I hate my career.

You’d think that it’d be cool to be a magician. It is not. I get to travel around the world, and watch kids stare at me. With their ugly little faces and dirty finger nails. They point and stare.

No one is appreciative anymore.

It’d be nice to get at least a smirk. I’m standing on stage right now digging through my magician bag. I don’t know what to do next. I’m sure what ever it is I’ll just have grimy little beady eyes stare coldly.

Snot nosed brats. They don’t like my talents. My skills. My life.

Magic is everything to me. I’ve been raised to be a magician. I don’t intend to brag, but I am a damned good one too. I can do every trick in the book. I can even make up my own tricks.

That’s it!

I stopped digging in to my bag and then asked for every one in the audience to write their name on an edge of a note card. Or what ever they had. I was going to create my own trick. I sure was improvising. As for what I was doing- I didn’t even know what it was. Only the master magicians could make up magic tricks on the spot.

“For my next superior magic trick please write your full name on to a piece of paper”

I announced out to the audience. They just twitched. Then this one kid just started to drool.

How rude.

I don’t know why I even told them to write their names. I guess it was to stall.

I looked up to the ceiling to spy three lights that beamed straight to my eyes. I cupped my hand over my eyes to block out the rays. I started to sweat though. I raised my gloved hand and danced it across my forehead- swiping off tiny droplets of sticky liquid.

I was starting to get nervous. The lights were directly in my eyes. I tried to look around my environment to come up with something. It didn’t work out. Mission failed.

They were almost done racing their tiny hands across their pieces of paper. I was running out of time.

I really needed some time too.

Maybe. Just maybe. I could kill all these stupid people. I mean I know I could do it. I’d just have to be an expert magician. Hah-hah which I know I am.

Then everyone in the audience shifted their head up to look at me. My eyes glanced side to side. I bowed to the audience. I was trying to demonstrate something. I don’t know what I was demonstrating- but I was.

I walked off the bright stage and then down each aisle. I collected all the tiny pieces of paper. I looked out in to the rows of young students and teachers. I just smirked. I then looked down and just kept following my procedure. I felt everyone’s hand dump a load in to my hat. As I was looking down my card had flipped out of my jacket pocket. I bent to get it then tucked it in to my glove.

I had gotten everyone’s piece of paper then raced back up to the blistering stage.

My forehead was flooding with waves of sweat. I couldn’t help it. My face scrunched and I hissed out a noise of disgust.

I stood on the stage and did nothing.

I threw my hat filled with papers up in to the air then caught it with the same gloved hand. The papers were in order and in perfect condition. What a great magician, right? Not every one can catch and throw with one hand.

With my bare hand I had traced my finger a long the top piece of paper, and drew a simple heart. I still had no clue what I was doing. Just doodling to make it look like I was doing something.

So maybe I’m not the greatest magician?

These stupid kids just keep staring. I wish I could at least get a thumbs up. Just anything besides a stare or a twitch.

Still no response-


Only a dead silence.

They look so tired and bored. I could do them a favor and hypnotize them? But I had just gone through all of the trouble to collect those stupid pieces of paper with their pathetic names.

This is so hard.

“I’m going to hypnotize.”

I roared my voice out to the audience. Still no response. It’s all so dull out there where everyone is. If someone were to cough, it’d echo.

Now that’s just terrible.

I could hypnotize them by using all the papers I had collected. Everyone’s name is on it, so it could possibly work. I’ll just swing my pendulum above all the papers. I reached my gloved hand in to my jacket pocket and felt a gold chain. I rubbed my fingers a long the pattern. I then swiftly pivoted my self the other direction and smiled. I added a little bit of a dramatic effect and then turned around again quickly. I hunched over and pulled my hand out to show a gold pendulum.

The pendulum swung across the stack of papers that were in my gloved hand.

Left.

Right.

Left.

Right.

From side to side, the pendulum swung at a constant slow speed.

My eyes became slightly heavy. It was probably just the lighting again. They were still beaming right in to the black pupils of my eyes. Maybe later I’ll pretend I’m handicapped. I could use a few hundred bucks. After all these people are being rude to my performance. I could pay off my bills or the rent. Heck I could pay off both. I could hypnotize everyone to pay me five dollars! There are about one hundred fifty people here, so that’d be about 750 bucks. It’d be nice.

Left.

Right.

Left.

Right.

The pendulum was still in the same pace that it was twenty seconds ago.

Left.

Right.

Left.

Right.

My eyelids were dozing themselves away. If I was falling asleep I’m sure everyone else was hypnotized too. I calmed my voice down to a moderate tone. My voice was very comforting and inviting. Slow and soft.

Left.

Right.

Left.

Right.

A boy wearing a green shirt had fallen off out of his chair. Bingo. Mission accomplished.

That was it!

A whole new idea! Since I hypnotized everyone I’ll just make them think that I did and extravagant performance! I am the most brilliant. There is no other magician that is as good as me. So I’ll go ahead and rip up all these stupid names. They served no purpose anymore.

So that’s exactly what I did.

I kind of dropped the stack again, but I caught it again with my gloved hand.

Then I grabbed about six names at a time and ripped them up. Such pathetic people. I tore each name to shreds. I’d ruin the piece of paper then throw them back on to the floor of the stage.

I turned my head to peer over my shoulder. There was nothing but a huge pile of papers. I saw a tiny corner of a piece of paper still in my gloved hand, and then ripped it up. I had torn up every paper that was in my gloved hand. I looked out in to my audience, and notice that they were all wearing red or brown clothing.

I knew what had happened.

Something went wrong. Terribly wrong.

Everyone’s face was sweating. No noise had crawled out of anyone’s mouth though. They had just leaned forward, and stared at their feet.

I could feel the adrenaline rushing through the streams of my veins. My heart was pounding so fast. As if it had been torn up and slashed. Pain was racing everywhere.

I knew by now exactly what had happened. My once white shirt was now a red one. My knees shot down to the ground, and my body quivered itself over to the left, leaving me lying on the stage floor. I looked at the pile of papers beside me. Right in front of my eyes was half of a piece of paper that read THE GRE. An underneath was the words DEMI. Next to that tiny crumbled paper was the missing half.

It said AT MAGICIAN, an underneath was TRI.