The 53rd card shouldn’t have been in the pack, but it was to late to do anything about it now.
The Great Redondo, Magician To The Stars as the poster outside the small club said — for One Night Only Direct From Paris — had started the age old trick of fanning a deck of cards in front of a child from the audience. A small girl, aged no more than 10 but looking younger with her flat chest and bright pink bows in her hair would choose the card and memorise it and the audience would whoo and haaa when The Great Redondo first burnt the card on stage with a flourish and then produce it from the purse of a woman in the third row. A plant, of course, but the audience didn’t know that. They were there to be entertained by magic and prestidigitation and so what if this conjuring was just another way of deceiving people? Entertainment was everything.
But the small girl chose the card that shouldn’t be there. A normal deck, as every card game player and indeed every magic show audience member knows, is 52 cards. But the 53rd card was, well, quite a problem because it shouldn’t have been in there.
You aren’t familiar with the Greater Fate Arcane Pack? Possibly not, so you may not know that the 53rd card is nothing like the others in a standard pack. Not a Joker, because that if nothing else, would be funny. Nor one of those blank cards that get slipped into decks in the vague hope that someone would draw their own version of the lost four of clubs. This one was known quite differently.
The card was called the Gaze Of The Dark Seer. GODS, for short.
There was no familiar heart, club, diamond or spade symbol, no number or letter in the corner on this card. No portrait of a long dead king, queen or knave. This simply had the face of a creature hatched, possibly from someone’s fever imagination, or more likely from a portrait done in hell. It was the face of a person, if you could call it that, staring out at the person who saw it, with dark and brooding eyes and an aura of power. No horns, no forked tongue. Just a sense of complete power.
More, that power would transmit to whoever saw it. I know, it sounds improbable but not everything even these days falls into the realm of the probable. We just think it should.
So 10 year old Wilma Hardy hesitantly picked out a card from the fanned cards and though it was odds of 53-1 against, her little hand went straight for that GODS card. It was a mistake it being left in the pack and no one could predict what she would pick, but these things happen.
“Let’s see what you have chosen, sweetheart,” beamed The Great Redondo (or Dennis as he was better known off stage) and gestured for the girl to show him — and the audience — her selection.
“I don’t know what it is,” said Wilma, holding the card in both hands.
For a second Dennis thought he had somehow selected a child of enormous stupidity if she didn’t know what a playing card was. Perhaps she couldn’t read something as difficult as a K, Q, J or A and had no idea what a heart was. But even as the thought went through his mind he saw the look in the little girl’s eyes change. From the usual awed look of a child her blue eyes slipped to a cold, deep void. She had seen the card that shouldn’t be there and Dennis, Great or not, was not the person to cast a spell to stop this before it went too far.
The Great Redondo took a step back as the girl held it up for all to see. But here’s the thing that has puzzled many before and after, the GODS card works only on the first person to see it. The dark image disappears when observed for the first time (this was supposedly a fresh pack, as these shows demanded) and what she held up had transmuted into a blank card as if washed away by an unseen hand. It had been thus washed, of course.
For a moment more, Dennis hoped that he had imagined the shift in the girl’s eyes and that she had in fact drawn one of those annoying blank cards. But he knew that fleeting hope was just that: the girl, beyond belief, had found the card he wouldn’t want her to see. She was supposed to pick out the queen of hearts so he could make a joke about it — it always went down well with an audience to hear that this little poppet was indeed the queen of all our hearts — because the card waiting in his assistant’s purse was, naturally, the queen of hearts.
The best laid plans, etc, and things were about to change for someone in the audience.
Let me explain here: the GODS card gives the first observer a power over someone else. The thing is, the card doesn’t tell the person with this newly acquired power who he or she can control. That was how it worked, for the Dark Seer was a controller of minds. Or at least a single mind.
Dennis, being the Great Redondo, muttered under his breath the spell that would stop him from being the one controlled. In legend, it was unlikely to be a male who was controlled. It was normally a female because, if you believed the ancients, the Dark Seer had a thing about women. But there were tales that such unexpected things happened of a male slipping under some control. It was usually a female who would be affected, and as Dennis started to make a swift and ill-considered joke about a blank card which would explain all the blank reviews he got the man scanned the audience. There, next to the empty seat where little Wilma had sat before being chosen, was a woman who Dennis took to be the child’s mother. On the other side was an older girl, possibly a sister though not with the same cute features.
“I am going to have ask little Wilma here to dive into the pack again and choose something other than a blank card.” With an obvious gesture he threw the blank GODS card away across the stage and as it was already burning his hand he was not surprised to see it burst into flames before it struck the stage floor.
Now that did bring the gasps and applause from the crowd. Goodness, if he could do that every show he wouldn’t be playing these cheap little venues. He’d be doing Vegas for sure.
Once again the Great Redondo fanned the cards and this time, as expected, the little girl chose the queen of hearts. At least, as expected by Dennis. Another chance to crack the old line, another round of laughter, and little Wilma was heading back to her seat with applause ringing in her ears. The magician would go and pick the ‘right’ card from his assistant’s purse, get a deserved round of applause before moving on to his usual end piece, the famous invisible flying rabbit.
But even as he made the rabbit disappear into the secret double chambered box, the man couldn’t stop thinking about the mistake he, or his assistant, had made in letting the 53rd card get into the pack. The show came to an end with the rabbit magically safe and sound in a goldfish bowl on the other side of the stage (you’d have to look very closely to see that Bunny One was marginally different round the nose to Bunny Two) but the truth was Dennis couldn’t wait to get off the stage and away from this place. He wanted nothing to do with whatever Wilma did next with her unexpectedly acquired power.
All the Great Redondo knew was that all hell was about to break loose for someone who didn’t expect it.
It was three days later, just when he thought the coast was clear, that Dennis got a call from his agent. “There’s a message for you,” said old Lenny Sylvesterov, wheezing and rasping as he always did on the ‘hone. “Woman by the name of Cassandra. Cassandra Hardy. Wants to talk to you about her girl. Wilhelmina, or Willy or something?” The old man wheezed into laugh. “You been playing naughty on stage with the little ones again?”
Dennis, overcoming his rapidly sinking heart, denied any such thing. He did however ask what the woman wanted. Perhaps, he hoped, it was just praise for making her daughter look good. Or a request for an autographed photo, possibly the one like he was on the poster where he was pulling a star spattered cloak round him and on his shoulder a white rabbit was perched. He had lots of those.
To dearest Wilma, the girl who was the queen of all our hearts, he would write.
“Dunno. Something about wanting you to see her quick. She’s not far from you.” Sylvesterov rattled out the address and put the phone down without reminding Dennis he had a show next week.
“Problem?” Asked Mrs. Dennis who normally was his assistant but was now sat on the sofa in a faded silk dressing gown, her hair a mess because she hadn’t put a wig on.
“No, well, possibly. Yes. That GODS card… I think the girl saw it.”
“Of course she saw it,” said Mrs. Dennis with a heavy sigh. “I told you that was your job. You should have checked the deck properly. That fucking card always jumps to people’s hands if it’s there.” The woman went back to her magazine and the article about the perils of sawing woman in half and why catching a bullet in the teeth is easier.
“I did check,” said Dennis morosely, though he wasn’t sure he had. Not properly. Normally you can tell by the heat a card 53 generates, but maybe he had been in a hurry that night. No surprise as he was sharing a dressing room with a man who taught dogs to walk on their hind legs and sadly stank of dog food. The stench made the rabbits nervous and crap more than usual. Dennis had just wanted to get out of the cramped room fast.
“So what will you do?” Mrs. Dennis asked, though she sounded as if she didn’t care much what he did.
“Go and see her, calm her down if she’s upset,” said Dennis. “It might not be anything. Maybe she wants to book a private show for a party.”
“No, it is something,” said Mrs. Dennis and went on reading, chuckling over how amateur magicians had managed an injury rate of one in every five girls sawn in half.
Dennis passed a weary hand over his eyes. Of all the mistakes to make… He would rather have had one of the bunnies escape from the goldfish bowl as happened once before. That was why everyone thought he might make a better comedian than straight magician, but those bookings dried up and it was back to the real illusions. Inviting little girls to choose cards that didn’t go beyond number 52.
Number 23 Burkett Road was as unremarkable as any of the others around it. Slightly dilapidated and in need of some paint, with an untidy and small front garden. Mrs. Hardy — Cassandra, Dennis remembered — opened the door to him. “You better come in,” she said sternly, which suggested it wasn’t a booking for a kids’ party at all.
Dennis went in and looked round nervously. He had-expected a child with fangs to emerge from a room and spit blood at him. Melodramatic because it wasn’t card 54, was it? But you never knew.
The woman ushered Dennis into small living room and pointed at a sofa where he could sit. “I need to talk to you,” she began as she settled into the one armchair in the room.
“Of course,” said the man. The woman, who was clearly Wilma’s mother, didn’t looks if she was controlled. Her mind was all her own, which was good, thought Dennis. Perhaps, unlikely but possible, the card hadn’t registered on the girl and she didn’t want to control anyone. One can but hope.
“You’re not a very good magician are you?” Cassandra started. “More of a trickster really.”
“An illusionist, madam. The name, Great Redondo, is for show. I perform tricks, sleight of hand, that sort of thing. My name’s Dennis, really.”
“I know,” said the woman darkly. “I looked you up. Dennis Collier Robertson, drummed out of the magic circle––“
“Suspended,” interrupted Dennis.
“—For playing with some small girl from the audience.”
“Not true! I was offering her a walk-on part in new show.”
“Hmm. Well, the story goes that was the furthest from your mind. A distinctly dirty mind, I suspect.”
The man protested his innocence again, but blushed.
“Well, whatever you did you made Yvonne’s life a misery.”
“Yvonne? But I thought your girl was called Wilma.”
“It is. I am talking about the girl with us. My sister’s eldest. A girl by the name of Yvonne. She was sat with us at your show.”
“Oh, her.”
“Yes, her. It seems that you gave some sort of hypnotic power to my child, and she turned it on poor Yvonne.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“So what did? Please do tell me.”
“I can’t say.”
“You can,” snapped the mother, looking more angry now. “You can because little Yvonne, though she is a year older than my daughter, is in quite a state. She wasn’t before Wilma went on stage and you tricked her!”
“She was meant to draw a card, which she did. Second time. That card was a queen of hearts. Look, I shouldn’t be giving secrets of the business away, but it was all above board. Just an unintentional mistake.”
“What was that first card?”
Dennis gulped. “Oh that… It was a trick card. For another show. It wasn’t meant to be there but my assistant screwed up and left it in.”
“And this card has some mysterious power, I take it. Enough at least to make my daughter order Yvonne around.”
“No!”
“Yes,” countered Cassandra, anger breaking her voice. “So what was it? What did it do to Wilma’s mind if it wasn’t you?”
“I’m not a hypnotist,” said Dennis, and wished he was. He could then get the girl out of her trance and return things to normal. He swallowed and wished he could get up and fly. “The card… it’s weird. It isn’t supposed to do anything.”
“Liar.” The woman looked dark and even more angry than before. “Mr. Dennis fucking-useless Robertson, I am not without knowledge in these things.”
“Like what? You’re not a magician on stage. I’ve never seen you on the circuit.” In fact he could only think of Cleo, Queen of All Egypt and this woman definitely wasn’t black.
The woman bristled. “If you must know I am a witch. I know what the card was. So, do you?”
“What?” Dennis shrank back in his seat. Was she really a witch, or just an angry woman? Was she just pretending this to scare him? If so, it was working.
“It was the 53rd card, the one you people call GODS.”
“Um… what do you call it?”
“Darkness,” stormed the woman. She stood and appeared taller than before, fists clenched. “I am part of a coven that does not deal in that vileness! But you — your carelessness — brought it into Wilma’s life. Into poor Yvonne’s. Into mine.”
“But you aren’t, uh, affected.”
“No, because I am a witch and I countered it at once. But I couldn’t stop Wilma saying the words to Yvonne. I was too slow to stop her.”
“I am sure, if you are a witch, you have contacts who can correct it.”
“Darkness repels us. It shouldn’t be my problem.”
“Are you sure your girl did this? I mean, did she really do anything?” Dennis felt stupid asking the question.
“See for yourself.” Cassandra went to the living room door and shouted up the stairs. “Wilma, would you bring your cousin down, please?”
There were footsteps on the stairs and the woman came back into the room, soon followed by two girls.
Dennis gasped, for what he saw astonished him. First of all Wilma was dressed in a black latex cat suit that clung to her young body as if was painted on, and behind her — being hauled by a leash connected to a collar round the older girl’s neck — was this Yvonne, the other girl at the show. Dennis almost didn’t recognise her at first because her long auburn hair had been cut severely down to a rough stubble all over head. She was naked with her arms bound tightly to her body, hands secured behind her. In her mouth she had a large red ball gag that was making her drool. The girl had been crying and there were red marks on the older girl’s legs, as if she had been beaten recently.
“Happy with what you have done?” demanded Cassandra, gesturing at her tied-up, gagged and naked niece. “Is this what you think is fun?”
“I didn’t do this,” Dennis snapped back when he recovered from seeing the beaten Yvonne heavily secured and humiliated. “The GODS card only brings out what’s in people. Your girl could have had kind thoughts and dominated someone with those. She had to be already like that.”
“No,” growled the witch Cassandra. “You know that’s nonsense. The entity framed in that card,” and at this the woman shuddered, “is evil. He — it — has one intention, and that is to cause the misery of a slave to be invoked.”
“Your niece isn’t a slave,” spat Dennis, though he wasn’t sure what she was. She certainly looked the part now and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her small breasts (more than Wilma had, he thought) and her almost hairless vee at the top of her legs. Yvonne was quite a sight and in spite of the danger of the situation (the danger being this witch would either pick up the phone to call the police or more likely, cast a spell that would make Dennis’ private parts shrink) the man’s cock stiffened in his pants.
“Yes she is a slave now. I was asked to look after her for four weeks while her pants were away. The trip to see your performance, if you can call it that, was at the start of her stay with us. So poor Yvonne has to stay like that — or worse — for nearly four more weeks. A month of being tied up and whipped. Imagine how she feels?”
Dennis could imagine exactly how the child felt and his cock stiffened even more. With great effort he tore his eyes from Yvonne and stared at the girl’s aunt. That as when he realised the woman had avoided looking at her own daughter. In fact, she was defending Wilma by not accusing her which meant that the child was trying to own her own mother. A cold chill settled on the man. “I am sure you can untie Yvonne, you tell your child she can’t do this,” he said, knowing that would mean eye contact between the two.
Cassandra’s head twitched as if she had been slapped. “Not me. It is your problem––“ she began but Wilma interrupted her.
“Be quiet,” the girl said and her mother duly fell quiet. The youngest female in the room turned her attention to Dennis. “My mother won’t be untying anyone,” she said.
The chill in Dennis got stronger. Something had gone wrong here. The GODS card was only meant to allow one person control of another person. Yet already the mother as behaving as if she was a slave too, or rather on the verge of being one. A reluctant slave perhaps, but only because the woman was doing everything to battle the power emanating from her daughter. Dennis suddenly understood, and Wilma was laughing.
“Get it? You understand what’s happening here?” Wilma thought it hilarious.
“I think so,” said Dennis, his voice little more than a whisper. He swallowed, hoping to steady his voice. “You are the daughter of a witch, so you have some…” The man paused and swallowed again, unsure what to say.
“Say it!” Wilma was beaming, her mother looking distraught and her eyes pleading for this not to happen and poor Yvonne started howling into her gag.
“You have… you have powers,” said Dennis. He felt as if he had been punched in the gut.
“Undeveloped,” smiled Wilma. “Or they were until you called me on to the stage. Now if you had chosen poor, sweet Yvonne here she wouldn’t have given anyone this much trouble. In fact, she probably would have tried to dominate someone to look after kittens and feed them cream. All you did, Mr. Magician, was unlock something in me.”
“Dark,” said Dennis, without thinking.
“I hope so,” chuckled Wilma. “Would be a shame to go to all this trouble and not do something very dark indeed.”
Dennis nodded and felt helpless. He hadn’t the knowledge of spells, not the way some magicians had, to counter any of this. Basic protection, sure: that was necessary even in the simplest trickery as you could be wide open to some evil hovering nearby, looking to take advantage of open (and weak) minds. Always a lot of those in an audience. The man took a deep breath and frowned at Cassandra. “You wanted me to sort it all out because you can’t, right? Your daughter has some sort of a hold over you and she won’t let go.”
Wilma answered for her mother. “Yeah. Got that right, first time, Mr. Trickster.” The girl grinned as she looked from her mother to her tearful cousin and back again. “Both of them are mine, though for some reason I can’t get to tie my mother up and beat her the way I can with cousin Yvonne. Seems mother dearest still has some resistance in her. Perhaps you’d like to help make it easier for me,” said the girl in the black latex, raising an eyebrow at Dennis.
“I can’t. I’m just a stage magician. A trickster, as you said.” The man gestured helplessly, hoping his act would work here.
“Naw, you aren’t!” Wilma laughed and she flopped down in the chair her mother had been sitting in earlier, leaving the woman standing. At the side of her. “You know these things, Mr. Redondo. That’s why you had the 53rd card in that pack. Maybe you didn’t want me to pick it out, but who knows? But you see, you could have gone for Yvonne but you are an old pervert, right? I was the younger one, and you like — I mean really like — younger girls don’t you?”
“No,” said Dennis, hoping his lie couldn’t be seen.
“Please Wilma,” said Cassandra, clearly summoning up the courage to speak when she hadn’t been told she could, though still looking ahead. “Let’s stop this. If you let Yvonne get back to normal, stop tying her up and whipping her and let her hair grow back then we can forget about all this.” Throughout this plea she carefully avoided looking directly at her daughter.
Wilma snorted noisily. “Naw, ma. I don’t think that’d be a good idea.” The girl traced an imaginary line in the fabric of the chair arm. “I think however if you surrender to me, maybe with the magic man’s help, we can all have some real fun.”
“Wilma, your mother may be right here––“
“Oooh! The Magic Man speaks!” the girl sat forward, patterns forgotten. “This is a better plan. You help me to get my mother submitting to me and not using her fucking witch magic to stop me and I will hand little Yvonne here over to you. Just think, a whole month of whatever you want with her before she goes home.”
Yvonne, still sobbing where she stood, gave a muffled groan into her gag at the thought. Her eyes widened in fear of what this man might do to her. On the other side of the armchair, Cassandra gave another sort of whimpering groan and bit her lip. Dennis couldn’t be sure but she seemed to have tears in her eyes. Maybe, he thought, the woman’s powers of resistance could only last so long. Bit by bit they would crumble and exhausted by the effort, she would have to give in sooner or later. The ropes and gags and whips would all be for her then.
“See, everyone likes the idea,” said Wilma with a casual wave of her hand.
Dennis felt wretched. So many things and gone wrong in this and he wanted to get things back to normal. Of course, it had to be normal and forgotten (he would need a hypnotist’s help with this last part) to save his career. If any of this ever got out then he’d never work again on stage. He knew full well that show-business put up with all sorts of perversions and downright unacceptable behaviour but mind control? No, that was the line no one ever crossed. More hypnotists and real magicians had been sidelined and even run out of the country because they had played with the idea of controlling someone’s mind. Dennis would get the blame and no one would display a poster of The Great Redondo ever again, no matter how cute the rabbit.
But if he thought about it, four weeks with Yvonne would be great. He hadn’t much work coming in and maybe he could even train her to be an extra assistant for what work he had. With a riding crop he could train her well, he was sure. A sort of young dyke with her near-shaved head. The Great Redondo and Young Butch, he pictured the poster. Something in Dennis began to get excited. He could even get some hypnotism help to make Yvonne’s parents allow their daughter to become a star of stage, if not screen. The audience would go wild to see a pre-teen lesbian-style girl, maybe in latex like her dominant cousin, helping on stage. He could even use her in the disappearing rabbit act in a new way which—
“Enjoying the thought?” Once more Wilma was laughing.
“You… you were listening in to my thoughts?” Dennis blinked at the girl in the tight latex.
“Yeah. Part of that GODS crap I reckon. Of course, your thoughts are a bit jumbled, but then men’s are. I mean for instance, who was Sammy… Samantha?”
“Oh, just a lady,” Dennis blushed. He wouldn’t normally describe ten year old girls as ladies. He tried to screen that thought behind a wall of card trick techniques.
“Hmm.” Wilma didn’t sound convinced.
“Don’t do this,” said Cassandra. For a moment Dennis thought the woman was reading his thoughts too — he wouldn’t put it past witches to do things like that — but hers was more a pitying plea.
“I don’t know,” said Dennis, being honest at last. “That Yvonne looks, well, nice.” He stopped himself from saying: ‘Even if I prefer girls with long hair that I can pull. Shaving it all off was a dumb idea.’
“Great,” said Wilma. “See, mother. Everyone loves sex with girls like I said.”
“I’m not sure there’d be sex,” began Dennis, but he corrected himself immediately. “Yeah, you’re right. That’d be good.”
There was more sobbing from the bound Yvonne, which showed at least she was listening.
“But to get my cousin,” said Wilma, leaning forward with a very serious look on her pretty young face, “you have to get my mother here as my slave. No barriers, no game playing. Think you can do that?”
“I’m sure there’s a way,” said Dennis, and turned his gaze back to the naked, beaten figure of Yvonne and began to imagine the ways he would enjoy the child.
“I need your help,” said Dennis as he confronted the woman and the girl in a quiet corner of the shopping mall. It had taken the man two hours of walking up and down the polished marble floors and dodging shoppers to find what he was looking for, but he had to admit the invisibility screen was almost doing its job.
The nine year-old girl, who was busy feeling up the woman’s breasts where they hung from her open blouse, scowled at the man. She still had both her hands on the large, plump udders and though the middle-aged woman’s skirt was bunched up round her waist her panties were still, more or less, in place. Clearly the girl hadn’t really gotten into this so far. “What the fuck do you want?” The child asked over her shoulder. “Can’t you see I’m busy with this whore?”
Dennis shifted his weight and felt uncomfortable. He didn’t want to end up like the woman being handled, just staring into space and drooling a little from her half-open mouth. Standing there oblivious to whatever the girl wanted to do. He had no idea who the woman was — just some shopper unlucky enough to encounter Samantha when the child was feeling like having some naughty fun — but she was in a deep trance. He suspected that even if Samantha wanted to slap the object of her attention, the woman wouldn’t wake from the spell. The girl was good at this, and that was why Dennis desperately needed her help.
“I’m sorry,” said the man. He felt somewhat weary. He had spent so much of his psychic energy searching for the almost imperceptible faint glow of a privacy spell. Though, had he been better at detecting such spellwork he might have found Samantha before she had really got into using this poor woman. “It’s just… It’s important.”
With a sigh Samantha let go of the woman’s tits, though she did give the woman’s already hard nipples one last tweak before she let go fully. The woman, as Dennis expected, made no sound and still stood staring into the void, arms behind her back where Samantha would have ordered them to stay. “I don’t like you,” the girl said, though she hadn’t hit the man with a punch spell to send him hurrying away. So far then, so good.
“I know. And I am truly sorry to interrupt your fun.”
“This isn’t fun. Fun would be making the old cow strip off and run through the mall with tits bouncing. So, get on with it. She won’t stay under my spell for long without me playing with her body.”
“No, of course. You see, Samantha––“
“Goddess, please.”
“Yes, um, goddess. It’s like this… at a performance I accidentally gave a girl the 53rd card and she went––“
Samantha burst out laughing. “You were doing your usual pathetic stage show and you screwed up?” She thought it was hilarious and wiped a tear from her eyes. “You’re fucking hopeless. Why would a magician, so called, even have the 53rd car with him?” Then Samantha, a small mixed race child with honey-coloured skin and a mane of black hair to go with her stunning green eyes, got serious and put her fists on her hips. She looked like she would get round to that punch spell any moment.
“Please goddess. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” mumbled Dennis, flinching already in case wall of force struck him and laid him on his back.
The girl’s face, which had been set hard, suddenly softened. “Okay, wimp. I have no idea why I should help you other than, well, what you gave me. I guess there is a debt to be paid, though this may well close it. Let me finish off this old bitch and I’ll be with you.” The girl turned back to the vacant woman and this time, instead of continuing teasing and squeezing the woman’s tits she went straight for the cunt, worming her hand inside the woman’s panties. In a few moments of frantic rubbing on the woman’s clit (or inside her, for Dennis couldn’t see quite what the girl was doing) the woman gave a sort of muffled groan and her knees buckled a little. She didn’t fall but was clearly not in any sort of dignified space.
Samantha withdrew her hand, wiped her fingers in the woman’s hair and then stepped away.
“You’re not going to, um, tidy her up?”
“No fucking way,” chuckled the girl. “When she comes out of this she’ll wonder why the hell she’s so exposed and standing there smelling of cum. I reckon she’ll be back with this world in about five minutes, so we better go. You can buy me a soda, Mr. Redondo-the-lesser.” With that the child threaded her skinny arm through Dennis’ arm and set off leading him to the food court. Dennis didn’t even look behind at the dishevelled, half-naked female. She would, if she ever had the courage, have quite story to tell her friends. On the other hand, no one would believe that she had woken up in the state she was and anyway there’s no such thing as magic, as everyone knows.
It was only when Samantha had got through her second soda, and a doughnut, that she finally spoke. She had listened to Dennis’ lengthy explanation and excuses (none of which impressed the girl) and now she was ready to say what she thought. To the man’s surprise, it was fairly reasonable.
“When you screwed up with me, or rather tried to screw me, you did give me something I could use. I know you didn’t reckon on handing me the keys to the kingdom and it wasn’t the sort of initiation your dull and stuffy friends would approve of, but hey, I don’t care. I’m having fun. I mean, real fun; not the sort of silly things kids of my age do like poking a single finger up their own snatch.” She didn’t sound like a pre-teen, but Dennis knew was a side-product of the (unintentional) transfer of magic powers to the girl. She just got immediately older in her head, which with her looks and prospects made her a very dangerous entity if he was honest. She was capable of seducing both men and women as well as other children.
“But, Dennis boy, this mess you’re in… I reckon as I am probably the only person who can help, and so I will. But so help me,” the girl’s face grew darker at this, “this is the last time I come to your rescue. I was going to say keep your hands off small girls in future but I take it this Yvonne is the object of your lust now.”
“Thank you goddess,” said Dennis.
Then a sly smile flickered over the young girl’s face. “But I could just take over them all. Hey, that’d be fun, wouldn’t it? Me owning this Wilma and Yvonne and poor Cassandra too!”
The colour drained from Dennis’ face. “You wouldn’t!”
“I could, if you do something for me. Something for me.”
A feeling of helplessness swept through Dennis. He sensed what was coming. “I can’t help you, whatever it is.”
“Oh, you can, and will. For my help I want a complete deck of all the cards. Not just the 53rd, but the 54th and all the way up to the 64th card.”
“Not that, please.” Something in Dennis told him he should get up and run now before all this got out of hand. She surely wouldn’t spell punch him in the middle of so many people, would she? But even that would be worth not handing over the 64th card. Everyone in the real magic world – and he expected all their demons – would come after him. He swallowed hard. “I can get you the 54th and you don’t need the 53rd. I mean, you can do all that anyway, right? But goddess, I beg you. The 57th would ruin you and, uh, the 64th would be really bad.”
“I can handle it.”
“Only the thirty-thirds can handle it. You aren’t anywhere near that level.”
“Bollocks to your hierarchy of wisdom and all that shit. I want them all.”
“Even if they burn you up?”
“I want what I want,” said Samantha, darkly. “But it’s up to you. I’m going and I might just find some empty-headed bitch on the way out and get her to fuck the nearest man. Just for fun, of course. Find me if change your mind, loser.”
Dennis was in the sort of dilemma he hated. He had to so something about what he called ‘the situation at number 23’ and disliked the fact that little Samantha had her claws in him. Yes, he could get hold of the full Fate arcane pack. Even one with the 64th in it, evil card though that was. But it was what Samantha would do with so much power that scared him. If it got out that he had handed over so much to a non-initiate — it was a miracle no one had got wind of little Sammy, and her suddenly acquired skills other than thinking with some accuracy that he had tried to molest the girl — then he would be toast. No, scratch that. Toast was edible. He wouldn’t be anything more than vile-tasting dust by the time the thirty-thirds had got hold of him. Bastards, he thought.
But things at Wilma’s home were about to go very bad. If the girl’s mother was a true witch she could hold out for a while against the power her child had acquired. She might even get help from her coven, though Dennis always thought these covens were little more than glorified knitting and gossip clubs. But the truth, which Wilma wouldn’t know yet, was that if she broke her mother’s will (and she definitely intended to do that) then Wilma’s power would multiply. That was what had happened with Samantha. If that ‘goddess’ had thought her newly gained skill was there simply to make her teacher hand out less homework or impel her best friend not invite some other girl to a party, she was wrong. The more you got those powers to work on more people, the stronger you became. In this case, stronger meant more crazy.
Another out-of-control Sammy in the world was a frightening thought. And what if Wilma wanted a full pack too? If she and Samantha both had their hands on the full pack and ever met up and went to head then there’d be an explosion of psychic anomalies that would dig a smouldering black hole in the planet’s psyche from which no one would emerge into the light again. Oh fuck, this had all the signs of everything in The Great Redondo’s world spinning out of control.
On the other hand, handing over a full, all-inclusive, pack and then getting out while he could might just hide his trail. He could go to somewhere remote, grow a beard and take up wood chopping for a living. No more magic tricks, no more playing with small girls and them getting powers they shouldn’t have. He could even abandon his dear, sweet and utterly lazy wife and find someone new. No one would find him, because he could mask his trail (and scent, because magic always leaves a hint of cinnamon behind it) with one of the few spells he knew that would work without consequences.
That was the thing they never told you about casting spells and all that stuff: there are almost always consequences. Many of them unbearable if you weren’t prepared.
So maybe running away was the best bet. Truth was, he wasn’t making much of a living as The Great Redondo. He hadn’t made it in television and all that garbage about ‘street magicians’ these days left him cold. He was too old to be some scruffy, torn-jeans and wild haired ‘youth’ making a punter’s credit card appear behind a car’s windshield (or better, inside the headlight glass). His act was on stage with an audience who paid for tickets. Trouble was they weren’t paying much for tickets these days. Even if they did, there’d always be another Wilma or Sammy in the audience, tempting him.
Just as Dennis was toying with a list of what to pack and what size suitcase he would need, the doorbell rang. He opened his mouth to call to his wife who he was thinking of leaving that she might want to answer that, but he remembered she was out somewhere. He dragged himself out of his chair and went to open the door. He was not prepared for what he saw. There was a woman on the doorstep, and she looked like she had something to say. For a moment the man didn’t recognise who it was, and then he knew exactly who it was.
It was the woman that little Sammy the filthy-minded goddess had been feeling up at the mall. Not with her tits out now and with her skirt was down where it should be, and no longer drooling with a vacant stare. If anything it was a look that told him things were about to get even worse. “Go away,” snapped Dennis and tried to close the door. The woman was quick and had her foot in the way.
“What do you want?” Dennis asked, retreating a little behind the door. He was scared what anger this woman would unload on him.
“I want to know what the fuck is going on,” snarled the woman. Without hesitation she pushed her way into the house, ignoring the man’s assertion that she couldn’t come in. Once she was in it was her who closed the door. There would be no escape for Dennis. “Tell me or I call the cops.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Dennis, figuring that bluffing this out would be the best course.
“Yes you do. You were there. I saw you, you dirty pervert. And then I saw you with that child having drinks in the food court. Like nothing had happened!”
“I still think you are mistaken. I have no daughter and I haven’t––“
“Stop! Never said she was your daughter. She was an evil little cat and if she’s yours, you’ve got problems. But you were there and saw what she did to me. And I’ve still got the marks. You know she bit me on the boobs? Want to see the teeth marks? I don’t know how she did what she did and why I couldn’t stop her, but you are going to tell me, Mr. Redundant.”
Dennis felt that this had spiraled into even more chaos than he imagined possible. “Redondo. Not redundant. How did you know where to find me?”
“Simple. I saw you at the mall while that bitch played with me, even if I couldn’t move or say anything. I could still see, got it? I was going to march over to your table at the food court but I was scared that the pair of you would do something terrible to me. But then I saw your face on a poster and asked a few questions. So here I am.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Dennis, reaching for the door to open it. “I think you should go.”
The woman knocked his hand away. She was strong, he had to admit. “I stay. You talk. Or I make the sort of phone call you wouldn’t want.”
Dennis’ shoulders sagged. He was being beaten on all fronts. “You better come in and sit down,” he gestured towards the living room. “I will try to explain.” He wasn’t sure he could but he had to do something.
The woman, whose name it eventually emerged was Martha Cowley, listened with unwavering attention to the long story Dennis unfolded. At the end of it she nodded. “So you wanted to fuck a small girl and you ended up with giving her secret powers that allow her to dominate people.”
“Um, which one?”
“Both of them it would seem.” The woman settled back in her seat. She wasn’t unattractive, Dennis thought, and with her clothes not open and bunched up she looked very presentable. She also had a big bust and as much as the man liked girls with flat chests he also appreciated the opposite of plenty of breast meat to play with. He was, as he would be the first to acknowledge, an all or nothing man.
“You really are hopeless,” the woman sighed. “I wonder… why don’t you show me this 53rd card if it’s so good?”
“I can’t, please, no!” Dennis was horrified.
Martha sneered. “You can’t because you haven’t got one or because you are scared I will control someone. You, perhaps?”
“I haven’t got a pack of cards here. It’s too dangerous… I keep them locked up at a bank vault. As for controlling me, well, men aren’t affected by it all.” Not quite true but good enough for now.
“So you say, but we could try if you go and get one.” Martha Cowley’s eyes were twinkling.
“We?”
“Yes, you heard.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” Dennis stared at the woman. She looked a determined sort of person.
“Oh I think I do. In fact, if I am right I could take control of this pair — the one you call goddess and the one trying to tame her mother. You thought about that?”
Dennis admitted he hadn’t. But as he turned the idea over in his mind he began to see perhaps there was a way out of this growing nightmare. “I’ll do it if you promise to let me be. Not go to the police. Or the magic circle or the elders of the council of wisdom—“
“Shut up,” said Martha, now in charge. Dennis stopped talking. “I won’t go to anyone but this bitch Samantha and the potential bitch Wilma. I imagine you would want this Yvonne child all to yourself, at least until her parents come back. You are certainly perverted enough.”
Dennis blushed. Martha was right: he was. And Yvonne was lovely. Even lovelier bound and gagged the way she had been. Perhaps this battle-axe could even put in a good word for Dennis with Yvonne. A persuasive word or two. Martha certainly looked persuasive enough for anything: she had got in his home without much trouble for starters. She also looked like the sort of person you would never invite on to a stage. Some folk just had that look about them that said they wouldn’t believe anything you said and did. Like they knew it was all a trick.
And then, slowly, a new thought invaded the mind of Dennis. If he used the 53rd card properly he could make this woman do something she didn’t want to do. Yes, that would be clever. He would go along with saying she could have the card (even throw in the 58th for free, which would give her that extra glamorous look. She’d like that) and then trick her. She would become his property and then she could take the blame for everything. He wasn’t quite sure how, but the woman could be fooled. Everyone could be. It was only a matter of opportunity and timing. So he would trick her into being the fall guy for his faults and then––
Dennis stopped himself and stared at Martha. She was sat watching him, and toying with a small pendant at her throat. It was one he hadn’t noticed on her before. The man’s heart sank (an increasingly common sensation, he understood) and he groaned and looked away. This woman knew exactly what she was doing.
“I see you have noticed this,” she said. “The cross of St. Furizae, I am told. I did some research, you see. I was scared of being put in any sort of bad position again. Most of what I read was silly nonsense but this got a good press, as they say. A simple device that I believe it stops me being easily tricked. I wonder if it’s working?”
Dennis didn’t say anything. It was the one thing you never wanted to see on anyone you planned to hoodwink or deceive. For some reason even the most persuasive words would simply not have the desired effect. There were times when simple, old-fashioned magic worked best and some of these times you never wanted to see the slightest hint of it. The man said something under his breath which Martha understood was merely highlighting his hopeless position.
“Well, if it does work then I expect I have done the right thing. Clever me, hey Mr. Redondo?” Martha must have sensed what was starting to form in the mind of the magician, or at least she came expecting to be misled and lied to. Perhaps, Dennis thought, that was why he had been so open with her when she wanted to know what he had done. He cursed anew under his breath. Now he would have no choice but to go along with what Martha said.
“I’ll get you the card,” the man said, more to himself. Then he began to detail where his bank was so they could meet the next day. It was probably the best that he surrendered now to the inevitable.
Martha Cowley looked stunning when they met the next day. For a forty-year old woman (his estimation, and Dennis was normally good at this sort of thing) she was quite amazing. A tight fitting dress that showed a very healthy and curvy figure, great legs with the usual high heels, and on her head lovely wide brimmed hat that gave her the air of a wealthy woman. He would have fucked her then and there if she’d asked, but guessed she wasn’t going to. Her mind was on something else, and already she was glowing the way people did when they were on the verge of power.
Dennis shepherd the woman in her clicking high heels and heavy scent down to where his safe-box was (the man who opened various secure doors raised an eyebrow at one point as if to say ‘wow, is she yours and how much are you paying her?’) and opened it with his key. He slid the box on a table in the middle of the underground room and in front of the woman, duly opened it. Inside there were several envelopes with contracts, an aged book of minor spells, a handful of gold coins, some conjuring equipment with sentimental memories but no value and several packs of the Fate cards. As the man who escorted them down here had left as per bank protocol and closed the large polished steel door behind them, the pair were quite alone. Reluctantly the man took one pack of cards out and laid it in front of the woman.
“I need you to be very careful,” he said. “Please. I will open the deck because it has my seal on it,” and there was indeed a wax seal at the end of it, “and I shall as promised hand you the 53rd card. Look at it and then when you have looked at it hand it back. If the effect has worked it will go blank — no, don’t ask, it just does that. You will then have the power to do anything you want. Or, as we agreed whatever you want with those two young females, Samantha and Wilma. I have given you the addresses of both so you’ll have no trouble. Once they are under your spell as it were I hope you will honour our agreement about Yvonne.”
“I shall think about it,” smirked Martha. “Oh, and no tricks, for I am still wearing my protective cross of St. Furizae as you have no doubt noticed.” She tapped the cross at her throat. Dennis had noticed, and he gave a soulful nod.
With a flourish born of performing so much on stage, Dennis tore open the seal and with a somewhat exaggerated gesture took the cards out. They were wrapped in thin gold foil and he peeled the foil back and then with typical dexterity produced the 53rd card. He held it out for the woman to take and her eyes lit up. She grabbed the card and stared at it, and yes, it clearly worked. The look in her eyes changed as it did with everyone who saw it. “Yes,” she gasped and chuckled. She handed the card, now blank back, and with a sigh Dennis slid it back into the middle of the rest of the cards where it was safe and wrapped the foil round them. Then he said, quietly, “Martha my dear, would you look at the steel door in front of you?”
Martha did and her look changed again as her reflection took hold. She looked puzzled, then alarmed. She gave a small strangled cry and stepped back but it was too late. The effect was complete. She saw herself in the polished steel door and the change had begun. Dennis stood back and watched. In front of him the woman was changing and making strange strangled sounds. She was shrinking — there was no there word for it — and her expensive dress was falling loose round her. More, her face was changing from that of a confident middle-aged woman to that of a teenager. As her height diminished, so did her features get softer, more child-like. Her impressive bust had shrunk so much that her chest was rapidly getting flat. Her shapely legs and become thin and she more or less fell out of her high heels. Her stockings has gone saggy round her legs, held up by her garters until her garter belt too slid down to her ankles — and her panties too. They were far too big for her now. “What’s happening to me?” She cried, clutching at her visibly shrinking body. “What have you done?” Her voice no longer had a mature timbre. It was like that of a small girl now. A distressed ten year old.
“Ah, Martha, it’s why even shit, cheap magicians like me don’t have mirrors on stage. When things change with magic then mirrors aren’t your friend. What’s happening is one of those things that the 53rd card does so well. You see, this was a good place to do this because you got to saw yourself. Good for me you saw it, bad for you because you saw yourself first. If, and you couldn’t know this my dear, you saw a reflection of yourself first after the card, you became what was in your mind. You were thinking of little girls, I am sure. You were thinking of Samantha for what she did to you. You wanted to get your own back. So what’s happening, and don’t worry because I think the process is stopping now. You have become a small girl. Regressed, amazingly, to Samantha’s age. An age I find quite lovely. Suffice to say you have no need for a 40DD bra any more. Nothing of course fits you from your old life, but then we wouldn’t want it to.”
“You tricked me,” squeaked the newly-made girl, staring at the man. Her dress slipped down from her shoulders and fell to the ground. She shrugged the far too large bra off her bare chest. All she wore now was her hat, which had slipped down her brow a little, and the cross of St. Furizae. It looked larger on her smaller chest, but that was of no consequence.
“No, not at all. I did what I said I would do. You relied on that cross which possibly made you drop your guard. Simple thing, tricking people when they think they are smart. So much harder when they anticipate what’s coming.” The man grinned.
“What’s going to happen to me?” Martha instinctively covered up her chest with her left arm and had her right hand over the vee of her pussy, but she had no boobs and no pubic hair now to hide. She was a ten-year old girl with slim hips, and a fetchingly cute nose on her round face. She still had her heavy perfume and that amused Dennis. He liked little girls with a distinct aroma.
“I shall take charge of you, Martha. I admit I wanted a small girl to obey me and please me and I think I have with the help of that particular card. A little pretence to get you here perhaps, but an entertaining diversion and I succeeded.”
“But... You can’t!”
“I can and have done what I wanted.”
“This is impossible.”
“No, I think you’ll find it isn’t. The impossible suggests it isn’t going to happen, but this is very much possible and has happened, whatever you may think of magic.”
“I don’t want this!”
“I am sure you don’t, but you will adjust. Humans always adapt to new circumstances. You will just be a lovely little girl but with, interestingly, the mind of a mature woman. Yes, a trapped mind but everything has a price.”
“But I’m not what you want… what about Wilma and Yvonne? Those girls and the mother?”
“Oh I expect Cassandra will have her coven to help her resist her daughter’s desires, for these witches for all their faults do stick together. Yvonne will return to her parents in time, marked or otherwise. Wilma thus will find that she is in a heap of trouble and, well, what the fuck do I care?” Dennis shook his head. “If only she had known I was her best friend in all this, but… kids, hey?”
“And me?” Martha the small girl squeaked. “I can’t be like this. I haven’t got anything to wear.”
“I brought this for you in readiness.” Dennis took a small parcel out of the safe box. “It’s a pretty girl’s dress about the right size for a cute ten year old girl, with socks and shoes. Should fit you I reckon. But alas no panties. Under my control I don’t want you wearing panties again.”
“Your control?”
“Martha, please give me some credit for who I am. That cross of St. Furizae is lovely but while you wear it, and until I release the spell I put on it yesterday — which is unlikely — you remain very much under my control. No panties and full co-operation, I think.”
“Oh God,” said the woman-turned-child.
“Not going to help. Never does, sorry to say. You are mine now, child, and we will leave here once you are dressed. We will take a long journey to where I have already made arrangements for us to stay with no questions asked, and we decide what next to do. Or rather, what I want to do to you next. Should be fun, of sorts.”
“I could scream and say you raped me,” glared the child Martha.
“First no one would hear you where we are, second I am a valued customer here and my word counts more than an emotional and irrational little girl who blabbers about magic and fairies and whatnot and third, perhaps most important of all, your virginity is back. For the time being at least,” laughed the man.
Martha reached up to her supposedly protective cross but her arms felt weak and her will even weaker. “I can’t take it off,” she moaned.
“No, and you never will. That little thing is not your friend any more. Indeed, it helps me control you even more.”
“Please, take it off me. I promise I will do anything.”
“Oh my dear child, you will do everything I want with you like this, so your promise is not needed. The cross at your throat stays. Just as you stay like this until I get bored.”
Tearfully, Martha tried to object to all this but she knew it was all hopeless. More, she felt different. Just like she had back when she was a small girl. Before Uncle Harry took her virginity away over the back of the sofa just before her eleventh birthday. She sobbed as she thought of all she had lost, and then conceded she had no choice. It wasn’t her life any more, not the way it was. She opened the package to get her clothes out. There was a blank playing card pinned to the simple, yellow and blue floral little girl’s dress. Written on it were the words: ‘Number 53 in a series of many.’
Martha sobbed a little more, the way kids do.
The end