Wizards. I need to meet more wizards!

Image via Wikipedia There were a few tables in the bar with people at them, singles and couples drinking alone, regardless of their company. A thick smog filled the bar, mixing with the depression and fading into the gloom. People talked quietly, huddled over their drinks and their small bowls of peanuts. I sat near the door, an old man recently free. My escape from the wool factory was as dramatic as it was elderly, but I won't bore you with the details. Needless to say, I hope those guards I killed weren't volunteer workers or schoolkids raising money for teddy bears and cookies and heroin, or whatever kids like these days. They probably weren't, they had guns. Good people rarely use guns to herd the elderly.
 The young man opposite me offered a chance for me to reverse my condition, to restore my youth and perhaps thwart the Agency and their sinister care-home. He was a wizard.
 Problem was, I discovered later, my hearing ain't what it used to be. He was a Pinball Wizard, like in that song. We'd just discovered this fact after several minutes of conversation. I know knew why he'd looked so confused by my plan to launch fireballs at our enemies. It also explained why he was wearing bright blue jeans and a white t-shirt tucked into his high waistline. Not mystical at all.
 Still, he was sympathetic. Being a veteran of the pinball hustlings, he understood the dark forces at work and agreed to help me. Unfortunately, he couldn't reverse my aging, nor could he help me infiltrate the Agency care-home again. Unless, of course, it was part of a giant pinball machine, which I doubted.
 A man in khaki approached from the bar. He had a handlebar moustache, broken by a scar down his left cheek, which retreated into his sideboards and head hair, itself hidden under a large hat. He told me he'd been listing to my predicament and had a solution in mind.
 Once again, I'm searching for the Fountain of Youth. Only this time, I'm a really old guy. So I'll probably whine more.

I opened my eyes, and the world swayed as one.

Rocking, slowly, from side-to-side, I noted that my room shouldn't sway as such. It dawned on me, as it often does in such circumstances, that it was not the room swaying. It was I. It furthered dawned on me that, for once, I was not drunk. It similarly dawned on me that I was surveying my room from a high shelf. It dawned on me also that I shouldn't fit in this space, unless I had shrunk. The reason for my tiny swaying head also dawned on me. I was a bobblehead.
 Dark magics are at work here...

 Don't forget folks, still time to enter DogintheWaterPipe's Excellent Competition

The Wizard and me

I don't think I'd ever seen a man look so dejected. Filling his pipe absent-mindedly, to have something to with his hands as much as anything, Gandalf refused to meet my gaze. For my part, I looked past him at the fridge door, my mind organising a thousand pointless thoughts at lightspeed. After a lifetime, I took another drink and tried to sum up in words, emotions that I couldn't even comprehend.
 "I'm... sorry." I stumbled, as if he didn't know that. As if all I needed to do was apologise to make everything better.
 I drained my glass, and poured myself another. Cliches. That's all we can think of, when we really need to express our own thoughts. Another lifetime passed in a matter of seconds, and Gandalf finally looked me in the eye.
 "It's not you, it's me" I began. "I just don't believe in magic any more."
In the morning, he packed his things into three cardboard boxes. He spoke to me once, asking for the sellotape. We agreed to divide up the hobbits later, when he'd found somewhere to stay. He left in the evening, to stay in a B&B nearby.
 I haven't seen him since, but still look at dawn to the East.

Kazam!

"And is this your card?"
"No." I replied firmly. There was no point lying - the card brandished in face was a 7 of hearts, and I'd picked Death. The manic figure in front of me didn't seem affected by his magical failure. In fact, he continued happily:
 "Well, for my next trick, I need to borrow your watch!"
I tried, I really tried, to hide my watch, but he wrestled it from my wrist and hid it in a bag. Performing something actually akin to magic, he produced a large hammer from a small packet, and repeatedly struck the bag with my watch...
 "Tom... is this necessary? People are looking..." I pleaded hopelessly.
He continued, hitting the bag over and over. Then, in front of the disapproving audience gathered around us, he emptied the bag onto a pew. Several squashed oranges fell out, feebly attempting to roll on the uneven surface.
 I looked at the Vicar. He, too, was looking at me. Over his glasses, disapprovingly. I smiled apologetically. My wedding day was not turning out like I'd planned. Not one bit.

Some rumbling on the grape vine....

Suggest there will be a new Lego Harry Potter range this year. I, for one, look forward to using children's toys to show how much better a wizard I would have been.
 Why not buy a Lego Paul Blanchard instead? I mean, all Harry had to face was an angry, flat-faced Ralph Fiennes. He was rich for God's sake... Me? Pah, I've been chased by a normal-face Ralph Fiennes since 1984, not to mention a host of mythical animals. Frankly, I should be given magical powers, I'd make the world  a lot better...
 Well, for Nazis anyway.

(No, not really)

I smiled to myself. After all, I had the upper hand, and a bird was singing cheerfully nearby.

(Here, I have both hooked you, gentle reader, and described my surroundings in a most
masterful manner, [and used some alliteration] as well as overusing brackets)

Behind me, my would-be pickpocket recoiled in surprise as his tried and tested pocket-picking methods failed.

"What? What is this?" He stammered, worried more in how I had outsmarted him than in the fact he had been caught.

I stood up, turning so he could see my full costume. He recoiled again, fearful of my splendor. For I was a magician, the scourge of the criminal classes. Standing tall in my frilled shirt, black cape and top hat, I addressed him thus:

"I never reveal my secrets, my good Sir!"

"But... But..." he stammered, "I never fail."

I laughed again, this time extending my arms to make my cape billow. I like to make my cape billow: It's more theatrical, and I like the way it feels when the air caresses me.
Before me, the would-be criminal mastermind had collapsed. He was getting paler, and I - being the noble hero I was - bandaged up his hand. Not being of the magical persuasion, he would never understand my magic pocket bear-trap.