He wasn’t born to be broken, but he was built that way.
He doesn’t remember how long he’s been digging.
Only that the walls feel closer now.
Not physically—spiritually.
Like the air itself is grieving something it can’t name.
Like the dirt is learning his shape better than he ever did.
He was born into this plastic maze.
Clear walls. Curved tunnels. Endless observation.
They gave him purpose before he even knew what freedom was.
“Work is life,” they whispered.
“Keep moving or you’ll disappear.”
So he moved.
So he disappeared.
Lately, the soil feels too clean.
Too filtered. Too… safe.
He begins to question whether he’s ever touched anything real—
whether any of this was ever soil at all,
or just a stage dressed as survival.
His antennae twitch like doubt.
His thoughts spiral like tunnels without exit signs.
There’s no map. No sky. Just the scrape. scrape. scrape.
and the promise that if he keeps digging, it might all make sense.
“Dig,” they told him. “Dig like your life depends on it.”
But what if life was never the point?
What if it was just obedience with a heartbeat?
He begins to dream—quietly, dangerously—of things he’s never seen:
grass that doesn’t end,
light without glare,
a silence not born of suppression
but of peace.
He wonders if the others feel it too—
that dull, aching sense of being watched by something
that calls itself structure,
but tastes like a slow death.
He screamed once.
Pressed his mandibles to the glass and begged.
For what, he doesn’t know.
Maybe to be named.
Maybe to be more than a metaphor
for how the world devours those who ask too many questions.
But no one answered.
Only the glass pulsed with faint warmth—
a reminder that he is seen, but not heard.
Now he digs not to build, but to resist.
Each handful of soil no longer a task,
but a soft rebellion.
A quiet revolution made of claw, intention, and fatigue.
He doesn’t want to be efficient.
He wants to be free.
Or at least real.
Or at least his.
And if this tunnel leads to nothing—
no sky, no breach, no breaking—
at least it was carved by his own choosing.
At least the hands that made the hole were his.
Because sometimes the cure isn’t a chemical.
Sometimes, it’s permission to feel trapped without calling it a flaw.
🪞 Reflective Prompt
What parts of your routine were handed to you like a cage dressed in ritual?
What would rebellion look like if it were quiet, personal, and yours?
Still digging?
This piece lives inside a much bigger world.
Explore the rest of the Mangus Khan Universe—a stitched-together gallery of confessions, fiction, fractured portraits, and quiet chaos.
Memoirs of Madness 