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8-dermestid · 26 days

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Hello, I hope you are well! Recently I read a fanfic of yours on Ao3 about Ticci Toby and I fell in love with your writing!! I loved the way you develop the characters and their feelings!! 🤧💕✨

I would like to know if you write for Creepypasta X Virus, it is one of my favorites but there is almost no content online about it 🥹👉🏻👈🏻

Anyway, I saw your requests are open! If the idea pleases you, I would like to ask for headcanons of X Virus and Toby (or just Toby) with a reader who practices magic and has somewhat "dark" tastes (interest in poisonous animals/plants and the supernatural as a whole, in short, just a scary and adorable nerd at the same time!)

Thanks!! 💚

ahh! hello-hello!! i read x-virus' story and took notes for these, i really enjoyed writing Cody, so thank you very much for the request :-]

i rlly liked this request, and this is actually the first time i've ever done headcanon-ish things, i hope you enjoy these (bc i enjoyed writing them a lot)

x-virus & ticci toby: reader with macabre interests

relationships: ticci toby x reader, x-virus x reader

word count: 1.5k

links: available on ao3

x-virus warnings: animal death (off-screen, animal body shown) animal dissection, taxidermy, canon-typical violence

ticci toby warnings: canon-typical violence

☣︎ X-Virus | Cody _____ ☣︎

You let it slip one day that you wanted to try taxidermy, an embarrassing guilty pleasure you were confident you could keep under wraps, but Cody’s just been so nice about your eccentricities and you couldn’t help yourself.

“They use bugs in the process, lots of museums have them to clean the bones because they’re better than the best person with the best tools—” You pace back and forth as Cody watches you from your bed, “—Because that’s all they do, all they do is eat rotting flesh off the bone. The bones last much longer when cleaned by any Dermes—”

You stop yourself from mentioning the insects by their scientific name, embarrassed that you let your ramblings slip away like that.

Cody leaves the next day and you’re left alone with your thoughts. Maybe there’s another mansion full of serial killers so you can start fresh, your ears burn recalling how excited you got talking about flesh-eating bugs.

A few days later, Cody returns to the mansion with a limp raccoon and some things it stole from the local morgue.

You spend the entire night together trying to preserve this creature’s hide, you take it apart with precise motions, expertly moving the scalpel along the skin and parting flesh and sinew. You soak the skin in salts, rubbing it into the bloody underside until you smell like copper and the salt mines.

The whole room smells like formaldehyde, too.

✸ ☣︎ ✸

Cody is so excited to share its books with you, all of them. You spend long evenings together curled over a battery-powered lantern and ten-pound textbooks, occasionally mentioning an interesting tidbit when you come across one. Your books are filled with flattened foliage from the surrounding woods, poisonous plants and flowers, plastic baggies filled with poison ivy leaves, and hand-drawn diagrams of each plant’s internal structures in a ballpoint pen. It flips through each page carefully, examining each specimen, complimenting each note and observation.

“You should open a museum,” It says, running a finger over a pressed Conium maculatum. That snaps you out of your science headspace.

You should, but you can’t. “Besides, who would enjoy a museum like that?” You argue.

“Think about the Mütter Museum,” It quips back, “If people frequent a museum full of pickled people-guts and spines, I’m sure people would go to yours. People like flowers.”

In another universe where violence wasn’t at the forefront of your mind, maybe you’d be the curator of a weird little museum full of oddities.

✸ ☣︎ ✸

“Toby comes here all the time to burn CDs, don’t worry, the cameras stopped working years ago and they never bothered to fix them,” Cody pushes open a window and climbs into the air-conditioned computer lab of the local library, “Just don’t knock anything over, I guess.” It jokes.

You drop through the window and feel goosebumps form on your arms, you haven’t felt air conditioning in years.

Cody unlocks the door leading to the rest of the facility, you walk side-by-side, dragging your fingers over the spines of dozens of books.

“You know the Dewey Decimal System, right?” Cody asks, there’s a thrill with breaking in, especially for pleasure (rather than worrying about killing every occupant in a house, you both can focus on finding a specific edition of a book you were dying to read).

“By heart.” You joke, guiding it to the 500s: Natural Sciences.

You spend five hours squished up together reading from the same book. It points to a diagram and you explain every minute detail, Cody listens eagerly to your explanations, wanting to ingrain every word that comes out of your brilliant, perfect brain, and memorize the way you describe the venom sacs of the Hydrophis schistosus.

The way it rolls off your tongue—Hydrophis schistosus—Cody wants that to be the last sound it ever hears, the sound echoing forever in its brain until the heat death of the universe.

You creep down to the 200s and find a few textbooks about niche religious practices. You tell Cody about the rarity of cannibalistic religious practices, and the prevalence of cannibalism in some movies ticks you off.

“Cannibalism isn’t that common,” You scoff, “It’s more than socially taboo, it’s biologically taboo. Ever heard of Kuru?”

“Tell me.” It begs.

✸ ☣︎ ✸

⦻ Ticci Toby | Tobias Erin Rogers ⦻

Every word that comes out of you flies over his head. Even though he doesn't know a thing about what you’re telling him about, he’s completely and utterly enamored. Toby never graduated high school, and—for the most part—he’s glad he didn’t have to spend any more time around high-school people.

He misses learning. Sometimes Toby thinks he’s stupid, Tim and Brian went to university, and they have high school diplomas with their names on them somewhere, Toby has nothing except an honor roll card from the eighth grade. You’re so brilliant, maybe part of him thinks he’s weighing you down by stopping your ramblings to ask for clarification. He’s so deep in thought he hasn't been paying attention to your talks about the Ghent Altarpiece’s connection to ancient practices of animal sacrifice.

“Does it bother you when I do that—when I don’t know things a-and you gotta explain it to me?”

You’re sitting on the porch together looking out over the rolling fog, he sucks in a breath, the tip of a Marlboro lighting up orange-hot.

“I like it, actually.” You say matter-of-factly

Toby’s diaphragm sputters as smoke spills from his nose, and he coughs hard into his elbow. “...Doesn’t it—But I’m interrupting you because I’m too stupid to get it the first time—”

That word gives you pause, and Toby tosses away the cigarette butt and curls into himself, shame burning hot on his face.

“I don’t think—”

“E-Everyone does,” He cries, “I-I can’t help it, I couldn’t even finish high school. Tim and Brian made it to college, at least.”

You push yourself into his personal space, knocking your knee into his as you lean over to share a secret.

“I can teach you if you’d like.”

Toby’s red-hot shame melts into a giddy flush as your warm breath lands on his ear.

✸ ⦻ ✸

The next victim that comes Toby’s way—a family of three with a prying-eyed teenager getting too close to discovering the mansion—grants you both access to the internet for a time.

You start with Wikipedia, it’s good practice to get bare-bones information that starts the deep dive. Marine Biology is the starting topic because the random article Wikipedia spat out at you was about the bigfin squid.

Toby mumbles aloud as he scrolls through the article, the picture on the right left the hairs on his arms standing on end. Little is known about it because it dwells so deep, and scientists aren’t entirely sure why its distinct long arms are there.

“Nobody knows how it feeds?”

“We know more about space than our oceans,” You say, “We have pictures of the Big Bang.”

Toby rolls back on the wheeled chair and pushes the keyboard to you.

You open a new tab and open the search bar.

COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND.

He pulls back in, opening the third link that pops up. You sit quietly as he devours an entire article explaining the picture’s existence, he’s vibrating in his chair. Toby continues the search without your input, googling words and finding plenty of pictures of smattered space dust orbiting tiny, dense stars.

The pictures of the black hole shake him to his core, nebulae give him chills, beautiful planets and star systems and moons and—

Alpha Centauri grabs a hold of Toby’s body and keeps him there. He pushes the monitor towards you and you read along with him, he’s shaking with excitement, free hand flapping excitedly as he scrolls through the academic journal.

He prints out a few pictures before the police show up, the cosmic microwave background bathing the room in greens and blues and smatterings of yellows and reds.

✸ ⦻ ✸

He starts stealing books from the library, as do you. You take turns showing and telling. He shows you astronomy books and you show him textbooks about the history of taxonomy; you spend hours sitting across from each other on the floor exchanging knowledge.

“I’m—I’m glad we did this. Thanks for doing all of—of that.”

You peek over an academic journal you’ve read at least seven times, smiling softly as Toby puts his new collection of literature into a box and pushes it into the closet. He piles a few flannels and shirts over the box to camouflage it amongst his dirt laundry.

“Why’re you doing that?”

Toby turns to you and turns away meekly, “...It’s our special thing, you get it? I don’t want anyone getting into our business. This is our thing. Our special thing.”

A warmth creeps up your neck as Toby holds your gaze. You close your journals.

“Babies have more bones than adults.” You whisper, your hand splayed over his shoulder blades, “About three hundred.”

Toby’s breath hitches as your hands warm the spot where his cervical vertebrae end and the thoracic meet.

“H-How many are—” He covers his mouth to cover a shaky breath, “—i-in the spine?”

“There are thirty-three vertebrae. Seven cervical,” You and trails down his back, “Twelve thoracic,” you creep further, “Five lumbar,” Lower and lower you go, “Five sacral,” You’re getting bold now, “...And four coccygeals.”

You hold your hands there, Toby enjoys the warmth radiating from your fingers, he wants to melt into you like watered-down clay (you would call it slip since you know everything). He wants to read books with you for the rest of his life and not do anything else.

He wants you to count every rib, every tooth in his mouth, every bone in his hands and feet—counting and counting and counting until he's dizzy.

✸ ⦻ ✸

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8-dermestid · 29 days

Text

i'm over sleeping like a dog on the floor

relationship: ticci toby x reader

word count: 7.6k

links: available to read on ao3

warnings: canon-typical violence, character dies by decapitation (off-screen death but on-screen head), toby is psychotic/has tics/is disabled

Working the graveyard shift as a middle-of-nowhere gas station has its perks; you get paid to do nothing but mop and organize shelves. Most nights you spend alone (or with your only coworker), until you get a regular customer for the first time since this place opened.

(like/reblogs are greatly appreciated, requests are open ✷)

As autumn passes away and winter begins to take hold of the climate, the manor becomes a hellish place to live. Plenty of well-developed people struggle with the seasonal changes—the colder air, longer nights, and dead-looking forests make seasonal depression hit hard. In Toby’s experience, however, these symptoms hit harder for the people in the mansion. The temperature drops make Jeff irritable, his decade-old burns aching as fresh nerve endings attempt to make connections to his old skin. EJ always found a way to hide in their room for months, only coming out if forced by Slenderman’s jobs or a need for food. Anyone with chronic pain had more intense symptoms, and anyone prone to stress snapped under the pressure. Tim and Brian always left before winter hit (only because they looked non-disabled from the outside and could mask until they found a place to hunker down).

Toby is no exception to this rule. The stress of incoming frost and shorter days makes him quick to anger, his tics become more frequent and intense, and he becomes more prone to biting his fingers until he bleeds. Joining Tim and Brian would be a dream, but that is all it would remain (being visibly disabled, paranoid, and psychotic beyond belief—and the hole Toby carved out in his cheek—made masking almost impossible). If he were to try and follow them to a hotel room, Toby would get strapped down and sedated in a stark-white hospital with buzzing overhead fluorescents.

The last time he went to the hospital was because he stepped on a rusty nail six months back, and Tim and Brian almost thought about tracking down EJ because hospitals and Toby do not mix. Thinking about those fluorescents makes him sick. The droning electrical hum makes his skin crawl.

Maybe tonight is the night—though the idea crawls with stressed-induced impulsivity and panic like centipedes under his skull—Toby needs to mull over this thought with a cigarette.

Jeff is arguing with nobody again and slamming his head against a wall. Sally’s running around upstairs. EJ hasn’t been home in months. Tim and Brian are who knows where, not that Toby cares, and the other people crowding this place are too quiet for Toby to care about right now. He rocks in his bed (a moldy mattress with loose sheets piled atop it, a thin, ratty blanket being all he can use to hide from the cold)

(Hush). The quiet is safe, and breathing softly and stepping carefully is safe. It’s good practice to keep his head down when there’s incoherent screaming in the room down the hall. The clatter of overturned furniture and scratching on the walls are commonplace sounds, whether rooted in reality or psychosis.

Toby tries to control his volume by breathing through his mouth, sniffling now replaced with hollow gasps. He’s so careful not to let any loudness escape him (not an easy feat). His diaphragm stutters, his shoulders heave in an involuntary twitch, his ribs push inward, and his spine curls sharply down.

Do it. Deep breath in, hold for four, out for four. Grab a cigarette and a lighter, and try to take your mind off things. Toby rocks on the floor and nurses a cigarette between his teeth, letting the smoke simmer in his lungs before exhaling low. He quits rocking on the floor, rising to his feet and beginning a careful hunt, opening every drawer, opening the creaky closet door, checking the big hole in the wall, checking the drawers once more, then out the window (pulling the half-hanging curtain over to give him some sense of privacy). Finally satisfied, Toby tugs the sheet on his mattress until it slips from the corner, exposing a large hole carved into the side, its guts twinkling with bits of fiberglass.

Toby sticks his hand in, numb to the prickling sensation scraping across his skin, and pulls out a large, empty duffel bag. He crawls towards his drawers and tosses his extra clothes into a small heap atop the bag, stuffing it until it’s bloated like a three-day-old carcass. With only a few possessions to his name—his hatchets, a hunting knife, a hammer (which he puts into his pocket instead, worried about scratching his things), his CD player plus headphones, a sentimental bag of teeth, and a dented thermos—Toby is ready and packed, letting out a shaky breath as he zips up his bag. Checking around all the hiding spots again (his searching based on psychotic delusions), Toby finally pulls the moldy curtain back and opens the window, which squeals in protest. He freezes, checking his surroundings and listening for even the softest sounds of disturbance in the creaky manor.

The mansion’s natural groans and hums make the house feel alive. It’s watching him—and watching him think of a plan to get out of this hell. The radiators creak, and the walls ache like the house is breathing around him. The walls are moving, Toby thinks. He is inside a living thing. He pries open the window, and the house cries out in protest. The chains supporting the windowpane squeal like birds, and Toby scrambles out of the window and onto the once-shingled roof in a panic, nearly slipping from the second story in a thoughtless terror. He digs into his pocket and pulls out his beat-up box of Marlboro Reds, curling up into a ball on the roof, shaky hands searching for his lighter. Toby can’t stop shaking. His neck pops in two places. He should climb back inside—crawl back into that living, breathing beast—and pretend this idea of freedom never crossed his mind.

Toby sticks a cigarette between his teeth, digging around his many pockets for his lighter. He’s so nervous, whole-body tremors as the agonizing howls of the mansion’s other tenants remind Toby of his options: keep living within Slenderman’s walls, dirt-poor and sickly, but safe from the cruelties of the outside world, or risk contact with the outside, possibly getting strapped down to a hospital bed and drip-fed a cocktail of medications, sedated and alone. Toby’s grip is loose, and his lighter slips from his hand as it twitches involuntarily. Toby watches it slide down the roof and hop over the broken gutter, landing in a puddle beneath the house.

Toby peers over the roof—making the quick choice to abandon his duffel bag inside his room —and swings his legs over the edge, dropping down. He sticks his hand into an ice-cold puddle and pulls the cobalt-blue plastic body from the water. He rolls his thumb over the striker, shaking the lighter and trying again (flick, flick, flick, Toby can hear the fuel when he shakes it vigorously), holding the dead thing to his dry cigarette, cupping his hand to protect any weak flame it may produce.

Nothing.

Toby throws the lighter as hard as he can into a tree, hands trembling uncontrollably, wrists flinching, fingers curling in distress. He pulls on his hair—tugs and tugs, grabbing at the curly strands at the nape of his neck and tugging upwards like he’s pulling a shirt off over his head—trying not to scream and cry about his two-dollar lighter being a shitty, two-dollar lighter. He pulls one axe from its holster and the hammer from his pocket; the next smoker he spots won’t make it home (and Toby can add some teeth to his plastic-baggie collection, whichever ones he can salvage from the destruction of a stranger’s dental record). His cigarette (with a sharp angle in the filter from an angry bite) gets stuffed back into its cardboard container, then the box, and into his pocket.

Toby picks a direction and walks, one hand tugging at his hair and the other’s knuckles white around a hatchet handle. Each tired step squelches under him. Slick leaves and muddy earth force walking to be a conscious thought; Toby, already nauseous with stress, stumbles forward, using the tall trees for support (and to ground himself on the textures of moss and lichen under his fingertips).

Keep breathing.

In for one, two, three, four; Hold for one, two, three, four; Out for one, two, three, four.

Keep walking, don’t stop, don’t turn back, don’t even look back. One shaky mile becomes two, then three, then four. Each threshold crossed brings Toby further from the manor and closer to freedom.

One time, Toby had to visit a mortician’s office to take care of a sloppy kill months ago. The doctor was working late, and Toby came across the current project: some forty-something man with silver hair and scratchy stubble. The mortician had already slipped the eye caps under the man’s eyelids, and the little barbs gripped the backside, holding the shape of the lid to make it look like the man’s eyes hadn’t sunk back into his skull. Toby peeled back the man’s lips, admiring his yellowed, crooked teeth and dry gums. There were wires connecting the upper and lower jaw, keeping the man’s mouth shut with needles nailed into his bone.

The process was fascinating and morbid, and the wires and nails made Toby queasy because the man’s body was so cold. Sometimes, Toby felt like that—or that he felt trapped in that state—the stiffness, the cold, the wires and nails keeping his jaw wired shut no matter how much he wanted to scream.

Sometimes, it was him laying on the cold, metal table stinking of formaldehyde, stiff with rigor mortis with sunken eyes and guts in the viscera bag. He found the body shortly after and beat its face in with his axe until they were unrecognizable. He took three teeth (one of their wisdom teeth and two molars), the only intact thing left of them, and fled through a broken window.

Toby, rubbing his eyes, pushes them into the sockets as he stumbles past the tree line and down a crag. When he makes contact with the ground and stumbles forward in his dreary state, Toby is startled when a car blares its horn at him. The driver shouts at him, swerving over the double-yellow to avoid hitting him.

Toby stands in the road like a deer, heart pounding against his ribs. He watches the car swerve back over the double-yellow and around a wavy bend, eventually concealed by a shelf of carved rock. Turning to look across the empty highway, he spots a gas station bathed in red neons with an inviting golden light warming the interior.

An older man with a blue face mask is walking behind the gas station for the restroom, and Toby stalks behind him, axe in hand.

✸𓆟✸

“It’s getting windy now. Are you sure your bus is coming after your shift?”

“Probably,” You say, “they’d only stop if there was some looming total disaster. They operate like a Waffle House.” Walking into the custodial closet (slash break room), you grab a bucket and mop and move out to a monstrous soda spill left by a group of teenage boys (where one of them just got their learner’s permit, you’re sure of it).

Something collides with the dumpster outside.

You think it’s someone dumpster diving again.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Quit being so paranoid.” Your coworker says.

You turn to Sandy, and she shrugs, straightening the 5-Hour Energies by the register. She’s pretty dressed up for a graveyard shift at a gas station, with her hair done up and pink tinsel weaved into her box braids. She’s wearing a concert tee with a little stone fairy printed on the front and leg warmers with these tall boots. Her makeup is shimmery and loud; she belongs at a club covered in confetti and glitter like it’s 2009.

“No need to be scared of the boogeyman, or… whatever they call that guy.”

“Slenderman?”

“Mhm, that. I’m sure it’s just good Photoshop, just an art project people are writing scary stories about, and parents think it’s real, and now the news is involved. It happens all the time!”

“Yeah, but…” Your words die in your mouth.

You saw him, you swear, between the trees or houses on your walk back to your dorm. Impossibly tall, with no features, stalking you from a distance like an animal. Maybe Sandy’s right. The stress of academics and work is probably just driving you crazy, making you see things that aren’t there. The town newspapers haven’t helped your theory of delusion, as people won’t stop going missing in this area. You’re tempted to grab a flashlight and check the perimeter, just in case. You reach for one on the shelf nearby, but Sandy gives you this disappointed look.

“I’m not letting you go ghost hunting. Not good for you,” Sandy’s gaze softens, “Now I feel like a dick for buying these tickets.”

You quit mopping. Tickets?

“Ugh, don’t look at me like that! When I bought them, there wasn’t this Skinnyman stuff—”

“Slenderman.” You say.

“Slenderman stuff,” Sandy corrects, “I didn’t buy them when this Slenderman stuff was going on.”

“...Again? You went to a concert two weeks ago.” You say, focusing on pushing the mop over the soda spill until it makes the water a murky brown.

“That was nothing. It was a house concert, this one is real and at a big venue and everything! I’m taking my girlfriend for her birthday. Please, come on! I’m sure nothing crazy is going to happen tonight. Nothing ever happens here, anyhow. We work at a nowhere gas station in the middle of nowhere—I’ll even pay you, please.”

You may be terrified of these recent missing persons cases, but Sandy does pay you handsomely when she pulls stunts like this.

“Mundy doesn’t have to know about our little arrangement. It can be off the books.”

Mundy’s your manager, but not actually in your opinion. He never shows up, carries a ‘my way or the highway‘ view of things, and rules over this run-down Shell gas station with an iron fist. You missed your cousin’s birthday because he needed you to watch over this place. He’s the worst.

“You know what? Sure.” You say.

Sandy whoops and tosses you more money than you’ve ever seen in a paycheck. She squeezes you tight and says thank you about a million times.

“You’re the best, and I owe you one—or three—I don’t care, whatever you want! Take it easy.”

Her girlfriend pulls up, tucking her stout blue car parallel to two rusty shells. “I mean it! No ghost hunting.”

She dashes out of the gas station before you can speak. According to her orders, It’s a free, lazy night for you, and your first order is doing your legitimately obtained puzzles. You grab a magazine you ‘borrowed’ from last month’s shipment. You pull out a Sharpie and fill out some blank spaces. You chew on the cap, filling in NAP for twenty-eight across. Fifty-five across is FRIDGEMAGNET. Fifty-two down is IGLOO. Eleven down is easy as you fill out the top corner of the board without much trouble—TENDER, UMAMI, MEAT, SKEIN… It’s almost too easy, or you should seriously consider the big leagues. You finish just above half the crossword only half an hour into your shift, tossing the magazine aside and switching to swiping through your phone to keep the crossword-world-record holders off your tail, as they can’t know about your prowess yet.

That girl who captained cheerleading is having a baby, and there’s also a picture of her wearing a wedding veil (not that you care, considering she stuck gum in your hair during your math final). Some Robotics club girl got into one of those Ivy leagues and is having the time of her life, and a ton of videos of your past friends drunk at a club, confetti all over their everything. You turn off your phone with a heavy sigh and set it on the far side of the counter next to the cigarette shelf, returning to your only company for the night.

You finish the crossword after nearly an hour (it technically only took you thirty-five minutes, but you wouldn’t stop getting up to try and do something productive to keep your mind off your downward spiral), and you sneak the magazine back into the pile with all the other ones that look just like it.

The door slides open, and a man who looks your age stumbles inside, brown hair dripping wet. You switch into professional mode and get your feet off the counter. You give him your standard welcome, but he ignores it and ducks into the aisle closest to the wall.

Maybe he’s just cold and drunk, but he looks rough. His sickly gray skin—with eyebags dark enough to be mistaken for under-eyeshadow—gives him an almost zombie-esque look (like a trad-goth, but gray). He peeks over the top of the aisle and locks eyes with you, lurching back as if it burns to hold your gaze. He reaches the far corner of the store, opens one of the fridges, and pulls out a can. You watch this man pace the back perimeter and grab a few things, still meandering.

“Can I help you find anything you need?” You ask, but he doesn’t seem to hear you as he stuffs a fistful of Slim Jims in his pocket.

Whatever, he’ll eventually find what he’s looking for if the poor guy searches long enough, or maybe not, considering his apprehension about approaching the front half of the store where your register is. You feel like a cat watching a bird from the window as you watch this strange person pace around the back of the store for nearly twenty minutes. Maybe you have a staring problem, but this guy is too eccentric to look away from. He knocks into the slushie machine and hisses to himself, speaking under his breath.

He creeps forward to the counter like a deer, a few loose bills and coins tightly held in his bandaged palm. There’s not one bit of eye contact, but his gaze is piercing as his eyes remain locked on the linoleum floors. You grab the soda can he slides onto the countertop, then nod to the Slim Jims sticking out of his pocket.

His shaky palm opens, fingers twitching as five or six individually wrapped Slim Jims spill onto the counter. You count them up and add them to the total. Then he grabs a lighter and tosses it into the pile, the lime-green case clattering amongst his other purchases.

“That’ll be $12.56.”

He hands you $9.27. It’s all he has, and his sudden nervous energy confirms that.

He seems paranoid, and maybe getting a fistful of Slim Jims in him will do him good. You look at the camera and take the money he gave you, bagging everything he piled onto the counter.

“Oh—” He coughs into his fist, his neck creaks, “You don’t have to do that.”

You reassure him, “It’s nothing.” crosses your lips as you pass him the plastic bag.

He steps back, shies away, and then flees out the door like a feral cat. You hear another car horn as this strange guy disappears from view beyond the tree line.

Another weird stranger, you think. He’s just another passerby you’ll never see again.

✸𓆟✸

That’s what you think until he shows up again two weeks later. He’s dirtier than last time, his fingernails caked with dirt as he bumps into Sandy. He grabs a soda from the back and shuffles to the front, eyeing your name tag. He says your name as if he’s kneading the word between his teeth and under his tongue like a lozenge.

You take the Pepsi from him and scan it. He coughs up enough money to pay for it—and a little more, four dirty singles more than he needs to pay for the soda.

“From last time—I know it wasn’t enough, I remembered.” He says, wiping his hand on his jacket. He looks proud of himself.

You thank him, and he looks like he’s about to burst, squirming at the compliment like a prodded insect, shakily taking the can from you and cracking it open.

“I’m Toby,” He tips the sugary drink back, then swallows hard, “Well, my name’s Tobias, but Toby sounds better. Toby Rogers sounds better than Tobias Rogers.”

Sandy eyes you, gesturing to Toby with a long acrylic, who’s now rocking back and forth on his feet and rambling. You shrug. He’s probably not a threat.

He seems chill, you mouth to her.

He grabs a map and turns it over in his hand. He sets down his drink and skims over the large map of the state. You take his moment of focus to take in his features, dull, brown eyes that skirt around the paper. His hair is greasy and messy, probably knotted beyond care. His clothes—beat-up hiker’s trousers, a heavy jacket over a ratty black tank top, and goggles with bright orange lenses, the right one cracked. He twitches, then turns the map to you.

“Are there any ways to go here?”

You snap from your observation, blinking as your vision is filled with the veins and artery-looking highways across this middle-of-nowhere part of the state. Toby points to some empty spot on the map, some national park (you think).

“Well, you could take the interstate highway.” You suggest, dragging your finger along the thickest vein on the map.

“Well, I’d need a car for that, right? I don’t have one of those.”

Oh. That’s the problem with this part of the country. No car, no luck. If Toby wants to leave, he would need a car—whether that be from a friend or a stranger. You tell him so: that there aren’t many options to leave if you don’t have the money to do it, which feels especially cruel considering you essentially spotted him for Slim Jims the other week. He folds the map politely and then slips it back into its container.

“That sucks, I guess,” He says, continuing to nurse his drink. Sandy makes a phone-shape gesture with a frantic expression on her face.

Toby’s a little eccentric, but he’s not 9-1-1 call-worthy. You shoo her away to reorganize the shelves. He keeps talking at you about a variety of things. He sounds like a camper, talking about how living in the woods is better than where he’s living now, how his roommates are very noisy, and he’d rather be cold and wet and living in a tent than be in his current situation.

“Off-campus housing must be tough. Are you in a fraternity?”

“Fraternity? No, not uni,” he says, shuffling on his feet as he pulls the soda tab off the can and rolls it between his fingers, “Not uni. Not smart enough for it. I didn’t even finish high school.”

“Oh.”

Now it’s your turn to shuffle awkwardly.

Sandy slips into the break room and shuts the door behind her, leaving you, Toby, and the blinking security camera. Toby finishes his beverage and looks for a bin to toss it (and to look polite and well-mannered). You lift the garbage bin from behind the counter (also to look polite and well-mannered).

You both talk about a variety of things. Toby seems to relax once it’s just the two of you. He asks you about working here. He asks if you like it.

“Kind of. Pay is pretty bad, but the graveyard shift means I get paid to do nothing,”

He nods, then runs his fingers over the ridge of paper maps again. His hand snaps sharply downward to grip the counter, his free hand tugging up his sleeve so he can scratch his arm.

“Is there not any other way out of here?” Toby abruptly pulls his hand from the counter and strikes his temple with the heel of his hand, “W-Why won’t anybody let me leave?” Toby’s voice is cold and jagged like glass with corrosive terror. You recoil, instinctively covering your precious internal organs with a defensive lurch. Toby does the same, pulling his hood over his matted hair and bumping into the flat shelf behind him. Besides the hum-buzz of yellowed fluorescent lamps, the store is silent. He tugs the goggles over his eyes in a rough motion, too, mumbling and rocking to soothe himself.

After what feels like an eternity, Toby finally speaks at a volume you can hear.

“Do you ever feel like you’re being watched?” He weeps, “Like, even if you sleep on the second floor, it can still see you—even if you’re hiding—and it knows exactly where you are, and you can’t do anything?”

Sleepless nights, icy chills that leave the hairs on your neck standing on end, that prey-animal feeling where you know you’re being followed and observed (but your eyes can’t catch that distant figure, tall enough to blend in amongst the trees). People stopped believing you after you cried wolf a few too many times. Calling friends in the dead of night on the side of the road did not earn you a good favor, which explains why so many people stopped talking to you after high school. You look down at your near-dozen crossword puzzles filled out on lonely graveyard shifts, down at your hands, and then you meet Toby’s frightened gaze.

“I guess, yeah.” You reply.

Toby blinks, tugging his blue surgical mask to rest comfortably on his nose.

“Really?” He creeps back towards the counter, shuffling forward to speak quietly, “I like coming here because I feel like I’m finally alone; It feels like I’m safe here—like nothing can hurt me.”

You nod. Working here gives you plenty of quiet, something most people can not get enough of. This place can be nice as long as Mundy leaves you and Sandy.

“My house isn’t a great place to be right now. That’s why I come here a lot. Nice and quiet, no screaming.”

“I get that, too,” You say quietly, speaking as if you’re trying not to frighten a wild animal, “Sometimes everything is just… too much, yeah?”

“...Yeah,” Toby whispers, “Yeah.”

He relaxes, taking a few deep breaths before pulling back his hood and goggles. Toby then hooks a finger around the elastic band on his surgical mask and pulls it off of his face, revealing a gaping scar on the side of his cheek that looks like it was chewed through. His teeth are visible, fairly yellow (but otherwise fine-looking), and slightly crooked. Seeing Toby’s face in its entirety takes you a moment to become accustomed to, his crooked smile and slightly-bent nose are not what fills your mind. His jaw is soft and rounded, and his gray-ish skin is smattered with lighter marks of old wounds.

Toby scratches at the healed-over gash, picking at some calloused skin while his other fingers curl involuntarily.

“I don’t go out much at all—” He starts, wiping his hand on his coat, “It’s been nice, even if I’ve had to sneak out to come here, I don’t want any other guys knowing I’ve been out here to see you—” Toby scrunches up, fingers curling as he watches you process his words.

Toby has the nervous energy of a dog retired from blood sports and brought into a quiet home, always biting the hand that feeds because it’s all he’s ever known, kicking and screaming in terror at any gentle caress, howling like you’ve flayed his skin, separating sinew and flesh. He has matted fur and mangled teeth; he limps from years of brutality, eyes darting around the peaceful setting expecting to be bitten; to be scratched; to bleed with no future of quiet.

You walk out from behind the counter and sit beside him, bumping knees. You both sit in silence, surrounded by the warm hum-buzz of fluorescent lights. Toby’s shoulders heave with a tic as he knocks his knee against yours. The small noises of the creaky building and its humming electronics (which would normally send Toby into a tizzy) didn’t make his skin crawl. He feels his chest fill with air then feels the air leave out of his nose as he takes in your features, following the slope of your forehead down to your nose and mouth, then your chin and your neck. If you were to meet his gaze now he would die, so he enjoys this moment next to you for as long as he can.

Your time together is cut short when Sandy exits the break room.

Toby’s face warms as he scrambles to his feet and scurries out the door with a quick goodbye and thank you shouted in your direction.

You feel a hot blush creep up your face from your neck, Sandy finally speaks once it creeps to the tips of your ears.

“Did I…interrupt something?” She asks, holding back a snicker.

“A little bit,” You say, stuffing your hands into your pockets, “I keep your things from Mundy, you keep mine.”

✸𓆟✸

There are three things that, when they come together, become the ingredients for the worst shift of your life.

First: Sandy doesn’t clock in, any shift without Sandy is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the jelly.

Second, and this one’s new, Toby doesn’t visit. He makes the grueling night shift a little less boring and gives you someone new to chat with and learn things.

Third, Mandy does one of his surprise visits, especially when he remembers the security cameras he installed.

He stormed in only a few minutes after you clocked in, stomping about the store and trying to find something to interrogate you so he could open the door to harsher criticisms. He finds a few misorganized cans and grills you.

“You’re supposed to put the tall cans in the second fridge, don’t mix them.”

“My bad, Mundy. Won’t happen again.” You say, holding your hands up.

Most of the time he finds minute things, but because there are hardly any customers, there’s hardly anyone to mess anything up, which means there’s not much you can do to fill out a shift. This time, however, he pulls out a little card, holding it out as if you are supposed to know what that means. He drags you into the break room and pushes the little SD card into his dingy laptop. He clicks on one of the few dozen files stuffed in the folder.

You watch a VOD of the security footage from a few weeks ago when you spotted Toby for those three extra Slim Jims. Mundy looks like he’s about to explode, pausing the video when all of Toby’s items are dumped out on the counter.

“You rang up only three Slim Jims that night. Why do I see six going into that bag?”

You freeze up, half because that’s such a stupid thing to pull you aside for, but also because Mundy is that crazy.

“I—”

“And then here,” He scrubs the video forward, showing the following interaction the following night, “Loitering? You’re letting people run amok in here when I’m not here? To think I trusted you and Sandy to care for things on your own.”

“Toby wasn’t doing anything—”

“No, don’t give me that done,” He snaps, ”Do you have any idea, any clue, what you’re doing to this place by letting people like that loiter around my store?” Mundy shouts, “Letting—You’re letting total thugs and drug addicts hang out in here. Do you ever think about what that may do for the reputation of this place?”

You sink back into your chair, which squeals as you curl like a sun-dried bug.

“You’re lucky I’m not going to fire you, do you understand? You’re lucky. That’s all you are. If that guy didn’t pay you back, you would be handing in your uniform.”

“But he’s not—”

“Not what?!” Mundy throws his hands up in exasperation, “Do you think normal people want to shop when you let crazy people bounce off the walls? You let this guy in—dirty and probably drugged out of his mind—and you make conversation with him? Let him loiter?”

“Mundy—”

“No, I’m not even going to bother with this,” He shoves the sopping-wet mop into your hands, “If I see any more shenanigans after this—you’re done. Get mopping. I have a headache from dealing with you, especially since I’m always trying to keep Sandy under control.”

Mundy massages his temples, walking into the break room while mumbling, “Now I’ve got to replace that piece-of-shit camera, too. Always on the fritz...”

You get to mopping, and Sandy passes through the automatic doors, a tense expression on her face.

“You know, I could hear him from the break room,” She mouths, “I think I would be the same if I were the manager of a dead-end gas station, especially if it were the only thing I had done with my life.”

Sandy pulls her purse over her shoulder, “Be careful not to unscrew your arms from mopping so much.”

She leaves, climbing into her girlfriend’s passenger side and pulling out of the dirt lot even faster. Mundy exits the break room and watches you like a hawk, and you spend three hours doing purposeless chores to keep him happy; you mop the floors, reorganize shelves, and restock the fridges (which were full) until you can barely hold yourself upright.

“See? I hired you to do your job, not just loaf around all night behind the counter.”

Ugh.

✸𓆟✸

Toby comes in again a few days after Mundy’s new ordinance began, and you can tell that all of this recent surveillance is getting to your head because you immediately look up at the camera that watches the both of you as if it’s going to snap at you like a dog. He says hello, waving with his eyes squint-y from a smile.

“You look like you’re about to puke.” Toby chuckles, leaving a few bills on the counter while he heads to the back to grab a drink, “Something wrong? Is it Sandy?”

“No, just… work.” You grab Toby's drink, eyes flicking to the camera as you take the money, count it up, and give him a few coins in change.

“Is it Mundy?”

You hush him, eyes flicking up to the camera. He nods, taking his drink and starting his familiar pacing around the main body of the store. You grab the mop from the break room, though you’ve already mopped this entire place three times, and begin your familiar dance to follow Toby around the store.

“He won’t let you stay. If I let you loiter, Mundy will fire me,” You meet his gaze, and he looks like a kicked dog, “I’m so sorry.”

Toby peeks at the camera, then looks back at you, “Is he here?” He asks.

“Break room, most likely watching the footage from my last shift. Mundy’s waiting for me to slip up, so it’s been stressful.”

Toby pats your shoulder, then takes his can and finishes the rest of his drink quickly, “... I’m sorry. I can go home if being here is a bad thing.”

“I don’t want you to go, though—” You say, your voice is a little too heavy for talking to a regular—”...You know, you’re one of three customers we’ve had for weeks. Isn’t that funny? This place is a dump. I would quit, but I need the money.”

Toby watches you push the mop in a fit, pushing and pulling water across the clean linoleum tiles.

“...I have to go now. Thanks for everything.” Toby says quietly with a new coldness to his soft tone.

His sudden shift in demeanor makes you a bit nervous as he exits the store, waving sweetly at you. You wave back. Hopefully, he didn’t say thanks for everything because he was leaving forever. You watch him disappear along the edge of the highway, and you are left alone to mop the floors for the rest of the night, eventually leaving because Mundy doesn’t trust you to handle closings anymore.

Toby scales the crag outside the gas station, slipping back into the woods with new feelings bubbling under the surface of his skin. He races past familiar trees, spotting the mansion on the horizon. He scales the wall using the only standing gutter left, and then he slips into his room through the window, angry enough to chew on his hand until he bleeds. He pulls off his shoes and flings them into his dresser. The quickest, easiest answer would be to run back there, hatchets in hand, and dismember this guy that’s been bothering you. The other part of Toby, the one he kept hold of after everything that happened to him (the part of him that’s still seventeen years old and terrified), wants to just curl up on his dingy mattress and give up. He grabs a hatchet and curls up with it in his arms, running his hand along the handle’s grain.

Maybe in a few days, he doesn’t want to scare you, maybe he can make it look like a bad accident.

There’s the clatter of furniture, the familiar sounds of home, and Toby drifts off to sleep, planning out the next few nights to prepare even if it means he won’t be able to see you. Spending the next few days in the manor is rough because everybody won’t stop asking questions. Toby hardly imagined anyone in the manor enough to notice he was still there (it took everyone nearly three weeks to notice EJ’s absence when it was too late to catch them), and it was even stranger for others to be concerned about Toby’s whereabouts.

He wishes EJ was still here, they hardly cared about unimportant things and cared even less about stupid things like visiting someone behind Slenderman’s back. They would have helped him plan, listened to Toby go through a few plans, giving a thumbs up when good and a thumbs down when bad. He instead spends the few days pacing around his room as ideas swarm his brain like locusts, biting off chunks until Toby needs to sleep and quit thinking.

✸𓆟✸

Mundy grumbles, stepping outside and lighting a cigarette as he stands next to the dumpster, eyeing the few gutted shells of cars abandoned on the lot. He twirls the keys around his finger, more stressed about adding two sudden openings online. He always hated computers.

Toby peeks around from behind the dumpster, eyes trailing down Mundy’s back, eyes boring into his spine and shoulder blades beneath his shirt. He unhooks one of his hatchets from its holster on his hip, creeping along the edge of the gas station’s wall as Mundy shuffles on his feet.

You already settled into your shift hours ago, Toby memorized your schedule so he could always bump into you. Mundy was so wound up from Sandy organizing the magazines her way that he nearly snapped and fired her on the spot.

Any reprieve from Mundy’s surveillance would not be taken for granted. You start counting the ceiling tiles, wishing you could do a crossword right about now.

“You think Mundy’s… Okay?” Sandy pipes up, restocking the beef jerky bags on a distant shelf.

“No.”

“I mean—yeah, he’s not generally okay, but… he’s been outside for half an hour…” Sandy stands, abandoning her work, ”I don’t smoke, but that seems like a long time to be out there in… that.”

Rain beats against the windows so intensely it’s hard to see the highway that runs parallel to the station, the only indicator that the highway still exists is the occasional flash of high beams as someone drives by. You can understand the need for a break (whether with a cigarette or a puzzle) but this torrential downpour would dampen anyone’s smoke break, at least he should be standing under the concrete awning. Lightning lights the night sky, highlighting the dark forests that swallow this little establishment. Thunder growls overhead, rolling over your mind like a cold chill.

“Something’s wrong.”

“Oh my god, please don’t go off on one of your tangents about Slenderman, I do not need that right now, especially since this is the first time we’ve had a moment without Mundy breathing down our necks. Besides, give me some reprieve since I’m handling garbage on such a stormy night.”

“I wasn’t going to!” You throw up your hands dramatically, “You’re the one that brought it up!”

Sandy looks outside and shudders, “Slenderman isn’t real, I’m not going to let your little internet ghost stories scare me.” She swallows, slipping outside and pulling the garbage bag from its canister, “You’re so paranoid.”

You watch her disappear into the darkness, the automatic doors sliding shut as she rounds the corner to toss the bag into the dumpster. You suck in a breath and push it out shakily. You hear muffled shouting, Sandy calling out for Mundy, but there’s no response.

The store feels too big all of a sudden, you feel too exposed with the large glass sliding doors, but Sandy’s jeers about your paranoia push that nervous energy down into the pit of your stomach.

Sandy heaves the bag up above her torso, but her shaky grip (and her laziness about tying the top of the bag) causes a plethora of things to spill from the bag. Sandy huffs, dropping the half-full bag on the ground and groping for trash in the dark.

She groped around in the dark, mind swimming with frustration and confusion. The rain soaks through her coat, and her well-kept nails are caked with mud as she picks up garbage. She feels the usual things—crumpled-up cans, napkins, and old fast food bags.

But the sudden, leathery texture that she brushes her fingertips against, a coppery tinge to the air. It’s warm, warm like a person.

A blood-curdling scream rings out after a flash of lightning turns night to day (followed by the loudest clap of thunder you’ve heard—the kind that makes the earth shake). You chuckle to yourself, but you shut yourself up when you hear her hysteric sobs mixed in with Sandy’s horrified screams.

Everything goes quiet.

“Sandy?”

Her sobs continue, you can hear her crying.

“Sandy—” You step out into the rainy darkness, “—Hey, are you there? Is everything okay? Was it a raccoon or something?”

She shouts your name with the desperation of a wild animal with an arrow through its leg, scrambling to her feet, she’s soaked and cold.

She grabs the collar of your shirt, drags you back towards the light, then locks the doors behind the two of you, and knocks a shelf over to block the door.

“Sandy, what the hell? I just—”

“M-Mundy’s dead—he’s fucking dead,” She gasps, sobbing harder than before, ”We’re next—Oh god, oh god, oh god—”

Sandy lurches and vomits, dark bile streaking across the linoleum tiles. You’re at her side in a second pulling her dark, curly hair away from her face. You guide her to sit down in the break room, kneeling in front of her as she nearly shakes herself to pieces.

“He’s dead? You’re serious?”

“His head was in a garbage bag—” A dry sob rattles her frame, ”—He’s dead. Dead, dead, dead.”

You pull out your phone and dial the emergency number, gently soothing Sandy as she tries to hush up when the line connects. You give the operator the address and hold the phone for Sandy. She sputters, trying to spit out her words. The operator asks her questions, trying to get her to relax.

She described Mundy’s still-warm head rolling out of the bag, Sandy’s skin void of its typical warmth and vibrancy. Sandy emphasizes how warm it was when she touched it, like feeling a leather bag sitting in the sun.

The operator soothes both of you, help is on the way.

After thirty minutes of agonizing silence, The approaching ambulance’s siren wailed like an angel, and the paramedics that arrived on the scene ushered you and Sandy out and swaddled you both in blankets. Tape cinched the gas station, and officers secured the perimeter, marching like ants. The rain was still heavy, and large droplets beat against the ambulance. Detectives sat across from you trying to get Sandy (in her nearly catatonic state) to recite the scene.

“I don’t know,” Sandy said, “I don’t know.”

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know… She’s rocking herself, shivering either from terror or the cold—perhaps both—as you rub her back and try to help her calm down.

“Rich,” a paramedic shouts, which drags the detective's attention from Sandy, “Call up Morgan—We’ve got another.”

He sighs and hops out of the ambulance, beating a phone number into the small buttons and walking off into the rain.

Sandy turns to you, she’s ice cold, “...What are we gonna do now?”

Your mind can’t help but wander, the rational half of you wants to believe that this was some kind of freak accident, that Mundy just…

Well, you aren’t sure how someone could be accidentally decapitated, but maybe there is a logical explanation for Mundy’s death. He is just another number in a vast list of victims of these unexplainable attacks. Some believe in a Jack the Ripper scenario, while others lean towards the supernatural. You’ve fallen down the rabbit hole before, and with each passing moment, the idea of your past delusions being real sounds less and less insane. Sandy nudges you, interrupting your slip into panic.

“What are we going to do now?”

“I…I don’t know.” You whisper, curling up under your blanket.

You swear you see someone moving amongst the trees, and dread washes over you like an icy bath.

What are you going to do now?

✸𓆟✸

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