Fetish Magician 2a: The Claustrophile

The Claustrophile: Hannah

I was expecting the call. Angela always calls me when Annie has had one of her ‘interesting experiences’. She had been particularly nervous about this one, because the man in charge was not from the scene, so it might have been uninteresting or interesting for all the wrong reasons.

“Hi,” I answered. “Who am I speaking to today?”

“Angela, of course. I just thought you might like to know about the ‘interesting experience’ Annie had the night before last.”

“So, why didn’t you ring yesterday like you usually would?”

“Because Annie spent the rest of the night pleasing Master with new-found, but sadly temporary, skills in the fellatio department, then we slept ‘til gone midday and there were other things that took priority, but I’m calling now; it’s the first chance I’ve had.”

“Hang on! Back up a bit! Aren’t you the one whose oral skills are next to zero, because of that notorious gag reflex of yours?”

“Yes, normally, but during the show Tom, he’s the magician, hypnotised me and allowed me to ignore the gagging until dawn. And Robert took full advantage.”

“So, why didn’t you ask this Tom character to make it permanent?”

“Honestly, I didn’t think of it, but I can probably ask him if he needs me to assist again.”

“So, you’d do it again?”

“Like a shot, well Annie would, if Master did not need her for the evening.”

“Tell me all about what happened!” I demanded.

Angela told me, in detail, what had happened and how she felt about it, later she sent me the video Robert had taken of the whole event; I had trouble believing it was not mostly done with special effects, but it matched the description Angela gave.

“So, despite being cut in half, beheaded, having your body vanished and whatever else he did to you, you’d like to have another go. What does Robert think about that?”

“He says he does not mind so long as I’m not needed for the day and there is video of the performance for him.”

“So, what’s the downside? Because it can’t be all good.”

“Some of the things hurt to start with, but that went away quite quickly. I lost the oral skills at dawn; I nearly choked when the sun rose. And I don’t know if or when I’ll get to do it again.”

“All sound pretty minor to me, especially as you’re not short of money, so you could arrange for Tom to need you as an assistant.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, but my first reaction is that it would feel a bit like cheating on Robert and it would also be interfering in Tom’s life; neither of which would be things to feel good about. He did mention when we first spoke that he might want to find another assistant, both to improve the flexibility of when he could do shows and hinted at the possibility that a two assistant show might be even more fun.”

“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

“Of course. I can give you his number, you can arrange something and maybe he’ll give the fucking you so desperately need.”

“So, he’s a good lay?”

“I don’t know for certain, because I only had his dick down my throat, but I reckon he’d be just the kind of lover you need.”

“But weren’t you saying he’s a bit vanilla.”

“Yes, but that gives you the chance to train him to be the dom you need, there are no bad habits to break; you’d teach him from scratch and if I know you (which I do) you’ll produce someone just right for you and make the rest of us jealous that we missed the chance. Sleep on it!”

After some more social chit-chat, we hung up.

I slept on it for a couple of nights, once I had viewed the video, several times.

I decided that I would contact him and leave a message asking him to contact me about the possibility of an ‘adult’ magic show.

The phone rang three times while I went through in my mind what I needed to say in my message, when he answered, “Hello, Tom here.”

I was a bit flustered, “Oh hi, um, I was, kind of, expecting an answerphone. Are you busy?” Not exactly a textbook example of phone etiquette.

He took it in his stride and answered the question, and ignored the mangled beginning. “That depends on if you’re talking immediately or for the next few weeks.” The fact he seemed so casual about it implied to me that he was not busy now, but perhaps had a few engagements to prepare for in the next few weeks. He followed up with his own question, “By the way, who am I talking to?”

I felt I was on the losing end of this conversation, so far. “Oh, sorry, I’m Hannah. I was speaking to Angela and she suggested that I might like to be a magician’s assistant. I’ve seen the video Robert took. I was amazed. Angela said that you could probably do some stuff that I would enjoy.” The quiet at the other end of the line almost made me wonder if I hadn’t lost the connection altogether, but I ploughed on. “Angela even suggested that you could probably give me the fucking I need in the process.”

That certainly caught his attention. “Whoa, Lady! Are you sure you’ve got the right number?” he exploded.

Hell, had I misdialed? And was talking to a complete stranger?

“This is the number Angela gave me,” and I rattled off the number I had received in the email with the video.

Now he seemed confused. “That’s my number, but who is Angela?” Facepalm! If he was involved in one of Annie’s ‘Interesting Experiences’ he might not know her as Angela.

More apologies. “Oh, sorry. Of course, she uses her other name when she has her ‘Interesting Experiences’.” I hoped that if this was the right guy, he would recognise the phrase and if not it would be the excuse to end the call without getting anyone in trouble.

“So that would be Annie, right?” Hooray! He knew the phrase and the right name to associate with it.

“Yes,” I said simply.

“So you’ve spoken to Annie, Angela, whatever, and seen the video that her ‘Master’ took (and he’s called Robert?)” I made a sound I hope indicated agreement. “So you think you might like to be my assistant?”

“Well, yes and no.” Not a model answer, but it did line up nicely with the uncertainty I was feeling about the whole venture.

“That tells me nothing,” he pointed out. “So what do you want?”

“I want to book you for a private show,” I blurted, but I don’t think he noticed. What the hell made me say that? Maybe it was a vestige of the semi-rehearsed message I had planned to leave.

“Ok, when? I’ll see if I can fit it into my calendar.” He was actually taking me seriously. Was I ready for this?

“I don’t know, when are you free?” I was trying to put the ball in his court, only to discover that it belonged in mine.

“What?” His confusion crackled down the line. He gave the impression in that one word that he knew less about what I wanted than if I had not called him at all. I was regretting not having had a plan in case I got through.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” More apologies, this was turning into my worst phone call ever. Too late now; plough on! “When I said I want to book you for a private show, I meant I want to book you for a VERY private show; just you, me and a video camera, so I can see what you did to me afterwards.”

“Ok?” He did not sound as if he was getting it. “You want to meet me for a private magic show and be my assistant with no audience other than a video camera?”

“Finally, he gets it. That’s exactly what I want, and, if Angela is right about you, and she reads people well, generally speaking, I think I’d like to have sex in the process.” Rats! I’d mentioned having sex with him twice in the first five minutes of our first phone conversation; was I really that desperate?

“And do you have any idea what tricks you’d like to be involved in?” Hooray! A technical question in his field of expertise. But was he that uninterested in sex? Or perhaps, I’d triggered some sort of professional ‘Do the job and take the perks, if they come’ attitude?

“Yes, I do.” No, I didn’t, this call was far into uncharted territory. Some small part of my brain took over like a native guide. “I want to be in magic boxes. I love being inside boxes. You might call it my kink; I’m a Claustrophile; I love being in confining and enclosed spaces. I guess it stems from having my first orgasm while hiding in a laundry basket, aged fourteen.” Where did that come from? I’ve never told anyone that, not even Angela.

He took the offered scrap of information and ran with it. “So things like ‘the Hindu sword basket’, or ‘the sword box’, or ‘the Origami box’?”

The first two I had heard of and the box nature of them appealed, the sword part less so. That last one was new to me and I had no clue (what did Japanese paper folding have to do with any magic trick?) “I guess, but what is ‘the Origami box’?”

“That’s where I put you in a smallish box and then fold it until it is impossibly small, with you still inside it, and then I stick swords through in each direction.” While ‘small box getting smaller with me inside’ hit a selection of my kink buttons, the mention of more swords was a bit off-putting.

“Wow! That sounds like I might get a kick out of it. But will there be boxes where you won’t stick things in the box with me? ‘Coz, I guess once you've been in a box and had things stuck through you, doing it again might be a bit dull, right?” If it was all being in boxes and being run through with swords, I might decide to give the experience a miss.

“Of course, there are box tricks that don’t involve blades, it’s just that those were the first to come to mind. I reckon I should be able to put together a varied program for you.” At least he was not just a one trick pony.

“Great, and when can you fit me in?” Why was I not asking for more information? I had seen the video and there are times when just going with the flow is the best thing to do. I hoped that this was one of them.

“If you don’t mind a weekday morning, any time after a couple of weeks; you see, most of my normal work is in the afternoons and evenings.”

“And why the delay? Why not next week?” Why was I pressing to have it done sooner? It was not enthusiasm, but perhaps a desire to get it over and done with.

“Because it’ll take me a little time to plan and get together what I need for your show, I’m just starting, so I don’t have everything available immediately. So how about we exchange email addresses and then work from there.” He seemed to be honest about his capabilities of getting things together. We gave each other our emails and before the call ended he had sent a ‘testing’ email, so I sent back an empty reply; this seemed to indicate thoughtfulness and caution; not bad traits in someone you are possibly going to put your life in the hands of.

The first few emails were mostly of a technical nature; the dimensions of various parts of my body and such like; although he did not seem to ask about anything that might hint that he was planning to put me into a costume, but perhaps the other measurements were enough.

The rest of the emails, over the about a month that it took to fix a date, were about how I envisioned the show going. I told him that I wanted to turn up on the day and be told what to do and go home afterwards with an experience to look back on and video to prove to myself that I had not dreamed it or been hypnotised into having a fake experience. I took the opportunity to introduce him to the important systems of checks and balances in the scene, such as safewords, which seemed to be a new concept to him, but he seemed to think it was an obvious thing to do, once he knew about it.

The day of my private magic show dawned and I was already up, showered and dressed in a simple T-shirt and knee length skirt (Angela had told me that he had seemed to approve of her attired in that when she had gone to be Tom’s assistant), fortunately the weather was warm enough that it would be comfortable, although I did put on a coat to keep the wind off.

I was already getting nervous and thinking about cancelling, but felt doing it by text would be rude and if I was on the phone to him, he would know I was using whatever pretext I dreamt up as an excuse to chicken out; for some unknown reason I did not want to lie to him. So I did not cancel, but got into my car with a great sense of trepidation and drove across town to the address on a small business park the other side of the bypass.

The unit still bore the nameplate of a recently defunct firm, so I concluded that this was not his usual base of operations, but a place hired for our encounter. I parked outside and waited until our appointed time of ten o’clock, before leaving the car and heading for the people door that stood beside the closed roller shutter of the goods entrance.

I walked straight in through a dim passage, passing two side doors marked ‘Toilets’ and ‘Office’. I opened the door at the end and emerged into an open space.

There was no one in sight. For a moment I considered that I had come to the wrong place, but I took in some of the details and realised that I was exactly where I should be. Among those details were some cameras dotted about on tripods, some of which seemed to be already running, and in pride of place, was a wooden crate and there was another box towards the back with some stuff on it; and the clincher was that the floor had been recently swept, although I could not tell if the wide chalk circle inscribed on the floor was for me or a left-over from the previous occupants.

I had a feeling that I was being watched from somewhere, so I looked round and called, “Hello?”

I am not sure what I expected, but a breathy voice (an amplified whisper on later consideration) said, “Please confirm you are the Hannah I have an appointment with!” I turned toward where the voice came from and saw nobody there. The voice repeated the request to identify myself as Hannah.

The puzzle of why he was asking for me to say who I was, suddenly became clear to me. During our email conversation I had told him about consent and he wanted to be sure that whatever he planned he was doing it to me, not some unsuspecting stranger; my consent was assumed from the outset, because I had commissioned this show in the first place and if at any point I wished to withdraw my consent (temporarily or permanently) I had the agreed safewords.

“Yes, I am Hannah,” I called. “And I assume you must be Tom, right?”

“Yes, I am Tom.” The voice came from a speaker at the rear of the open area. “Shall we begin with a bit of housekeeping before the main event? And, maybe, a few instructions to help this go smoothly,” the voice suggested.

“Ok.” I said to the space in general.

“Firstly, unless instructed otherwise, you will remain in the circle chalked on the floor,” he said; good he was taking charge; whether because he knew what he was doing, because I had written that I wanted to be told what to do, or because it came naturally to him, I did not know. “This is because that is the only area covered by the cameras. I decided that using several cameras would make recording your private show easier; I shall be sending you an edit that will make the best of the show, but I’ll also be sending you the raw video from each camera.” This showed that he had thought about what I might want from our rendezvous and was not restricting my field of movement for arbitrary reasons. His tone seemed quietly authoritative, giving me confidence that if I requested permission to leave the circle, I might get it depending on the reason I gave for wanting to leave.

“Secondly, I have a box for you to inspect. It is at the edge of the circle near the speaker I am using. Please go to it and describe it.” When he first mentioned inspecting a box I assumed that he meant the wooden crate in the centre of the circle.

I looked over at a box that was near the speaker that I had previously observed as bearing some stuff on top. This time I focussed specifically on the box, having paid scant attention to it before. Wow! I had never seen such a beautiful box. The trapezoidal frame of steel was polished to a high shine, but not a mirror finish allowing it to be seen for itself. Set in this frame was a set of perfectly clean sheets of glass; I could see that these sheets were held in place by slots on the insides of the frame. It was exquisite.

I went to it slowly, trying to appreciate the artistry, design and construction of this box. If I had thought that I wanted to design a box for myself, this would be that box.

“That’s a beautiful box!” I murmured, I do not know if he heard me, but that moment was between me and the box. Louder so that Tom could hear, I said, “It’s a trapezoidal box constructed of steel and glass.” I wondered if he want more description

I knew I should not do it, for fear of marring the box’s perfection, but I reached out and stroked the box’s frame, so as not to put fingerprint smears on the glass. The cool smoothness under my fingertips was so satisfying.

“And how would you get into the box?” he asked. I found myself slightly resenting the interruption to my communing with the artwork before me, then I pulled myself together. I was here to try out being a magician’s assistant; the box was a bonus (maybe I could buy it off him when we were finished).

“Let’s see,” I said, while I pondered the conundrum. “Hmmm, it seems to be constructed as a solid box; no opening lid or anything like that.” I walked round the box in the hope that some flaw in the perfection of the frame would reveal a hidden catch or similarly obscure means of getting inside the box. The orbit around the box only served to increase my desire for the box and to be inside it. The only blemishes in the polished frame were a set of recessed bolt heads that seemed to hold the frame on the side I had started on to the rest of the box. “There only seems to be one way to get anything into or out of the box and that is unscrewing the bolts on this side.”

“And what about the hole in the lid?” he queried.

I had not paid much attention to the clutter on top of the box, so I had missed this feature of the box. The hole in question was a slot about two inches wide and maybe a foot long. “Sorry, I hadn’t spotted that with the other things lying on top. But I couldn’t put anything thicker than my elbow in there. What is this other stuff, anyway?”

“Well, there’s a hand-held camera, so that we can get close-ups of what is happening, when it is needed,” he explained. “Then there’s a Bluetooth earpiece, so we can communicate more easily; if you could put that in now, it will also record our talk so that it can be added to the video.” As I picked up the earpiece and began fitting it, I was thinking that he seemed to have thought things through and that even in the early part of the show, even if he did not put in an appearance, he would still be part of the video. “Next there’s a sheet of security labels; you can see they’ve been scored so that once they are stuck down trying to peel them off will cause them to break apart.”

The speaker suddenly went silent, then I heard his voice directly in my ear. “There that’ll be more comfortable; you won’t have to shout.”

“You’ve got a nice voice; kind of, calm, in control and reassuring. I get the feeling that following your instructions will bring me only pleasant things, even if that goes against common sense.” I did think to wonder how long we would be talking in each other’s ears before I saw him for the first time in the flesh. Of course I knew what he looked like from the video, but people seldom seem the same when met face-to-face.

“You’re in luck, because I’m a magician and common sense has very little to do with what I shall be doing to you and with you.” He paused as if he was savouring the thought of what he was planning for me this morning.

He returned to the now and said, “But we weren’t talking about my voice, we were talking about security labels. As you mentioned the only practical way to get into or out of that box is to undo the bolts and remove the side. To prevent that I want you to apply a security label to each of the bolts and then use the marker on top of the box to sign each one; do you understand?”

I picked up the sheet of security labels and carefully peeled the first label away and stuck it over the top left bolt.

“Yes, er,” suddenly I realised I did not know what to call him and I was in the middle of a sentence without a proper end I could use; I compromised and concluded with, “I understand.” While I peeled a further three labels and positioned them over the bolts and then signed each in turn, I grappled with the question of whether it mattered if I did not have an approved mode of address for Tom. I decided it did, so I had to ask. “How do I address you? Do I call you ‘Sir’ or ‘Tom’ or something else?”

“In the current setting, ‘Tom’ is just fine,” he said.

I must confess I was a little disappointed to be starting out on such familiar terms; if I decided he had the necessary qualities that I wanted to have a relationship of some sort with him, some of the boundaries that we would need were already being eroded. I hope I hid my feelings well enough.

He added. “If you wanted to be a magician’s assistant, on another occasion, perhaps more public, then we would have to decide if another form of address would be more appropriate.” Obviously I had failed to hide my feelings, but the starting point for a dialogue on how we might interact on future occasions had been established; all assuming that I wanted there to be future occasions.

“The security labels are done and signed. Nobody is getting into that box without destroying those labels.” I had made what I now realise was something a magician would take as a challenge, except I also know that he had this planned from the start; making such an assumption probably showed how naive I was in matters magical.

“That is all with that box for the moment,” he said, “so we move on to the first illusion. You will need to take the camera and the other item on there that looks like a small remote control.”

There was only the camera and a thing with buttons on it; I grabbed the camera and the other item from the top of the box. I waved the remote above my head in the hope I would get confirmation that it was the right thing, in case something had been knocked off or gone missing.

“Yes, that’s the thing,” he confirmed. I gave the remote a brief glance; it looked like some weird cross between a TV remote and a car-key.

“Now, go over to the wooden crate and check it out for solidity,” he instructed, adding, “and tell me about any unusual features you spot. You may video your inspection as it will probably be good to put in an insert in the final video.”

I made my way to the crate, paying more attention to how to get the camera running. Then I inspected and knocked all the sides and the base to check it was good and solid, as requested. I hoped I was doing an adequate job of videoing this task (having seen the resulting video, I reckon I did better than I expected, although Tom seems to have done something to improve the framing in the edited video).

“Features to this box?” I pondered out loud, “Hmm. Well we have a metal loop on each side.” I circled the box and filmed myself tugging on each loop checking it was firmly attached to the box. “These, I assume line up with the plates at the edge of the lid over there with enough space to be locked down with the padlocks. The only other odd thing about this crate I’ve noticed is the small holes built into either end; they’re, maybe, three fingers widths wide (perhaps fractionally more).” Not exactly a scientific measurement, especially as my fingers are quite slender. I hoped I had covered everything I was supposed to and not bored him with things he did not think were important, or missed something I should have noticed, or even noticed something I should not have.

“That’s good,” he said; it’s always nice to be praised. “You’ve mentioned all the features that I intended you to find, but if you spot anything else, let me know, ok?” That puzzled me. Had I missed something key? Or was he thinking I might know more about boxes, than perhaps he did? Or was he just playing with me to try and keep my attention?

I had asked for a magic show/experience that involved me being in boxes and I had already been shown a gorgeous box that I could not get into and now I was examining another; I asked what, to me, seemed a perfectly natural question. “Do I get in the box now, Tom?”

“Not just yet, Hannah, there is more work to do before you see a box from the inside.” He replied. It seemed that I was going to have to earn my time in boxes. “The first bit involves using the remote control. Press the ‘start’ button.”

I looked closely at the remote to identify the correct button; it was fairly obvious; the button with the circle and the vertical crossing it. I pressed it and was startled to hear a car engine start up and fade to an idling engine noise. I looked in the direction of the noise and could make out the outline of a large-ish car.

“Now, you may have spotted the steel cable with the hook on the end lying on the floor. You should find that the hook will fit through the holes in the ends of the box, but you will need to operate the winch control to pay out enough cable for it to reach through the crate. You may also want to press the light switch so you can see what you’re doing.”

I pressed the button with the headlight symbol and was bathed in the headlights of the car; if nothing else it made the reading of the symbols on the remote easier and showed that the car had an electric winch mounted on the front. It was quite easy to figure out which were the winch controls, but which one let more of the cable out and which pulled it in was less obvious; I tried one and it was the wrong one; the other one proved right.

Before starting, I needed to know how far to feed the hook through the holes in the end of the crate. Some dominants like things just so and expect you to know without being told, but it seemed that Tom was happy to be asked questions. “How far do you want the hook through the crate?” I asked.

“I want the hook to be between six and twelve inches beyond the hole it comes out of; this will give you enough space to work with it, without too much slack.”

It took me a few minutes to pass the hook and its cable through the box as specified. “I’ve done that, Tom; now what?”

“Now you put the lid on the box and lock it down with the padlocks that are currently on the lid. Please, be careful not to dislodge the other thing on there and not to prematurely lock any of the padlocks, because I have the keys, I shall not be unlocking any of those locks until I’m ready and missing padlocks diminish the wonder of the trick.”

I was beginning to wonder if I was going to be allowed to get into a box. The first box had one way in (secured by bolts) and I had been asked to collude in my exclusion from that box by covering the bolt heads. Now I was being asked to lock myself out of the other box I had been shown. I was beginning to feel that Tom did not get my desire to be inside small spaces, or, more hopefully, that he was toying with me, in which case the magic and/or the in-box-experiences would have to be good to make it worth the effort.

I went over to the lid, which looked as solidly constructed as the rest of the crate. I turned the hasps of the four padlocks outwards, so they could not accidentally lock themselves, and then I knocked on the lid; it sounded as solid as the rest of the crate. I picked up the lid and carried it to the box, where I rested it on the edge to be sure I had it the right way round and found that it did not seem to matter which way round it was, because it would lock down whichever way round I put it on. I had another moment of disappointment as I slid the lid into position and flipped the metal plates so the slots in them went over the loops on the box. Finally with a bit of a heavy heart I fitted the four padlocks through the loops, making it impossible to get into the box without the keys that Tom held.

As I clicked the last padlock shut, Tom said, “Now, Hannah, you are going to earn your entry into this box. Please remove all your clothes; you’ll find a basket to put them in so they aren’t in the way and will remain clean for you to re-dress when we are finished.”

He could see what I was doing, but I still had no idea where I was being watched from; for all I knew, he might be watching from some concealed position, or via one of the cameras and thus in another room, or possibly building, or given that he was a magician, who seemed to do real magic, he could be standing somewhere in full view, but invisible. Having his voice directed straight into my ear also made it impossible for me to listen for his movement or the origin of the voice somewhere in the building. Part of me was wondering if this was planned or he really was just making communicating and recording our conversation easier, as he said.

Another part of me wondered why I was undressing and how I should do it; there did not seem to be any part of me that considered whether I should be undressing. The answer to the ‘Why?’ I guessed had to be a combination of not wanting to damage or dirty my clothes; making the illusions easier, because with nothing to snag on things there was less to worry about; of course, he wanted to see me naked, especially if he was considering me as a potential more permanent magician’s assistant role; and it might be a test to see how much he could get away with before I questioned his commands.

The ‘How?’ was as complicated. Did I undress quickly to bring forward the moment when I might be installed in a box, or did I perform a striptease? I rapidly dismissed the striptease, because I still had no clue about where I was being viewed from. I finally resolved that I would undress casually, as if I wanted to undress, rather than had been ordered to.

I easily spotted the basket, and approached it removing my coat, which I dropped into it. Carefully I removed my top, skirt and bra, each following the coat.

“Shall I take off my shoes too?” I asked. Some people seem not to class shoes as clothes and his answer might give a bit of clue about the reasons for my disrobing.

“Yes, the shoes and socks go too. I swept the floor, so other than some grit, perhaps, it should be clear of anything that might hurt you.”

This did not clarify to me his motive for getting me naked, but it did give some confidence that he was giving some consideration to my comfort and safety; neither of which are bad things. I slipped off the flat shoes I was wearing and placed them beside the basket, and then went on to remove my stockings and panties. I walked to the centre of the chalk ring and did a turn on the spot that should have been visible from any of the possible viewpoints; I may be a small package, but my figure is well worth looking at.

He whispered in my ear, as I returned to the locked crate, “You look good enough to eat.”

Normally, such a comment would have been taken as a compliment, but I began to wonder how literally a magician might mean it; I am not a person who ever fantasised about being eaten.

I guess he noticed that I was a little concerned about something. He asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what you plan to do with me, but I hope that that comment was metaphorical rather than literal; while some people get off on vore fantasy, I would rather not be involved.”

In the pause that followed, I may have imagined the sound of typing, via the ear-piece. Was he googling to find out what I was on about? In which case I was safe, unless I was giving him ideas.

“No vore-anything is going to happen today, although it might be interesting to try if I could find a willing vore-ee, if that’s a word. I just meant you have a beautiful body.” He was trying to sound reassuring, but the fact that he seemed to be willing to consider something so bizarre made me wonder what I was letting myself in for.

Time to get things moving again. “I’m naked, what’s next?”

“Put on the belt that you had on the lid,” he instructed. “Then attach the loop on the back to the hook you so carefully pulled through the box, making sure that the remote is within easy reach, as you’ll be needing that in a few moments.”

I checked out the leather belt that was still on the box lid; it was thick and tan in colour. It seemed a bit stiff as I put it on, but comfortable enough, once I adjusted it. I picked up the car’s remote controller and stepped to the end of the box where the hook was. It was a bit fiddly to hook myself to the cable, but it was soon done.

“I’m hooked up, Tom,” I said, despite being sure that he could see that I was hooked on.

“Right, on the remote you’ll find a red button. Press that once! These next instructions are very important for your safety; crouch down as small as you can, then press the ‘winch in’ button once and then drop it immediately.”

These instructions sounded like they might lead to me being seriously hurt; I could picture being dragged across the floor with the crate preceding me until the crate met the winch, when it would be crushed as winch continued to pull on the hook on my belt, either the winch would jam on the debris or I would be covered in shards of splintered wood until I was pulled against the winch’s feed rollers and I hoped to be able to activate some cut-off switch.

I looked at the red button on the remote, to see if it had a symbol that gave me any clue what effect it would have on the function of the winch. There was no symbol.

This morning I had come a long way, in my feel for Tom and his way of working, rather than physical distance. I had told him that I felt that following his instruction would do me no harm; but here I was debating with myself, whether I should do as he asked. I could unhook myself and walk away, something told me that I would regret such a move.

I thumbed the red button, being careful to press it only a single time and then my thumb moved to hover over the wind-in button. Some parts of me conspired to take control of my thumb (probably my sense of adventure, my confidence in the magician I had seen do strange things to Annie, my desire to earn my place in either of the boxes I had been shown and finally my preference for getting something for my money). The thumb pressed the button and the rest of my hand went limp, releasing the remote to fall to the floor.

From my position crouched on the other side of the crate, I heard the car’s revs suddenly increase and there was a sudden pull on the belt round my waist. I tried to scream, but that got modified into a grunt by the tug on my waist. What happened next is beyond description, except that it was suddenly dark and confined, with a short scraping noise as the crate moved a little for a fraction of a second. One moment I was tethered to a cable through a crate to a winch and the next I was inside the crate. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what appeared to have happened; I seemed to have been pulled through the hole I could not put my hand through; but that’s impossible; except it had just happened to me, without any instructions on how it was done.

Being inside the box, began to feel good. I could faintly hear the car still running, but nothing else, until I heard a tiny scrape outside the box, which was Tom picking up the remote I had dropped. Seconds later there was a tap on the box and Tom said, “Hannah, are you alright in there?”

I gave the question some consideration; I felt that I was unharmed, but unless the padlocks had been released, I was in here for as long as he wanted to keep me in here; not usually a safe situation. It crossed my mind that this might be one of the many boxes that Tom had mentioned that involved the insertion of blades; but dismissed this quite quickly as the only holes were the holes the cable had been threaded through. “Fine, thank you, Tom.” This was intended to convey that I was unhurt and not uncomfortable.

“I need you to do one thing before I release you,” he said, “unhook the hook from your belt. You can take that off too if you want; you won’t be needing it again today.”

This was not the smallest container I had ever been in and so it was easy enough to feed the hook out of the crate, once I had detached it from the belt; admittedly I did bump my elbows against the walls of the crate a couple of times before I got a proper feel for the boundaries within the crate. I also took the opportunity to remove the belt too; I do not think that was audible from outside the box.

There was a short period during which I could hear the whine of the car’s winch and a few clanks, then the car fell silent.

“I’ll get you some water, then you can get out, but not until I say.”

“Ok,” I acknowledged.

For a few moments I was worried to hear receding foot-steps; I was locked in a box and the only person with the keys was walking away leaving me alone in an abandoned building.

I soon turned my thoughts to being inside a box without the need to leave it until asked to do so; this turned me on and cautious of the limited space, I began to explore how I felt physically and mentally about being in a locked box. I touched my naked body and discovered my nipples had responded positively to the experience and there was a tingle between my legs. My excitement at being in a confined space seemed to be compounded by the fact that I was unable to leave. A hand was soon causing my level of excitement to escalate and I became oblivious to anything happening outside the box; I might have noticed if the lid had been removed, but otherwise I was intensely involved in what I was doing inside the box to the exclusion of caring what may have been occurring outside. I had a powerful orgasm; somewhere in my personal top ten. Then I leaned against the inner wall of the crate and waited for my release, to experience other boxes.

“Hannah, you may now exit the box,” came Tom’s whisper in my ear, which suddenly reminded me that he would have heard me masturbating in the box. I did not know whether to be embarrassed or relieved that he had not interrupted me.

I pressed upward against the lid of the box and it lifted, until it reached an angle where it slid from the side of the crate and clattered to the floor. I unfolded myself from within the box and looked round in the hope of seeing Tom; I knew he had to have been there, because the padlocks had been removed and there was a glass of water a few yards away on the floor. I could not see Tom.

“Have yourself a drink of water!” came the instruction whispered in my ear.

I stepped out of the box and went over to the glass. It looked clean and the water was still; it had stood there long enough to have settled. I picked it up and sniffed it, before I took a tiny sip, to see if it tasted right. I was feeling quite vulnerable, not only from being naked in an unknown place, in the presence of a man I had yet to meet in the flesh, but I had the feeling that I had been dragged through a small hole into a locked box (not that the actual feeling of that event was unpleasant) which meant either my mind was playing tricks or Tom was playing tricks; either way something odd was happening.

As the few drops of water trickled down my throat, I realised how thirsty I was and the water tasted exactly like it did at home, which probably meant the Tom had run the water before filling the glass so that it was fresh water in the pipes. I necked the remainder of the glass and felt a lot better. It occurred to me much later that if Tom was the magician he claimed, he would have methods that would allow him to do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted without resorting to something as crude as drugging a glass of water.

There was a slight clearing of a throat, then Tom said into my ear, “Time for the next piece of magic, Hannah. Please shift the crate to the back of the circle, near the speaker; we will need the space of the next thing we are going to do. If you pop the lid inside the box and then slide it, you should not have too much difficulty.” There was a missed beat, then as an after-thought, “Oh! And the glass can go in there too.”

I stowed the glass in a corner of the crate and picked up the lid and slotted that into the crate diagonally, so that it was neat and not going to smash the glass. The crate was not particularly heavy, but instead of pushing it, I decided to pull it. At the circumference I left it straddling the line and stood in a casually attentive pose to indicate I was waiting for more instructions.

I did not have to wait long. “To your right, you’ll see a low platform with a flattened box on it.” I nodded that I could see them. “Position the platform in the centre of the circle, you may have noticed a chalked ‘X’, that’s the centre. Take the box too.”

I picked up the box to get a look at the platform. It was not much; just a square of plywood with some batten attached around the edge like a rail and some stubby feet underneath. I bent down to drag it, but it did not turn out to be as heavy as I had anticipated, so I picked it up and carried it to the centre of the circle. As I was nearing the centre I let go of the box, so that I would have two hands to place the platform in the correct position; I know some doms who will ‘punish’ their subs under any pretext; Tom did not seem to be one of those, but placing the platform as centrally as humanly possible would please him I hoped. I carefully placed the platform and adjusted it, trying to be quiet and going so far as to lean over the platform to check that the chalk mark showing the centre of the circle was visible through the hole in the centre of the platform.

“Good. I applaud your precision,” Tom’s still disembodied voice praised, “but it only really needed to be over the cross; the cameras have sufficient depth of field to catch everything. If you continue to take as much care, I may see if I can teach you a trick or two.” I was liking the way Tom was dealing with me; he praised, which made me feel I was doing things right, he explained, at least some of, why he wanted what he wanted, so his instructions did not feel arbitrary or capricious and he offered a reward for continued ‘good behaviour’; although why I might want to learn a trick or two, I could not see at the time, but then I did not know what trick he would eventually teach me.

Satisfied with my placing of the platform he moved on to the next thing to do. “Now, I assume that you know how to set up a box by tucking in the flaps in turn and then tucking the corner of the last flap under the first.”

“Yes, Tom,” I answered.

“Ok, assemble the box so that it has a base and place that base on the platform; you’ll find that it fits neatly inside the rim on the platform; that way it won’t fall off, unless it gets pushed too hard.”

I picked the box back up and opened it into a square tube. A glance inside told me the correct way up, but I paused a moment to consider if it mattered. I decided that even if it did not matter to Tom, it mattered to me. I turned the shell of the box over so that I was initially folding the base flaps and began tucking. I would like to flatter myself that I made a tidy job of the final tuck; I have seen people make a mess of that tuck and bend one of the flaps so that the inner part is bend up and takes up excessive space in the box or the outer part is so badly bend that the box does not sit straight. Given that I assumed I would end up inside this box, having a flap jutting up inside the box would be quite uncomfortable.

With the box assembled, I held it a short way above the platform and dropped to allow its weight to help set the creases.

“Good.” It feels good being praised, even if the thing you are being praised for is something you could probably do in your sleep. More instructions followed. “Now, you will have seen that there was a pot of sticks and a step ladder next to where you got those items from.” I nodded. “Bring them near the box! In fact, place the stepladder directly next to the platform and fold down the top flap on that side so that it is held down by the ladder.”

It took no time to drag the steps and the pot into position and folding down a flap from the top of the box and catching it against the side of the ladder was no problem, once I had worked out which way the steps unfolded.

“Now, I want you to pick a stick from the pot and check it out. Describe it too!” Tom whispered in my ear. His tone said that he was letting me see what I was going to be involved with, rather than filling time or trying to frighten me.

At the pot I took a moment to assess if any of the sticks sticking up from the pot was any different from the rest; beyond barely detectable differences in grain pattern none of the sticks stood out. I picked one at random. The stick I picked was a little over half my height, smooth, straight and was thick enough that I could not quite close my fingers to my palm around it. There was only one thing that marred it, which was that someone (presumably Tom) had tried to whittle one end of the stick to a point and not made a particularly good job of it; I guessed that it was just sufficient to puncture a cardboard box.

“Well, it’s wood and it’s round. It’s a round wooden stick a bit longer than my leg and someone has tried to sharpen one end.” I hoped that Tom did not take this as disparaging his stick sharpening skills.

I suddenly put together what the plan for this scene was; I was to get into the box and the sticks were to be poked through the box all around me. The box was quite big, but was it big enough to accommodate me and the full number of sticks in the pot? Tom would need to know exactly where I was in order to avoid touching me. Maybe I would need to tuck myself close to the first few sticks to give him space for the rest; I felt sure that if I needed to do that he would let me know.

Back to the stick. “I guess this needs to be poked through the cardboard of the box and I suppose it is sharp enough for that, but I doubt it would spear anything more substantial, but it might scratch if it was run across skin.” Was I being too critical? I felt the need to comment on the roughness of the edges between the whittled faces of the ‘point’. I hoped he would take it as a suggestion that I did not want the points to come too close.

“Good summary!” More praise; either he had not spotted the implied critique of his improvised spears, or he was ignoring it. “Now it is time for you to get into the box and crouch down or sit down as you like, you just need to have you head below the edge of the box. Once in the box, topple the ladder away from the box and fold in the top flaps to make a top, in the same way you did for the base.” As I took my first few steps up the ladder, he added, “I would suggest that you take a position that you find comfortable or at least easy to hold, because you may be in there for a while.”

The actual getting into the box was a little difficult as it was deeper than my heel to crotch measurement, but I managed it with a minimum of pressure between my legs and no damage to the box; the folded edge of a substantial box is surprisingly strong. Stood in the box, I pushed the handle at the top of the step-ladder until it over-balanced and watched it collapse flat when it hit the floor.

I took hold of the flap I had folded down and drew it up and over me as I squatted down in the box. In turn I pulled the other flaps on top of the preceding flap until the last flap was pulled down. It was tricky getting the outer corner of the last flap inside the loose corner of the first flap, but I managed it without bending either too severely.

Tom asked if I was ready to continue, so I answered that I was going to be a little while finding a position that I could hold easily. I ended up sitting with my back against one face of the box with my feet braced in the opposite corners and my knees close to my chest. “I’m ready,” I said, adding a note of doubt by appending the phrase, “I think.”

Anyone would be doubtful if they were sitting in a box expecting someone to pierce the box with a lot of sharpened sticks and hoping that the person with the sticks was skilled enough to miss them. What if there was some kind of accident and Tom got too close and I got scratched? What if Tom’s aim went wrong and he accidentally tried to spear me with one of the sticks? I dismissed this, because I still had this feeling that Tom would do me no harm, and I doubted if a stick would be capable of more than giving me a painful bruise before stopping.

It went quiet. In the quiet, I heard a couple scuffs of shoe against the floor and then a couple of scrapes from the direction of the pot of sticks, then another foot-scuff; closer this time.

I was feeling very tense, expecting that a pointed stick would come through the box without warning; I had resolved that if I could help it I would not scream.

Suddenly a totally unexpected question, “Are you ready?” came through the earpiece in my ear. I nearly screamed, but found enough control.

“Yes, I think so, Tom,” I called back, hoping to project something other than surprise, but my voice came out squeaky.

“I shall count three and then do it.”

I began to wonder if waiting without knowing when it was going to happen was better or worse than having a countdown. “Ok,” I whispered, partially hoping that he would not hear me.

He was not planning on waiting for any acknowledgement from me, because he was already counting.

When he reached three, everything changed.

I heard the expected pop as the pointed end of the stick pierced the thick wall of the box. I barely had time to notice that the sound of the puncturing had come from behind me, when I felt the point hit me in the back, between my shoulder blades. This development was shocking enough, but was compounded by the feeling that it was going through me and the extra feeling of it bursting out of my chest. Curiously, I noted that once the tip was through me, it slowed while retaining enough impetus to pierce the opposite wall of the box.

It took me a split second to gather these feelings together and work out that I had been penetrated with a wooden stick, but that tiny fragment of time seemed to stretch as if it might be the rest of my life. I was stabbed through the chest and it took maybe two seconds to calculate what to do. I yelled my safeword, “RED!”

As this word found the air outside the box and the airwaves beyond the earpiece, the sensation of being penetrated was repeated, but this time I was transfixed through the small of my back and out through my belly.

I shouted “Red!” again.

After my shout, the silence was oppressive. What was Tom going to do? I had told him what ‘red’ meant, but would he remember? Assuming he remembered, would he actually stop? He should have stopped after I had called ‘red’ the first time. Now I was speared twice in a box in a disused warehouse; I was totally at his mercy. I have never felt so vulnerable in my life.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” he asked. His voice showed surprise.

Two questions; the first was the perfect question when ‘red’ is called, the second seemed redundant. I was speared by two sharpened sticks through my chest and guts, of course I was hurt.

Another part of my brain questioned why I was analysing what Tom had said, instead of answering the question that mattered and getting the situation sorted out; presumably by getting me out of there and into an ambulance on my way to hospital.

Prompted by this side-thought I answered, “You only went and speared me through the chest and then again through the guts after I had called out.” There was some relief in saying what was wrong, because it made it Tom’s responsibility to sort out the situation.

I expected him to leap into action, but instead he said, “I’m sorry about the second one, but it was underway before you shouted and I could not turn it aside, because it might have ended up somewhere worse. So, are you hurt?”

Now was not the time to apologise for not responding to my shout the instant I made it; making excuses only magnified the offense I felt. And such a feeble excuse too; where could be worse than through my abdomen? And asking the same stupid question again? Angela had warned me about Tom’s vanilla-ness; was I going to pay a dreadful price for not properly heeding the warning?

My temper was beginning to boil. “What do you think, bucko? You just speared me through the chest and the guts, what do you expect?” I shouted.

“I expect you to have a wooden stake through your chest,” came his reply; this meant that he had deliberately speared me; I was dealing with a maniac. He added, “But I don’t expect there to be blood.” Had he missed all education and common-sense? If he expected to deliberately spear someone through the chest and guts and there not be blood, he believed in magic. “Is there any blood or pain?” he asked. Maybe, he really believed in magic.

I was given pause by this thought. If he believed in magic, perhaps he had reason to. I moved my hand to where the stick exited my chest. It felt like I would have imagined it would feel, if I had ever thought to imagine being stabbed through the chest. I also felt some wet droplets. I raised my hand towards the opening in the top of the box where the flaps did not quite meet to see if the moisture was tinted with red; it was not.

“I don’t feel any blood. Well, not yet anyways.” I was not discounting the possibility that the stick was stopping the blood leaking out, but there was the problem of internal bleeding. Then why was I not feeling faint? I immediately put that down to adrenaline.

“And you won’t, unless you find something in there to cut yourself on. That’s blood sorted.” He dismissed the lack of external bleeding, just like that; no thought to internal bleeding at all. Then he continues, “So, do you feel any pain, or are you just thinking you should feel pain because of your situation?”

Is this man an inexhaustible supply of stupid questions? “Is there a non-painful way to be speared?” I sneered.

I was not expecting an answer, still less an admission. “I’ll admit most people feel some small amount of pain at the start of a penetration or cutting, but that usually goes away quite quickly.” He was expecting me to feel some pain and he did not warn me?

“Are you in pain now?” More stupid questions! “If you are in pain now, then being a magician’s assistant is not for you and we might as well give up.” This gave me enough pause to analyse my situation.

My situation could be summarised as sitting in a box in an abandoned warehouse, with two wooden spears through my body. This set of circumstances should involve lots of fear, bleeding and pain.

But I was not feeling fear, I could not tell why, but was discussing my situation with the instigator of that situation without jabbering or screaming, in fact I was feeling quite lucid, not a state associated with fear, except where the lucidity is a product of the ‘fight or flight response’, but I was waiting, possibly too long, for my current predicament to be sorted out.

I had already established that I was not bleeding, but I felt the exit points of both spears to check that I was still not bleeding, despite every thought in my head assuming that bleeding was a normal consequence of being pierced with a piece of wood.

I turned my thoughts to the pain part of ‘things there should be lots of’, and started by noting again that I was not screaming. I tried to move slightly, but the stick through my chest was not permitting that and the tiny bit of movement I managed put pressure on the edges of the exit points, so I decided that, in the interest of not causing bleeding to occur, I would stay as still as possible. Then I noticed in retrospect that there was no pain associated with the attempt at moving.

I thought back to the actual event of being penetrated the first time and tried to think what I had felt at the time. I remembered the pop of the point coming through the outside of the box; surely thinking about where to expect the stick to go cannot have distracted me from any pain I felt when the point of the stick began burrowing through my back; but I could not recall any pain, even from the evidently high speed impact with my back. I had to conclude there had been no pain.

“I don’t think I’m in pain, but it is certainly uncomfortable, but I guess that is something to do with having my movement limited by being skewered inside a box. In fact, come to think about it, I did not feel any pain at all; not even when the skewers hit me in the back. I suppose that it was just the shock of my situation talking.”

“What? Did you really feel no pain?” He sounded incredulous.

I made an affirmative, kind of, ‘hm’ noise.

“That may make you my perfect assistant. That is, if you feel you want to after we’ve finished today,” he said.

Did he sound impressed? I had not thought about what would happen after this morning; at the moment I was more focused on surviving the next few minutes. Moving my mind to consider the longer term was a bit of a stretch. I had enjoyed how I was being treated, but the afterglow of being locked in the previous box, which was fading, died the moment the stick went through me. I just could not think of the future at the moment.

“So, you stopped everything; what happens next?” he asked. He evidently had no clue of what to do once he was not in charge or in his area of expertise.

I decided that he needed to know the general rules and then move on to the specific. “In general, if I am in a life-threatening situation, or one risking potential harm, you get me out as soon as possible; otherwise you wait for me to ask to be removed from the situation or to be told you may continue, possibly with some restrictions on how far, how fast or intensely you can go. In the current situation, which, it seems silly to say, does not seem to be life threatening, you wait for me to decide whether I want out or to continue and then act accordingly.”

Internally I questioned why I was teaching him generalities, when he had done nothing to address my specific predicament.

“I thought it would be something like that, but being new to this kind of thing I thought I had better ask.” It was good that he knew that he was a novice in these things and was willing to learn the proper way to act, rather than making assumptions that could cause trouble. “Does this mean you are undecided about what to do at the moment?”

“Well, yes, kind of,” I admitted. “I think it’s more that I have a few questions, before I ask you to continue; if I ask you to continue.” What was I thinking? Was being speared twice by someone who failed to stop immediately I had shouted not enough? Why was I even thinking about continuing with this, which, it seemed, would lead to further spearings.

“Ok, ask away; I’ll answer as best I can.” His voice carried a blend of enthusiasm and caution. Did he like that I was asking questions; hoping that this indicated that I could be persuaded to continue and perhaps become his assistant? Was he worried that I might decide against continuing depending on what he answered?

“That’s as much as I can ask.” I acknowledged that I could not expect total disclosure at this stage. I moved on to the questions I felt I needed to ask. “So, how many sticks are there? And will they all be going through me?”

“There are a dozen sticks left in the pot and the plan was that they all end up in the box.” He was talking about what he planned to do, rather than what he would do, which meant he was prepared to accept that I did not want to continue, if I did not like his answers. He moved smoothly on to the second question without prompting. “Inevitably, a few will go through without touching you, but the plan was that they be used to increase your tension while you wait for the next one; to enhance the experience, based on the thought that some of the enjoyment of the magic is the anticipation. And there is the consideration that if all the sticks went through you there would seem to be a gaping hole within the box where you could be, thus reducing the visual effect of the illusion.” He was back on his home ground; where he knew what he was doing and why; that boosted my confidence in him.

“I suppose that makes sense,” I commented. Now I had been told what the plan was, though I had better move onto my predicament. “Given I have a spear through my chest, how come I’m still able to breath and will I still be able to speak at the end?”

“I know it sounds like a cop-out answer, but breathing with a stick penetrating your chest is just a property of the way the magic works. It seems that magic exists to allow the magician to do what he wants, while protecting the people he does it to from harm. I guess that means I could not kill anyone with magic, but, maybe, I could kill someone by not using magic; I don’t know and I’m not about to try it to see what happens, and there’s always the possibility the magic might stop me doing something like that anyway.”

If I could trust what he was saying, I would not come to physical harm from his magic; which was a relief. But the fact that he seemed not to know the limits of the magic was disquieting, because it left open the possibility that he might find the magic’s edge and harm someone, perhaps me, by stepping beyond. Fortunately, he seemed to be confident that he was within his magical limits, which I hoped meant that I was safe, for the moment.

I decided that I needed to concentrate on the moment, so I reminded him of the second part of the question he had been answering. “And speaking?”

“I had no intention of doing anything to stop you speaking, but I could if you want;” he replied. Good! That he was not thinking of silencing me; but giving me the option of doing it if I wanted it; was that really so good? “All I’d need to do would be put a stick through your neck or jaw; you might be able to make some noises, but it would not be intelligible.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, thank you.” I tried to remember if at any point I had mentioned how safewords work if the person is gagged or otherwise cannot speak. I hoped both that I had and that he would not put me in a position that I needed to find out; that would be a breach of trust.

“What would happen if one of the sticks got twisted?” I asked. Where had that question come from?

“Erm.” He seemed as surprised by the question as I was. “I guess that might be uncomfortable, because it would lead to bits of you being turned against other bits of you. I suppose, if there was a joint in between, there is the possibility of dislocating that joint. The good news is that it’s not going to happen, because the cardboard of the box will hold the stick in place so it will not move unless stupidly large amounts of force are used.”

“That’s good to hear.” Then putting things together I thought, ‘that’s not what I meant!’ “I meant what will happen if the stick is turned around its longways length.”

“Oh. I get it now. I don’t think that would do anything; you might feel something as the wood moves against whatever it’s touching, perhaps like wood against skin, but inside you.”

“Is it ok if I try it, Tom?” I asked.

“Of course, if you want to.” I raised my hands to the section of the intruder in my chest directly in front of me, so that I could turn it. He continued, “But if something starts going wrong, you have to let me know, so I can try to fix it.”

Good that he was taking the responsibility for the situation I was in, after all he had planned it. I had only commissioned it and perhaps given him too free a hand.

I put my hands around the dowel and turned it; the sensation along the path of penetration was pleasant. It was like the pleasantness of stroking a smooth piece of well-worn wooden furniture, but the wood stroked you back and inside.

“I was going to offer to twist the rod for you, but you seem to have gone ahead on your own.” I wondered whether he was saying this because he was aware of my limited mobility and thought I might find it difficult to turn the spearing wood or because felt guilty about putting me in this predicament.

“I figured that if I tried and didn’t like it I could stop quicker than you, because I’d know to stop quicker,” I rationalised out loud.

It was not easy turning the dowel, but I managed to move it some. The sensation was nice enough that I carried on, first turning it one way with one hand and the back the other way with the other.

“It looks like you like it,” observed Tom. “How does it feel?”

I was at a loss as to how to describe the feeling, but I said, “like you said, the feel of smooth wood against whatever it’s touch internally; I wouldn’t have thought it felt so nice, but if you have a unique chance to try something, jump at it, I say, because you won’t get another and at least you’ll know what you’re missing. I must say it feels best where it passes through my left tit; why would that be?” Why did I tell him that? It was true that it felt subtly different; like the difference between touching your forearm and somewhere more erogenous.

“I don’t know. I didn’t even aim for your breasts; I intended to come through your upper chest, but it is difficult to be precise when you can’t see the target.” I almost felt glad that he still seemed to be on the defensive, but that was a detail I could have done without.

“I guess you’re right,” I conceded; it must be difficult to spear a person in a box; like shooting fish in a barrel.

I was beginning to lose track of how much time I had sat here calmly, and not-so-calmly, discussing the fact I had been harpooned, but I still seemed to have full use of my senses; with the possible exception of common sense. Being speared by Tom did not seem to be as harmful as the initial concept would imply and the turning of the rod once it was through was surprisingly pleasurable.

Time to exert the power of the sub, with a ‘you may continue, but…’

“Well, I think I’m ready to continue, but I would like you to give each rod a twist once it’s in; like a pleasant experience to counter the shock of being speared.” As an afterthought I added, “And you could tell me where to expect the stick to go through, that would be a help, too.” The hope being that I would be able to brace myself or have a moment to prepare myself for the impact and mitigating some of the down-side of being a human pin-cushion.

“Twisting the sticks after the penetration I can do easily, but to tell you where the next stick is going through could be more difficult and, as I’ve already said, my aim is not very precise, but could tell you where the stick is coming from and its direction; would that be ok?” He was willing to make concessions and aware of his limitations; both good things. But best of all he was not just saying, ‘I can’t do that,’ but he was offering a compromise.

“If that’s the best you can do, it’ll have to do.” I tried to sound as if I was letting him get away with something, rather than appearing pleased that he was acting as I had hoped he would act.

I heard him take a step towards the pot and the scrape as he took out another of his sharpened sticks. Another step, this time, towards me and my confining situation.

“So something like this?” he asked and, without pause to allow a reply, then went on, “Left side high, straight across, three, two, one.”

While he was counting, my mind was a-whirl trying to interpret what he meant by his description of where the stick in his hand was coming from and which direction it was going. By the time I had got some idea where it was coming from, it was already passing across my line of sight, a few inches in front of my eyeballs. I gave a short squeal of surprise and then said, “You don’t need to count so fast, it’s not a race; I need a little more time to know what to expect.”

He did not comment, but twisted the stick across my field of vision, which was close enough that I could not easily focus on it. He seemed to be able to turn it about four rotations in each direction, whereas I had only managed only a single rotation. “That looks ok,” I mumbled to myself.

He evidently took this as consent because the next thing I felt was a stick being thrust through my thighs and the pleasant rub of stick rotating in muscle. Ok, he had announced it was coming and I had the opportunity to tell him that I was not ready, but I did not. The next few I greeted with an involuntary grunt and a sigh as each was rotated with whatever part of my body it was immobilising.

Tom surprised me with one of the ones in the middle, by an origin, but no direction, and then after the count there was the pop of pierced cardboard below my right ear. I had a moment of panic where I thought that he was going to break his promise not to put a stick through my neck; this seemed confirmed when I felt the tip of the stick touch my neck. I was relieved when it stopped there and was quickly withdrawn and re-thrust through the box past my ear.

With ten sticks though me and another three through the space in the box, I had lost count. My arms and legs were skewered and unable to move. He said, “Final one! Right side low rear straight across.” After the count, which gave me just enough time to work out that it would be going through my hips, right to left, he thrust it through. It seemed to have a downward angle and about halfway it added the sexual feeling that I had just experienced a while ago in another box. I also felt the judder as the spear scraped the edge of the platform as its tip left the box. My groan at being pierced took on a higher pitched tone.

As he placed his hands into position to spin the rod, the tiny movement felt so good I let out a small squeak. This did not stop him, but I did not want it to. As he turned the wooden rod through my hips I must have made a noise he did not recognise as a heartfelt moan, because he stopped and asked, “Are you alright?”

“I will be,” I said. “Just keep doing that for a while,” then added, hoping I did not sound as if I was pleading, “Please.”

As he turned the stick through my crotch the sexual feeling grew. At one point he seemed to add some side-to-side motion which felt even better, but, regretfully that did not last long. Later it seemed that the stick pressed more lightly or more strongly against whatever it was pressed against and in very little time after that the build-up broke the dam of my self-control and I screamed the orgasm to the box and the entire space surrounding it.

He carried on twirling the stick; I had to ask him to stop. I then relaxed, allowing my weight to be supported by the rods through me, which in turn were supported by the walls of the box.

I sat panting, while there was some activity outside the box.

My chest had stopped heaving against the three sticks through it and I was breathing nearly normally, when he asked, “Are you ready for the next part, Hannah?”

What next part? Surely he was not planning to do more to me while I was impaled inside this cardboard box. “I’m not sure. What is the next part?”

“That’s the part where I pull all the sticks back out again so you can get out of the box; does that sound ok?”

Of course, it sounded ok; in fact it sounded better than ok. In an effort to sound like I was not particularly worried about my multiply-penetrated state, I said, “Well, it wouldn’t be much of a show, if I just stayed in the box, would it? Unless you’ve got a second assistant ready to go; up your sleeve or somewhere.”

“Sorry, no second assistant in the wings to take up the slack, so you’re going to have to come out of that box.” Was he joking?

“Not a problem, but before you get on with it, one more question.” Was I procrastinating? Did I really need to know? “What will having the sticks removed feel like?”

He seemed happy to answer my question. “I don’t know. My best guess is that they will feel much the same as they did when they went in, except that you won’t have the impact of the end of the dowel rod hitting you before it goes through and there may be some sensation as your body closes up around the hole the stick made, or whatever it does.”

“Back up a bit. You don’t know? What do you mean, ‘You don’t know’?” When your life depends on someone knowing what they are doing, ‘I don’t know,’ is not what you want to hear. I was now far from the relaxed state I had been enjoying minutes before.

“I mean that I don’t know what sensations you are likely to experience, because I’ve never been penetrated by anything and I’ve never done it to anyone else before, so I’ve not had anyone to ask.”

“Are you telling me that I’m the first person you’ve ever put in a box and rammed sticks through?” I was feeling the edge of panic and trying not to fall in.

“Yes, and you are only the fourth person I’ve ever done magic on; Annie was the third. The first two were girlfriends, who I only ever sawed in half and put back together and then got dumped by.”

I did not need to know about his former girlfriends; at the moment I felt they would be perfectly justified in leaving him. But I thought about the video of Annie’s show and realised that the only things that had passed through her were blades and the pin, which Robert had not got a good shot of.

“And what happens if you’re wrong and, say, the hole the sticks made don’t close up and I start bleeding to death?” I asked.

“It won’t happen like that.” He sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, but did I detect some vagueness in the statement.

“Happen like what?” I challenged.

“Even if the holes don’t close up, which I am confident they will, you will not bleed, because the magic will prevent it.”

“So, I might end up with a set of three-quarter inch holes through my body, instead of bleeding to death. That is such a comfort.” I did not feel comforted in the slightest and I let it show in my tone.

“Let’s put it this way. I have divided three people into two and there has been no harm done (other than my girlfriends leaving me) so trust me that a simple spear box will go any worse.”

Get over injured male pride; they left you for reasons and I guess they were to do with the magic.

He was equating sawing a person in half, which he had done before, with putting me in a box and filling me with wooden sticks, which he had never tried before. “What? That made no sense.”

“Why don’t I get you out of there and if there are any consequences I did not anticipate, we’ll deal with them, then we’ll talk, ok?”

“That may be the best idea either of us has had this morning.” He even seems to have the priorities in some sort of reasonable order.

Each stick he took out provided a brief wooden through flesh pleasantness and some relief at being less immobilised. There was also the clatter of the sticks being dropped on the floor. Moments after the last spear had been extracted and discarded, the blade of a knife came through the side of the box, slicing down near the edge and across the bottom. Tom pulled open the flap he had made and looked in.

I sat still for long enough to be sure I could not feel blood flowing from where the spears had been and that I did not feel faint from internal bleeding. I took the process of checking that I did not have more holes than I started with slowly, to avoid straining anything that might be harmful. I ran my fingers over my breast where the first rod had exited and was happy to find that I could not tell the exact point, because there was no damage to the skin, but I planned to check myself in a mirror once I got home, to spot any bruises; Angela had mentioned bruising, but I could not quite remember the context.

I got up satisfied that I was not letting light through, and stepped out of the wreckage of the box.

“So now we talk, right?” I was thinking that better tell him what I wanted. I felt thirsty again despite having drunk a large glass of water a few minutes ago. I wanted something to drink. “But first I’m feeling thirsty, have you got anything more interesting than water to drink?”

He seemed momentarily stunned that I was not ranting at him about the events in the minutes since my last drink. “Erm, yes,” he said. “Well, I’ve got tea-bags and instant coffee in the van and a kettle, but I don’t keep milk, because it goes off so quickly.”

Tea and coffee were not the level of interesting I was after. “I was thinking something alcoholic, perhaps.”

“No. No alcohol.” He seemed totally committed to this stance. “It is a very bad mix with magic. I feel that if your judgement is impaired you could end up doing something you might seriously regret, more than getting a tattoo while drunk.”

I glanced at my hip where the inscription ‘Dave’s Who’ was inked; evidence of a drunken tattoo session that had been so bad that even in a barely coherent state I had stopped it before the final two letters were started (I still had only the haziest recollection of who Dave was; I had toyed with the idea of adding a question mark, but never had the courage and opportunity coincide).

While some of the deeper levels of my mind speculated on the possible regrets possible with magic, my conscious mind returned to the conversation. “In that case, I’ll have the tea, please. Two sugars if it’s a cup, three if it’s a mug.”

“Sorry, but I don’t carry the sugar either, because I don’t take it, myself.”

I gave him a look that I hope implied that sugar might be the only thing that could prevent me scratching his face off. “I might have picked up a sachet or two of sugar or sweetener in my travels, I could see if I could find something,” he added and made for the exit door.

I threw a thank you after him and went to put my clothes back on; I was not planning to wait for my tea naked.

For want of anywhere else to sit, I sat on the platform where the wrecked remains of the box still sat. I did consider sitting in the car, but the key fob was nowhere to be seen (presumably in Tom’s pocket) and that would mean leaving the chalk circle; having been told not to leave the field of view of the cameras, it seemed wrong to disobey.

I was getting bored after a minute or so, so I got up and started to pick up the sticks that Tom had impaled me with. Maybe I just wanted the place to be tidy; maybe I wanted to discover something about the sticks that told me that I had not really been impaled but it had just felt like it (enough like it to fool me).

Most of the sticks were inside the circle, but a few had rolled a little way beyond the chalk line. I used other sticks to reach far enough to roll then to positions where I pick them up without crossing the line bodily. Why was I not having the guts to step over the line, pick up the stick and step back?

I returned to the platform, once the sticks were all stowed in the pot. I had heard Tom return to the office area and the clatter of cups and the noise of a kettle being boiled. I looked at the remains of the box; probably in hope that it would reveal more than just the entry and exit holes caused by the sticks. It occurred to me that the tricky part of the trick had been removed or destroyed when he had ripped the box open. The raw edge of the cut did not give me much hope that this could have been the case.

A scuff of shoe on concrete announced Tom’s return and he soon appeared bearing two mugs. He handed me one, which smelled of old teabag, but no less welcome for that, then sank to sitting cross-legged facing me. He was taller than me so when he sat his eyes were almost level with mine.

His smile showed that he was not looking forward to trying to justify his actions with the sword box and that he was relieved that I was still there. It had not occurred to me until that moment that it would have been the perfect moment to leave. I took a moment to wonder if the chalk circle would have stopped me if I had tried.

I took a sip of the tea. Its flavour was not enhanced by the mix of sugar and saccharin that had been used to sweeten it, but it was warm and wet, so a second sip soon followed.

He sipped his drink and glanced round. He evidently noticed that the sticks had been picked up and returned to the pot. He smiled slightly and then frowned; I guess he had spotted the sticks that had been beyond the circle had also been retrieved. His face briefly displayed confusion; I waited for him to ask for an explanation of the fetching of the sticks from beyond the circle, but no question came.

“So, we talk?” he said in a tone that said this was going to be a difficult conversation that he did not anticipate going the way he hoped. I was uncertain what way he hoped for.

“Yes,” I replied. I wanted to work out what had happened and what I felt about him and the magic. He needed to explain himself, but I was not going to tell him that.

“What are we talking about?” he asked. Was he really that clueless?

“What just happened, where we are and our whole situation.” I was trying to give the clue that he needed to explain spearing me; particularly without having tried on anyone first. And if that turned out to satisfy me, we could discuss where we went from there; if I wanted to teach him about the ‘scene’ and allow him to teach me about ‘magic’.

“That sounds like a lot to cover.” He was right, perhaps without being aware how right he was. “Where do we start?” A sensible question.

“How about, what gives you the right to put me in a box and fill me full of homemade spears, when you have never done that kind of thing before? And what made you even think it would work?” I almost added some comment about how reckless he had been, but he looked down in his mug and I considered the possibility that I had come on a bit strong.

“You’re not going to buy, ‘I just knew it would work out’?” I shook my head slowly. I do not consider ‘That’s just the way it is’ to be an adequate explanation for anything ever.

He thought for a moment or three. “Do you want the full story of how I learnt I could do magic? And how I progressed from undoing shoe-laces by magic to today?”

I did not need a blow-by-blow account of his progress through the magical arts, but if it provided an insight that would allow me to trust him properly it might be worth something. Also you can tell a lot about a person by what they think is the important part of the story. “I think we’ll go for edited highlights. So you started with shoe-laces?” I thought I would give him somewhere to start and see where he went from there.

“Yes, at school. I would cover the laces with my hand and they would do up or undo, whichever I wanted. It took me a long time to realise that this was not how the rest of the school did it. When I did work out that I was doing something different, I put in the effort to learn how to do it the normal way, because I already knew at that age that people who are different get treated differently and usually worse.” I could sympathise, because I was bullied by the other girls for being small.

“Ok, let’s see the shoe-lace thing!” A bit of non-threatening magic was not going to hurt.

He demonstrated by putting out a leg and hiding the shoe-laces on that shoe from sight for a few seconds. When they came back into view they were no longer the neatly tied bow, but each end of the lace trailed to the floor. I don't really know what I expected, except it was something with more pizazz. I guess he saw how underwhelmed I was, because he hid the laces from sight again and a few seconds later the neat bow was back in place.

I felt I had to comment, so I tried to say the kindest thing I could think of. “Not very flashy is it?”

“No, not at all,” he admitted, adding, “That probably saved my skin at school; I don’t think anyone noticed.”

“So how did you get from that to sawing people in half and spearing them?” Because it seemed, to me, that it is a long way from fiddling with shoe-laces to doing stuff that could potentially kill people if it was not done right.

“The first thing to develop were my telekinetic abilities. I would pick up pencils and levitate them to where I wanted them. I never did learn to write that way.” Ok, so he could move things about with his mind; that was not life threatening. Besides why could he not write that way; lack of control or not being able to put the right pressure down the pencil? He went on, “But the turning point was when I joined an after school magic club.”

Now this story was getting somewhere. “Why? What happened there? Did you find a mentor or something like that?” I prompted.

“No; a mentor would have been a great thing to have.” No mentor; that meant he was self-taught. I missed the next bit; something about learning the magic tricks and it helping him not to be bullied. “And with each new trick I learnt I discovered that I could do the same magically; in most cases, less well and less reliably.” That last bit did not sound promising.

“So you just learnt the tricks and then found out you could do the real thing. So you progressed up to bigger tricks? And that led to bigger magic?” I was trying to cut this long story short and get to the meat of the issue.

“Not quite, I learnt that there were bigger tricks and, as one does in their teens, I got ambitious and thought that I could do something like that. My first real magic with another living creature was levitating our dog, Samson.” So, he did not start on humans, but isn’t levitation just heavy telekinesis? I could imagine the sight of a dog struggling being lifted off the floor, especially with no obvious means of support.

“Didn’t that freak your dog out?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, because he was asleep at the time; he did kick a bit as if he was dreaming and who’s to say what of his situation, a foot above his bed, got through to his dream.”

“So, that led step-by-step to you sawing a girlfriend in half.” I was having trouble imagining the route from canine levitation to cutting someone in half.

“Yes, kind of. It’s not like that first time was deliberate, but by this time (I must have been sixteen or seventeen) I was supplementing my allowance by being a paid magician at parties and my parents were charging me to be driven to these parties (I suppose they didn’t have as much money as I assumed at the time, but it did ground me in the economics of the profession).”

“Ok, what happened?” 'Not deliberate', did that mean accidental or something closer to unplanned?

“Well, I had saved up enough to get my hands on a thin model sawing box and persuaded Bella that if she was to join the act that we could be together more for rehearsals and gigs and she could get some of the extra money I would be earning, because I could include a big trick in my show. So, one evening we got together to try it out. I taught her how to do the trick as it said in the instructions that came with the box, but when it came to the moment of truth her ankles got stuck in the foot stocks. I did not realise this until the saw I was using touched her waist. At that point I had the confidence in the magic that if there was a trick which I knew, I could do the real magic equivalent, so instead of stopping as any sensible person might have, I carried on. Bella was screaming blue murder, but I knew it was working by the lack of blood and the fact that she was screaming threats, not pain. So I proceeded as if I was doing the trick, but doing it for real; I even showed her her feet." So it was unplanned, rather than an accident. "When I had put her back together and let her out of the box, she hit me and stormed off. Thankfully, she didn’t tell people that I had sawn her in half; I’m guessing, because she didn’t have any scars to back up the tale.”

“Well, I can see why she would leave you. I guess you never saw her again.” I managed to suppress the smirk that nearly surfaced.

“We saw each other, but only at school and she never spoke to me again. I never spoke to her again either; I couldn’t work out how to apologise for something like that.”

I looked at him; at least he felt that he should be apologising for something like that. “And have you worked out how to apologise to me?”

“No. I am not even sure an apology is needed." I was dumbfounded; I had said 'Red' and he carried on, of course an apology was needed. "You asked me to do a magic show with you as assistant, you must have had some idea what to expect, especially if you’ve discussed it with Annie.”

I guess he had a point, but needed to defend my point too. “It’s a bit different to fantasise about something and to really experience it, you know.”

“So, you’ve fantasised about being in magical boxes?” he asked.

“Erm, not exactly, but I did wonder what it would be like to do that Houdini illusion.” Maybe I had called it the wrong thing, so described it and what appealed about it. “You must know the one. The magician gets locked into a box, after being tied up and put in a sack. Then the assistant gets onto the box and raises a curtain and suddenly the magician is on the box and he opens the box to find the assistant is tied up in the sack. I wonder what it would be like to be the assistant and suddenly find myself inside the box; I guess I’d find it a kind of thrill.”

“Well, this morning you have already experienced suddenly being in a box,” he pointed out.

“I guess.” It may have been true, but did not know where he was leading with this.

“You don’t seem convinced.”

I was not convinced, it suddenly happened to me without warning, then I remembered his comment about anticipation. I threw it back at him. “Well, like you said, part of the magic is the anticipation. I wasn’t anticipating anything in particular.”

“Sorry, I guess, that’s part of my non-magical magician training. There are various things you don’t do as a magician; chief among these is you don’t tell them what to expect. Not only does it give you a get out if what you expect does not happen, but it doesn’t let them know what they’re looking for when the tricky move is done.”

This sounded like an excuse to me, but my anger was cooling. I would concentrate on the future. No harm had been done, except to my confidence in him and I was coming to the conclusion that he might be able to earn that back.

“So, you can do by magic any magic trick you know the normal method for?” I asked.

“Yes, but I discovered recently that I could do a little more than that. I can do the normal tricks as if they were real with the extras that that implies.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you must have seen how I made Annie appear for the show. That was inspired by a combination of a couple of videos I saw on YouTube. One was a TV show prank where they appeared to 3D print a person and the other was the appearance illusion where some illusionist seems to be deposited as a screen with his image moves up. Once I had worked out how they could have been done, it was a matter of trying it, but doing it by magic.”

“So you know how those were done?”

“Not for certain, but, for each, I have in my head a design for the illusion that could work.”

“And the extras?” I enquired, because this seemed to be the crux of what I might be experiencing.

“Both the original illusions imply that the body is not all there at some point in the process, so I paused during the illusion to show that it was true. And then there is the point that I’m not using a large machine, just an arch and square of cloth and a dress.”

He suddenly changed the track of the conversation. “Are you ready to continue? Now that you know I can do real magic and you will not be harmed even if it may get a bit uncomfortable. You will go home with all your limbs and in the right places.”

It took me a moment to process this. Was I ready to continue? Had a dodgy mug of tea prepared me for what might be coming. I did not know; so I asked. “So, because forewarned is forearmed, what are you planning to do with me next?”

“My plan is to put you into the box over there that you seem to so admire.”

I was feeling cautious and had a feeling, backed up by many stories, legendary and modern, of magicians saying what they mean, but not meaning straightforwardly. “And how are you going to achieve that, besides the obvious?”

“I have a plan, but I’m curious what you think is the obvious magician’s method of getting you into a sealed box.”

My mind raced to concoct a magician's method to get me into a sealed box. “I can think of two. The first, but on second thoughts perhaps least likely, is just make me appear inside the box. You know the kind of thing; disappear me from somewhere (under a sheet or inside another box) and then hide the box for a moment and have me appear inside it.”

“Good thought, and something any illusionist and assistant could achieve (or appear to, at least)." I felt that I was being praised, perhaps beyond how good he really thought the idea was. "And the other idea?” he asked.

“You could hypnotise me and open the box and have me climb in, then un-hypnotise me, not remembering the bit in between.”

“Also a good idea, but I will not use my hypnosis on you this session and the cameras would catch me opening the box. Not to mention the security labels over the bolts.”

So many factors I had forgotten, but then video editing is a thing and he could probably deal with the labels with a minimum of effort. “For a man who can tie his shoelaces by magic, security labels by magic shouldn’t be a problem.”

“How about if I tell you that there will be a sheet involved, but at least part of you will be visible to the cameras at all times. And I shall not interfere with the security labels until I get you out of the box. Any thoughts?”

He was challenging me to try and work out how else he might achieve his stated aim. “Hmm, nothing comes to mind, except, maybe, that you think you’re going to do something to me so I can fit through the slot in the top of the box. And perhaps it’s to do with this thing that looks like an ironing board.”

“I guess sticking it in the middle there was a bit of a give-away,” he admitted.

“So, how does an ironing board help you get me into the box? And why an ironing board?” Was I being a bit slow? But I could not see a connection between ironing and magic.

“It’s not really an ironing board, just constructed like one. Most ironing boards aren’t strong enough to bear the weight of a person and it looks bad if a prop collapses while you’re doing a show. It’s built to look like that because everyone knows you can’t hide anything in an ironing board. Of course, it resembles the original I stole the idea from, which was right for the premise of the effect achieved.”

Not helpful! Then I thought about what ironing boards were for. “You are implying that you plan to iron me flat and post me through the slot in the top of the box and get me back to normal, so you can release me.”

“That is the plan in a nutshell, but I hope the experience will be ok.”

“Let me guess; you have never tried this before.”

“I’ve never tried it on a human,” he said.

“That implies that you tried it on something else. So, what happened?”

“It tried on Mr Snuffles. He’s my rabbit. The doves wouldn’t stay still enough and my cat seems to have an ability to sense when I plan magical experimentation and makes himself scarce.”

I suppose it makes sense that he would have some animals, but I failed to keep the scepticism out of my voice. “You have pets?”

“Kind of, but the rabbit and doves are more livestock, they appear in my children’s shows. But Harvey, that’s my cat, he’s a pet and usually about for a bit of companionship. He’ll occupy my lap while I watch a bit of tele and stuff like that, but he’s independent enough that he doesn’t seem to mind that I don’t have regular hours.”

The fact that he looked after animals and had a feline companion, raised my opinion of him. The animals would need to be kept in good condition for his work, but a cat would not hang around someone who did not care. If he could keep animals, there was a good chance that he would treat me well too.

“And how did your rehearsal with Mr Shuffles go?” I asked partly out of curiosity and more to get the conversation on track.

“It exposed a flaw in the original plan, but it also allowed me time to think up a solution, which I tried and proved it worked in principle, after a hiccup.”

“What ‘hiccup’?”

“You don’t want to know. But I assure you that it’s sorted and won’t be a problem for you.” Was he hiding something important? I stared at him to determine if he was minimising a disaster or dramatising something trivial. He noticed my look and added, possibly too hastily, “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you afterwards, because I solved that little problem and Mr Snuffles has appeared in six shows since, none the worse for it.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Did I really want to become acquainted with the inside of the artful conceived box enough to go through with this? On balance I did, once weighed with his charm and consideration, but any negative moments and I would have been out of there fast enough to make his head spin. “So how do we do this?”

“First I have to fit you with the solution to Mr Snuffles little problem.” From his pocket something that looked like it was the valve from a tyre; a small metal tube with a mechanism inside to allow the flow of air or not. “Hold this between your ring- and little- fingers and I’ll tape it into place.” While I took the device and placed it as requested, he pulled a reel of medical tape from another pocket; the kind that does not rip your skin off as it is being removed. He looked at the valve and removed it and re-presented it the other way round. With the valve back in place and snug against the flesh between my fingers, made a quick, but secure, job of taping the bases of those fingers together, so that I could feel the thread pressing into the bases of my fingers.

“Ok, I hope the rest is more impressive,” I commented, smiling slightly. “What next?”

“Next you get on the board and get into a comfortable reclining position.”

“Do you want me to undress first?” I had remembered that if there had not been the break to discuss things, I would have still been naked at this point. As he was about to go back to being in charge again, I needed to ask if he needed that part of the previous status quo to be restored.

He seemed briefly puzzled by the question, then his face lit up with an idea. “No, but you’ll need to be naked for the final illusion, so maybe I can do something about that on the way.”

I could only assume that he meant me to start this illusion clothed, but finish it naked.

I moved over to where the fake ironing board stood on a low platform over the chalk mark indicating the centre of the chalk circle that was my boundary. A swift press and push assured me that the top was safe enough to trust my full weight to. Turning my back to the board and putting my hands on the edge, I made a little jump and pressed with my arms to end up sitting on top; I felt as solid to sit on as it had when I checked; that was a relief.

Tom had said that I should recline, so I lifted my feet onto the board and, despite him having seen all there was to see, I adjusted my skirt. I lay down, but propped my head on my hand so that I got some sort of view of what he was planning and doing.

As he came from a short trip beyond the chalk circle, I spotted he had some cloth in his hand. It was a small table cloth. He waved in the air so that it settled on my legs. This seemed at odds with his promise that I would be visible throughout the process.

“I thought you said that I’d be visible throughout.”

“I don’t recall saying that all of you would be visible at all times,” he pointed out. Checking back on the tape proved that he had even implied that I might be partially covered; not an implication I had taken at the time.

“Fine." It pained me to agree, but I did not really have much choice. "Are you going to iron me flat from my feet up?” I asked; better to know, than assume. He might have intended to iron me from the middle outward, for all I knew.

“That’s the plan," he confirmed. "If I started at your head and you didn’t like it?" he was sketching out a scenario that he assumed I would like less. "This way I can reverse it and move on to the final illusion I had planned.” He seemed open to giving up on an illusion if I did not like it and moving on.

“So, where’s the iron you plan to press me flat with?” Ironing without an iron does not work, but he could be planning to use rollers to mangle me flat or something else that I had not thought of.

“Here.” He hefted something resembling a Victorian flat-iron in shape, but it was obvious not the cast iron that a genuine one would be. The way he handled it suggested that it was made of wood and painted to look right; another give-away was that it was too big. The effect was comical and I failed to completely suppress my amusement at the oversized prop.

He lowered the iron onto my feet and pressed until it seemed that the iron was flat on the board. I could not feel much more than contact through the cloth and an oddly pleasant sensation that began where my shins abruptly ended.

“How did that feel?" he asked. "Because Mr Snuffles isn’t exactly talkative about his feelings.”

“It’s, I’m not sure, I think warm describes it; like the sun on my feet.” Or it might have been more like a relaxing foot bath.

Taking my admission that it generated pleasant feelings he continued ironing up my legs, gradually my shins, calves, knees and lower thighs disappeared from being humps under the cloth. The feelings increased as more of me was flattened; I may have made some noises of pleasure.

With me sitting reclined on the board like an amputee missing most of both legs, he swung the iron out of sight, placing it on the platform. He stood back a bit, probably to give the cameras a good view, then returned to drag the cloth up my body. The top edge of the cloth reached the base of my ribs before he let it settle again. This should have exposed my feet, but I could not see them.

I tried to sit up, but the normal interplay of forces from the various parts of my body did not seem to be producing the expected result; missing legs meant I was missing some. I could feel the warmth in my legs, but I found that I could not feel anything else. I was on the edge of panic and asked, “What have you done?”

“I thought you knew what I was going to do. And I've done it up to mid-thigh.”

He picked up something that was lying on the board a little beyond the edge of the cloth. If I had not been able to feel something changing with my feet and a tickling sensation that I barely managed to contain, I would have assumed that the strips of thin stuff he showed me was a life-size photo of someone's feet printed on thin card. As he lifted it for me to get a better view, the continuation that went under the edge of the cloth raised the cloth's edge. He first showed me what would be the top of my foot; it looked oddly familiar, especially the pink pearl nail polish. Then he turned it round to show the other side which was a sole, on the way showing that it was as thin as the card I had originally taken it for. The sole showed a small and faint scar less than a centimetre behind the ball of my foot. Was the real reason for the delay between requesting the show and it happening, so that he could get photos of my feet to pull off this trick?

He caught me looking at him dubiously and by way of a demonstration that the foot in his hand was mine he turned over the toes to touch the sole. There was more contact feeling, but this time between my toes and the middle of the sole of my foot.

He moved the feet (I was still struggling to come to terms with them really being my flattened feet) and draped them over the edge of the board. The iron-shaped prop was picked up and he applied it to my thighs and hips up to my waste. I could not tell if he was acting it, but it seemed to take him more effort to squash my hips flat than it had for my legs.

As my hips disappeared under the iron, the support my hip bones gave to my reclining pose diminished and then vanished. It also created uncomfortable pressure against the side of my belly.

Tom alleviated this by helping me to lie back on the board. He then moved the cloth up further. I was able to glimpse the hem of my skirt on the board beyond the far edge of the covering cloth. He fussed some more with my legs so that more hung over the side of the board.

Taking up the iron again he flatten my belly, which I like to think is flat enough already and pulled the cloth up to my chin. I reached under the cloth to feel the difference between the solid parts and the flattened parts. I had barely got my arms under there when he put the iron onto my arms and I could not feel much except the growing warm sensation. He reached under to drag my arms out and dangle them from either side of the board.

Without my arms in the way to prevent it, he lifted the top edge of the cloth, saying "You’ll probably not want to see this,” before covering my face. I do not know why I smiled, because the prospect of being turned into a life-size cardboard cutout of myself did not thrill. I am guessing that the warmth I was experiencing had some influence on my mood. I felt the pressing of the iron on my chest and shoulders. Then I had the brief sensation of a touch on the nose, which would not have been quite so terrifying if it had not been combined with an increasing shadow seen via the cloth. I tried to scream, but I did not get very far.

Intellectually I knew that I had been flattened, but it felt more like being in a sensory deprivation tank; very relaxing to start with. I was dimly aware that my thinned form was being handled, but the pleasant warmth and the faintness of the sensations did not encourage me to expend the mental strength to work out what was going on. I did notice that after some time (precise tracking of the interval also escaped my attention), there was more contact feeling, but for the most part this too was ignored.

More time later, I felt my first positively physical feeling. The tactile sense of my hand returned. Compared to all my other sensations at the time it felt odd, in the same way a black and white patch would stick out in a colour photograph, but it drew my attention. It was lying on a cool surface, there was a little pressure across the back of it and the valve and the tape holding in place were still there.

Something touched the back of my hand. I spread my fingers cautiously, because I was worried too much movement might be bad for my situation. The pressure across the back of my hand seemed to hold me in place; it appeared that Tom had done something to prevent it from moving too much.

The expansion of my sense of touch flowed up my forearm and paused at my elbow. There was a whisper of contact with, what I had to assume was, my still flattened body, then suddenly proper tactility was restored to the lower part of my upper arm. The feeling of not being flat reached my shoulder soon after that. Whatever was across the back of my hand holding it in place also seemed to be resisting the additional force that my de-flattened arm produced.

There was another touch that started in the middle of the back on my hand and moved down my middle finger. This was repeated. At this point I realised that my hand was being stroked. I guess Tom was trying something to reassure me, in case I was feeling stressed. I was coming to like Tom despite the rather strange things he had been doing to my body.

Time moved on. I could feel the valve between and the thing attached to the valve twitch. Each twitch returned feeling and volume to part of me. Across the tops of my shoulders and down my other arm until I could feel my fingers pop back to life. I waited a few moments to see if there would be a pins and needles tingle, but the senses went straight from being asleep to awake. Another thing I noticed while this was happening was that the extra all-over contact feeling seemed to intensify.

The extension of my areas of tactility halted. I took it as a pause that I might use to find out where I was now; I knew where I expected to be, but the plan could have changed while I was deprived of my usual senses. With my upper hand, the first hand to gain sensation, attached to something, for what I hoped was good reason, I decided to see if I could move the other hand. That also lay on a flat cold surface; I assumed that this was the inside of the glass and steel box. Carefully I braced the upper hand and tried to lift the other. This was successful. I managed to put that hand to my upper forearm and follow it up to my wrist and hand. On the way I encountered the edge of the slot in the top of the box; I became more confident that Tom's plan had worked and that I was inside the box, but with my hand restrained outside for some reason.

I felt over my hand. The restraint across the back was a strip of some heavy duty sticky-tape, justifying my caution not to disrupt it for the moment. Further exploration found the valve Tom had taped between my outside fingers was still there and attached to some fitting and the end of a hose of some kind. I thought for a few moments. It now made sense; the obvious magical magician's way to unflatten someone would be to inflate them, which also made the presence of the valve reasonable.

I speculated that Mr Snuffles' initial trouble may have been the lack of an air inlet and smiled mentally at the image of Tom trying to blow up a flattened rabbit. His second trouble may have been down to careless installation of the valve, resulting in his care to get it right with me.

This situation led me to the question, 'Why had Tom stopped pumping?' An attempt at self-examination made me conclude, based on little more than the lack of contact feel on the soles of my feet and base of the rear of my shins that I was tightly rolled up to get me through the slot and I was not unrolling and expanding, because I was too tightly rolled. I also had the feeling that the clothes I had been wearing to be ironed flat were no longer there.

If I was too tightly rolled, I would have to attempt to unroll myself and hope he took the hint and pumped me back to my proper dimensions when that had been achieved.

To that end I braced my lower elbow and upper hand to allow me to manipulate the outer part on my flattened self so that I could expand when the inflation needed was supplied.

I began to peel the outer layers from the roll, then I felt an unexpected touch. Before I had time to reason that Tom had reached into the box to help my efforts at loosening me, I had instinctively slapped his hand away. I did not feel any further help from Tom after that; at least the guy can take a hint, even if it is more instinct than what I really needed at the time.

As I loosened my chest expanded and my breasts could feel something. The net result was that the expansion re-tightened the rolled up bit and I had to loosen some more. Soon my expanding body encountered one of the walls of the box, by which time the rolling was sufficiently loose that I could enjoy the expanding sensation and only needed to help align a knee that had got twisted and was not letting the expansion through.

The last part of me to become unflattened was my head, which seemed to pop from flat to round. I heard a couple of extra pumps and felt my nose pop out. I was relieved to be back in the shape I started and an additional pump or two, made me feel bloated. I held up my hand to indicate that he should stop; which he did. I could have said stop, but at that stage I was not quite sure what effect opening my mouth would have.

I reached out through the slot and ripped the tape from the back of my hand. Thankfully it was not the kind that would rip my skin off. I then went to work on the medical tape to remove it and the valve that it held in place. In hindsight, that may not have been the most sensible thing to do, but the valve on Mr Snuffles had to have been removed at sometime for him to be part of the several shows since his flattening.

I looked around to check that things were as I expected. They were. I was my normal size and shape and naked again, but inside the steel and glass box, at last. I opened my mouth to say 'Thank you', but instead emitted a high-pitched belch instead; I felt much more comfortable afterwards as the bloating I dissipated as the air was expected. I smiled from a combination of feeling less bloated, amusement at the unexpected noise I had made and then fact I was where I had desired to be since I had been introduced to the box; that is, inside it.

"So, how did I get in here?" I asked. "I'm assuming you did not open the side and lift me in. The last thing I remember properly is you having ironed most of me flat then covering my face, then things got vague until I knew I was here."

He had the hand-held camera in his hand and turned the display on the side towards me, to show me the bolts that held the side on the box, with the signed security stickers still in place.

While showing me the undisturbed bolts, he explained, "I finished the job of ironing you flat, then I rolled you up and posted you into the box, before inflating you again. I did not go totally to plan, but we are where I thought we would end up, so no harm done and a lesson learned."

"So, are you going to do something with me in here? Or do I need to get out?" I asked.

"You can relax there for a short while. I'll use the time to clear away the stuff I don't need any more and bring the kit for the next and final illusion. Then I'll get the screwdriver and open the box for you."

He easily rolled the ironing board away, with the iron riding on the platform and the cloth that had covered me while I was being flattened draped over the upper surface.

I recognised the illusion apparatus that he returned with as the illusion he had mentioned during our first telephone conversation, but for the moment I could not remember its name; I had looked it up on YouTube to get some idea of what I might expect if it should come up. The thin rectangular table with the cubic box about a foot in each direction riding toward the front matched what I had seen, but instead of a mirror riding on the back of the table there was a rack of three impressive Japanese style swords.

With the table placed over the chalk cross at the centre, he pulled a small powered screwdriver from his jacket pocket and used it to destroy the labels in the process of undoing the bolts that held the side on the box I was in. With an effort Tom lifted the side off of the box and placed it almost silently on the top, then he offered me a hand to help out. I was a little disappointed that my time in the box had ended in such an unmagical way; but then, it did seem the right way to do it.

I checked the box, partly to check that this was really the box I had been introduced to and not some fake version with hidden ways in. I was also checking that the box had not been damaged in the process of putting me into it. I could see the smudging caused by the contact of my skin and the glass; this was nothing that could not be cured with glass cleaner and elbow grease. The only other blemish was where the tape that had held my hand in place had left a sticky mark. I gave Tom a sharp glance for that; I think he got the message.

Time to turn my attention to the illusion that he had brought from the darkness beyond the chalk circle. "Is that the thing you called the, what was it; the one you said consisted of putting me in a small box, making it smaller with me inside and then ramming some swords through. Nice looking swords, by the way; if I did not know better I might have mistaken them for the real thing."

"Yes, that's the 'Origami' illusion I mentioned." I was glad he had named it, because it was beginning to bug me that I had forgotten what he called it.

"Origami, that was it; I knew if it sounded a bit Japanese. That box is a bit small. I may be on the petite side; but there is no chance that you'll get me inside, although it might be interesting to see you try." Why was I phrasing this as a challenge? Tom seemed to be able to do anything he put his mind to, no matter how impossible and I was supposed to be checking him out as someone to take a dominant part in a relationship, but maybe that was Angela's idea, not mine.

"That's the small size," he stated. "I've got to open it out a bit to get you on the inside, then I close it back up with you still inside."

"Well, that makes about as much sense as the rest of what we've done this morning, so show me!" Was I really ready, after the rest of the stuff that had already happened, to be compacted into a box smaller than I could curl up; my mouth was implying that I was, but my mind was less sure.

He went to the other side of the table and began tugging, adjusting and clipping together flaps and sections of the box and soon had expanded the cube to a bigger open-topped box that took up most of the table leaving a rim big enough to step onto but not a lot else.

"Is that as big as it goes?" I asked. Despite being bigger it was not particularly big; maybe a foot, by nearly three and a foot and a half high.

"Yes, next stop; back where it started, but with you inside." Was that a challenge?

"But how am I meant to fit in there?" Even by my claustrophilic standards it was still a bit small.

"I'm not sure, but this is a replica (kind of) of a well-known illusion." In response to my blank look, he continued, "Ok, well-known among illusionists and magic fans. I assure you that even the most non-magical of illusionists can get a woman into the box; admittedly he has a few advantages that I have not allowed myself, like using a thicker table and putting a mirror on the back of the table, where I have a sword rack, which conceals more than it reveals. Would you like a hand getting up onto the table so you can get a better look?" He held a hand across the top of the illusion with the obvious intent that I use it as a hand-hold to mount the table.

I took the offered hand and stepped up, even though I was in two minds about going any further than that. I looked down into the box. It was dark in there, given the interior was matt black and not a lot of light got in in the first place. At the bottom was that major feature that I could see; a pair of mechanisms similar to the runners you see on kitchen drawers or in filing cabinets, obviously how the back section that he had pulled from within the front section had slid along the table. A minor feature was the clips that held in place the flaps that had been folded up to give the box its extra height.

"Why don't you step inside?" He tugged my hand slightly adding a physical component to the request.

I took the hint and stepped one foot into the box; I could as easily stepped it back out again. It was a small relief to discover that the sliders in the bottom were flush with the bottom of the box.

"Face front," he instructed. He pulled on my hand to turn my body towards the front camera. By a masterful use of that force he made it so that I had to step my other foot into the box if I was to feel stable. I turned my first foot and stepped my other foot to be beside it. I was now standing in the middle of the box with my back towards the sword rack on the rear.

He tried to guide me to go down into the box, but I wanted to be sure of what was going to happen before I allowed that to happen. In the back of my mind I was using this as a test to see how he would react to a small amount of defiance. "What happens next?" I asked, giving a brief glance back towards the racked swords. I was not feeling ready for more things to be thrust through my body, and certainly not without warning.

"You mean once you are in the box and I have folded it back down to its smaller size?" Was he playing dumb or was he open to some negotiation of what happened later.

I nodded that I meant then. "Yes," I said. "I thought I had better ask, before we go too far, because I'm guessing if we get to me in a shrunk down box, I'm not going to be able to speak, probably with my face smooshed into something or something down my throat, like an arm or a leg."

"I reckon that you'll be able to speak, to some extent," he assured me, then added the caveat, "but what you say may not be totally clear from the outside, which is why we have the earpieces and mics. The usual plan with this is to push the swords through the box. I've never been clear on why that is done; is it to add insult to injury, so to speak, or to demonstrate that you have the flexibility to avoid them, despite your cramped quarters, or to show that you aren't in the box at all, in which case I can think of a few more exciting ways to vanish a person."

So he had another plan that did not necessarily involve the swords, but he was a bit hazy on the magical logic of the illusion. Then former I hoped would turn out to be a relief, because I guessed that the experience of being run through by metal swords would be different to the feeling of sharpened sticks, it was not a feeling I was particularly looking forward to. Some unexpressed thought niggled that if he was unsure of the magical logic of the illusion it might not work and I would be on the sharp end of however the 'not working' manifested.

"Well, I'm guessing that if you can get me from small to extra-small, the swords won't matter much and might actually be quite nice, if they feel like they did in the sword box." I was trying to hint that I would be sufficiently impressed if he could fold the box into its smaller size with me inside and the swords might be superfluous.

"I don't see why they wouldn't feel pretty much the same, but you can never be quite sure, because in the sword box you were relatively relaxed, but inside there you be a bit squeezed up." He was giving consideration to how the swords might make me feel given the difference in my situation, but seemed to forget that these were slivers of steel and not round wooden stakes. "Besides I have an alternative that we might talk about once you're in place." An alternative to the swords sounded like a good idea, especially if the alternative was 'no swords', but it implied the replacement of the swords with something, possibly less deadly. At least he was open to talking about the next stage before we got there.

"Alright, we'll see how far we get. I don't reckon that there's a chance in hell of closing this box up properly. Especially with me inside." I was challenging him again; was this a good idea?

"Ok, it's time to scrunch down some, so I can get the box back to its smaller size."

"So, how do we achieve that?"

"Try sitting down and we'll see where we go from there. Or you could try kneeling."

The few videos I had seen were not (for obvious reasons) totally clear on how the assistant hunkered down into the box, but I had the impression that they dived in and you cannot dive from a sitting position. So I knelt into the box thankful for the support of his hand. I shuffled back and bent forward until my back was below the level of the open topped box.

He seemed to think I was not low enough in the box. He said, "I think we're going to have to try you sitting inside and see what we can do with that, unless you can spread your feet and calves enough to get your bottom between your feet."

"Are you saying my butt's too big?" A testing question.

"Not in the slightest. It fits between the sides of the box, but your feet are in the way of getting it low enough to begin folding the top of the box back down. And before you ask, I am not saying that your feet are too big either." Good save.

I rose back out of the box enough to move my feet from the back of the box to the front. I tried to express some disapproval of his lack of foresight in not working out how to get me into the box efficiently, with a squinted glance and letting go of his hand to use the surface of the table outside the box to support the manoeuvre.

"Now, what do I do? I'm sitting in the bottom of the box."

He looked into the box to check out the small amount of space around me; a few inches at the front and another few behind.

"I reckon, if you shift forward a little and get your feet into the front corners, then lie forward on your legs, then the thickest section will be belly on thigh and you can get your shoulders near your ankles. I guess that your arms would need to be back along your legs too. I suspect that you'll probably feel some tension in the back of your legs until I get the magic started, but after that, you should be fairly comfortable; well, I'll do my best to make you feel comfortable."

A frown darkened my face as he admitted to not being certain of the kind of feelings doing this might give rise to, but I tried to flash him a smile when he said he would do his best. I put my arms back slightly and leaned forward to lie my torso on my legs. It was more comfortable to rest my hands on the tops of my buttocks, so I did that.

"It's just as well I exercise for flexibility, 'cause I'm feeling it in the back of my legs."

Me being in position and making a light-hearted comment, he took as an indication that I was ready. It got darker in the box as he folded the standing flaps down. I could feel the rear set resting with very little pressure on the backs of my hands and the minimal tickle as the front flaps were folded down and touched the hair on the back of my head. Light still got in through the bit of the top that was not covered by flaps, roughly from the top of my shoulders to the small of my back.

There was a click and I saw a line of light on the side of the box. Tom had released the mid-part of the side walls, which connected to the front section. there was enough gap to let in light that I could see with my peripheral vision, but not a big gap that you could see through. The faint scrape of the sliders let me know that the rear section of the box was being pushed forward before I felt the inside of the rear wall touch me; another clue was the diminution of the amount of light coming through the gap above my back.

The oncoming wall touched me gently, then he seemed to apply more pressure than felt entirely comfortable. I let out a noise to let him know that a bit more gentleness would be appreciated. His pressure moderated and then stopped. I was not feeling any more squashed that I had before, but I could feel more contact with the box. As he came to a halt most of the light leaking into the box disappeared; there was also a sound of something moving against something else from somewhere behind my head.

"How are you holding up in there?" he asked.

It took me a few moments making noises that made no sense to discover I could speak, although the transmission of the sound had more to do with the sensitivity of the Bluetooth I was wearing than the volume I was speaking at. "Well, it's a new experience and I don't feel as squashed in here as I thought I would. But overall it's not bad; I like the feeling of it being dark and hemmed in and my degree of movement very constrained. I don't even feel as crunched up against myself as I had expected, but there is definitely something strange going on, because every part of me feels like it's touching something, but there is less pressure than when you started just folding the open box."

"So, you're liking it?" He enquired.

"Hell, yeah. I know things can't be right, but they don't feel wrong; if you get my meaning?"

"I take it that you don't mind if I continue, then?"

"You mean moving on to the swords? I thought you had some other idea that you wanted to put to me before that happened."

"No, I mean finishing compressing you into the smaller version of the box. You are currently in a space that is about twice the size of what I plan you squeeze you down to."

I paused to calculate. "So, I'm inside something with dimensions of about a foot by a foot by two feet?" He grunted a yes. "I'm not entirely sure that I believe that, because it feels a lot more comfortable than the coach trip I made inside an ex-boyfriend's luggage that was bigger inside."

"So, you're ok if I make the space a bit smaller?"

"Um, yeah. I'll let you know if it becomes something that is too much for me."

"Ok," he acknowledged. The pressure against my posterior increased fractionally, but over a short time that feeling of every part of me being in contact with something increased, but I lost what little track of whether any specific part of me was in contact with the inside of the box or another part of me, particularly if the contact was between parts that generally require the most extreme contortions to bring to touch each other.

There were a couple of clicks and then things seemed to stabilise. It felt good to be in such a confined space. I relaxed what little tension remained from my situation.

Tom asked if I was alright.

"Don't know how you managed it, but it feels better than before, even though everything seems to be squeezed against something harder than before." I replied. "I suppose that it's sword time, now."

"Well, it could be if this follows its traditional path, but it doesn't have to. I could put other things through the holes, that I'm sure that you spotted in the various faces of the box."

"Other things? Like what?" My mind whirled with an ever expanding list of things Tom could add to the box; most of my imaginings had an unpleasant edge to them.

"How about I surprise you? It definitely won't hurt." Not being hurt sounded like a definite plus, but the thought of a surprise, when I was in no position to reject it was less comforting.

A popular joke perpetrated by many magicians I had seen (with widely varying degrees of success) was the 'I promise it won't hurt me' gag. "Are you talking about it not hurting you or not hurting me?"

He replied in an amused tone. "I think you'll enjoy it and I'll get to enjoy it too."

There was a pause while Tom got ready whatever he was coming into the box with me. I was about to ask him to confirm that he was still there, when the box moved a bit, although I could not tell exactly how and I felt something new touching the back of my head

"What are you doing out there? I can feel some movement and something touching the back of my head." I was letting him know that I had felt the changes, rather than complaining about them.

"That's just me putting some fingers through the hole in the top of the box; I need to position something. Do you know what part of you is against the hole on the side of the box?"

Now that was a complicated question, because I had not been tracking exactly what ended up where; for all I knew the pressure against the side of my nose could have been my elbow or somewhere half way up my back. I tried to check if there were any gaps in my feeling of all-over contact that might indicate proximity to a hole. There were a few places where there was no contact I guessed at the one most probable to have ended up not tuck into my squashed body. "I'm not totally sure, but I think I've got a hand there. Why?"

"Well, I plan to put something through that hole and I thought you would like to be warned. If it is your hand there you may even be able to identify what it is. I think you'll like it better than a sword."

It was nice to be warned, but whatever it was going to be would bump into the palm of my hand and might hurt if it went through. "Ok, but go gently, there can't be much room in her with me."

A moment later I felt something warm and firm press against my hand.

"I can feel something," I announced. I did not stand a chance of identifying whatever it was by having it pressed against my palm. Maybe I could turn my hand a bit to allow my fingers to touch it. "Give me a moment, maybe I can move a bit. It feels as if it is stiff, but not hard like a sword. Is it one of those long balloons?" I detected an underlying amusement in the way he breathed for a moment. Had I said something funny?

As I gently turned my hand I managed to keep contact with the thing being pushed through the hole. I had the sensation that the side on my hand was against the edge of the hole. My hand was out of the way of the item and Tom pushed it in further. Cautiously I wrapped my hand round it and squeezed. What I felt was familiar enough to know from the first touch. Tom had pushed his penis through the hole; I knew it had to be a real one and not a dildo by the warmth and the fact it pulsed gently rather than vibrating.

It seemed that he had not ignored my mentions of sex during our first phone call, but was giving me the chance to say no. At that point I was feeling about as aroused as I had in a very long time, what with having been in three boxes and still being in a fourth combined with the faint afterglow of two orgasms.

"I take it back," I said, "That's not a balloon, but I'm thinking that stiff was the right word to use (if you get my meaning). Why don't you try your luck with another hole?" I shocked myself; I had invited him to take advantage of my confined situation.

Initially I thought my invitation had fallen on deaf ears, because he stroked his dick in my hand a few times, but then he withdrew. There was more movement. The suspense was intense as I waited to find out if he would accept my offer or let me out of the box or, as a worse case, fall back to plan A with the swords.

The movement stopped, then I felt something touch my lips. He was taking this fairly slowly then. I put out my tongue, to be sure that what had touched my lips was what I hoped it was. It was. I was pleasantly surprised; it did not taste soapy or sweaty, but a little salty, which is to be expected, with an underlying flavour that I liked, but could not identify.

My reaction was to try to say, "You taste good," but as I opened my lips to let the words out, he took it as an invitation to push himself into my mouth. The result was I failed to say what I had to say and he became stiffer in my mouth thanks to the vibrations caused by my attempt to speak.

He withdrew and it took me a moment to realise that he was not preparing to ram his dick back into my mouth, but was waiting for me to say what I had been trying to say before continuing. I said, "I was only trying to say that you taste good." and got a 'thank you' in return. His dick once more pressed against my lips.

I practised every trick I knew for giving satisfying oral sex and my rewards were to have my mouth filled with the flavour of his cock and to hear his inarticulate noises of appreciate through my earpiece. As we continued he was getting harder; I decided that I wanted him inside me, but in a different place. I tried to push his dick out using my tongue and thankfully he took that hint until I was breathing on the end of his dick.

"How about you try another hole? But please use a condom." I may have been highly aroused, but I was not beyond being cautious and the request had the effect of making it clear which hole I was referring to. Why did I assume that there was an alignment between the hole in the box and my pussy? Maybe I was beginning to accept that magic was about being able to do what the participants wanted and I wanted this.

There was no movement, just a bit of vibration as he prepared to follow my request. Then I felt my tiny enclosed world tilt forward and moments later his dick inside me. I sighed at the release of tensions.

For the next few minutes most of my brain was occupied with experiencing the initially gently, even tentative, thrusts that became stronger as time passed. What little remained, not dedicated to breathing, was used to produce noises that expressed my excitement and pleasure, given that my vocabulary had been reduced to the one word, 'Yes'. At a deeper level, something had noticed the tilting of the box and concluded that it was balanced on its front edge; this meant there was a possibility that the box might be pushed off the table. This sense of danger fed into my experience of being fucked in a tiny box and enhanced it.

We may not have orgasmed simultaneously, but I would be hard-pressed to say who came first, it was that close. There was a moment of stillness. He pulled out, allowing some of my mind that had been devoted to experiencing this unusual sexual adventure, switched back to keeping my alive by expelling the spent air in my lungs, in a sigh and replenishing it with fresher air.

I lost some awareness of time as I panted and luxuriated in the post-orgasmic sensations that filled my confined body.

There were some clicks that brought me back to a keen sense of my situation. The all-over contact feelings lightened until it was sitting in the bottom of the opened out box with my body pressed against my outstretched legs. Once the flaps were upright again, he offered a hand to help me extract myself from the box.

As I unfolded myself from within the box, "Wow!" was my first comment. "Annie was right; I desperately needed a good fucking and that hit the spot, many times over."

He thanked me; it seemed that he had enjoyed it too. He maintained the hand-hold until I had got out of the box and down from the table. Then I hugged him; an action I hoped demonstrated that I meant the words.

Somewhere, a part of my mind questioned whether this was appropriate behaviour. I took a step backward and stood at attention. He looked a little confused at my sudden change in attitude. "You said that was the final illusion. Is there anything else you want of me?" I asked.

He seemed a little slower to switch to our more formal relationship of the moment, but he went from lover to tradesman. "No, thank you. You may dress and go about your normal business. I shall be sending the video, when I have a reasonable edit." At least there was still a little bit a dom there.

I collected my clothes from the ironing board and my shoes from beside the basket. I put on the skirt, top and shoes, but decided to carry my underwear.

I headed for the door out of there. "You know how to get in touch if you want more," he said. I looked at him over my shoulder and smiled.

I looked at my watch as I emerged into the sunlight and headed for my car. It would be lunchtime by the time I got home. Then I would have to ring Angela and tell her everything about the experience that morning.

Fetish Magician

by Vaughan

The Claustrophile: Hannah