=Door-to-Door-Magician=

Maybe it's something about my front door. It looks perfectly ordinary to me but it seems to attract the strangest characters. Today it was a door-to-door magician. "Good afternoon, ma'am," he said. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything." "Well in fact," I began and got no further. "But everyone can use a little magic in their lives. And that's exactly what I'm offering you today, risk-free, and at no charge to you at all. Seems to good to be true? That's what you're thinking, isn't it? I won't lie. It is too good to be true! But that's the very nature of magic, is it not?" He held up a hand to ward off whatever objection I might offer. "No need to say a word. I can see by the look on your face that you don't believe me and I don't blame you one bit. It's the same look I see on everyone's face. No one believes me. None of your neighbors believed me or their neighbors or theirs or theirs or theirs. And it saddens my heart, ma'am, I tell you truthfully, it does, to see how hard it is to bring magic into someone's life in this magic-depleted day and age."




At first I figured this was just a guy who'd come up with a clever shtick to sell storm windows or brick face or a gutter-cleaning service, but now I began to fear his game was something far worse than unnecessary home improvements. 

"Let me just get my husband. He usually handles stuff like this…"

He eyed me suspiciously. "Ma'am I beseech you—beseech you—don't shut the door on magic."

"I'll be right back," I said cheerily and eased the door shut on his frowning face. 




I engaged the chain for good measure.

There is no husband, I probably don't need to tell you, no anyone, it was just a ruse to get the man to leave and it worked. When I peeked out the curtains of an upstairs window sure enough he was double-stepping it down the front walk with his sample case or bag of tricks or whatever it was. 

When he turned the corner, the block was empty. There were only some boys who'd gathered, yelling and laughing, beating something small and crippled to death with sticks in the dirt yard of the abandoned house across the street.