Magic

The spectacle before Elizabeth was inhuman.

Not theatrical, not exaggerated . . . but inhuman. There was something quietly obscene about it, something that crawled beneath the skin and lodged itself like a splinter.

The sound of chains rattling against metal made it worse.

Victor was trying to keep still, she could tell. His muscles fought to remain rigid, unmoving. But the restraints betrayed him. Every shallow shift echoed in cold mechanical protest, the metallic clink of steel on chrome ringing out like sleigh bells across the sterile hush of her office.

And yet no one was celebrating.

He looked uncomfortable. But worse . . . far worse . . . he looked like a man who had grown used to discomfort. A man who had surrendered to it long ago. The kind of man who understood that some itches were never meant to be scratched. That there were hungers in the body the world simply had no intention of feeding.

He sat as before, head bowed, face shrouded behind the matted curtain of his hair.

Maybe it was a comfort to him. A barrier. Blinkers, like on a horse. Something to narrow the world down to just the visible patch of floor between his feet . . . solid, reliable, predictable. Everything else, he could pretend, was just a dream.

Elizabeth’s spine prickled with a cold ripple of unease.

What had she agreed to?

Was it too late to undo it?

Her thoughts roiled, an anxious tide surging against the edges of her rational mind. A deep, gnawing guilt rose in her throat, choking out reason. It flooded her senses, thick and acidic.

Had she become the thing she despised?

Evil crawls down many paths, she remembered reading once, but its journey begins with people being treated as things.

The line rang in her head with stubborn clarity, refusing to be silenced.

And now, as she sat across from the man handcuffed to a chair . . . her subject, her experiment, her lab rat. The phrase carved itself across the back of her skull like scripture in reverse.

What had she done?

Her hand trembled as it lifted, covering her mouth. She could hear her own breathing . . . sharp, uneven . . . beginning to spiral into the edges of a panic attack. This was not what she had envisioned for her first formal session with an institutionalised subject. It was supposed to be the start of something. A breakthrough. Not… this.

She turned toward the door, eyes fixed on the featureless frame. She could still call the orderlies back. They’d be just outside, pacing the corridor. She could say it wasn’t working. That she’d changed her mind.

It wasn’t too late.

She could still save her soul.

“M’am,”

The voice stopped her. Soft. Calm. Like the last breath of a breeze before the storm resumes.

“Do I scare you?”

She turned.

Victor’s head had lifted slightly, just enough for one eye to peek through the oily tangle of hair, like someone peering out from behind a curtain.

Elizabeth hesitated.

Her voice caught before it even reached her lips. And when it did, it came brittle and cracked, the sound of something under too much strain.

“No,” she said, though the crack in her voice told another story entirely. “I’m not scared, Mr. Langley.”

He didn’t blink.

He simply watched her . . . silent, unmoving. The eye beneath the veil fixed her in place with a strange, unshaken intensity.

“You sound scared,” he said.

Elizabeth exhaled slowly, as if trying to push the guilt from her lungs.

“I have never approved of the idea that people may be treated as objects,” she replied, her words slow, deliberate. “And I am fully aware that I have… crossed that boundary.”

She looked at him, really looked at him, and felt her resolve begin to slip.

“I don’t think I can do this, Mr. Langley. I’m going to fetch the Mental Health Technicians from the corridor. They’ll escort you back to your wing.”

Victor was silent for a moment.

When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, gentle, but measured with a weight that carried.

“M’am, with all due respect… this was my choice. Ain’t nothin’ you need be feelin’ guilty for.”

He paused, as though ensuring she was listening.

“In the years I been in this here institute, my days don’t change. Not much. Same routines. Same walls. My only escape’s when I dream. And dreams…” His voice softened. “They don’t last too long.”

He lifted his head a little more now, exposing just enough of his face to suggest something fragile, almost hopeful.

“I may look sorry to you, but this?” he said, nodding gently toward the room, the equipment, the moment. “For me… this here’s like a day at the seaside.”

His voice caught faintly, only just.

“Please, m’am… don’t send me back. Not yet.”

The words lodged somewhere deep beneath her ribs.

Elizabeth felt herself falter. Her mouth opened, then closed. She had no answer. No rebuttal. Only a slow nod.

Victor’s gaze drifted toward the desk, eyes studying the equipment with the cautious curiosity of someone trying not to scare a bird from its perch.

“What are those?” he asked quietly.

Elizabeth blinked, surprised by the sudden change in subject.

“Noetic test equipment,” she replied. “Experiments devised to test whether humans can influence probability.”

Victor tilted his head slightly.

“See into the future?” he asked.

She shook her head quickly.

“No. Not at all. It’s not probability in the sense of predicting lottery numbers or horse races.”

She adjusted the position of a lead wire absently, a familiar motion.

“It’s the ability to influence a completely random event… to shift the outcome toward something you choose. Not by chance. But by will.”

Victor was quiet again.

He considered the explanation with a kind of slow reverence, as though weighing something in his palms.

“So,” he said eventually, “magic.”

Elizabeth’s lips twitched.

She hadn’t expected it . . . humour. It cracked through the tension like sunlight through stained glass.

She smiled before she could stop herself.

“No,” she said, trying to suppress the grin. “Not magic. Just science. The ability to alter the collapse of a probability wave. To shift it from a spread of potential outcomes into one of your choosing.”

Victor nodded slowly, the way a man nods when he’s about to ruin a magician’s trick.

“So… someone usin’ their brain… to change somethin’. Without touchin’ it.”

Elizabeth’s smile faded.

It was written all over her face . . . she hated the analogy. Her brow furrowed, lips twitching to correct him.

“Yes, but it’s more quant…”

“M’am,” Victor interrupted gently.

“In all respects…”

He leaned forward ever so slightly, the chains whispering across the chair’s frame like a warning not yet given.

“What you just said?”

A small shrug.

“That’s called magic.”

“Nonsense!” Elizabeth said stiffly, the word snapping off her tongue like a ruler against a desk. “Magic is nothing more than the art of smoke and mirrors. A series of distractions. Tricks. It’s nothing but theatrical sleight of hand… an elaborate lie designed to elicit awe from the easily impressed.”

Her tone was tight with offence, clipped, defensive, and deeply personal. She spoke not as a woman correcting a mistake, but as a scientist defending a lifework against sacrilege.

Her research had taken years. Papers, models, trials, setbacks, late nights crawling through probability curves like a miner with a broken lantern. To have it casually likened to the parlour acts of carnival charlatans lit a hot, quiet fury behind her breastbone.

Victor, still bound, straightened in his seat.

The chains grated against the metal frame as he shifted, pulling himself taller, tension humming through the cuffs. His head rose just enough to lift his eyes free from the curtain of hair. His gaze unfocused . . . somewhere distant . . . as though reading from a place far outside the room.

And then, in that same calm, casual tone, he recited:

“According to the Oxford Dictionary, magic is ‘the use of supernatural or unseen forces to influence events or human behaver.’”

Elizabeth blinked.

Her mouth parted, but no sound emerged. She stared at him, openly this time, taken aback.

Had he just quoted the dictionary?

She found herself suddenly embarrassed by the assumption she hadn’t realised she’d made until it was broken in front of her. Somewhere deep down, she’d expected a man like Victor Langley . . . a convicted killer housed in one of the institution’s darkest wings . . . to be . . . simple. 

A brute. 

A creature of instinct.

And yet here he was, calmly quoting lexicon definitions with the ease of a scholar reading graffiti from a wall.

Victor shrugged lightly.

“I like words,” he said. “They relax me. Organise the chaos. Helps keep my head clean.” His eyes drifted back toward the desk. “Everything in its box, just like it should be.”

Elizabeth recovered slowly, her posture straightening.

“Well… I feel it only fitting that I must apologise, Mr. Langley,” she replied, tone softer now. “The definition… it does seem to fit the stereotype of my research rather well. I hope that you may see fit to forgive my outburst. I have dedicated a lot of time into my research.”

She turned to her desk and selected one of the smaller instruments, cradling it carefully in both hands. A black plastic box, half the size of a shoebox, with six small bulbs arrayed on its top.

“I’d love to walk you through the full set of experiments,” she continued, adjusting her grip, “but I get the distinct impression that your visit is more of a… sampler. A test. A demonstration of what I might gain… should I accept Dr. Clark’s terms.”

She knelt, placing the device gently on the floor in front of him.

“And as your visit may be cut short at any moment,” she added, “we’ll begin with the simplest.”

She pressed a small, wireless remote into his hand . . . carefully, as though trying to feed a wild animal from her palm without losing a finger.

Victor glanced down, turning the remote in his cuffed hands with slow curiosity.

“What’s this?” he asked.

Elizabeth offered a dry smile.

“This…” she replied, letting the word hang in the air, “is what you would call… magic.”

A pause. Just enough for the moment to breathe.

“That box has six numbered bulbs,” she explained. “Your remote has six numbered buttons. The goal is simple: choose a bulb you wish to illuminate, concentrate on it, then press the button that corresponds to it.”

Victor turned the remote over again. Though his wrists were pinned to his sides, he shifted just enough to see the buttons. Two rows of three. The rubber protrusions were thick enough to distinguish by touch alone.

He looked up with the kind of wonder usually reserved for vending machines and snow globes.

“But how’s it work?” he asked. “Apart from magic.”

Elizabeth’s expression flickered with amusement.

“This is called the Volitional Collapse Test,” she said. “VCT, for short… although the patients like to call it the bulb box test.”

Victor nodded thoughtfully.

“But… how’s it work?” he asked again.

Ah. A question she loved.

Elizabeth brightened, just slightly. Like a teacher offered a classroom after months in an empty office.

“This device is something I designed myself,” she said. “It’s somewhere between a double-slit experiment and a cathode ray tube. You’re familiar with cathode rays?”

Victor blinked slowly.

She pressed on regardless.

“Until they’re measured, particles… like photons or electrons… don’t exist in a fixed place. They exist as probability waves. Possibilities. And only once observed do they ‘collapse’ into an actual location.”

Victor said nothing.

She continued.

“My research is focused on the possibility that this collapse can be influenced… willed… by conscious thought. That our minds can nudge probability. Not predict the future, but reshape the outcome of random events.”

Victor frowned slightly.

“So… I’m supposed to light up one of those bulbs just by… thinking about it?”

Elizabeth’s smile widened. Her earlier anxiety faded like steam.

“All the buttons on that remote do the same thing,” she explained. “They cause a cathode to boil off a small group of electrons in a vacuum tube. The electrons form a probability cloud, which is directed via anodes toward six evenly spaced detectors… each linked to a different lamp.”

She pointed to the bulbs atop the box.

“Every button triggers the same process. The only difference is which one you choose… and I’m not allowed to know that.”

Victor tilted his head.

“Why?”

“Because if I know your choice, my own expectation could contaminate the results,” she said. “The system records the button you pressed and which lamp lit up. I’ll review the data later. Right now, you just focus.”

Victor nodded slowly. He stared at the box, then at the remote.

And then, with quiet deliberation, he pressed one of the buttons.

All six bulbs lit up in perfect, simultaneous sequence.

Victor exhaled. Not a sigh of failure, more like the wind leaving a loose sail.

“Don’t worry,” said Elizabeth. “No one manages to suppress the extra lamps… on their first attempt.”

Victor didn’t respond. His lips pressed into a thin line as he tried again.

And again, all six lit up.

“M’am,” he said between attempts, voice low and oddly calm. “I gotta say, when I got sent here… I didn’t think I’d be playin’ with lights and tryin’ to do magic.”

Elizabeth grimaced. She still hadn’t grown comfortable with her work being described in such terms . . . but she said nothing.

“What did you think we’d be doing?” she asked instead.

Victor pressed another button. The bulbs blinked obediently.

“Same ole thing,” he said flatly. “Some new doctor be asking me why I killed my Pa. Wants to write a paper and such.”

Another button. Another full array of light.

“They always ask. And when I tell ‘em, they get upset. So they up my meds.”

His tone remained even, detached. Like he was discussing the weather.

“But I’ve learned, y’know. Folks don’t want the truth. They want you to say what they’re already thinkin’. That’s all.”

Elizabeth hesitated. He was opening up . . . but only in fragments. A controlled leak in a sealed vault.

Still, she asked:

“Why did you kill him, Mr. Langley?”

Victor’s hand paused over the remote.

The silence stretched.

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said quickly, back-pedalling. “That’s not why you’re here. Please… just keep trying the experiment.”

Victor lingered in the quiet for a moment longer.

Then: “It’s best we don’t talk about it.”

He resumed pressing the remote, eyes fixed on the lights.

“It just upsets people. You folks… you’re better off not knowin’. Believe me.”

Elizabeth studied him.

You people.

Her brow furrowed.

“Doctors?” she asked. “Psychiatrists?”

Victor didn’t look up.

“Just people, m’am,” he replied.

The words landed gently, but they echoed louder than most.

Elizabeth sat back in her chair and let the phrase settle.

She watched Victor return to his rhythm . . . button, light, button, light. As though each press chipped away at the weight between them.

And quietly, she asked:

“Am I one of those people?”

Without looking up, nor breaking rhythm with the bulb box, Victor nodded once.

“Don’t take it personal, m’am,” he murmured. “Most folks down here are just like you.”

Click.

Light.

“It’s not an insult.”

Elizabeth’s jaw tensed.

The phrase caught her like a hook. It clung, not because of its malice, but because of its ease. Like being patted on the head by a stranger who didn’t know her name. She couldn’t help but pull at the thread.

Only minutes ago, she’d been called dangerously sane by Dr. Adrian Clark.

And now . . . just like everyone else.

She sat up straighter, something simmering just beneath her usually composed exterior.

“Mr. Langley,” she began, tone clipped and precise, “I respect that you may have secrets you wish to keep to yourself. I understand that. But what I do not appreciate is being dismissed… labelled… as ‘most people.’”

Victor’s thumb remained poised over the remote, the motion habitual now.

Elizabeth pressed on, her voice building not in volume, but in pressure.

“From the experiment in front of you, I would have assumed that you, of all people, would acknowledge that my personal perspective is not exactly the standard lens through which the world is viewed. Many… if not most… of the people I discuss my work with consider me eccentric. Unorthodox. Some use less flattering terms.”

She drew a tight breath through her nose.

“And unfortunately, that includes many of my colleagues here at the institute.”

Her hands folded stiffly in her lap.

“So again… keep your secrets, if you must. But please refrain from including me in the sweeping generalisation of ‘most people.’ I put great effort in breaking the curve and I find it rather offensive.”

Victor paused. Finally, the remote lowered slightly in his hand.

His head tilted . . . not with defiance, but with careful attention. It was as though she had passed some unspoken test. One eye, visible from behind the greasy veil of hair, studied her.

“You talk to all your patients about their… problems?” he asked quietly.

Elizabeth gave a short nod.

“Yes. The private patients come to me voluntarily. In return for taking part in my research, we discuss matters of interest in the hope we may identify and resolve… issues.”

She allowed the clinical language to linger just a moment before softening.

“I am still a licensed physician in psychiatry, even if my true research has… drifted toward less conventional territory.”

Victor nodded slowly, considering.

Then, in a voice dry as bone and quiet as death, he said:

“Tell him they’re called Shades.”

Elizabeth blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“Tell him,” Victor repeated, still staring at the bulb box, “not to let them know. That part’s important. They can’t know… he knows. Okay?”

Elizabeth’s brow furrowed.

“Mr. Langley, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re referring to.”

Victor exhaled slowly through his nose. It wasn’t frustration . . . it was weariness. Like trying to explain thunder to a fish.

“I saw him. Earlier. On my way here. Corridor outside the rec room.”

He leaned slightly forward, his wrists pulling faintly against the cuffs.

“He’s gone and poked a hornets’ nest. It’s been a while since I seen that many Shades hangin’ around one person.”

Elizabeth felt her spine straighten again.

“Shades…” she repeated, cautiously.

Victor nodded, solemn.

“They don’t usually crowd like that unless someone’s made a lot of noise. But with any luck, they’ll get bored. They usually do.”

She opened her mouth, but he cut across her gently.

“The man who says he can see the shadows move,” Victor said.

It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a guess.

It was a statement.

Elizabeth’s expression gave her away . . . just a flicker, but enough.

Victor saw it. And smiled . . . just a little.

“Mr. Langley…” Elizabeth began carefully. “Could you please explain how a patient from your wing of the facility knows about the psychiatric condition of a private patient?”

Victor looked back down to the remote.

He resumed the experiment with a slow, mechanical grace. Press, light, pause. The chain at his wrist twitched faintly as he shifted.

“I know… because I see them too,” he said, voice soft, almost reverent. “I know more about them than most.”

Another button press.

“They’re one of the reasons I had to kill my father.”

The words landed with the weight of a shovel striking earth.

“If your patient don’t wanna end up like me, he needs to get much better at ignoring them.”

The lights on the bulb box flickered.

So did the fluorescents on the ceiling.

Just . . . flickered. A ripple of dimness skimming the room.

Elizabeth’s eyes rose slowly to the ceiling.

The air felt colder.

She adjusted her collar with a slow, stiff motion, suddenly aware of how much fabric lay between her skin and the world.

Victor cocked his head.

A small, private chuckle escaped him. It didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s interesting,” he murmured. “Maybe you are different from everyone else…”