Kat vs. Jessie, Part One: The Guillotine

The Evil Magician was finding that his evil plans required so much of his attention that he didn't have enough energy to keep his unruly assistant Jessie in line. He could hardly keep up with all the shows and executions that were needed to stop her getting totally out of control. "What can I do?" he pondered. "Aha!" he thought. "I know! That assistant who is a magician herself- Kat! I will let her loose on Jessie and see what sort of a job she can do! That will let me concentrate on my evil schemes for a while- I can't keep up!"

He called Kat and invited her to take his place at the performance that evening. He warned her that Jessie needed keeping under control. "Oh" said Kat "is she rebellious? Won't she go along with the magic?"

"Ah, not exactly..." the magician replied. "You see, she rather enjoys it. In fact she enjoys it far too much! There's only so much chirpy optimism one can take when one is hatching evil plots and being diabolically fiendish- it spoils the mood!"

"Well" said Kat "I'll see what I can do!"

Kat decided to warm Jessie up with some card tricks, to size her up a bit. Sure enough, she was relentlessly cheerful, very impressed with the magic- almost too impressed! Magic is supposed to be mystical, dark, sinister, scary... not fun! She didn't bat an eyelid when she was ordered to strip, or made to bend down into the stocks of the guillotine. Even the melting cards seemed to produce no more than a "gosh wow what fun" from Jessie!

"RIGHT!" thought Kat. "You are absolutely insufferable! I've had enough of you, I'm going to chop your head off and let the Evil Magician put it back on when he comes to collect you! You are just TOO cheerful!"

"So my dear" said Kat "I've got one more trick to show you. Will you just give a good hard tug on that rope by your side?" ("This is it" thought Kat "You are for it now!") "What this rope?" asked Jessie, and gave it a sharp tug...