On the count of three, open your eyes and tell me what you see.
One.
Two...
"Three!"
The girl looked all around the room, but he was gone. She stood from the chair, walked around a bit. It was a plain, empty room. Nothing but a trapdoor and a chair. And she was sitting atop the chair, atop the trapdoor.
"Okay, okay!" She laughed. "You win. You're a magician, I get it." She crossed her arms and smiled, expecting him to appear from a different trap door between the wooden floor panels. But no response came.
"Lyle...?" She spun herself in circles, but nobody ever answered.
"Lyle, this isn't funny. Lyle! Lyle, get out here right now!"
"Look up." His voice came from seemingly nowhere. She quickly tilted her head back, praying that she would find him hiding in the ceiling, wedged between the rafters or something like that. But there was only an old, plastic ceiling fan. She pursed her lips and reached up for the wire hanging down from it, yanking it and turning it on. It turned three quarters around itself before wheezing to a stop, but the movement was just enough to drop a card on her head. She grabbed it and unfolded it desperately.
"we r ovr. lol."
"LYLE! YOU BASTARD!"
36. That's what he told everybody, at least. That he was thirty-six years old. What a lie, that was.
"Here, I want you to look under all three of these cups." He said, attempting to hide a smirk from the unsuspecting teenagers.
The boy in the chair raised an eyebrow at the man, but lifted all three of the red cups. Under the one in the middle was a small brown pebble, about the size of the tip of his pointer finger. He rolled his eyes.
"I paid fifteen bucks for this, old man. This better not be some stupid cup trick." He said, crossing his arms. The man laughed and shook his head.
"Well that depends on how easily you're entertained. Now follow the cup with the pebble in it." He began to move the cups around, slowly at first, but gradually picking up speed so that the cups moved in a blur. The boy's focus dropped bit by bit, and he found himself leaning forward in his chair in order to better concentrate on his cup.
When the man finally stopped, the boy knew exactly which cup had the pebble in it.
He pointed to the cup on the left. "It's that one. You're fast, but I know it's that one." He said confidently. The man grinned. "Are you sure?"
He lifted the cup, but there was nothing underneath it.
The boy frowned. "Okay, fine. So I got one mixed up. Then it's that one, in the middle."
Nothing under that one either.
"Is it on the right?"
None.
"Then where the hell is it?!" He slammed his hands on the table and stood up. The man pointed downwards with a confident smirk.
"Look down."
The boy stared at the man with a puzzled expression, but slowly and uncertainly crouched down. As he got closer to the ground, he heard a strange scratching noise, much like the plastic cups against the wooden table. And that of a glass pebble.
When the boy looked underneath the table, his jaw dropped.
Underneath, three identical red cups moved, by themselves, against the underside of the table. The boy grabbed one, and the other two fell to the ground. A glass pebble fell to the ground with them.
"Henry Ackroyd? Is Henry here?"
"Unwillingly, but yes." A young, irritable fifteen-year-old mumbled from the back of the classroom.
"Well, Mr. Ackroyd, you may want to cheer up. Being the first on the attendance list means you're the first one to answer a question this year. I don't need your sass, alright?" The teacher continued calling names from her list, each student answering with a simple "here" or "present."
Henry sighed and stared out the window beside him. What a bitch.
"Is that the Henry kid I heard about?" And the whispers begin, he thought to himself.
"Yeah. He says he's a magician, but I think he's just a freak."
"Come on, he can't be that bad."
"It's not that he's bad, it's that he's freaky good."
"Freaky? How?"
"Well, he said he was gonna make this kid disappear, right? The kid actually disappeared. Nobody heard from him at all until two days later."
"It could have been planned."
"When the kid finally turned up, he was two towns away and unconscious."
"That has to be illegal."
"Well yeah, but the cops in this area couldn't care less about small stuff like that."
"Small stuff?"
"That's scary. I don't want him in my class... I wonder what kinda parents he has..."
"I don't have parents." Henry said suddenly, standing. The kids whispering about him stared. Everyone stared. He looked around the room and scowled, storming out into the hallway. The teacher and a couple of the students followed him, but the only thing they saw was a locker slamming and his arm disappearing inside. When the teacher opened the locker, though, it was empty.
"Everyone, I'd like you to meet my lovely assistant, Henley." The magician said, gesturing to the woman walking onstage.
She was a thin, pale woman with shoulder-length auburn hair and big brown eyes that shone in the harsh stage lighting. The male audience members cheered, excited to see such a gorgeous girl wearing a shiny red skin-tight one piece and fishnet stockings. Her heels clicked on the linoleum Las Vegas stage as she approached the magician, waving and blowing kisses to her fans. The magician laughed, a tinge of jealousy in his chuckle, and put his arm around her.
"If you think this is nice, you should see what she wears in the bedroom." He added as a note of dominance. Henley dug her heel into his toe. He grimaced.
"Not necessary." She said through her smile.
"Sadly, though, I'll be making Henley disappear tonight." He continued, taking a step back and pulling a silk curtain off of a tall navy blue wooden box painted with gold stars.
"If you would," he helped Henley up the stairs and into the box. She gave a wink and blew one last kiss to the audience as he closed the door.
"Now, when I snap my fingers, Henley will be transported into a different dimension. You see, this is very complicated. Getting her there isn't the issue, it's more getting her back..." He snapped and the box rattled. He went to open the door, and the box was empty. The audience applauded.
"Now, as I said before, this is where things can go wrong. We haven't had any problems before, but hey, you never know. So if she comes back in three pieces, I'll ask you to please not scream. You'll grab the attention of the police. And that would not end well." He said. The audience laughed. He snapped once more, and the box rattled again. This time, though, something within the box screamed.
"What the hell?!" The voice exclaimed. The box rattled some more, and the magician quickly went to open the door. As soon as he did, a small girl tumbled out of it. The audience stayed dead silent.
The girl stood up. She looked exactly like Henley, and was even wearing the same outfit. She looked out at the audience and then at the magician.
"Who the hell're you?" She said, disgusted at what she saw. The magician blinked a couple times, looked out at the audience, and held out his hand.
"J. Daniel Atlas. Pleasure to meet you... uh," The girl backed away from his hand.
"Eww. No thanks. And I'm Henley Reeves." She said. The audience cheered.
"Uhuh... and how old are you?" Atlas asked, shaking his hand and returning it to his side.
"I'm thirteen." She responded.
"Oh dear..." Atlas said. The audience laughed.
"Where am I? And why was I in that box? And why am I wearing this weird outfit... which I look surprisingly good in, if I do say so myself." She said, sneaking a peek at her backside and causing a couple of the younger audience members to hoot. She gave her behind a little shake.
"Well, in twenty-six years, you'll be my wife and my assistant... and I was performing this magic trick with your future self, when suddenly-"
She cut him off. "Whoa whoa whoa, did you just say that I marry you?" The audience laughed.
"Well, yes-"
"I have got to bump up my standards." The audience laughed again, and a couple people even cheered her on.
"I'll have you know I'm a world renowned magician." Atlas defended himself, standing up taller. She snorted.
"A magician? That's not gay at all." The audience roared with laughter. "Could I not find an attractive mime to date?" She continued, feeding off their approval.
"I bet you found some magic trick to make me fall hopelessly in love with you." She said, cutting him off before he could respond.
"No, and it didn't take any tricks to get you in bed with me either." He said with a smirk. She blushed deeply and covered her face with her hands as audience members stood from their seats to applaud him.
"You bastard...!" She gasped. Then, suddenly, the door to the box opened again and out stepped Henley Reeves, back to her normal age.
"You're gonna scar me for life, man." She said as the audience cheered. He laughed and she smacked him over the head.
"You were asking for it." He said, rubbing the back of his head.
"That's disgusting!" Little Henley cried. She ran up to Normal Henley and hugged her around the waist.
"How could you marry and do a dick face like him?!" She exclaimed. Normal Henley crouched over and kissed her on the forehead.
"Because if I didn't then you wouldn't exist." Little Henley smiled as Normal Henley stood and held her hand out.
"Give it up for our daughter, Ackerie!" She yelled. Ackerie got a standing ovation that night.
As Lyle Raymond crawled through the air duct and tried to suppress his snickers, he could hear his ex-girlfriend shouting his name.
"LYLE, YOU BASTARD!" She screamed, and he couldn't take it anymore. He collapsed in the air duct and exploded with laughter, having to slap his hand over his mouth to keep quiet. When he finally stopped laughing, though, and continue to crawl, he cut his hand on something as he moved it forward.
He searched for the source of the cut, expecting a rusty nail. Instead, he found what looked like a tarot card wedged in a vent below him. He pulled it out, and blew the dust off of it.
"The Hanged Man" it read, with a particularly gory illustration of a man being executed on a cross.
"What the...?" He mumbled, flipping it over. On the back was a green eye, and beneath it a date and address.
March 29
4:44 pm
45 East Evans Street,
NY, NY
Gary Striker grinned and counted the money he had earned that day. He watched as the kid he had just earned fifteen bucks off of scrambled away, empty pocketed most likely.
"What a dunce." He mumbled. As he got to the end of his stack, though, he felt something stiff among all the bills. He flipped back to it, and found a tarot card.
"Huh. Strange. I recall asking for money, not my fortune." He examined the card and read it out loud to himself.
"Strength." He muttered, carefully observing the image of a woman holding tightly to a lion.
He flipped the card over. "March 29, 4:44 pm. 45 East Evans St. New York, New York."
Henry Ackroyd wandered the streets of Brooklyn, wondering where he should go home to that day. Yesterday was a shed just outside of his new highschool. The night before he slept on a park bench.
"Maybe a dumpster or something..." He mumbled to himself. He shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked a rock. He missed it, though, and almost fell backwards instead.
"Figures." Then he realized that there was something else in his pocket, besides his hand of course.
He pulled it out. It was a strange card, with a picture of a creepy-looking moon on it. He flipped it over and found an address and a date.
March 29
4:44 pm
45 East Evans Street,
NY, NY
He knew exactly where that was, it was an old apartment building he passed occasionally on his way to his job, depending on where he was coming from.
He chuckled. "Well I guess now I know where I'm sleeping tonight." He said as he shoved the card back into his pocket and broke into a sprint.
"Nice job tonight, sweetie." Henley Reeves kissed her daughter, Ackerie Atlas, on the forehead as the family walked off stage through the sound of roaring applause.
"Your improvisations always have me cracking up." J. Daniel Atlas said sarcastically. Ackerie frowned and kicked him in the calf.
"That was the grossest thing ever, dad." She said. Her father laughed.
"What? You called me gay." He pointed out.
"I don't want those images in my mind!" She exclaimed as the three of them made their way back to the dressing rooms.
"You kind of were asking for it, hon." Henley laughed, wrapping her arm around her daughter's shoulders and giving her a little shake.
"Thank you." He leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek.
As her parents chatted, Ackerie hung back, running the show over again in her mind. While magic always was something she was good at, she always thought she was better at acting. She tried to incorporate it into all of her tricks. Sometimes she did shows with just her mom, but usually with both parents. Dad always had to steal the show, though. When it was just her and her mother, every routine always required at least some degree of acting.
When she finally reached her dressing room, she found a card taped to the golden star on the door, covering her name.
She reached for it and took it slowly and curiously, staring at the intricate drawing of a sun with a face on it.
"Mom, dad..." She mumbled as she flipped over the card. Her parents turned around to face her.
"I think we should go to New York." She said, not looking up. Her father rolled his eyes.
"This isn't that thing about being a Broadway clown, is it? Because the answer is still no."
Ackerie held up the card. "In five years. On March 29."
J. Daniel Atlas and Henley Reeves exchanged knowing looks. Their daughter was about to go on the biggest journey of her life.