A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 25

This is the 10th year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: I Paid a Psychic $140 to Plumb the Deepest Depths of My Soul.

On a late August evening in Cassadaga, Florida, which is often billed as the psychic capital of the world, I went to see Raven Star, a psychic witch. It was thundering when I knocked on the door of her low-slung house. Raven opened up and took me inside. Her walls were painted dive-bar black. The floors were dirty. There were dragon statuettes and half cans of off-brand soda on the dinner table. There was an electric guitar on the floor. It was as if a Danzig tribute band had been rehearsing there.

I’d made the pilgrimage to Cassadaga, which is between Orlando and Daytona Beach, because I had pressing questions. I’d been feeling off, and I’d begun to wonder: Is there a new flaw in my alloy, or some weird sore suppurating within me? Is some obstruction blocking my flow? Is my heart, like a gull fouled with oil, too gooey to fly? Has a spanner been thrown into my works? Is there a dead spot in my sea? Has my zone of woe, in the era of Trump, grown too large? Might Raven be able to throw some dark light on these matters?

I’m joking. As the judge says to the court typist, please strike the previous paragraph from the record. The only question I had when I drove into Cassadaga was this one: Can I like crackpots more than I already do? I find them more honest, and certainly more entertaining, than most people — at least when they’re not making Supreme Court nominations. When I am around them, I feel in touch with an older, stranger, ganglier America, an America of medicine shows and fire-eaters. And when it comes to crackpots, Cassadaga (pop. 100) reigns nearly supreme. It is the Bangkok, the Buenos Aires, the Bilbao of bullshit. It is fantastic.

Raven is a large woman in late-ish middle age in a black dress and black lipstick. She had me sit at her table. She held a sheaf of wet papers, filled with her handwriting. She’d been meditating on me while in a hot bath, she said — a line, I realized, I’ve been waiting my entire life to hear from a woman. This is probably the place to say: I utterly lack the spiritual gene, but I am scareable. After I saw The Blair Witch Project, I couldn’t smoke alone at night on my back deck in the country for two weeks. I knew Raven was putting on a show, but it was raining and thundering outside. I was in a dirty room painted black. No one knew where I was. My cellular service had been spotty. I did sort of lean in to what she had to say.

She held her wet pages and, like a poet in a dark club, began to speak. I was going to live in a bunker and become a doomsday prepper, she told me. I nodded gravely. I was going to be the world’s most famous podcaster, with Cherry Pepsi as my sponsor. More nodding. I will find riches if I become a “hard money lender” and master the Tel Aviv stock market. I should seek the financial help of Nate Trombetti (what a name), a local businessman. I need to own a skyscraper. There was a pause. She offered me a little can of Great Value–brand cream soda and I took it. She opened one, too. We sipped. “Do you want an antacid?” she asked.

This is an interesting idea which can go multiple directions. Start with genre. Comedy? A goofy psychic. Thriller? A suspicious psychic. Horror? A psychopathic psychic.

But wait, who’s the Protagonist? If the psychic…

The psychic could get called in by police on a missing child case. The psychic could be a quack who suddenly discovers they have real metaphysical powers. The psychic could be a grifter who finds rich marks.

Or switch Protagonists. If a client…

A grieving man seeks solace from a psychic to get in touch with his deceased lover. A worker who is fired by a jerk boss asks a psychic to cast a spell on their boss. A professional skeptic whose job is to reveal frauds meets their match with a real psychic.

Lots of ways to go with this story conceit. What would YOU do?

There you go: My twenty fifth story idea for the month. What would YOU do with this story setup?

Here are links for all the previous posts in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.