Suspense Short Story – The magician
Photo credit: jppi from morguefile.com
Hugo arranged his old coat properly and was waiting and listening to the claps and noise that the spectators were making while his master James Douglas was addressing them. As he waited besides the curtains at one side of the stage he heard his master say now my associate Mr. Hugo will shoot me with a gun while I will try to catch the bullet in my mouth.
Hugo came in front of the audience and they all clapped. He had heard them clap before a thousand times, but all the glory all the fame was not for him to keep but his master the great magician James Douglas. Douglas announced anyone to come forward to check the genuinity of the gun.
One man came on the stage he checked the gun, the iron ball which was to be the bullet and even the gun powder. Hugo looked at the man impatiently; as he has seen hundreds of them checking the instruments before and none had ever found anything wrong for there was no trickery in the tools. It was the place where the bullet in the barrel was kept that mattered. These guns were used earlier by people but now they only existed in museums and with magicians doing the bullet catch stunt. The powder was loaded into the pistol but the bullet that the people expected to be thrashed deep inside the barrel of the gun was just kept on the outer brim of the barrel. The little alteration made the bullet eject slowly, enough for any person to catch it but the audience couldn’t notice the change.
Hugo adjusted the bullet on the brim and aimed it right at the great magician. Hugo had been working for him for the last 20 years .he had come as a boy and agreed to work for Douglas hoping to become a great magician himself, and he could become one if Douglas was dead, for he knew all the tricks all the stunts that Douglas knew and even better but with Douglas alive he could not dare to start his own show. only if he would die then the stage would be Hugo’s the men working for Douglas would be his for Douglas had no family.
The audience was silent and all were staring at the two. Hugo remembered how he escorted Douglas everywhere anywhere, but he was never appreciated more and never had Douglas given Hugo a chance to perform himself on the stage, only if he would die today thought Hugo the coming days would be his. He looked straight into Douglas bright excited eyes. In the coming years his eyes would also look as excited though Hugo whose eyes right then seemed to burn with rage.
He quickly his put finger in front of the barrel and pushed the bullet deep inside. The audience didn’t notice Douglas did but before he could do anything the bullet had blown his brains. Hugo screamed, the audience screamed the doctor came rushing and declared him dead. Hugo was crying in front of the crowd but deep inside he was just happy. The newspaper termed it as an accident. Now the stage was Hugo’s, the audience was Hugo’s.
20 years later the same newspaper wrote;’ the great magician Hugo died accidentally in a stunt called as ‘catching the bullet’. The bullet that his 20 year old associate shot at him blew his brains out while he was trying to catch it with his mouth.
__END__
