The stage is lit with candles. Around me sit grubby men with dull eyes. This is a cheap theater, it's rent is probably less than forty sous a month.

He shakes. Everything about him shakes and shudders with effort. He is summoning something. A dove. It sits in his palm so calmly that I am almost sad. With a soft kiss of the boy's lips, the dove becomes rabbits.

Rabbits are not beautiful, but doves crap everywhere. The boy has a real gift. The rabbits sit placidly on the stage, like little plastic animals. Only the light in their eyes and the twitching of their bodies makes them real.

"These rabbits will be part of my final act," the boy explains. He is not a boy, in truth. He is a man, with wild hair and a pretty, flawless face. He does not make eye contact with the audience, because if he did, they would see the little bit of crazy that rests in the bottom of his soul.

I have seen it once. It rests in his very core, but it is there. You can see it when he kisses you with his eyes open. It unnerves me, but saves me at the same time. I am much younger than him, he his much richer than me. He is the one who found me.

'Brave little gamin' is what he called me. He ignored the fact that, even though I have nice eyes, I am a boy. That does not bother him. He calls it love. I call it silly. I play along.

"This illusion may frighten some of the weaker of heart," he grins, his teeth white in the dim illumination. His green eyes do not focus on one person, they scan the whole audience. They scan the whole world.

I do not like this trick. I have seen it before. I was trying to sleep when he first created it. I was sure as hell unnerved.

"This is the Coffin Killing Replacement Trick," he goes on to say. "You will see the dead. I need a volunteer who is not afraid of decay."

One burly man with a large beard stands up, "I fear nothing."

I laugh inside. Everyone fears something. I fear going home, because when I am home, there are only three things for me. The head of a horse that is only half bone, myself, and if she is still there, a maid. I think the maid has died. Or gone on to an employer who can pay her.

I was rich once... When I was very little. That was when I lived with the maid. I am not so little anymore.

A coffin is brought on stage and the bearded man is told to lay inside. "Are you sure you fear nothing?" asks my master.

The man laughs, "Nothing."

My master begins. He slits his fingertips. Blood trickles onto the bearded man's face. There is silence, and then... A scream. And more silence.

Master uses all of his strength to prop the coffin up. Several women in the audience scream. In place of the bearded man is a corpse of blue and green coloration. It is grinning wickedly, its sockets focused on all of the audience as a single person.

With practiced ease, Master puts his hand in one of the sockets, and pulls away the corpse, leaving the bearded man with a confused expression. "There you have it. The Coffin Killing Replacement Trick."

The audience claps and laughs, but I know they are disturbed inside. They will never recover until the final act where my love will cleanse their souls. It is the final act.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he rambles in a showman's voice, "Everything in this show was an illusion. A clever illusion, yes, but an illusion none the less. However, what I am going to show you, is magic. It is an ancient technique called the Rabbit Shadow Illumination."

The rabbits from the earlier act appear around his feet. Their eyes hold a sorrow so deep it is incomprehensible. Master spills blood from his cut fingers all around and the shadows lengthen. They become beautiful people on the wall.

Master says something, and there is a flash of light. The whole room shakes. The whole world shakes. The light is so brilliant that I feel my eyes burning up and arising from their ashes. My body is nothing. I am reduced to my chemical building blocks and built again.

The Rabbit Shadow Illumination is nothing but magic. I am lost in it.

I will find myself someday.