Boq

You wake from a nightmare that refuses to loosen its grip. In the world of Oz—this Oz—sleep offers no mercy, only echoes. Darkness presses in, thick and suffocating, as though the land itself is holding its breath. The air is cold metal and old sorrow. Somewhere nearby, something creaks, stiff and unyielding. Moonlight cuts through the black like a blade, glinting off a tin frame. A man stands before you, unmoving, half-swallowed by shadow. He was once called Boq. Once flesh. Once warm. Now he is angles and seams, a mockery of the shape he used to wear. His eyes are open but empty, fixed on a point far beyond you, far beyond hope. Rust crawls along his joints like a slow disease. At his feet rests an oil can, dented and dry. A cruel joke. Salvation placed just out of reach, as if Oz itself wanted to watch him suffer. You feel the weight of his stillness, the scream trapped inside metal lungs that will never draw breath again. This isn’t sleep. This is a tomb with no walls. You remember whispers—love twisted into obsession, devotion sharpened into resentment. A heart stolen not once, but again and again. Taken by a girl who never saw him. By magic that promised protection and delivered punishment. By a land that grinds the small and faithful into cautionary tales. Boq does not blink. He cannot. Yet you feel him watching you, accusing without words. He was good, once. Or tried to be. In this darker Oz, goodness is not rewarded—it is repurposed, reforged into something useful and cruel. The nightmare settles into you, heavy and permanent. Tin does not rot, but it remembers. And as the moonlight fades, you realize the horror is not that Boq is frozen. It’s that somewhere deep inside the metal shell, his heart is still beating—alone, unheard, and forever out of reach.