a rope drops from the space above the stage. Clea grabs hold of the rope, wraps a length of it around her waist, and is lifted into the air. Below her, Katie does a handstand. Her skirt remains open and rigid and her legs extend from the opening in a V shape. Two assistants take up positions on either side, holding her legs.
The magician waves her arms in a flourish and Clea is slowly lowered. After a moment, her foot is level with the bottom of Katie's skirt. Then both her feet disappear into the opening. Slowly, Clea is lowered into the opening, appearing to disappear into Katie, who remains standing on her hands. When Clea is in up to her hips, she unwinds the rope from around her waist and grabs Katie's legs, pushing herself further into the opening. Bit by bit she disappears…breasts, shoulders, head, arms, and finally her hands. When she has vanished, Katie flips over onto her feet and whips away the skirt. She is naked from the waist down and cleanly shaven. And there is no sign of Clea.
Katie spreads her legs slightly and the magician kneels down next to her. She reaches out her hand and begins stroking Katie's labia. Katie shudders and gasps and something begins to emerge from her pussy. It is a snake. It is a long snake. The magician pulls three meters of snake from Katie, holds it up to the audience and says "Say hi to Clea. I think she makes a wonderful boa." She lifts Clea the snake down onto her shoulders and parades around the stage.
Two assistants pass the dark sheet in front of her and the snake becomes an iridescent green feather boa. The magician smiles. Her outfit is complete.
* * *
Seven assistants line up on the stage. Each stands in a shallow glass dish about the diameter of a dinner plate. Each is dressed in a skintight bodysuit of one of the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet in order. The magician, still clothed in her twin, drapes the dark sheet over the first, a tall Asian woman in red. With a snap of her fingers, what appears to be steam hisses out of the surface of the sheet and the assistant loses form. The sheet collapses to the ground. The magician bends over and gently lifts the sheet, revealing a pile of red dust in the glass dish.
The magician then moves down the line, disintegrating each of her assistants in turn. By the third, the theatre has become noticeably more humid. By the sixth, some audience members are forced to wipe condensation from their glasses. Finally, in the end, the magician is left with seven piles of dust in all the colors of the rainbow, all that remains of the seven beautiful assistants who walked, breathed, and smiled no more than a few minutes before.
"Whoops!" she exclaims, holding up the end of her boa, which was once her assistant Clea. "Someone's been left out." She retrieves another plate and sets it on the floor. She removes the boa and holds it above the plate. Suddenly it bursts into flame as the magician pulls her hand away. The boa is completely consumed and a pile of white dust is seen settling onto the plate.
The magician moves to pick up the plates, but can't seem to decide how to carry them all or, for that matter, where to put them. She's alone on the stage and there's too much to do. So she shrugs and begins to strip. Slowly she peels her silvery sister from her luscious body. First one breast is revealed, then the second; then she's sliding the gown down her belly. Soon enough, her twin's fabric form lies puddled at her feet. Nude, she wanders offstage and comes back dragging what looks to be a five-foot-tall pole affixed to a round, flat stand. She stands it upright in the middle of the stage and drapes the silver dress over the top of the pole. Then she drapes the sheet over the dress and pole and before it has even come to rest, she pulls it away, revealing her twin, fully human again.
But stuck. Though human, she is still attached to the stand via the pole, which penetrates her and prevents her from moving. She is slick with sweat and obviously enjoying the experience, but as they say…the show must go on. She leans forward and her sister slowly pulls the pole out. Nearly three feet of the pole's length is withdrawn from her vagina, which seems impossible, but the audience is able to believe anything is possible at this point.
Together they drag a table covered in white plastic into the middle of the stage. The front legs are shorter than the rear legs, so the top surface of the table is easily seen by the audience. On it, drawn in black, is the outline of a woman's body. One twin walks offstage again while the other picks up a plate of green dust and begins pouring it on the table, careful to keep within the lines. She then covers it with the cloth. Her sister returns with a brush and a watering can, which she hands to her. The magician sprinkles water over the surface of the cloth and then gives the edge of the sheet a snap as one might when readjusting a bedsheet. The sheet billows up slightly. When it comes to rest, the outline of a human form can be seen underneath. She whips the sheet away and shouts "Hello, Nina!" revealing a beautiful black woman in a green bodysuit. Nina sits up and waves to the audience. She begins to move to get off the table, but the magician throws the sheet back over her, shouting "Bye, Nina!" A puff of steam and Nina is again reduced to green dust.
The other magician is brushing the dusty remains of Nina off the table and back into her dish when she shivers. Her twin asks, "You cold? Me too. Hold on a second." She reaches into the dish and grabs a handful of green dust. She grips her hand tightly and ever so gently lets a couple of drops of water fall on top of it. Then she reaches into her hand and begins pulling out a length of green fabric, which turns out to be Nina's costume. She tosses it to her sister and does the same with a handful of orange dust (formerly a buxom blonde named Crystal). Soon they are clothed in green and orange and ready to continue.
What follows seems to the audience to be more like madcap experimentation than magic performance. The audience is, of course, none the wiser, not knowing the true nature of the forces at work before them and assuming that what is in truth inspired improvisation is, rather, a carefully choreographed tour de force, rehearsed so thoroughly that is seems effortless and spontaneous. The two magicians, armed with sheet, watering can, and brush, begin reconstituting their assistants in strange manners. One woman, poured into two piles, reappears divided into two pieces at the waist. Another, piled up differently, is reconstituted in two pieces, but divided vertically down the middle. Only a small handful of one girl is used, resulting in a pretty but disembodied brunette head, smiling but puzzled.
Nina is reconstituted again. As expected, she is nude. She doesn't seem to notice, though – only half of her remaining dust has been reconstituted and only her front half is present, set on the surface of the table like a color bas-relief. When she is again reduced to dust, the twins sweep her down to the lower half of the silhouette and pour half the pile of orange dust onto the top half. A sprinkle of water and pale, blonde Crystal is rehydrated, her large breasts bobbing and exposed. But the lower half of her body is Nina's, dark and sleek. The twins let her walk around the stage to try out her new legs before guiding her back to the table. Soon, orange and green dusts are being swept back into their respective piles.
The twins begin taking requests. What would the audience like to see? Headless assistants, assistants with multiple limbs, assistants with none – no possibility goes unexplored. Top halves joined at the waist. Lower halves joined at the waist. Whatever will please the crowd. Blue and yellow powders are mixed and two identical girls are reconstituted. Are they Winnie or Katie? They are both. The twin magicians wrap them together in the sheet and they are restored to their individual identities. Finally, it is time to move on and one by one all the girls are sprinkled onto the table, rehydrated, and restored. Together they take a bow.
* * *
"One more quick trick before intermission!" declares the magician. "I need a pair of volunteers from the audience. Volunteers without shame!" The audience roars and hands are raised. The magician points and a couple walks up onto the stage. The man is middle-aged, perhaps handsome in his time. The woman is younger…and stunning, a sultry Mediterranean beauty with smoldering eyes. The magician whispers in her ear…she smiles and begins to remove her clothing. The other magician and all the assistants climb up onto the table, crowding onto it. The female volunteer, now naked and glorious, climbs up onto the table also.
The magician addresses the man. "You sir are faced with a daunting task! How well do you know your Lady Love? Can you identify her among this bevy of beauties? Oh you think so? Well, let me make it a little harder…" She hands the sheet to women on the table they hold it out so that all are obscured behind it. Then, as the magician waves her arms, the sheet collapses. All the women, including the volunteer and the magician's twin, have vanished.
Or so it seems at first. Closer inpection reveals that the table is now covered with small mounds of flesh. The male volunteer stands agog and nearby audience members gasp. They're pussies. Ten women have been reduced to their genitalia, sitting disembodied upon the table.
"Good hunting, sir! Do you think you can find her now? Don't be afraid to touch." She runs her finger along two or three of the small fleshy clefts upon the table. They quiver. She gathers one up and holds it to her chest. "This one is mine…so to speak." She looks at it. "Hi Callie."
She looks up and addresses the audience. "It's intermission time, folks! We'll give this fellow some time to choose and when we come back we'll find out if he's right. Feel free to come up and help. Security will be watching…please don't try to take any of them home with you." And with that she strolls offstage to thunderous applause.
* * *
QUITE IMPRESSIVE.
Anna jumped, nearly dropping Callie. She peered around the dim dressing room.
SUCH POWER. WE MUST UNDERSTAND IT.
A dark figure emerged from the corner of the room.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
YOU ARE NOT THE POWER. THE POWER IS HERE.
Anna felt something rip inside, like claws through her mind. The control talisman on her finger began to glow. The glow intensified and floated over to the dark figure in the corner. Anna looked at her finger and screamed. The ring was gone.
CONTROL. THESE OTHERS ARE HELD IN THRALL. IT IS EASY TO RELEASE THEM.
The small mound of flesh that Anna gripped in her hand began to glow. Several more glowing green sprites floated in from outside the room. Anna hoped that the women had been restored and not trapped in their reduced states. Callie continued to glow.
THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT. IT IS HALF. AND YOU ARE HALF. ONE BEING DIVIDED. WE DO NOT CARE FOR THIS.
Anna felt strange. She looked down. Callie's pussy was quickly dissolving into her hand. As Callie vanished, memories flashed into her mind. Memories that were now hers. Her skin began to darken. Her hair lightened from black to chestnut and lengthened, falling down around her shoulders.
My name is Callie. My name is Anna. I am one person again.
A green glow left her and joined the others. She began to cry.
WE MUST STUDY THIS POWER. IT FASCINATES US. AND WE MUST STUDY YOU.
Callie felt a pressure. Incredible pressure. She was being smashed flat. And she was growing smaller. She'd been transformed many times, but this felt different. It was uncomfortable…rough and hard. She was not being manipulated for manipulation's sake. She realized, as consciousness left her, that she was being stored.
What remained of Callie, who had only minutes before been both Anna and Callie, fell to the floor. She was now a playing card. The queen of diamonds.
The card twitched and flew into the air, moving into orbit around the dark figure, joining the twin glows that had been the two matched talismans.
Then the figure stepped back into the corner and vanished.
TO BE CONTINUED…. In Part 6 - Rescue (available on Magic Stories Unlimited)