In the belly of the city’s corpse, A car rumbles like a sick heartbeat. He sits behind the wheel, Head crowned with gold antlers, Eyes unblinking beneath the mask— A vision pulled from the edge of sleep, Where the nightmare makes sense. No one knows if he’s driving or being driven. The streets are slush and ruin, Frozen veins running to nowhere, Lit by the ghost-flare of buildings That hold their breath against the end. The world outside reflects him: Shattered glass and bent steel. The horns gleam like a terrible joke, Some god of the lost, A king with no kingdom, A beast with nowhere to run. And you, staring back, See a bit of yourself— The stranger behind the glass, The passenger who never arrived. In the mirror, the antlers blaze, And for a second, you swear They point the way forward.