SMT 2025 Holiday Storyflod Part 2
As is our tradition, for this holiday season, we’ve selected a few favorite stories from the first half or so of our fourth year to share — unlocked — with readers far and wide. We had a difficult time choosing, as they’re all favorites (just like every year — we feel very grateful to all our authors for writing such spectacular stories). If you love what you’re reading, please share and recommend, and dig into the archives for more. As well, please tell us your favorites from 2025 in the comments, or by emailing morningtransportnewsletter@gmail.com
This week’s unlocked stories are Thomas Ha’s “The Patron,” (March 2025, below), Margaret Ronald’s “Ghost Rock Posers F**k Off,” (January 2025); Izzy Wasserstein’s “Mothman and Eli Visit the Cryptid Museum” (July 2025); Leah Cypess’ “Waiting to Happen,” (March 2025); and Brenda Cooper’s “The Forest Final” (September 2025).
Enjoy them all.
~ Julian and Fran, December 28, 2025
This month’s stores began with tales by Juan Martinez and Stephanie Feldman. We hope you love these, the Storyflods, and all the stories to come in the new year — as much as we love bringing them to you on Sundays.
Bringing out great short fiction each Sunday depends on the support of our readers. Our first story each month is free. We hope that you will subscribe to receive all our stories, and support the work of our authors. If you already subscribe — thank you! Please pass on the word, or a gift subscription if you can.
The Patron
by Thomas Ha
On that day, I was hired to be a father.
I had been many things with the program, but never a father. Postal worker, repairman, church gossip, but no: not once a father. Substitute teacher, dog trainer, cousin attending a funeral—those were perhaps closer—but still nothing comparable to being a father. I technically had one of my own at some point, so I should have been familiar. But I still had to read the night before to remember the gist of the role.
The child called himself Paph. He called me Dad.
I found him waiting behind a chain-link fence at the local elementary school, next to a muddy snow pile. Other children had been picked up well beforehand, and the child had the worried eyes of someone used to leaving last. A teacher holding a clipboard asked if I was his father today. The blue star logo of the program lit my phone as well as his, and our devices exchanged the relevant data and authorizations.
“He’s all yours.”
“All mine.” I looked over. “Hey, Paph.”
“Hey, Dad.”
The child reached out a gloved hand.
#
Father was no different from any other role. I was there to be there because someone else couldn’t be there. I provided something interpersonal someone else could not provide. And so, as we walked together, along the icy sidewalks and through the city park, I asked Paph the questions I had been hired to ask.
“How was school? Everything went well?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Did you learn a lot?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“How was your presentation? The Adventures of Pinocchio, right?”
“Yes, Dad. Ms. Evangeline liked it. She gave me full marks.”
“That’s wonderful. Well done. Did you have to pull some strings?”
The child didn’t understand, but he seemed to recognize the cadence of the joke and laughed. With each prompt, the program recorded the exchange on my phone. A small blue star appeared next to each objective when complete.
“What about you, Dad?”
“My day?”
“Yes, Dad.”
Under the list of prompts, a new objective materialized:
IMPROVISE.
My patrons were listening and potentially updating the prompts when it suited them. I did not always receive live feedback, but I welcomed the opportunity.
“It was good,” I replied. “Not too much work, so, all in all, it was fine.”
“Not too much work?”
The child stopped, tilted his head, and let go of my hand. “I don’t understand. Why did you miss my presentation? You said you were going to be there if you could move things.”
At first I thought Paph was taking a turn at a joke, but he stared like he expected a real answer. I did not know how to interpret it. Maybe he assumed I had received different instructions. Or he had trouble discerning what was real. Some people, children especially, had difficulty discerning what within the program was real.
Again, on my phone, the prompt blinked:
IMPROVISE.
“I’m sorry, Paph. I know I said that. I wanted to go, but . . . I had a meeting then.”
“Oh.” He wiped his eyes. “Oh. I see.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, Dad.”
The child’s voice sounded hollow.
#
Fathers were required to make choices. This was one thing I knew. Mine made a choice, for example, when he mortgaged me to the program. For some reason, I suspected my patrons were interested in how I would make such choices, and it felt as though I was being purposefully sent on a crooked path more than a straight one.
One such choice came, shortly after, when a teenager emerged from under a stone footbridge in the city park. He stepped from the darkness with a small boy wearing a yellow hat. Paph seemed to know them, or at least did not seem surprised to see their faces.
The teenager skipped introductions, asking only if I was Paph’s father.
I told the teenager that I was.
“Paph and my little brother have to work something out.”
I asked what that meant.
“He didn’t tell you?”
I said he had not.
“Well, look. There’s a disagreement. Simplest way to put it. He owes my little brother, and they’re going to work it out.” The teenager closed his hand into a fist, indicating something violent. A schoolyard redistribution of punishment was my interpretation. I didn’t have any background on this from the program, but I knew enough.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”
Paph watched us silently, hot breath streaming from his nose into the cold late-afternoon air. He was not nearly as afraid as he should have been. Instead, just neutral.
“You can’t?”
The teenager made a small gesture in front of his jacket, which I believed was not visible to Paph from where he stood. Thumb, index finger, and middle finger pinched together. A signal.
The teenager was telling me that he was also with the program.
He was the “brother” of the boy in the yellow hat, just as I was the “father” of mine. We were not always allowed to disclose our roles during an engagement, and his was one of those. I suspected he was getting his prompts surreptitiously. Instead of his phone, in an earpiece, or maybe on his watch. There were all sorts of ways to access the program that weren’t obvious.
“Paph already agreed,” the teenager said, while still signaling to me. He extended his index finger, telling me there was a monetary tip for this prompt if completed. He touched the first knuckle. Ten percent. He spread his index and middle fingers. He was offering a split of the tip if I helped him.
“Is this true? Did you already agree?”
Paph nodded but did not speak.
Technically, I could not allow harm to come to the child. But I also could not prevent him from coming to agreements. My relationship with him was, after all, based on agreements too. I wondered what his real parents would do. Perhaps they knew this was coming and hired me for this very reason, so they wouldn’t have to decide.
I found only a new prompt on my phone, which I assumed came from them:
NEGOTIATE.
I noted they did not say something like LEAVE or PREVENT HARM.
NEGOTIATE was a pointed and particular word.
“I can’t let him get roughed up. What kind of father would I be? But I can’t let him go back on his word, either,” I rationalized. “If the boys can agree to something minimal . . .”
“One hit?”
I gauged the height and weight of the boy in the yellow hat. “One hit. No face.”
“One hit. No face. Even steven. Okay.”
I looked to Paph, who remained expressionless. I extended my fingers and signaled my ID number for transfers. The teenager reached into his coat and clicked something. I saw my funds go up on my phone.
The boy in the yellow hat walked up to Paph and socked him in the stomach. Paph, to his credit, did not fall. But he buckled and gasped, and I rubbed his back until his breath came back to him.
“Even steven.”
The teenager gave the customary subtle salute of a fellow player in the program. The signal conveyed a mixture of thank you, well done, and good luck, all with a simple thumb bent down under the palm with fingers extended.
Much to my confusion, the boy in the yellow hat did the same subtle salute-signal—even though I’d thought him the teenager’s patron.
A blue star appeared next to NEGOTIATE, indicating my patrons were pleased.
#
I brought the child home after that. If he was upset, he did not show it. If anything, he seemed strangely happy. Paph resumed asking questions, and I resumed the prompts. Blue star. Blue star. Blue star. Each prompt completed.
We came to the child’s house on Gene Street, a three-story brownstone nestled near stately oaks. Paph unlocked the doors with his thumbprint and led me through a giant foyer and up to an elegant drawing room. I hovered nearby as Paph unloaded his book bag and quietly worked through his assignments. He removed his wool cap, unearthing shaggy hair that covered his ears.
While the child worked, I knelt next to a dollhouse near the fireplace, studying the craftsmanship. I’d never seen anything like it. A replica of a three-story house, and inside were intricately carved statuettes, milky white. One that appeared to be a child. One that appeared to be a woman. Another, a man. And then a strange fourth figurine, this one mostly featureless and oddly proportioned. Its chest was marked with a carved letter “P.” I set that one down.
“You’re back.”
A voice preceded someone entering the drawing room. A young woman, pale and dark-haired, smiled at me before kissing Paph on the head. Then she hugged me gently and kissed me on the cheek.
“Welcome home, sweetheart.”
“I . . . Thank you. It’s good to be back.”
I had several thoughts. The first, that this was a double role that had not been disclosed. A father-husband combination was not agreed upon, and I would take that up afterward.
The second thought that trailed but then slowly overtook the first: she seemed so familiar to me, this woman, though I could not place her. It made it all the more disorienting when she treated me like we already knew each other. I took her to be Paph’s mother, which caused me to reconsider who my patron might be. I assumed it was both parents, but perhaps it was only the father. A busy working father, hiring a stand-in. That could very well be. I was not the first father hired for the house, either, if I had to guess.
We sat there, in the drawing room, we three—Paph continuing with his schoolwork, his mother and I, in conversation. How was work? How was Paph’s presentation? I answered, politely, pleasantly, over tea. All the while I watched her, trying to remember how I knew her. I noted she was dressed in an older style, something that might have been popular a generation ago. It also made it harder to imagine her out there, in the city.
“Finished!” Paph grinned and held up his homework.
I looked through the equations but found them more advanced than I could handle. I pretended to check them anyway, then told the child he did a good job.
“Just in time for supper,” the woman said. “Shall we?”
“Let’s,” I said. “Although . . . there’s something we should discuss. On the way home, Paph and I—” I looked to the motionless child. Again, like in the city park, he did not seem afraid, only blank.
“You what?”
I glanced at my phone but saw no instruction one way or the other. I looked again at Paph, into his eyes. I thought about what a father would do.
“Nothing,” I answered, and gave him a reassuring smile.
#
We enjoyed each other’s company over supper, which was a wonderful arrangement of several courses, very traditional, pot roast, sautéed vegetables. They were served on decorative silver dishware I associated with an older time. I was unsure how Paph’s mother had time to prepare it, given that she’d been with us in the drawing room, but my latent curiosity was displaced when I recalled how I knew her.
It was her laugh that reminded me.
A laugh I had heard several years ago. I did not have many funds of my own because I was a player in the program. But every once in a while, around the holidays, when the city felt particularly lonely, I used what little I had to act as a patron.
I had hired this woman, on one such occasion, to be my friend and confidant.
She called herself Gala or Gale or something like that during the engagement. We walked along the river, and she held the crook of my arm. We discussed books and talked about one she knew by John Fowles. She told me stories. Laughed at my jokes. And it was a weighty laugh that I remembered because it almost felt real, could have been real, except for my knowing that she had been in the program. I had even invited her to return for a second engagement, but she never accepted. It was normal to turn down repeat engagements, though.
I reached for my wineglass and gave her the signal of a fellow player. A thumb and two fingers, pinched together. But either she did not see it or pretended not to.
I knew it was her.
Gala or Gale or something like that.
Many of us made it a practice not to recognize our patrons after an engagement. It was safer and simpler. So I could not blame her for that. Still, I watched her face, listened to her laugh, and I felt myself slipping further into my own role.
At the table, with her, with Paph, I was struck by both the artifice and my indifference to it. I was more comfortable with being a father than I had been moments before. Imagining what it would have been like if I could have bought my way to parenthood. If this were my house, my wife, my child.
My words flowed more naturally. When I made a joke, it was almost real. When I laughed, it, too, was almost real.
Paph beamed, and it seemed like he was smiling at me in particular. Maybe I’d been too transparent, but Paph seemed tickled, like he knew what I was thinking or sensed my connection with this woman. And he was enjoying the arrangement.
Strangely, so was I.
I drank and talked, like this was my home. And when the woman spoke, I imagined we were by the river, arm in arm, neither of us looking for blue stars.
After the meal, I went with her down a dark hallway. She stopped outside a room, then said I should put Paph to bed. My room for the night, apparently, was across the hall.
“Oh,” I said, trying not to react. “Of course.”
“It was a lovely evening.”
“Yes.”
She kissed me on the cheek and then let her hand linger at her waist. Her pinky touched her thumb, a player signal. My heart leapt a little. I knew she was in the program, but the confirmation excited me. And now that we were close, I could see the flesh-colored earpiece buried beneath her dark hair.
Then I felt hesitation, unsure if I was interpreting the signal correctly. The pinky and thumb together was not one I had seen often. To us, it meant something like:
Be careful.
I did not know how to react, other than to give her the player salute-signal. The slight bend of the thumb down, my other fingers straight. The gesture that meant:
Thank you.
Well done.
Good luck.
She smiled tenderly, then withdrew, the woman I knew as Gala or Gale, and I heard the door to the bedroom lock with unsettling finality.
#
Paph grinned from under his comforter. I smoothed out the covers and told him I enjoyed our time today. He peered up from under that shaggy hair that covered his ears, and he seemed to want to say something, then changed his mind.
“I’m glad you could make time for me, Dad,” he said.
“Of course.”
“It’s hard, because, you know, you’re not always around.”
“I know. And I’m sorry about that,” I said.
“A lot of people. They come. They go. Teachers. Playmates. Family. A few buttons. A few calls. Everyone except me.”
This sounded something like a slight confession. He was speaking maturely, like he wanted to get at something beneath the words, things swimming under waves of emotion he wasn’t ready to confront. I wondered, then, if he was hiding a phone or other device on him, something that could be sending me the blinking prompts I’d been receiving. I reconsidered, yet again, who my patron was, and what I was doing here.
The entire evening felt like a performance, I realized—a little familial reenactment, more than a true caregiver assignment. I began to think my audience was not at all who I suspected it was.
“It’s a very lonely feeling,” I said. “When relationships we have, the people we meet, become more like parts we can exchange. No one knows anyone or feels accountable to anyone.”
Paph nodded intently. “Yes, Dad.”
“We give up human things we shouldn’t give up when that happens.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“And so we do other things to try to make those relationships feel real.”
“Yes, Dad.”
I thought briefly of my nights alone in my cramped studio. The years I worked without anything to share or anyone to share it with. The times I looked for friendship, or any kind of human connection, in a crowded city devoid of it. I tapped into that feeling.
“It’s okay to admit we need others around. And . . . ,” I said. “It’s okay to seek that out, however we need to seek it out. Even if those ways are unusual.”
Paph smiled sleepily. “Yes. You understand.”
“I do. I understand.”
I said good night and left the child to rest. In the shadowy hallway, I breathed out with a little relief, thinking I had comforted him. It was not easy being left alone the way he was. More and more children with wealthy parents took measures like the program. And that’s what I assumed Paph took to doing too. Imitating close relationships in the only way that was possible.
I stepped quietly through the darkness, trying to find my way back to my room, wondering whether to stop across the hall. But I paused to look at my phone, and found one more blinking prompt:
DON’T REACT.
That was when I realized someone was standing at the other end of the hall, near the drawing room. Someone large, leaning out from a door frame and watching me. His eyes were his most prominent features, wide, and with an unusual violet hue. His lips were colorless, and his hair was white and feathery and long, as though it had never been cut. He was dressed in something that looked like an older style of gown, and he breathed audibly but otherwise did not make a sound. I expected him to move toward me, and I almost screamed, but instead I stood there, looking only at that blinking prompt in my hand:
DON’T REACT.
How long I stood in place, it was difficult to say. But when the stranger did not move, I took the moment to walk several steps to my room, shut the door, and locked it, much as the woman had done earlier.
In bed, I listened to footsteps, up and down the hallway, again and again, and I watched the doorknob, half expecting, at any second, it to turn.
My phone blinked with one final prompt before going dark:
I THOUGHT YOU UNDERSTOOD.
#
I left as soon as the sun rose. I received my payment and an extremely generous tip for the extra prompts and double role. There was, however, no invitation to resume the engagement. I had the distinct feeling I had done something wrong, that I had not performed how I was expected to perform.
Eventually I began to wonder if that woman had continued on in her role. Judging by her familiarity with the house, she could have been there well before me, and so she might have stayed well after, too. I began to regret the loss of the engagement and what else it could have meant.
In the weeks after, I wandered back to the elementary school where I’d first met Paph. It was unprofessional, of course. I could even be penalized by the program. But I felt unusually guilty about having built that connection with the child and leaving so abruptly. I did not even say goodbye, and I felt I at least owed him that.
I saw the child waiting by the chain-link fence, and I almost called out. But then a stranger, another young man in a wool coat, approached and waved his phone, blue star logo visible, toward a teacher with a clipboard. I held back.
Paph saw me, I think, and smiled wanly, from a distance. There was a sadness in him, though perhaps I imagined a sadness that merely reflected some of my own. Something the program addressed, but also, in some way, that it caused.
I would have waved but stopped when I saw the child gesture subtly. I thought I was mistaken, but I grew more certain of what I was seeing, if not what it signified. His thumb was bent down, his fingers extended. The customary salute-signal to a fellow.
Thank you.
Well done.
Good luck.
The child drew his face into a grin, then looked through me, like I was no longer there.
#
Thank you for joining our journey this week.
Thomas Ha is a Hugo, Nebula, Ignyte, Locus, and Shirley Jackson Award–nominated writer of speculative short fiction. You can find his work in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Weird Horror Magazine, among other publications. His work has also appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. His debut short story collection, Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, is available for preorder and will be released by Undertow Publications in September 2025. Thomas grew up in Honolulu and, after a decade-plus of living in the Northeast, now resides in Los Angeles with his family.
“The Patron,” © Thomas Ha, 2025.
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