“The Dead Magician”
As I walk to my car after a long day of bussing tables at the local country club, I exclaim
to Derek the cook having a smoke in the parking lot, “Boy that magician was something else!” “Yeah, let's hope we never have to see that again,” Derek cheerfully responded in between
drags.
I waved to the bartender, Dave, and assistant cook, Noah, who were still in tears over the
magician act before pulling away from the parking lot. While I finally sit down on my couch to catch up on CSI Miami, I hear a scratching at my door. For a moment, I ignore the unusual noise but decide to investigate as it did not stop. “Hey little guy! What are you doing here?” I said as I greeted the dog on my front porch. Observing the collar, I noticed it said “CAT” and stated, “Call this number immediately if found,” so I did. “Hello?”
“Hello,” I had recognized the voice on the other end of the phone but could not figure out exactly who it was. I replied, “I found a dog with this number on its collar, and would like to return it.”
Before I could even finish, the man said, “Splendid, I will send you my address right now if you don’t mind coming at this hour, I’ve been looking for my cat all day long.”

Against my better judgement, I responded, “Sure, I’ll be right over.” I would not want my dog to be missing all night, so I figured it was the right thing to do. Upon opening the door, I was greeted by a slightly familiar face and a cynical laugh coming from the tall figure.
The man exclaimed, “Lovely, right on time!”
Just as I recognized that phrase and voice, I began to say, “Aren’t you that magi...”
I was unconscious in the blink of an eye. Eventually, I was strangely woken up to both Dave the bartender and Derek the cook shaking me. “What the heck is going on, Derek?”
“Do you remember that magician?” Derek said. “Yeah, I just returned a dog to him.”
“So didn’t me and Dave, that is how we ended up here.”
Confused, I said, “Where exactly are we right now?”
“The magician’s disgusting basement,” I heard Madison, one of the waitresses say from a
corner of the dark room. She began to explain, “He killed Liz and Crystal,” two more waitresses were laid out in the corner next to Madison.
Astonished with the events unfolding in front of me, I yelled, “Ok, what the Hel* is going on, guys? Why are we all in this magician’s basement and why is he killing us?” Directly across from Madison in the opposite corner, a door opened and another body was shoved to the ground.
“Oh lord, I think that’s Noah,” Dave said as Noah was still dressed in his work uniform. We ran over to inspect the body, Noah was still alive but did not appear conscious. Above us, we could hear the magician accompanied by the dog walking through the front door of the house.

“He’s using his dog to lure us all to him,” Noah said with a groggy voice, “I was walking to my car after closing when I heard something in the dumpster. Before I could even make sure it was a dog inside, I was unconscious.”
Madison described a similar occurrence while walking from her car to her house. “Except, he couldn’t knock me out, only handcuffed me and threw me in the trunk of an
SUV,” she explained.
“Why is this dude kidnapping our entire staff?” asked Derek.
Dave added, “We didn’t make fun of him that much, besides he couldn’t even hear us.”
Suddenly, the door at the top of the steps was aggressively swung open and down came another body. This time, it was a fellow busser, Matt.
He described a similar occurrence with a dog concluding, “This magician is insane, why would he kidnap all of us just because we made fun of his act? We even lied to him and said he did good when he left.” We started to hear some kind of music followed by that familiar voice.
The magician’s voice loudly filled the room with, “You nonbelievers! Your time has come,” a spotlight flashed on the two deceased waitresses and he continued the message, “You all now have front row seats to my final act!” As the smoke began to rise around Matt, the basement suddenly went dark. After a few seconds, the dim lights flashed back on and Matt was gone. Then, we heard the magician again, “Are you not entertained?” followed by deranged circus music and a spot light illuminating the ceiling of the basement. We looked up and collectively let out a scream. One half of Matt’s body was in one box with the other half in another. The boxes moved slowly apart revealing a pool of blood that mysteriously had accumulated on the ceiling.

“He’s going to kill us all,” I said quietly in terror.
“Not on my watch!” said Dave fiercely.
“We’re getting out of here alive whether he likes it or not,” followed Derek.
“How are we supposed to escape an insane magician?” asked Noah, “He’s one step ahead
of us all.”
We then received our final message for the night, “Congratulations, those of you who
remain get to spend the night with my precious little kitten.” The dog from earlier that night seemed to appear out of nowhere in front of us all.
“There’s our way out!” Dave said in an excited whisper. He began to elaborate, “One of us is going to scratch at that door like a dog,” he pointed to the top of the steps, “until he opens the door. Then, me, Derek, and Noah are going to tackle this lunatic while you guys,” he pointed to me and Madison, “Run for help. We will try and hold him until the cops come, but if we can’t we’re running too.”
I sat at the top of the steps scratching for what seemed like an eternity. As I began to hear footsteps approaching, I whispered down the steps, “Start coming up, I think he’s coming.” Derek, Noah, and Dave all crept up ready for the magician to appear. I scratched until the door swung open and all three men simultaneously jumped on top of the magician. While Madison and I made our break for the front door, I noticed newspaper clippings covering the living room walls.
I almost completely stopped to observe each headline when Madison grabbed me and shouted, “Let's go! We need to call the cops now!” As we proceeded to the nearest house, I could hear a struggle ensuing behind me. Down the street from the magician’s house, we banged on the

door of an unknown lady who came out seemingly angry we had woken her. It must have been at least three or four in the morning by now.
“We just escaped an insane kidnapper, please let us call the cops!” said Madison in a panic. She let us in and after a few minutes, we heard sirens racing down the street. We pursued behind the sirens back to the magician’s house where Derek, Noah, and Dave were all standing outside already talking to police.
After listening to what had happened the officer said, “We are going to set up a perimeter around the house to get a clear shot at him. You guys will wait in the swat van; it is on its way here now.” Somewhat relieved, I watched the swat team assemble around the and begin shooting through the windows. We watched Liz and Crystal being carried out with white sheets draped over them followed by the magician himself.
Derek said to the officers, “There is one more boy inside, he was cut in half in the basement.”
“We searched that house top to bottom, there is no more bodies to be found in the entire building.”
“You have to find him, he’s in there, I promise,” said Noah to the officer.
“Ok, we will continue to look while we comb for evidence.” said the officer with a worried look. Before we were taken away to the hospital, the officers were already able to inform us that the magician that had kidnapped us had actually been dead for at least fifty years. The investigator also informed us, “The newspaper articles on the walls described that he was killed performing a dangerous ‘Saw your own body in half” trick. He was thought to have been dead since then.” Puzzled, we were all relieved to be on the outside of that house.

The days at work following this series of events were different. Everyone was very quiet and almost unwilling to discuss what had happened. Months afterwards, we were all still struggling to recover from the fact that Matt’s body was never recovered from that dreaded house. Then, we all watched a headline scroll across the TV in the front office that sent a cold shiver down my spine, “BREAKING: KILLER MAGICIAN PRESUMED DEAD, ESCAPED FROM CUSTODY!”