Flash Fiction: Bewitching Confirmation

It’s deja vu all over again for this week’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Two random number —> two title fragments —> the story title for which we get to discover the story. I got a 14 (“bewitching”) and a 5 (“confirmation”), so here’s my story.

BEWITCHING CONFIRMATION

The next time someone tells you there’s no such thing as “fate,” tell them my story and see if they still believe you.

I grew up out in the sticks of North Dakota with every expectation that I would take over my father’s farm (which had been my grandfather’s farm and my great-grandfather’s farm) and keep raising soybeans and sunflower seeds. My family expected it, my friends expected it, and most days even I expected it.

I’m not saying we were backwards or out of touch, but we didn’t own a television set until late in the Sixties. It wouldn’t have done us much good to have one to begin with, given how far away from all the stations we were. Folks in town had cable, but it didn’t run twenty-five miles out to service two dozen folks like us. We could put up a fifty-foot antenna to pull in the Bismarck station and on a good day, maybe get a snowy, fuzzy signal from Aberdeen.

When we finally did get a set, the only shows we were allowed to watch were “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” and “Bonanza” on Sunday night – if our homework and our chores were all done. Other than that, we watched nothing but the local farm reports, weather, and “The Huntley-Brinkley Report”.

Sometime during my early high school years, Mom and Dad decided that it was time to move into the brave, new future and send me to college. There were meetings in town run by the NDSU Agricultural Outreach Program and among other seeds planted was the one that got my parents thinking about the future of agriculture and my place in it. I had decent grades, so off to Fargo I went.

To say that there was some culture shock for me in my freshman year would be a tremendous understatement. There were more people in some of my classes than there had been in my whole high school. The transition from über rural isolation to total cultural immersion was a rough one much of the time, but when I came out the other side, it was obvious to me that my parents’ plans for me might need some serious revisions.

For all that it had been created by a bunch of dirt-farming, Midwestern, conservative Protestants, NDSU had some surprisingly forward-thinking programs. In particular, we were encouraged to take a broad spectrum of classes in any field that interested us. In my case, I had to keep up on core classes for my Agriculture major, but beyond that I found I was fascinated by classes as diverse as economics, the history of radio and motion pictures, statistics, and business administration.

My junior year the school decided to start an on-campus television station. I joined the group putting it together and had some ideas on some local programs we could create even with our limited funding. By the time we had been on the air two months, I was a segment producer. By my senior year I was an associate producer.

Then I met Kiara.

I had gone through a handful of relationships in my first three years at college, most very platonic. On the one hand, it was North Dakota, so almost everyone there had a fairly straight-laced background. On the other hand, it was the early Seventies. Our “Summer of Love” had been more like a “Weekend of Like”, but I had managed to lose my virginity.

Kiara was a veteran from a lifestyle we had only seen on television. She had been at Woodstock. She had lived in Haight-Ashbury for a year. How she ended up in North Dakota was a mystery to everyone except her, and she wasn’t telling. How she ended up with me was just a mystery to everyone.

I wasn’t arguing with her choice. We were about as diametrically opposite as we could be on so many topics, from the way we had been raised to the way we thought about just about everything. Despite that, our most heated arguments were over nothing more serious than what to have for dinner.

In a situation like that, young and madly in love, what could possibly go wrong? Well, except for winter break arriving and Kiara insisting she should go home with me for three weeks to meet my parents and family.

Needless to say, I had not mentioned Kiara to my parents. Perhaps my naiveté was showing, but I was so caught up in the present with her, school, and my television work that I simply had not thought ahead that far.

“I don’t think you know what you’re getting into,” I said. “That would be a really bad idea.”

“Nonsense, it will all be fine,” she replied. “It will be obvious to them how much we were destined for each other and accepting it will be as natural as the sunrise.”

“It will be a disaster with a great deal of screaming, yelling, arguing, and possibly a homicide or two.”

“If you think so, but I believe we can allow our talents to influence events to a much more reasonable outcome. What are you afraid of, other than them figuring out that you’re getting laid on a regular basis?”

I just looked at her, mute, at a total loss for words. How could I explain what was so obvious to me but so inconceivable to her?

“Is it that you haven’t told them about me,” she asked, “or that you haven’t told them you’re not going to be a farmer when you graduate?”

“What? I never… We haven’t… I mean, how did you?”

“No, we haven’t discussed those things, but I’m your soul mate. I know things about you that you don’t know. When you allow yourself to do so, you’ll do the same with me.” As I said, she had been at Woodstock.

“It’s obvious to me you haven’t told them those things,” she continued. “It’s also obvious that you’re scared. You’re scared because you don’t know how to deal with what you see as a problem. But once I show you how to use your talent, we’ll all be fine. Okay?”

It was anything but okay, but the only coherent thought I could get out was, “Talent?”

“Of course, ‘talent.’ You have yours, I have mine. That’s why we’re soul mates. You’ll understand later. For right now, just plan on us visiting your family for the holidays. And get together some of your gear so we can do a little documentary about it. I’ve got a good feeling about it.”

“You want me to make a documentary about you meeting my family for the first time?”

“Yes, that and you letting them know about the change in your future plans. I’m sure you can come up with an outline, a human interest piece, older generation meets the new, that sort of thing.”

“You’ve lost me.”

Kiara sighed, as one would when repeating a lesson to a struggling, confused child.

“Your talent is telling stories, specifically in this life through your television shows. Your soul’s archetype is that of a bard. My talent is inspiration and persuasion. Most would call me a witch, but I think ‘muse’ is a better description. We’ve no doubt been together in many past lives, which is why I was drawn here to find you. Later we’ll explore that, but for now, just believe it works. Write an outline of what story you want to tell about this event and we’ll make it happen.”

As she said it, as the words drifted around my head, I began to see what she meant. It started to make sense in its own peculiar way. I could still remember what my objections had been just minutes ago, but now I could see how I had been mistaken.

Years later, after that documentary had won multiple awards and led to a career in the television industry which was nothing short of stellar, I remembered that conversation. I could see where everything in my life had fallen together at that point and taken a sharp turn away from its previous path.

All of the films and television series since then were stories I absolutely had to tell. And I could tell them, always. Somehow there was always a path forward through the Byzantine maze of the entertainment industry, and somehow I always got green-lighted.

By my side through it all was Kiara, always there with the right word or thought at the right time, always there to push me forward when I seemed to be bogged down. We were soul mates then, and we still are. One of the elite, Hollywood power couples.

The next time you’re wondering why some people make it and some don’t, the next time you’re thinking some people are just lucky and get all of the breaks, remember this story. That is, remember it if we allow you to.

It’s not luck. It’s fate.

It’s magic.