[ CW ] `` A flash of light , a puff of smoke , and she was gone . ''

Wade Quaid, Wade the Wonder, 1996 Illusionists Choice Award Nominee, traded his false cuffs for true ones as he stepped onstage. 
 
 Lovely Madeline swept her arm out. Her fingers splayed with practiced showmanship. Her knee-length sequin skirt sparkled with the spotlight. Her lips cracked a smile as she announced him, showing their lines. But that smile too was false. Her eyes told the truth. 
 
 She was bored of him. 
 
 `` Salutations!'' Wade said. He clicked his heels then bent to the crowd with a flourish. `` Welcome, you who would witness arts most arcane. Arts most hidden. Arts deemed profane in darker years and times and the very speaking of which would cost dearly.'' 
 
 Wade popped out a bouquet from his coat sleeve. Madeline took it from him and tossed it behind the curtain. Somewhere in the ill-lit club a patron deemed to clap once. No, Wade saw. The man had snapped his fingers, calling a waitress over. Wade readied his next trick as the fellow ordered a drink. 
 
 `` I learned this next wonder from a visitor from lands to the East!'' 
 
 Madeline was already rolling the box out. It creaked on three wheels. Rickety. The felt on it was coming unglued and was drooping in one of the corners. Wade creaked a bit himself as he shuffled over to it, feeling his own age much the same. As well as his own shabbiness. 
 
 Wade took the handcuffs from his pockets. `` The Sultan's Fury,'' Wade said with a gesture to the box. `` Tales tell of similar devices which the Desert Kings employed. When their mistresses displeased them, the punishment was interment in the box. And then another interment. One much deeper and much more in the ground.'' 
 
 Wade let some sand trickle from his fingers. The guy in the audience had a menu out. 
 
 `` Circumstances force us to imagine the sand,'' Wade muttered. `` But the first detail -- the box itself -- requires no imagination. Lovely Madeline, if you please --'' 
 
 Madeline sighed and put her wrists behind her. Wade stood poised to slap the cuffs. His eyes traced down the low slit of her dress and the exposed the length of her back. Her bare skin was spotted with age yet remaining tantalizing to his eyes. He muffled his mic with a palm. `` You wo n't reconsider?'' Wade asked her. 
 
 `` What's to consider?'' she mumbled, handcuff key in her cheek. `` You ca n't draw'em anymore, Wade. I'm taking Mad Gonzago's offer to be his second.'' 
 
 `` And you could do that? After fifteen years you could just --'' Wade fluttered a hand. 
 
 `` Wade, I could have done it after ten. I felt sorry for you is all. But now I got a grandkid to consider.'' 
 
 `` As it was then, so now it will be,'' Wade said, speaking into the mic was again. He snapped the cuffs on her. 
 
 Wade shut the doors of the felt box then spun it around in a circle -- revealing to his audience of one that it had four true sides. He tapped his cane on each one for good measure. The tone of the tapping deepened with each hit, as if it counting down. 
 
 Wade let it go and held a finger up. `` Now we say the words,'' he said. 
 
 In the box, trapped behind four felt walls, one false and three true, Lovely Madeline would have figured out about then that she would n't be getting out of the cuffs this time. No slipping out the false back of the box for her and into Gonzago ’ s waiting arms. The little pyrotechnic right beside her face would go off in a moment. A little bit stronger than normal due to Wade's tinkering with it. A little too close to her face for surviving. 
 
 `` A flash of light.'' 
 
 Wade clicked the button in pocket. Something like a shotgun shell popped inside the box. 
 
 `` A puff of smoke...'' 
 
 And she was gone. 

