2625. Sleight of hand.

When it came to card tricks Estelle was definitely sleight of hand. She could make cards appear and disappear with panache. For that matter she could conjure up other tricks as well, like when she put a chicken carcass into a hat and pulled out a live rabbit. She had always said throughout her teens that she wanted to be a professional magician. Her parents were not happy with such a choice. Someone as bright and clever as her should strive to be a doctor or a lawyer or a university professor.

“There’s no chance a girl would make it in the men’s world of magic,” declared her mother. “Aim a little higher.” But Estelle would have none of it. She asked at the local casino if they needed a card dealer but there were no vacancies. She applied for a job as a magician’s assistant but (in the magician’s words) being female demanded she don a bikini and appear out of a box after being cut in half. Silly girl, it was a man’s world.

 All that is in the past. For the last four years Estelle had worked as a checkout assistant at the local supermarket. She’s doing very well; extremely well in fact.

2286. Three friends

Graham was recently widowed and apparently was not doing too well with the grief. His wife Euphemia has passed away suddenly. He had two close friends – Benjie and Shane. Benjie was the practical joker and Shane was a little more serious.

Benjie had heard that Graham was a bit down in the dumps so he thought he’d play a bit of a trick. He was a master at imitating people. He phoned Graham and pretended to be Shane.

As soon as Graham heard Shane’s “voice”, he said: “Hi Shane. Great to hear from you. We haven’t spoken since you gave me a hand to murder Euphemia.”

1994. Magic mirror

Alexander told his younger sister Clarissa that if you take seven deep breaths in front of the mirror something spectacular will happen.

“You need to do it outside,” he said, “because you never know what’s going to happen.”

Clarissa took her small wall mirror outside and propped it up against the leg of the porch chair on the lawn. She looked in the mirror and took seven deep breaths.

That is when Alexander threw a bucket of water over her.

1777. A pathetic disguise

It was April Fools’ Day. Lorallie was determined to pull off what she thought would be an all-time wonderful prank.

Lorallie’s best friend Natalie, ran a business from home selling buttons. She had literally (almost) millions of buttons that she advertised online. It was hard work, and that’s because it was so heavily patronized. Natalie’s husband, Max, was involved in the business as well. In fact, Lorallie and Max were having an affair, so the April Fool’s trick was as much for the benefit of Max as for Natalie.

Although Natalie didn’t know about the affair, she herself was having an affair with Lorallie’s partner, Mervyn.

There was one problem that kept popping up. The courier would five times a week pick up the parcels of buttons from Natalie’s front door. But about once every two weeks or so the packages waiting to get picked up would get stolen. No one had seen the thief. The packages simply “disappeared”.

On the 1st of April Lorallie dressed all in black to make herself look like a stealthy thief, and she wore a shocking pink balaclava. She ostentatiously “sneaked” down to Natalie’s place to pretend to be the burglar. When caught she would cry out, “It’s me, Natalie! You big April Fool!”

But it didn’t work out that way, because Natalie, who had just heard about Lorallie’s affair with Max, could see through Lorallie’s pathetic disguise. She shot Lorallie dead with a gun.

In the long run Natalie was let off the hook by the court because she claimed she thought Lorallie was not Lorallie but the button-package thief. The button-selling business went into abeyance. Natalie and Mervyn went their separate ways, with Natalie dating Michael, and Mervyn moving in with Candy. Max now dates Cynthia. (Michael, Candy, and Cynthia are new to this story). One of Lorallie’s teenage children, Clinton, was so upset with his mother’s death that he got into bad company and drugs. (Clinton is also new to this story). The consequences of Lorallie’s ridiculous April Fools’ joke had a bagful of repercussions that went on and on, and I haven’t even begun to mention what happened to Fergus, Angela, Owen, Freddie, and Lorraine…

To make things slightly confusing, did I mention that the courier driver was Mervyn?

So think twice before you do something stupid this morning.

… oh, and Tessa.

1385. Sunday afternoon snooze

It was not unusual for Danny to have a full-scale afternoon snooze every Sunday afternoon. This wasn’t a gentle doze in front of the television; this was a get-into-bed affair. His wife and kids would hear him snoring away for an hour – sometimes for an hour and a half. Then he would get up and life would return to normal.

“Work for your parents tomorrow,” he would say to the kids. “And school for you.”

This particular afternoon the children decided to play a trick. They adjusted all the clocks, even the clock in the car. They convinced their mother to wake their father up.

“Hurry up, dear!” said mother. “You’ve overslept. You slept all the way to Monday morning. You must’ve needed it. You’ll be late for work.”

Danny leapt out of bed.

“A quick breakfast?” asked mother. The kids were all sitting around the breakfast table eating morning cereal.

“I’m not hungry,” said Danny. “I’ll grab a coffee on the way to work.”

Off he set in the car for work at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. The kids were ecstatic about their trick! It worked!

Twenty minutes later, Danny reappeared. “I’ll get you lot sometime soon,” he grumbled. “I want everyone seated in the dining room in five minutes.”

The event began. “I’ve got these family tickets to Disneyland,” said Danny. “We’ve always wanted to go, and now we are.”

The kids didn’t believe him. “You can’t fool us with this one,” they all said. “We don’t believe you.”

“I knew you’d think that,” said Danny. But that was Danny’s real trick. They didn’t believe him, and they never knew they were really going to go!

1185. A clever trick

Albert was for ever playing little tricks on his children. For example, when he was driving over a railway crossing with his kids in the back seat, he would stop on the railway line, pretend the car stalled, and ask “Any trains coming?”

The kids would always scream, “NO!”

Of course, Albert always checked both ways before pretending to stall on the railw…