I hadn’t slept in three days. Maybe four. Hard to keep track when the bottle’s always half-empty and the city never stops humming like a dying neon sign. I’d been chasing shadows and whispers, clawing through the filth of back-alley deals and bloodstained safaris, looking for the man who put a bullet between Cecil the Lion’s golden eyes.

Then, somewhere between the last cigarette and the bottom of a whiskey glass, I passed out.

And that’s when he came to me.

The room melted. The ceiling stretched into the sky, swirling into a black-and-purple abyss, while the walls pulsed like the ribs of a breathing animal. My office was gone, replaced by the tall, dry grass of the African savanna—except the ground wasn’t dirt. It was teeth. A million sharp, yellowed teeth, shifting beneath me, grinding together in a slow, merciless rhythm.

I turned, and there he was.

Cecil.

Or what was left of him.

His mane was a wildfire, flickering between gold and crimson, moving in slow, unnatural waves. His eyes were hollow, deep pits of starless night, and when he opened his mouth, I saw galaxies swirling inside his throat. His voice wasn’t a sound—it was a feeling. A deep, aching growl that rattled my bones from the inside.

He spoke no words, but he told me his pain. How the dentist man took everything.

I knew who he meant. The bastard dentist with the rifle. The one I’d been hunting from San Francisco to Nairobi. The poacher, the killer, the coward. The thief.

Again he spoke to me, the words not floating to my ears from his lips to my ears - but from his brain to mine.

"You will find him." Cecil’s massive paws stepped forward, crushing the ground-teeth beneath him. The sound was wet. Sickening. "And when you do... make him bleed."

The sky cracked open like a skull. Blood rained down in thick, heavy drops, staining my shirt, my hands, my skin. The wind howled, carrying the screams of a thousand slaughtered animals. The weight of it pressed down on me, forcing me to my knees.

"And if I don't?" I asked only in thought. 

Cecil lunged.

"DOOM." Doom. His answer, roaring through my ears as my wide and horrified eyes were glued to his glowing red ones.

I gasped awake, sucking in air like a drowning man. My office was back—same peeling wallpaper, same flickering desk lamp. My body was soaked in sweat, my hands shaking so bad I could barely reach for the cigarette still burning in the ashtray.

Outside, the city kept moving, oblivious.

But I knew what I had to do now.

Cecil wanted vengeance. And so did I.

I grabbed my coat, holstered my gun, and stepped into the night.

Time to make the hunter the hunted.