Fiction

23 Balls

by S.W LaBounty

 

The juggler had a simple goal: to juggle more balls than anyone ever had. It had

been his obsession since he learned the basic three. Six months after three, he could do five balls; six months after that, seven. A year after, he was up to nine balls and flashing ten.

 

Up until this point the juggler was happy with his rate of progress. Juggling was his only activity and the addition of another ball his only thought; but at ten balls his advancement stopped.

 

It seemed eleven wouldn't fit into his hands. The balls felt awkward and difficult to throw. Practice sessions lasted hours but the juggler achieved no more than two or three catches. Two years passed, and in ad­dition to failing with eleven balls, the juggler was getting worse at ten.

 

The juggler tried increasing practice ses­sions, then he tried decreasing them. On the advice of others, he practiced two hours, rested one, then practiced two more.

When it didn't help, he reversed the pattern, but still had no success. The juggler lifted weights, stretched for three hours ever day and read "Zen and the 11 Ball Juggler." He studied creative visualization and slept in an oxygen tank. He sought enlightenment at Grateful Dead concerts, fasted for four weeks and watched computer­generated graphics that analyzed his form in stresses, vectors and muscle masses.

 

He still couldn't juggle eleven.

 

In a state of confused desperation, he went to visit the Devil.

 

"What can I do for you, juggler?" the Devil purred, leaning in with pursed blood­red lips.

 

The juggler, aware of the Devil's long history of deceiving humans, chose his words carefully. "I want to juggle, in a standard cascade pattern, more balls than anyone ever has..."

 

The Devil sighed, "How many is that ­ twelve?" .

 

The juggler shook his head. "Twelve is too few. I want to put the matter beyond any doubt."

 

"Well, how many then?"

 

"Twenty-three. "

 

"Twenty-three!" The Devil's eyebrows rose to his hairline.

 

The juggler quickly continued, "And since your record of duplicity is well-known, let me make this very clear. I want not only to juggle twenty-three balls in a standard cascade pattern, but I want all the world's greatest jugglers to see me do it. I want media coverage by all the major networks and newspapers. There's to be no 'memory lapse' by people who see it or mysterious camera failures just as I start."

 

The juggler was breathing heavily and making grand gestures with his arms. "This whole thing is to be above-board, on the up­and-up and totally beyond factual reproach!"

 

The Devil sneered sarcastically. Hearing nothing, he stroked his prodigious chin, then,stood up to a full seven feet and said, "Why am I required to give you any of this, my friend?"                                                                                 .

 

The juggler took a deep breath and said, in a half-whisper, "In return I'm prepared to offer you my immortal soul."

 

The Devil shocked him as he cackled, "How very Faustian!... But I don't want it."

 

"Huh?"

 

"I don't need it and don't want it!" the Devil said with a royal flip of his wrist

 

"But you're the Devil!" the juggler whined. "You're supposed to want souls!"

 

"The 1980s gave me more souls than I can handle." The Devil then leaned back on his throne, looking tired of his eternal task. "And besides, what makes you think I won't eventually get your soul anyway?"

 

The juggler sat, confused, while the Devil crossed his knees and began absent-mindedly picking at his fingernails. Then the Devil brightened and said slowly, "Permit me to make you another offer instead. I'll let you juggle twenty-three balls in front of the entire world. I'll do all the publicity, rent the arena, everything. But you only get one shot."

 

"One shot?"

 

The Devil stood and began to pace. "You will only have the ability for one run in front of the whole planet. One shot. Just one time, then never again. At the precise moment you catch the twenty-third ball..." he paused and leaned in, his yellow, pointed teeth showing through a wicked grin an inch from the juggler's nose... "I will remove from you all your juggling abilities!"

 

The juggler bit his lower lip, "You mean..." 

 

"I mean;' said the Devil, lifting a long, clawed finger, "that you will never again be able to juggle three, let alone twenty-three balls. No clubs, no rings, nothing! Ever again!" He plopped back into his seat and continued in a lower voice. "If you even attempt the most basic manipulation of objects your hands will burn from the touch and your brain will stall. The notion of even how to start will elude you. The knowledge will always seem maddeningly close, but you will never recover it."

 

The juggler considered the offer. Despite his recent setbacks, the ability to juggle had been his greatest joy. But twenty-three balls!

 

"Hurry up!" the Devil demanded. "I've got four billion other souls to tempt!"

 

"No tricks?"

 

"I give and take away just what I said." The juggler swallowed hard and said,

 

"Done."

 

A contract was signed in blood and the date of the historic feat was set.

 

That day arrived, and the juggler trembled as he peeked through the curtain of the Civic Auditorium. It was filled with celebrities, famous jugglers, reliable anchor-people and their camera crews. The curious world awaited, buzzing.

 

Frantically, the juggler searched in his mind for any loopholes in his agreement with the Devil. The proclaimed Prince of Lies was sure to have some gambit. The juggler strenuously avoided the twenty-three balls before the performance lest he accidentally touch one and use up his one shot on a technicality.

 

Then it was time.   He mounted the stage to polite applause, bowed awkwardly and immediately felt the skeptical eyes of thousands on him.

 

Shaking, he stepped to the table and the twenty-three balls. They were bright red ­the Devil's color. He felt sure that it wouldn't work and he'd be ridiculed forever.  He picked up the balls one by one and piled them into the crook of his right arm.

He had no idea how to even start, and took a deep breath through a dry mouth as he stood there with them all piled up in his two arms. The thousands of silent people were black silhouettes behind the stage lights, and he felt a tightness in his chest that meant he was about to cry like a child.                .

 

Before the first tears fell he bent his knees and majestically heaved all twenty-three balls above him.

 

Time seemed to stop at that instant, then gradually recover. The balls, moving at a sloth's pace, began to form an order, an alignment. The juggler could see numbers on each ball: 1, 2, 3, all the way to 23. They fell gently in this numerical sequence, moving quietly as gliding sea gulls.