by Adam Bennett
“Yes, sir,” said the crewman.
He walked over to the box and peeked inside, making one last inspection of the props for his show’s finale — and what a finale it was going to be. To everyone else, it was just going to be a magic show. He laughed quietly to himself.
“Five minutes, Mr. Down,” The show’s director said as she came in to give him the update.
He nodded at her. Putting the finishing touches on his costume, he admired himself in the mirror for a moment and went over his brilliant plan in his mind one last time. When it was just one minute until showtime, Daniel went to the curtain and peeked out at the crowd. He looked for Jovana, but she was nowhere to found. He wasn’t worried. He knew she would be there and that there was going to be blood to clean up in the morning.
“AND HERE HE IS, MR. DANIEL DOWN!” the woman on the mic announced, and the crowd applauded at the introduction.
It was just after 8:00 PM, and Jovana was still in her room. She was having doubts about attending the show. Something didn’t feel right to her about the whole thing, and even Daniel seemed a little off to her. She went out onto her balcony and watched all the people below her running around the streets like ants. “Why shouldn’t I go?” she whispered to herself. “I deserve to be out.”
She put on the same dress she had been wearing the night she had met Daniel. She still wasn’t sure what to think of him, and even though something seemed off about him, part of her was captivated about what he’d said regarding her ex-fiancé. As she continued to get ready to go out, thoughts of her ex-fiancé still riddled her mind like bullets into a man in an old mob film. Hate crossed her face. “He deserves to die.”
When she walked into the theatre, she saw Daniel onstage with an audience member. She took a seat in the back. She knew she was extremely late.
“Okay, now put the card back in the deck. I’ll look away so I don’t see where it goes.” When Daniel turned his head away from his temporary assistant, he saw Jovana sit down. A devilish grin crossed his face. “Okay, now please shuffle the deck.” He watched as the man from the audience shuffled the cards, and then took the deck from him. “I’m going to have to ask you to stand back.”
The audience member did as was requested.
“I’m going to lay the cards out on this table, pick your card, and throw it across stage into that grinning Halloween pumpkin. Isn’t it spectacular?” Daniel laid the cards out on the table just as he said he was going to. He felt around with his hands and strategically picked one. When he had the one he wanted; he stepped behind a line on the stage. He aimed the card at the pumpkin and tossed it fifteen feet across the stage, where it entered the jack-o-lantern’s wide, grinning mouth. The audience burst into applause. “Sir, if I could ask you, please go and retrieve the card from the pumpkin and tell us if it’s your card.”
The man walked over and pulled the card from the jack-o-lantern’s mouth. “That’s my card!” He smiled and showed the card to the audience so they could see it as well. They applauded again.
Daniel looked at Jovana again and saw her applauding. “For my final trick, I’ll need another audience member. Preferably a lady this time. Do we have any volunteers?”
A multitude of hands went up, but Jovana’s hand wasn’t one of them.
Daniel walked up and down the aisles until he finally got to her. “You, ma’am. What’s your name?”
“Jovana,” she said.
“Let’s give a nice round of applause for Jovana, everybody!” Daniel said into the microphone. He took her hand and led her up onto the stage. His personal assistant brought out the final items for this part of the act and set them up at one end of the stage. Daniel led Jovana there. There was a large object standing there, covered with a sheet. “Pull off the sheet,” he told her.
Jovana did as she was asked. Beneath the sheet was a foam mannequin.
“All right, Jovana. What you see here is, of course, a mannequin. What you’re going to do is take this sword… don’t worry, the blade is very dull… it wouldn’t even cut paper if you tried.” Daniel threw a sheet of paper up in the air and slashed at it with the sword. The paper floated to the stage floor and everyone laughed at him. He walked over to the mannequin and took a small swing at it. It left the tiniest of cuts on the mannequin’s chest. “So you’ll take this sword, and I want you to make a cut on the mannequin.” He handed the sword to Jovana and walked over to an easel with an outline of the manikin on it. “I’m going to show the audience exactly where you are going to make the cut before you do it. You won’t be able to see where I’m drawing. Can you see the paper from where you stand?”
“No,” Jovana answered.
“No. Okay, good.” He walked back over to Jovana. “So let’s make this more interesting. Let’s pretend this is someone you hate. Who do you really hate?”
“I have an ex-fiancé; his name is Chasin,” Jovana answered. She knew that he already knew this, but she played along as part of the show.
“Let’s make this even more fun — for all of us. Do you have anything of his with you? A watch? His boxers?”
The audience roared in laughter at his joke.
Jovana reached into her purse and pulled out the hat she had retrieved from her apartment earlier.
“Go ahead and put it on the manikin there. However you want to put it on is fine.” Daniel watched as she followed his instructions. “Okay, good.” He walked over to the easel. “Now, when I say ready, you go ahead and make your first attack on your fiancé.”
Jovana wasn’t showing it, but she was thoroughly enjoying herself. The thought of her ex-fiancé with a sword to his throat was more than enough to get her excited. It brought her even more joy to fantasize about her being the one to sink the long blade into his guts.
“Okay, here we go.” Daniel rolled up his sleeves and grabbed a red marker. He made a slash across the neck of the mannequin’s outline on the paper. “Ready.”
Jovana took up the sword. She held it out in her hands like she was a bloodthirsty warrior and made a slash across the neck of the life sized mannequin.
The crowd cheered at Daniel’s ability to guess correctly.
“Mmmmm. Katarina, I don’t want to wait any more,” Chasin said.
Katarina was kissing his neck. “Let’s not, then.”
“I like you way better than your sister.” Chasin was kissing her as he led her into his bedroom.
“Mmmm. Let’s not talk about her right now,” Katarina said. They entered the bedroom and she pushed Chasin down on the bed. She took her shirt off, exposing her black, lacy bra. She began to crawl on top of him. “Ahh, Chasin… Chasin!” she moaned.
Daniel took his marker again and placed a dot over the heart of the outline on the easel. He drew a little arrow pointing toward it so the audience could see his mark. “Ready.”
Jovana took up the sword again. She held it out in front of her with both hands and charged at the mannequin’s heart. With all the strength she had she stabbed at it.
The crowd cheered and whistled again, but even louder than before.
Daniel smiled a big smile. Everyone thought he was just happy at the perfect execution of his trick, but he was actually smiling at the execution of the man that Jovana so passionately hated.
Now Katarina was screaming. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sight of Chasin’s head lying next to his shoulder. She stared in horror as blood poured profusely from the wound in his chest, over his heart. “Chasin!”
Daniel got the red marker ready again. He honed in on Jovana to determine her next strike. “Whoaaaaa, now. This is supposed to be a family show.” He got a huge laugh from the crowd. “Ha ha! Okay, then.” He took his marker and made a slash going upwards into the mannequin’s groin area. “Ready.”
Jovana grasped the sword tightly. She moved in on the mannequin and took a large swipe upwards between its legs.
The crowd stood up and gave a standing ovation.
Daniel took a bow at
one end of the stage and a second bow at the other end. “Let’s hear it one more time for Jovana!” The crowd continued to applaud. He gave Jovana a second to share the spotlight and invited her backstage with a simple hand gesture.
“Nooo!” Katarina was still screaming and her tears were like rivers running down her face. “CHASIN!” She ran to the door of the apartment. “HELP, SOMEBODY! HELP!” She ran back to the bed where blood was running down Chasin’s body and pooling in his lap. There was so much blood that it was dripping off the bedsheets and onto the carpet. “Chasin,” she wailed.
“Come to my dressing room. I want to share something with you.” Daniel led Jovana through the hallways to where his dressing room was.
The producer was standing at his door. “Excellent show, Mr. Down! Very impressive. Good crowd tonight, too. We’ll have to invite you back.”
“Thank you. I’ll be more than happy to come back and play here.” He opened the door for Jovana. “I need about five minutes. Will you make sure I’m not bothered, please?”
The producer nodded. “Sure thing, Mr. Down. I’ll call security over right away.”
Daniel walked in behind Jovana. “Go ahead and sit down.”
“I enjoyed that very much. He is such a bastard.” Jovana said.
“I know you did.” Daniel wheeled a chair over to her and sat down. “I just want you to relax your mind.” He wheeled right up to Jovana and placed his right hand over the side of her head. “You're going to see something in a minute. Just watch.”
Jovana sat quietly. She started to twitch.
“Do you see anything?” Daniel asked.
Jovana nodded. She saw Chasin on the couch in his apartment with her sister Katarina. She felt uneasy as she watched the two of them kissing each other, just the way she used to kiss him. She twitched again when she saw the two going into the bedroom. Then she began to smile. She saw Chasin’s head roll off to the side, and she smiled even more when she saw all the anguish it brought upon Katarina. When she saw the blood pouring from his chest, she got downright giddy. Excitement crossed her face when she thought about how she had taken the sword to his groin. When the image of Katarina kneeling at the foot of the bed, drenched in Chasin’s blood, passed through her mind, she came back to reality. She felt powerful and in control. She felt like revenge was hers. “Did this really happen?” She expected Daniel to say no, but secretly she hoped he’d say yes.
“It was like you killed him yourself,” Daniel answered. “And your sister will be going away for a long time for his murder.”
The same fiendish smile that had come across Daniel’s face earlier, now came across her face. “They got exactly what they deserved.” She got up from the chair and walked out the door. There wasn’t anything in the world that could have made her more happy that day.
Daniel laughed a devilish laugh. “There’s always a story. They always have stories.”
Tabitha Ormiston-Smith has an acute, near-perverse lust for learning. Trained in private investigation, computer science, philosophy, combat shooting, dog grooming, clinical aromatherapy, and many other fields, she stumbled into the most reproachable field of knowledge: law. As a repercussion, she's become a lawyer. However, she miraculously managed not to become evil. How, you ask? By the same arcane magicks that cause her toilet to flush in the wrong direction.
That's right, she's from the underworld. Yes, they call it Australia, but we all know the truth.
tormistonsmith.wix.com
RESTLESS LEGS
Tabitha Ormiston-Smith
It was happening again. Pat thrashed about, destroying in the process his neatly-made bed and tossing Bobo to the floor, where he lay half under the bed, his stuffed yellow legs pointing to the ceiling in silent protest.
It wasn’t an ache, exactly, although it was kind of like an ache. A bit like an itch, too, but not the kind of itch that you could scratch, sort of like an itch inside your bones. It didn’t really hurt, but the feeling was somehow worse than hurting. Pat knew what real pain was like, from the time he’d fallen off his bike and skinned both his knees and one elbow. It was bad, but you could be a Big Boy about it, and then it wasn’t so bad. This feeling, somehow, you couldn’t be a Big Boy about, or if you were, it didn’t make any difference. Pat hauled himself upright. Kneeling and sitting back on his heels gave him some relief, he usually found, but if Mum came in and caught him sitting up there’d be hell to pay. Hell to pay, he repeated to himself, feeling wise and grown-up. Dad often used the phrase when he was talking to Mum about his day at work.
The trouble was, after a few minutes kneeling with his weight compressing his bent knees, he always started to get uncomfortable, and then he’d have to lie back down and it would all start again. Wearily he climbed out of bed. Walking around eased his legs more than anything else. Perhaps if he was really, really quiet, quiet as a mouse, this time Mum wouldn’t know he was out of bed.
And in other news, Pagans around the country are gathering to celebrate Friday’s Super Moon, when for the first time in… how long is it, Kellie-Anne?
I don’t know, George, but it’s a long time, that’s for sure.
Well, in a long time, the Full Moon will occur on the night of Friday the 13th. Better stay inside, folks, and watch out for black cats…
“Where’s the thing, dammit? Bloody rubbish.”
“Here you go.” The television faded into silence. “Glass of red, love?”
“I’ll get it. Pat’s out of bed again, I’ll just get him settled and be back in a jiff.”
“You’re too soft with that boy, Ellie.”
“Dave, he’s just a little boy.”
In the kitchen, Pat heard his mother’s footsteps and quickly turned on the cold tap, hunting through the draining board for a glass. They couldn’t argue with the ‘drink of water’ excuse. Used correctly, it would also lay the foundation for at least one ‘toilet’ excuse later in the night, if needed.
“Come on, Tiger. Back to bed with you.”
“Just getting a drink of water, Mum.”
“All right. Well, come on, bring it with you and you can have it in bed. Just this once, mind, and you be careful with it. I don’t want you out of bed later saying you’ve spilt it everywhere. Right, put it on the bedside table and hop back in. Good heavens, what have you done to this bed? It’s all over the place. Let’s just straighten this out… and here’s Bobo on the floor… there, that’s better. Now, listen, young man.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “This getting out of bed every night and running about has to stop, okay? You need to be sleeping at night, not going for a wander every five minutes. I don’t want to find you out of bed again tonight.”
Pat wriggled around, trying to find words.
“But Mum, it’s my legs, they get so, so… it’s awful.”
Mum sighed. “We’ve had this conversation before, sweetie. It’s just growing pains.”
“It’s not. How can it be growing pains when it’s not pains?”
“Don’t get smart with me, young man. Now off to sleep.”
“Can I have an aspirin, then? If it’s pains?”
“No, you cannot. There is nothing wrong with you. Now, I don’t want to have to come in here again, understand?”
Pat sighed. “Yes, Mum.”
“He all settled?”
“Yes, love. Here you go. I brought the bottle in.” Clink. Glug.
“Ta, love. What is it with him, anyway? If I got caught out of bed at his age I got a hiding.”
“Dave, he’s only six. It’s the same thing; he reckons his legs hurt, but there’s nothing wrong with him. I even took him to the paediatrician. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with him. He’s a healthy little boy.”
“He does it for attention. I told you, Ellie, you’re too soft with him.”
Pat lay in bed and listened. He could hear his parents talking in the sitting room, their voices a faint but comforting murmur. The hall clock struck the quarter hour. Pat loved the
chiming clock. The chimes were a copy of Big Ben, Dad had told him. Ever since then, Pat — who had no idea what Big Ben was, and vaguely conflated him with Uncle Ben, of Uncle Ben’s meat pies — had seen the clock as an ally, a sort of older brother, a reassuring presence during the long hours of the night. Every fourth time, you could count the bongs and know how late it was.
Pat awoke with a lurch of terror, sitting bolt upright in the dark. He’d had The Dream again. He huddled into a ball of misery, clutching Bobo, and waited for the next round of chimes.
Pat had had The Dream many times. It always started innocuously, with him playing with his Matchbox cars, or at Kinder, or running around the back yard. But soon he’d hear the feet, scrattling quietly behind the normal sounds of the day, and then he’d see them. Hundreds and millions of spiders, their hairy legs rustling, their horrible fanged faces glaring at him. And they were coming for him. He always woke just as he was about to scream, a scream so big, he often thought, that it could swallow up the whole world. But he mustn’t scream, he knew. If he DID scream, a scream so big that it could swallow up the world, then his scream WOULD swallow up the world, and he’d be left alone in the dark, with the spiders.
Only once had he ever told Mum and Dad about The Dream. He’d never make that mistake again. Mum had gone on and on about Unwholesome Influences, whatever they were, and had forbidden him from watching telly after dinner. But that wasn’t the worst. That Saturday, Dad had taken him to the zoo and had made him go in the insect house and look at huge big spiders, right up close, for hours and hours. Pat was never telling anyone anything about The Dream, ever again.
Alone in darkness and silence, he waited for Big Ben, who would bong his bongs and make it safe again.
