Class Ends

There was silence. The gun didn’t go off; there wasn’t even a metallic click. Shaggy was trying harder to pull the trigger but it wouldn’t move. In fact nothing moved; the gun seemed stuck in the air like the basketball. He didn’t know what to do except sweat. But he just couldn’t announce his defeat by letting go of his gun, by leaving it to hang there in the air.

Tobias didn’t wait for Shaggy to decide the next move.

“Ladies and gentlemen! In the same manner as items can be locked into space, they can also be forced to move along certain lines. To you I will now demonstrate once again the power of the universe that surrounds us by moving this gun to your teacher’s desk here behind me,” Tobias exclaimed solemnly yet proudly.

He moved aside so that the gun (with Shaggy attached to it) had free access to the teacher’s desk a couple of feet away.  The teacher, who was still on her knees hiding behind her desk, was quick to scurry over to the corner by the door.

Tobias made some kind of magical move with his right hand stretched out towards the gun, and at the same time, loudly and in front of everyone, he instructed Shaggy to hold on tightly. Shaggy couldn’t change a thing though because he was already holding on tightly, so he sweated some more.

Tobias moved his right hand slowly so that it was pointed at the top of the teacher’s desk. Then he moved aside a bit farther as if to observe. And so did all the others in the room, even if most were still hiding behind their desks. He then crossed his arms to indicate: “let the show begin.”

The gun started to slowly move in a straight line towards the teacher’s desk. Shaggy tried for everything he was worth to hold it back without revealing his effort, but it was no use; he couldn’t even shake it or twist it, not even a hundredth of an inch. The gun continued gliding as if it were on a track, and Shaggy just had to come along. He had given up trying to pull the trigger, but he still didn’t want to let go of his gun. So he followed it while trying to come up with something to rescue the situation.

But when the gun was above the teacher’s desk, it stopped and then slowly turned on its side as if preparing to lay flat on the desk. Shaggy panicked. He let go of his gun and ran out of the room. His gang reacted a few seconds later and tried catch up with him, but not real hard. When making their way out of the classroom they couldn’t avoid the sight of Shaggy’s gun lowering itself down towards the desk to meet its surface.

Tobias just stood there proudly watching, without saying word. When the gun placed itself on the desk and seemed to be still, another student close to the door sneaked out, and soon all the others, including the teacher, left in a panic. Patrick, however, remained, still sitting back in his corner, with no intention of leaving. He looked amused, but he held back some because he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to applaud Tobias or not.

When the last of the fleeing students had left the room, Tobias looked back at Patrick with a smile. He then walked to the door and closed it. As he walked back, his manner changed from that of a magician to a regular person, like anyone else, except for his orange hair and flamboyant tie, of course.

He asked Patrick to come forward, which he did. Tobias went over to sit on one of the student desks in front of the teachers’, and he signaled for Patrick to come sit at a desk beside him, which he did.

“So, you say you’re interested.” Tobias opened up the conversation in a calm easy manner as if nothing strange had happened at all.

Patrick smiled like he enjoyed the situation.

“Yes I’m interested, but I don’t know what this is.”

“You’re right; you can’t really know anything by this small performance. However, are you interested in learning and maybe working with me and the others on our team? I think you will fit in real well.”

“But doing what? I don’t have any education; I just go here because I don’t have anything better to do. Nobody cares about me,” Patrick said, throwing out his hands and shrugging his shoulders while kindly looking back at Tobias.

Tobias gave Patrick a friendly smile and sat back a bit on the desk.

“You know, I, and the others, and those running the show don’t care what your education is. We have our own small community, and we run the show the way we like, not the other way around. We’re a bunch of strange people who have found joy being together, doing what we do, and we don’t always agree with society just like they don’t agree with us. You know, we try to develop our own kind of business, and we welcome people like you. I have to admit that it was no coincidence that I came to visit you here, but I, we I mean, need to be sure that you can be one of us, and I actually think you can.”

Patrick was listening eagerly, and he didn’t want to interrupt with questions. Tobias continued, as he didn’t expect questions at this point, anyway.

“I don’t expect you to leave everything and join us just like that, but I wonder if you would like to try and meet us, and we’ll take it from there. You will be very well taken care of, and you will meet kind, caring, and sometimes very interesting people; that I can promise you. I don’t want to talk about money, not just now anyway. There are some things I would like to show you first, like what our community can offer and things like that. Actually, I think what we can offer you goes beyond any monetary value.”

Patrick had nothing to lose anyway, no belongings he was attached to, no real family, no anything. The more Tobias talked to him, in his now-soothing voice, the more safe he felt, and there was something about Tobias that he liked. He had totally dismantled Shaggy and treated him like a fly not worth bothering about, and that appealed to Patrick a lot. So after a while, sitting there listening to Tobias, Patrick had to ask.

“That trick you did with the ball and the gun? Was it a just a trick?” he asked a little doubtfully, while throwing a glimpse at the basketball still hanging in the air and the gun laying there on the teacher’s desk.

Tobias turned on a big smile and almost laughed.

“No, you’re right, that was not just a trick. But the funny part is to make it look like magic. What I did was actually for real, and it actually works, no magic involved.

“You know, when I was a kid I wanted to be a magician, and I was quite good at it too, but you need money and connections and people to support you to get anywhere. I started out playing in nightclubs and all that, and I tried to become famous, but it seemed that most people are judged by their looks somehow and I wasn’t one of them. I think I also made the audience uncomfortable; they couldn’t get their heads around what I was doing, so they would leave the show in the middle.  Club managers hated that.”

Tobias shrugged his shoulders to show that he given up his dream and then he continued.

“Then after a while I discovered that some of the tricks I had come up with had been stolen. Somebody, probably the managers who watched the rehearsals, sold my act to other performers. I actually think they deliberately discredited me so they could steal from me and sell my act, so I would run out of money and give up the gigs, no questions asked. They thought I was bad news.

“But I didn’t give up. It became more and more obvious that you need contacts in this business, and the managers probably bad-talked me because the felt like I was a threat to them. Like maybe one day I would reveal their scam. I have no doubt though that they helped others through this black market of tricks to build up their careers.”

Tobias took a short break. He and Patrick heard some people making a racket outside, but they didn’t react. Patrick listened intensely, and he seemed to enjoy hearing Tobias tell his story.

“Anyway, the only gigs I could get were doing shows for handicapped people in institutions, of all places. And I can tell you, some of these places are worse than any prison. Some staff there were really ugly people. But by learning to interact with my audience I met some really interesting people, and we got to know each other.

“Okay, they all have some kind of handicap, but some of them have brains you wouldn’t believe. Like me they’ve been dumped, but unlike me, because of their handicap nobody even wants to notice them; it’s like they’re invisible in society. But, it’s actually these handicapped people I met while doing magic who are responsible for making my little act here today work.”

Tobias paused for a few second, as if he were studying Patrick, and then he asked, “So, I hope you’re interested in coming with me. I have something to show you and there are some people I would like you to meet. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Tobias turned to the basketball hanging there in the air, and with a slight move with his hand the ball dropped to the floor and bounced a few times. He then stood up, picked up the basketball and put it back in the paper bag. He also took off his orange hair that in fact was a wig and put it into the bag too, and he did the same with his orange tie. Tobias also started to undress, taking of his dark grey suit, revealing a normal-looking t-shirt and shorts underneath. He turned the pants and jacket inside out, so they became a dark blue suit, and put them back on. He passed his fingers through his hair a bit and, like “magic,” he had changed his overall appearance quite a lot. Tobias laughed.

“It’s good for the show you know. People do take notice of me when I wear this, but not afterward. That can be quite handy sometimes, you know…. Anyway, are you coming?” he asked, ready to leave, but with everything he had put in his paper bag still behind.

“Aren’t you going to bring your things with you?” Patrick asked, surprised.

“Oh no, I don’t need those anymore; they’re just ordinary things. There’s no value in those.”

“But the gun?”

“Let it be. It’s not mine anyway.”

Patrick laughed a bit at the ignorant way Tobias said that as if he didn’t care.

“But isn’t the gun locked in space anymore?”

“No, it’s not; I let that go with the basketball. So anyone who picks it up can use it, if they like.

Patrick seemed amused, and he stood up to follow Tobias out. But first he went over to the windows to have a look at all the noise outside.

“Do you think Shaggy and his boys will let us go just like that?” was Patrick’s next question. “They’re out there smashing your car to pieces.”

Tobias just laughed as he urged Patrick to come along, like that was nothing, and Patrick did. Whatever Tobias was up to now, this he didn’t want to miss.

...

To be continued next Friday.