2016
It was January 1, and Alannah was feeling nothing but butterflies. The first show was tomorrow, and although they’d practiced and practiced, it was still a huge event, and she was close to freaking out.
She was sitting behind the stage, trying to calm herself. Jeremiah was out front, talking to the lighting director. This was the last full dress rehearsal before the real thing, and they wanted everything to be perfect.
Alannah had messed up a couple of times when Jeremiah magically transformed her into a tiger. That was the trick she was most worried about.
The rehearsal started at 10:00 a.m. Alannah and the three temp assistants got into place at the back of the theater. They climbed some hidden ladders and waited.
Deep baritone music fill the theater. The acoustics were perfect; Alannah could hear every note clearly and there were no echoes. The music rose in pitch and volume, and the lights in the theater went out when the sound reached its climax. The sound stopped as suddenly as the lights, and she imagined the audience, shocked by the sudden transition to darkened silence.
A moment later, the first pyrotechnics showered the stage. When the glare dissipated, the spot lights engaged, focused on Jeremiah at center-stage.
He waved his arms, and Alannah and the assistants started to fly down toward him. The wires holding them were completely invisible and, when they landed on the stage, disengaged without being touched. The four woman looked like magic elves appearing from nowhere.
Jeremiah wanted to start the show with a bang…by turning Alannah into a tiger. Once she got past that act, she would relax.
Jeremiah had always planned for the music and other background noise to be an integral part of the show, along with the fireworks and lighting. Every piece of the puzzle had to fit together perfectly.
He held his arms out as if commanding attention and directed a large cage to be rolled out. The cage had solid steel bars, and the back was draped with a large cape.
Jeremiah helped Alannah enter the cage while the other assistants danced around. Fireworks blasted off almost at random, keeping the nonexistent audience captured.
When Allannah was in the cage, Jeremiah pulled the cape all the way around, so that nobody could see inside. He gestured for the cage to be lifted into the air, so the audience would see that there was no way for Alannah to escape.
She knew that from their perspective, she would be transformed into a tiger, and it would seem astonishing.
The audience would start the process of wanting to believe. That’s what Jeremiah needed.
In reality, though, the trick wasn’t the slightest bit magical. She knew (but the audience didn’t) that the back of the cage was faked. It looked like the same steel bars that the rest of the cage was made of but was instead a thin wooden wall painted to look real. Behind the wall the tiger was waiting. Moments before, his trainers had settled him in the cage, bribing him with pieces of raw meat, and then lifted the fake cage backing.
As soon as the cape hid what she was doing, Alannah pulled a small trap door in the bottom of the cage and slid into the tight area beneath. It was the kind of trick that needed a slim assistant to work. From the audience’s perspective, there didn’t seem like anywhere near enough room for somebody to hide. That was the secret of most tricks in which the assistant disappeared.
She hurried into her hidey hole and pulled a cord that released the fake wall. It crashed to the floor, on top of her and the rest of the cage. The tiger was free.
The sound of the wall crashing down was hidden by the loud music and fireworks that Jeremiah used to distract the audience. He would hear it, though.
A few seconds later, he’d pull the cape off with a big flourish, and the transformation would be complete.
Alannah was now a tiger.
It worked like clockwork.
The cage was taken off the stage and the handlers took care of the tiger, allowing Alannah to be freed.
She punched the air with both arms, loving how well the trick worked. She couldn’t wait to hear the audience’s reaction tomorrow night.
Still off stage, Alannah dropped into a tunnel and waited for her cue to climb onto the middle of the stage. This time she was hidden only by darkness, as Jeremiah stood to one side with the spot light on him. The darkness only lasted a few seconds, and she climbed up exactly as planned, magically appearing out of thin air.
She smiled. The show was going to be great.
The rest of the rehearsal went without the slightest problem, and they were ready.
Thirty minutes later, after a quick debrief, Alannah wanted to be alone. The excitement had given her a headache, so she went to her dressing room behind the stage and sat on the floor, leaning in a corner of the small room.
A sudden sleepiness come over her, draping her like the cover in the tiger cage. Her eyes closed almost on their own, and she fell asleep within a minute.
* * *
The next couple of hours were quiet in the Jeremiah Moore Theater. Most of the staff had left to be with their families on New Year’s Day. Only a few holdouts still hung around, mostly people who didn’t have any family to go home to.
This was the first time that Savannah Clark had seen the inside of the theater. She had read detailed descriptions of it from Alannah’s diary, of course, but nothing really prepared her for the glitziness, the size, the amazing technical triumphs that allowed people to fly and invisible trap doors to swallow people. Even though she knew the trap doors were there, when she bent down and tried to find them on the stage, she couldn’t. The floor was beautiful hardwood and looked better than the living room of any house she’d ever seen.
She walked through the seating area, trying out various chairs, and every one was perfect.
The back of the theater opened out to the waiting area that connected to the main part of Caesar’s by the snaking mirrored walkway.
She went to that walkway and couldn’t help herself. She laid on the floor and looked at the ceiling. Her image looked down at her, and she laughed. It was surreal to see herself hanging in the sky with no support.
“Nice, isn’t it?”
A man stared at her from the doorway to the theater.
“It sure is,” she said.
“I’m Will. One of the electricians.” He moved toward her.
“Savannah. I’m nobody, I guess.”
He grinned. “Can’t say I agree with you there.”
He locked eyes with her and stepped closer. His eyes wandered down her body.
“You don’t work here?” he asked.
“Does it matter?”
What the hell?
She moved to him and didn’t hesitate. She took his face in her hands and kissed him.
He kissed her back hard, greedily, as if it’d been a long time since he’d been with a girl. He was hungry for her body.
Savannah didn’t mind. It’d been a long time for her, too. She thought to the last time she’d pretended to be Alannah with Jeremiah. A month ago? Six weeks? Either way, she was overdue.
Will’s hands roamed over her body, and she felt every touch.
She whispered in his ear, “Over here. It’s secluded enough.”
She led him to the main part of the theater, near the back. It wasn’t dark but neither was it lit as brightly as other areas.
Everyone’s left, anyhow.
She kissed him again, passionately, their tongues meeting and playing. His erection was pushing against his jeans, and she undid his belt, unzipped him, and pulled his pants to his ankles. She wanted this to be something he would remember.
She heard a couple of small noises from farther down the stage, but they barely registered on her. She was totally preoccupied.
Savannah knelt and took his cock into her mouth. She pushed it in as far as she could without choking and clamped down on it. She knew the warmth of her mouth would make him go crazy. He held her head with his hands as she bobbed up and down, his balls in her hands.
“Oh God,” he moaned. He braced himself and pushed her head gently in the rhythm she was setting, and it didn’t take very long for him to come.
He moaned louder and pushed her head down.
She swallowed what she could and licked his cock, slowly removing herself from it.
“Next time, it’ll be my turn,” she smiled as she stood up.
He just nodded.
As he reached down to pull his jeans up, Savannah could see over his shoulder. Jeremiah Moore had been watching the entire time. He stared in horror, then turned and ran from the theater.