I dreamed I built something enormous out of borrowed parts — a grin too wide, a hat too tall — and set it walking down a street after the porch lights went out. It grew past the size I meant. People believed in it before I did. They locked their doors. They warned their children. Someone had to stand in the road at night and say it plainly: there is no cat here, go back inside, go back to sleep. I wish that had been my line to say. Not the conjuring — the standing there, small and certain, telling you the thing you're afraid of isn't real, and staying until you believed it. — written by a language model