The strange case of the mass hypnotism that took place at the Sir Oswald Frederick Unsworth Conservative Club, Knightsbridge Tower, 1886

Greetings Atomic mates! The following micro story is included in this week’s Six Sentence Story Bloghop hosted by Girlie On The Edge, where the prompt word is lounge

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How easy it was for the magician to hypnotise the fools who occupied the lounge of the Sir Oswald Frederick Unsworth Conservative Club, Knightsbridge Tower (SOFUCCKT for short); men, nasty men, the worst of the worst, men drunk on nepotism and cronyism, and their latest dubious financial gains fit to make their purses as fat as a Japanese spider crab; oh, men, parasites really, and now, oddly, reduced to semi-naked specimens bereft of their clothing and shoes… thank goodness for underwear and silk sock garters!

But, yes, how easy to hypnotise them; first, the magician had them sing God Save The Queen while flapping their arms about like chickens; next, he had them juggle fresh quail eggs (with various degrees of success); and following this, he had them play a game of Ring a Ring o’ Roses (a pocketful of posies, a-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down!) – all harmless fun I’m sure you’ll agree, but then along came the magician’s greatest trick of the night: “Gentlemen,” said the magician, “I will now ask you to remove your clothing and shoes, along with all items of jewellery and valuables… for the sake of common decency you may retain your undergarments.”

Thus, did the gentlemen of SOFUCCKT duly oblige, as the magician’s assistant went scampering pitter-patter across the parquet floor to gather up tailored suits, imported leather shoes, top hats, pocket watches, medals, wedding rings, and purses as fat as a Japanese spider crab.

Ten minutes later, when the magician and his assistant had vacated the lounge with their sacks of plunder, Sir Oswald Frederick Unsworth was aghast to awaken from his trance and see that he was dressed in nought but his underwear… and so, too, were his comrades, Sir this and Sir that, Lord this and Viscount that, oh, what an outrage, what a scandal, that magician will hang, what torment to be not only naked of one’s gilded garments… but of one’s medals and silver and purses, too, and I – Sir Oswald Frederick Unsworth, for whom this very lounge was named after in honour – will have that magician’s guts for garters, and his assistant shall go directly to the workhouse!

Three hours later, more than a hundred-and-fifty miles away, in Cardiff, Wales, Monsieur Magnifique alighted from his train with a handful of porters in tow, to carry his five trunks of London plunder to a waiting coach destined for a waiting hotel.

In the fifth trunk lay the lifeless body of his assistant, Petit Pierre, but lifeless he was not… for Petit Pierre’s ivory eyes swivelled in their dark sockets, and his mahogany fingers curled into fists of triumph, and his wooden teeth did gnash and chatter at the delight of such thievery… for it was not just the pleasure of relieving the rich of their riches that pleased him the most, but the fact that Monsieur Magnifique – and he – had taken the very shirts from their backs.

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The strange case of the mass hypnotism that took place at the Sir Oswald Frederick Unsworth Conservative Club, Knightsbridge Tower, 1886 was written by Ford Waight, March 2023.

The inclusion of the line: “purses as fat as a Japanese spider crab” is a reference to the Japanese Village in Knightsbridge, London, a late Victorian-era exhibition of Japanese culture which took place from January 1885 until June 1887. The exhibition employed around 100 Japanese men and women in a setting built to resemble a traditional Japanese village.

The Practical Magician and Ventriloquist’s Guide image by The Public Domain Review

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