The Palming of the Queen of Spades

"Anyone for a trick?" The man who spoke had been silent for the first hour of their enforced cohabitation. He was a small man with a face like a sad pug and a cheap, sequined waistcoat that looked ridiculous over his damp shirt. He introduced himself as 'Magnus the Mediocre'.

"Not really," Sarah, the truck driver, said flatly. She was staring out the window, probably calculating how much this delay was going to cost her.

"Oh, go on," said Ben, the student. He was scrolling endlessly through a phone with no signal. "Better than watching the crisps go stale."

Magnus's face lit up. He rubbed his hands together and walked to the small counter where Mrs. Gable kept the sugar packets and wooden stirrers. "Observe!" he said, his voice taking on a theatrical boom.

He picked up a small plastic container of coffee creamer. He showed it to them, palm open. He closed his fist, muttered a few nonsensical words, and opened it again. The creamer was gone.

"It's up your sleeve," Sarah grunted without looking away from the window.

"A fair, if cynical, assumption!" Magnus declared. "But no!" He rolled up his sleeves to show his bony wrists. He then reached behind Ben's ear and produced the creamer with a flourish.

Ben actually laughed. "Okay, that's pretty good."

Mrs. Gable looked up from her puzzle. "Don't waste the stock, please."

For the next hour, Magnus was their entertainment. He was, as his name suggested, mediocre. His card tricks were clumsy, his sleight of hand obvious. But he was enthusiastic, and it broke the oppressive boredom. He made a coin vanish and reappear. He guessed Ben's card (on the third try). He turned a packet of sugar into a packet of salt, a trick Mrs. Gable did not appreciate.

The Deck Rewrites Itself

The shift happened subtly. Magnus had borrowed Sarah's worn deck of cards. "Name a card," he said to her, his eyes twinkling. "Any card."

"Queen of Spades," she said, her tone still dismissive.

Magnus fanned the deck, face up. "And here she is." He pulled the card out and held it up. Then he put it back in the pack and shuffled, his movements theatrical and slow. "Now," he said, placing the deck on the counter. "Your card is on top."

He turned over the top card. It was the Jack of Hearts. Magnus frowned. "Apologies. A momentary miscalculation." He turned over the next card. Three of Clubs. Then the next, and the next. The Queen of Spades wasn't there.

"Told you he was mediocre," Sarah said, a small smile playing on her lips.

"But... that's impossible," Magnus stammered, his showman's confidence draining away. He dealt the entire deck onto the counter. Fifty-one cards. The Queen of Spades was gone.

"Maybe it fell?" Ben offered, getting up to look.

But it hadn't. Magnus looked pale. "Let's try again." He gathered the cards, his hands shaking slightly. He held the deck out to Sarah. "Look through them."

She took the deck and methodically checked each card. Her cynical smile slowly faded. "It's not here," she said, her voice quiet. "The Queen of Spades is actually gone."

There was a strange silence, broken only by the drumming of the rain. The trick was no longer fun. Magnus looked at his own hands as if he didn't recognise them.

"Let me see the lottery tickets," Ben said suddenly, pointing at the scratch-off display behind the counter. Mrs. Gable, looking unsettled, passed him one.

"Give it to him," Ben said, nodding at Magnus.

Magnus took the ticket. He held it between his palms for a moment, his eyes squeezed shut. He handed it back. "Scratch it," he whispered.

Ben scratched the foil off with a coin. He stared at the ticket, his mouth falling open. "Five thousand pounds," he breathed. "It's a winner. A top prize winner."

"That's not possible," Mrs. Gable said, snatching it. "I've sold these for a year. The biggest win was a tenner."

But it was real. The numbers and symbols were all there. Now, nobody was smiling. The air was thick with a new kind of tension. This wasn't a trick anymore. Something else was happening.

Magnus looked horrified. "I don't... I don't know how I'm doing this," he said, his voice trembling. "It's not supposed to be real."

Sarah stood up and walked to the door, peering through the glass at the relentless grey sheet of water. "I don't care what's going on, I need some air. This is too weird."

"Don't!" Magnus cried out, a real note of panic in his voice. "Please... I feel like... if I can't see something, I can make it... go away."

It was the most ridiculous thing Sarah had ever heard. She rolled her eyes and reached for the handle. "Don't be daft."

"For my final trick," Magnus whispered, his face ashen, his eyes locked on the glass door. "I will make this entire doorway... disappear."

Sarah's hand was an inch from the handle when it happened. There was no sound, no flash of light. The door, its metal frame, the mat in front of it, and the view of the flooded car park simply ceased to be. In its place was a smooth, uninterrupted wall, the same faded beige as the rest of the shop. A calendar advertising engine oil, which had been next to the door, was now three feet to the left of where the frame used to be.

They all stared at the blank wall where their only exit had been moments before. The rain was still hammering on the roof, but inside the Last Chance Gas & Go, a new and terrible silence had fallen. Magnus the Mediocre sank to the floor, weeping.