The Magic Trick That Went Wrong

Literotic asexstories – The Magic Trick That Went Wrong by CitizenHotel,CitizenHotel
The following story features damsel-in-distress bondage, humiliation, and sexist points of view. Reader discretion is advised.

Emma was on top of the world. She had been working hard for 10 years, but her career was finally in the place she had always dreamed of. She was on TV.

It had been a miserable slog to get there. Back in her late teens she had started out as assistant to a mid-tier illusionist – and, frankly, loathsome sexist – who went by the name of Ronald The Unguessable; he would have ended up working cruise ships if Emma hadn’t walked into his life. With no idea how lucky he’d got, he hired her quite openly for her looks, but she had more talent at the age of 18 than he knew what to do with. She transformed his career.

The turning point was a routine they devised called The Damsel In Distress. It involved several complex escape scenarios, and culminated in a reveal that was as titillating as it was technically impressive: having been ‘tricked’ into climbing fully clothed inside a magical cabinet, Emma was revealed mere moments later, tightly gagged, comprehensively bound and very nearly naked. It was an enormous hit and took them to Vegas.

Ronald, unsurprisingly, gave Emma no credit for her work on The Damsel. In fact, she had designed the technical aspects single-handed; Ronald’s contribution was the name and the presentation, neither of which were to Emma’s taste. Ronald insisted on playing her distress for laughs and sexual kicks rather than astonishment – it was out of the question, he insisted, for Emma to escape the final predicament, since the narrative was that she was a rival illusionist who had been outmatched, defeated and humiliated by Ronald’s sorceries. The whole routine, she felt, was about putting women in their place.

Unsurprisingly Emma grew tired of this treatment after a few months and decided to move on. Back in those days, mind you, she had none of the confidence that developed later: she might very well have stuck around if Ronald had only softened a little. Promised just a smidgen of credit for her work, eased back on the pervier aspects of the routine, or even unbent sufficiently to tell her that she was an asset to the show. But he was convinced, somehow, that he really had done the important work on The Damsel, and told her to go to hell.

Ronald The Unguessable wasn’t heard of much any more. The Damsel In Distress remained popular for a while with a pretty new damsel, although Emma could tell from the tapes that it wasn’t being performed with the same polish. But he couldn’t come up with anything new that matched its quality. The Vegas run ended and Ronald went back to small-town shows.

Emma, however, went from strength to strength. She was snapped up by a female magician named Zelda, who knew that Ronald had none of the abilities required to come up with The Damsel and suspected the truth. Zelda quickly came to rely on Emma’s gifts and decided to give her second, and before long equal, billing; it was Zelda, too, who suggested the name Enchantress. Zelda and the Enchantress were a huge success, and when her partner retired Emma took the show solo.

Now, at long last, the Enchantress had been offered a regular slot on national TV, beginning with a pilot to test the waters… just a formality, of course. It was her dream come true, the reward for all the long nights, the unsavoury comments, the roaming hands, the demeaning costumes. That was all behind her now. She was a feminist icon: she had made the cover of Vogue, and been interviewed by a fangirlish Oprah. It was said that her success had encouraged thousands of girls to seek a career in magic. The days of creepy old men running magic were over, and it was all down to her.

Tonight was the pilot, broadcast live to the nation for technical reasons Emma didn’t quite understand, and it had gone as smoothly as she could have possibly hoped. The studio audience, at least three-quarters of them young women, had been in raptures since the show opened with her signature illusion, a modern and uncompromising piece called The Reimagined Woman. She didn’t actually have magical powers, but she felt she could already read the next day’s reviews. The arrival of a superstar. The dawning of a new age. The epitaph of Vegas magic.

With only one illusion remaining, and laughing to herself with pleasure at the thought that she had done everything needed to secure a long and profitable career in television, Emma – Enchantress – strolled back in front of the cameras one last time.

“It is almost time for the Enchantress to leave the mortal lands and return to the ethereal realm,” she said, in a ringing, arrogant tone that came naturally. “A realm where women sit in their rightful place at the head of society, where sexism is treated as a footnote in history, and where a powerful female sorceress is an object of worship, not lust.”

The house lights had come up for this section, and Emma noticed that the male audience members were looking rather aggrieved. She had been laying on the feminism a little thick tonight, she supposed. And perhaps they had been hoping for just a little sex appeal. Driven by an instinct to play down her looks, Emma had selected a voluminous robe for the performance: it was practical, but utterly sexless. Her faultless figure was disguised, her sumptuous arse and perfect tits hidden. She was more than a pretty face, so what need did she have to draw attention to her natural charms?

“Before she departs, the Enchantress wishes to dazzle you one last time.”

The audience were tense. They knew the rhythm of Emma’s routines. The first and the last illusions: they were the showstoppers. Whatever was coming now, it was worth seeing.

“The Enchantress will demonstrate her superiority with an escape. And for this she requires a volunteer. A male volunteer, if one is willing to test his mettle.”

An escape! Emma was reputed to be the greatest escape artist of her generation, but didn’t usually deign to perform such tricks. There was a suspicion that she now considered bondage to be objectifying and anti-feminist: that she disliked being presented even for a moment – before escaping with ease – as a bound and helpless damsel, the state in which she had spent much of her early career. Whatever her qualms, she had put them aside for tonight’s finale.

“Will a man attempt to bind the Enchantress?” she asked the audience. “Does a man here think he has the slightest hope of rendering her helpless? She will allow you-” Emma gestured at the studio clock “-a full ten minutes to secure her body in any way you think fitting. Our table is stacked with strong cord, handcuffs, chains, padlocks, straps and other restraints. Do your worst. Once bound, the Enchantress will be covered with a silk sheet and placed on the table in the centre of the stage, and at the end of a further ten minutes she will spring up, entirely free, as proof of the innate superiority of women!”

There was a pause as Emma looked around the studio audience. Had she overdone it? The male audience members had looked pissed off beforehand. What would they make of this? If none of them agreed to volunteer, this part of the show would fall flat.

The spotlight roamed around, pausing on likely candidates. A spotty teenager – he went bright red and shook his head. A gym bro with swollen biceps – not interested. A family man sat next to his partner, an ageing playboy with a facelift, an accountant type in an expensive suit and bad haircut – none were willing to volunteer. Emma started to worry.

“What about this gentlemen?” she said, pointing to an older chap sitting uncomfortably next to a large party of teenage girls. He wouldn’t present a great deal of jeopardy, but Emma thought it would be nice for him to get a bit of attention, and she needed someone. He started to decline, but she spoke over him. “A big round of applause for-” he mumbled “-for Mr Smithers!”

Mr Smithers walked slowly to the stage. It seemed to take an age, and Emma fretted about viewers switching channel.

“The Enchantress has decided to add a further incentive for this evening’s closing illusion,” she said. “She is so confident in her ability to escape any restraint devised by a man that she hereby pledges, before witnesses, that if Mr Smithers succeeds in binding her beyond escape in ten minutes, she willingly gives herself up to be his property.”

Improvised lines, hardly her best material, and anyone could see that the old fella hadn’t a hope in hell. But as silly and melodramatic as the idea seemed, it added a bit of spice. And what clearer message could she send out to her legions of female fans? Men will try to tie you down, they will try to own you, but you can escape. You are not a slave to be bound, an object to be owned.

Mr Smithers had reached the stage, and was looking with mild, professorial interest at the table of restraints. They had cleared out most of the neighbourhood’s hardware stores and sex shops. It was far more than would be needed, but made for an arresting image.

He selected a long strip of cloth, and approached a live mic.

“I believe we will begin, if I may, with a nice tight gag.”

Beginning with a gag? How odd. And what did he mean nice? But the man seemed to know what he wanted to do. He gestured, and Emma obediently turned around. She allowed the old gent to thread the cloth – which she noticed he had swiftly knotted – between her teeth, and tie it tightly at the nape of her neck. Very tightly, in fact. Goodness me, she thought, that hurt.

The man went back to the microphone – how odd that he knew which one to use, Emma thought – and said: “When binding a female magician, always gag them first. It puts them in their place, and you don’t have to listen to any of their chatter. We all get enough of that at home!”

Now just a minute! – Emma lifted her own mic and started to object. But nothing came out. Nothing more than an incomprehensible mmmphing mumble, anyway, accompanied by a small amount of drool. The audience and Mr Smithers both laughed, and Emma felt a mild sting of humiliation. This was an effective gag, she had to admit. The thick knot in the centre filled her mouth and prevented any sound escaping.

“I’m sorry, my dear, I couldn’t quite catch that,” said Smithers, seemingly in his element at the microphone. “Now, what next? Of course: to render your female magician instantly and irretrievably helpless, you simply bind her wrists tightly together behind her back. She will then be both silent and physically helpless, which is her natural state.

“But binding her hands behind her back,” the man added, apparently warming to his subject, “has a greater significance than merely preventing escape and providing a basis for further restraint. It induces a wondrous and gratifying sense of vulnerability, because it puts our magician’s greatest assets on display, and stops her defending them. It reminds her that she is not an independent woman. She is an object for our pleasure.”

What was going on? And who was this man? He was right, too, in his assessment that an effective gag had the power to put Emma in her place; with no ability to respond to his bizarrely sexist patter, or indeed to comment in any way whatsoever other than “mmmph!”, she was no longer a magician being prepared for an escape. She was a glamorous but mute assistant being bound for the audience’s pleasure. She was a – Emma shivered at the thought, and then was shocked to find that she was a tiny bit turned on by it – a pretty damsel in distress.

Smithers had returned from the table with a simple length of cord, and was patiently waiting for her cooperation. Something was wrong, she felt sure, and now was the time to resist. Right now, she was merely cleave-gagged. She could take out the cloth, call off the routine for whatever technical reason she chose to invent, and walk away from what would still be a very serviceable pilot. That was the right thing to do.

But how would that look? What TV network would option a magician who bailed on a live performance, and who chickened out of an escape at the first sign of a competent rigger? And what would her young female fans think, to see her run from a man’s challenge? For that matter, wasn’t she curious to find out what was happening? And wasn’t she intrigued by the idea of being helpless – really truly helpless, with no possibility of escape – for the first time since she had become a magician?

Mr Smithers looked at her curiously, seemingly aware of Emma’s internal struggle, and repeated the instruction she had missed while thinking. “Would you please cross your wrists behind your back, my dear, and stand up nice and straight?”

Again the moment of confusion – why did it matter whether she stood up straight or slouched? – helped to ease Emma into compliance. “Of course, sir,” she tried to say, but it came out as “Mmmph cmph smph.” More laughter, slightly crueller this time, she thought, and to hide her humiliation she turned her back obediently (what a twinge she got from thinking about that word – she was being obedient, she was meekly doing exactly what a man told her to do) and crossed her wrists. She was standing up straight, she realised: ramrod-straight, like a soldier on parade. She knew her tits, pert at the best of times, were thrust out like headlights, but at least her loose clothes meant no one could see. Her nipples were standing to attention too, for that matter.

Mr Smithers grasped Emma’s wrists, and she realised with a sinking sense of dread that he was far stronger, and surely far younger, than he appeared. But now was too late to point this out, because without the slightest delay he wrenched her wrists upwards so they were crossed at the top of her back, rather than behind her arse, wrapped the cord around them five times, cinched the cord a further three times and then secured the whole thing with a triple knot of eye-popping tightness.

“Easy, really,” he said, having again found a microphone willing to broadcast his thoughts. (Someone in the production team would answer for this, Emma thought grimly.) “Never mind the ten minutes I was offered: five seconds for a gag, ten seconds to bind the wrists, and our pretty little damsel is quite helpless. You will note that I have used the reverse-prayer configuration, which is far harder to escape and places greater strain on the torso: fortunately our damsel is very flexible, although also rather dim.”

There was open laughter at this line, which infuriated Emma. Tightly gagged, she was unable to respond and could only suffer the mockery in humiliated silence. Helpless, she wanted to cry out, have you any idea how often I’ve had my hands bound? I’ll be out of this in seconds. Even if it does appear to be, er, unusually tight.

But Mr Smithers was moving on.

“Miss Enchantress offered to be placed on a table, presumably lying down. What a lazy little thing she is!” A sprinkling of laughter. Emma knew that an audience that has laughed once – and they had loved the embarrassing gag talk – will laugh at almost anything. “I will instead bind our pretty sorceress standing up, for two reasons. One: you should always try to catch your victim off guard. If she expects to be bound on her back, bind her on her feet. And two: it is a pose that is deliciously objectifying, which is pleasant for those of us watching her struggle and will also add to her sense of humiliation. It is my suspicion that Emma is a less effective escape artist if you make her feel like a helpless, beautiful and airheaded damsel in distress.”

Emma was shocked. A few people knew her real name, of course, but it was supposed to be a secret. Did Mr Smithers know her? She also felt distinctly uncomfortable about this talk of watching her struggle.

“We will shortly bind our damsel’s long and shapely legs, a job I am looking forward to very much. But we must first complete our work on her equally shapely torso – not that you can tell quite how shapely it is right now, which is something we may need to attend to later. A few loops of cord should prove amply sufficient.”

“A few” was an understatement. Painfully tight loops of cord soon encircled her chest, throat and waist, each neatly connected to the other bindings with cinches and knots at key unreachable points. Jesus, Emma thought, this guy really knows what he’s doing. A crotch rope split her in two while Smithers misdirected the audience’s attention with a joke about Emma’s ugly clothes; the back of it was hitched to the loop about her throat and the gag in her mouth and drawn slowly tighter until her head was pulled right back.

“Arrogant wench, isn’t she?” said Smithers, amiably. “Got her nose in the air as usual.”

Yet more laughter. He has humiliated me, Emma thought. He has defeated me. I am helpless. And then desperately tried to banish the thought and remember that she was the finest escape artist, male or female, in North America. Everything is fine! I’ll get out of this in a trice!

Mr Smithers was unhurriedly binding Emma’s legs now, working his way up from the ground. Ankles, below the knees, above the knees, thighs; yanked tight, impossibly tight at each turn and securely knotted. Emma was fighting a sense of panic now, a sense of total powerlessness. She knew he was engineering this – by taking so long to bind her, by humiliating her with jokes at her expense that the gag prevented any response to, and by constantly telling the audience precisely how helpless she was. They no longer believed she had a chance, she knew. Even her most loyal fans, the young girls who believed everything she said about the superiority of women. Some of them looked thoroughly downcast to see their hero so debased.

“That will do, I think,” said Mr Smithers with a smile of such assured confidence that Emma wanted to scream. Not that she could have screamed if she wanted to, of course. “Emma is completely and utterly helpless and has absolutely no chance of escape, but we will play her little game anyway. We will put her in the sacred place like a beautiful helpless virgin sacrificed to an angry god.” He grabbed her, his hands conveniently finding pleasant resting places in contact with Emma’s arse (left hand) and right breast (right hand). She protested against this liberty at the top of her voice… with the result that she made another humiliating mewing sound, drooled on her chest, and blushed deeply as the audience roared with laughter. Laughing along with them, Smithers hefted her on one shoulder like a ladder or a not especially valuable statue, and plonked her down beneath the blazing spotlight.

“A final assessment!” he announced, walking around the trembling, ramrod-straight prisoner. “And shall we dispense once and for all with the pitiful name ‘Enchantress’? This young lady’s name is Emma, and while she is indeed enchanting from a strictly physical point of view, she has no abilities in the magical arts.

“Emma’s wrists are bound tightly (and painfully high up) behind her back, which in itself would be enough to render our pretty damsel quite helpless. Observe the strain in her shoulders, the stress in her neck, and how pleasingly and obediently she is thrusting out her assets – her only assets, I would venture to suggest, given that she is, I think we can all agree, a very bad magician – for our delectation. Thank you, Emma my dear, for your total obedience and mystifying dimness.

“But where was I? Emma’s throat, chest, stomach and waist are securely bound with a harness of drum-tight cords, none of which she has the least chance of reaching, let alone loosening. I have also added a private rope slightly lower down that I shall gloss over for the sake of decency, this being a family show, but will say only that I do not doubt that it will give Emma as much pleasure as it gives me, and that it made a most convenient hitching point for the ropes forcing her head high in the air. I do insist on my prisoners maintaining good posture at all times. Keep it up!” And he gave Emma a smack on the arse. The audience laughed heartily; she grunted in pain and tried very hard not to cry.

“Emma’s legs are securely bound at ankle, knee and thigh. She will not be walking or running anywhere – although she could bunny-hop if she wanted. I suspect she would find that especially humiliating, however, given that her very lovely tits would bounce up and down, and of course with her nose in the air she has no way of seeing where she’s going. If she attempts to hop, Emma will immediately fall over, and then find herself tightly hogtied for her trouble.

“And finally, of course, Emma is very tightly and thoroughly gagged. She cannot call for help, cannot really make any noise at all except for that adorable quiet mmmphing sound, which perhaps she will demonstrate for us now?”

“I certainly shall not!” Emma proclaimed in ringing tones – or tried to, having forgotten the situation in her feminist outrage. It came out instead as a soft and extended mmmph, and the audience hooted with laughter. Dammit! She had done what she was told again.

“Thank you, my dear, bless your dim little heart. Now, the gag is not necessary from an escape point of view, but it is absolutely vital in the sense of humiliation and powerlessness it induces. A beautiful woman who cannot talk is simply an ornament. The gag reminds Emma that she is a slave to be bound; an object to be owned. We could remove her right to vote (as we should for all women, incidentally) and she would not be able to object. Nor, I suspect, would she wish to, for she is enjoying the sense of being owned.”

What was happening? Why hadn’t the production company pulled the plug and called security? The man was clearly a maniac (not to mention a pervert) and the routine had overstepped all bounds of decency. And the entire time slot, Emma felt sure.

“Ten minutes, then, my dear! And for the sake of fairness let us follow the rules to the letter.”

Smithers threw the silken drape over her, and she felt again like a statue. Not a very good omen for an escape! But now her humiliation was over, and she could focus on the thing she was good at. The joke would be on him when she escaped. The original plan had been to escape before the end of the first minute and reappear, in a new costume, in the armchair at the back of the audience. But her confidence was sufficiently knocked that she decided to settle for simply escaping at all.

She wriggled and writhed, ignoring the laughter and wolf whistles that greeted this – she was far more exposed standing up; Smithers had been right about throwing her off guard by tying her in this way. She strained every muscle trying to find slack, of which there was none. Never mind! Then she must reach her escape tools, which were hidden in various places about her costume. A packet of lock picks and small blades occupied a tiny pouch next to her right breast… a pouch which she now found was empty. So too the pouch above her arse. And all the rest. He hadn’t been feeling her up, he had been disarming her. She really was – no, don’t say it, don’t say it! – she genuinely was helpless. Oh God.

“Our damsel just discovered, I think, that I took away her escape tools. Did you know that, girls? Your heroine uses picks to open handcuffs and knives to cut the ropes. Not very fair, is it? Not very enchanting?”

Unseen by the audience Emma blushed again at this criticism – one that she felt was wholly warranted. Using tools was a con, something she’d only considered as a backup in case something went wrong on live TV. But spooked by Smithers’ mind games, she’d gone for her tools almost immediately! She really was a fraud. As if to confirm this gloomy thought, a few of the men in the audience started to boo.

Still, Emma wasn’t out of tricks yet. She had plenty of techniques left to try, and time to try them. If only she could banish the thoughts that kept popping into her head. Fraud. Cheat. Dim. Helpless. Damsel in distress. And the recurrent image of herself when the cover was whipped off, still bound, still helpless, a humiliated failure for the world to see. How awful that would be – and why was the idea turning her on so much?

From the outside, this section of the show had the potential to be boring: ten minutes of staring at a person wriggling around under a cloth. (Of course, it wasn’t actually supposed to last the full ten minutes.) Somehow it wasn’t. Partly this was thanks to Mr Smithers, who kept up a stream of mockery and gloating about how funny it would be if Emma couldn’t escape. But partly it was the thought that, genuinely, she might not. In most magic acts you assume that everything will go to plan. Mr Smithers had introduced such a wild-card element that nothing seemed to be guaranteed.

But surely it was part of the act? Surely Smithers was in on the joke? His material was a little off-colour, admittedly, but that was the way nowadays, wasn’t it? The TV people would have called in security if he was really mistreating the star this badly. Little did they know that it was the TV people who were in on Smithers’ joke.

The time was almost up, and it looked like Emma was still under there. Well – that didn’t mean anything. She could be in there but free. Or she would vanish just as the cover was drawn back. Yes, that was probably it.

The timer finished with a loud bong, and the wriggling stopped. That’ll be her free then, thought Melanie, a teenager in the front row whose room was covered with Enchantress posters. Although, she mentally added, if she’s still tied up and knows she’s about to be shown off to the world, she might just be paralysed with fear and humiliation. Oh God, don’t let it be that.

Smithers walked forwards slowly, savouring the moment. “Must be finished by now,” he said, smiling. “Unless the lady would like a little more time?”

Melanie thought she detected the tiniest movement under the sheet. Probably my imagination. Although… her head was bound so tightly that even if she’s trying to nod, I doubt it would be noticeable.

“No? Let’s have a look at you, then. See how you got on. Oh – oh no, my dear, what happened?”

He had whipped back the sheet, and Emma was still standing there, still securely trussed up and gagged. She could barely move a muscle, could hardly make a sound, and was blushing more deeply than ever. This might partly have been because, even though the ropes and gag were all in exactly the same places, her costume had mysteriously changed.

Gone was the loose and forgiving robe: in its place was a skimpy and figure-hugging costume like the one worn by the comic-book magician Zatanna. With her wrists still bound between her shoulder blades and her chin in the air, Emma’s breasts were almost bursting out of a tightly buttoned blouse, her stiff nipples unmissable through the thin white cotton. She had a white bow tie around her neck – next to that cruel cord, which hadn’t moved a millimetre – and beneath the tight ropes her legs were encased in fishnet stockings. Her feet were perched on vertiginous stiletto heels; she looked like she could topple over at any moment.

The audience was silent for a moment, drinking in poor Emma’s total and complete humiliation. But then a strange thing happened: they started to clap – the men at first, jeeringly, but the women and girls gradually joined in. Emma looked baffled, and then she understood, and a look of utter defeat appeared on her face.

“Thank you, thank you so much,” said Mr Smithers, who was peeling off his face mask to reveal Ronald the Unguessable. “Yes, I’m back. I heard that my assistant had been getting ideas above her station, so I thought I’d better bring her down a peg or two. And now I have. She’s quite a sight, isn’t she? Trussed up, gagged, defeated, objectified, humiliated, and a total and complete failure on live television. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, Ems. And to be honest, ladies and gentlemen, I’m fairly sure she did. She is having the time of her life.”

Much laughter at this idea, but Emma blushed again: it was quite true. She was overwhelmed with humiliation and embarrassment, but more turned on than she could ever remember.

“I thought this costume was appropriate, since poor Emma thinks she is an all-powerful magician and feminist icon, but really, like Zatanna, she is a glorified damsel in distress – a pretty one, admittedly, but not a bright one. And certainly not someone you should give her own TV show. As much as we’ve all enjoyed this spectacle, I’m sure that everyone watching at home is quite sure of that.”

The cameras zoomed in on Emma’s cruelly gagged face. She was trying to say something, which caused more drool and more laughter, and tears were running down her face. It was true. The TV show was gone now. As was her career: who would hire her now? At least as a magician – she would easily find work, she knew, as a glamorous assistant. She still looked good in tight ropes and a demeaning costume. That was her place.

“But let’s move on. What should our silly, helpless damsel in distress wear next?”

Ronald tossed the sheet back over Emma, as if she was a songbird in a cage.

“A bikini!”

“A school uniform!”

“Jodhpurs!”

“Stockings and suspenders!”

“Catwoman!”

“Princess Leia in the gold bikini!”

“Nothing!”

Ronald smiled.

“The television people have kindly informed me that they are extending this broadcast well into the night. So do not worry: we will have time for it all. Now, shall we set another timer for ten minutes?”

FIN