text: I looked out over the auditorium. The Silence was deafening. There were only four people in the audience and one of them was my stooge. The three other people only came to the show because they were given free tickets as they passed the venue and I'm sure they were bribed with a free drink too. I spent the next forty minutes doing a few parlor tricks. I pulled a rabbit from a hat. I did the trick with the rings. I made a Dove appear from a burning dish. I didn't even get so much as a raised eyebrow. Even my stooge was looking bored. I decided to pull out my new show stopper. It was a disappearing act involving a member of the audience. You put the stooge into one box and make them reappear in another box. To do this you needed twin stooges. Which was very hard to come by considering my reputation for not paying my assistants. It was at the very last minute I was fortunate enough to find a pair that were new-to-the game and hadn't heard of me. The only problem being we had no time to rehearse. Picking a member of the audience can be an exciting moment. But when there are only four people to choose from it can be pretty anti-climatic. Usually, you have a stampede of people raising their hands wanting to be picked. In this instance, the only person putting up their hand was the stooge. The rest of the audience were trying their best to not make eye contact with me in the hope I wouldn't pick them. I picked my stooge and did the whole pretending not to know her bit. I walked her into the box and closed the door. I said the magic words that would teleport her from the box to the other box. I swung open the door to reveal she had indeed disappeared, but Instead of rapturous applause from the three people in the audience, they began laughing and pointing at the box. I looked down to see my assistance head protruding from the trap door. She had got her head stuck and was struggling for air. Panicked, I quickly called for the curtain to be lowered. I frantically tried to free her as the scared young woman fought for breath. Eventually, I freed her, relativity unharmed. Then I remembered her twin was still in the other box. I knew something was wrong because she hadn't tried to free herself from the hidden compartment yet. I pulled open the trap door to find the girl unconscious but still breeding. Her lips were blue, her twin was in hysterics. I shook her and slapped her till she gasped for air. Relief washed over me. The two young women embraced each other. I tried to apologize but one of them slapped me in the face, before walking off the stage. There was a time I could fill a room. People came from all over to see my shows. The great Mancini wasn't so great anymore. It was hard to compete with the young magicians of today. People weren't interested in the old school magic anymore. I was old and tired anyway, much like my act. I woke up the following morning to find a package had been delivered to me. It was a book sent by an old magician friend. We had talked before about my shows. A note came with the book with the words "I hope this helps," written on it The book was old and on the worn cover was a faded picture of what appeared to be a Demon. I my knew my friend was into the occult. Most magicians are. Every magician dreams of performing real magic The book was titled "The Grimoire of Faust," how to control Demons to do your will. As I was leafing through the book a couple of pages fell out. The pages didn't appear to be apart of the book. They seemed a lot older, ancient more like. One of the pages had the words, "Daemones autem vis ad eos," written on it and below that was the only word I could translate "Monitum, " or warning in English. On the other pages, there seemed to be a diagram for a ritual of some sort. The pages told of a ritual that would allow me to summon a demon. The demon's name was Abraxas. He was a trickster demon who would torment people into giving up their souls by playing tricks on them. I couldn't just summon him. I also had to befriend him so he didn't play tricks on me and try and take my soul. The ritual seemed fairly simple. All I had to do was place two tall mirrors in front of each other and place a candle in between the two. Then draw a circle around the mirrors with salt and just let it do its thing. I sat for hours watching the mirrors but nothing appeared to be happening. I started to feel really stupid. I laughed at the thought of believing this was actually going to work. So I went to bed. I awoke to the noise of something shuffling around my room. The room was dark but I could make out something moving in the shadows. "Who's there?" I called out in a whispered voice. A low growl came out of the shadows. "I am the many. I am the many who preside over the damned. Why have you summoned me?" I couldn't think of anything to say. What do you say to a demon? I scanned the room looking for some kind of answer to give him. Then I spotted my chess board that I always kept set-up. "I summoned you to play a game of chess with me. I'm old, most of my friends are dead," I quipped. The demon laughed. I turned on my lamp beside my bed and moved over to the chess board. I moved my king's pawn two spaces. The demon appeared in the form of a shadow, not fully revealing his true form. The shadow moved over to the board. An almost invisible hand moved the king's pawn two spaces. After a bit of back and forth, I soon had the demon in a checkmate. This infuriated the demon, sending him into a rage. He flipped the board and flew off into the shadows. The next night I awoke to the demon moving around my room. I turned on my light and saw that the chess board was neatly set back up. "Are you sure you want to play me again? You got pretty angry the last time." The demon grunted and decided he was going first by moving his queen's pawn 2 spaces. After a bit of back and forth and a few intentional mistakes, I let him win. This really pleased the demon. So much so that he wanted to play more games. I thought him to play checkers and showed him a few tricks. He didn't seem impressed. So he showed me a few tricks of his own. He turned my water into blood. He made snakes appear in my bed. All to the amusement of the demon. The owner of Club Maximo was an old friend of mine from my club days. It was a small venue, but it was a venue where all the big names started out, old and new. When I look back on it now doing those small venues were the best times of my career. There is a level of intimacy you get with the small shows that you never got with the big sell-out tours. I had persuaded my friend Barry to give me one of the canceled slots. I promised to do it for free as long as he promised me that the house would be full. I did away with my old act. I decided if I was going to do this I would get with the times, and now that I had a new assistant the possibilities were endless. Smoke descended from above, a crack of lightning hit the ground as I appeared on stage seemingly from thin air. I clicked my fingers and levitated into the air. "What you are all about to witness tonight is magic's equivalent to the second coming of Christ. Everything you see tonight will be nothing short of a miracle. And I must warn you, try not to blink you just might miss a trick." I decided to bring the act out to the crowd for some close up magic. I borrowed someone's watch and made it reappear on the hand of one of the bar staff across the room. I borrowed another guests phone and rang there dead relative. They cried with sheer delight when they heard their voice. One member of the audience had a big abscess on his back that he had for years. I made it vanish for it to reappear again on the back of a different member of the audience. They screamed in horror until I told them to look again and it was gone. I wowed the crowd for a solid two hours. I walked back on to the stage to reveal the big finisher. I was going to make a member of the audience disappear. But this time I wasn't using a stooge. I was going to make an actual member of the audience disappear and reappear again in a different box, But with no trap-doors, no screen-doors and no smoke and mirrors. The crowd rose to their feet, with rapturous applause as I seemingly made the woman disappear in a blink of an eye and made her reappear in the other box. I bowed as the audience screamed for more. The owner of the club was so amazed by the show he gave me a permanent contract. Within a month I was doing seven shows a week in three different venues. And by the end of the year, I was selling out massive arena tours. I was back on top. As long as I had my demon friend in my corner nothing was stopping me from taking the world by storm. I had gotten home tired and weary from a disastrous show. " "What was that all about, "I screamed at the demon. Not impressed with me screaming at him he flew into a rage trashing my house. He made all the furniture in the house disappear. Having been on a whirlwind for the past year I had forgotten how vain, jealous and diabolical a demon could be. He was Jealous of all the attention I was getting. He was angry at the fact that I was taking all the credit for his work. I was getting all the praise while he had to sulk in the shadows. The demon assured me he was going to be on his best behavior at the next show. I should have known better than to trust the word of a demon. The show seemed to be going as planned. The demon was sticking to his word. It was coming to the end of the show and I had a big showstopper planned. I was going to bring half the audience on stage and make them disappear and reappear outside the venue on another stage I had set up. The lights went dark and when they switched back on the audience was gone. I directed the rest of the audience to follow me outside. When I got out to the other stage it didn't take me long to realize something was wrong. The people that I made vanish hadn't reappeared. The other half of the audience were making their way out to an empty stage. I could see the confused looks on their faces. Some were still smiling waiting for the big reveal. I call out to the audience. "Be prepared to be amazed," I asked for the curtain to be lowered, to buy me some time. I call out to the demon. "What in the hell you doing." The demon laughed. "That's actually where I sent them. And if you want them back all you have to do is say my name?" "Abraxas, that's your name." The demon laughed at me again. "That's the name given to me by humans. What's my name?" I racked my brain. I just started blurting out random names in the hope I would get lucky. I was desperate. The crowd was starting to think something was wrong. I begged the demon to bring them back. Impatience turned to panic. The crowd was calling for me to bring back there love ones. Panic turned to anger as the crowd started baying for my blood. The began storming the stage to get at me. Kids were crying for their parents, parents were crying for their kids. I looked around for the exits but people had them covered. I was trapped and the crowd of people was going to kill me for sure. "All I had to do was say the magic word, I thought. Then it hit me. The magic word. I call out to the demon. I know what your name is. Abracadabra, your name is Abracadabra. The demon gave out a laugh that echoed through the air and then he just disappeared. He kept his part of the deal and made the audience reappear. There was a stunned silence in the air for a moment. Then the crowd broke out into rapturous applause.