After passing through a small room with another flap door (with the weird guy from before nowhere to be seen), Nate and Katie found themselves facing a gap between the shadowed backs of two seating stands. Though they couldn't see anyone else, the twins could hear the buzzing and laughter of a whole audience of kids . From the gap, they could see a wooden stage at the other end of the tent.
The twins walked forth. Unlike the outside of the tent, the insides of the tent glowed a bright pumpkin orange, with walnut-brown stripes running down the sides. It kind of reminded the twins of the inside of a jack-o-lantern. It was also much larger than it looked from the outside.
The seating stands were packed with at least three dozen children of different ages, and not a single adult in sight. “Hey, let’s sit over there!”, said Nate, as he pointed to two empty seats in the top row of the right side stand. The twins proceeded up the steps leading up the stands.
As Katie took her seat, Nate looked out at the stage, which was a painted wooden platform shaped like a large half-circle. Though there were dark green drapes hanging behind the stage, there weren’t any curtains around the stage meant to hide anything backstage. Nate wasn’t sure where this ‘Sorcerer Spectra’ would come out from, especially when there’s no other exit flap around.
“Hey Katie," Nate quipped, as his thoughts wandered. " Are you still scared of getting picked?”
Katie gave a sheepish look back. When Katie was younger, she was always afraid of being picked by magicians. Actually, she was always afraid of going out in front of any audience, and accidentally embarrass herself. It’s gone a bit better, but the young girl remembered how much her legs still quaked during those moments.
Katie directed her own attention towards the kids around her. She and Nate were sitting at the very end of the seating stand, so the only kid next to them was a small, dark haired African-American boy with glasses, reading a 3rd grade novel without bothering to notice his new neighbors (a label on the book’s back said ‘Joey’).
Most of the kids in the audience seemed quite animated, with many of them probably excited for the show or just itching to move around. A few rows down on the opposite bleacher stand, a younger girl in a blue dress was bouncing on her seat in anticipation, with an excited grin on her face. She looked miles happier than the older boy next to her, who wore a slightly ripped soccer shirt, and an irritated scowl on his face. Katie’s eyes went wide.
“Nate, I think that’s Caleb!”, Katie exclaimed. Nate looked at where Katie pointed. “Oh. Him.”, he flatly replied.
Caleb was one of the meaner kids at the twins’ school, and the twins’ both shared the same classes with him. Though he wasn’t that much of a bully, he was never that nice around most other kids, at least the ones he didn’t think were ‘cool’ enough. Nate still had a grudge on Caleb for ‘accidentally’ hitting his face with a basketball during Gym class.
Katie, on the other hand, had a woefully fresh memory of Caleb squirting a juice box all over the back of her head. She still remembered leaving school with sticky, apple-flavored hair, which smelled much less like apples by the end of the day.
Nate’s dirty look suddenly morphed into surprise. “Hey, that’s his sister!”, he exclaimed.
“He has a sister?”.
“Yeah, I think her name’s Olivia,” Nate explained. “He presented in class and talked about her once.”
“I feel really bad for her,” said Katie.
“I think his sister wants to watch the magic show, but he can’t leave her alone,” replied Nate. He was grinning again. Seeing Caleb looking this miserable was like licking the cream off a plate-sized Oreo.
It was then when the lights around the tent start to dim.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS,” a male announcer called out from a speaker. Katie and Nate assumed it was from behind the bleachers, as they couldn’t see them anywhere near the stage. “PLEASE SIT DOWN, AS WE PRESENT TO YOU, THE WONDERS OF SORCERER SPECTRA.”
As the announcer quieted, quite a number of kids ignored the announcer’s words and continued their chatter.
Then suddenly, there was a loud bang and a flash from the center of the stage, and the lights instantly dimmed from a glowing orange to a dark foreboding green. Every child in the audience quieted as smoke and fog began to seep from the floor of the stage, pooling into a thick, green cloud.
Nate and Katie heard the boy next to them put away his book, as they and the entire audience watched the fog in anticipation, and in near silence. Oddly, too silent. As Katie looked on, she wondered why she couldn’t hear any sounds from the carnival outside.
And as quickly as it appeared, the fog suddenly parted in all directions by a strong wind from its center. And there stood the silhouette of a tall man, with a top hat and with long dark cape that sparkled green underneath.
“GREETINGS, CHILDREN!”, the man proclaimed with a bombast that caught several kids in the audience off-guard. He raised both his hands up as the fog continued to flow away from where he stood, as more stage lights shined upon the magician. “You gaze upon the wondrous, the almighty SORCERER SPECTRA!”
A dramatic organ chord thundered from the back of the tent. Now that the kids had a clearer view of the magician, a few of them, including Nate, were slightly disappointed. At least Katie seemed to be entranced by the guy, and Nate saw that her attention was glued to the man as he proclaimed himself.
Nate had pictured a cooler, more hardcore getup like a tall voodoo headdress with a skull-capped magic staff, and yet this guy just looked like a regular birthday party magician with only a bit more extra money in his costume. Besides the sparkly cape and the top hat, he also had the fancy black tuxedo with even a large black bow tie. The one piece of clothing that didn’t add up was the large leather boots, which Nate thought was swiped from a set of cowboy clothes.
Although, there were a few other things that seemed strange. His loud manner of speaking sounded like he was fanatically devoted to every single word coming from his mouth, and he jumped from soft to loud in the most unexpected moments. And there was also the wide gaze he held towards the audience of children; half-mad and utterly mischievous.
“Oooh, I think some of you seem disappointed!” the Sorcerer Spectra called out.
“You think I look just like any other ordinary magician. Maybe you were expecting my costume to be a bit more ‘out of this WORLD’! Do you want to see me wearing something cooler?”
The Sorcerer paused, as if letting the young audience reply. A few of the kids gave some sheepish nods.
“Well, let me ask you: why should I change my clothes…”
The Sorcerer picked up his cape and twisted around with his cape hiding his body, and there was another flash of light, along with a glittery sound that made Nate and Katie think of Disney and fairy dust. Then the Sorcerer turned back towards the audience.
“…when I can change so much more?”
Nate and Katie’s jaws dropped. The man in the magician get-up was gone. Instead, standing on his spot in the exact same clothing was a woman with long red hair and luscious lips, and what was clearly a large rack of breasts that stretched against the front of the tuxedo.
There was a whole chorus of ‘whoas’ from the children in the audience. On the other seating stand, Olivia was gaping while Caleb’s bored eyes had popped wide open, and not just because of the Sorcerer’s vanishing act.
“Oooh, and now I have your attention, boys and girls!”, the now female Sorcerer mocked, with a coy finger wag at the audience. A few boys shifted awkwardly in their seats, as a weird sensation in their lower bodies was suddenly making their cheeks blush a little. The female Sorcerer’s vexing voice didn’t help much.
“This is how I usually like to appear,” the Sorcerer went on. “But, I think some of you may like wizards more than witches. Well, I can fix that.”
The Sorcerer picked up the corner of her cloak and, once again, flew it over her head and body while spinning around in a sparkly noise.
“And SO…oh my.”
The children instantly broke into laughter. The man from before was once again in the costume and back on stage, but something from the woman was left behind: the two large boobs still stuck out under the suit on the man’s body. Nate and Katie let out some slightly grossed out giggles.
The man touched a finger on his chin as if in thought. Then he shrugged.
“Well…mistakes happen, every once in awhile.”
He twirled again. A swirl of the cape and more magic sprinkling later, the Sorcerer once again stood as a woman.
“There. Should be a bit more normal…huh…”
The Sorcerer looked down upon herself. Acting curious, the Sorcerer pulled down her pants.
There was a chorus of more ‘ewws’ and incredulous laughs. The Sorcerer was wearing sparkled underwear under her trousers, but under the woman’s panties there was an obscenely large bulge pushing against the front. Nate and Katie look stunned. Katie looked down the audience and spied Caleb looking much more attentive than before, while Olivia’s jaw was hanging wide open.
“Yes, yes, I know. Oooh, I can’t believe she just did that!" said the Sorcerer in a mock voice. “I know what some of you are thinking too. All I did was put down a pillow into my underpants. This was a pretty funny joke, right?”
She gave a wave of a hand. As if it were nothing but air, the underpants instantly disappeared.
“How’s this for a joke?”
It was a penis. A humungous penis the size of a large deli sausage, with testicles like two volleyballs in a sack, all hanging down between the female legs of Sorcerer Spectra, who stood displaying her assets with absolute pride.
The whole tent was silent. Jaws went slack and eyes went bulging all around the seating stands. In the upper seats, Nate stared in disbelief at the unnatural thing hanging from the Sorcerer. Katie shut her eyes with a yelp the second she realized what just happened, only to peek out with one eye. Joey, the boy one seat away, adjusted his glasses while his mouth shaped into a very awed ‘o’, while in the other seating stand, Caleb had shed all sense of boredom and was gawking openly along with his little sister, except now the young boy now had his own little growing bulge under his shorts.
“Now, to the little ladies in the audience, this might be the first time seeing one of these before.” The Sorcerer patted the top of her gigantic hanging member as if it were a pet animal. “This is called a penis. This is what boy’s have instead of vaginas. And, for the young men in this room who don’t know what a vagina is…”
The Sorcerer waved the fingers of both hands towards her member. With each wave, the giant penis and testicles shrank like a fleshy deflating balloon, sinking further into the Sorcerer’s crotch. Eventually, the thing disappeared completely, and in its place was a shaved, fleshy slit that a number of boys in the audience have definitely not seen before.
“…this is what a vagina is.”
Nate glanced at Katie, who was watching fully transfixed and awed. Nate’s seen a vagina before of course, he and her sister bathed together a lot when they were younger. But he’s never seen one from a grown up woman the same age as his own mom.
“I could tell you how they work, buuut you can ask your parents once the show’s over. For now…”
The Sorcerer paused. “Hmmm…yes, why not.”
She snapped her fingers, and like the underwear, the suit and the fallen pants vanished. Not split apart, not torn to shreds, but vanished into thin air, leaving the woman’s large rack fully exposed from her chest. Sorcerer Spectra was now completely naked except for her top hat, her sparkling cape, and her leather boots.
A few kids in the audience manage to find their voices again, and they gave several more shocked ‘ewws’.
“Oh don’t be so surprised, they’re just breasts!”, the Sorcerer exclaimed. “I’m 100% sure some of you used to drink from these things.”
Now this got both boys and girls in the audience blushing.
“Your parents probably won’t want you to see these things. Well, they’re not here right now, aren’t they?”
A gust suddenly swept through the tent, and the lights shifted again to green as fog start to pool around the Sorcerer. The children in the audience watched and gaped as the Sorcerer began to levitate from the ground, accompanied by more dramatic music from the back of the tent.
“Tonight, I’m going to show you things your mommys and daddys will never want you to see!” the Sorcerer proclaimed, with her arms stretched out from her sides, as she continued to rise. “I specialize in the magic of transformation. I can change things into anything I wish, I can warp bodies like they were nothing but clay, and transform them into objects, animals, even other kinds of people! I will show you all of this, and I promise I will blow your MINDS FOREVER.”
The moment she finished the word ‘forever’, there was a flash of light accompanied by the crash of thunder.
“BUT…”
The lights went back to a normal tint, and the fog suddenly evaporated under the Sorcerer, who stayed at the same position in the air. She raised a finger.
“Here’s the catch.”
Without warning, the Sorcerer dropped back down onto the stage, and casually clopped her two boots back on the stage without even bending her knees.
“I’ll show you all my powers, of course. But where’s the fun if I just stand up here and just keep changing myself?.” She shrugged, as her cape flowed back to its normal place. “Nononono, I’m not just going to show you my powers, I’m going to share them with you.”
“So, I am going to need your help. Are there any children here brave enough to come up on stage, and help me demonstrate my spectacular powers?”
Nobody raised their hands. For a few seconds, the tent was once again kept in complete silence.
“Well?” said the Sorcerer. “Any volunteers? Is there anyone here who wants to be changed?”
There was still silence. A few seconds later though, three hands shot up at the same time, followed by a couple more hands and a chorus of ‘me!’s around the stands.
Katie and Nate looked over and saw Olivia jumping up and down with her hand raised as high as she could, while Caleb slumped himself down in his seat. He wasn’t the only one, as several other kids around the audience were making an extra effort not to be noticed.
Katie kept her hand low. She looked over and saw that Joey, the small boy sitting nearby, had pulled out his book and hid his face behind the pages.
She then looked at her brother Nate, and from his biting lips and his hands under his seat, she realized he’s being as nervous as she was. After seeing what the Sorcerer managed to do with herself, who knows what she was going to do to them?
“Oh, so many volunteers who want to help me tonight!”, the Sorcerer called out, as she dramatically scanned around the room. “But who shall be the first?”
The sorcerer kept her searching gaze even as hands rose around the theater, when her eyes landed on the perfect child sitting in the bleachers. Or maybe two or more?
“YOU THERE!”