An excellent little horror story; starts ~4min 30secs into this episode of Tales to Terrify: Tales to Terrify 306 Liam Hogan Franz Kafka. This podcast is usually pretty solid, if you like straight-up traditional audiobook-style readings of short horror fiction. Puts me in the mind of Kathe Koja’s The Cipher—but more for art reasons than horror reasons.
Tag: rope
I love that it goes totally unmentioned that he stole her watch…
…on stage, in front of several thousand people. He slips it off the left wrist of the assistant standing to his right (our left) at the 1:40 min mark. You can even see him pocket it. I love this, because it never plays into the trick (which is, itself, an incredibly rudimentary one; I did a version of this when I was 10 and got my first magic kit for Non-Denominational Gift Giving Holiday Season. I’m pretty shocked this made it on.) In many ways, it’s the greatest grift of all time: Dude does a frenetic rendition of a less-than-mediocre effect (even his patter is a decade old, and sorta stock) in order to create a grand misdirection so he can steal a junk-jewelry watch. It’s one for the ages.