Box.

Two days ago, Jeff gathered the courage of 17 years to tell someone he's gay. She was a friend of ten good years. Good except for the part where the closet felt like the bars of a prison. She asked him if he felt certain things that she did, and there, Jeff believed, he finally broke out of it.

Yesterday, she died in a car crash.

He brooded, that night, after crying for razor-sharp hours. Exhausted, he went to sleep without knowing.

He dreams of being in a small box, edged with rusting iron, with walls made of meat and veins. A dozen bloodshot eyes were on the floor, where most were open and some were blinking. Jeff tried hard to avoid getting his paws on them, but poked a few and they squealed like old rats. There was something carved into the ceiling of the box, but he knew little of what it meant.

Dream-things being dream-things, he touched the wall, and saw his fingers sink into it. Jeff pushed his whole pawhand, and it went through. His body followed, and as his blue lupine eyes went past the barrier, he began groping in the dark. He felt a membrane, rubbery and thin, and poked through it.

He saw the inside of another box that looked exactly like the one before, except there was a tail and a pawfoot jutting out of the opposite wall. "Hey, wait!" He moved forward, and the tail went deeper into the wall. Jeff paused in thought, then flicked his tail. The thing on the wall moved in synchrony.

"You've gotta be kidding." Jeff was moving himself further into the box when he felt something cold and narrow circling his waist, just a bit beyond the boundary of the box. Very soon, the cold turned into a sting, then into the searing pain of an eviscerating slice.

Jeff woke up screaming and ventilating. His inner ears were flushed red. Sleepily, he sat up on his bed, rubbed the sleep from his weary eyes, and stayed silent for many minutes.

7:30

It is today. Gaining some control over his faculties, Jeff tells himself it was a dream. He stood up, and walked to the bathroom door. After he opened it, he stayed motionless and squinted. "Oh God, no..."

He moved himself forward, slightly, and as his snout passed the frame of the door, his eyes slid to the edge to see a snout emerge from his bedroom doorway.

"NO!"

-----

Short story is (c) Me.