The World As It Should Be
by Hayley Davis
I can’t bear the smugness of magicians. The air of superiority that comes from knowing something that we don’t. Yes, it’s only the knowledge of which card you chose or which number you’re thinking of, but for those few minutes, while the question hangs in the air and the audience are in the magicians’ thrall, he -inevitably he, where are the female magicians? – holds all of the power. He has absolute certainty and we do not. More than this, he is more than happy to revel in this fact, to extend the moment, delighting in an omniscience we can only observe.
It makes me uncomfortable. To being so sure of something. Anything. Even for a few moments.
I think about this as I arrange the items from the rider of this evening’s talent:
‘2 bottled water - sparkling
1 multi-pack Pickled Onion Monster Munch
1 bottle good quality Merlot’
When I took this job, three years ago, it was a filler, time to be used to get my head and my life together. I’d been certain. Until I was not. One Tuesday morning I’d placed a load of washing into the machine and grabbed the box of detergent capsules. I picked one out of the box, inhaled the scent of lavender, then placed the box on the counter, put on my shoes and walked out. I never went back. I still wonder how long it took my husband to realise that I wasn’t coming back. How he’d explained it to our daughter.
I happened to see this job advertised on Twitter. It’s within walking distance of my tiny flat and I thought it would give me the space and the time to figure something out. To be certain.
Tonight’s magician is a regular, his act is popular if a little dated. During his last visit, I worked out how he delivered his showstopper, a simple act of manipulation, but it was effective. A card trick where an audience member breaks open a piece of fruit to reveal the playing card they have chosen earlier from the magicians’ pack. The fruit is of course pre-loaded, and the magician simply manipulates the audience member into making the pre-determined choices. He had performed the trick countless times no doubt, but something about this manipulation grated on me, along with the resulting unearned adulation.
The stage had already been set by the time I arrived for my shift, so it was easy for me to quickly replace the loaded orange with an ordinary one.
Now, I just have to wait. I watch the monitor that displays a close up of his face. I witness a spectrum of human emotion flicker over his face, confusion, realisation, denial, dread, shame, anger: the things we all endure, inescapable because our existence is not rigged. Satisfied now, I slip out of the theatre, pulling my jacket on as I leave. The chaos of life has been restored. One without certitude, without guarantees. The world as it should be.
Hayley Davis is a writer and actor based in Birmingham, UK. She works across mediums including solo performance, short film, and short stories. She gained her MA Creative Writing at University of Birmingham. Her film The Get out Clause, a project in which she wrote, produced, and performed, won “Best Local Film” at the 2017 Birmingham Film Festival. The short film is a surreal story about a woman who is forced to confront her unfulfilling life. In 2023 she toured the UK with her show ‘5 Years’ about a woman who has agreed to trade five years of her life for the perfect body. Hayley’s short stories appear in various online literary magazines. You can reach Hayley at mshayleydavis@gmail.com.