Norman Pricklethorn and the great Worry Famine of 2025

Norman Pricklethorn is one of the world’s amateur worriers, a professional overthinker, and reigning champion of his local community centre’s “Catastrophize Like a Pro!” workshop, woke at precisely 6:03 a.m., as he always did. He stretched, rubbed his eyes, and reached for his pride and joy: The List. In Norman’s head it was always written in bold text and italicized, and on a good day underlined.

The List, created on his phone, saved to the cloud and duplicated on his Tablet, Laptop and at least 2 printed copies, updated daily and stored in his study filing cabinet and the drawer in the wee table the house phone was on in the hall. It was ALWAYS close to hand! It contained every reasonable, marginally reasonable, and aggressively unreasonable thing he could worry about on any given day. He refreshed it nightly with the same devotion monks once reserved for illuminated manuscripts.

He clicked on his bedside lamp, blinked at the page … and froze.

The List was blank.

Empty. Driven Snow White. A desert of nothingness. A spotless expanse that could drive a man to madness or worse, to peace.

Norman felt his throat tighten.

“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no, this cannot be happening! Where are the parking fines I might have forgotten to pay? The suspicious mole on my left knee that looks slightly less like Australia than when I checked last week. The ominous feeling that I’ve offended the postman?”

Nothing.

A cold sweat broke across his forehead. “I … I can’t not have anything to worry about! That’s something to worry about!”

He wrote that down. Then immediately crossed it out because it felt rather silly and forced.

Just as he was on the verge of a full existential spiral and seriously considering whether his toaster might be plotting against him and will burn his morning crumpet, the doorbell rang.

Ding-dong.

Norman jumped. “Ah! Good! Something! What if it’s burglars? Or tax auditors? Or worse, neighbours?”
He hurried to the door and flung it open.

There, on his doorstep, stood three figures in togas.
Flowing white, gold trim, sandals, like a Greek drama club had wandered away from rehearsal. They looked slightly translucent, as though reality had decided to render them in “low effort mode.”

The one in the middle, tall and dark-eyed, stepped forward with a sigh so heavy it wilted the geraniums.
“I am Oizys,” she intoned. “Goddess of anxiety, grief, depression, and misery.”
Her voice carried the emotional weight of a tax form filled out in yellow crayon.

To her left stood a man with dramatic cheekbones who kept glancing at the sky as if expecting fiery meteors.
“Moros,” he said. “God of impending doom. It’s coming. All of it is coming. Probably today.”
The third, much shorter, was nervously twisting the hem of her toga.
“And I’m Amechania,” she whispered. “Goddess of helplessness. I would shake your hand but… things might go wrong.”

Norman blinked. “You’re” he paused seeking the correct way to say it lest he offend, “Greek gods?”

Moros nodded gravely.
 “Business has been slow. Everyone’s coping through confessional Vlogs and therapy apps.”

“Except you,” Oizys said, peering at him with professional interest. “You are one of our most promising mortals. A natural talent. A prodigy. A savant of spiralling.”

“We follow your work closely,” Amechania added. “Your performance last Tuesday, worrying for two hours straight about whether your coat ‘looked too confident’ was inspiring.”

Norman blushed. “Oh well, I do my best.”

Oizys pointed at his blank List. “We sense a disturbance. Your worries have… vanished.”
“Extinct,” Moros said. “A great famine of fretfulness.”
“A drought of dread,” Amechania murmured.
“A scarcity of psychological snacks,” Oizys added, trying out a modern metaphor and realised that  it did not really work.

Norman nodded miserably. “I.. I don’t know what happened. I woke up and there was nothing left to worry about. Not a single anxiety!”

The gods exchanged a concerned look.

“This is worse than we feared,” Moros said.
“Much worse,” Oizys agreed. “If a mortal of your calibre runs out of worries… the balance of the universe is at risk.”
“We’re here to help you,” Amechania said kindly. “We’ll find your missing worries.”

Norman clasped his hands. “Truly?”
“We swear it on Olympus,” Oizys said, dramatically raising her arms. “We shall restore your anxieties to their rightful place.”

Moros leaned in. “Just… brace yourself. Whatever stole your worries…”
He paused for effect. “…may already be coming for your fears.”

Norman gasped.
“Should I worry about that?”
“Oh heavens yes,” Moros said. “I would start immediately.”

Norman , ushered the Gods into the living room as he closed his front door he noticed his neighbour from across the road, nice chap Michael O’Donnell, talking animatedly with a sharply dressed man in suspiciously shiny brogues, he waved in what normally he would have worried was not a cheerful enough wave, but today … nothing not a twinge of anxiety.

He apologizing three times for the mess (there wasn’t any), twice for the potential of mess (unlikely), and once for the concept of mess in general (they assured him they’d seen worse Oizys mentioned Pandora’s bedroom).

The gods settled onto his sofa and chairs. The sofa creaked ominously as Moros sat on it.

“Oh dear,” Norman muttered. “It’s never made that noise before. Do you think it’s breaking? Collapsing? Imploding?”

“It’s just sitting,” Moros said, though with the tone of a man who wouldn’t rule out imminent furniture-based disaster.

Amechania perched on the edge of an armchair like a sparrow expecting a cat. “We need to determine when the disappearance occurred. When was the last time you saw your worries?”

“Last night,” Norman said. “I updated The List at 11:17 p.m. precisely. I remember because I added a note about possibly having closed the back door with too much enthusiasm.

Oizys leaned forward, fingers steepled. “Excellent. And the moment you woke it was empty.”

Norman nodded.

Moros crossed his arms. “This suggests interference. External, unnatural and probably malicious. Possibly apocalyptic.”

Norman paled. “Apocalyptic? As in… end of the world?!”

“No, no,” Moros said thoughtfully. “Not that apocalyptic. More like… a mild apocalypse. A small ‘a.’ Maybe just the end of Wednesdays as we know them.”

Oizys rolled her eyes. “What Moros means is: someone may have stole your worries or they just wandered off, they do that sometimes. We must look for signs.”

She snapped her fingers. A scroll appeared in a puff of dark, slightly citrus-scented smoke. “A checklist,” she said. Norman’s heart fluttered. Lists. He trusted lists.

Amechania read from the top. “First question: Did you recently throw anything away that you shouldn’t have? Items often contain residual anxiety.”

Norman gasped. “Yesterday I cleared a spam email promising to ‘Remove all your worries with one click!!!’ I thought it was a scam!”

The three gods exchanged a horrified look.

“Norman,” Oizys whispered, “that was no ordinary spam.”

“It was a trap,” Moros said. “A temptation. A siren call.”

“It had three exclamation marks,” Amechania added gravely. “No mortal should resist that kind of punctuation.”

Norman wrung his hands. “Did I… click it?”

Oizys placed a cold, gloomy hand on his shoulder. “You must search deep into your memory. Recall your actions. Think back to the moment you opened that email.”

Norman shut his eyes. “I… hovered over it. I hovered for a long time. But then I deleted it. I was proud of myself!”

Amechania frowned. “Deleting it may have activated a failsafe.”

Moros nodded. “The ‘Oh, so you’re not worried about spam and phishing?’ protocol.”

“Known as the Calmness Penalty,” Oizys added.

Norman nearly fainted. “So by trying not to worry… I triggered a catastrophe?”

All three gods answered at once:

“Yes.”
“Possibly.”
“Oh absolutely.”

Norman collapsed into his chair. “What do we do?”

Moros walked to the window and stared out dramatically. “We must track your worries. Whatever caused this to happen is dangerous, bold, and almost certainly overconfident.”

Oizys flicked her fingers, conjuring a spectral map formed of smoke and sighs. “Your worries form a unique emotional signature. If they were devoured, we will smell misery. If hoarded, we will sense tension. If converted to something else…” She paused. “Well. Let’s not consider that possibility yet.”

“What could they be converted into?” Norman asked.

Amechania whispered, “Confidence.”

Norman screamed and held his head in his hands.

Moros clapped his hands over Norman’s ears. “Careful! Mortals can only handle so many plot twists before noon.”

Oizys drew a circle on the map. “There. Your worries are not gone. They have been centralized. Stored. Gathered in one place.”

Norman leaned over the map. “Where is that?”

The smoke swirled, condensed, and formed a glowing point.

The gods leaned close.
Norman leaned closer.
The point pulsed ominously.

“It’s…” Oizys whispered.

They all squinted.

“…your garden shed.”

Norman blinked. “My shed? But I haven’t cleaned it since 2022. That was ” .. he searched his inner list … “Number 7 on The List”

Moros gave a slow, grim nod. “Precisely.”

Amechania shivered. “Whatever lurks in there now… is feeding on your old anxieties.”

Oizys rose. “Norman Pricklethorn. Grab your coat.”

“Why?”

“We’re going to .. “ he paused, Norman thought he was a little over dramatic ” … the shed.”
From somewhere they heard a small orchestra go “Dum dum DUMMMMMMMM!”

Norman swallowed hard. “Should I worry?”

Oizys smiled faintly. “You’re starting to sound like yourself again.”

Norman put on his coat , which, as Amechania observed with interest, did look rather confident and stepped outside with the gods in tow.

Across the street, Michael O’Donnell had now moved on to pacing, waving his arms and pointing at his car, as the sharply dressed man in shiny brogues nodded along with the practised patience of someone used to difficult customers. Norman waved mainly out of habit.

“Should I wave again?” Norman whispered. “Was the first one too brief? Too enthusiastic? Too….”

But the moment he reached for the familiar spiral of social anxiety… nothing.
No twinge.
No flutter.
Just a calm void where the panic used to be.

It was deeply unsettling.

Oizys tutted sympathetically. “We’ll get you fixed in no time.”

They reached the garden gate, which emitted a tortured creeaak when Norman opened it.

Amechania jumped. “Was… was that the shed? Or… the gate?”

“The gate,” Norman said. “But it does often sound like it’s plotting something.”

Moros gave the hinge a hard, suspicious look. “We’ll deal with you later.”

They advanced across the lawn. A chilly wind picked up, the kind that only blows when something ill-advised is about to happen. The shed sat at the far end of the garden like a small, lopsided crypt, leaning slightly, as if trying to escape its own contents.

Oizys lifted her hand. “Do you feel that?”
The air shimmered. Norman could hear a faint humming?
No, not humming, it was fretting.
The shed was fretting.

Norman swallowed. “That doesn’t sound healthy.”

“Indeed,” Moros murmured. “Sheds should not emote.”

Amechania clung to his sleeve. “It’s worse than I feared. Something inside is… anxious.”

Oizys nodded grimly. “Your anxieties are inside, all right. Decades  worth.  Pressurised. Concentrated. When you lost them they’ve fused into a single entity and went to the place that was number 7 on your list.”

Norman blinked. “A single… what?”

Before anyone could answer, the shed door rattled. Once. Twice. Then burst open.

A cloud of shimmering, jittery energy poured into the garden like a swarm of caffeine-infused bees. It pulsed, jittered, twitched a living mass of pure, weaponised nervousness.

Norman stared, open-mouthed.
Oizys gasped.
Amechania squeaked.
Moros muttered triumphantly, “I knew it!”

The creature if “creature” was even the word that described it,  floated forward, vibrating at a frequency only dogs or extremely anxious auditors faced with a policy failure could hear.

“What is that?” Norman whispered.

Oizys answered softly, reverently:

“Your worry.”

Amechania corrected, “All your worries.”

Moros nodded gravely. “Behold: the Anxietron. Formed from every trembling thought you’ve ever had. Every sleepless night. Every ‘what if’ that never found a home.”

Norman took a step forward. He wasn’t sure why. The creature quivered eagerly at his approach, like an abandoned puppy made of dread.

“It… likes you,” Amechania said.

“Of course it does,” Oizys added. “You created it. Fed it. Nurtured it.”

“It’s basically family,” Moros said.

The Anxietron surged closer, hovering inches from Norman’s face.

Norman raised a hand. “Hello?”

The Anxietron responded with an enthusiastic full-body tremble that shook a nearby flowerpot off its stand.

Norman looked back at the gods. “What do I do?”

Oizys clasped her hands. “You must reclaim it.”

“How?”

Moros cleared his throat. “You must worry. Harder than you’ve ever worried before. Enough to pull it back into yourself.”

Amechania nodded. “Worry like the world depends on it.”

Norman’s eyes widened. “But I have… nothing to worry about.”

The gods exchanged a tense look.

“Then we’ll help,” Oizys said. “Quickly — think of something stressful.”

Amechania offered, “What if you left the stove on?”

“Or made a mistake in your taxes?” Moros suggested.

Oizys snapped her fingers. “What if your neighbour’s friend in the shiny brogues is here to complain about your hedges?”

Norman felt… something. A tiny flicker.
A spark.
A micro-anxiety.

The Anxietron pulsed expectantly.

Then, suddenly from across the road a familiar voice called out:

“Norman! Did you mean to leave your bin out on recycling day?”

Norman’s entire body convulsed.

The Anxietron shrieked with delight.

Oizys grinned. “Oh, yes. That’ll do nicely.”

Before Norman could respond, the Anxietron lunged not maliciously, but with the overenthusiastic energy of an excitable fog bank.

It wrapped around him like a vibrating duvet.

Norman staggered backward, arms windmilling. “Oh! Oh dear! It’s… it’s quite tingly! Like a static shock but with intentions!”

“Good!” Oizys called. “Your worry-flux is reactivating!”

Amechania bit her nails. “Or it’s consuming him. Hard to say yet.”

“Both are perfectly normal outcomes,” Moros added reassuringly, which was not at all reassuring.

The Anxietron pulsed, rippled, and then to Norman’s horror began trying to pour itself into him via his ears.

“Is this supposed to… mffh … feel like I’m being filled with fizzy dread?” Norman sputtered, slapping at the cloud like someone trying to bat away aggressive glitter.

“Yes!” Oizys said.

“No!” Amechania yelped.

“Possibly!” Moros shrugged.

The Anxietron trembled with impatient eagerness. Norman tried to summon a proper panic spiral something classic, something robust but the calm emptiness inside him was still too vast.

“Oh no,” he whispered. “I can’t hold the worry. There’s too much of it.”

The Anxietron responded by squeezing tighter, as if trying to reassure him through the medium of anxious compression.

Across the road, Michael O’Donnell continued shouting about bins and cars and shiny-brogue men, blissfully unaware that a man was currently being emotionally mugged by his own stress.

Norman forced himself to close his eyes.

“Think, Norman. You were once the champion of catastrophizing. You worried about whether umbrellas judged you when you closed them too forcibly. You worried you weren’t watering your plants enough even the plastic ones. You CAN do this.”

He inhaled deeply, conjuring the memory of an all-time-classic anxiety:

“What if,” he whispered, trembling, “what if the Wi-Fi goes out… Mid Windows 11 update?”

The gods gasped.

The Anxietron let out a delighted, shimmering screech.

Norman felt something, a trickle of dread, a warm, familiar tension returning to the edges of his mind.

“Yes!” Oizys cried. “YES! That’s it!”

But then, quite suddenly, the Anxietron stiffened.

It froze.

Shivered.

Then slowly turned, if a cloud of concentrated neurosis can be said to turn anywhere, toward the hedge along Norman’s garden.

The hedge rustled.

Once.

Twice.

Then a shadow stepped out.

A tall, thin man in an immaculate grey suit. Mirror-polished brogues. Crisp white shirt. Sunglasses dark enough to reflect Norman’s startled face back at him.

The shiny-brogues man from across the street.

Except now, up close, he didn’t look quite… human.

Oizys hissed. “Oh no.”

Moros took a step back. “It’s him.”

Amechania whimpered. “Not now…”

Norman blinked. “Who?”

The man smiled a perfect, corporate smile.
Cold.
Empty.
Professionally menacing.

“Good morning, Mr. Pricklethorn,” he said smoothly.
“I see you’ve located your… emotional asset  .. we are in the process of repossessing it”

Norman blinked. “My what?”

The stranger clasped his hands behind his back.

“I’m here,” he said, “on behalf of the Department of Unproductive Feelings,  the DUF are understaffed at the minute after the outbreak of roundabout painting in Cheltnam and I am filling in for Nigel and I am a little late for the repossession”

He adjusted his tie.

“And I’m afraid your worries are now several months in arrears.”

The man sighed with the weariness of someone who had already been disappointed by today.
“Anyway … I am here as the duly appointed representative of the Department of Unproductive Feelings, Enforcement Division. We’ve had reports of an unregistered Emotional Accumulation in this vicinity and we are here to repossess it”

Moros groaned. “Oh no. Not them.”

Amechania hid behind Norman. “They audited me last year.”

The well shod man flipped open his parchment clipboard. It crackled ominously.

“Mr Pricklethorn, it appears you have accrued … ” he squinted, “…a backlog of… oh dear oh dear oh dear… forty-seven years of unprocessed anxieties. That places you in violation of Emotional Tax Code 14B, subsection ‘Chronic Internalisation.’”

Norman stared at him, appalled.
“I didn’t mean to collect them.”

“That’s what they all say,” the man replied, making a tick on his parchment that sounded far too judgmental. “Per regulations, all unclaimed anxieties must be repossessed and redistributed among the general population.”

He had in his hand a sack labelled COMMUNITY DREAD FUND.

The Anxietron let out a horrified whine.

Oizys stepped forward. “You can’t take his worries. He needs them.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “Needs them? These are extremely overdue. Honestly, most mortals would have burst into flames from the emotional pressure. Frankly, he’s lucky we’re only here for repossession.”

Norman swallowed. “Isn’t there… some kind of appeal process?”

The DUF agent sighed, the sigh of bureaucrats who lived for someone asking that.

A second scroll was produced. “Form W-11: Petition for Temporary Retention of Personal Existential Despair. You may file it, but I should warn you, approval requires demonstrating that your anxieties are contributing meaningfully to society.”

Norman blinked.
“But… they’re just… my worries.”

The man nodded sympathetically. “And we respect that. But under Emotional Taxation Law, personal dread must yield either productivity, creative output, or portable guilt. Otherwise, it’s classified as Hoarded Malaise.” .. he pointed at the Anxietron …  “that is definitely hoarding.”

The Anxietron let out a guilt-laden shiver and tried to get back in the shed.

Oizys leaned toward Norman. “Negotiate. You can do this.”

“I..I can?”

“Of course,” Moros said. “No one is better at catastrophising likely outcomes.”

Norman took a deep breath. “Okay. Let me just… ask. What’s the current Emotional Debt Rate?”

The collector perked up bureaucrats love a man who knows the lingo.
“Well, given the cost-of-living crisis, governmental austerity policies and the recent shortage of premium-grade angst outside of the Reform Parties Immigration policies, we’re charging 3.7% Compounded Uncertainty.”

Norman frowned. “That seems high.”

“It was 4.2% last quarter.”

“But these anxieties weren’t making trouble,” Norman argued. “They were stored safely. Contained. My shed is up to code.”

Amechania muttered, “Debatable.”

The collector looked uneasy.

Finally, he said,
“Tell you what. If you can demonstrate a healthy, sustainable worrying pattern enough to stabilise the Anxietron without allowing a Category Five Spiral I can issue a provisional waiver. I am feeling particularly good about the world today”

“A… demonstration of productive worrying ?” Norman echoed.

Oizys smiled brightly. “We believe in you.”

The collector readied his clipboard.

The gods stepped aside.

The Anxietron hovered expectantly.

Norman inhaled.

And for the first time in his life, he worried…on purpose.

Norman closed his eyes.

He needed a worry. Something potent. Something classic. Something only he could produce.

He searched the dusty filing cabinet of his mind… and found it.

“What if,” he whispered, “I didn’t iron… my socks?”

Oizys gasped. Amechania nearly fainted. Even Moros clutched his chest.

Norman continued, voice trembling:
“My freshly laundered socks. And my underpants. What if someone at work does a… random underwear inspection?”

The DUF agent froze mid-scribble.

“That,” the agent murmured, “is highly non-standard.”

Encouraged, Norman dug deeper.

“And what if…” he gulped…” they change the toilet paper in the executive bathrooms?
From four-ply to one-ply?”

Amechania shrieked. “No! Not the downgrade!”

Norman nodded grimly.
“Yes. One-ply. And what if oh heavens what if it doesn’t pass the two-finger wipe stress test?”

A stunned silence fell.

Even the wind held its breath.

Then: vrrrrrrrrrmmm—!

The Anxietron surged forward, tendrils of existential Fear-Of-Missing-Out stretching toward Norman’s ears like overexcited anxiety-vines.

The DUF agent removed his glasses. “By the gods… that is textbook catastrophic projection.”

He reached into his suit, pulled out a heavy rubber stamp, and thunked it onto the W-11 form.
A glowing bureaucratic sigil flared.

“Extension granted,” he declared. “Three years. But Mr Pricklethorn….” he raised a stern finger “ … you must maintain your worries at the industry-standard volume. No hoarding. No neglect. And no more emotional pressure cookers in sheds.”

Norman nodded solemnly. “I’ll… try my best.”

“Try harder,” the agent said, then vanished in a puff of auditor steam, which smelled faintly of over brewed coffee and dread.

And that was that.

Oizys threw her arms around Norman.
“You did it!”

Amechania bounced on her toes. “Your worrycraft is magnificent!”

Moros nodded approvingly. “A healthy, responsible level of neurosis. Very sustainable.”

The Anxietron, thrumming happily, wrapped around Norman like a loyal, jittery pet. Then, with a soft whoomph, it dissolved into a thousand tiny sparkles of dread and reabsorbed straight back into him.

Norman wobbled slightly.
“Oh. There it is. Anxiety… restored.”

The gods cheered and marched him triumphantly back toward the house.

Inside, the familiar scrap of paper lay on the kitchen table.

The List

He picked it up.

It was full again, gloriously, reassuringly, overwhelmingly full. Tasks and worries and what-ifs and definitely-nots and maybe-laters.

Norman smiled.

A deep, relieved breath left his lungs.

“All back to normal.”

Outside, across the road, Michael O’Donnell had found a fresh reason to shout at his bins and strangely the man from number 23 was on the receiving end of some professional finger wagging. He could worry about that, he made a note on The List, and for the first time that day, Norman felt a pleasant, manageable flutter of concern.

The world was right again.

And Norman Pricklethorn, amateur but undeniably talented worrier, finally had something to worry about.