For the best experience, listen to the voiceover performance by Anthony Michael Malec, then come back to read the Author’s notes for the year end review.
Text copyright © 2025 Ed Herrington
I lay in my bed, blanket pulled to my chest, knees up, laptop fulfilling its sworn duty. As I put the finishing touches on my latest chapter, I giggled at the infectious good cheer shared between Chuq and Slacy. My smiling, stifled laughter made one of my dogs lift its head and look at me as if to say “C’mon man, I’m trying to sleep.”
“I’m sorry, girl,” I whisper and scratch her belly in apology. I looked to my wife to make sure I hadn’t woken her. Her face, shrouded by an eye mask in peaceful rest, soft lines at the corners her lips earned by years of laughing, made me smile again. She had earplugs in to block out her noisy night-owl.
A clatter clacked on the roof. I looked up at the ceiling. The dogs also looked up at the ceiling, then at me as if to say “not it” before laying their heads back down for sweet slumber. Another clatter called to me. “Dammit”, I huffed. Neither my wife nor dogs rustled at my complaints.
I pulled the Santa hat more snug on my head. What? Who cares that it’s over? It’s nice and warm. I slid out of bed, thinking about Christmas day when I found the hat. It lay on the ground, just in front of our fireplace. I mused that it must have been dropped by Santa on his way out. But Santa isn’t real. Besides we have a gas fireplace and no chimney.
I walked into the living room, expecting to see nothing. Other than the lit Christmas tree and stockings hung on the mantle, nothing is what I saw.
The clatter clacked again. Clack. Clack. It moved across the roof, getting closer. Clack. Clack. Directly above me now. Clack. Silence.
The gas vent over the fireplace swung open. Crawling out of the vents came a gray mist. It swirled its way towards me, then clawed into my nostrils and down my throat, scratching, burning. I coughed, gray dust and blood splattering on the hardwood floors in wet blobs. “What. The. Hell?” I wheezed. Not mist—dust. Drying my mouth, scraping my eyeballs, abrading my skin.
The dust poured out of the vent in a torrent, swirling around the room. A tornado stream of gray fog and shadow. The Christmas tree shook, paintings tilted askew, and the stockings looped around themselves. The dust twirled faster, tighter, like an ice skater going for a record spin.
A shadow formed in the dark cloud. Spinning. Faster. Tighter. The shape became more solid, more real. The whirlwind coalesced into a single being. A large man in a red suit—white beard, balding head bare.
He held out a hand. “Give.”
“No. I found it—it’s mine.”
“Give!”
“No!”
He held up a red-mittened hand. “Ho now, ho ho, young man. Be reasonable. I shall ask once more, and then—oof”
I tackled the not so jolly man to the ground. He grabbed for the hat and I used my longer arms to push his forehead down, forcing the rest of his body out of reach of the hat. I punched Santa in the face, brushing a layer of dust off revealing cartilage and sinew, that then spiraled around his rosy cheeks.
The face quickly reformed, cheeks redder and madder than ever. I felt the true power of the hat then. Strength flowed through me. I punched Santa again, his face fractured into clouds of dust with each hit.
It reconstituted, slower this time, and he yelled “Stop that!”
The power felt good, warm, cozy in my bones. I could do this. I could kill Santa with my bare hands and keep the hat forever, feeding off its power to do good with cozy and cheer. I will defeat—
Santa snapped his meaty fingers through the mitten, thumb rushing past four fingers fused into a single flipper. A flash of bright light seared my eyeballs. Then, too late, I realized the mittens were not an idle threat. They were the alpha and the omega—time and space bent to his will.
My fingers felt like they were dipped in the arctic sea. I tried to tap into the hat’s warmth—its coziness—but the connection unraveled in my grasp.
I pulled my hands close, peering through the spots in my eyes, lit only by the dim Christmas tree lights. The tips of my fingers blackened, then flaked away like the first snowfall of the year. Each snowflake tumbling, spinning, then turning to dust before it ever touched the floor.
Once the skin of my palms eroded, the red muscles beneath were exposed, bulging as my fingers clenched in agony. My hands shook, and the muscles slid free in avalanche sheets, exposing bare bone. With fingers now made bone rakes, I dragged them inward to gather the dust falling from my chest, but it all slipped through like sand.
I tried to scream, but my lips split and the roof of my mouth caved in. My finger bones cracked like ice sickles, then shattered into fragments that melted into dust. My body disintegrated from top to bottom, grain sliding through an hourglass.
My essence floated above, watching the scene below. As my body crumpled to dust, the hat remained intact. Skin, muscle, ligaments, and bones broke apart, molecule by molecule, and piled at my once-feet—the hat left untouched atop the heap.
In my last moments, I saw Santa walk over, lift the hat, and return it to his balding head. He spit on the pile of dust that was me, snapped his fingers, collapsed into a vortex of dust, and exited through the vent.
A white light came for my soul, surrounding me, calling me home. When it receded, I was somewhere dark, somewhere cold. A howl cut through the silence. Then a pack joined in. I was cozy no more.
Author’s Notes
Yep, I got Flucksed by Santa. I enjoyed being Ed the Cozy Editor, but Cozy had to die.
I had a lot of fun these past seven months. Jan Herrington and I first posted The Spectral Agent on May 19th. My plan in coming here was to support Jan’s work and join a community of like-minded writers. Both of those were a great success.
What I never planned on was writing The Flucks. That idea and motivation spawned out of nowhere with a flash. I’m so grateful to Anthony Michael Malec for lending Slacy a voice. The story wouldn’t be the same or had as much success without him.
In the past seven months we have:
Published 20 episodes and 2 bonus episodes of The Spectral Agent (only 10 left)
2,300+ downloads of the audio version
Published the first chapter of Orchards of Time last month
124 downloads of the audio version
Published 9 episodes of The Flucks
2000+ downloads of the audio version
Hosted The Flucks Live with Anthony. His performance was on point and hilarious with a few stifled laughs from him.
Published I can hear her calling as part of the Hallowtide Files: The Gheeldyn community collaboration (now clearly seated in the Flucksverse)
Published 3 extra cozy episodes of The Flucks — Chuq, the origin story of Chuq and Slacy’s relationship.
I also wrote a poem for the first time in this series. Who knew I could?
The Cozy Editor — this post of course.
Published 46 posts overall
Posted thousands 😅 of notes
Gained 99 subscribers and 184 followers
Throughout all this, we’ve found an inviting and supportive community of writers and readers. I love being part of this community. I don’t believe we’d have been able to write so much without your support.
First, I’d like to thank Jan Herrington. He is my inspiration. Without him, I wouldn’t be here. I would have never started The Flucks. I love working with him every day and can’t wait to see what he creates next.
Jan and I would like to thank a few of our biggest supporters. They read and comment across all our creations and are always extremely kind. Every one of them has their own amazing stories that are better than mine.
RM Greta reads everything. Not just Jan and my stuff, but everything our community produces it seems. She’s always supportive and a pillar of the community. Without her feedback and encouragement, I would not have branched out into some flash fiction, then Gheeldyn, and probably The Flucks. She’s the biggest supporter of Jan and everything he creates. We have a ton of fun with the crossovers.
Anthony Michael Malec has been working with me on The Flucks since day one. I throw crazy stories and situations at him, and he performs them perfectly. An extra special thanks for narrating The Cozy Editor with no notice!
Happy Nielsen was one of the earliest readers of TSA and bullied me into publishing The Flucks. I can’t thank her enough for both.
✨🖤morningstar🖤✨ has read every episode of TSA and loves the characters as much as Jan and I do.
Walt Shuler listens to every episode of The Flucks and loves a good squelch. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to fit one in this story, pal.
Stephen Duffy lets me take his stories out of context and roots for bad things for Slacy.
Hylia Corvidae creeps me out with her teeth talk, but I like that she likes The Flucks. Maybe The Flucks needs more teeth 🤔.
Hallie Jules loves Chuq as much as I do and likes to go into nerdy detail about neurodivergence with me.
KJ Harlow and I get technical with Substack and that tickles my engineer brain.
Rebecca Watson (ReBe) found The Flucks, I think through Stephen, and then listened to everything in like one day.
The Circus Dragon hits in waves and brings her dragons along for the ride. Nothing for a while, then bam!—a lot of the chapters and a lot of fun comments in one day. She also loves cozy, so of course loves Chuq.
LM Sypher created three cover arts for episodes of The Flucks.
I’d like to give special thanks to Nikki | Nocturnal Narrator. Her story doc on The Flucks provided a lot of insight that has shaped future chapters. She’s also a very active member of the community.
As a bald man, I must say, that was incredibly wrong of you to try to take Santa's hat. The hat protects us. It keeps us safe. Maybe you didn't deserve your end but to take a balding man's hat, is to invite trouble.
Excellent read, and I look forward to more in the new year.
Loving that it's been such a wildly successful year for you and Jan. Perhaps 2026 is the year that you get the MVP of the author-centric Goodreads-killer out into the wild. Like stories, tech does a lot better with a human-centered approach.