the magician’s assistant
by Rachel Christina McConnell
He clamps me in the box, a velvet-lined coffin sparkling with forced smiles and sequins, captured starlight. The audience, a vulture’s wake of wet, vile mouths, like baby birds screaming for worms. He winks at me, a glint of metal flashing between his teeth, that frozen, twitching rictus of a grin, cold as a silver dollar. I know the drill.
The saw croons, a heavy metal mouth. The grit of rusted iron teeth. Sawdust spit. A cold bite, cleaving my ribs. The crowd gasps, a collective intake of breath, sharp and ragged.
Or maybe the guillotine, that cold cunt of steel. The blade, a heavy thud, a dull blood drum rapture, thump-thump, thump-thump, the world shrinking, narrowing to the chopping block. And then, the regal, headless ghosts, a parade of Henry’s wives, a death march in my ears. My neck, a delicate stem, awaits the chop. He smiles, that wide, wolfish grin, and snip goes the stem, my head lolling like a broken bloom. He loves me, he loves me not. A flower pulled to pieces. A child’s game played with my wilting part. My world, a splintering box, the bloodied woodgrain, a map of someone else’s death. The head roll, a penny in the reaper’s pocket. Whispers of falling hair.
Either way, I’m halved, quartered, vanished. A puff of smoke, a flourish of his wand, and poof—the trick is done. He bows, they clap, and I’m supposed to be whole again, when I’d rather stay dead.
The trick is smiling through the dismemberment, the beheading. Each night, I’m resurrected from the ashes of my own spectacular, theatrical death. A headless chicken, flapping for applause. Lazarus in sequins, rise again. Tightrope smile, stretched thin.
Even with my head in a basket, I’m the star. Like Algol, he holds up my severed Medusa head, petrifying the audience. A glitter bomb of sawdust and blood. A gritty reminder of what it feels like to be more monster than human, less than alive, just a painted doll waiting for the next performance.
The crowd hums, a hive of wasps. The saw’s cool steel rakes across my belly—a butcher’s cesarean, a lover’s first touch turned violent, then a slow, agonizing parting. Or the gleaming blade descending, a silver crescent moon, a swift eclipse. The guillotine’s kiss, a silver flash, severing my thoughts, my future, leaving only the echoing silence where my head used to be.
Either way, I disappear, bisected, vanished in a puff of smoke and a practiced bow. He gets the applause, the thunderous ovation. With his conjurer’s eyes and the scent of brimstone clinging to his velvet lapels.
Tonight, it’s the saw. I feel the phantom sting already, the imagined parting of flesh and bone, the riot of applause echoing in the hollow chambers of my two halves.
He’s a master of illusion, after all. He can make me disappear without even touching me. He’s been sawing me in half for years, dismembering me, piece by piece, with his words, his silences, the casual cruelty that chips away at my reflection until there’s nothing left.
He pulls the box apart. A gasp, a ripple of applause. He gestures, a flourish of his wand, and poof—I am whole again. The illusion of wholeness. And I, his lovely, sawed-in-half assistant, am just another one of his illusions. Vanishing into the black hole of his ego. Love, his greatest con. And I, his ultimate disappearing act.
I humor him with this grotesque game of peek-a-boo. In every woman he sees his mother’s face, a sudden eclipse behind her gentle hands, then her miraculous, laughing return—that’s the first magic, the world re-formed from the void. As children grow, they learn that things unseen still exist, like the moon hidden by clouds. But for the magician, that primal fear never withered. It rooted deep in the dark, fertile soil of his mind, a persistent, venomous weed. He controls the vanishing and reappearing, ensuring that what disappears always comes back.
The saw bites. The crowd gasps, a collective intake of breath. He grins, a mask of practiced pleasure, basking in their wonder, their fascination. Convinced he’s conquered me, broken me, made me his. He thinks he’s sawing me in half, but I’m already gone, slipping through the cracks in his perfect illusion, a static glitch in his broadcast. He remains unaware of the almost imperceptible tremor of the box, the subtle shift as the false bottom gives way. The one I designed myself, my secret escape hatch. I fall, not into the darkness, but down a rabbit hole, into the hidden garden I’ve cultivated, a space where I’m finally myself, finally free.
Smug in the delusion of absolute power, he extends his hand, expecting to reveal my neatly bisected form. He finds only stardust, a shimmering void where I used to be. His smile falters, cracks, then crumbles like a sandcastle at dawn. I can almost hear his heartbeat, the faint, frantic ring of a coffin bell. He’s lost his star, his muse, his lovely, sawed-in-half assistant. His smiling victim, swooning in sequins. Sweat blooms on him, a rash of fear. His magic wand, a jester’s mocking phallic scepter, bone-white and crude, clenched tight in his sweating fist. His wolf-grin snaps shut. He wasn’t afraid of losing me. He was afraid of losing his grip.
Mine is the silent, potent magic of the vanished woman, the one who leaves no trace but the phantom scent of crushed violets. An encore of flowers strewn across the stage. For flowers, those fragile, bleeding things, are my wands. My submission was the ultimate performance; even as I danced his tune, I was the one pulling the strings.
He is the magician, yes. But I am the magic.
And tonight, I’ve made myself disappear.
Photo of Rachel McConnell
BIO: Rachel McConnell is an emerging writer who holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in Dark Moon Lilith Press, Minerva Rising Press’s The Keeping Room, and Swamp Ape Review.