Americana stories—Fiction

The Hanged Man, by Gabriela V. Everett

Houdini can feel the blood rushing to his head. The stocks chafe his ankles as an assistant fills the tank with a hose; he supposes the water will taste like mineral and metal when he drops, but for now, he is museumed above, eaten by the eyes of the crowd. Then the pulleys go slack.

He submerges, crowning on the surface like a water birth. The water offers an unusual gravity, like when he was young and would do somersaults underwater with his eyes shut, testing if his senses could pull him toward the sun, right-side up. The stocks weld him to the metal lid, water cold as he hangs in stasis. He opens his eyes, and for a moment everything is silent. The blur of his assistants shuffle about, and a curtain is draped before the glass. The box goes black.

Science thinks in threes: minutes without air, days without water, weeks without food. Houdini thinks in twos. Minutes, restraints—whatever tempts. Two minutes—air off-limits. Two easy minutes and he will be out.

He’s worked under worse—been buried alive and succumbed the moment his fist breeched the topsoil. Nearly drowned in icy rivers. He is the undefeated death-defier. The hairs on his head sway as he begins to wiggle in the dark.

Houdini twists, torques his body as his arms move slow, heavy. Everything distorts with his thrashing, water following his squirm as if commanded by the moon. He imagines his assistants waiting behind the curtain, axes making their hands sag like wet clothes.

The drape was a good idea, Houdini decides, as he slips from the trick-handcuffs restraining his wrists. He moves to tinker with the stocks holding his feet, sipping from the little pocket of air near the lid of the box, groping for the key hidden along the rim. The audience is ensnared—he knows. He can feel it as the orchestra swells, “Asleep in the Deep,” growing with urgency. Will he die? He knows what they’re thinking. Excitement of the highest caliber: doom. Houdini unlocks his feet. His assistant begins the countdown. He nudges the lid, ready as the curtain opens.

The crowd exalts: He’s escaped, he’s alive! They chant and applaud—Houdini having sprung from the box like Venus from the shell. He bows. Axe no longer in grip, an assistant smiles, claps. Houdini soaks it up, his light blue bathing suit dripping on the stage as they help him down. He leans against the glass and shakes water from his hair. The audience whistles as droplets fly. A puddle forms at his feet.
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Sometimes, when he’s alone, Houdini wonders how many tallies he can get before fate scores. He meditates on this in the shower, curious. He gets off on the stunned gasps, the astonishment—surely everyone knows that by now. Who else would dangle upside down from a crane outside a news building, floundering in air? Why else? That adrenaline: intoxicating. Houdini washes his hair, eyes closed, eyelashes twitching as he pictures a world where all his trick cuffs and secret air pockets are gone. He crowns on the water, slips into a dizzying reality where there is no curtain—nothing hidden—and the blur of the audience is the last thing he sees.

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