Magic

I am submitting this story of mine here, in hopes that it resonates with somebody else as well.

Magic.

I’m a magician. An amazing magician, I’m told.

I stand on stage every day, and pull rabbits out of hats. The crowd oohs and ahhs, and asks me how I do it, and I just smile and say that I’m a magician.

My colleagues clap me on my back after each show, and we walk out, a group of wizards.

Only, I’m not like them.

I don’t know when it started, not exactly. But one day in school, when we were learning the trick, I found that I could pull a coin out from behind someone’s ear with no effort at all.

And I loved that feeling. That’s why I wanted to become a magician. Everyone told me I was going to be an amazing magician.

We kept progressing, in magic school. We learned the card tricks. The saw. And the rabbit. They spent a lot of time learning those tricks, the memorization, the textbooks, the schematics and false bottoms.

I never really needed to.

It made sense to me, where the card went. How the saw worked.

A true amazing magician wouldn’t need those other things, right?

Some things I couldn’t do and other things were beyond me, but I didn’t need them for class, so I never bothered with them. People still saw me as flawless, so I just moved on.

I reached my hand into the hat and pulled out the rabbit, and they cheered, as the years went on and the stages got bigger. But one thing still hasn’t changed.

I don’t know where the rabbit comes from.

They all watch as I feel the dread rise, my heart entering my throat, my stomach feeling loose as adrenaline floods my system. The rabbit isn’t in the hat. There’s nothing there.

And right on the edge of passing out, I feel its ears, and I yank it out. They cheer uproariously, and I know. I’m an amazing magician.

Every time I stand on that stage, I feel the vertigo. Will this be the time that there isn’t a rabbit? Will this be the time when I get outed? I beg and plead with the universe, asking for another week, so I can learn how this rabbit works like everyone else, that I won’t have to rely on this magic that brought me here in the first place.

But then the rabbit comes out, and the crowd cheers, and my question is postponed. The executioner reveals today was not the day. I am still an amazing magician.

I don’t bother learning how to pull out the next rabbit, because I am an amazing magician, and amazing magicians pull rabbits out of hats.

As the triumph fades and the next show approaches, I numbly walk onto the stage, and wonder once more if today will be the last. I take a deep breath, and reach into the hat.