Born of Corruption by Teri Brown

double, triple, quadruple check.
    For a long, breathless moment we wait, time spinning into an eternity, while the excitement in my chest bursts. As the red curtain rises, my mother releases my hand and steps forward. 
    Make no mistake: There is only room for one star on this stage.
    Because of the stage lights, my mother’s silhouette is all I see as the velvet curtain makes its silent ascent into the darkness. The blinding spotlight looks like a sun rising on the horizon, and though I can’t see the people in the audience, the scent of perfume and expensive cigar smoke assures me of their presence, as does the excessively polite, well-bred clapping.
    That’s fine. By the end of the night they’ll be my mother’s devoted fans. Unlike other mediums and mentalists, she uses a mischievous humor during her performance that puts the audience off guard. While others rely on darkness, drama, and deception, Madame Van Housen does everything with a wink that asks “Can you believe this?” The audience loves it.
    “Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen!” Though her voice is projecting to every corner of the auditorium, it still sounds sweetly feminine. She stands until her eyes adjust to the glare of the spotlight, then glides forward so the audience can see her better. Her dark, delicate beauty unfurls like a blossom. “I hope you enjoy this evening’s show, but more, I hope you learn something about the spirit world. It can be a dark and dangerous place.”
    Mother pauses as the audience digests this and then an impish smile wrinkles her nose. You can almost hear the audience relax. Then she continues.
    “I’ve been gifted with the ability to read minds and foretell the future, as some of you will discover personally.” She pauses again and sways on her feet. My cue. I rush out of the darkness to steady her. She pats my shoulder and gives the audience a tremulous smile. “I’m sorry. I just had an overwhelming feeling that someone here is going to join the spirit world very soon.”
    Someone screams and rushes out of the theater. A plant.
    Mother waits until the slamming door reverberates through the auditorium. “Anyone else is more than welcome to leave if they feel uncomfortable.” She presses her hands together, eyes cast downward, looking like a grave madonna.
    No one ever moves a muscle. In all our years of doing shows, no one has ever left.
    She turns to me. “This is my daughter and assistant, Anna. She is going to entertain you with some magic while we wait for the spirits to respond to my presence.”
    Though she introduces me as her assistant, in reality, she is more my assistant than I am hers during this part of the show, which makes us both edgy and uncomfortable, though neither of us has ever said it out loud. Mother hates me being the center of attention, and I hate having to depend on her. I learned early on that my mother isn’t exactly the dependable type.
    I begin with easy magic tricks—making a cage of disgruntled doves disappear and reappear in different places, cutting a rope and making it whole again, plucking a scarf from a ball of flame. Mother is adept at keeping audience eyes elsewhere while I do the sleight of hand the tricks require.
    We communicate by gestures and eye contact. A wink means keep it up. A twist of the wrist means to skip the next trick and move on.
    The audience oohs and aahs in all the right places, and my movements get more dramatic as I warm up. Enthralling the audience is the best part, the part I love. I hate when people call magic trickery. What my mother does is trickery. What I do is entertainment .
    As I work, my senses go on high alert and a million details run through my mind: the location of the audience in relation to where and how I’m standing, my mother’s movements, even the collective mood of the people in the first row.
    Tonight the show goes well. My mind lights up with excitement. The audience has never been so attentive, the stage lights