Archive of Our Own

Toby Rogers sat on the pavement beside the school bus stop. The rain had picked up between the morning and late afternoon, shifting from light showers to heavy rain that soaked through his jacket and dripped off his hair. He leaned into the road trying to see if the bus was nearby. Cars raced past him, puddles splashed in his face and he didn't flinch. His bag beside him and wasn't waterproof but perhaps something would be salvageable later. No bus came. His fingers twitched involuntarily and a minute later he whistled.

The sun started to set. Toby pulled his phone out of his pocket and contemplated asking Lyra to pick him up. On one hand, a late bus was the perfect excuse to avoid going home, where Ron Rogers, his dad, would yell at him for not bothering to find shelter because he got the perfect carpet wet, never mind that there wasn't a shelter nearby. His Mum would fuss over him with a towel before crying about how worried she was that something happened to her 'little girl.'

He rang Lyra. She picked up on the fifth ring and said in a sleep heavy voice, "What do you need? Shouldn't you be at the house?"

Toby's shoulders shrugged and his fingers twitched, one after another in a random cycle. "Bus is late. I'm wet. I'm crashing at yours."

"Urgh, no you're not. My place is shit right now, I don't want you here."

"It's always shit. Just come and pick me up. I'll crash on your sofa if your boyfriend is round."

"No. Cause then I've gotta drop you back and I'm not going back there unless it's an emergency you hear me. Figure it out on your own for once." Then his phone beeped and the call had ended. He called her again. She hung up immediately.

He checks the road again, still no bus. So he stands up and decides to walk the hour home. He shoved his phone in his pocket and started the long walk home. The bus sped down the road, five minutes after he started walking. Toby threw his middle finger up when he noticed and muttered, "Fuck," under his breath.

The Rogers family lived in the suburbs, with orderly trees and the same front door as their neighbours. His feet slapped against the concrete that permeated the area and that around it. He peeked into every house with open windows and lights turned on - everyone lived such boring lives, watching the game show of the week, all of them, like clockwork. Toby cut through the park that was connected to the parallel streets, barren as more and more equipment was stripped out of safety concerns. In the trees, not yet trimmed of branches kids could climb, Toby saw a man standing. He slowed down, squinting. Toby’s perspective was screwed because the man's head was too close to the height of the tree and it wasn’t due to proximity. The man staggered after him, struggling despite his apparent height. Toby picked up the pace, speed-walking until he was round the corner. The bottom of his trousers got caked in mud because no one had cut the grass since Summer the year before. When he got onto his road, he left footprints on the road from the mud.

Toby reached his house and knocked on the door. No one answered so he kicked, twice for good measure. The lock jingled, the door opened enough for an eye to peep round the corner. The metal deadbolt clattered more before the door swung open and Toby was pulled into a hug by his Mum. She squeezed him while he stood limply in her embrace. Hugging her back would be right but before he could kick his brain into gear to remember that, she was cupping his cheek. She patted around his face, relaxing the more she did and she smiled breathlessly. He stood still, restraining the urge to twitch his fingers.

"I was so worried when you didn't come home." She said, "I called Lyra and she said you weren't with her." She ran her hand through his hair, "Oh you're freezing. How long were you out for? This isn't healthy. You really should know this." She stood back and surveyed the rest of him before pulling his jacket off, "What did you do? Walk home? In this weather? What am I going to do with you Tessa?"

Toby tensed at the name. His shoulders ticced suddenly and the force of it threw him off balance, sending him staggering away from his Mum. Her eyes softened but she backed away, waiting for him. Toby jerked his shoulders again, then his head - banging it against the wall - before the urge finally receded back to his fingers. When his head had ticced, his Mum had turned away and scurried back into the kitchen without another word.

Typical, she would run off as soon as he stopped being her good daughter. His neck jerked, less than before. He dropped his bag on the floor.

Drip

Drop

Their carpet was ruined. Pity, it was expensive, apparently because it was organic wool. Really they should have brought a carpet that wouldn't be ruined by the rain but the Rogers weren't a family to listen to reason.

Drip

Drop.

Ron wandered into the entrance of the hall. He looked his son up and down in silence. Toby stared back, waiting with a blank face. He found his teeth digging into his cheek, gnawing against the flesh and scars. His mouth filled with blood. Whoops? He whistled again, and spat the blood all over the carpet.

"You'd better clean that up before it dries. Or-" Ron spat, further ruining the carpet. His voice rose, "Or there will be consequences. I can't have you thinking you own the place." He looked down at the puddle developing where Toby stood, "Clean that up as well!"

Then he stumbled back out of the entrance into the hole he had crawled out of. Good riddance. Toby picked his bag back up, and hauled it to his room. It had left a large stain, a distinct dark patch. On the journey, he had to stop several times because his fingers kept twitching and dropping the bag, which would topple down the stairs with an individual wet thunk for every step, and rinse and repeat until he had a clean run where at least one baby was on the handle at times.

Toby's room was a mess. Socks strewn about the floor and stains that had sunk into the carpet - which was stiff rather than soft like elsewhere in the house. Magazines with naked women were strawn across the room, courtesy of Lyra, but all close enough to be kicked out of sight or buried under the layers of clothes in case someone happened and the wall beside his bed had two fist shaped holes and a head shaped dent. It was the most honest place left in the house, since Lyra had left.

He flopped onto the bed, pulled his phone out of his pocket and googled, "What do you do when you're cold?" The top result was about dialling 911 but he was sure it wasn't that severe. He scrolled down, laughing at some suggestions like sitting in front of a fireplace. Some people were truly idiots, who had a fireplace conveniently on hand.

He took a warm shower, gurgled the water straight from the tap to wash out the blood in his mouth and stepped out. Toby didn't feel any better, his head was still wet and he knew a bruise would develop on his knees from where he slipped mid tic. If anything went wrong, his Mum and Ron could sort it out. He had tried, it wouldn't be his fault if he died. He had even told them about it this time.

His books were ruined. Toby fell back onto his bed, drew the covers over himself and fell asleep.

Toby got another detention for not doing his homework. He mimed a yawn and then pointed to what had been his homework, "I don't know what I was expected to do about."

"Don't get smart with me. We have a zero tolerance policy here and I've given you more than enough..." His teacher droned on but Toby paid no mind. A detention was good news, another excuse to get the late bus home and another excuse to not have to see his Mum or Ron more than necessary. "And I expect it done by tomorrow. This is your last warning before I'm taking this to the principal."

"What do you want me to do?" Toby yelled, pointing at the slush of paper that he'd thrown on his teacher's desk.

"Figure it out, this is your mess Toby. You can clean it up."

Detention took place in a quiet hall where every last one of Toby's tics reverberated around the hall so everyone could hear them. The student to his side glared in his direction. He didn't even pull out the mush that he'd been carrying around in his bag all day because at some point it had been crushed by his other notes and textbooks and ripped in half. He crossed his arms on the pop up desk and figured a nap would be the best way to spend the hour.

 Unfortunate circumstances meant the school’s hockey club finished at the same time as detention. As Toby walked towards the exit, he found himself pressed between two bodies. Cody and Owen  Sweat dripped down their arms, infecting Toby through contact with their gross bodily functions. Cody wrapped his arm around Toby’s shoulders, pulling him in close.

“Whatcha doin’ Tessie, my girl!” Cody asked, laughing as if he had told a joke, squeezing his shoulder.

“Nothing.” Toby replied, “Minding my own business.”

“Prolly in detention. Honestly, I don’t know why they don’t suspend her already. Would make all our lives easier.” Owen sneered.

Cody laughed, trailing his hand down Toby’s shoulder and toying with his shirt collar, “But then what other freaks would give us a challenge like this one.” His eyes lingered on Toby, looking down at his chest but back up when he saw nothing. “Imagine the shock on the team when I come back saying who I made crack”

“Most of the team will think your a fag.”

“I am right here.” Toby said, pushing them away. His hand twitched by his side.

“Yeah, I know.” Cody said. “So what do you think?” He grabbed Toby’s wrist, restricting the twitching and keeping him from going too far. Owen wandered in front of them, posed to catch Toby if he tried to run. Toby pulled Cody’s arm closer to his body and the boy smirked.

Cody screamed. Toby pulled away, blood staining his lips and on his teeth. Teeth marks lied on Cody’s wrist. “Don’t FUCKING touch me.” Toby screamed, baring his blood stained teeth. “Or I swear, I swear, i swear-“ his voice trembled as he continued to speak. Cody stumbled back and Owen stepped to the wall. Toby hurried down the halls. He slammed the exit doors as he left.

Lyra's beaten up third hand car was parked in the bus lane when Toby stepped out of school, churning its engine, coked in mud and the second letter in the number plate had been scratched off. He wiped his mouth and licked around his lips. He slid into the car without checking if it was her, because it was such junk that anyone sane would have replaced it, but not Lyra. She grinned at him and slammed her fist on the radio to stop it playing the ear bleeding pop music.

"You were listening to that shit?" Toby asked.

"It's just what the radio was playing. Now I have you twat to distract me, right."

 "Nothing fucking interesting has happened since you left me in the rain yesterday."

She pulled out of her parking spot and began to speed down the road. Her greasy overgrown bangs covered her eyes so she took both hands off the wheel to push them back, curling them back to make the look seem purposeful and failing. Once that important task had been managed she said, "So, did the bus come yesterday?"

"After I started walking." Lyra slapped her hand against the steering wheel and barked out a laugh. Toby found himself laughing back, he continued "I was so wet when I got home. I think Ron blew a fuse." Then they started laughing even louder.

"Yeah? And how mad was he when you just got back up?"

"Fucking weird part is, he didn't do anything. Well, he told me to clean up but that's all. All that crap from before and just 'clean up' as if I would. He honestly should have just got the beating over with.

The car went silent for thirty seconds but those thirty seconds were long enough for Toby to shift in his seat, cracking his neck and clicking his fingers relentlessly until his tics were nearly louder than the engine. Finally, after pulling onto a highway, Lyra calmly responded, "Bet you're glad I got enough shit together to have you round tonight."

"What, your boyfriend out?"

"Believe it or not, I cleaned."

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Toby said. He watched himself smile in the wing mirror and a sense of wrongness struck him in the chest. Smiling looked unnatural on him, his teeth too big despite being perfectly normal sized and his face a mirror of plastic dolls but somehow still skin, muscles and skull. Lyra’s idea of cleaning was closer to a child's idea, shoving everything into the corner or empty cupboard space. ‘Organised chaos’ she called it instead of a pig sty, but still Toby preferred it to the smell of bleach that permeated the Roger’s house. He looked out the window at the roads upon roads; he still smiled. It didn’t look real in the mirror. An uncanny twin stuck in an alternative realm felt like a more rational explanation for his reflection than the truth. He schooled his expression. The mirror went back to how it should have been the entire time.

“So, how’s school?” Lyra asked. Her eyes flicked towards him briefly before going back to the road.

“School.”

“That’s barely an answer.”

“I don’t get why you're asking. What do you want me to say?”

“Am I not allowed to ask after my baby brother?”

“Not when you’re asking me about school and things you’ve never given a shit about before.”

“Well I’m giving a shit now.”

“Why?” Toby shouted.

That got Lyra to shut up. She didn’t speak again for the rest of the drive, except to look at him with a pitying expression. Toby pretended he didn’t see it.

Lyra had, honest to god, actually cleaned her house. There weren’t any bottles on the floor, the glass from long old broken bottles had been vacuumed and the rotting food had been cleared from the fridge. Toby moved about the home with a new ease, not having to tip toe across the carpet. He opened the cupboard to get a plate for some of the pop tarts Lyra somehow always had on her. The plates were stacked on bowls which were stacked on a pile of cutlery. “You said you cleaned.” Toby teased.

“I said I cleaned, not that I tidied.” Lyra responded. She reached into the cupboard and brought out a can of beer. “Do you want one”?

“Nah. It’ll make the tics worse. Unless you’ve got anything stronger.” The discomfort of his tics wasn’t worth feeling tipsy. Toby could make himself feel tipsy – the world shifting about him, the same dreamy sense and floating up and away from his body – just by trying. For example, when Ron was shouting or used to hit Lyra, he found the sensation came naturally. His neck jerked violently just at the thought of those memories. No, if Toby was going to drink he needed something strong.

Lyra eyed a box near her feet, tucked in the corner between six packs; she bit her lip before stating, “No. I’m trying to drink less.” She cracked open her can and wandered into the living room. Toby followed her like a lost puppy.

They threw on the latest slasher movie that was available to rent on DVD. Toby laid on one end of the sofa, dangling over the edge watching as the latest dumb blonde ran away from the killer. They were always so stupid he thought, if he met a monster no one knew about yet, he’d accept his fate with grace. Everyone knew that the first victim in a horror story doesn’t survive. The only reason they fight is because a fight means more wounds, more blood, more gore to freak out the young children watching their parents watch it through the door.

“Are those kids still  bothering you?”

“What.” Toby said. Lyra looked at him with furrowed brows. He continued, “You don’t have to be worried about me. I’m probably exaggerating, you know how I get when I’m angry.” At the same time she said, “Those kids who push you around and touch you. God you know what I’m talking about. I’m worried they’re going to do something soon.”

Her words registered. Toby huffed, “What could they even do that would hurt me.” Then he laughed, “It probably wouldn’t be that bad all considering.” He turned back to the screen only to find it paused before the killer came out of the shadows. “Why’s it paused?”

Lyra stared at him. “It’s paused because you have blood on your mouth.”

He licked his fingers and rubbed around his cheeks, grimacing as the saliva dried. “Better?”

“Why do you have blood on your mouth?”

“Those kids you’re soooooo worried about? I bit one of them.”

Then, Toby sat up, leaned over and plucked the remote out of her lap. He clicked play. Lyra tried to speak again so he turned the volume up. She shouted, Toby turned the volume up another notch and ignored her until she turned silent. Finally, he settled back down how was before and grinned as the girl's blood splattered against the floor.

Lyra insisted on driving home because it started to rain when the movie ended. Fucking bitch, she made him walk in the rain last time.

Toby was pulled through the front door by his shirt collar and dragged across the floor. He let his body fall to dead weight. It was easier to be dragged than walking, allowing his sudden tics to run through without restraint. When he was thrown to the ground, allowing Ron to loom over him with a toothy, polished grin, did Toby grit his teeth and think ‘maybe I am slightly fucked.’

“I told you to clean that floor!”

The puddle was still matted from where he came home the day before, and from where hundreds of feet pressed down on it daily in muddy work boots. The colour had returned to normal. The water had dried and left nothing, no stains, no smell. Maybe Ron had finally seen the way the house was trying to break out of the perpetual state of new, or maybe he was looking for an excuse. Toby didn’t care.

The first hit felt like nothing. The second hit felt like nothing but it did make blood trickle down his nose. He grinned up at Ron. “Hit a little harder, maybe I’ll feel it next time.” The goading comment made Ron shift. Toby tried to sit up, but he was knocked back down by air – nope, Ron’s fist again, he hadn’t seen it coming. He kept twitching.

Connie rushed into the room, an apron tied around her with pasta sauce spilled down it. “What are you doing?” She shouted. “Get off her!” Ron hesitated. Connie rushed forwards and pulled Toby into her arms. She manoeuvred his body so she could raise his chin and stare at his face. “Her nose! How are we ever going to explain a broken nose to someone?”

“The fucker gets into fights frequently enough. No one will question it.”

“When she’s a respectable adult! To Lyra! Lyra’s never going to accept this!”

“What could she do anything? Bitch was bad as well, she knows it’ll be deserved.”

Toby clicked his tongue and banged his fist against the floor over and over again. Ron looked away from Connie and down at him. “We can’t let this behaviour continue.” He said, calmer.

Connie diverted her eyes and let go of him. She stood up and hesitated at the kitchen door, staring at her daughter who was pushing himself up to fight and her husband. Then she turned the corner and was gone.

Ron waited until she was gone before he grabbed Toby by the hair and pushed him up the stairs, using himself to stop Toby from running outside. Toby hissed as he was pushed by Ron's chest. Hands fell just above his hips once they reached the landing. They dug in, he couldn’t pull out of them. Ron didn’t let go, even when he was elbowed and hit and kicked, a combination of tics Toby didn’t try to hold back and purposeful jabs to try and get out. He could guess what would be upstairs. Very few things effectively punish a kid who can’t feel pain. Ron had tried them all and only one instigated desperation in Toby.

Physical punishments made him laugh, hurting others was unjust and made him worse, locking him in his room made him seek out the excuse to be alone, grounding attempts led to smashed windows and missing kids. But locking him in the closet worked.

Toby shrieked, as he was pushed into Lyra’s unused closet. He stumbled into the back of it and reached out to catch the door with his fingers. Through the slight crack, he stared at Ron, because Ron wouldn’t have the balls to break his son's fingers. Toby could be patient. He could wait with his fingers crushed in the door forever if it meant he’d get out sooner. Ron couldn’t.

Toby felt the static run through his body, the urge to jolt and twitch and tic. He pressed it down, keeping his fingers stock still. The pressure of the static built up. He moved his neck but it didn’t alleviate anything. It built in his arm.

“Fuck.” Toby said as the static finally triggered his nerves. The door slammed shut. His hand went flying towards his face, bashing himself in the skull. Chains rustled, so he could be locked into the closet and all he could do was keep hitting himself in the head, exhausting himself and making everything easier for Ron. Pathetic, Toby’s tics rendered him absolutely pathetic.

Toby’s shoulders pressed against the walls of the closet, rattling the hardboard as the screws holding it together threatened to come undone. He threw himself against the wall, and all his weight gave way to the tiniest slither of light which closed again when he relaxed. His legs could stretch out but crossing them was impossible. The closet was long, thin and short. No matter what angle Toby was thrown in, he could rarely move too far from it. At least, he thought, he was in a corner this time. If time passed like molasses he could curl into a ball, head pressed against one side and his feet at the other, and pretend to fall asleep.

His tics started again. Toby didn’t try to stop them. They shook the closet and he was sure there would be a bump at the back of his head in the morning. They were always worse in manner and amount in the closet, building and building till they crashed and started building again. But they were also better, in some fucked up way because in the closet, no one saw Toby at his weakest because of them.

Between hitting himself, the figure started to become clear – a faint outline caused by Toby’s eyes adjusting to the darkness and the slight light caused by the repetitive tics. He couldn’t make out anything besides the shape of a face. The darkness made his face look like it had been plastered over, no eyes, no mouth, no face. Toby shook his head, this had got to be a new record before he started seeing things. It shouldn’t happen so quickly.

The tall figure curled in a fetal position. It kept its head facing Toby, straight on. Toby shifted about, reaching with his hand to just confirm there was nothing there. And at first, it was just air. His arm straightened out. His fingers met a rough, thin, cottony texture. He spread them about, the surface was smooth and round. Toby pulled his arm away, cradling it towards his chest. The darkness still engulfed his vision. He gasped for air.

He saw it. It’s body shifting, creaking the closet as it crawled closer to Toby. Its long arm reached out, palm spread out. It had long, curly nails.  It cupped Toby’s mouth, nails digging into the sides of his cheek. He tried to scream but it all got muffled around the things hand. It pushed him back, until he was pressed between the wall and the thing's body. The pressure released enough light and it was close for Toby to confirm: his monster had no face.

-

Toby pressed his head against Lyra’s car window. He watched the world pass by, making a point to notice all the horrendous ads plastered across the billboard. “You need help!” He yelled, pointing towards a specific sign they always passed for a therapist. Doctor Marizel had ordered 30 billboards but all on the same motorway. There were slight differences in design but they were all as incredulous as the other. “I wonder if she gets any clients because of these. Maybe they could convince Ron. He’ll be driving to yours, probably to yell at you for money you stole as a teen he’s only just noticed is missing. And he’ll see ‘You Need Help!’ and he’ll stop and go. I do need help. Then Boom, Shoom, Kaboom, Ron’s in therapy and we can be one happy family.”

Lyra howled with laughter, “In your wildest dreams kid.”

Toby didn’t think what he said had been that hilarious but Lyra was drunk, she’d drunk a bottle of wine but spilt some of it. Maybe everything was funny when she was drunk, like how Ron found everything annoying and Toby found everything to be brighter and louder. Or maybe, it was funny because Lyra was out of the house and if things got better once Lyra left, that would mean she was always the problem.

“I don’t think it's your fault.” Toby said, mouth moving with his thoughts like a fucking idiot.

“What’s not my fault?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then whatcha talkin’ ‘bout?”

“I was just saying shit. Don’t mind me.”

She wrapped her arm around his seat and laughed, “You’re my baby bro. It’s my job to care about you.” When Toby pulled away, about to murmur something about not being her baby brother, far from a baby and not much of a brother either, she pinched his cheeks. She had one hand half-hazardly laid against the wheel and had turned to face him, looking at the road from the corner of her eyes.

Lyra almost drove into the wrong turn, that would detour them by fifteen minutes at best. She swerved back into the correct line at the last second, cutting in front of a car just inches behind her. They honked but Lyra just laughed. “Whoo, that was exhilarating.” She said, turning to face Toby. Toby stared at her. He would have quite liked to spend fifteen more minutes in the car, watching the world pass by, as if he had nowhere to return too. She took his lack of response as agreement with her statement. “We should do that again some time. Who needs a theme park when we have the road!”

“Theme parks are safer.”

“Less fun though.”

“You could go to jail.”

“And who's gonna send me to jail? The fun police? It’s basically law to drive a little badly anyways.”

And who was Toby to tell her otherwise. He couldn’t drive, his tics made him too vulnerable to crashing, so he had never bothered to learn the theory outside the basics overheard from adults discussing it. So he shrugged, laughed along.

The rest of the drive was smooth and silent. Lyra pulled back and focused on the road when their laughter tapered off. Toby went back to watching the world go by, as they passed cars and started seeing signs for gas stations and fast food chains rather than lawyers. The service station marked the turning of Lyra’s town to the Roger’s town, where the litter stopped and the cars slowed down to rates that matched the town's fears, because the twenty mile difference had a line, where on one side, people had things to lose.

As they rounded the corner of the station, Lyra slammed her foot on the brakes. Toby was thrown into his seatbelt, which made him look forward to where their car was midway between a traffic light that had just turned red.

“I thought I’d make it, fuck-“ Lyra muttered. She looked behind her, but there was no room for her to reverse back into the designated spot. She started to drive again, speeding up in hopes of making it across the junction.

The cars from the opposite end of the junction started to move. Toby and Lyra were a few metres away from the standard road when one car swerved about to avoid them. Lyra tightened her grip on the wheel. The second car came.

Toby heard the crash before he saw it, and he never felt it. The window smashed, sending glass clattering against the dashboard. There was a bang, from what he’d later find out was from the car, the roaring continuous rolling of tires going nowhere and a high-pitched scream that was cut off after seconds.

He opened his eyes. Their windows were intact. Toby rolled his head across the seat. Lyra laid still in her seat, the airbag inflated around her, glass sticking in odd parts of her body, including her arm and chest. She groaned and winced whenever she tried to move. The door was inverted, jutting into her side.

The road came to a stop. Toby watched as everyone waited for someone to arrive and Toby waited with them. Everything went silent, Lyra stopped moving so much and no one did anything for ever and ever and ever and ever.

Toby woke up in a hospital. The machine next to him beeped, beeped, beeped incessantly. He screwed his eyes shut and turned over to hide the fact he was no longer sleeping. Wires caught against his skin, stretching as far as they could before pulling him taut back to his back. The white light he couldn’t look away from burnt his eyes, shining bright pink when he screwed his eyes shut, thin translucent fucking things that couldn’t do the one job. With no escape from the senses, Toby came back to his body in pieces, antiseptic burnt his nose, his left arm was squeezed by a plastic prison (a cast). There was a needle, or ten, buried under his skin, a faint digging that reminded him of its presence whenever he moved.

After hours, or maybe a minute, a nurse wandered into the halls. She fiddled around with the machines, before stopping to finally look at him. “I’m sorry for any discomfort you’re feeling” She said, in a clipped clinical voice. Toby turned away. “How much do you remember?” Here, her voice turned soft. Goosebumps rose on his skin and he watched her, her wrinkleless dress, her firmly pressed together lips and how she stood stock still, waiting for his response.

“I was in the car, with Lyra, and we crashed.” Something else had happened between Toby waiting and waking up in the hospital, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked. He sat up, and was laid back down by the nurse. “What happened?”

The nurse turned on her heel and left the room, as soon as the pause became too long for her to give a dismissive answer.

It was 10pm. Just after visiting, hours closed at half nine. He wondered if his Mum had come to visit him. If she had sat in the uncomfortable chairs hoping he’d wake up to a familiar face, like they did on TV. He wondered if she had left alone to check on Lyra instead. On one hand, his Mum had made it clear that she didn’t approve of Lyra and as an adult, she needed to get back on the rails before there was support. On the other hand, Toby’s second home was the hospital because of the bumps and bruises from when he was younger. Like an estranged Aunt, he visited it less as he got older and the horror of the lack of pain dissolved into an expectation of responsibility or natural consequences.  But time is relative and home is always a home.

The hospital wing he was in starts to shut down at 1am to give patients time to sleep, evidently the crash wasn’t that bad since he wasn't in the intensive care unit. The lights dimmed, not quite black out dark but enough that if he closed his eyes and buried them deep in the pillow, it would be enough to sleep. Despite the low light and how he had adjusted to the smell of chemicals to the point it was an afterthought, Toby couldn’t sleep.

The crash, he had been in a car crash and even that didn’t make him feel anything. He’d accepted having CIPA, on an intellectual level, he knew that slapping hurt and that ice cold weather made his lips turn blue. These were signs his body was being treated like a slab of meat. A slab of meat is only different from the human body in that it breathes and its organs work, like a system. A slab of meat is allowed to be frozen and slapped because it doesn’t have a system that could be broken. But a clock can be broken, although it’s a system of cogs, because it is not aware it is a system. So is Toby less human, because his body is not aware it is a system that can be broken any second, because it lacks the red blaring alarms, or is he more human because he is aware he is a system but not affected by it, a soul emancipated from the constraints of a human body?

He is still constrained by his body, ergo Toby is not more human. If he is not more human, he must be less human. His mind drifts from there, trying to escape from the truth that is now inescapable. A tiredness pulled at him, enough to make his body heavy and stuck still despite the buzzing in his nerves telling him to tic. 

Toby caught sight of a figure stalking down the halls. He blinked and squinted and it didn't go away. It passed by his final window. No one opened his door so he rested his head back on the pillow and questioned if it was a nurse or if it was a hallucination. The question, in of itself, probably a sign he needed to sleep. He shifted around, positioning his head so he could see the entire room and there was the man from the hallway.

The man had no face. He stood still, in the corner, the fittings of a suit gave away that he was staring directly at Toby. He shivered, thinking back to the closet and the tight walls and how this man had also been there.

“What do you want?” Toby asked.

“I had a boy like you once, before.” It said,

“What happened to him?”

It paused. It lacked the face to express itself like a human, but it adjusted its tie and stood somehow taller.  “He did not understand my nature – not like you. I desire something more complex than hatred and fear. I have found that thing in you.”

“I’m not a fucking thing!”

“You are to me. But, you aren’t special. All humans are.”

Toby pulled the needles out of his skin and stumbled towards the thing, growling, barring his teeth. This thing was dangerous, he knew instinctively, but it couldn’t hurt him. It couldn’t even press damages, because it had broken into his room first. The thing turned its back to Toby and walked out. He hadn’t given Toby a chance.

The static quietened down to the hum of hospital machines. Toby didn’t realise it had got so loud, so loud it left ringing in his ears. How had he been able to hear the thing? He stared at the door and regretted chasing out so quickly; he needed to ask more questions. Toby fell to the ground abruptly. The machine tracing his condition started to beep, aggravating the static in his mind. So he pulled the wire, sent it crashing down beside him, and punched the monitor till glass was in his hand and it was quiet again.

A nurse came by five minutes later. She forced him back to bed, hooked him up, the beeping started again but the static began to fade. “What were you doing?” she asked. Toby tells her about the not-quite-man in his room. “I’ll have someone investigate in the morning.”

A psych came. She listened with a downturned lip, wrote notes, and passed one note to his Mother. When Toby got discharged, he had to go to the shrink.

The shrink, Doctor Patil, offered him a lemon drop when he entered and then introduced herself by saying “You can call me Reena.” Toby stared at her, his fingers twitching and drumming against his chair. She stared at  him for ten seconds before continuing, “Do you want me to explain why I think you’re here today?”

Toby shrugged, “I’m here because a man broke into my hospital room.” He refused to mention that it was faceless, or that it had been in the closet with him or that everything faded around when it was nearby, like he was watching from the wrong side of a static TV. He wouldn’t go on pills. He wouldn’t let them stack up more and more ways that he was wrong. Toby was coping.

Doctor Patil shuffled some of the papers on her desk and hummed in response. “That’s partially why you were referred to here. But your sister died Tessa-“

“Toby.”

“Your sister died Toby. We need to make sure you're doing okay after all that. Where do you want to start? With your sister? With the man in your room?”

Toby shrugged, “I’m doing fine.”

“Then why don’t we talk about your name. Would you prefer to be called Toby?”

Toby didn’t answer that. He skidded his chair across the china floor, making direct eye contact as he let it screech for several seconds. Then he stood up and left the room.

It turns out if Toby won’t ever be taken off Doctor Patil’s list of patients until she feels she has done what she can to support him. In the waiting room, Connie placed her hand on his back and explained that to him. Ron laughed, “Just get your stupid ass back in and fucking talk. None of us wanna be here.”  Connie shrunk into herself and pushed him towards her office, for his own good.

Cody slammed Toby against his locker, pressing down at his shoulder, where glass had been removed because of the accident. “I can’t believe they actually let a freak like you back in.” He said. Toby twitched with his full body so Cody released his hold briefly before slamming him back against the locker, watching as Toby’s head banged against it. The entire school stopped and stared but Cody paid no mind to the attention, as he continued, “Was she trying to kill herself? Fuck knows I’d commit a murder suicide if I had a tranny for a sister.”

The crowd laughed. Toby blushed from shame. His twitching increased, neck jerking from side to side, fists punching the locker and tongue clicking over and over. He stared right into Toby’s eye before he went limp against the locker. It helped release some of the tension spilling out into his tics, allowing him to regain control of his body briefly. It was weak but he didn’t have any other choice until Cody released his grip.

He stayed there, gritting his teeth and taking deep breaths. Some people moved on but a crowd was still there, watching. Owen approached, hands in his pockets. “Seriously? Look at Tessie, what’s she gonna do.” He drawled.

Cody reeled back. "I was making she knew we don't want her here." He turned to face Toby as he said, "Just like his sister."

Toby clenched his fists together and punched him, over and over and over until blood was dripping down his nose and he couldn't close his mouth without sending intense aches across his jaw. His breath stuttered as he broke the fist to twitch with his fingers and looked down at his masterpiece. Cody tried to sit back up but Toby scrambled up first and placed his foot on his chest, applying enough pressure to keep him down, ignoring the quiet cracks and how Cody groaned even when he stopped moving. "She didn't fucking kill herself!" Toby yelled, "Don't you dare say that. Her spit was better than you'll ever fucking be you piece of shit." He choked on his words, tears building up in his eyes that he blinked away, then wiped away. "You're no better than the dirt on her shoe."  He looked down at Cody. He looked small, fragile, reduced to the sack of meat he deserved to be treated. Toby spat on him.

"What's your problem?" Owen shouted. Toby looked up, broken from a trance to find the crowd had dispersed. A teacher was heading towards him and Owen had his phone out, angled to capture the entire hallway.

Toby ran out of the hallway, not sparing a second to look behind. He crashed through the doors and stumbled down to the bus stop. He sat down on the pavement, waiting for the hourly bus to come to the stop and take him far away. Cars whizzed by, a few slowed down to stare but continued on their way regardless. The concrete was made up of small pebbles, he could dig them out at the cost of his nails, leave them to become part of the concrete and he'd stick a pebble on his skin instead. He looked up and saw a tall, faceless man in a suit standing across the street. Toby blinked but it didn't vanish.

It approached him and sat down. Static filled Toby's head, drowning out his thoughts. The buzzing sensation was weird, but not overwhelming. The closer it got, the harder it became to parse his own thoughts through the static. The angry thoughts came easily but not the memories accompanying it which made everything a sensation of feeling, something alien to Toby who had come to think himself more as a motion than a human. His body stilled and he looked up towards the creature.

“You’re here.” He said.

“I am. I told you, you would understand.”

“Understand what?”

It was clear the man was referring to something but Toby couldn’t remember what. All he knew was that on some level, he would understand. It was true. The man with no face was pleased, Toby knew this intuitively, through the buzzing in his brain. His tongue felt heavy. “Huh?”

“You’ll know... Soon.”

It stood up. Toby grabbed its suit sleeves. He couldn’t think but he knew, deep in his bones, that he didn’t want the thing to leave.

“Make me proud, won’t you?”

Toby nodded, letting go and standing up alongside the man. He stayed stock still as the man walked away.

Once he was so far gone, Toby exploded into tics, his neck cracking, his fingers twitching, forward, backwards, his arms throwing themselves in any direction. His body moved without him piloting it, forever, for five minutes. Any attempt to get it back under control left him jerking seconds later with far more intensity. And it kept going, and going, and going until Toby was so exhausted he couldn’t move anymore.

He looked up, across the street, but the faceless man wasn’t there, having vanished while he was distracted.

“I feel its eyes on me.” Toby said in therapy. As soon as he said so, dread burrowed down into his gut like a parasite and started eating his courage from the inside out. “Forget I said that.”

Doctor Patil dropped her paper on the desk. “What prompted you to say that?”

“Nothing, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“If someone is hurting you, or something, you should tell me. I’m here to help you Toby. But I can’t unless you let me into your mind.”

His mind wasn’t hers to enter. He wasn’t allowed to let her in. “I don’t want you anywhere near my mind.” Toby stated. She would try and find a way to take the creature away from him, with it the static. It hurt, when Toby tried to think apart from the static that was leftover in his head. Everything was easier, clear cut, when he followed it. “You’re going to mess it up.”

Doctor Patil bit her pen against her desk, eyes drifting away from Toby and back down to her notes – baseless assumptions she would have made because Toby almost never spoke in their bi-weekly sessions. “It’s already a fucking mess. How could I make it worse?”

He snorted. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do want to know.”

“No. You don’t.”

The man, the faceless man, walked into the room. The door opened and shut after him but Doctor Patil didn’t blink. Toby stared at it for a few seconds before he felt the static press at his mind. It wasn’t touching him, it wasn't overwhelming him.

“I think this man you see,” Doctor Patil continued, as if the thing wasn’t in the fucking room with her, likely infringing on her mind as well, “I think he is a manifestation of your guilt. Over Lyra’s death.”

“I’ve only seen him once.” Toby lied, not taking his eyes off the thing. It laughed, ringing in his ears. Doctor Patil made notes, he could see it in the corner of his eyes. He whipped his head to face her and threw himself towards her desk. He could still feel the thing in the room, the static ever present in his mind but silent. He grabbed the neckline of her shirt and pulled her close. She fumbled, trying to get her hands on the emergency button, hidden under the desk. Toby pinned her left hand, which was closest to the emergency button. Her notes spread across the tables, scribbled notes of 'schizophrenia’ and ‘repressed grief’ glaring at his face, all of it wrong. “It’s real. It came into my room, and now it's stalking me. I know it. Don’t you dare write that off if you care about helping me. It’s real. It’s here. It’s always here.”

He let go, stumbling backwards. The thing, whatever it was, purred, rumbled, growled, the static shifted but Toby couldn’t parse through what it meant. Doctor Patil took several deep breaths, clutching her desk but her hand never strayed towards the panic button – good. She opened her mouth, he could see the words forming but all that came out was buzzing, like a wasp was in his ear. His vision blurred, into tiny blocky shapes, then squares, the world lost its colour. Toby’s world became a static TV and he didn’t return to himself a long time after that.

Ron hit Connie because she hadn’t emptied the dishwasher before he had lunch. He backed her against the table and yelled; he spat on her and Connie flinched so it landed on her cheek rather than her mouth. Toby could hear the exact vitriol he said from his seat on the stairs. The beginnings of anger curled in his chest but really, after so many years with Ron, Connie would have expected it. If she didn’t want to get yelled at, the dumb bitch would have emptied the dishwasher in the early morning to ensure everything would be smooth sailing, if Ron came home early.

Connie yelled something back, Toby didn’t hear it, too concerned with listening to the birds tweeting from outside the window. How fucked up was that? That the birds sang while Ron yelled. If anyone cared, then nature would go silent. The world would stop turning for a second in order to give a shit. But instead it kept turning and turning. What was the point in anything?

Ron slapped Connie. Toby could see it from the corner of his eye, based on Ron’s movement. Connie squeaked, pushed past him and ran out of the room. She scrambled up the stairs, not sparing a glance for her son who should have been in her way. Ron huffed and put two slices of bread in the toaster. All the while, Toby stayed where he was on the stairs, watching.

Doctor Patil had said, one of the few times that they spoke, that it was worth paying attention to what was around him right now. It was dangerous for him to think about Lyra because she thought Lyra made the man appear. Toby didn’t want to tell her that the man appeared no matter what he did but he did take her advice to focus on what was around him.

What surrounded Toby was shit. He spent the after school hours he’d previously been at Lyra’s on the stairs. Ron burnt his toast, the smell wafting across the entire house. Or maybe he hadn’t and Toby was having a stroke. God – he wished he was having a stroke. It would be easier, probably, if he was dead.

The house fell still for three minutes as Ron buttered his toast and got out a can of drink. He opened it with a pop! As he wandered to the living room, he saw Toby sat on the stairs and grunted.

“Is that all you know how to make?” Toby called.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“You burnt fucking toast?!”

Ron reached through the banisters, grabbed Toby by his hair and yanked him towards Ron so his face was smushed against the metal pillars. “Don’t use that language with me girl!”

Toby laughed and pulled away from the bannisters, not caring that chunks of his hair were ripped out. “I’ll say whatever fucking shit I want... Cunt.”

Ron placed the plate of burnt toast down on the closest radiator and started to head towards the stairs. He cracked his knuckles and Toby laughed.  “You think that will hurt me?”  Ron stumbled, clenching his knuckles, until they were white knuckled. “I mean really!” Toby continued, “You know it doesn’t hurt. Why do you fucking do it?”

Ron stepped back. He punched his fist into the wall, not even making a dent, then he grabbed his toast from the radiator and wandered off to the living room, where he would sit his useless ass down and watch TV until he got the liquor and then passed out to shit ads and soft porn. It wouldn’t have been a bad evening, even for Toby on the stairs but it left him feeling wound up like a ball. Where was his catharsis? Where was it?

Cheap fabric and leathery skin filled Toby’s mouth as he jumped onto Ron’s back and bit on his shoulder. The man toppled over. The plate shattered, some shards digging into Ron’s round belly and others into his forearms. Toby straddled over him, manoeuvring so he sat on Ron’s back, pinning him down.

“What do you FUCKING get out of this?

“I-“

Toby shoved Ron’s face onto the ceramic. “Shut the fuck up!”

“You asked me a question?”

“And you were going to lie!”  Toby cried, tears leaked from his eyes but he didn’t hiccup or wipe them away. There were much bigger things to focus on. “Tell me the truth!”

“I deserve better.”

“And you think fucking, sending Lyra packing, hitting us, locking me away is what you deserve?”

“I deserve a quiet house without intolerable brats who can do nothing right.”

Toby punched him in the nose to a sickening crack. Blood streamed down Ron’s face and his eyes widened. He kicked Toby off and cupped his nose with his hands in a pathetic mimic of a shield. Toby clambered up and stood over Ron. He spat right on Ron’s face, on the top of his lips. “Let’s be honest with ourselves.” Toby said, calmly, “You deserve so much worse than that.”

He walked up the stairs, towards his room. Ron groaned, swore and banged his fist against the floor but he didn’t chase Toby. On the second floor landing, stood the faceless, slender, man. The static was loud, sudden and welcome. The specific low buzz was easy on his mind. Without a face, Toby had to guess what the Man wanted based on the noise.

“Are you proud?” Toby asked.

The man placed his hand on Toby’s shoulder and led him to his room, “You could do better.”

“Who’re you talking to?” Connie asked. Toby turned around to find her, with a small icepack pressed against her cheek.

“No one,” And it was true, because the Pale Man had vanished, although the hum of static remained.

Connie had told Doctor Patil about well, finding Ron bloodied and bruised and him talking to himself on the landing. She stared at him during their next session, “We need to change strategies.” She said, pushing all the paperwork on her desk away from herself. She’d taken down the cartoon poster about smiling and how things get better. “Because you’re getting worse.”

“I don’t think I’m getting worse.”

She levelled him with a stare. "You are. Normal people don't attack their dads Toby. With the current rate you're escalating, you'll have a record soon and you have to live with that. If you hadn't attacked Ron, you'd be  charged with assault. Do you know how that's going to look to future employers? Future Girlfriends?"

Toby didn't care about women - who were too weak-willed to be worth his attention. He wouldn't live long enough to care about jobs either. The wiggling feeling in his gut said that as long as the faceless man watched him, he wouldn't get a job. Maybe he'd kill himself first. Either way, who would hire a crazy? There was only one end but at least the fighting eased some of the tension. The static, which had become ever present, preened at the thought and his fingers.

"Who's gonna hire me if I'm crazy?"

Doctor Patil sighed, "No Toby. With help, you won't be 'crazy.'" Toby's fingers twitched against the plastic chair.

"So I am crazy?"

"Right now, yes."

His head jerked, cracking his neck, "Do my tics make me crazy?"

"They make you disabled."

“That’s what you call being crazy as well, disabled.”

“There are different types of disability-“

“Doesn’t matter, I’m still crazy in the end.”

“Of course you're crazy.”

“See now you’re seeing reason.”

“But I want you for it.”

“Yep!... What?”

Doctor Patil coughed. Toby jerked his head towards her, blinking rapidly as he refocused his vision. “Toby.” She said in her sad calm voice, “Who were you talking to just then?”

He was about to say you, when Toby spotted it, outside the window: The slender man. He flinched away and gulped as he waited for Doctor Patil to say anything else. She didn’t, just silently handed him a test she had on hand.

Connie gets the call with his results a week later. She knocks on his door to tell him, but she’s weeping. Toby already knows. They’ve labelled him schizophrenic.

Toby Rogers sat on the pavement a long road from home. He curled inwards, protecting his face from the downpour of rain, digging his eyes into his knees until his vision went red. There wasn’t a drain nearby and a large puddle began to form near his feet; the neighbourhood really had shitty designers on it. He had climbed on the last bus from his shittier hometown and took it until he was at the second to last stop – they were less likely to search there than the final stop.

His phone buzzed. He wondered if it was Lyra, promising him sketchy fast food from the place on the second exit of the motorway to their dead grandma’s if she could pick him up. Lyra was dead though. It was Connie, maybe Ron, trying to get to him before they had to call the authorities – probably Connie, Ron would be pleased to find him dead in a ditch. He picked up the phone, Connie. Toby picked it up.

“Hey Mum.” He said,

“Tessie! Where are you? It’s dangerous now it’s dark! And it’s wet! You’re going to catch a cold.”

It wasn’t particularly cold, just wet, but Toby didn’t point that out. “I’m fine. I just need time alone.”

“You can have that, but in your room, please, where I know you’ll be safe.”

“No.” Toby hung up. Connie rang him again and he threw the phone down against the pavement, cracking it against the floor.

“She doesn’t understand.”  Toby looked up to see the Slender Man looming over him. He kept eye contact with the being, staring at the smooth slate where his eyes should have been. It didn’t flicker. It laughed, a purring static hum like a roaring belly. “And I am perfectly real.”

“What do you want?”

It kneeled down and pressed two fingers under Toby’s chin, holding it in place. “I want you.”

Then everything burned.

Seconds later, Toby came back to himself shuddering. His brain scrambled to connect the sensation to a past experience, to categorise it to protect itself. He could feel it working for a minute before the thick layer of static overcame it and swallowed Toby into the normal numbness.

“What was that?”

“You will get answers when you prove yourself.”

Toby pushed himself up from the ground and slammed his fist into the thing's shoulders, over and over. It pressed its hand on his shoulder and pushed him away.

“What do I have to do?” Toby asked.

It ruffled his head, “You’ll know what to do. I’ll see you soon.”

Toby stared at where it had once been.

Toby followed Owen after school. He climbed onto the bus in the midst of the bustling crowd of kids desperate to head home, hanging about a pack behind Owen so he wouldn't notice Toby's new presence on the bus. Toby boarded without issue and he slipped into the seat two rows behind where Owen sat. His eyes burned as they glared at Owen's curly black curls and he wondered if Owen could feel it or if the sensation described was a myth. The palms of his hands were wet with sweat so Toby wiped them down on his trousers; it would ruin his grip otherwise.

As they traveled further into the neighborhood,  the roads got darker and the street uneven, the bus bounced every other second. There were several alleyways peeking out of the high street. Toby turned to try and find the Pale Man so he could ask, was this too easy? Was this a test of his intuition that he was failing? But the Pale Man wasn't there and he hadn't told Toby to try and kill Owen. It just hadn't dissuaded him. Maybe he was crazy like Doctor Patil said. But still, Toby couldn't turn back. He said he would do this so he was going too, for himself, to prove that he could.

Owen climbed off the bus and Toby followed after him. The knife was light in his bag and when he opened his bag to have it on hand, he struggled to find it. He eventually grabbed it, the blade digging into the palm of his hand and leaving droplets of blood behind where he walked. Toby wondered briefly, if Owen tried to take the knife off him, would the supposed sharp stinging sensation scare him off continuing to fight back?

He followed him down the alleyway, inching closer until Toby stepped in a puddle and it splashed at the back of Owen’s leg. He turned around, stared at Toby before he stepped closer, squaring himself up for a fight

"How long have you been following me?" Owen shouted. Toby shuffled his grip from the blade of the knife to the handle. It was slippery with blood, he should have considered that. Owen didn't notice the minute movement, continuing to shout, "What do you want with me? I won't shag a tranny. You know that."

“I’m not here to ‘shag’ you.” Toby said, raising his hand with the knife slowly towards Owen’s chest. He tried to stab it in when Owen noticed and stumbled back, shouting insults. Toby staggered forward from the force behind his stab. Owen abused his loss of balance and wrestled the knife from Toby’s hand, prying each wet finger from the handle. Then he thrust it into Toby.

The knife hit his chest. Owen lacked the force to thrust it in but maybe it had hit a lung. Toby had never paid enough attention in biology class. If it was fatal, a murder suicide wouldn't be the worst way to go. It would still send the message, they should never have fucked with him.

Owen stepped back, staring with his mouth agape as Toby remained standing tall. His face contorted with disgust and disbelief as Toby slowly pulled the knife out from his chest, careful not to further injure himself, and wiped the blood against his pants leg. He stood stock still and accepted when Toby jammed the knife into his throat. There was a second where he seemed to try and move as the pain registered and blood spurted around the wound, onto his shirt and Toby’s face. Then Owen slumped to the ground. Toby knelt down, pulled the knife out and stabbed him again and again, until he was more meat than man, flesh ripped apart from where he had yanked at the knife out, blood staining all his clothes and his face was blank through it all. The entire time, his body felt calm, controlled and as soon as he looked away, the power on his wires fired up again and his neck jolted to the side.

Standing over Owen's body was the Pale Man. Toby looked up at him with wide eyes and hesitantly asked, "Did I do it well?" which made it laugh.

"You're not there yet," it said. before vanishing. And taking Owen's body with it.

The next time Toby opened his eyes, he was in his bed. He pushed himself upright to see he’d lost six hours of time. He creeped down the stairs, stopping every other step to make sure he wouldn’t wake anyone up if he suddenly twitched and fell down the stairs. In the kitchen, he found the knife washed up and drying alongside the dinner plates. He went out the doors in the kitchen into the overgrown garden and trudged barefoot in the mud to the garden shed. The door was stiff and the wood splintered but Toby pulled it open with force, and entered the darkness.

He picked up the hatchet. It used to be Lyra’s, back when she had developed an interest in axe throwing after a summer camp ten years ago. Since, it had rusted and only came out to chop at the firewood and keep their neighbours trees from growing over the properties lines. Toby twirled it in his hands, and promised himself he’d give it new life.

Toby didn’t have to stalk his second victim. He didn’t even need to kill him, really. Killing Owen had proved to Toby that he could but maybe, to please the Slender Man, he had to prove he would, just because he wanted to. So, two days after Owen had gone missing, a tragedy but one expected from a moronic teenager, Toby made sure he got a detention the same day the football team had practice. As the second bus of the afternoon came, Toby slid next to Cody and said, “I know what happened to Owen.”

“How would you know?”  Toby’s body jerked, when he tried to speak. Cody watched him with narrowed eyes before he scoffed and tried to wedge his bag between them to force Toby out of his seat, “This isn’t whatever sick fucking gotcha you think it is.”

Toby almost felt sorry at how Cody’s face contorted itself with grief and anger; had he looked like that when Lyra died? He waited a minute, stubbornly remaining in the chair, until his body finally fell back into his control. “Come find me at the park, you know the one. I’ll tell you then.” He didn’t wait to see Cody’s shocked reaction, instead getting up and moving to the front of the bus, several empty rows in front.

Toby arrived at the park at night time, the hatchet attached to his belt in a cheap holster. He saw Cody, under the lights parents installed for their children’s safety, on a swing. Toby approached him, remaining hidden in the shadows in case Cody noticed the weapon and decided to run.

“Not here.” He demanded, “The woods.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Do you not want to know?”

“I’m not doing anything else you want! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting here? I’m here as a favour so you’re going to tell me what happened!”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

Toby didn’t reply. He wandered into the woods and waited. He clambered up a tree, and found a branch that wasn’t too high to obscure him but made up for the fact he was smaller. Then he waited.  Birds cooed from their nests and the smell of dew steeped onto his clothes. Leaves crunched and the woods went silent. The thick branches and depth of the wood hid the moon and streetlights from view. Toby looked down and noticed the faint outline of Cody. When he walked past Toby’s spot on the tree, Toby plucked a thick stick from the tree and threw it at Cody’s head.

“What the fuck?” Cody yelled, turning around to stare at Toby, “How the hell was I meant to find you from up there.”

Toby’s arm twitched, “You weren’t looking.”

“Well, I am now, and you’re going to tell me what happened to Owen or-“ he cracked his knuckles, “You’re going to regret it bitch.”

“Hmm. Okay. I killed him.”

There was a pause as Cody turned the words over in his mind. Toby narrowed his eyes at the shifting expression, waiting to see what it would settle on and unclipped the hatchet from the sheath, running his fingers across the blade.

Cody laughed. “You really, you really think I’d believe that? You think this is a funny prank?” The laughter switched to rage as Cody started shouting, “My friend is missing and you think this is a funny fucking prank!”

Toby dropped from the tree and raised the hatchet, bringing it down against Cody’s shoulder. Cody screamed as Toby placed his hand on his shoulder and yanked the axe out, chunks of flesh hitting the floor and splattering on their pants. Cody placed his hand on his shoulder and staggered back but he wasn’t quick enough. Toby swung the axe into his back and when Cody fell to the floor, Toby stepped on his failing, pathetic body and buried the hatchet into his skin. Cody moaned as the energy to cry for help dissipated and his body twitched as it tried to force itself away from the pain and pressure. Toby paused as Cody’s body curled to the less damaged left side before jolting back to place in pain and wondered if he looked so weak when he ticced.  He carved up the back until he was chopping up the intestines and ripping them out.

The Slender Man appeared as Toby finished hollowing out the lower half of the chest. It placed its hand on his shoulder and the static overtook him. All he knew was that the being was pleased with him, that he felt strong and a knowledge that he was almost ready. Toby opened his mouth, tried to think through the buzzing in his mind to ask what he was ready for but all he said were gargled sounds. The Slender Man moved its thin, spiderly hand and curled it around his chin, forcing it closed.

“You wanted to do this.” It said, Toby nodded so it continued, “If you want to do this, then you have nothing to worry about.” Before it slithered its hand to Toby’s cheek, which it petted twice, before vanishing into the night. Just like Owen, the majority of Cody’s body vanished with it.

The news reporter, a man called Tom Minoney, clapped his flashcards together as he began to drawl through the headlines. They started global, focusing on the wars going on the other side of the world before moving more and more local. As Tom swapped flashcards again, his face twisted into something beyond impassiveness.

"Two boys, Owen and Cody," pictures of the two flashed on the screen. In the pictures they were smiling like they'd done nothing wrong, they seemed like innocent victims and it made Toby's blood boil. He clenched his fist and made moon shaped indents in the palm of his hands from where he'd been pressing so tightly. From the other side of the sofa, Connie muffled a gasp as the news reported continued in a monotone voice to explain how they'd never arrived home, how if anyone had seen them to reach out and if the two boys were out there somewhere, to reach out. He ended the brief segment on them promising they'd hear more about them from the families later. In other news, there were roadworks happening on the motorway that people should be aware of, as it would mean a lot of congestion.

Connie flipped the news off. "It's just awful," she said, "I heard they went to your school? Do you know them?"

"I knew them,"

"God, this must be so hard for you. First Lyra and now this. You need to tell me these things Thalia,"

"It's okay. We weren't friends."

Toby ignored the small part of him that screamed to take credit for their murders. Why would they fuck off to the middle of nowhere when there were visible shits and giggles to be seen by harassing him and the other freaks in the year. Had killing them done this? Had killing them turned them into the kinds of people whose disappearance would be hard to cope with.

He wasn't allowed to head to school the next day. Connie wrapped him in a large hug and rambled on and on about how weird it was that only men were going missing and she didn't want to risk anything happening to her precious daughter - just in case someone mistook her for a man with a short hair cut.

Toby wanted to push away and spit in her face, maybe slap her if she tried to get close to him again. The bubbling urge to yell that it was him, that he was proud of it, that there wasn't a world where he was weak enough to get kidnapped. Instead he ticced and jerked in her arms, flailing about and whacking her arms in the crossfire. Her face softened as he slowed down due to exhaustion. She pushed his fringe back and kissed his forehead, muttering about how she could tell it was stressing her out, and it would all be over soon.

Ron didn't like that Toby stayed home. He bitched and moaned the entire lunch time that it was going to be impossible for him to focus on his meetings. Toby rolled his eyes. He'd be in his room, sleeping, or planning how to prove himself worthy to the Slender Man.

"It won't be that bad, I'm sure Thalia will respect your work. Won't you?"

"Sure?"

"That means not having those, schizo freakouts. I don't need my co-workers knowing I have a retard for a kid."

"Ron, don't say that. He's struggling. It's natural."

"I don't bloody care. Isn't that why we pay for the shrink?"

"I don't want to go to the shrink either."

"Both of you, this isn't something that can be healed overnight. Or alone. So we're all going to be as respectful to each other as we can be. Is that clear?"

"I'll be respectful as long as he is." Ron spluttered.

Toby rolled his eyes, "I won't do anything, first."

Connie sighed before forcing herself to smile, "Then it seems we won't have any issues will we?" When neither Ron or Toby answered, she took that as confirmation. She picked up her bag and headed out the door to run errands, or whatever Connie did for the 3 hours between lunch and Toby coming home.

He started to head up the stairs when a hand on Toby’s shoulder held him in place. Ron smiled as he pushed Toby forward. He stopped smiling when Toby’s arm jerked and shrugged Ron’s hand off him and he dug his nails into Toby’s skin instead, leaving crescent moon shaped indents in his shoulder. The next time Toby’s arm jerked, Ron remained firmly attached like a parasite.

They approached the closet and on instinct, Toby’s body started to tic and twitch, reacting to the stress at the sight of it alone. “Don- Don’t you, you fucking dare!” He screamed, trying to control himself to properly fight back. Despite everything, Toby’s body was still so so weak. There was nothing he could do as he fell back into the darkness, his head cracking against the wooden frame.

The Slender Man joined him after only thirty minutes. It felt like longer; he couldn’t believe it had come at all after he put up such a weak fight. It buzzed in his mind, a swarm of bees swimming in his ears and coming to lay eggs in his brain. Toby covered his ears, but that didn’t block it out. He looked up at the man and waited to hear if it had anything to say. But it didn’t.

When its spindly hand reached out Toby wouldn’t have known if he screamed. He couldn’t hear it over the static. It touched his head and the static vanished, leaving a disorientating silence. There was nothing and for a second, Toby thought he had died. Until the hand manoeuvred his head like a puppet so through the trail of light, he could see its almost face.

“What?”

It trailed his hand down his face, down the side of his ribs and into his pants pocket. It pulled out a small sharp knife and placed it in Toby’s hand. The blade was cold and the thing was warm but skinny and slipped through his fingers like water. It didn’t say anything else, it evaporated into the air like mist and Toby knew, the final thing he had to do.

He stabbed the knife into the door and tugged until splinters of wood broke under the pressure. He yanked the knife out, and repeated it again until a small hole he could crawl through was formed.

Toby grabbed his hatchets from his room, his body moving without thinking, as he approached Ron’s office. The door creaked as he pushed it open. Ron muted his call and swivelled around on his chair. He yelled something but the words flew over Toby’s head. He dragged the hatchet across the floor, ripping up the carpet. Then he raised the hatchet high above his head and swung it down at Ron’s head. The skull cracked, blood and brain started to ooze out of the large cut. Toby’s breath shuddered as he stared at how pathetic his Dad looked under him, with glassy eyes and blood trickling down his head. He laughed loudly, snickering as his head jolted, his fingers twitched and his body jerked while Toby still felt completely in control. Ron’s head remained upright until seconds later, Toby regained control, stepped on Ron’s groin and pulled it out. A pink chunk of meat fell onto the floor and Ron’s body followed like a ragdoll seconds after.

A businessman on the call was on the phone. Toby grinned as he shut the lid of the laptop and walked out the room, then the house. The Slender Man found him there. He placed his hand on Toby’s shoulder, as a guide, and said, “Follow me. Before you get caught.” And they headed towards the local woods.

Connie Rogers hadn’t been able to make herself stay at the house after that dreadful afternoon. She sat at a wooden table, Lyra’s, taken from her flat because it fit the apartment better. She sipped a coffee and watched the news. Her sister Lori sat down besides her and grabbed her hand as they turned on the news.

“They’ll find her.” Lori said. Connie nodded, and wished that finding her would bring the daughter she remembered home.

Toby stumbled out of the Slender Man’s office rubbing his forehead. He’d seen the Masked Men do it and wondered if it alleviated the weight of the static. It didn’t – but the habit stuck. He headed to the bathroom, knowing Clockwork wouldn’t appreciate him lying on her bed in dried blood and the rest of the proxies shifted too much if they were reminded too much of their state.

As he stared in the mirror, unhooking his mask and wiping off the blood with wet cloth, he saw his old self, the shy weak host he’d outgrown and killed the pretense of a person living inside. He wondered if he could lean through the mirror and tell that kid what was coming. He laughed at the idea, his arm twitching, the punk wouldn’t believe it, he’d be scared of what would come. But that was okay, he’d embrace his fate, regardless.