The cage door has no lock. I know this because I checked it a thousand times, running my fingers over the seam where the iron kisses the air. It is not rusted shut. It is not welded. It simply waits . And so do I.
Instinct unleashed. Kind nightmares. You are both the cage and the thing that gnaws through it. And somehow, impossibly, that is how you stay human. instinct unleashed kind nightmares
I dream I am running. No—I dream I am chasing . And the thing I chase turns out to be my own spine, unspooling like a tape measure across a dark field. “You measured this wrong,” I say to no one. “You always do.” The cage door has no lock
They call it instinct—that low, humming wire strung between the ribs. Not the roar. Not the fang. Something quieter. Something worse. It is not welded
These are the kind nightmares. The ones that tuck you in before they drown you. The ones that smile with your mother’s mouth and say, “You’ve always wanted to know what happens next.”
At three a.m., the leash becomes a suggestion. Not a restraint—a ribbon. And the thing beneath the floorboards stops pretending to be the furnace. It remembers it has teeth. Not for chewing. For tasting the shape of consequence.