The Wonder Emporium

By Jackie Myre

Darryl De'vante is a professional magician in a post-mortal plane of reality, working alongside a tormented burlesque performer, a conjurer from magic's golden age and an unaging trans child housing a cosmic entity to build a little piece of heaven for souls that require it. Also, he was born a girl.
In the great cosmic magic show, the real secret isn't always the one you're thinking of.

A spinoff novellette expanding the universe of the Mortal Masquerade series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jackie Myre
• Release date: Jul 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005640200

Jackie Myre

Habitually weird, cheerily dark and proudly genderfluid (male at birth), the pseudonymous Jackie Myre followed an early obsession with cartoonishly bizarre perils into experiments in stage magic, escapology and messy performance art, usually appearing in drag. When middle aged adulthood caught up, Jackie began transferring his experiences in both online fantasy and the Northern UK goth and fetish scene into the Mortal Masquerade series of novels and novellas.Jackie is married with many cats in central England.

Book preview

The Wonder Emporium

by Jackie Yaga

Copyright © 2020 Jackie Yaga All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

​Chapter 1: Discovery

There are many stages to a magic trick, more than people realise. Most get fixated on The Secret, the hidden method that leads to the effect, the bit that you're not supposed to tell anyone. Honestly, though, those secrets just aren't that interesting. Magic isn't just about secrets for the same reason fine art isn't just about stained canvas.

The real secret, such as it is, is the journey, the story, the reason for creating the effect in the first place. Take a simple beginner's card trick, the sort of thing that you might find printed on the back of a cereal box:

The magician gives the spectator a deck of cards. They are asked to randomly deal out the cards face down into four piles, one at a time, until they are left with four even piles of face down cards dealt at random. With a flourish, the magician asks the spectator to turn over each top card, revealing the four aces. All the other cards are then spread out to show it was a regular deck all along.

If you worked out The Secret, good for you, have a biscuit. If not, don't worry, it doesn't matter either way to the point I'm making. Maybe I'll tell you The Secret at the end of our time together. But here's how to approach the real secret as I see it:

This trick has the beginnings of a magical experience, but it is nowhere near complete. In its favour is that it is entirely in the hands of the spectator with no physical intervention from the magician, so this should be emphasised from the outset. Make a big deal out of the role reversal, act like they are the ones doing the trick and you are the spectator watching them. Build gags around this. Play the obnoxious heckler. Insist on inspecting and shuffling the deck beforehand to stop them from cheating. Tap your fingers impatiently while they deal out the cards, as if you've no more idea what will happen than they do. Then, when the effect is complete, give them all the applause. Act amazed, tell them you had no idea they could do magic like you just witnessed. Leave them feeling like the star.

Don't be afraid to lay it on thick. Of course they know full well that it was you making the trick work. They might feel embarrassed and patronised by your over the top platitudes, but that is part of the fun, part of the tease. You have offered them the chance, which they can take or leave, to play along, to accept the suggestion that the magic was all on them after all and that they might be capable of other amazing deeds they're not yet aware of, if only they'd allow themselves to believe in little moments of wonder. And that is one of the most beautiful gifts you can give to anyone.

Now let's talk about what they just did, exactly: they caused four particular cards, out of a possible field of fifty-two, to appear on the top of piles. Big deal. On its own, this is a bland coincidence of no particular consequence, for it to become magical those cards need to be significant in some way. So, take a moment to explain why finding the four aces is a feat worth accomplishing. You could make it a gambling plot about building an unbeatable poker hand, but other, more imaginative plots might serve you better, depending on your character and the tastes of your audience. You could spin a tall yarn about the cards representing mythical beings waiting to be united into a greater whole. Maybe a pathos-riddled personal story about the first time the cards offered up the aces for you, marking the start of your life as a magician. Be as goofy and cheesy as you like with these stories. It's not about being convincing at this point, it's about inviting the spectator to drop their defences and enjoy a little fantasy.

You could work all this patter in while the spectator is dealing out the cards, breaking up what might otherwise be a tedious chore. To the same end, you could stop them halfway through and add some extra interactive element – let them switch some of the cards to other piles, start over, whatever. Nothing they do at this point will affect the final outcome in any way, but make them think that it will.

Better still, like a boxer throwing a jab to set up the knockout punch, throw in a sub-reveal. The four cards currently on top will be genuinely random, but seize on any connections you can as proof that the spectator is getting closer to their goal of conjuring the aces. If there really is no conceivable link between the cards turned over, treat it as an appeal to faith and perseverance. Have them try once more before getting to the end of the deck, then treat the final reveal as their third, successful attempt. Use it to sell the difficulty