The Tilting Theatre was a massive shadow in the moonlight. Its doors yawned open like a mouth ready to snap down on anything foolish enough to walk in. The building was made of stone covered in dying crawling ivy, and rusted wrought iron. There was a billboard above the mouth of the building that was anachronistic: it didn’t match the time the building was built nor today. Half the lights around the billboard were out, while the other half screeched a high pitched and flickering wail into the foggy night. There were two towers twisting up the side of the theatre giving the impression of a castle, but something was off with the perspective. Instead of a strong sturdy fortress the theatre looked like it was tilting to the side. The Tilting Theatre looked like it was one gentle breeze from collapse. It looked like it should be occupied only by ghosts and the dead. Of those it was about to gain a new member in that second category. 

 

Appearances are deceiving and on the night me and my best friend went to the Tilting Theatre it was not empty even though it looked like it should have been condemned. 

 

 Legs encased in fishnet stockings stuck out of the end of the box on the table. The stage lights above reflected off of the shiny stiletto shoes, the gleaming silver table, and the expertly applied glittery makeup smeared on the face of the girl in the box. The girl let out a scream as the blade sawed through her middle. 

 

“She always was dramatic,” Zarah Michaels whispered from the seat next to me. Despite giving me a running commentary for all forty minutes of the Astounding Alonso’s Magic Show this was the first comment my friend had made that hinted towards her connection to the people on stage and the first that was not about a trick.

 

The audience applauded as the Astounding Alonso, and one of his other assistants separated the two halves of the table revealing the girl inside had been cut in half for the audience’s amusement. I recognized the girl on the table as Jamie. A friend of Zarah’s who had sent her the tickets. My friend had only used the tickets because I challenged her to a loser-buys-dinner bet that she couldn’t figure out the secret to all the tricks in the show. 

 

  Next to me, Zarah pointed out how the table had two legs protruding from the middle that flared out like a triangle. She explained that the legs were hollow: Jamie had her legs tucked into the hollow right leg, while another girl had her torso in the hollow left. It was this second assistants legs we were seeing. 

 

The audience applauded again as the two halves of the table were put together. The magician said some “magic words,” and I had been listening to Zarah enough tonight to realize that this was just a stall tactic to give the girls time to switch their legs back. The boxes covering her were removed and Jamie swung her legs down “miraculously” whole again. 

 

I watched as the table was wheeled away, thinking that there was a girl contorted in the small space of the hollow leg. Zarah had told me right before the lights went down and the show started that behind every great magician was a much tougher very flexible girl who was doing the hard part. 

 

“So when you used to do this trick, were you the legs?” I whispered teasingly. Zarah pretended like she couldn't hear me as the magician called for the “Box of Pain” to be wheeled on stage. The box had four doors on front, and I recognized the famous trick: cutting a girl to pieces, rearranging her, and then putting her back together again. The magician loaded an assistant inside after tying her hands up and gagging her. The crowd cheered. 

 

Alonso showed off the steel blades he would be thrusting into the box with Jamie’s help.  Thumping and muffled yelling could be heard from inside the box. It seemed Jamie wasn’t the only assistant with a flair for the dramatic. Zarah leaned in to whisper something sly to me. She was cut off by Alonso thrusting the first steel blade into the space between the top most and second door of the box. There was a thunk.  Alonso jerked back as if in surprise. It was the best acting we had seen from him the whole night. The thumping had stopped. 

 

Zarah jumped to her feet, and I confess that at the time I was mortified, though now it is that feeling itself that embarasses me. 

 

“Stop!” Two voices yelled. One was Zarah. The other was a woman I had only met once before, though I recognized her, standing a few seats down from us in our row. Vanessa Hughes. She had been Alonso’s third assistant when she, Jamie and Zarah had all worked for him. 

 “Open the box!” Vanessa demanded. 

 

“Now!” Zarah added, not about to be outdone. 

 

“Nessa, Zee, I didn’t know you were coming,” Alonso said. He was surprised, and something else, something tight and shadowed making up the lines on his face. 

 

Jamie, who had been standing off to the side handing Alonso the blades pushed him away and opened the doors to the box, trusting the instinct of her former assistant-sisters. 

 

She let out the first scream. Then it was unclear who had screamed next or who was screaming in particular. The girl in the box, who we would learn was Elizia, had been decapitated by the blade. Her head rested on the steel, which separated it from her neck. When they opened the other three doors to the box her body fell forward. One of her heels was broken, and her fishnets were ripped. Her hands were still tied in front of her. The glitter on her face was smeared from the tear tracks she had let out when she realized she couldn’t get out of the box. 

 

I had thought for a  brief moment that this was part of the act. That Zarah and Vanessa had been invited back specifically to be plants in the audience to help pull off this particularly gruesome version of this trick. But Zarah and Vanessa would never work together again. But Jamie was really crying, and as dramatic as she had been on stage she had never been this sincere. But that was real vomit coming out of the Astounding Alonso’s mouth as he threw up over the side of the stage.

 

Theatre management tried to calm  the frenzied audience, and explain that since we were all witnesses we should all stay until the police arrived. 

 

Instead of heading to the theatre doors to argue with the theatre managers Zarah grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the sweaty, teary, bloody stage. Vanessa seemed to have the same idea, and we met in between the slicing beams of light and the cloying stage fog. 

 

Zarah dragged me onto the stage, but then seemed at a loss for what to do when facing a weeping Jamie, and a weeping and retching Alonso. She never had been as good at figuring out the trick to people as she had been at figuring out the trick to things. 

 

As a therapist specializing in trauma and PTSD treatment I could understand why she thought it appropriate to nudge me forward. I had a feeling I was going to get a lot of new appointments in the coming week, as I crouched next to Alonso, and took stock of his breathing. I noticed both Zarah and Vanessa hovering near the box and the body as if looking for the wires, or mirrors that would make this whole thing make sense. 

 

Unlike Zarah, Vanessa had stayed on the stage after retiring as an assistant.I had heard rumours that she was in conversation with a certain streaming service about getting her own show performing and then explaining magic tricks. I had heard this rumour through Zarah, who had sworn she was not jealous about five times when she was relaying it to me. 

 

Finally, the police arrived and ushered the crowd into the lobby in an attempt to coral them without disrupting the crime scene. 

 

“Ladies, gentleman,” A man said flashing his badge, “I’m Detective Harris. I’m going to need you all to clear out. We’ll have to ask you some questions about the accident Mr. Alonso, before you can be on your way.” 

 

“Don't you think you should ask any question at all before you determine it is an accident?” Zarah spat. She had no fondness for the police, and I knew that was because of me. The treatment I had received when I was child after the murder of my parents; the inept questioning, and hostile interrogation at only nine years old had lead to my own trauma, and later the desire to work in trauma recovery. Zarah, having been my friend since we were in pre-school had been present for this time in my life, and the moments after. She had never forgiven, or trusted the police after my parents murder. It was an opinion I tried to remain objective about, but found hard to dispute all things considered. 

 

“A girl dies during a dangerous magic trick. Look it happens. Houdini died because of a trick didn’t he?” Detective Harris dismissed. 

 

“It's not supposed to be a dangerous trick!” Zarah snapped. She walked over to the body carefully, and gestured to the wheeling platform the box was resting on. “This?” she said with a derisive wave, “has a false bottom. The assistant crouches down and puts most of her body inside. This places her head bellow where the blades come in.”

 

“So?” The detective asked. 

 

“So, she wasn’t crouched down. She was banging and trying to yell through the gag before the first blade went in because she couldn’t crouch down.” Zarah placed a foot inside and then stomped on the floor of the box. 

 

“Its solid,” Jamie gasped, from where she had joined me and Alonso on the floor. 

 

“Someone boarded up the false bottom before…uh...” 

 

“My Elizia.” Alonso sobbed. 

 

“Before Elizia entered the box, and was gagged. It's not unusual for assistants to play up the drama a little so no one did anything when she struggled thinking it was part of the act but it wasn’t an act. She had nowhere to go. Elizia was murdered Detective and you need to arrest her killer.” 

 

“Enough of  the build up, we all know the best part of the magic trick is the reveal.” Vanessa spoke up and raised a challenging eyebrow at Zarah. The two exchanged a look. It was the smug, and almost amused glance of two people who knew how the trick was done. A look that dared the other to heckle the magician and ruin the show for everyone.

 

“Alonso always uses three assistants,” Zarah uttered the magic words. 

 

“Where is Fiona?” Jamie asked it for all of us, looking around as if the third assistant would join our circle any moment now. 

 

Vanessa smiled. Her were teeth blanched white, and something serpentine was in her eyes. Like any magic trick her hands were what gave her away. Despite her smile she wasn’t as carefree as she seemed, and her fists were clenched at her side.  She explained how she knew from performing her own show that the stage door was locked and inaccessible due to safety concerns in that half of the Tilting Theatre. This meant that performers always had to bring their equipment in through the front doors. It meant that the only way in or out was the front doors. We had all been onstage, and no one had gotten past us. 

 

“She’s still in the theatre,” the Detective said hand inching toward his gun, and giving his trick away too.  

 

The wings of the Tilting Theatre were a labyrinth of props, and magic tricks. Almost all of which had traps doors, secret hiding spaces, and tricks. We all looked around wondering where the woman could be. We were Theseus listening desperately for the scrapes of the minotaur's hooves to help him locate the monster. 

 

I made my way up a set of prop stairs listening to my heels click over the wood as I sat atop them. I was exhausted, and horrified at what I had witnessed. The illusions of a magic show were only fun when you knew nothing was really happening to the pretty girl.

 

Everyone settled in a half semi-circle backstage. Vanessa let the moment hang like a rope, or a levitating woman, or the echo of applause. She gestured with her hands, a movement more like an assistant than a magician. It was something in her muscle memory she couldn’t resist. The difference between presenting a trick and performing it. 

​

 “Fiona is hiding in the trap door under the prop stairs.” 

 

I leaped up as if the murderer was going to jam a knife through the steps and kill me next at that stage cue. Zarah steadied me as I stumbled giving me a half amused, half pitying glance. Detective Harris drew his gun as Zarah very calmly stepped forward and threw open the panel revealing the hollow staircase.

​

It was empty. 

​

“A good guess,” she said to a confused Vanessa, “but just a guess.  There is no more reason for Fiona to be in the stairs than in any of the other tricks back here. Except for one.” 

 

There was another hanging, choking moment. Finally I realized Zarah wasn’t waiting for dramatic effect. She was waiting for a setup. I sighed under my breath, but obliged. “Which is the one prop she could be hiding in above all others?” 

 

Zarah walked to the silver table with the triangle legs. Sawing a woman in half. “Why would Fiona find a hiding spot, when she could simply choose not to leave the one she had?” 

 

I remembered Zarah whispering in my ear about how this trick was done. Jamie was the torso, and another girl was the legs. She gestured to Detective Harris who drew his weapon again. 

 

“Come out with your hands up Fiona, its over.” Harris spoke with a sense of real stage presence for the first time. 

 

There was a pause. It was the suspenseful silence before the magician waves his arm and reveals the illusion, presto, and then a girl’s legs slowly raised up into the air before resting on the table. Harris and Zarah reached in and helped pull Fiona from the hollow leg. Due to nature of the trick she had been lying upside down. 

 

There were tear tracks on the woman’s face, but instead of regret her jaw was set in a stubborn line. 

 

“What’s your real name? None of that stage name crap,” Harris barked.

 

“Fiona Foust.” 

 

“Fiona Foust, I’m going to need you to come with me and answer some questions regarding the death of Eliza Alvarez.” 

 

This finally surprised Zarah, “She was your wife.” 

 

Alonso sagged and Jamie helped support him, He looked like a wax doll someone had been holding for too long. Like he wasn’t exactly melting but losing his proper shape. Still there was the outline of an aging man who once had once been handsome. There was the wick in his spine to light the spark of a performer.  “We got married while in Vegas doing a show. I blew it off as a drunken joke. I told her I was going to get it annulled. But…”

 

“You really loved her,” I said, thinking back to a miserable ‘my Eliza.’ 

 

“No! He loves me. Or he would have. Once that whore was out of the way!” Fiona screamed. 

 

Detective Harris arrested Fiona Faust, the jealous assistant. Jamie and Alonso went back to their hotel to grieve in peace, Vanessa vanished without a word when no one except maybe Zarah was looking. As for Zarah and I, we found ourselves outside staring up at the Tilting Theatre. 

 

“And I thought the drama between you and Vanessa was toxic,” I mused. 

 

Zarah huffed a laugh, and then frowned.  “What a waste.”

 

 “At least you solved it. Her family, and Alonso deserved that much.” 

 

Zarah smiled at me. She had never been good at the stage smile, or the performance thing in general. She preferred designing the tricks, or solving them. It was one of the reasons she had stepped away from the stage. Her real smile though was enough in a world framed by moon and not stage light.

 

“I believe there was a bet that if I solved every trick you would be buying dinner. I solved every trick, and solved a murder.” 

 

I rolled my eyes, “I’ll buy you dessert too.” 

We turned our backs on the Tilting Theatre with its yawning mouth, and crooked towers. I hadn’t noticed when we had come in, but I noticed now that gargoyles lined the lurching towers. One of them was missing a head. The Tilting Theatre was a crumbling, breaking building. We let the tower vanish behind us in the fog. Presto. Now you see it, now you don’t.