Sleight Of Hand

Another 8th birthday party booking. They all seem to be turning 8 this year. Maybe that's also the age where parents finally lose interest in the novelty of their children's birthday parties, and decide to just book a magician.
Still, I shouldn't complain, at least work is steady this year. Means I'm putting in less hours at the petrol station.
Though it's Steph's birthday soon, should probably buy her something good, but it's not like the money is pouring in. She'll understand.
I get to the kid's house, forty of them, it's usually the whole school class and a few extras - cousins, friends from different classes, the token friends of any siblings, or children of the parent's friends. It'd be weird if parties later in life were attended in a similar fashion.
I go through the motions, I think half these kids have seen me before. I hear one whispering the conclusion of the trick to her friend. If I see her at another show she can be the "volunteer" for the custard pie trick. I always save that one for the little shits.
So, I do some giant size card tricks, a stuffed rabbit in a hat, the knotted handkerchief and a small scale swords through a box routine with the birthday boy.
Afterwards I loiter by the food, chowing down on cocktail sticks skewering pineapple and cheese chunks, and I have a slice of plasticky Transformers cake.
"Hey, great stuff," an overly enthusiastic father says, shaking my hand and placing a friendly mitt on my shoulder. "I loved the magicians when I was a kid, had one at every birthday for about five years running. Thought I wanted to be one, until I heard about investment banking!"
He laughs a big cackle. The howl of the well off.
"I got these big, ungainly hands anyways," he says. "Could never get the cards to stay wedged in there. My parents wastes a small fortune on magic kits for me. At least yours backed the right horse, huh?"
I swallowed my mouthful of sponge. "My parents don't know I do this."
"Shit, you are living the boyhood dream, huh?! Ran away and joined the circus, right!"
"They're dead."
His face turned sour and he quietly, quickly made some new friends on the other side of the room.
I tossed my paper plate towards the bin - though it failed to make its target.
After collecting the rest of my pay I packed up and left. Children's birthday parties are no place to hang out, though in my younger days I met some willing single mothers, and once one that wasn't single. Though Steph put paid to all that.
It's not that I yearn for it or anything, that stuff is far more exciting in theory than practice. But there is a certain frisson to those chance encounters now lacking in the inevitability of my days.
I know what bed awaits me, I know who's there, and this malaise comes from somewhere, but, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change things. Not between me and Steph.
I should try and think of something nice to get her. I think I've let her down these last couple of years, I'm sure she's already wondering how I'll complete the hat trick. But, and perhaps I'm ignorant, forgetful or complacent, I just don't remember what she likes.
I resolve to try and listen that bit harder, hear the clues in what she says. Maybe there's something that she keeps hanging out there, like a carrot for a mule, seeing if I'm going to putz it up one more time.
I drive home, passing the petrol station, unconsciously - I think - I slow the car and take a long, lingering look at the place. I've got the night shift there tomorrow, 11pm to 7am.
I take the next junction and, eager to have a drink and slip into bed, I press my foot down a little.
I look forward to the feeling of Steph's body pressed against mine before we fall asleep.
I see a flash.
It's dark. Sudden.
There's a thud, followed by an uncomfortable clatter.
I brake, look back, and see the body lying in the road.
Leaving the car I'm thankful that the street is quiet. A few houses, but not a light on in any of them.
Getting closer I see that it's the body of a young boy, dressed in an unhelpfully dark hoodie and jeans. His face is pale, about from the blood stripe across it. His eyes are wide, lifeless.
I look up and down the road, still noone around. I've been fortunate.
I crouch by the body, hold my hands over his most obvious wounds and I close my eyes.
His sharp intake of breath alerts me.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
He's bewildered, sits up and shuffles back.
"You should wear a hi-viz, or at least something colourful, if you're going to dash across roads at night."
The boy holds a hand to his chest, breathes deeply, as if ascertaining the veracity of the situation against his memory of it.
"You hit me? With your car," he finally utters, though doubting himself.
"Clipped you," I correct him. "Nothing serious, but you should see a doctor just to be sure."
"O-okay..."
I give him my card in case there are any problems. I offer him a lift home but he points to his house, we're right in front of it. I get in my car and drive away.
When I get home Steph is asleep, though she stirs and mumbles a hello as I climb in next to her, kiss her cheek.
As I lie sleepless in bed, I'm brought back to the vacant look in that boy's eyes as he lay dead on the road. That look which confirms the disconnection between body and spirit, or soul, or whatever.
Now I know that if I'm quick then that spirit lingers, as if taking one last look at its vessel and I can encourage it to take up its residence for just a little longer.
I wish I'd known that then, before I killed them.
I told Steph about the accident, sure I left out a few details, like my powers. But she insists that it was, as I say, an accident. But I know more, and I can never find forgiveness.
I've told Steph about that, though I've never told her how she died once. That we were putting up a painting, she was on a short ladder, missed her footing and her head collided with our kitchen worktop.
From somewhere within me came this urge, this futile rage, a seemingly impotent hope. I looked into her eyes, saw that the life had gone. I placed my hands on her, and then it was back.
And she never knew why I cried and held her so close, so tight.
That I couldn't bear the abyss of my life without her.
Yet I know that with every passing day the tide comes in, our lives must end, and it dulls the magic, it dilutes my hope.
Perhaps, I make excuses for myself, I'm so tired, so listless, because I love her so much. If I cared less maybe our eventual deaths wouldn't concern me.
Though I cling onto the idea that there is a soul, that it is that which I coax back to those vacant bodies, and if it were to roam free it would find a fitting afterlife. I can't help but think we are all doomed, and that is what I see in the eyes of those children as I reveal their card, as I pull the rabbit from the hat, as I push the pie into their face.