The Great Balloon Magician by Jonathan Bridge

When people asked him why he chose his profession, he would tell them it’s because he loves kids. That wasn’t really the answer, it’s just what he was told to say during training. He was told to say a lot of things that weren’t true, but it was what the customers wanted to hear, and the customer is always first. He was by no means fulfilling his childhood aspirations by becoming a balloon artist, but at the same time not cynical about it either. The job fulfilled the purpose of what a job was supposed to do, and that was enough for him. He felt the disappointment of falling short of childhood aspirations and dreams, but only slightly. Overall it wasn’t a big deal, because with this job there were no strict deadlines, no reports to hand in first thing Monday morning, no shirts to button up and no ties to tie, no rush hour traffic jams, no phone conferences with corporate, and definitely no cubicles trying to consume his soul every day from nine to five. But for now let’s just say he did it for the kids.
*****
It was a typical Saturday afternoon and he had a gig at a little boy’s birthday party. Upon arrival, he rang the doorbell and entered, as if the doorbell served to announce his arrival rather than ask for permission to enter.. Letting his feet lethargically drag him in, he didn’t even look around, as it was always the same thing: balloons hanging from chairs, ribbons coming down from the ceiling, party hats everywhere, oversized presents stacked arbitrarily on the table out front, and a giant HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign hanging in an easily visible spot.
Mrs. Wilkins came over to him, showed him where to set up, and handed him the check for $75, all while maintaining that smile people force in an attempt to always make a good first impression. The balloon artist reciprocated a similar facial expression, obviously. As he sat down and began pulling out balloons, a few kids timidly stood their distance, close enough to satisfy their curiosity but far enough away to quench their apprehension. A small boy with light blond hair and a collared shirt hidden by a sweater vest shuffled his feet over a little close than the others. The boy didn’t look happy, simply standing in front of him pouting. The balloon artist couldn’t really blame the boy though, as he would have been pissed too if he had to wear that stupid sweater vest in the middle of May.
“What kind of balloon animal would you like little fella? How about a dog, or maybe a bear?”
No answer. He just stood in front of the balloon artist, with a look on his face like he had been told a week ago that Santa was not real, and just figured out that the Tooth Fairy must be fake as well. Finally he just shrugged his shoulders.
“Well a dog it is then!”
Blowing up the necessary balloons in advance, he looked at the boy’s face to see if there was any improvement, any sign of happiness. None. It didn’t really bother him though. In fact he felt just the smallest smidgeon of envy that this boy was able to show how he really felt with no apprehension, while he had to sit here with this phony grin on his face. It was if a camera man was saying “cheese” every second he was on the job. A smile on your face puts a smile on their face was the line in bold print on page two of his training manual.
He tied the balloons together to make the body and head. Then he moved onto the legs, no problem. Now all that was left was the tail. Just as he finished tying the tail to the body, he realized that it was no longer a balloon dog. There was no tail, no head, no legs, and no body. Instead, it was a balloon bicycle! It had balloon wheels, balloon handle-bars and all. Struck with awe, the balloon artist just sat there with a bicycle in his hands. Yet he was quickly snatched back into reality when the little boy grabbed the bicycle from him with a giant grin on his face.
“Wow a bike! Thanks a lot this is rocks!”
As the little boy got on his bike and pretended to ride around, the balloon artist was left there flabbergasted, looking around the room this way and that, straining his neck left and right to see if anyone else saw his balloon bear turn into a bike. No one noticed.
The next kid in line stepped up and announced, “I want a spaceship!”
“Sorry, little fella. But I don’t know how to make a spaceship.”
Dejected, the little kid turned to walk away, but was stopped by the forceful hand of a mother. She pulled him aside by the arm, whispered what must have been stern words about being polite to adults, and firmly pushed him back in the balloon artist’s direction. The kid’s confusion was understandable, as it must have been difficult to take a man dressed up in rainbow colors and sporting a silly hat seriously as an adult? Nevertheless, the kid walked back over and asked him for an animal. Whatever he knew how to make, to be specific. So the balloon artist began to make a giraffe, with long yellow balloons and a few short brown ones. Upon making the long neck and attaching it to the body and head, he began to finish it off with the four balloon legs. Yet once again, just as he thought he was about to produce a finished balloon giraffe, he realized that in his hands was nothing short of a balloon spaceship! This time however, the balloon spaceship has colors that he didn’t even use. There were also realistic looking decals on it, such as NASA and USA.
“Whoa a spaceship! Now I can fly to the moon, and to Mars…where I can shoot aliens!”
As the balloon artist watched him turn his fingers into pretend lasers as he ran around shooting the adults he saw as Martians, he strained his neck a little less to see if anyone detected something out of the ordinary. Once again no one noticed, and now he began feeling confident. He felt like he was on a hot streak in a Casino: the roulette ball was landing on his lucky number 33 like it was a magnet, the slots were coming up with three gold bars every time, and the river card was always completing his flush. By no means could he even begin to fathom how, or why this was happening. On the inside it could have looked like the monkeys escaped from the zoo, but on the outside he stayed cool and confident, as if he had been expecting it the entire time.
The game was fast-paced and able to change quickly though, as this time a woman approacheed. He noticed that she was the mom who had pulled the boy aside. She was very attractive, with blonde hair that stopped just past her shoulders and beautiful green eyes that would make any blue-eyed girl jealous. As he took in her gorgeous body like a sponge, he could not but have helped to notice that there was no ring on her finger.
“Wow you are rather impressive. It seems like you can make just about anything.”
“I am just here for the kids, doing whatever it takes to make them happy Miss…”
“Williams, but please, call me Mindy.”
“Well, Mindy, would you like a balloon animal too?”
“Sure…surprise me.”
He began to make his newest creation, a teddy bear holding a heart in his hands, hoping that this magical hot streak would not fail him now. After making the bear and beginning the heart, he looked at his progress and became upset with how it was turning out. The bear was not deformed, but it looked more like a brown alien than a bear. Nevertheless, he was banking on this magic to continue. And just as he finished putting the heart in between the two balloon paws, he realized that it was not a teddy bear holding a heart, but instead a bouquet of flowers. A bouquet of daisies, to be more precise. And not a balloon bouquet either, but real daisies!
“Oh my, daisies are my absolute favorite! How in the world did you do that? I didn’t know you were a magician too.”
Instead of trying to answer this time, he just smiled, winked, pulled out a daisy, broke off most of the stem, and gently put it in her hair behind an ear. And with that, she picked up a napkin, kissed it, leaving bright red lipstick on it, and wrote her number with that same lipstick. Once again he reeled in the winnings with that cool and confident look on my face. Feeding off the excitement of the crowd like a jet being fueled before take-off, he fully embraced this “ability” and accepted it. He still had no reason as to the how or why, but these questions must have slowly faded away to make room for the fact that he was turning into the life of the party. He seemed set on riding the curtails of this magic all the way to the end. No more questions asked, no more neck straining, He was all in.
By the time Mindy left to go put the daisies in water, everybody had stopped what they were doing as if it were a fire drill. The video games were left playing on without anyone handling the controllers, the cake knife was left halfway in the ice-cream cake, and the face paints were left out to dry as the last girl ran inside with a half painted butterfly on her cheek. Even the adults circled around and sometimes “accidentally” pushed in front of kids to watch what one girl called “the Great Balloon Magician”. The fitting title instantly stuck.
Another woman was the first to speak up.
“If you can make daisies magically appear, can you do the same with roses?”
“You will just have to wait and see Ma’am. Now let’s see what the Great Balloon Magician can do”.
He started making a funny balloon hat that a lot of kids love. Just as he was about to tie the last balloon in place, he realized that once again he no longer had in his hands what he had set out to make. This time, however, his hands slipped as he could not hold the weight of this newest creation. It was not a bouquet of roses, but instead a strange man. This stranger, who looked like he had jumped right off the Ralph Lauren magazine on the coffee table, got up from the floor where he had been dropped. Even though he looked nothing like the great balloon magician, their facial expressions of utter confusion and astonishment were identical. The silence that had just engulfed the room was violently broken with cheers and applause, as this man was the woman’s pool boy.
Everybody praised the great balloon magician, as they assumed the pool boy and he had been in cahoots the entire time. Yet the cheers quickly died as the pool boy walked over to his employer and starts making out with her. The passion and intensity they exhibited seemed almost unreal, like they were characters in an over the top romance novel. As the great balloon magician sat their dumbfounded, he must have noticed a ring on the woman’s finger. Alarms went blaring off in his head, as his facial expression revealed that he realized that what she wanted most was not a bouquet of roses, not her husband, but instead the pool boy.
Before the great balloon magician even got a chance to step back and let the angel and devil on his shoulders plead their cases, a man pushed a little boy up to the front.
“Make something for my son Joey now. It is his birthday party.”
It was an order, not a request, so the great balloon magician decided to let this magic continue on as he began to make a basic bunny. Everyone watched on as he blew up the pink and blue balloons, twisting and tying them together. The crowd was as quiet as a church during silent prayer, but filled with more anticipation than a group at the top of a rollercoaster, waiting for that first plummet. The great balloon magician was a little more uneasy, as he wasn’t sure if this rollercoaster was safe, as he had no idea if the track was intact, if the seatbelts were securely fastened, or even who was controlling the ride. He could have only sat back and wondered: what did Joey want most at this exact moment? Just as the great balloon magician was about to finish attaching the pink ears to the blue body, his hands slipped once again as he could no longer hold the weight in his hands.
The crowd’s first thought was that it was another man, very similar to pool boy. This time, however, the body hit the floor and didn’t get up. This guy, who looked nothing like a model from a Ralph Lauren magazine, wasn’t moving or breathing. The great balloon magician had never seen a person die before, so a part of him wanted to believe that this man was going to get up. But deep down he became vulnerable to the truth that was about to plague the rest of the room: this man was dead.
As the great balloon magician sat there frozen, the kids started clapping and laughing as the plague had not reached their innocent and naïve hearts. To them, one man was still “the Great Balloon Magician” and the other was another member of the supporting cast. To them the great balloon magician could do no wrong. But the claps slowly stopped as the parents hushed their children, and turn them away. One man becomes the shepherd and moved all the children to another room, trying to protect them from whatever had just occurred.
Once the children were gone, all chaos broke out. If the children were the innocent sheep being herded away, then the adults could only be a pack of wolves.
“Murderer!”
“Don’t think your hands are clean of this death! We know it was you!”
“Why in front of the children? You heartless bastard!”
“I’m calling the cops right now!”
“Murderer!”
As the great balloon magician took on the barrage of threats and accusations, he slowly realized that another bull’s-eye had been placed on another man’s chest.
“I know you were in on it too!” a member of the crowd blurted out, pushing Joey’s father with his index finger.
“Yeah, you are the one with the motive here,” another man chimed in.
“I had nothing to do with this!” Joey’s father replied forcefully, knocking the man’s index finger away.
“You hated his guts for what he did to you!” the man that jumped in retorted.
“I won’t deny that, but I could never kill him. You have to believe me!”
Based on what little else the great balloon magician could pick up over the shouting and brawl that almost erupted in the living room, he found out that the man dead at his feet was Joey’s father’s former partner. The word former was used not because he was now dead, but because he somehow cut Joey’s father out of some business and left him with almost nothing.
Enough was enough. The great balloon magician jumped out of his seat and made a break for the door. He anticipated that some of the men would run after him, but underestimated how intimidating he came off as. Who would chase a man that may have just killed a guy out of thin air, with balloons as his weapon of choice?
Running past his car and down the street, he didn’t stop until he found himself deep in the woods and out of sight. Alone, he pulled out some balloons.
“I am not going to jail,” he stated authoritatively to himself, or maybe the woods. “If I make a balloon animal for myself, then I should get whatever I want most.”
So he began making a dog, because it was the quickest to make. Just as he was about to tie the tail to the rest of the body, he paused.
“No time to quit now,” he told himself trying to gather the courage to make that leap. It was only a moment’s hesitation, a slight exhale, before he tied the balloons together to complete what should have been just a simple balloon dog.
*****
That was the last that was ever seen of the great balloon magician. Through the woods the police followed his trail, only to find his tracks come to a dead stop at a small balloon dog lying on its side. Stumped, as it appeared that he vanished from this spot, they called in for the best search dogs and trackers in the area. The reinforcements did no good, however, as the dogs never picked up a scent and the trackers were dumbfounded. The police checked with the company that employed him to find that his name was William Bryant. They put out a warrant for his arrest, created fliers with his name and face on it, but no one ever responded. Upon doing a thorough search of William’s entire life, they only found out that he had unpaid parking tickets, lived in a one bedroom apartment that contained nothing unusual, and worked as a balloon artist. Nothing to suggest that he was a murderer of any sort, much less a skilled hit man. Furthermore, they could find no correlation between William and the victim. It appeared that had never met, and did not have one mutual friend. They interviewed every person at the party, but took special interest in the pool boy’s story. He claimed that he had been taking a nap during the day at his house. He thought everything was part of his dream, all the way from hitting the floor at the great balloon magician’s feet to kissing his employer. It was not until later that he realized he was “not in Kansas” as he stated in the police report.
All of the other testimonies were the same. Each in their own way explained how the great balloon magician could make your wish come true, whether you told him what you wanted or not. Even Joey’s father admitted that he may have subconsciously wished for his former partner to drop dead. Since wishing alone was not a crime, Joey’s father was shortly released from custody. As for William Bryant, the police did not know what to do, as there was no protocol to follow for a situation such as this. Lacking motive, a murder weapon, and a cause of death, as the autopsy indicated that the otherwise healthy middle-aged victim died of natural causes, the police were forced to close the case. They were already overloaded with case files anyway, and it was not long before they let this mystery fade into the back of their minds, some unconsciously, others consciously, until it was almost completely forgotten. Almost being the key word there, as each time they saw another balloon artist, or a piece of his work tenderly held in a young child’s arm, they were forced to think back to the great balloon magician and wonder: what did he wish for?