Magic

• Sienna Thompson, Grade 6, St Elizabeth's Catholic Primary School
• Short Story
• 2020

Excellence Award in the 'The Inside Story 2020' competition

It was a hot mid-summers day and the green grass in the fields had grown luscious and long. To John, this was the best time of year to practise. The birds hummed softly and the breeze swayed gently in the wind. Conditions were perfect.
As he stood in the grass, John closed his eyes to concentrate. The chairs around him, his ‘practice chairs’ as he called them, would start rattling, then pause, and slowly move up, higher and higher, into the sky. Then John would bring them back down again.
Chairs weren’t all John could lift; he could lift other things too. But chairs were good practice, not too easy but not too hard. He used all sorts of chairs. Small chairs, tall chairs, soft chairs, hard chairs. But in John’s mind they were all the same. All his puppets. He could use them and move them, but most of all he controlled them.
John stood still as the chairs danced through the air around him. Playing games, he thought as the chairs continued their airborne dances. Then they dropped, as John heard a crunch. A crunch that put fear coursing through his veins; he’d been discovered before but had managed to put those kids off the trail. He had never heard anyone this close, though. Had they seen him? What was he to do?
“Hello? Is anyone there? Did you see me practicing for my magic show tonight? I’d rather no-one knew about that…” John was beginning to feel troubled. There was no way anyone would buy such a lame excuse!
“A magic trick, was it?” began a disbelieving voice. “Let’s see it again, then.”
His face turned deathly white as John decided to try to make his powers look as if they were fake enough to be a magic trick. Whilst getting ready for his ‘magic trick’ John went through the possibilities.
“I could reason with her… I could run… I could scare her… or this might work.”
“Abracadabra!” John shouted as he raised just five of his stiffest chairs into the air, then back down again.
“Is that it? Not a very good cover up… Anyway. Welcome to the crew!”
“I don’t understand. Aren’t you supposed to be running away?” John was perplexed. People don’t meet someone like him every day.
“No. You don’t understand…” The strange lady muttered to herself. “Look, my name is Maggie and I am a super-human like you. Here are the basics:
1. You’re about to become a superhero
2. You have Telekinesis
3. You need to come with me.
John was scared. He had no idea who this lady was or what she wanted. So, he did something that he later learnt to deeply regret. John ran. He ran as fast as he could and didn’t look back. He didn’t stop running until he was back in his house, inside the safely locked doors. He wanted to forget everything. He wished it had never happened.