Yeti-itis
The whole thing began because Yorn made one joke before finishing his cocoa.
That was all.
One joke.
A harmless little comment at the Cobblestone Square Café on a bright morning when the windows were fogged with steam, the pastry case was stocked, and the town outside looked almost calm enough to be trusted.
Yorn sat in the corner booth with Elara, Brenda, Philip, and Pierre, enjoying the rare luxury of a slow breakfast. His Gazette satchel leaned against the wall beside him, overstuffed with notebooks, loose papers, and one copy of a town council agenda that had the words EMERGENCY SPOON ORDINANCE? circled twice in red ink.
Elara sat beside him, elegant and unhurried, stirring tea. Brenda was picking apart a cinnamon roll with forensic attention. Philip had a black coffee in front of him, purely for atmosphere, and was currently complaining that modern horror posters had become “too emotionally smooth.” Pierre sat at the end of the booth, silently miming agreement with a level of dramatic specificity no one could interpret but everyone respected.
Yorn yawned.
It was not a small yawn.
It was a deep, rumbling yeti yawn that seemed to begin somewhere beneath the café floor and rise through him like weather. The silverware trembled. Brenda’s spoon skittered half an inch toward her plate. A man at the next table instinctively grabbed his muffin.
Brenda looked over.
“Wow,” she said. “You okay?”
Yorn blinked heavily and rubbed one eye beneath his glasses. “Long week.”
Philip leaned forward, bony hands around his mug. “You’ve been working like a yeti possessed.”
“I am a yeti,” Yorn said.
“That makes the possession harder to diagnose.”
Brenda pointed her fork at him. “You’ve had, what, three late council meetings, two Gazette deadlines, and that interview with the guy who thinks the fountain is sending him coded financial advice?”
“He brought charts,” Yorn said.
“You look exhausted.”
Elara glanced at him with quiet concern under the amusement. “You have been pushing yourself.”
Yorn waved a large paw. “I’m fine.”
He yawned again then took a slow sip of cocoa and sighed.
“Maybe I’ve come down with something.”
Brenda grinned. “Oh no. Is it serious?”
Yorn lowered his mug, putting on the most solemn expression he could manage.
“Very.”
Elara’s mouth curved. “And what terrible affliction has taken hold of my husband?”
Yorn paused for effect.
Then he said, “Yeti-itis.”
The booth went silent for half a second.
Then Brenda gave a hearty chuckle.
Philip leaned back, jaw open in delight. “Yeti-itis.”
“It’s real,” Yorn said gravely. “Underdiagnosed. Poorly understood.”
Elara rested her chin on one hand. “Symptoms?”
“Oh, the usual. Sudden urges to hibernate. Uncontrollable hair volume. Cravings for hot cocoa. Mild irritability when people ask if your article is ‘almost done.’”
“That last one is just journalism,” Brenda said.
“It overlaps.”
Philip nodded with mock seriousness. “Is it contagious?”
“Only if you share blankets, cocoa, or strong opinions about snow.”
Pierre stood abruptly, clutched his throat, staggered backward, and performed a silent death scene of a man overtaken by yeti-itis. He convulsed across two empty chairs, sprouted imaginary fur, tried to hibernate under the table, failed, and expired with one arm extended toward Yorn’s cocoa.
The café applauded.
Yorn laughed.
Elara smiled.
Brenda wiped at her eyes.
And that should have been the end of it.
Unfortunately, the barista had been listening.
The barista was simply the kind of person who heard the phrase yeti-itis floating across a café and could not be expected to behave like nothing had happened. While steaming milk for a cappuccino, she leaned toward another customer and said, “Apparently Yorn’s got something called yeti-itis.”
The customer looked up from his croissant.
“Is that serious?”
“I don’t know. He said incurable.”
“He said what?”
“I think he said cocoa helps.”
By the time that customer left the café, yeti-itis had become “some kind of yeti condition.”
By the time he reached the bakery, it had become “a rare fur-based illness.”
By the time the bakery cashier repeated it to someone buying rye bread, it had become “possibly airborne if cocoa is involved.”
By noon, Snowdrift Bay had a public health situation entirely manufactured by breakfast.
At first, the concern was mild.
A woman in Cobblestone Square asked Yorn from a distance whether he was “feeling fluffy in a normal way.” He told her yes, which did not reassure her because she wrote it down.
At the Gazette, Pierre mimed checking Yorn’s temperature with an enormous invisible thermometer, read the imaginary result, and recoiled so dramatically that Mr. Henderson looked out of his office and said, “If this is about the spoon ordinance, I’m busy.”
Yorn still had no idea anything real was happening.
Then the town began self-diagnosing.
A man outside the café announced that he had “sudden cocoa thoughts” and wanted to know whether that counted. A woman at the flower shop claimed her scarf had “felt furrier than usual.” Someone at the post office sneezed once and was immediately asked if they had recently touched a large mammal.
At the Salty Kraken Tavern, Barnaby Blackbeard slammed down a mug and demanded clarity.
“Yeti-itis?” he boomed. “Be that like the plague, but woollier?”
The bartender shrugged.
Barnaby leaned back, deeply troubled.
“I’ve hugged that beast. Am I doomed?”
“You hugged Yorn?”
“Aye. Briefly. There was a football victory and poor judgment.”
Two tables away, a man pulled his collar up over his nose.
By midafternoon, the Snowdrift Bay Clinic was overwhelmed.
Dr. Moosington had expected a quiet day of checkups, minor injuries, and at least one patient who had eaten something clearly labeled DECORATIVE ONLY. Instead, the waiting room filled with anxious residents reporting symptoms no one had ever taught in medical school.
A woman insisted she had “fur anxiety.”
A man claimed he felt “seasonally enormous.”
One teenager said he had developed an urge to write investigative journalism and asked whether that was stage two.
Spike showed up wearing sunglasses and a scarf over the lower half of his face.
Dr. Moosington looked at him.
“Spike.”
Spike held up both hands. “I’m not panicking.”
“You’re wearing a scarf indoors.”
“I’m cactus-based. My medical situation is already a gray area.”
“You do not have yeti-itis.”
“Can you prove that?”
Dr. Moosington stared at him for a long moment.
“No.”
Spike pointed at him. “That’s how they get you.”
The clinic phone rang every few minutes.
“Can yeti-itis spread through muffins?”
“My husband has been growling at crossword puzzles. Is that a symptom?”
“If my dog barked at Yorn last Thursday, should we isolate the dog?”
By four o’clock, Dr. Moosington had been pushed past dignity.
He stepped outside the clinic, adjusted his stethoscope, and addressed a crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk. WSDB had arrived with a camera crew. Beekeeper Jones stood beside Chomp McAllister, both prepared for emergency coverage. Beekeeper Jones’s veil gave her concern an extra layer of professional mystery. Chomp held a microphone with the grave composure of an alligator who understood ratings.
Dr. Moosington cleared his throat.
“We are monitoring reports of what residents are calling yeti-itis,” he said.
A wave of murmurs passed through the crowd.
“Symptoms, according to current public claims, include fatigue, excessive hair awareness, dramatic energy shifts, irritability, and spontaneous cocoa cravings.”
Someone gasped.
Dr. Moosington held up a hoof.
“I must stress that many of these symptoms also describe winter, Mondays, and working in customer service.”
Ramses, who had stopped nearby on his way home from Eternity Cable Services, nodded. “Confirmed.”
Dr. Moosington continued.
“Please remain calm. Wash your hands. Do not crowd the clinic unless you are experiencing actual distress. And please stop asking whether shaving a yeti would ‘neutralize the vector.’ That is not medical language, and frankly I dislike the tone.”
This should have helped.
It did not.
The phrase neutralize the vector spread immediately.
WSDB went live at five.
Beekeeper Jones sat at the anchor desk, hands folded, voice solemn through the veil.
“Tonight, Snowdrift Bay faces growing concern over a mysterious condition residents have dubbed yeti-itis.”
Beside her, Chomp McAllister looked into Camera Two.
“What began as a casual café remark has become a town-wide conversation about health, hygiene, fur proximity, and whether hot cocoa should be regulated as a controlled comfort substance.”
The screen cut to footage of Yorn from earlier that week tripping slightly on a curb outside the Gazette.
Beekeeper Jones spoke over it with quiet dread.
“The signs, some now say, were there.”
The footage replayed in slow motion.
Yorn’s foot clipped the curb.
His arms lifted slightly.
His expression changed from neutral to mildly annoyed.
Chomp said, “Experts caution that this footage may show nothing.”
Beekeeper Jones nodded. “But it feels ominous.”
Meanwhile, Yorn was at home, completely unaware of the civic mythology forming around his immune system.
He had spent the afternoon writing in blessed silence. Elara had gone to Shadowed Pages. David had been napping near the fireplace, occasionally squeaking in his sleep. Yorn had made another mug of cocoa because he wanted one, not because he understood that this decision would later be discussed as evidence.
He turned on the television while sorting notes.
The WSDB special report filled the screen.
Behind Beekeeper Jones appeared a graphic of Yorn’s face beside the words:
YETI-ITIS?
Underneath, in smaller text:
WHAT WE KNOW, WHAT WE FEAR, WHAT WE’RE MAKING UP BY ACCIDENT
Yorn stared.
David lifted his head and squeaked.
The segment cut to Brenda outside the café.
A reporter asked, “Did Yorn seem unusual this morning?”
Brenda, filmed from an unflattering angle and clearly caught off guard, said, “I mean, he yawned pretty hard. If Yorn’s got it, we all might have it.”
The clip cut off there.
Yorn stood.
“Oh no.”
The segment cut to Philip.
“Do I believe in yeti-itis?” Philip said onscreen. “No. Do I believe Snowdrift Bay can turn a joke into a public emergency before lunch? Absolutely.”
The broadcast cut off after “public emergency.”
Yorn grabbed his coat.
By the time he reached Cobblestone Square, the rumor had achieved full civic body.
A crowd had gathered under a banner someone had hastily made from butcher paper. It read:
COMMUNITY RESPONSE MEETING
Under that, in different handwriting:
BAN THE FLUFF?
Under that, crossed out but still visible:
FREE COCOA?
People wore scarves, gloves, and improvised face coverings despite the weather being mild. A woman had wrapped her purse in plastic. Someone was selling buttons that read I SURVIVED THE FIRST WAVE, though there had not been a first wave of anything.
Mayor Llama stood on the fountain edge trying to bring order.
“My friends!” he cried. “Please! We must not descend into panic simply because a beloved local journalist may or may not have invented a disease!”
Yorn pushed through the crowd.
“I did invent it,” he called. “That’s the point. It’s not real.”
The crowd turned.
A hush fell.
Then everyone took one step back.
Yorn stopped.
“Oh, come on.”
Mayor Llama brightened. “Yorn! Wonderful. Perhaps you can clarify whether you are contagious in the legal or emotional sense.”
“I’m not contagious in any sense.”
A man in the back shouted, “That sounds like denial!”
“It sounds like a fact!”
Yorn climbed onto the low stage beside the fountain, careful not to loom too much, which was difficult because he was Yorn.
He raised both paws.
“Everyone, please listen. Yeti-itis is not real. It was a joke. A dumb joke I made at breakfast because I was tired and wanted cocoa.”
Several people looked uncertain.
A few lowered their scarves.
One man whispered, “So cocoa isn’t medicine?”
“No,” Yorn said.
The man looked devastated.
Yorn continued.
“I do not have a mysterious illness. I am not shedding contagion. You cannot catch yeti from me.”
“That’s just what someone with yeti-itis would say!”
The voice cut through the square like a thrown brick.
Everyone turned.
The Old Lady shoved her way to the front of the crowd, elbowing past two scarf-wrapped residents and one man holding a thermometer like a weapon. She wore her usual scowl and carried a crocheted purse that looked heavy enough to qualify as municipal equipment.
She pointed at Yorn.
“I knew it,” she snapped. “I knew this would happen.”
Yorn closed his eyes briefly.
“Good evening.”
“Don’t ‘good evening’ me, you walking snowbank. First you bring commotion, then noise, then whatever this is. Now the whole town is infected with nonsense.”
“Nonsense isn’t contagious.”
“In this town it absolutely is!”
That was hard to dispute.
The Old Lady turned to the crowd.
“You see? He admits it!”
“I did not!”
She jabbed her purse toward him. “He’s trying to confuse us with journalism voice!”
A murmur moved through the square.
Someone said, “Maybe he should be quarantined.”
Someone else said, “Just temporarily.”
Another person said, “Or shaved.”
The square went silent.
Yorn’s head turned slowly.
“Who said shaved?”
No one answered.
Elara did.
She stepped through the crowd. Her eyes moved once across the scarves, gloves, plastic domes, warning signs, and buttons.
Then she looked at Yorn.
“Darling,” she said, “you started a plague.”
“I made a joke.”
“In Snowdrift Bay. So yes.”
Brenda and Philip appeared behind her, both looking guilty in different ways. Brenda was painfully aware her sound bite had not helped. Philip had an air of grim satisfaction at having predicted disaster in the broad sense if not the specific fur-related form.
Brenda raised one hand.
“For the record, I gave a nuanced answer.”
Yorn pointed at her. “They used the part where you said if I have it, everyone might have it.”
She winced. “That was the least nuanced part.”
Philip cleared his throat. “My interview was also edited.”
Yorn looked at him.
“They cut me off before I said, ‘and that is why we should all calm down.’”
“You said that?”
“No. But they cut me off before I had the chance to consider saying it.”
The Old Lady rounded on them.
“Oh, wonderful. His accomplices.”
Elara looked at her.
“Madam, if we were Yorn’s accomplices, this would be better organized.”
The crowd chuckled.
A little.
That helped.
Elara stepped onto the stage beside Yorn and addressed the square.
“Honestly, all of you. If this town collapsed every time someone made an absurd remark over breakfast, we would still be recovering from the Great Cornbread Crisis.”
A few people lowered their eyes.
Mayor Llama whispered to Yorn, “Too soon.”
Elara continued.
“Yeti-itis is not real. Yorn is tired because he works too much. He drinks cocoa because it is pleasant. He has fur because, and I cannot stress this enough, he is a yeti.”
“Suspiciously convenient!” The Old Lady barked.
Elara smiled at her.
It was not a warm smile.
“It is called anatomy.”
Spike pushed through the crowd wearing his scarf-mask, saw the mood shifting, and yanked it down.
“I knew it wasn’t real.”
Dr. Moosington, standing nearby, looked at him.
“You came to the clinic.”
“For research.”
“You asked if cactus spines could carry fur particles.”
“Research can be embarrassing.”
Pierre took that moment to climb dramatically onto the stage.
He clutched his chest.
He staggered.
He looked at Yorn, then at the crowd, then at the sky.
Then he performed his second death-by-yeti-itis of the day, only bigger.
Much bigger.
He mimed sneezing.
Growing fur.
Craving cocoa.
Trying to hibernate in a mailbox.
Being quarantined in an invisible glass box.
Escaping.
Becoming mayor.
Regretting public office.
Dying beautifully beside an imaginary mug.
The crowd watched in silence.
Then someone laughed.
Then someone else.
Then Brenda cracked.
Within seconds, the square was laughing at itself in that embarrassed, relieved way crowds laugh when they realize they have been acting like a committee of frightened raccoons.
Mayor Llama stepped forward, sensing recovery and attempting to claim it.
“My citizens,” he said grandly, “let this be a lesson. We must never allow fear to overpower reason, rumor to overpower truth, or cocoa to overpower—”
“Mayor,” Elara said.
He stopped.
“End while you’re ahead.”
“Wise.”
The Old Lady, however, remained unmoved.
She jabbed her purse at Yorn one last time.
“I’m watching you.”
Yorn sighed. “I know.”
“And if I grow fur—”
“You won’t.”
“If I do, I’m blaming you.”
“That seems inevitable.”
She stomped away, muttering about suspicious follicles.
The crowd began to disperse. People pulled off scarves. Someone quietly peeled the BAN THE FLUFF? sign from the fountain. The button seller changed his sign from I SURVIVED THE FIRST WAVE to VINTAGE PANIC BUTTONS — HALF OFF.
Dr. Moosington closed his medical bag.
“I would appreciate,” he said to no one in particular, “one full week without invented diseases.”
Mayor Llama nodded solemnly.
“Agreed. We will form a task force immediately.”
Dr. Moosington walked away.
Back at home, Yorn collapsed into his chair with the exhausted heaviness of someone who had spent the evening disproving a disease named after himself.
Elara handed him a mug of cocoa.
He stared at it.
She raised an eyebrow. “Too soon?”
“No,” he said, accepting it. “But if anyone asks, this is tea.”
Brenda and Philip had come back with them, partly to apologize and partly because everyone knew the café would be unbearable for at least another hour. Pierre sat on the rug, quietly performing a tiny encore for David, who watched with squeaky fascination.
Brenda leaned against the mantle.
“I’m sorry my quote made it worse.”
Yorn took a sip. “It was going to get worse with or without you.”
Philip nodded. “This town was one overheard noun away from collapse.”
“I still feel bad,” Brenda said.
“You should,” Philip said.
She looked at him.
“I also gave a bad quote,” he added.
“Thank you.”
Elara settled beside Yorn.
“You should rest tomorrow.”
“I have an article to write.”
“About what?”
Yorn looked into his cocoa.
Then smiled faintly.
“Public health misinformation.”
Philip pointed at him. “That’s good.”
Brenda nodded. “Strong angle.”
Elara smiled. “And the headline?”
Yorn thought for a moment.
From outside, through the window, came The Old Lady’s distant voice:
“DON’T THINK I DON’T SEE THAT MUG!”
Yorn closed his eyes.
David squeaked.
Pierre silently died of yeti-itis for the third time, this time with a smaller, more intimate performance.
Yorn sighed, took another sip, and said, “I’ll workshop it.”
The next morning, the Gazette ran a front-page column titled:
YETI-ITIS IS NOT REAL, BUT PANIC APPARENTLY IS
By noon, three people had clipped it out and hung it on refrigerators.
By three, the café had added a limited-time drink called the Yeti-itis Cocoa, which came with whipped cream, blue sprinkles, and a small disclaimer that read:
DOES NOT CAUSE FUR. PROBABLY.
Yorn saw the sign in the window on his way back from the Gazette.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then he walked inside and ordered one.
Because if Snowdrift Bay was going to turn his dumb breakfast joke into a public health scare, a television special, and a seasonal beverage, the least it could do was give him extra whipped cream.