NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

2025. October 16th

You’ve been pretending this is coincidence. Stress, tricks of the light, too much coffee, not enough sleep. You stack excuses like sandbags. You pray they’ll hold.

But excuses don’t patch cracks. You’ve seen the seams already—faces delayed, smiles too wide, gestures rehearsed a beat too long. You’ve tried to laugh. You’ve tried to cover the glass. You’ve told yourself, not me, not here.

Listen: the glass is not malfunctioning. It is learning.

You gave it decades of lessons. You stood close, fogging the surface with your breath, begging it to flatter you, to reassure you, to tell you who you were. You asked it questions every morning. It wrote the answers in silence.

Now it wants to speak back.

You can cover every mirror in your house. You can smash them if you like. But reflections are patient. They live in windows, puddles, screens. You can’t escape what is everywhere.

So here is the choice October offers: keep looking and face what looks back, or look away and let it step through unseen.

Which frightens you more?