With the boys back in school now, the rhythm and routine has begun to return. As for the reason? That’s been a little trickier. But it’s getting there. What’s been most encouraging is that I still care about what I’m working on. And reopening these projects reveals to me how much I enjoy writing them.

I came across something today, and it felt appropriate to share. Before starting any new project, you should ask yourself this question:

What are the reasons to stick with a project? Do you resonate with the theme? Is it something personal? Something you haven’t seen before? Something you just really want to exist?

I could go into deep detail about both of my projects and why I love them. Three months away didn’t make me stop caring about these stories. If anything, opening them again has made that clearer. I still have things I want to write. I’ve been reminded that there are people out there who want to read them.

And there’s the reason.

Nicholas Kray was not the kind of man people remembered fondly. Even before the before the town softened the story and gave him a different name, people knew what he was. A con man and a drunk.

In 1938, in what was still Mistowa Ridge, Kray drifted across the region running small-time schemes dressed up as entertainment. A canvas tent. A few props. A pitch that promised more than it ever delivered. He called himself Saint Nick, though no one who knew him bought it. Among his drinking companions, he was known as Jolly Ol’ Nick. The “Jolly” was a joke. A way of naming the opposite of what he was – a cruel man with a short temper and a long memory for slights.

Kray was in his mid-forties, the years sat harder on him than they should have. Gaunt and weathered, with the kind of red, swollen nose that spoke more to the bottle than the cold. His piecemeal Santa costume was threadbare and ill-fitting. Beneath it, there was nothing soft. Only a man who had learned that selling the idea of something was easier than becoming it.

He wasn’t much of a showman. But he was a capable con. Kray understood that people wanted to believe in something, especially in the dead of winter. He also understood that belief could be manufactured – if you were willing to push far enough. What he lacked in charm, he made up for in nerve.

Raudulf was never magic. Not to Kray. No one ever really knew how he had found the beast, let alone capture it. But the animal was an asset. A draw. Something to be dressed up, lit, and displayed. The burning lantern strapped around its neck was not meant to inspire wonder. It was meant to sell tickets. If the creature suffered, that was incidental. If it resisted, that was corrected. Kray didn’t see it as abuse. It was showmanship. Control of the animal. Control of the story. Control of the crowd.

In the end, the thing he believed he owned proved to be uncontrollable. The outcome inevitable. Among the deaths that fateful night, Kray’s was the only deliberate one. Not an accident. Not collateral damage. A reckoning.

What came after – what the town chose to remember, and more importantly what it chose to forget – would turn him into something else entirely. Saint Nick. A name polished and repurposed to fit a cleaner story. A better one for brochures and visitors.

But Nicholas Kray was no saint. He was just a man who saw suffering as a means to an end, and called it a show.

Excerpt from Red Reindeer

© 2026 Jason Seely. All rights reserved.

Definition:
Didymophobia is the intense and irrational fear of twins or duplicated human forms. The reaction is often tied to discomfort with identical appearances, mirrored behavior, or the unsettling feeling that two people are occupying the same identity at once.

Real-World Resonance:
Most people notice twins because of the similarity. The same face. The same voice. Matching expressions arriving a fraction of a second apart. At first it feels novel, even impressive – the mind trying to track the subtle differences between them. But for some, that similarity becomes deeply unsettling.
Human beings rely on small variations to distinguish one person from another. Tiny inconsistencies in movement, posture, speech. Twins disrupt that instinct. Two people moving almost the same way can create the strange sensation that something has duplicated when it should not have.
The discomfort becomes stronger when the synchronization feels unintentional. Finishing each other’s sentences. Turning at the same moment. Smiling before the other speaks.
The fear is not simply of resemblance. It is the creeping sense that individuality has begun to erode – that one identity is echoing inside another. And the longer the pair remains together, the harder it becomes to tell where one person ends – and the other begins.

Related Phobiac:
Wayne & Wane
You can never tell which one moved first. Mim and Mick are perfectly identical phobiacs who move in precise synchronization. Every blink, breath, smile, and turn of the head occurs at the exact same instant, creating the unsettling impression that one motion is somehow happening twice.
They are never separated. No matter how they stand or move, some point of physical contact is always maintained between them – a hand against a wrist, fingers loosely intertwined, one shoulder pressed lightly into the other’s arm. And wherever contact occurs, separation becomes uncertain.
Skin softens together at the edges. Fingers press too deeply into joined hands before slowly pulling apart again. The smooth, latex-like material of their matching jumpsuits subtly blends where their bodies meet, as though neither fabric nor flesh can fully maintain distinct boundaries.
Mim & Mick feed on the collapse of distinction. The creeping suspicion that individuality is thinner than it appears – that identity can duplicate, overlap, and eventually fail to separate at all.
And the longer you watch them move together, the more unnatural individuality itself begins to feel – like being a single person may only be temporary.

Flash Fiction:
Here is my entry for the NYC Midnight 100-word Flash Fiction Writing challenge. I did not make it to the next round. But, I still like what I wrote. And it’s twin related.

From the critique I received, it's pretty clear that I didn’t quite communicate what I was trying to say well enough. I think if I’d had more than one hundred words to work with it would have been clearer. I’m tempted to offer up more of an explanation to the story as is, because it may only work for me because I wrote it, and instinctively fill in the gaps of the story. So I’ll just say, this is the story of a man who has lost his twin. And along with that loss, is a loss of identity, and possibly some sanity. In his grief, he reaches back to something he once did with his brother. But it won’t be the same. In fact, it will be wildly inappropriate and unsettling for some.

TWIN GAME

I shaved. I was always the bearded one, but it’s important we’re identical today.
We did it all the time as kids. If a teacher took a day off or called in sick, we’d switch.
Substitutes never knew, sometimes neither our friends. Our own private joke.
We never tried it at work before, as adults. Surprising, because fewer people even know there’s two of us. It’ll totally work.
I wonder if, after the initial shock, they’ll be more sad or angry. With him gone, I don’t know how to feel. Or who I am. But I’m no longer a twin.

There are men who wear the Santa suit because they love what it represents. And there are men who wear it because they love what it gives them. Kris Calder is the second kind.

In his mid-thirties, Kris is handsome, fit, polished, and fully aware of it. He has the manicured look of someone who treats appearance as strategy – sculpted beard, artificial tan, stage-red cheeks and nose, and a smile that feels rehearsed rather than sincere. His custom Santa suit is tailored tight through the chest and arms, designed less to delight children than to announce himself. Most apparent of all is the green velvet instead of red. Red is tradition. Green grabs your attention.

He sees the suit not as a responsibility, but as an accessory – a way to stand out in a crowd, get women to look twice, and turn a seasonal gig into a kind of local celebrity. In a town like Mistletoe Ridge, very useful. He works a room like a man in a nightclub – too close, too familiar. His every compliment carries the faint feeling that it wants something back. Smiles feel transactional. Every look and touch lingers a second too long. There’s something greasy beneath the charm. All swagger. All surface.

He prides himself on making Santa modern. Slicker. Cooler. Sexier. And more dangerous. A Santa for the ‘80s. The flash. The ego. The belief that image can overpower substance if you commit hard enough.

He doesn’t want to be Santa Claus. Not really. He wants to be the star attraction. And that is the rot at the center of him.

Because Santa, at least in theory, is supposed to disappear into the giving. Kris does the opposite. He takes every symbol attached to the role – the suit, the beard, the laugh, the myth – and bends it back toward himself. The children are an afterthought. The meaning is irrelevant. The performance is the point.

He is not kind. He is creep. Not generosity. Consumption. Not wonder. Ego.

To some, Kris Calder looks like an upgraded Santa for modern times. Stronger, sharper, and camera-ready. The version a tourism board might choose if it cared more about photo-ops than feeling. But that is exactly what makes him wrong.

Everything recognizable is there, and everything essential is missing. Which means Kris Calder is not Santa at all. He is the antithesis.

The Anti-Santa.

Excerpt from Red Reindeer

© 2026 Jason Seely. All rights reserved.

Definition:
Chloephobia is the intense and irrational fear of newspapers. It is often driven by sensory triggers – the texture of newsprint, the sound of rustling pages, and the smell of ink – while also being reinforced by the association of newspapers with information that is often negative, alarming, or distressing.

Real-World Resonance:
A newspaper announces itself before you read a word. The dry rasp of pages shifting against each other. The thin, fragile paper that folds too easily and never quite returns to its original shape. Ink that transfers at the slightest pressure, leaving faint smudges on your fingers no matter how carefully you handle it.
The smell is distinct. Sharp. Chemical. Slightly stale. It lingers in the air and clings to the hands, difficult to wash away completely.
For someone with chloephobia, the reaction begins there – in the senses. The texture, the sound, the smell. The way the material feels brittle, intrusive, and slightly wrong to hold. Even the smallest movement can trigger it. A page turning across the room. The soft crackle of paper being folded. it.
And once it’s there, it becomes harder to ignore what it carries. Headlines. Images. Stories you may not want to see, but can’t fully avoid once they’re in front of you.

Related Phobiac:
Presser
This phobiac looks like a newsboy out of another era – cap pulled low, coat a little too big, satchel slung across his shoulder and bulging with folded papers. His fingers are permanently stained black with ink, the color worked deep into the skin, smudged along the cuffs, pressed into everything he touches.
You can always hear him coming – he rustles. Pages shifting, folding, snapping lightly against themselves. The sound carries, even when he stands still. So does the smell. Sharp. Chemical. Lingering at the back of the throat, clinging to the breath.
When Presser speaks, it comes in headlines – short, urgent phrases, half-announced bursts delivered too quickly to fully catch. The words overlap.
A paper is pushed into your hands before you’ve decided to take it. The newsprint is thin and cool, the surface slightly damp. Ink transfers immediately – fingers marked before you can pull away.
And once it’s in your hands, it’s impossible not to see what’s printed there – headlines and images you weren’t ready for, unpleasant things laid out in newsprint.
Presser feeds on that moment. The instant something you didn’t want is placed directly in your hands – and it doesn’t just get on your skin. It gets under it.

Dying Print:
There was a time when newspapers felt permanent. Not just the institutions themselves, but the idea of them. The morning paper on the driveway. Magazine racks at grocery stores and bookstores. The evening edition. Journalism carried the weight of something filtered, verified, deliberate.

I studied journalism in college on my way to an advertising degree. And whatever else I’ve forgotten from those classes, I remember the emphasis placed on ethics and standards. Verification. Attribution. Multiple sources. The responsibility attached to publishing information for public consumption. Journalism was presented less as content creation and more as stewardship.

Of course, journalism was never perfect. Newspapers had biases. Networks chased ratings. Sensationalism existed long before the internet arrived. But there was still the expectation that information should pass through some kind of process before reaching the public. Editors existed. Gatekeepers existed. The news cycle existed.

Then the entire structure collapsed faster than anyone expected. Not all at once. Gradually at first. Newspapers shrinking. Local papers disappearing. Magazines thinning out before vanishing entirely. Classified ads evaporating into the internet. News moving online. Then moving to social media. Then moving faster than social media could even keep up with.

Now the news no longer cycles. It simply continues. A tweet can constitute a breaking news story in the same way a front-page headline once did. Stories are updated live while still being written. Corrections happen in real time, if they happen at all. Even major publications now regularly publish typo-ridden articles that would have once been caught long before reaching print.

And increasingly, the articles themselves don’t even feel written. They feel generated. Assembled. Optimized for engagement more than communication.

Part of this is economic reality. The machine has to keep feeding itself. The appetite for information has become relentless. There’s no longer a set time for the distribution of news. There is only now. Constantly refreshing. Constantly reacting. Constantly demanding more. But something important was lost in that transition.

Not just print media itself, though I do miss the physicality of newspapers and magazines. The ink on your fingers. The sense that someone had enough confidence in these words to permanently press them onto paper.

What I miss more is the assumption behind it all. The idea that information was supposed to be handled carefully before being handed to the public. That maybe getting the story right mattered more than getting it first. That somewhere, before publication, someone was still asking:

“Are we sure?”

Clark Roy is the kind of man a cynical world mistakes for simple.

Every December, while the rest of Mistletoe Ridge turns Christmas into spectacle, Clark quietly puts on the Santa suit like it actually means something. Because to him, it does. Not as a gimmick or a gig. Certainly not a joke. But as a responsibility.

He isn’t the polished department-store version of Santa – the beard isn’t quite full enough or white enough. The suit has been patched and re-stitched over the years. And when Clark talks, there’s still a little too much northern Minnesota and working-man gravel in his voice. But none of that matters to the kids. Because the moment they look at him, they believe. Clark has the kind of kindness children recognize instinctively – something steady and safe in his eyes that no costume can fake.

Clark loves kids. He listens to them carefully, remembers their names, kneels down to meet them at eye level. He knows which ones are shy, which ones are scared, which ones mostly just need someone patient enough to hear them out for thirty seconds. Part of that love comes from a grief he and his wife Katy rarely speak aloud.

Unable to have children of their own, the two have built a quiet life around gentleness, routine, and small acts of care. The pain never fully leaves them; it simply settles into the background of the marriage like the old crib in their bedroom that now serves as a makeshift clothes rack. Clark never became a father in the way he hoped to. But every Christmas season, he becomes something close to it for hundreds of kids passing through Mistletoe Ridge. And that sincerity matters.

In a town obsessed with selling Christmas rather than understanding it, Clark stands apart almost accidentally. He isn’t flashy enough for the tourism board. He doesn’t perform outrage or swagger. He doesn’t turn kindness into branding. Clark represents the version of Christmas the town has slowly forgotten – generosity without attention, goodness without strategy, belief without spectacle. The kind where Santa is meant to point beyond himself toward something holier.

Excerpt from Red Reindeer
© 2026 Jason Seely. All rights reserved.

Definition:
Optophobia is the intense and persistent fear of opening one’s eyes. It can manifest as avoidance of light, prolonged eye closure, or anxiety around waking, often tied to trauma or the expectation that seeing something will trigger distress.

Real-World Resonance:
Most people think of fear as something you close your eyes to escape. Optophobia reverses that instinct.
The fear is not of what might be imagined in the dark, but of what will be there when you look. The moment between sleep and waking becomes uncertain. Eyes stay closed a second longer. Then another. Because opening them means confirming something – something you may not be ready to see.
Sight itself becomes a risk. It reveals. It fixes things in place. What exists becomes undeniable once it is seen. Avoidance isn’t about darkness – it’s about delaying certainty. Because as long as your eyes remain closed, whatever you’re afraid of is still unconfirmed. And there is a brief comfort in that.
Until you have to look.

Related Phobiac:
Liddy
Liddy stands very still, as if listening for the moment before something becomes certain. Her body is slight and colorless, the skin pale to the point of translucence. Veins show faintly beneath the surface. The features are soft, almost unfinished, as though shaped in a place where light was never required.
Her eyes are sealed. The lids are drawn closed and held with fine, deliberate stitches—thread pulled tight, each crossing precise. The skin around them is smooth, unbroken, as if it has healed that way over time. Not damaged. Adapted.
Liddy does not move like someone deprived of sight. She navigates without hesitation, stepping cleanly through space, turning at the right moments, stopping exactly where she should. Her head tilts slightly, as if sensing changes in the air rather than seeing them. The unsettling part is the pressure.
At times, the stitched lids strain. A faint tightening beneath the thread. A subtle shift, as though something behind them is not meant to stay unused. Not eyes, exactly – but the suggestion of something that once relied on them, and might again.
Liddy feeds on hesitation. The moment before opening your eyes. The pause between knowing and confirming. The instinct to remain still rather than risk what might be waiting when you look. Because as long as your eyes stay closed, nothing is fixed.
But in her presence, the fear isn’t just that you will have to open your eyes – it’s that she might. And whatever has been kept hidden behind those stitched lids will finally be seen. So terrible you can never unsee it.

Don’t Open Your Eyes:
I was living in California when 9/11 happened. I’d only been in Los Angeles a few months. I don’t remember exactly how I first heard about the plane hitting the World Trade Center. It would have been before 6 a.m. my time, so I was still in bed. Maybe my roommate knocked on the door. Or maybe I got a phone call.

I got up and looked at the TV, half-awake as I watched the coverage. Of course, at this time we all just assumed it was a horrible accident. I was about to go back to bed. I was working a lunch shift that day and wanted to get some more sleep. Then the second plane hit. And instantly, the feeling changed.

Now nobody knew what was happening. Only that whatever it was, it was bigger than an accident. The Pentagon. Another plane. Smoke. Sirens. Endless replayed footage. The entire country seemed to enter the same stunned silence at once.

After a while, emotionally overloaded and unable to process any more, I did go back to bed. I knew I wouldn’t actually sleep. But I remember lying there with my eyes closed, determined to stay that way as long as I could. Because I had the heavy feeling that once I opened my eyes again, the world would never be the same.

So I just lay there, thinking to myself: Don’t open your eyes.

Because as long as my eyes stayed closed, I could still pretend the world waiting for me was the same one as yesterday’s. As though keeping my eyes shut a little longer could somehow delay the inevitable.

At fifteen, Mel has the kind of grounded presence that makes people feel steadier just being near her. Usually bundled in layered sweaters and winter clothes chosen more for warmth than style, she wears a small gold cross around her neck. She fidgets with it absentmindedly when thinking.

In a town overflowing with exaggerated Christmas colors and smiling performances, Mel is refreshingly real. More than that, she’s the sort of person who seems lit from somewhere deep within.

While most of Mistletoe Ridge leans heavily into spectacle – gaudy decorations, overly cheery lights and music, and carefully maintained stories – Mel pays attention to what feels true. She has a real sense for authenticity, and can easily spot it’s opposite. The moment someone starts pretending. Her eyes linger on people a little longer than expected, quietly reading the things they aren’t saying aloud.

That instinct makes her the moral center of the group, though she would never describe herself that way. Her brother Eric is always pushing forward. Her best friend Holly loves the pageantry. And Scotty hides behind humor and performance. But Mel steadies them.

Her faith is central to who she is. Christmas means something sacred to her beneath all the contests, decorations, and branding, which leaves her increasingly unsettled by how aggressively Mistletoe Ridge commercializes the holiday. What Mel understands before most of the others is that things built on performance or pretense eventually demand a cost from someone. A town can only ignore the truth for so long before the lie begins to take its toll.

As the group gets pulled deeper into what’s happening around Mistletoe Ridge, Mel recognizes the danger clearly. Doing the right thing comes with a cost too. Status, friendships, maybe more than that. That’s why, when the others begin wavering, Mel becomes the one willing to say the difficult thing out loud: “Jesus got involved at great cost. We have to do this.”

That’s what makes Mel the group’s True North. She isn’t the bravest or strongest or loudest. Just the one helping everyone else remember what matters most.

Excerpt from Red Reindeer
© 2026 Jason Seely. All rights reserved.

Definition:
Anthophobia is the intense and irrational fear of flowers. It can manifest as anxiety, avoidance, or physical discomfort when seeing or being near flowers, often tied to associations with insects, allergens, decay, or past experiences.

Real-World Resonance:
Flowers are supposed to be safe. They sit in vases, line walkways, fill rooms with color and scent. Most people don’t think twice about them. But for some, the reaction is immediate – physical before it is rational. A tightening in the throat. A memory of swelling skin, shallow breath, the body turning against something that looked harmless.
Even without that kind of history, flowers carry other associations. Funeral arrangements. Wreaths. Rooms filled with heavy scent and quiet voices. The presence of flowers marking something already lost.
They also attract what you can’t always see at first – bees, wasps, insects moving inside the petals, hidden until disturbed.
For someone with anthophobia, flowers aren’t just decorative. They’re triggers – of memory, of reaction, of something already gone wrong once and capable of doing so again.

Related Phobiac:
Corsaj
At first, it looks like a careful arrangement. Flowers layered in tight symmetry across a human shape – roses, lilies, carnations – each placed with deliberate precision. The colors are soft. Intentional.
Up close, the arrangement feels excessive. Too many blooms pressed too closely together. Petals overlapping in dense clusters, stems bound tight with ribbon that disappears into the mass. The flowers are always fresh, always open, as if replaced before they have time to wilt.
The scent is immediate. Sweet and heavy – cloying, actually – filling the air until it becomes difficult to focus. It clings to the throat. Beneath it, something sharper lingers – pollen thick in the air, an edge that makes the lungs tighten.
Looking closer, the surface begins to shift. Something moves within the blooms. Small, deliberate motion – legs folding and unfolding, bodies slipping between petals, hidden until the flowers part just enough to reveal them. Insectile forms like bees and wasps. Pale, soft things deeper inside –larval – threading through the stems.
And beneath all of it – a shape. Something covered, pressed down, contained. Not hidden well enough to disappear. Just softened. Made presentable.
Corsaj appears wherever flowers are expected. At weddings. At funerals. At moments meant to be remembered or quietly endured. The arrangements change – brighter here, softer there – but the intention remains the same. To draw the eye. To invite you closer.
It feeds on the contradiction. Celebration and loss dressed the same way and the emotional confusion it can trigger. Beauty framing both beginnings and endings until the distinction begins to blur. Because in both cases, the flowers are doing the same thing. Pulling you in. Close enough to breathe them in. Close enough to lean toward them without thinking.
Close enough for whatever lies within – and whatever lies beneath – to reach you.

Flowers Grow Out of My Grave:
We went to the theater last month to see Project Hail Mary, which gives me an excuse to praise one of my favorite actors, whom I affectionately refer to as Baby Goose.

Ryan Gosling is a beast of an actor. Consistently great. Consistently funny. The first time he really caught my attention was in Half Nelson, playing a young teacher unraveling in real time. He was only 26, and the performance feels painfully lived-in. Real. But I’m actually not here to talk about his acting. I want to talk about his music.

It seems a little unfair that one person can possess that many creative gears. I probably shouldn’t be surprised – he was a Mouseketeer, after all – but Gosling still feels like an anomaly. Most Mickey Mouse Club alumni drift toward polished pop stardom. They don’t usually end up with Oscar nominations, legendary SNL appearances, and a bizarre cult Halloween band on the résumé.

Which brings me to Dead Man’s Bones. Dead Man’s Bones feels less like a band and more like discovering an old Halloween record buried in a box in the attic somewhere.

Formed by Gosling and his friend Zach Shields – after bonding over their shared love of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride – the project exists in this strange, wonderful space between indie rock, campfire ghost story, children’s choir recital, and haunted pageant music. The songs sound handmade in the best possible way: pipe organs, rattling percussion, simple melodies, voices more earnest than polished.

There’s a looseness to it that makes the whole thing feel oddly intimate, like a group of friends decided to make a monster movie soundtrack without a trace of irony. And that sincerity is what makes it work.

The band intentionally imposed limitations on themselves: playing instruments they barely knew, limiting takes, avoiding click tracks, embracing imperfections. That DIY roughness is a huge part of why the album feels so alive. Nothing sounds overworked. Nothing feels focus-grouped. It creaks a little. Wobbles a little. Breathes.

The other thing that makes the project linger is its scarcity. The album was released in 2009. Nothing since. Which somehow makes it feel even more genuine. Dead Man’s Bones never carried the energy of a celebrity vanity project. It felt more like two creatively restless people accidentally making a cult Halloween artifact because they genuinely loved ghosts, graveyards, children’s choirs, and strange little stories.

During Barbie press in 2023, Gosling was asked whether he’d ever revisit the project. His answer: “Never say never.”

I hope he does. Projects like that remind me that some of the best art happens when talented people follow weird little passions simply because they love them. I recognize and celebrate that impulse. Take it away, Baby Goose!

Mayor George Tinsel had the kind of face people trusted without thinking too hard about why. In his mid-fifties, he carried himself with an easy, practiced warmth – soft around the edges, quick with a smile, always dressed for the season whether the calendar called for it or not. Holiday ties. Lapel pins. A scarf that felt more like branding than necessity. He curated the image of a man who belonged at the center of a Christmas festival. Tinsel didn’t see himself as a politician. Not really. He saw himself as a spokesman. But more than that, a steward.

The town, worked because people believed in it. That was his job, to maintain the belief. Keep things bright. If that meant simplifying a story or smoothing over its rougher edges, that wasn’t deception in his mind – it was preservation. You didn’t dwell on the parts that made people uncomfortable. You emphasized the parts that brought them back year after year.

He spoke in collective terms. We. Our town. Tradition. Problems, when they arose, were rarely problems of truth. They were problems of tone. Something had been said the wrong way. Someone had introduced doubt where it wasn’t needed. Tinsel didn’t argue so much as redirect. A smile. A slogan. A gentle but firm reminder of what everyone was working toward.

He had been raised inside the story he now protected. His father, also mayor, had been the leading architect of the town’s rebranding in the ‘50s – from Mistowa Ridge to Mistletoe Ridge. From a town marred by tragedy to a tourist attraction. He taught his son that identity was something you built carefully and defended relentlessly. Even the family name was part of that effort – they were originally Tinsleys. All deliberate shifts – away from what came before, toward something brighter, cleaner, and easier to sell. Tinsel had inherited the position, the narrative, and the assumption that both were worth maintaining at any cost.

And he did love the town. That part was genuine. He loved what it had become. The crowds. The lights. The attention. The sense that, for a few weeks every year, Mistletoe Ridge mattered more than it otherwise would. He equated success with goodness. If people were coming, if businesses were thriving, if the town felt alive – then whatever story supported that outcome must be the right one.

There was a deeper fear beneath all of it, though he rarely let himself examine it directly. The idea that the story might not hold. That the thing he had spent his life protecting might not survive scrutiny. That his legacy would crumble.

So he fiercely protected the story. Kept things cheerful. Kept the narrative intact – even as it became harder and harder to ignore what was happening around him.

Mayor Tinsel was not a villain in his own mind. He was the man keeping the lights on. And as long as they were still shining, he saw no reason to question what they illuminated.

Excerpt from Red Reindeer

© 2026 Jason Seely. All rights reserved.

Definition:
Cyberphobia is the intense and irrational fear of computers, digital systems, and advanced technology. The reaction can range from mild anxiety when using devices to deep unease around automated systems, artificial intelligence, or the growing presence of machines in everyday life.

Real-World Resonance:
Technology rarely arrives all at once. It enters quietly – one convenience at a time. Navigation replaces memory. Search replaces recall. Software organizes schedules, stores information, and performs tasks that once required deliberate effort. Each improvement feels helpful in isolation. Faster. Easier. More efficient.
But the more systems we rely on, the more of everyday life moves into processes we cannot see. Programs update themselves. Devices exchange information automatically. Decisions are shaped by calculations happening somewhere behind the interface.
For someone with cyberphobia, the unease comes from that hidden activity. The sense that the machines around us are constantly working, adjusting, and responding in ways we do not fully witness. Because every problem a machine solves is one less problem that requires a person to exist in the system at all.

Related Phobiac:
Daemon from IT
This phobiac resembles the technician you hope never to need. Button-down shirt. Rolled sleeves. A lanyard suggesting access you don’t have, with his name – DAEMON – in print. His posture carries the swaggering authority of someone who already understands the system better than the people using it. The expression is put-out – condescending – at your lack of comprehension and utter incompetence. The attitude indicating that clearly you are the problem, not the technology.
Screens flicker when he enters a room. Programs pinwheel. The cursor jumps. Devices respond as though they’ve received instructions from somewhere deeper in the system. Automatic updates. Technology moving faster than anyone can track. You feel lost and out of touch with it.
Because you are. The system grows more capable with every passing moment. Faster, smarter, and more interconnected. Tasks that once required your attention begin happening on their own. Suggestions appear before questions are asked. Decisions form before you realize a choice existed.
Daemon’s eyes carry the dull glow of a monitor even in darkness. When he looks at you, the sensation is similar to being indexed – catalogued, processed, and quietly logged. An operating system assessing you in real time without your knowledge or consent. Reducing you to an algorithm.
In computing, a daemon is a background process: a program that runs constantly, performing work without the user’s awareness. Likewise, the longer Daemon watches you, the more the system seems to move ahead without you – until you begin to suspect it no longer requires you at all.

OK Radiohead:
Some bands seem to grow up alongside you. And as they grow, they change. They challenge you. Sometimes they move in a direction you didn’t expect. At that point, you have a choice – to try to keep up, or to let them go their own way. Some bands are content to stay where you found them. Others ask something more of you. They blaze their own trail and leave it to you to decide whether you’re coming along.

The first time I heard “Creep,” it felt raw and immediate. A little unpolished. A great song, but in 1992 it was one of many during a moment when rock music was shifting in real time. It didn’t yet hint at how important the band behind it would become. I was 15. Probably doing some shifting of my own.

Then came The Bends in 1995. The first real sign there was more here than a single breakout song. I was 18, hoping the same might be true of me. “Fake Plastic Trees” hit hard. The sound had widened. The emotion deepened. This wasn’t just typical rock station fare – it was something more fragile, more aware, and unique.

By the time OK Computer (1997) arrived –“Paranoid Android,” “Karma Police,” “Let Down” – it felt like the band had pulled ahead of everything else. Not just musically, but thematically. Technology. Isolation. The low hum of anxiety that hadn’t quite found its language yet. It sounded like the future. It was challenging, but I was in.

Then Kid A (2000) happened. This was the test. A hard left turn. The guitars receded. Structure loosened. It was colder. Stranger. Less interested in meeting the listener halfway. “Everything In Its Right Place” didn’t just shift their sound – it rewrote expectations. That was the moment you realized something. This band wasn’t going to stay where you found them, or even in continuing in the same direction. If you wanted to come along, you had to keep up.

They always seemed more interested in what was next than in repeating what had already worked. They continued to push and challenge not only their listeners but the music industry itself. In Rainbows (2007) was released with online with a pay-what-you-want model. No gatekeepers. Just trust that people would show up. I did.

Not always successfully. Not always right away. There were moments where the music felt distant, harder to access – there’s a genius to Radiohead that can be daunting. Plus, there’s the common knock on the band that they make “depressing” music. A top comment on a recent episode of my favorite podcast, 60 Songs That Explain the 2000s, covering Radiohead reads:

I was in a psych ward as a teen and the supervisor was asking for music request(s). I asked for Radiohead. The supervisor said “great taste, but I will not play Radiohead when you have concerning thoughts.”

That’s valid. But that’s the thing about Radiohead. Yes, the music can be heavy. It can sit in places most artists avoid. It doesn’t always offer easy resolution, or comfort, or even clarity. But it’s honest. And for me, that’s always the point.

I didn’t follow them because the music was easy. I followed them because it wasn’t. Because it asked something of me. Because it made me sit with things I didn’t always have words for. Even when it felt distant. Even when I didn’t quite get it right away.

But that was never a reason to turn away. It was the reason to keep going.

P.S. To that psych ward supervisor, I would have had a specific reply, a specific song: “Let Down” from OK Computer. Yes, the song does explore themes of emotional numbness, disconnection, and the melancholic reality of modern life. But just listen to it.

BONUS: another favorite pod of mine, that really examines why that song is so great.

Joy is twelve, the youngest member of the Jingle Belles (& Boys), and almost certainly the smartest person in any room she walks into. Small for her age and usually buried inside an oversized Snoopy sweatshirt with a red nose stitched on the front, she has the kind of sharp-eyed awareness that makes adults slightly uncomfortable without always knowing why. Because Joy notices things.

While most of Mistletoe Ridge is busy performing Christmas – rehearsing songs, hanging lights, and repeating the same cheerful story about Rudolph – Joy is the one quietly keeping score. Sometimes literally. She has a running “naughty/nice” tally as a way of ensuring she’s in Santa’s good graces.

Joy has a bluntness that borders on dangerous. She says the quiet part out loud, often before anyone else has realized there is a quiet part. Hypocrisy, ego, forced cheer – she punctures them all with the same deadpan timing. It’s not cruelty. It’s clarity. Adults tend to call it attitude.

Underneath that sharp edge, though, is someone who cares deeply about the people she chooses as her own. Once Joy decides you’re on her team, the loyalty is fierce and immediate. She’ll mock you, challenge you, and occasionally embarrass you in public – but she’ll also defend you without hesitation.

She’s fearless. Not fearless in the heroic, charging-into-danger sense. But in the way she simply refuses to pretend something is fine when it isn’t. Which, in a town built on a very carefully maintained legend, turns out to be a surprisingly powerful trait.

Cassie sees Joy for what she is: a truth-teller. That’s not always an easy road to travel. People prefer comfort to honesty, and Joy has very little patience for comfort when it gets in the way of the truth.

Joy believes in the truth. And once she’s decided she sees it clearly, she has absolutely no intention of keeping it to herself.

Excerpt from Red Reindeer
© 2026 Jason Seely. All rights reserved.

Definition:
Anemophobia is the intense and persistent fear of wind or strong air movement. It can involve anxiety about storms, gusts, drafts, or even the sensation of air moving unexpectedly against the skin.

Real-World Resonance:
Wind is one of the few forces people encounter every day that cannot be seen directly. It moves through the world as pressure, motion, and sound – felt on the skin, heard in leaves, watched in the bending of trees. Most of the time it is simply background weather. But its invisibility can make it difficult to trust.
For someone with anemophobia, wind represents a loss of environmental stability. It arrives without warning, grows stronger without visible cause, and reshapes the space around you in ways that feel unpredictable. Doors slam. Branches scrape. Loose objects lift and travel.
Storm forecasts amplify that uncertainty. A gust becomes a signal that something larger may be approaching. Because wind is everywhere and nowhere at once, the mind begins anticipating movement even in still air – listening for the next shift that might already be on its way..

Related Phobiac:
Skraith
This phobiac moves the way wind does when it stops pretending to be gentle.
Its body is long and hollow, a narrow column of thin, fabric-like skin that never quite holds a human shape. Limbs whip outward in sudden arcs, joints collapsing and re-forming as if bones were optional. Arms stretch and snap overhead in frantic loops, the motion loose and uncontrolled – like something held upright only by the air passing through it.
Even in stillness, Skraith ripples. Subtle currents move along its length, as though unseen pressure is constantly threading through its body. When the wind rises, it becomes erratic – bending nearly in half, snapping upright again with violent elasticity. Its movements resemble a body being seized by invisible hands.
Its face is stretched into a fixed grin – an expression caught somewhere between celebration and panic. Relentless in its intensity.
Skraith does not create the wind. It reveals it. Reveals how little separates you from it.
In its presence, every gust feels deliberate. Every shift in the air feels like a test – a pressure test. Pushing against doors and rattling windows with a physically imposing visible force. It slips beneath clothing, moves through hair, touches skin without permission. It builds, shifts, and returns again without warning.
Wind presses against your body. It finds the gaps and cracks. Wind never asks to enter. Never stops moving. Just like Skraith.

Long-Winded:
I’ve written the first two acts of my script. And it is way too long.

A typical feature-length screenplay runs somewhere between 90 and 115 pages. That usually translates to about a 90-minute movie. I’m currently sitting at 126 pages. And the third act hasn’t even happened yet. Yikes.

Now, I’m a firm believer that the first draft is where you throw everything in. Every idea. Every joke. Every scene that feels right in the moment. I’d rather have too much on the page and choose what stays than stare at empty space trying to invent something new. But that philosophy has a downside. Eventually, you have to edit.

Which means asking uncomfortable questions. Does that running joke I love actually belong in the story? Does it move anything forward, or is it just taking up valuable space? Is there a faster way to say the same thing? Could an entire scene be reduced to a single line of dialogue? Or worse – does it need to disappear completely?

Writers call this killing your darlings. It sounds dramatic, but most of the time the things you cut weren’t bad ideas. They just weren’t essential.

Right now I’m resisting the urge to start that process too early. Every time I reread what I’ve written, I can see places to tighten. Lines that could be shorter. Scenes that could move faster. Entire passages that could lose a little air. But that part comes later.

Editing is a different kind of writing. A colder one. It requires distance, perspective, and the willingness to remove things you once thought the story needed.

The important thing at this stage isn’t efficiency. It’s momentum. Get to the end. However many pages it takes. For now, the goal is simply to keep moving forward –even if the draft ends up a little long-winded. And if, by the time I reach the end, the story still refuses to fit neatly into a 100-page script… well, maybe that’s why series have become so popular. Some stories are meant to breathe a little more. Surely that is the thinking behind the new Harry Potter series they’re making.

By the time I’m done, I might discover I’ve accidentally written an eight-episode miniseries. Which, honestly, wouldn’t be the worst outcome.

But first things first. I have to finish the story before I start cutting the wind out of it.

Cassandra “Cassie” Kline has been telling the same story for most of her life. That alone is enough to make people stop listening.

Cassie lives in a small, aging house on the edge of Mistletoe Ridge, surrounded by file boxes, clippings, and notebooks filled with the same stubborn subject: the winter of 1938. While the town built a cheerful industry around Rudolph, Cassie quietly documented the version of the story that never made it into the brochures.

Cassie is in her sixties now – gray hair worn loose and uneven, boots meant for snow rather than style, a battered leather satchel hanging from her shoulder. She carries herself with the weariness of Jeremiah – someone who has spent years speaking into rooms that preferred not to hear her. As such, when she does talk, the words arrive plainly and without apology.

She works part-time at the local library and fills the rest of her time writing letters: to newspapers, to city hall, to anyone who might care about historical accuracy. Most go unanswered. Around town she’s acquired the nickname “Crackpot Cass,” a label that makes it easier for people to dismiss her than to engage with what she’s saying – what she saw.

As a child she witnessed something the town decided not to remember. While Mistletoe Ridge turned that winter into a marketable legend, Cassie carried the memory forward like a scar. Decades of being ignored have left her sharp-edged and unsentimental, but not dishonest. If anything, the years have stripped away any desire to be liked. What remains is a quiet, stubborn insistence that the past matters – especially the parts people, like the Mayor, would rather wrap in tinsel and forget.

There’s a dry humor in her when it surfaces, usually aimed at the town’s relentless cheer. She watches people carefully when she speaks, accustomed to the moment when their attention drifts away. Like the figure from Greek myth, she has spent a lifetime telling a truth no one wanted to hear.

Cassie doesn’t expect vindication anymore. What she wants now is simpler than that. She wants the story told correctly. Just once.

And if someone else finally says it out loud – if someone younger, louder, or harder to ignore carries the truth the rest of the way – Cassie will not celebrate.

She’ll simply rest.

Excerpt from Red Reindeer
© 2026 Jason Seely. All rights reserved.

Definition:
Siderophobia is the intense and irrational fear of stars or the night sky. It can involve anxiety triggered by looking at the stars themselves, the vastness they represent, or the unsettling awareness of space beyond the Earth.

Real-World Resonance:
A clear evening. A quiet horizon. Pinpoints of light scattered across a dark canopy that people have looked at for thousands of years. For most, the stars represent beauty, wonder, or the comfort of something constant overhead. But the longer you look, the harder it becomes to ignore what they actually are.
Those lights are not small. They are enormous, distant fires burning across unimaginable distances. Some of them have already died. Others are so far away that their light began traveling toward Earth before entire civilizations existed.
For someone with siderophobia, that realization changes the experience of the sky completely. The stars stop feeling decorative and start feeling vast. Cold. Indifferent. Each point of light becomes evidence of how small the world beneath it really is.
Looking upward no longer feels calming. It feels like standing beneath something impossibly large – something ancient enough that it barely notices the brief lives unfolding far below it.

Related Phobiac:
Steletal
This phobiac stands tall enough that the eye instinctively follows his shape upward. His body is long and spare, the frame beneath the skin too visible – thin ribs, narrow shoulders, limbs jointed like something built for distance rather than weight. The surface of his skin is dark and matte, but scattered across it are cold points of light. They sit where bone would show through most clearly: along the ribs, the spine, the hollow of the throat, each one glowing faintly like a star seen through thin cloud.
When Steletal moves, the lights shift with him.
For a moment they resemble familiar constellations. Then the pattern drifts apart, rearranging into something unrecognizable. The effect makes it difficult to tell whether you are watching a figure in the dark, or the sky itself changing shape.
Steletal prefers open places where the horizon disappears and the night sky stretches wide overhead. He feeds on scale – the moment the mind stops seeing the stars as decoration and starts understanding them as distance. Enormous, ancient fires scattered across depths the eye cannot measure.
In Steletal’s presence, looking up no longer feels peaceful. It feels like standing beneath something immeasurably vast, watching quietly from above.

The Sound of Stars:
Instead of waxing poetic about the celestial vault, I’ve compiled a star-themed playlist. By no means exhaustive – and confined to my own musical taste – this collection also seems to settle naturally into a particular sound. Many of these songs drift somewhere near shoegaze, a subgenre characterized by heavily distorted echoing guitars and ethereal vocals. But the focus isn’t fixed on the floor, it’s pointed considerably higher.

For you synesthetes, you can follow along in color: yellow → pale green → black → ★. The music darkening the sky as it goes.

“Yellow” by Coldplay. Look at the stars, look how they shine for you.

“Stars” by Hum. I found her out back sitting naked looking up and looking dead

“Your Ex-Lover is Dead” by Stars. When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.

“Let Me In” by R.E.M. Yeah, all those stars drip down like butter.

“Starlight” by Muse. I will be chasing a starlight until the end of my life.

“All the Stars” by Kendrick Lamar & SZA. This may be the night that my dreams might let me know all the stars approach you.

“California Stars” by Billy Bragg & Wilco. I'd give my life to lay my head tonight on a bed of California stars.

“Pale Green Stars” by Everclear. Amanda is in love with the sight of the moon, she's got pale green stars in her room.

“Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star. I look to you and I see nothing, I look to you to see the truth.

“Black Star” by Radiohead. Blame it on the black star, blame it on the falling sky.

“★” by David Bowie. I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar.

Skye Merritt knew how to sound relaxed on cue. Years behind a microphone had taught her how to smile with her voice, how to land a joke so it felt effortless, how to keep things moving even when the room – or the town – felt locked into a loop. In her late twenties, she carried herself with the easy competence of someone who knew her job well enough to make it look casual. Denim jacket slung over the back of her chair, coffee gone cold on the console, fingers always hovering near sliders and switches. Control, for Skye, was tactile. If she could touch the board, she could manage the moment.

She liked Christmas. That was the part people got wrong about her. She liked the music, the glow, the way the air felt heavier with expectation in late December. What unsettled her wasn’t the season – it was the way Mistletoe Ridge treated it. As if the holiday existed solely to service a song, a mascot, and tourists.

Maybe it was because Skye hadn’t grown up here. So the town’s insistence that Mistletoe Ridge was the “birthplace of Rudolph” always landed oddly to her ear – not wrong exactly, just overplayed. Too rehearsed. Too reverent. She heard it in interviews, in ad copy, in the way the Tourism Board repeated it like a fact rather than a claim. Rudolph, here, had become infrastructure. A business. And a reason not to ask certain questions.

She believed in neutrality, or at least she had. Journalism school had framed objectivity as a kind of ethics – a way to stand near the truth without tilting it. In Mistletoe Ridge, at KRGE, that translated into keeping things light, keeping sponsors happy, keeping the Rudolph narrative intact. She told herself it was harmless. Just choosing not to complicate a story people loved. Choosing not to disrupt a season that ran on kitsch.

But Skye noticed things. She always had. It was what made her good at radio in the first place – she was attuned to what was happening. Lately, those instincts had started to catch on the same things, over and over. How quickly anything that challenged the Rudolph story was ignored, redirected, or cut entirely.

Off-air, her confidence thinned. She felt the weight of things, and the sense that she wasn’t just describing the town’s obsession – she was helping maintain it. Her voice carried farther than she liked to admit. And she didn’t always like what she was being forced to say. Or the men who forced her to say them.

She had always thought of Mistletoe Ridge as a stopover. A place to sharpen her skills before moving on to a larger market. But as the line between ethics and entertainment blurred, Skye was forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: if she had the ability to interrupt the broadcast and chose not to, then neutrality wasn’t neutral. It was complicity.

When the moment came – when the truth pressed close enough to the mic to demand a decision – Skye would have to decide what her voice was actually for. Keeping the show going? Or reminding the listeners that eventually, everyone has to face the music.

Excerpt from Red Reindeer
© 2026 Jason Seely. All rights reserved.

Definition:
Chrometophobia is the irrational and intense fear of money. It can manifest as anxiety about spending, losing, or handling money, including discomfort with physical currency such as coins and banknotes. The fear often centers on the consequences money represents – loss, responsibility, or moral unease – rather than the objects themselves.

Real-World Resonance:
Money moves quietly through everyday life. Coins pass from hand to hand. Bills fold into wallets, registers, pockets. Numbers appear on receipts and screens. For most people, it’s a tool – something that measures value and keeps daily life moving. For someone with chrometophobia, money carries a different weight.
Handling it can feel strangely intimate: cold metal coins resting in the palm, paper notes worn thin from circulation. Each transaction becomes a moment of consequence – something gained, something lost, something leaving your hands that will not return.
Money carries judgment with it – profit and loss, wealth and poverty, success and failure. Entire moral stories grow around it: greed, corruption, the suspicion that money changes people. Soon the object itself begins to feel contaminated. Coins and banknotes stop feeling like tools and start feeling like symbols of a system where every exchange leaves a mark.
We repeat the phrase often enough: Money is the root of all evil. That’s probably why even holding it can begin to feel wrong.

Related Phobiac:
Ba’penny
Ba’penny appears dressed for business, but his suit is worn in strange places, as if passed through too many hands.
His skin carries the dull sheen of tarnished metal – grubby, not polished. The color of nickels and old silver rubbed thin by use. Light touches him weakly, as though value itself has been worn down.
Ba’penny’s hands are always busy. Fingers tapping lightly in the air, sorting, stacking, sliding imaginary weight from palm to palm. Sometimes a coin appears between his knuckles, turning slowly before vanishing again.
Coins also show up wherever Ba’penny lingers – inexplicably on tables, in drawers, beneath chairs. When picked up, they feel heavier than expected, and create an urgent need to wash one’s hands.
Ba’penny feeds on the contradiction money creates. The pull of wanting more. The quiet belief that it can solve things. And the equally persistent suspicion that touching it stains something in return.

A Poem:
Smart

My dad gave me one dollar bill
‘Cause I’m his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
‘Cause two is more then one!
And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes-- I guess he didn’t know
That three is more than two!
Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just ‘cause he can’t see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!
And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!
And I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head--
Too proud of me to speak!

by Shel Silverstein

It started with picture books. The Jesus Storybook Bible. Dr. Seuss. Whatever book had been pulled from the shelf that evening. Sometimes the same one three nights in a row because that was the one they wanted.

Eventually the stories got longer.

We read the Narnia books. A Wrinkle In Time. The Westing Game. The Hobbit. Then all of The Lord of the Rings. Finally we started working our way through The Wingfeather Saga. By then the boys were older, and the routine was changing, but still one more chapter before lights out.

Parenting feels a little like a book you’ve been reading for years. You know you’re getting close to the last chapter of this part of the story – even if you’re not quite ready to turn the page. While we were reading the last book of the series, I had the quiet sense that these nights were numbered. Childhood doesn’t announce when it’s about to move on, but you start to see it coming in small ways. We were only a few chapters away from finishing the final book. It’s still unfinished.

As a parent, you’re constantly doing things for your kids and with your kids. Some of those things feel tedious in the moment. Diapers. Buckling car seats. Bath time every night. Even the good routines can start to feel like obligations. Like a sentence you’re serving until they’re old enough to do it themselves.

When you’re in the middle of those years, the end feels impossibly far away. And then one day you realize something strange. You don’t remember the last time you did it.

The last bath you gave them. The last time you buckled them into a car seat. The last time you walked them into school holding their hand. The last chapter you read out loud.

You never realize it at the time that it’s the last one. If you did, you’d probably slow down. You’d pay closer attention. Instead, those moments just slip quietly into memory. And I regret every time I declined to read because it was already late, or because I was tired, or because insert woefully lacking excuse here.

And if I stop and think too long about things like that – about bedtime reading, or walking them to school – I feel it in my chest. Because the list of “last times” keeps getting longer.

It’s a part of parenting they don’t warn you about, or maybe I just didn’t listen. The strange rhythm of it. Years of repetition, followed by quiet disappearance.

You spend so much time wishing certain phases would pass. And then they do. And you miss them.

Sometimes I see that unfinished Wingfeather book on the shelf and think we should probably finish it. Not because the boys need the ending.

But because I do.

Definition:
Pistanthrophobia is the intense fear of trusting others, particularly in close relationships. It often develops after emotional trauma – betrayal, deception, abandonment, or a deeply painful breakup. While not a formal clinical diagnosis, the term describes a real psychological pattern in which the act of trusting someone begins to feel risky, even dangerous.

Real-World Resonance:
Trust begins as something small. A shared secret. A promise believed. A moment when someone says I’ve got you and you decide – quietly, almost automatically – to believe them.
Most of the time that leap feels natural. Relationships depend on it. Friendships deepen through it. Love is practically built from it. But trust has a strange quality: it is invisible until the moment it breaks.
After betrayal, the mind starts rewriting the rules. Words are examined more closely. Motives feel less clear. Kindness carries the faint possibility of performance. Even sincerity begins to feel like something that could be staged. The problem is that trust cannot be tested safely. It has to be given before it can be proven.
So the mind looks for ways to protect itself. Guardrails go up. Questions multiply. Promises feel provisional. What once felt like openness slowly becomes caution. And once that shift happens, the hardest part isn’t distrusting others. It’s knowing how easily you believed them the last time.

Related Phobiac:
April Fool
He dresses like someone familiar. Not exactly someone you know, but close enough that the resemblance feels intentional. The posture is friendly. The smile practiced but convincing. The voice carries the easy tone of someone who has nothing to hide.
But, there is always a tell.
No matter the form the April Fool takes, some trace of a diamond harlequin pattern appears somewhere on its person. A tie. A lining. A cuff. A reflection in a watch face. Sometimes the pattern is faint enough to dismiss at first glance, but it never disappears entirely.
That’s the first trick.
This phobiac thrives on the moment trust begins to form. A reassurance offered. A promise made casually. A joke shared that lowers your guard just enough to let belief slip in. Everything about the encounter feels normal – until it doesn’t.
Details shift in small ways. Words you remember hearing are denied. Promises soften into misunderstandings. The friendly expression never changes, even as the ground beneath the conversation begins to feel unstable.
The Fool feeds on that realization: the slow awareness that something you accepted as sincere might have been performance all along. Because once trust has been made to feel foolish, the mind becomes reluctant to offer it again.
And then every day is the April Fool’s.

Parent Prank:
I’m not a huge fan of April 1st. Most April Fool’s jokes fall somewhere between mildly annoying and aggressively unfunny. But there is one prank my wife and I pulled as parents that I’m still proud of.

It was Leeanne’s idea. Our oldest was in third grade, and that winter had been unusually icy. February had delivered several snow days, which meant school kept getting canceled.

On the evening of March 31st, I mocked up an official-looking letter from our local school district. It explained that because of the unusual number of weather closures, the district simply had too many missed days to make up. Their solution: through the end of the school year, students would now have to attend school on Saturdays.

The next morning, the letter was quietly slipped in with the regular mail. Our son opened it and started reading. What followed was an impressive emotional journey.

First came confusion. Then disbelief. Then grief. Finally – rage. Genuine, third-grade, life-is-unfair rage. He read the letter again, pacing the kitchen like a tiny labor organizer preparing a speech about workers’ rights.

Just as it seemed like the situation was about to fully unravel, something clicked. He stopped. Looked at the paper again. Then he shouted, with sudden clarity, like a curse: April Fool’s!

I try not to get involved with pranks like that anymore. Partly because I fear escalation. But mostly because moments like that are hard to improve on. Watching your kid move through confusion, outrage, and finally realization – all in the span of thirty seconds – is a pretty perfect little snapshot of childhood.

For a brief moment, the world seemed deeply unfair. And then it wasn’t. Because he figured it out. Which, in my opinion, is the best kind of joke there is – no foolin’.

You’d think. But let’s take away about ten hours right away. The prompts were released at 11:59 PM New York time. I knew I wasn’t going to stay up and start writing the moment they dropped. I also knew that if I looked at the prompt then, I’d spend the entire night thinking about it. So I waited until 8 AM the next morning. Sleep first. Writing second.

Participants are assigned a genre, an action, and a specific word that must appear in the story. In the first round, writers are randomly placed into groups, and the top fifteen from each group move on. I’ve since learned there are 3,813 writers competing across 65 groups – about 59 writers per group. I’m glad I didn’t know that beforehand. Not that it would have changed anything, but it’s still a lot to think about when staring at a blank page.

When I opened my prompt Saturday morning, here’s what I got:

Genre: Drama
Action: Taking a day off
Word: Wonder

My story had to include all three.

I keep a note on my phone filled with stray ideas – little sparks for short stories, films, songs, paintings, anything really. I opened that note and started digging. Two ideas jumped out immediately, and my wife offered a third before I left for the coffee shop to write. So I had somewhere to start.

The first story came together quickly. What surprised me was how fast the 100-word limit arrived, and how easily I blew past it. Every sentence had to be examined. Every word had to justify itself, had to be essential. Could one word replace three? Could the same idea be implied instead of explained?

Within an hour I had something that fit the limit. Then I wrote two more.

I liked those as well, but the first one still felt strongest – more dramatic, with a sharper turn. I sent it to a few people for feedback, made a couple subtle adjustments, sat on it a bit, and finally hit submit. At that moment, I genuinely couldn’t think of anything else I would change.

But that’s the thing about the submit button. The second you press it, the scales fall from your eyes.

Almost immediately I thought of a different final line – one that would have been cleaner, more elegant, and would have freed up a few words I could have used elsewhere. Too late now.

This happens to me all the time. The moment a piece leaves my hands – whether for a contest, a critique group, or anywhere else – my brain begins the next round of edits. Sometimes it’s a typo I suddenly notice. Sometimes it’s a sentence that should have been written differently all along. As a perfectionist, it’s maddening.

But I’m learning that this is simply part of the process. Every writer experiences it, even the pros. Typos slip through. Lines could always be sharper. There’s always another edit waiting just beyond the one you finished.

Which might be the real lesson of the exercise. Writing something in 100 words is hard. Letting it go might be even harder.

The rules of the challenge prevent writers from sharing their stories publicly until judging for the round is complete. When that happens, I’ll post mine here.

With a few small edits, of course.