The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Medium

Hey kid, close the door, would ya? It feels like an icy wind just blew in here. So, what do you want to do with your life? A medium--like the seance kind? Well, that's a first. I don't need to contact the netherworld to predict this one:

You'll take a job after high school in one of those creepy little "aquarian" book shops--you know, the kind with crystals and pentagrams everywhere, and you'll spend far too much time reading the obscure material that few ever wander in to purchase. You'll become an expert on people like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Houdini and other spiritist freaks. Eventually, after pestering a working medium who buys the odd piece of paranormal paraphernalia you are admitted to a seance, and you are fascinated. Soon you've become an apprentice to "The Amazing" this or "Madam" that, but as you are admitted into the sacred inner circle, the sad truth comes out--it's all a scam.

You are heartbroken, but you've invested a lot of time and effort in learning to talk the talk, so you suck it up and go into the cynical business of hustling the bereaved. Bad lighting, incense, dark eye makeup, and some well placed speakers fool those who wish to be fooled. The skeptics you can simply dismiss as creating a "bad aura" and refuse to perform for them.

Then one day, you hit the jackpot. You've recently branched off from your mentor and are working alone. You are hired by a particularly intense well-dressed man of Italian descent. He first comes to talk to his mother, and you manipulate enough information from him to feed him the lines she might say. Soon he's coming to confess all manner of guilt to his mama, and you're becoming privy to the dirtier secrets of the local mafia. You are uncomfortable, but the money he's paying you and the damage he could do to you combine to keep you from stopping the weekly sessions.

Then comes the big test--he asks you to contact a recently-departed colleague. It seems your client has a conscience and wishes to apologize for liquidating a friend. You are happy to oblige, but then he adds that he'll be back the following week to ask the dead friend about the exact location of some stolen diamonds.

You panic; he could kill you if your scam is revealed. You go to the police, and they decide to wire you with a microphone in hopes you will hear more crimes confessed.

Unfortunately, as they hide just outside your building, they communicate over radios set to the same frequency as your wireless microphone that you use to speak for the dead. Your client hears what's about to go down and sneaks out a back door, but not before promising you a death worse than anything you can imagine.

I'd love to tell you more, but at that point my crystal ball just kind of gets foggy. Have fun.