Jack in a Box/Devil in a Cage

By - J.R. Harrington

1. Jackal

The sound of claws tapping on broken concrete, not minding the cracks. An abandoned city, your very own territory. You don’t know why the humans left—you cannot read the myriad of missing posters stapled to telephone poles. You prowl the night alone, searching for opportunity.

Sometimes you feel as though you built this place, that it’s yours alone. The stray cats hiss at you as you pass, dogs howl from inside houses they’re trapped in—you don’t free them, that’s competition. Pigeons coo you to sleep in the mornings, in the apartment with the broken window you rest in.

Eating old trash, chewing on cigarette butts for a buzz. There’s nothing like you in this place, no-one to feed you scraps of meat. Still, you stay, waiting for the day you run out of places to dine and have to start killing cats and rats and pigeons.

You never got along well with the other jackals; they were all trickier beasts than you. Trickier beasts that held grudges. As a pup you fought with one of your siblings—the injuries he sustained plague him to this day.

To most jackals, that might be a crowning achievement. One less competitor to worry about. It only made you burn with guilt. You do not search for a mate, certain you would only hurt them, only ruin them like you did your brother.

The stars are visible with the city smog gone, and you gaze at them nightly. So out of reach, they feel comfortable to desire. Some nights you forget to scavenge, instead sitting and looking up. For a loveless jackal, you think about love a lot.

One night a sleek black hound begins to follow you, eating the scraps you leave. It sits outside your apartment in the morning, and chases away the hissing cats. You aren’t sure why this dog doesn’t chase you, you’re so much smaller than it, but it only follows leisurely.

For many nights, it draws closer slowly. You start to expect it, start to think that it’s lonely. How did it get out of its house? How did it find you? You’re too feral to speak it’s language, but it’s tail wags when you leave a little more food for it.

You bat at it with a paw, it flops down like it wants to play, tail wagging. And so you dance. Both of you are gentle with your teeth, careful never to draw blood—until you nip his ear too hard, and he yips and starts back.

Not knowing what to do, you run back to your apartment. Guilt is a thicket of brambles around your heart, piercing and inescapable. But the next night your hound is back at his post, sitting tall as always. You nudge him with your nose and investigate his ear. There’s only a tiny scab, nothing serious, but it still plagues you.

You hunt down a bird and share it with him by way of apology. He stares at you, docile and different. His collar is ragged, but clearly marks him as somebody’s pet. You can’t imagine accepting a life where you were subject to the whims of a bigger creature than you. What would happen if his human came back for him? You would be alone again, starry-eyed jackal bearing the weight of guilt.

Now you walk side by side with the hound, and let it sleep in your den. In all but species, the hound is your mate. He defends you when a cat takes a run at you, he helps sniff out food. You try not to fear hurting him, but you always do. He reassures you, licking your pelt clean gently at dawn.

Still, you know that he is tame, and you are feral. You could never fit perfectly together, no matter how it seems so. You know one day you will hurt him beyond repair, and lose him. But that day only comes when you lie down for the last time, wasting away.

You don’t get up in the night, and your hound howls his grief before laying down at your side and waiting for his own death to come knocking.

2. Soldier

Righteous man, avenging the fallen—and only making more fall. Gritted jaw, unable to stop moving—shark in the water. Every day of the year, a soldier has passed. Is this your time? Field-stripped cigarette butts, the butt of a rifle settled into your shoulder.

Nightmares where the men you’ve killed come back to haunt you. Men like you, only following orders. Troops mowed down, bloodsoaked hands. The smell follows you like a butcher. Even home, you can never escape the odor of death, permeating the air around you.

Distant gaze, flinching at any loud noise—car doors slamming, cabinets clattering. Anything can transform into a gunshot or shelling, everything becomes terrifying. You wake in the night, soaked in sweat.

You know exactly what’s wrong with humanity—the war whispers secrets of avarice in your ears, you see the madness in those career soldiers, rising the ranks, and wonder if their tinnitus is telling them anything at all. It’s death or gory glory, and you can’t stop choosing the latter.

Falling in love with the medic who tends to you, wondering why they would ever want to help a killer, a soldier. He tells you you’re healing well, you beg him for worse news. You never want to go back to battle, damn your restless soul.

He lets you play pretend for a while, lying that you can’t go back in the field just yet. You tell him what the war has done to you, how it’s made you cold and wild. He tells you how many times he’s started to tend to a soldier only for him to gasp a final breath.

The medic gets to go home soon, and you go back to fighting. Alone in the trenches, deep in the night, you light a cigarette. Soldier, giving away your position—soldier, falling at the hand of another pawn in the game, another man to start awake thinking “what have I done?”

As you choke on the blood staining your abdomen, no-one calls out “medic!” in that frantic fear-laced way they always do—and you become another battle-field ghost, another death for the counter; nothing special at all.

3. Father’s Son

Gritted jaw, you couldn’t say why you’re so angry. Tension headaches everyday, abusive music blaring in the basement as you strut on the treadmill—feet pounding rubber. You find your fists punching the air, violent movement until you’re left panting. Hating yourself and hating others, letting your pain fester and spoil.

Unable to forgive yourself for any transgressions, unable to forgive him for making you this way. A soldier fighting a war against himself, violent urges, claw marks on your arms. Hiding scars with long-sleeves, sweating in the sun.

Sharp teeth cutting into your gums, always chewing your lips and biting your tongue. Sharp tone ruined by a stutter, the beast inside you ridiculed. It only makes you angrier with every mistake you make—why won’t the words cooperate?

Trapped inside your own mind, pushed down rage for years—it becomes a restlessness that can only be appeased with violent dancing in the night, tumbling into bed with someone who doesn’t mind your need to consume or destroy everything you touch.

Drumming along to rock music, thudding fisted hands against your thighs. Angry scars laid out when you’re bare, snapping teeth at anyone who dares try fixing you. You’re unfixable, untameable—the other boys tell you how you wear your face in a sort of feral way, you smirk and say “I am a bit feral.”

Breakable boy, cracks showing no matter how you hide in that wrath. Fragile, delicate, oh so volatile. You’re an unstable element, always angsting over something or other. Miserable on the phone with a friend, shouting into the receiver.

Shards of a broken mirror sit on your bedroom floor, waiting to cut into your skin. You consider eating them, autocannibalism. When you look in the glass you want to pull out your eyes to never see that face again.

In bed at night you shake and cry, thinking such painful things, marking each of your sins like blood on your skin. Worst of all, the thought “I am my father’s son.”

Imprisoned in that house with him, trapped with his voice in your head. Impulsive actions, fatal flaw—one day you’ll die from it, certainly. Your friends chastise you for your idiotic stunts; you just pull more, until one day—SNAP, something’s broken that isn’t meant to break.

4. Jack in a Box/Devil in a cage

Flighty soul, you can feel it trying to escape from your chest. Violent little thing, you’d swear it wants you dead. Restless, relentless. An angel reaches out to rub the spot at your sternum where it aches, you know you don’t deserve that blessing.

You plucked the feathers from that angel’s wings so it couldn’t fly, it put you in a cage for years. Not revenge but self-preservation. Now it is kind to you out of spite, the only form of violence it knows. It lies to you, saying you’re good, apologizing for trapping you just as you beg forgiveness for hurting it.

Are you a devil, or just a jack-in-a-box? Is it an angel, or just a frightened child? Does it make any difference at all? You are a man who cannot let go of past mistakes, you are a mistake waiting to be made.

In the night you find the highest point in the neighborhood and write down everything you see before sparking up and dumbing yourself down. You make jokes through text messages and smile—just a tad predatory—when boys call you cute.

These days you walk around with a mini composition notebook and observe the world. You carefully sketch small things you see in ballpoint ink, marking down mostly decay. Mushrooms, drying black-eyed susans, roadkill. On the ground you find an old chain; with a safety-pin you make a necklace, ever the opportunist.

When you crawl back to your cage you remember the despair, and the angel tries to soothe you, and the boy in your phone reminds you how to heal—you remind yourself not to love him, certain it could never end well. You tell him you’ve a secret, and he begs to know—you beg for the strength not to tell him your hidden affections.

You write letters in a psych ward notebook and scowl, you look up at the stars and growl. You’re repressed to the point of pain, pushing past the anger and struggling to be something

more, something greater. Teaching yourself to create instead of destroy, spending hours toiling at the keys, pounding out a melody.

Taking pictures of the moon to send to the boy every night, the way it lights up the clouds covering it, the silver circle in the sky. You tell him how you’ve always preferred the stars, the way they tell their stories. He tells you he likes them too, it feels like he’s saying he likes you—he shouldn’t.

Feeding your memories to the night, letting them soak in the dark sky before returning to you more painful than ever. Better to be miserable than to feel nothing at all. Some days you’re happy, temporary joys, scattered in the sunshine. You feel better in the forest than anywhere else, sitting by that stream drawing things on the opposite shore.

Most of the time you’re dour, bitter little man. You live in a frown, wearing black to blend into the darkness. Each step is a stomp, you make the earth tremble. Noticed even when you’d prefer to be ignored, adored when you deserve to be hated. Cruel words you’ve said turn around in your head—you think you may be the most pathetic creature you’ve ever seen.

A villain in your own story, vile and cruel. Unable to accept that you’re only a man, the same as any other—devil on one shoulder, angel on the other. Corrupt and incorruptible, kind and unkind. A complicated mess, brain in overdrive trying to villainize.