The Popcorn Oracle

You come across a quiet movie theater with a heavy wooden side door propped open just a few inches, as if it’s just for you. There’s no one else in sight and the air inside the door is dark, cool, still. There’s a faint hum, too, if you listen very closely. You can’t explain it, but somehow you know you must open the door and enter the theater. What’s inside is important to you right here, right now. As you step through the door, a popcorn spirit greets you in a burst of kernels and buttery salt.

You have found the Popcorn Oracle, and it has a story to share with you today.

The Popcorn Oracle says:

There is a show getting ready to start around you. This could be literally - maybe you’re going to the theater or a performance of some kind. But, more than that, you have reached a point in your journey where the stage of is set, the cast is warmed up, and everything is ready to premiere around you. There’s a story about to play out, one you will want to watch with your full attention and immerse yourself in fully.

This show you’re about to watch is part sequel, another part to something that happened before. You could call it karma. You could call it laws of the universe - what goes around comes around, you reap what you sow, everything has an equal and opposite reaction, etc. Or you could say: There are rules to story, to plot, to movies. All elements introduced in an earlier act serve a purpose in the narrative to come. That’s Chekhov. Things that happened in the first part set into motion things that will happen later. That’s Newton. This time, later is now. The elements show their purpose in the show that is about to unfold around you.

Scenes you have wanted to play out for months, even YEARS, are about to project live and larger than life. You will literally catch yourself in a moment and say: I feel like I’m in a movie, that couldn’t have played out better if was a movie. Because life is about to feel like a movie, scene after scene after scene going exactly the way you would want it directed, cut, and produced… only better.

Your only job is to sit back, relax, and enjoy it as it all plays out for you. Your popcorn is ready, and so are you.

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About the Storyteller & the Studio

Bailey Lewis is an award-winning author and interactive storyteller. She is head of Bailey Sends Word, an independent story studio where the mystical meets the everyday. Bailey’s work has been published internationally, awarded in many national contests, and featured in The Wigleaf Top 50. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina.

Over her 20+ years in the industry, Bailey has served as editor-in-chief and on editorial staff for many art publications and presses, from the hyper-local to the internationally acclaimed - starting back as far as the stapled-together copy paper magazines she made for her stuffed animals at the age of six. Most recently, her studio’s storytelling project The Gumball Machine of Great Fortune received a public art grant and ongoing installation at ArtFields Festival 2026.

Visit the Bailey Sends Word Story Studio site for more about Bailey and the work.