propshifters swept away the debris, then moved the table behind the lowered curtain. Our music started up, Sylvie dropped her robe, I took her hand and we strode out in front of the curtains to greet the audience.
Something about the way the high heels made Sylvie’s bottom stick out as she walked across the stage, spine straight, small breasts carried high, a diamante tiara glinting from the top of her sleek head, made me think of a show pony. The crowd cheered. I turned her into a twirl and she stood sunning herself in their applause. I wondered if I was just a flesh bandit pimping a skin act, but there was no denying it was the best greeting I’d got in a long time.
Sylvie waited for the clapping to die down and our music to shift to a slower tempo, then handed me a deflated red balloon. I looked at her lithe body and held the balloon up to the audience displaying its limpness. They laughed and I raised it to my lips and started to blow.
The balloon expanded into a massive scarlet Bratwurst. I stopped, puffing theatrically, struggling to regain my breath, marvelling at the balloon’s Priapic fullness, raising my eyes and looking at Sylvie’s tits. The crowd belly laughed.
I raised the balloon back to my lips and kept on blowing. Sylvie covered her ears waiting for the explosion. Just when there was a danger of the crowd getting bored it burst, scattering red sparkles across the stage. I stepped back smartly, producing a bottle of champagne from its wreckage before the shreds of rubber had even hit the ground. The crowd applauded, two champagne flutes were flung from the wings and I caught them, slick as any juggler. I’d opened the bottle, passed Sylvie a drink and had downed one myself by the time the applause faded.
Sylvie nodded to the remnants of burst balloon lying dead on the stage and grinned,
'That reminds me of last night.' I looked outraged and the audience laughed. Sylvie winked and said in a conspiratorial whisper that echoed to the very back of the room. 'Not for much longer though, just you wait until you see the big athlete in act three.'
'That’s what you think.'
I pulled a wand from the inside pocket of my suit and pointed it towards the audience.
There was a quick flash of red at the front of the stage and the music switched to a graveyard moan. Sylvie’s hands flew to her mouth. The curtains behind us slid back to reveal the table where Ulla lay hidden. Before the audience had time to stare too closely, two of the ninjas jogged on, their features concealed by bandito scarves stretched black across their lower faces, each of them carrying one half of the sparkling blue cabinet. The first ninja handed me his half, I opened the lid and displayed its empty interior to the audience while he rolled the table centre-stage. I placed the box on top, exhibited the emptiness of its twin, then laid the two halves end to end. My ninja helpers slid out both boxes’ fronts, fixing the two parts together, turning them into one long coffin.
Sylvie stood frozen.
I said, 'Remember the rumours about my first wife?'
Then, as if she’d suddenly realised what we were about to do, Sylvie turned and tried to run towards the wings. The ninjas moved quickly. They grabbed my sexy young assistant and forced her high above their heads, ferrying her back to me. Sylvie’s pleas for help cut across the room. Her body looked white against the black of the ninjas’ costumes and the midnight-blue of the backdrop. She freed one leg and swung into an athletic turn, standing upright on one of her tormentors’ shoulders for a split second, like an art deco figurine caught in the moment, but the ninjas regained their hold and pulled her down. I rubbed my hands as they lowered the kicking, screaming girl into the sparkling coffin, latching her in tight, her head and hands at the top, secured like a witch in the stocks, feet poking out through the holes in the other end.
Sylvie turned her face to the audience appealing to them. I forced fake champagne into her then twirled the table sickeningly fast until the top of her head was facing towards the audience. This was the girls’ cue to do the fancy foot switch, while the bottom end of the box was out of sight. Sylvie cried for help, wiggling her hands, and I birled the table in the opposite direction so the audience could see Ulla’s shoes kicking madly at the other end. I gave the table a final twist, laying the cabinet side-on to the audience, so they could see the whole arrangement now — Sylvie’s frightened face and Ulla’s kicking feet.
The lights dropped, leaving the stage in darkness save for one golden pool in the centre where the table lay. I got a sudden vision of Sylvie’s half-naked curves lying above Ulla’s svelte form. The thought of the women’s closely packed flesh sent a thrill through me that had been absent in rehearsals. I shook myself against the distraction of my own excitement, took a massive swig from the water in the champagne bottle and gave an evil cackle. One of the ninjas jogged on with a giant two-handed saw. We wobbled the saw between us, showing the audience its evil- looking teeth and then set to work, he at one end, I at the other, the only noise in the room the sound of metal eating through wood and Sylvie’s petrified sobs. Ulla wiggled her feet frantically, the red shoes glinting as if they were desperate to separate themselves from the encumbrance of a body and begin a whirling, dancing life of their own.
The saw cut through the final layer of balsa, I bowed my thanks to the ninja and he ran off-stage, leaving the saw on the floor behind him, its discarded presence as much a part of the thrill as a centrefold’s abandoned panties.
Slowly but slowly I approached the box; I hesitated for a beat, then reached out and gently separated the two sides. Sylvie’s dark eyes were wide, her red mouth opened in a horrified silent scream, blood dripped from the box where the severed legs still danced.
The crowd roared, but I looked with horror at the cavorting red shoes. I shook my head then slammed the two sides of the box home, spinning the table until I got the signal that Sylvie and Ulla had regained their original places.
Sylvie cried, 'Have mercy.'
And the ninjas handed me seven long silver swords, unlatched the box and dragged her screaming into a new coffin, this time making her stand upright, sealing it shut while I sliced seven round, green watermelons in two, displaying the deep pink flesh of their insides to the audience, licking the last one lasciviously before I threw it into the wings.
There was a drum roll and I thrust each of the blades into the box, pushing them hard, forcing against the resistance inside, until their sharp tips emerged, silver dripping red, from the other side. I crisscrossed the blades until it seemed no one could have hidden from their cuts, but when I slid them free and opened the door, instead of a punctured and bloody corpse there was Sylvie, triumphant and unscathed.
She said, 'Now will you free me?'
But behind us the ninjas were setting up a new device. A simple black-painted board, the same size and
