She calmly laid inside the coffin-like box, fully aware of what was about to happen to her. She understood the magician's intent precisely. In fact, she was no stranger to this experience. He had operated on her before; he had cut her into two separate pieces before. She knew how painful the procedure would be and how time slows down when one is in pain. The minute that the magician takes to saw through her soft body will be an eternity of suffering.
If the magician was kind, he would hypnotize her at the start of the act and command her into the box to be sawn in half. When one is hypnotized, the body feels none of the pain. In some acts, the magician would hypnotize the girl, box her up, divide her in two, and then unhypnotize her to bring her back to life after staring blankly into space throughout the course of the procedure. In this way, the girl does not feel the bulk of the pain and the audience is satisfied or comforted to know that she is still alive after being frighteningly sawn in two.
So now she awaited the saw, the cold steel of the blade that the magician is now brandishing over her head, tapping it to elicit the rapping sound that comes from thin and frail metal. The audience may not be fully convinced that the saw is real, but she knew that this was genuine. Soon the saw will cut through her, a helpless girl unable advert her sentence, enclosed within the box and secured at the ends by stocks around her neck and ankles. She thought of how she was coaxed to lie in this box, of the way that the magician seduced her inside.
She danced onto stage, carefree and smiling. She saw the eyes in the audience that followed her body's contours outlined by the tight body suit she wore. Her legs were covered with black stockings and her feet, naked save for the stockings, felt the coldness of the stage floor. She danced around until the magician grabbed her by the arm and spun her to face him. She looked into his eyes, entranced, mystified, and powerless. Her knees gave way below her, and she slid onto the ground; the magician let her fall and walked towards the back of the stage. A snap of his fingers, and in an instant spotlights lit up the ominous box she was destined to lie in again and again. The box was spun several times to display all its sides. Once opened, it was again turned this way and that to show the emptyness that awaited a victim. It was simply a box built upon a special base with legs. The base was longer and slightly wider than the box itself. At each end of the base was a small pillow made of the same material, color and texture, as the lining of the box. Around the edge of the base was a silver trimming, as well a along the intersections of the planes of the box. In addition, at the middle of the box, two strips of silver trimmings separated the box into two halves. The legs below had coasters permitting the entire apparatus to be wheeled around on stage.
After demonstrating the box free of any trickery, the magician walked forward to his beautiful young assistant, picked her off the ground gently, and led her to the box. He helped her climb onto the base of the box and continued to hold her hand as she stepped into the box and sat down inside. Now, with his hands on her shoulders he pushed her backwards until she was lying supine, her torso inside the upper box halve and her head on the pillow. She playfully swung both her legs into the air, crossing and uncrossing them in the air until the magician took hold of her ankles, extended her legs straight, then swung them down into the box; her long legs caused her feet to project from the other end of the box, which she rested upon the pillow there.