Ewww, I Love Magic

Word Count 857


    Ethan finished the last page of How to Hypnotize People Without Them Knowing It and set it on the dresser next to his bed.  He picked up a deck of cards and started to shuffle it.  Can I really be such a bastard?  Have I really sunk this low?

    He caught his reflection in his dresser’s vanity mirror and was throughly disgusted by his scrawny, short appearance.  No wonder I’m twenty three years old and I've never had sex.  Scruples be damned, I will do this…but how?  He shuffled his cards some more, and then he had it.


    It was one o’clock on a Friday night and Ethan scanned the local watering hole until he found what he was looking for.  Sitting at the bar was a tall, leggy, perky breasted, very pretty blonde.  She had just chased away two drooling “frat guy” types.  Ethan admired her good taste in doing so - so much so he did something he normally never did; he confidently sat down next to her.

    “Hi, I’m Ethan.”

    “I’m Margaret.”

    “Can I show you something?  It will only take a minute.  It’s a magic trick.”

    “Ewww, I love magic.”

    He fanned the cards out and waved them around and around.  “Pick a card, any card,” he said soothingly.  Margaret did and looked at it.

    “Now, if you would please, put it back into the deck.  I want you to focus on your card.  In your mind, picture your card and nothing else.  Let the rest of the world vanish, this bar, the people around you, while still visualizing your card.  Let all of your problems and worries leave you, until you are totally relaxed and thinking of nothing but your card.  Our minds are joining and you’re feeling even more relaxed because of it.  I know what you’re thinking.  I can see your card.  It’s the king of spades.”

    “Yes, it is,” said Margaret dreamily, even though the card she picked was the queen of hearts.

    “Come with me,” said Ethan.  She followed.


    Margaret’s dress slipped off of her and fell onto Ethan’s bedroom floor.  She removed her black bra, revealing to Ethan jiggly perfection incarnate.  She took a long step to, and wrapped her slender arms around, the stunned, breathless Ethan.  He looked up into her beautiful, big sky eyes as she kissed him.  Her warm tongue felt wonderful in his mouth and her hands roamed deliciously from the back of his neck, and then further down his body.
 
    Margaret undid his pants, pulled down his boxers, which gave Ethan such ecstasy it felt as if she liberated him from a life of slavery.  Meanwhile, she pulled her own panties off with her other hand.  She moved so fast and Ethan’s mind raced.  Her touches aroused him on such an animal level, so much so that suddenly he felt a wild urge to throw her upon his bed and take her immediately.  Instead, he gently stopped her caresses.  What is wrong with me?  He couldn't believe what he was about to say.

    “Margaret, stop.”  She did.  “I can’t do this,” he said.

    “Why?”

    Ethan looked tortured for a moment, then he admitted to hypnotizing her.  He even told her he had never been with a woman before.

    “I know what you tried to do.  You owning up to it is very refreshing.  Just when you think honesty is a passé quality, someone like you comes along.  Anyway, it’s time for me to come clean, too.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Look in your mirror.”

    Ethan looked into his mirror and saw himself embracing…a hag.  Margaret’s breasts sagged downward flat.  Varicose veins spidered her clubby legs.  Wiry, iron gray hair crowned her leathery, wrinkled, warty face.  She cackled hoarsely as Ethan backed away from her, horrified.

    Yet, as he looked away from the mirror and back at her, she was instantly beautiful again, and it was not just her physical beauty that moved him, but her presence as well.  She was warmly inviting.  Even her cackle changed back to a musical, dulcet, young woman’s laugh.

    “I...I don’t understand.”

    “It’s complicated.  Let’s just say it’s been a long, long time for me as well, Ethan.  Gaze into your mirror again.”

    He looked.  This time she remained beautiful, but it was he who had changed.  He was tall and handsome.  He looked away from the mirror back to Margaret, and now she was the one who needed to look upward to meet his eyes.

    “A gift from me to you, forever, whether you have me tonight or not, for being upstanding in the face of extreme temptation.”

    Ethan thought.  He eventually said, “Actually, I think I want to take the new, souped up me out for a test drive with you, right now."  He pulled her into him and kissed her before she could even answer.

    Margaret, to say the least, didn’t mind at all.


    Ethan never strayed from Margaret.  His devotion was never a result of any charming sorcery.  She earned his love simply through her goodness and her own feminine mystique, which everyone knows, is a potent magic unlike no other.  He remained handsome, young and happy with Margaret for more than a century until his death which, sadly, even she couldn't forestall forever.

    Margaret, on the other hand, will live on, missing him dearly, until the time she finally meets another forthright and honest young man, many, many years from now.