Where I am, it is too dark to see anything but blackness. There’s still lots of things to hear, though. It’s almost as if I am blind, because I can’t tell what any of these obscure sounds actually are. The place I am is very small and does not give me very much space to stretch out and get comfortable, but that is OK, for I do this every night. According to schedule, I should not be in here much longer.

The man I spend most of my time with tilts my compartment forward, and my small body rolls forward with it. He straightens it out, and I roll back into my original position. Then I hear him say his favorite word, “Presto.”

I watch as his white hand reaches down past a thin black layer that covers me. His hand isn’t actually white, though. Every night, before his routines, I always watch him cover his real hand with a piece of white silk that molds around it. I have heard rumors that these are sometimes used to keep hands warm, but when you see it as closely as I get to, you would notice his is much to thin to actually do this.

His fingers wrap around me and he starts to pull. It always hurts a little when he does this. He thinks these things growing out of my head are handles designed for him to grab. What he has never understood is that I use these to hear, and they are not meant to be tugged on.

He lifts me completely out of the black cylinder and dangles me in the air. Instantly, my eyes sting from giant, blinding lights pointed straight at us. There’s always one pointed straight in my direction, which does not make this burning sensation in my eyes any more bearable.

Once my eyes adjust, I can finally see. My view is not surprising. In fact, it is rather predictable. It’s the same view every night. Facing us are hundreds of different people. There always are, but they’re never the same people. They’re always different.

I chuckle to myself at everybody’s expressions. Their eyes are the size of quarters and their mouths are hanging wide open. The smaller humans always do this silly expression much larger than the bigger humans do. After a couple of seconds, everybody stops hanging their mouths open, and instead all turn the corners of their mouths upward. Everybody in the room starts to rapidly bring their hands together and apart over and over again. It’s making a sound that I recognize. I heard the same sound from inside my compartment.

The man holding me bends the entire top half of his body towards the ground. (Might I remind you that since I am in his hand, which is part of the upper half of his body. So as he swings down, my entire body swings down with him.)

Everybody seems to find this thing we do as something outstanding. Personally, I don’t see what is so great about what we had just done. We do this every night. I always sit in there the whole time. It’s not like I wasn’t there a second ago.