He opened the box, propping its lid with a stick, and then slipped his hands in. The top of the lid, facing us, was lacquered black, a semicircle of bounding hearts painted on it. We watched his head and chest, his twitching shoulders, his empty and unblinking gaze. Where his hands had gone, his arms soon followed. When, finally, he removed them, they were soaked in blood to the elbow.
When did we realize something had gone wrong? I can speak only for myself: I believed even then that it was all part of the act, done for effect. Even when, as he continued to stare at his dripping hands, the five volunteers clutched their hearts and collapsed one by one on the stage, I still believed.
For a moment more he was stock-still. And then he turned, hands still suspended directly before his eyes, and regarded through the gaps between his blood-thickened fingers the heaped volunteers. Slowly, so as not to alarm us, he turned back to the box and climbed in. He kicked the stick out and the lid slapped shut.
After minutes of silence and stillness, we climbed onstage and opened the lid. We found the box empty and slightly damp inside, as if it had been licked clean. No trace of blood, nor any trace of him.
Long after we buried the volunteers and burnt the box to cinders, it was all I could do not to believe, not to feel him there, just behind me, always about to reappear.