Jumping Jack Flash http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=2484
This comes from Jack and Doug's first meeting, early in the story.
***
The nextr instant,
the man in the poster seemed to materialize right through the wall.
He entered with a hand stand and sprang to his feet, capered around a moment and then
spoke a single syllable. The music muted to much less that the ear-splitting shriek
while the noise from the other box seemed to pick up, both in pitch and volume.
Before Doug
could wonder what came next, a swarm of knives shot out of the mysterious box.
They seemed as thick as a bunch of killer bees and all flying straight at the
man who had stopped abruptly, going dead still.
The whole
audience gasped. A woman screamed. Doug could not see the scarlet and gold clad
man move so much as a muscle yet somehow not one knife actually touched
him. Some seemed to halt in midair for a
blink while others swerved, bent, changing course a degree or two before
thudding into the wall. It had to be pretty solid because not one went through.
This’s got be a trick. Doug blinked a
couple of times, sure he was not seeing reality. How in hell did he do that? And what the fuck was that? While Doug sought to wrap his mind around what he had
just seen, Jack calmly gathered the knives and pitched them back toward the
humming box. After that he pulled a much longer blade from a hidden spot in the
stage side of the box. He ran a fingertip up and down the blade and then
extended it to a kid in the front row.
“It’s real,” he
said. “Touch it, run your finger along the edge—slow, real careful now or it’ll
cut ya.” The child did. Doug could not see the lad’s face but he could imagine
the awed expression. Then Jack took the sword back, lifted one leg and laid the
blade across his knee. It sure looked like he bore down hard. The sword bent
very slightly but did not break. When he released the pressure it emitted a
high pitched sound.
By now, Doug
was mesmerized. He had no idea how this stranger managed but the guy was damn
good, whether a trickster or as magical as he appeared.
The redhead
straightened, held the sword vertical as his lips moved, seeming to chant some
silent mantra or spell. Then he pulled a lighter out of a hidden pocket in his
flashy costume. He sparked it and then ran the blue flame up and down the
cutting edge of the sword. Blue flame tipped in red and gold sparkled to life
along the blade. Again he held the sword aloft. He flipped it to change his
grip on the pommel which looked to be wrapped in dark red leather beneath the
huge red stone that twinkled at the apex.
Then without
further theatrics, he tipped his head back and to all appearances took a good
half the blade into his mouth and down his throat. He pulled it up and did the
same thing again. This time he ran a
fingertip down the sword’s length which made the flickering flames fade and
vanish. As he lowered the blade to his side, he seemed to speak a single
syllable although Doug could not hear it.
As had happened
earlier, a cluster of short daggers shot forth from the humming box. This time
they sang too, with shrill tremolo sounds, whispery yet keen. Again they all came close, some even making
some of the dags and tatters of his costume flutter. One clipped a single lock
of hair as it passed him. The crowd broke into spontaneous applause. Coins
rattled and a few bills fluttered toward the stage and settled around Jack’s
feet.
He smiled,
bowed and vanished back through the partition without a glance at the money. Once
again the wall, solid enough to stop knives, did not deter his exit at all.
Doug stood with
the rest and followed them out of the tent. He might have been able to stay and
watch it again but it was too late now. He’d have to get another ticket to go
back. On impulse he went back to the gate where a blowsy blonde dispensed
tickets from a big roll and stashed the money in a noisy old cash register.
“Good show,
ain’t it? That Jack is groovy. Here ya go, darlin’. There’s a lot more to see
and great games to try your skill and luck, though. Hang around, there might be
even more fun to be enjoyed later.” Her bold wink left little question as to
what kind of fun that might be but Doug was not interested.
He wandered
around for awhile, watched a couple of other shows which were obviously faked
and not well done. Then he got a couple of corn dogs, a sno-cone that tasted
like the scent of cheap cologne and a serving of funnel cake. Finally, as he
had known he would, he went back to Jack Flash’s tent. This time he sat through
the whole performance twice. He still could not figure it out. If the red
headed carnie was a fake, he was a damn good one. The sword swallowing part was
probably done by some mechanism that collapsed the blade by sections although
it certainly looked seamless, catching the light without one ripple or distortion.
How Jack
managed to elude those knives, though, was something else. The blades belched
out of the machine in clusters and did not spread very far yet they hit the
wall behind Jack in many places. He did not seem to move. Was there some clever
distortion in the light that tricked the eye? Doug felt a compulsion to find
out. The third time he moved forward and took a seat right in front, just
behind and to the left of the humming box from which the knives emerged.
This time Jack
noticed him. He went through the whole routine and disappeared behind the wall
only to emerge again as soon as the rest of the crowd had left. He came back
through the partition which Doug had decided was subtly divided, this time
without a handspring or any capers. He stopped a long arm’s length from Doug,
and planted his fists on his hips.
“What’s with
you, Dude? Do you get off on steel or something?”
Up close, Jack
was a striking looking man. His face was tight and clean, more angles than
curves. When he parted his lips in a mocking smile, he revealed even, white
teeth. His eyes were a changeable mixture of colors flickering from blue to
gray to green. When he shook his head, Doug would have sworn the ears that
peeked for an instant through the wild red locks were as pointed as Spock’s.
For a breath,
he hesitated, not sure what he wanted to say. “I can’t figure out what you do,
how you’re doing this, the knife thing. I’m pretty sure the sword folds in on
itself but this other—it’s the weirdest trick I ever saw.”
That was when
Jack grinned, an honest but mischievous grin that made him look like some kind
of elf. “I move things,” he said. “No trick, really. It took some practice and
refining a talent I guess I was born with but it’s easy. At least for me it is.
A mechanism in the machine lines them up and then shoots them out by
pneudraulic force—that’s compressed air power, actually.”
“But they don’t
stay in a cluster and they don’t fly straight.”
“Nope. That’s
‘cause I make them move.”
