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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 16. // (masterlist)
The loud blaring scream from the old TV danced throughout the small living room of Nina’s apartment as the screen played a classic slasher film. Junk food and nail polish sprawled out on the hardwood floor beside the two girls as Natalie firmly gripped Nina’s hand in hers, applying another steady stroke of pink paint onto her nails. Only the glow from the TV screen, and the dim light from the lamp standing tall next to the couch, illuminated the dark apartment which had long been overtaken by the midnight hour.
Perching the brush in between her fingers, Natalie carefully ran the paint over Nina’s nail one last time, before leaning back and examining her handiwork. She watched as the girl blew over her freshly polished nails, as she beamed with excitement as she spread out her hands.
Natalie fought back a smile at the enthusiasm, and brought herself to her feet, stretching the late-night tiredness out of her overworked limbs.
“Gonna go out for a smoke. You coming?”
As her nails finished drying, Nina nodded, and jumped to her feet as well, and followed the tall girl over to the front door, grabbing her leather jacket as Natalie grabbed her coat.
The springtime weather outside had been warmer than other nights, with only the occasional chilly breeze rushing past the two girls standing on the front step of Nina’s apartment building. The downtown streets were consumed by the darkness, only the orange overhead glow of the flickering street lights reflected off of the wet roads, glistening in the little remaining snow that hid in the shadowy cracks and crevices between buildings. Natalie held her cigarette between her fingers, with her jacket draped over her pajama top. She stared out at the world around her, watching cars drive past, splashing the dirty water of the melting ice, the sound of the engine roaring. Taking a deep inhale of smoke, pressing her lips onto her cigarette as she thought to herself for a moment, she thought the busy nightlife of the moment was almost peaceful.
Nina sat herself down onto the cement step, arms crossed over her knees, and took a deep breath in. It was a quiet night, only the occasional car or pedestrian passed by. The stars were brighter than usual, mingling around the waning moon in the abyss skies.
Natalie glanced down at the girl, and took a seat next to her. The two girls sat in silence for a moment, letting the world move past them.
“So what's going on with you and Toby?” Nina asked, turning her head to look at Natalie, who looked back at her.
“What about us?”
“Like are you two a thing or…?”
“We’re just friends,” Natalie said, tapping the building ash off of her cigarette.
“Whaat! You two are so cute together though,” Nina continued to tease as the other rolled her eyes.
“I don’t think he even knows what he wants.”
“Well what do you want?”
Natalie took another long drag from her smoke as a drunken group stumbled down the sidewalk, past the pair, and down the street, laughing and chatting amongst themselves. Another car drove past, the headlights reflecting off of the water collecting on the roads.
“I don’t know, just a quiet life I guess. I know Toby wants to go back to how everything was, but I don’t,” she sighed as she stared down at her burning cigarette, “I’d rather have a good life than have him.”
Nina stayed quiet for a moment, looking at the girl who looked down at her feet, with time and tiredness tracing her freckled face, her messy unwashed hair tangling itself over her shoulders. She was strong, made to be tougher than most girls her age. She was tall, she took up space without restraint. She was bold. Nina eyed the way Natalie’s brow furrowed, with disgust, or frustration, or shame. She watched as Natalie took her last deep breath in of smoke, and flicked the finished cigarette to the ground, inhaling life into her dazed body as she shook herself out of her own thoughts and back into the moment.
“But whatever, that doesn’t matter.”
“That’s like, really similar to how I felt with Jeff,” Nina said, “All I really want is to have a good life but how can I even achieve that if I’m just like, all alone, you know?”
“It’s better to be alone than with someone who makes you feel like shit, Nina.”
“I guess so. But I don’t want to live my life alone like there’s got to be something about me he can love, right? It doesn’t even matter anymore though, it’s not like he’s here,” She ran her hands over her ponytail, laughing sadly at herself.
“You don’t need to waste your time on someone who doesn’t appreciate you. Jeff was a dickhead to you anyways.”
“I know, I know. It’s just that even if he was a dickhead, I wish things were different.”
“Yeah, I know that feeling,” Natalie muttered, groaning softly as she stood up, tailbone sore from the hard cement, “This conversation is getting too deep, let’s go inside.”
Natalie sat down on the couch beside Nina who buried herself under the covers and stretched out her legs. She laid back into the seat and placed her arms over Nina’s legs, watching the rest of the film playing out on the old TV, reaching for the remote to turn the volume down. When Natalie glanced over to the younger girl, she noticed Nina had fallen fast asleep, breathing softly as her chest gently raised and fell. She looked peaceful.
Natalie turned back over to watch the movie, the ambience of the world around her harmonizing with the suspense of the final scare before the credits rolled. She loved horror movies, how they never really had a happy ending. She thought it was most realistic how the main character fought so hard to survive, maybe even killed the killer, but could never truly be free from everything that had happened. The violence, the blood, being stripped from everything. Natalie thought that was what made horror movies so realistically gruesome. That she had a morbid understanding that no one else seemed to have. The only thing they didn’t get right, she thought, was that when the main character was the last one standing, there was never an annoying idiot in their life to insist he wanted to stand with them. Natalie had survived her own slasher film, the final girl, and the final asshole who didn’t understand personal space. When you survive a horror movie, she thought to herself again, you spend the rest of your life trying to make sure a sequel doesn’t happen. And Natalie’s mistake was befriending a serial killer.
As she watched the credit scene play alongside some suspenseful music, the girl turned the TV off with the remote. For a moment, she stared at her reflection bouncing off of the black screen, as if she was trapped in a void. She saw the kitchen lights from behind her shine over her in the reflection as well, and when the girl leaned her body away, it seemed the light seemed to follow. Natalie sighed and leaned back into the couch, staring up at the ceiling, the world quiet around her, the weight of Nina’s legs remaining still on her lap. She thought about the most dreadful things; she thought about Toby, the boy she considered her best friend.
She had never met anyone who had so closely resembled the sun. If she looked at him for too long, her eyes would burn. He was Icarus, and scorched wings. Teeth bared to the world as he fell. She thought back to a newspaper article she read about how when the sun dies, humans wouldn't know until eight minutes later. Natalie made it a point to stay eight minutes longer with him at any chance she could. She wanted to be there when his light went out.
The girl shook off her thoughts, and readjusted herself into a more comfortable position, before closing her eyes. She listened to the softly breathing girl draped across the couch, the occasional car passing, the creaking of the old apartment settling. . She listened to the sound of the clock on the wall ticking. Natalie listened to the world live on beyond her, and wondered how quiet it would be when the sun died. Her body fell heavy, breathing shallow, before the girl finally drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, Natalie stretched the tiredness out from her slender limbs as she walked through the crisp warm countryside. The snow had begun to melt, dead grass from under the white blankets peaked out. Birds had begun to sing again, the subtle heat spread over her body as the girl made her way down the gravel roads. She dragged herself up the front porch steps, and into the house. Natalie listened as she heard the muffled TV playing from the livingroom, which meant Toby must have been home. Last time they talked, they had another argument over her unfavorable customers at the bar.
She shuffled past the living room, and into the kitchen, where the early morning sun shined past the windowsill, the white paint chipping. The old floorboards creaked under her sluggish steps as she turned on the coffee machine and went to grab her mug from the cupboard.
“Hey, how was the sleepover?” Toby asked from behind the girl, standing idly in the doorway.
“Where’s my mug?”
“What?”
“My coffee mug. Where is it?” Natalie closed the cupboard, and turned to face the boy, who always looked a little bit guilty of something.
“I accidentally dropped it last night, and-and it broke.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Toby stood silently for a minute, feeling the rage seeping from the girl across the kitchen.
“It’s just a fucking cup Nat, why are you mad?”
“‘Cause I told you to not touch my shit, Toby. You just don’t fuckin’ listen,” Natalie said, raising her voice as she pressed her hands together, trying to put a leash on her temper.
“Why the fuck do I gotta listen to you? You bitch me out over a fucking cup, I said it was an accident,” Toby raised his voice back, not quite willing to put his own leash on.
“Maybe have some respect for me and my things and we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“Well maybe I just don’t respect stupid bitches, hows that sound?”
“Don’t call me a bitch, Toby, I swear to God.”
“Don’t act like a bitch then.”
“You’re fuckin’ unbelieveable” Natalie shouted, slamming her hands on the countertop before pushing past Toby, and out onto the front porch, closing the door hard behind her.
She dug a cigarette out of her pack, quickly lighting it, and closing her eyes as she inhaled. She felt the smoke go to her head, drowning out her racing thoughts, taking her teeth off of her tongue. Natalie let out a deep breath as she pressed her back to the wall, and squinted her eyes at the bright blue skies that draped over the rolling green fields.
The front door slowly creaked open, and Toby stepped out onto the porch beside the girl who refused to look at him.
“You should learn how to leave people alone,” she muttered as she continued to look off at the farmland ahead. Anywhere but him.
“You should learn to be less of a bitch.”
Natalie scoffed as she raised the cigarette to her lips once again, her free arm draped around her side, squeezing herself. Toby quietly stood by her, tapping his thumb onto his other hand and tried not to bite the inside of his cheek too hard.
“You know, I-I can just buy you a new mug,” he said softly, tripping over the words he forced out past his gnashing tongue, “I didn’t know you’d get so mad about it. I swear it was just an accident.”
“Don’t worry about it, it doesn’t matter.”
The two stood in silence under the sun, listening to the passing breeze, and occasional birdsong. Natalie sighed to herself as she put out her cigarette, and nudged the boy’s arm with her own.
“Nina was telling me about this dumb frat party or something. She invited us, but I don’t know if you want to go.”
“Sure why not, better than being trapped in this place.”
The music blared loudly throughout the house, the bass of the song nearly causing the floor to shake. Toby groaned to himself as he noticed all of the people talking, drinking, laughing. Some dancing, some flirting. He couldn’t even hear himself think. He glanced over towards Natalie, who looked equally as uncomfortable, maybe even more than he was. The two pushed through the crowd of drunk strangers chatting amongst themselves, and into the kitchen where they saw Nina talking to a guy neither of them recognized. When she noticed them, Nina excitedly waved them over. Toby made his way towards the eccentric girl, and Natalie followed closely behind, pushing off a guy who accidentally knocked into her.
Nina poured four shots of vodka, and handed a glass to each of them. She plugged her nose while it went down, Toby shook off the taste, and Natalie swallowed the liquor down like she swallowed her pride.
“This is Joshua, he’s a friend of mine,” Nina shouted out, barely being able to speak over the stereo blasting dance and pop music. Toby scanned the older boy up and down, before easing his hostile expression, and giving a nod. He glanced over his shoulder at the girl behind him, watching as Natalie hugged herself with her arms, and glared around the room. The boy nudged her with his arm, gaining him a scowl before she realized it was him.
“Lighten up Nat, have another shot,” he shouted, leaning over to her so she could hear better.
“I’m going to take it slow, but you go wild.”
“Suit yourself,” Toby exclaimed before turning back over to Nina and the other boy introduced as Joshua, preparing himself to do another shot with the group.
Natalie took a step back as she made her way over to the chips, grabbing a paper plate as she piled some on, and sneaking herself a beer from the cooler. She pressed herself against the wall behind her as a couple of girls rushed past, giggling amongst themselves. Tossing a chip into her mouth, the girl watched quietly as Toby shotgunned a cooler with a few other boys. She watched as he brushed off the twitches and jerks in his fingers and arms. She couldn’t understand how it was so easy for him to talk to people. It was as if he had a special talent of making friends, while she couldn’t connect with people even if she wanted to. As she leaned her sore back against the wall, feeling the soft vibrations of the bass as the beat dropped, looking out over the sea of people in front of her, she couldn’t help but feel as though she only existed in the shadow of the boy she called her best friend.
Natalie pressed her bottle to her lips as she choked down the last drop of beer, tossing the empty drink into the garbage can next to her, and pushing past people to make her way out into the backyard. The chill of the night brushed against her face as Natalie inhaled the fresh air, feeling the weight that suffocated her in that house fall off of her chest. Her hand dug into her jacket pocket as she pulled out a cigarette, replacing the cool, fresh air in her lungs with a burning smoke as she lit it, and inhaled. Natalie closed her eyes, sitting herself down on the hard cement step, the music barely muffled by the walls separating her from the party indoors. A few groups of people mingled outside alongside her, most of which held red solo cups in their hands, or joints, or cigarettes, chatting with people they’ve probably known their whole lives. The girl rested her arms over her knees as she stared down at the ground, listening to the world around her. She tried not to think about how slow, or fast, time was passing her by. She tried not to think much at all.
The girl sat on the step for a moment, finishing up her cigarette before flicking it to the ground. One song done, a couple seconds of silence, another one starts. Cheering, talking, yelling. Arguing, and yelling. One song ends, another one starts. Natalie groaned as she pulled herself up to her feet, making her way back into the party. As soon as she entered the house, back into the kitchen, she saw Nina quickly approach her, she stumbled a bit as she walked, anxiety painted her face alongside her flashy makeup.
“Oh my god there you are, I was looking all over for you,” Nina said as she grabbed Natalie’s hand, “I think Toby had too much to drink.”
The girls made their way into the living room, where they watched as Toby argued loudly with another unfamiliar boy.
“Toby I found Nat,” Nina shouted out, but he ignored her, or couldn’t hear.
Natalie watched on the sidelines as Toby drunkenly bickered back and forth with the college kid who was bigger, and taller than him. She watched as he insulted the other boy, put him down, clawed and bit his way to the top. It was a mortifying act, as if he had something to prove. As if he was lost in his own self-deception and lies. When the older boy called Toby a freak, Natalie watched as Toby tackled him to the ground, a hunger for revenge in his dark eyes. She watched as everyone crowded around, watching the younger boy take the bigger one to the floor, and beat him senseless. Even the pop songs blaring in their ears couldn’t muffle out the sounds of shouting, and yelling, and Toby threatening the other.
“Say that shit again,” he screamed louder than any bass the stereo could produce, “you think it’s fucking funny now, huh?”
Natalie's first pet was an elderly herding dog. As it aged with her, she watched as her companion succumbed to old age when she was only a child. She watched as Nina yelled for them to stop, other men pulling Toby off. When he looked at her, she saw a familiar look in his eyes. She knew better than anyone how to let a dying dog die. The sun was burning out, the girl thought. Natalie stayed for an extra seven minutes before storming out that night. She changed her mind before the eighth. She decided that she was better off not witnessing the light die too. That girl never really liked the dark.
As she pushed past the crowd of people, some shouting, most watching, and out through the front door, she tried to ignore the wasted boy who followed out after her. Natalie made her way down the road, pretending like she couldn’t hear Toby calling her name.
“Nat for fucks sake slow down,” he yelled out, running up to the girls side. She bared her teeth and quickened her pace, rejecting the orders of the boy. As he grabbed her hand, and stumbled over himself, Natalie had then noticed how bloody he was. He didn’t seem to notice, or care.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going home,” she replied as she yanked her hand away from his grasp.
“What, why?”
“Because you’re acting like a lunatic!”
“So what? You think that makes you better than me?” Toby slurred his words as he raised his voice, unable to stand still as he tripped over himself.
“I didn’t say that,” Natalie spoke back.
“Well you sure fucking act like it.”
“What’s your problem?”
“There’s no problem, I’m having the time of my fucking life,” he shouted out, pushing past her and walking himself back home. He wiped the blood from his nose as he walked ahead of her.
Natalie stood for a moment, letting distance grow between them as the boy continued down the street, and shook her head in disbelief.
Toby burst through the front door of the quiet little farmhouse draped in the darkness of the midnight hour. Sobriety began to wash over him as he collapsed onto the couch that night. His finger ran over his lip as he noticed blood pouring from his busted mouth. He didn’t remember being hit, but was sure the other boy must’ve gotten a few good punches in. Toby turned himself over onto his back as he looked up into the dark livingroom, he couldn’t even remember why he started the fight in the first place. All he knew was that he would do it again. That he would spend his life fighting, and sleeping on the couch. It was him against the world, and he did what he had to do to survive. As he closed his heavy eyes, the buzz still warming his body, he made sure he heard Natalie come into the house before he let himself fall asleep.
#tombfic#finally got this done#life has been busy#enjoy the angst#creepypasta#creepypasta fandom#ticci toby#creepypasta headcanon#ticciwork#clockwork#ticci toby headcanons#toby rogers#creepypasta ticci toby#ticci toby fanfiction#ticci toby fanfic#ticci toby creepypasta#ticci toby headcanon#natalie ouellette#nina the killer
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Tomb concludes... Tomorrow? Basically on Day 7.
@carthage-industries Just thought I'd let you know 😉
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🧺 — LAUNDRY AND TAXES
MASTERLIST
for easier navigation . check it out on AO3
+ all chapters and l&t related posts can be found under the #tombfic tag.
my inbox is open for any questions or comments on l&t as well.
Prologue
HOME ARC.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
ALABAMA ARC.
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
CABIN ARC.
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
BACK HOME ARC.
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
FARMHOUSE ARC.
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
Chapter 11
WRECKAGE ARC
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
SPRINGTIME ARC
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 1. // (masterlist)
“Oh darling, please believe me~”
Toby’s dark eyes fluttered open as he jolted up, his hand pressing over his chest as he caught his breath. He could hear The Beatles blaring from an old boombox stereo in the room next to him. He could hear a familiar voice humming alongside in a pretty tune.
“I’ll never do you no harm~”
The soft sun shone through the bedroom window as his hands dropped and gripped the sheets of the bed he sat on. The boy eyed his surroundings, a sick feeling bubbling up in his stomach as he nearly threw up.
What was he doing in his childhood room?
He raised a shaking hand up to his face and let his fingers run over the gash that once scarred his cheek, quickly noticing it was no longer there. He was now once again seventeen years old, and everything was fine.
A million thoughts raced through his mind, paralyzing the boy's trembling body as he struggled to breathe. The warm rays of sunshine danced on his pale skin, and the chirping birds outside accompanied the muffled music. The same records his sister would always play.
His sister.
Toby suddenly threw his body out of his bed and scampered down the hall, almost breaking down the door as he forced himself into his sister's room.
“Lyra-”
“What are you doing?” The girl scolded her little brother, she had been cleaning her room while singing along to her favorite album.
Hesitantly, Toby collided his body against his sisters, gripping mindlessly onto her as though he was desperately seeking confirmation she was real, and not another hallucination. She smelt like peach juice and beach. She felt warm, and alive. Her arms cradled the boy who was overcome by dizziness, he felt as if he was about to faint. As he stared into her familiar green eyes, he ignored her confused gaze. She was as beautiful as he remembered. It took everything in him to fight back a sob, to collapse into her arms and weep. All he could do was stare, take in her entire presence that had been so cruelly taken from him all those years ago. He was here, and so was she, and for now, everything was fine. For once in his tortured life, he seemed to be having a good dream.
“Seriously, what's wrong with you?” Lyra grumbled, pushing off her clingy brother, “are you going to get out of my room now? I’m sort of busy here, nutjob.”
He couldn’t move, as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t muster up the courage to look away. A part of him was terrified that if he did, she would disappear again. In response to her brother's difficult attitude, she shouted out, “Mooom, Toby won't leave me alone!”
A faint voice from the kitchen called out in response, “Toby, stop bothering your sister.”
His mothers voice, he recognized. It sounded almost angelic. For a moment, he thought he must have died in that godless forest and ended up in heaven. He scoffed to himself at the idea as he made his way to the kitchen to see his mother as well. Toby knew better than to entertain the idea of being freed from his sin, he knew he would never see the pearly gates when he died. Not all dogs go to heaven.
He first noticed how lively his mother looked as she scrubbed away at the dishes, compared to all those years he witnessed her carrying such heavy grief in her bones as she moved. Toby only watched from a distance, lingering quietly at the entrance of the kitchen.
“Do you need something?” Connie called out to her son. Her awareness of his presence took the boy off guard, he stammered for a moment. She never noticed him watching all the times he had done it before. Back when everyone told her that Toby had died in that forest fire long ago.
Toby made his way cautiously to his mothers side and embraced her in a tight hug, causing her to let out a surprised gasp at the sudden affection of her troubled boy.
“I’m sorry mom,” he dug his face into the nape of her neck, “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh- Toby, it’s not a big deal,” she hushed as she ran her overworked fingers through the messy, chestnut hair of her son. As Toby pulled away, he allowed himself to get a good look at her face. She looked healthy, happy. Better than he remembered.
As a proxy, he would occasionally check in on his mother, from a distance. Or drop off flowers for mothers day in the dead of night. Only tragedy had gotten this close to her in years. Only tragedy. He inhaled the sun and sound from the nostalgic world around him as though he were living in a mere memory. He breathed in his mothers perfume.
“Why don’t you go clean up your room while I finish making dinner, sweetheart,” Connie suggested, pinching his cheek. His hands, no longer scarred, lingered over hers before he let out a deep breath and made his way back to his childhood room.
Toby sat down on his creaky, small, old bed and embraced the afternoon environment for a moment. His sister was still blasting her music from her room, his room still smelt like teenage musk and a summer long lost. He was years away from the battlefield, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling like something bad was going to happen. The boy grew frustrated at the hopeless situation, to be thrown into a happy memory only to realize he must have to be stolen back from it soon. To wake up on the ground of that dreadful forest.
Standing up, he peered over at the family portrait perched on his tiny dresser. The photo of his family he knew, with his sister, his mother, him, and his father. To his shock, it was now replaced with a new photo which no longer included his dear old dad. Only Toby, Lyra, and their mother. They looked happier, Toby’s smile was more genuine, Lyra was beaming, Connie looked peaceful. They looked like a normal family.
A few hours had passed before Connie called her children to the dinner table, bringing spaghetti and meatballs to their plates. This was the same table where he would so often sit across from his father who would spend the evening ranting and raving, berating his son for being a useless burden. A haunting feeling creeped up behind him, smothering him, stealing his breath. Toby picked at his food, trying to choke down the anger at the idea that his father could still be alive. All of that fight, that effort, went to waste. He had gotten his family back, but he couldn’t shake the idea that he must have gotten that monster back as well. It burnt holes in his gut when he thought about it.
“When's dad coming home?” He spoke up, breaking the soft silence.
As soon as he finished his question, it was as if a wave of tension choked up his family. Lyra glanced worriedly over to Connie, her body sitting still, waiting for her mother to speak up. Connie looked up quickly at her boy, shock and a hint of guilt mingled on the cracks of her face, dancing in her green-blue eyes.
“I’ve promised you this, Toby, he isn’t coming back.” She smiled as she continued to work at the food on her plate, but anyone could see she was fighting back a sorrow too heavy for one woman to carry.
Toby’s heart dropped, he felt uneasy for a moment. And then he felt relieved, and then angry. In what world did his mother gain the courage to kick that man out? In what world did everything turn out fine? That was when the realization drowned him, suffocated him. Toby wasn’t sent back in time. He was in an entirely different world. One where things work out for the best. One with no war.
Memories from before he woke up in this place flooded his mind like a wave pool. Crimson skies, the shrieks, the desperate attempts to flee. His desperate attempts to find that girl. If he ended up in this strange world, he wondered who else wound up here as well. His tired brown eyes glanced down to his hands. They had no callous, no scar. Innocent. He curled his clean fingers into a fist and squeezed. It was far too quiet, far too peaceful.
That night, Toby laid in bed and stared up at his ceiling decorated with dinosaur-shaped glow in the dark stickers that had long worn out. He thought back to how small he was when they had first stuck them there, his father had to lift him up so he could reach. Everytime Toby thought about his dad, he felt a burning sensation consume him. He gritted his teeth down to metal and ash, he clenched his fists so tight they whitened. Toby sat up in bed, he couldn’t sleep. His brow furrowed as he tried to control the rage that took him over. There was something unfed within him, begging to devour like a hungry dog.
His gaze turned towards his bedroom window to meet the trees wrapping around the flickering street lamp illuminating the night outside. Something about that sight overtook him, and he couldn’t help but stare out into the endless void of the midnight hour. Call it desperation, frustration. As his body fell back onto his bed with an irritated groan escaping his mouth, Toby let himself fall into a deep slumber, hoping he would wake up back into the world he knew. Back where he knew himself. Back where he knew he didn’t have to feel as powerless as he did confined in the walls of his childhood home.
Toby softly awoke as he took in a deep breath of morning sunshine and August breeze. He rubbed his tired eyes and examined the area around him, heart beating fast as it typically did when he woke up, readying itself for tragedy. There was a bed underneath him, carpet under that, and a horribly familiar house that surrounded. To his complicated feelings of dismay, he was still in his childhood home. He sniffled to himself as he sat up and let his feet hit the ground. The boy thought back to all the times he would wake up in strange, unknown places with no recollection of what he had been doing before. He thought back to the times he would wake up with blood on his hands, and how he never knew if it was his or not.
The lanky boy, still in his pajamas, shuffled out of his room and down the hallway which led to the living room. His hands traced over the walls he grew up with, gliding over patched holes in the wall, listening to his sister talk to one of her friends on the phone in her room. As Toby made his way to the blaring TV, he stared at the infomercial for a long while, waiting for the image to turn to static, or to distort as it typically did where he was from. The longer he waited for something to happen, the more he realized it never would. Like awaiting the arrival of a friend who he hadn’t met yet. Everything was normal.
Toby made his way out of the house and into the outdoors. The boy had no regard for his appearance, no shame. He had the belief that he shouldn’t waste his breath trying to please a world that endlessly rejected him. The summer heat embraced his body as he eyed his surroundings. Toby made note of every car, house, neighbor mowing their lawn. He twitched and turned to every bird flying, tree swaying. Every stranger he passed as he walked down the sidewalk of the neighborhood he had walked a thousand times made his fist clench in preparation. His hand would make its way down to his side, ready to grab a hatchet that no longer resided on the belt he was no longer wearing.
As he looked at the large, overbearing forest that he was approaching at the end of the street, Toby could only think back to the last time he had witnessed it in all its mightiness and size. When he entered the woods, all he thought about was the fire. The heat that scorched him, the ash that choked him, the smoke that scraped at his lungs. The blood of his father that he wore like a glove on his hands. Compared to the night Toby Rogers died, the now once again seventeen year old boy felt odd standing alongside the tall trees he had once burnt to ash. The boy looked out at the vastness of the wide green forest, taking it all in, as he did last time he was there. This time, there was no fire, no blood, no tragedy. There was no static. No faceless entity.
“Are you listening?” Toby called out to the endless nothingness. In reply, there was a harmony of birds chirping. A warm summer breeze danced past him. He stood silently, eagerly awaiting a response from the eldritch being who tortured him for years. A masochistic desperation for a sign that he wasn’t left behind. He felt healthy, clean. A cleanliness that drove him mad. It stripped him from all he was. Toby was left bare and small standing directionless in the midst of the woods. He choked back his frustration and turned to make his way back home. There was nothing there for him.
#tombwrites#tombfic#creepypasta#ticci toby#creepypasta fandom#creepypasta headcanon#ticci toby headcanons#creepypasta ticci toby#ticci toby fanfic#creepypasta fanfiction#ticci toby fanfiction#toby rogers#creepypasta fanfic#creepypasta art#ticci toby creepypasta#ticci toby headcanon
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 14. // (masterlist)
(AN: SORRY For the lack of updates, life has been very hectic lately and I haven't been too confident in my writing/story-telling skills so I have been slacking fr. I can't say Ill be posting regularly again, but I AM NOT abandoning the fic. L&T will get its ending eventually, thanks for sticking around 🫡 Enjoy)
The afternoon sun beamed down as a crowd of people swerved around the dramatic scene which had been playing out in the midst of the bustling winter market. The girl, who Toby knew as Nina Hopkins, collapsed into Natalie’s arms, nearly sobbing about how much she had missed them.
“It’s so good to see you two are alive!” Nina spoke out, clinging to Natalie’s body, which had tensed up like a nervous cat.
“You’re causing a scene,” Toby muttered lowly, glancing at the people who were giving strange looks as they passed by the teens.
“Let her do her thing, Toby,” Natalie scolded quietly, patting the girl on the back with an awkward fondness.
Toby shuffled in his place uncomfortably, shoving his hands into his sweater pocket as he waited for the girls to be done with their heartfelt reconnection, secretly hoping to himself that Nina wouldn’t have any tears left for him. The boy looked over the sea of people rushing by, and then down, to see a little boy clinging to Nina’s side. He looked to be about 9 years old, with neat brown hair, and he quietly glanced around with a subtle sort of embarrassment.
“Who the fuck are you?” Toby spoke out at the child, catching his attention, and Nina’s, who glared at the older boy as she slapped his arm.
“That’s my little brother, you jerk.”
“Oh, so that's why he looks like that.”
The group of eccentric teens pushed through the market as they exchanged casual conversation, splitting off from the crowd in the snowy streets of the market, and made their way into the Bulldog Tavern. The atmosphere was a relaxed contrast to the midday busyness of the town outside, and there was no one in the empty tavern but the four youths who sat themselves down around a table. The overhead lights draped over the room, a soft golden glow, shining off of the wooden floorings and bottles of alcohol sitting untouched on the shelf behind the bar. It smelt like rye whiskey and firewood, and only the bubblegum-pitched sound of Nina’s voice rang throughout the room.
She explained that she had found herself in the new world with her back pressed against the same bed she had slept in when she was a teenage girl, in mid-October. Confined by the same poster-filled walls she had once torn down, to escape into the arms of a man who didn't care if she lived or died, in another world. When she found herself back in her mother's house, Nina had come to the understanding that even after she ran away, even after all the atrocities she had seen and done, she hadn't lived a life any different from the one she had lived as a 16 year old girl. She still tied her hair back with ribbons, and she still smudged her mascara. She still wanted to find Jeff, and she still wanted to be loved.
The scars that once etched itself out from the corners of her mouth had washed away, alongside the chemical burns that previously littered her body. Nina rubbed her hand over her arm, a melancholic smile painted onto her teenaged face. She looked softer, healthier, than Toby remembered. The girl radiated the same type of glow as rave lights; flashing, headache-inducing.
Nina explained that as soon as she made an ounce of sense of the world she woke up in, she began to obsessively search for answers.
“So what about Jeff?” Toby blurted out, asking the question Natalie dreaded to ask. Nina blinked for a moment, a layer of uncomfortable silence dancing around the bar, then she awkwardly laughed to herself.
“Oh, yeah, I’m totally over him. I did a ton of digging but couldn't find anything on him, so I don't know if he even exists here. It’s whatever.”
“Well that's a relief. We’re all better off without him here anyways,” Toby said as Nina’s painted nails twiddled with the ends of her hair, which had been tied up with a purple ribbon. He crossed his arms over his chest in irritation as Natalie nudged him to shut his mouth, and leaned into the conversation.
“So what's your plan now?”
“Oh my god, I don't even really have a plan. I just had to get away from my mom and stepdad, and crazy enough, I found out where Clocky stayed, so I took Chris and ended up here.”
The little boy sat silently beside his older sister, looking around at the desolate bar, trying not to think too much about the strange things she had been discussing with the two others who were sitting across the round, walnut-wood table. Nina glanced over at her little brother, placing her cheek on the palm of her hand, as Toby leaned over towards Natalie, and whispered to the girl about how she's too easy to find, which earned him another rough elbow into his side.
“I was actually going to ask if we could, like, stay with you guys for a bit? Just until I get a job!” Nina squeezed her hand closed, and anticipation buried itself onto her sun-browned cheeks, and into her bright eyes. She sounded desperate, maybe a bit hopeful, as she pleaded to her two old friends.
“No.” Toby quickly shut down, before being brushed off by the girl next to him.
“You can stay with us, but with a few conditions.”
Natalie crossed her slender arms atop the table, laying down the rules of their stay as the older boy sulked, sinking angrily into his seat. The conditions were that the siblings both had to enroll in school, help around the house, and Nina had to actively look for a job. All of which, to Toby’s dismay, were ones the eccentric girl across from them agreed to with a wide smile on her face.
The February frost mingled on the worn, decaying front porch step of the small farmhouse, and only the sound of ragged sneakers and winter boots stomping off excess snow spread out over the quiet, white winter fields as the four youths made their way inside. Nina held stars of awe in her eyes as she looked out at the vast countryside property, and a girlish sort of excitement as she followed her friends through the dim hallways of the house, only lit by the sun shining through the icy window panes. Chris followed closely behind, he didn't say anything at all, but he took in the chipped gray-blue wallpaper, the lifted old wooden floorings that squeaked under his weight, and the smell of something dead, like cigarette smoke. There was a strange sense that there had been something lively here once, maybe a family, maybe a boy his age who would run through the halls as his mother cooked dinner, or an elderly couple who never wore their rings, waiting for the day the other passed.
The little boy ran his hand along the walls as he wandered behind his older sister, not bothering to listen in to the conversation she held with the two strangers who showed them where the bathroom was, then the kitchen, then the living room. Then, they came to the old art room where Chris and Nina would be sleeping. When the older boy opened the creaky door for them, there was a grand reveal of nothingness. A completely empty space; like a blackhole had swallowed the life out of the room one night, and never spat it back out.
“You’ll have to sleep on the floor for right now, at least until you can afford mattresses,” Toby said, gesturing his hand out at the lack of furniture.
Nina waltzed into her new bedroom, and Chris hesitantly followed after her, uncomfortable. He tugged on her coat to catch the girl's attention, and whispered to her, a horrible confession of sorts.
“I don't wanna live here, Nina. I don’t wanna sleep on the floor.”
The girl had a rich history of sleeping on forest grounds and dirty carpets in the old world; so often, that sleeping on the floor was just another thing she had grown accustomed to, alongside the stench of blood and rot. It was almost more comforting to Nina than the bed she'd woken up in when she came to the new world. She was grateful to have a roof over her head, and told Chris to be as well, ignoring his complaints.
Natalie threw down a couple of pillows onto the floor, and a few blankets she found tucked away in her bedroom closet. The sun outside the window had begun to hide itself behind the winding hills of the farmland, the orange-red skies reflecting off of the glistening snow as the room darkened. The forest trees in the distance stood tall, still, and branched over the warm gleam of the horizon.
“This should be good for tonight. Let me know if you need anything else, alright?” Natalie said with her hands on her hips, looking down at the two guests sitting in their makeshift beds.
“Thanks so much, again, seriously. You're a lifesaver Clocky,” Nina smiled at the tall girl as she curled herself under the blanket, her dark hair sprawled over her shoulders and pillow.
“Just call me Natalie,” she replied as she turned to leave the room, flicking off the lights, leaving only the dim glow of the sunset draping itself on the floor over the pair of siblings, and reflecting from the girl's tired eyes.
“Night, Natalie.”
“G’night, Nina.”
As promised, through the course of the early February days, Nina had enrolled Chris in the small elementary school in town. But instead of finishing her high school education, the girl had focused entirely on getting a full-time job. She would sit for hours at the old library computer, and perfect her resume, before handing it out to every retail store and salon she could find. The winter frost kissed her cheeks as she buried her chilled face into her wooly scarf, mitted hands hugging her body for warmth as she made her way back to the tiny farmhouse, nearly every day.
Eventually, as her friendship with Lady Luck would bring, Nina had found herself working at a clothing store in the smalltown mall. Cursed with the boredom of a 9-5, but thrilled with her first legal paycheck. And the first thing she bought: a pair of new shoes she had kept an eager eye on from the boutique the girl had spent time window-shopping, which instead cursed her with sore feet, and a scolding from Natalie about her poor financial decisions.
Toby tossed a piece of chopped wood into the dying flames of the fireplace, listening to the crackle as the lumber began to be overtaken by the eager fire, and watching as it burned to char. The sparks danced, scorched, in his eyes; the color of pinewood being set ablaze. The boy remained still for a moment, and witnessed, with a sort of hunger that he couldn't quite name. Then, he heard the sound of the front door creaking open, and the sound of little footsteps stomping off snow. Both Nina and Natalie had been kept busy at their jobs that awful season, and sometimes Nina would stay late into the evening, leaving Toby to watch over Chris after the young boy had returned from school.
Chris quietly shuffled into the livingroom, and sat on the couch, reaching for the TV remote, and turning it on. The blare of the television overtook the room with a laugh track from an early-evening sitcom, and Toby looked over at the child who’s gaze was glued to the show. He stared at Chris’s face for a moment, his full cheeks like his sister, neat brown hair, big brown eyes that haven't yet seen half of the world in its tainted glory. Toby turned to look down at the boy’s hands, which settled around the remote mindlessly, and how his legs were too short to touch the floor as they dangled over the edge of the couch. A bright, wide smile crept onto Chris’s face as he exhaled out a repressed laugh at the juvenile joke on TV, followed by another ear-scorching laugh track.
There was a sick sort of feeling gripping the older boy’s chest as he eyed the child next to him with furrowed brow, and he couldn't help his face from scrunching in a sort of disgust, or anger, or guilt. The only thing Toby could think of, was the guttural sobbing of the mother he had witnessed that dead winter night, through the shattered window, watching as she held the body of her child, wailing, pleading to a God they both knew wasn't listening. And when Chris laughed again, at another childish joke on that blaring TV, boyhood resting innocent in his eyes. Toby could only picture him dead.
The older boy quickly stood to his feet, placing a hand over his stomach as a wave of disease and dizziness overtook him. Chris glanced over at Toby with an unassuming concern, but didn't say a word, and watched as the teen stormed out of the livingroom.
Toby had begun to develop an unfortunate habit over the days of avoiding the little boy. He hid in bed to avoid looking at Chris, because he didn't want to look in his eyes and see the terrified, pleading eyes of the children he had to kill before him. He covered his ears, because he didn’t want to hear the soft, quick, tiny footsteps of the boy wandering the halls outside of Toby’s bedroom; unseen, like a ghost, haunting him. And soon thereafter, Toby had begun to make home with the snowy forest landscape outdoors, ignoring his ice-bitten hands, because it was better than facing punishment in child-form.
He laid himself back in the snow, and stared up at the cloudy afternoon skies. Gray and dark, as if there had been a forest fire, and the smoke had spread over the wide heavens. But the woods around the boy remained quiet, only interrupted by the occasional deer running past, or rabbit. And everytime an animal would rustle through the frost, or a twig would snap, Toby would jolt up, heart beating, looking around for the source of the sound, before collapsing back down into his white, cold cradle. He sighed deeply as his heart slowly settled after another twig-snapping scare, and looked up at the dead tree branches towering over him, reaching across the gray skies. The boy felt his eyes grow heavy, and tired, and when he stretched his arms up, he noticed how red his fingers had gotten, nearly blue with chill. Toby let out a groan of irritation at the condition of his hands, and pulled himself to his sore feet, brushing the snow off his sweater as he made his way towards the warmth of the farmhouse.
Toby huffed out hot air into his palms, and rubbed them together before going to open the backdoor, entering into the kitchen. The first thing he saw was the sniffling boy sitting on the floor by the dinner table, and then he saw the blood. Toby didn't quite understand physical pain, but he was taught from a very young age that blood meant injury, and injury meant something bad had happened. Toby looked down at Chris who shied away in shame, rubbing his teary eyes, and turning his bleeding forehead away from the olders gaze. There was a violent sort of feeling that rushed through Toby’s body, a loud irritation, frustration, and his lip twitched.
“Get the fuck up, stop crying,” he shouted out, gesturing the boy to stand up, which he did.
“You hit your head on the table? Are you fucking stupid?” Toby yelled at Chris, who didn't say a word.
For a second, Toby could only look down at the child, and see his 9 year old self looking back up at him. Angry, and so small. And for a second, Toby could only look up, and take a deep breath in, and try not to think of his father. He stood tall across from Chris, who’s gaze remained firm at his feet, and there was no more shouting. Toby’s hand slowly made its way down to the hatchet that sat on the holster of his belt, and gripped the handle for a moment. He stared down at the little boy, half-imagining his younger self who he had killed long ago, alongside many other little boys, because it had to be done, and Toby realized something horrible. Standing over the child, his hand gripping the hatchet handle, the frustration that steamed off his sun-spotted shoulders — he was in control. And even worse, Toby had been in that place many times before, and he made his own decisions, and it haunted him, and now, the ghost stood quiet before him, in the form of a child choking back tears. A child that sort of looked like him.
Toby took a deep breath, inhaling the early evening sun, which had already begun to set, and the musk of the old kitchen. He knelt down, and met Chris’s height, and raised his hand off the hatchet handle, to which the little boy fought against a flinch at the movement.
“Alright,” Toby spoke quietly, “How bad is it?”
Chris sat still on the wooden dining room chair, his feet unable to touch the ground, as he tried not to look at the older boy who shuffled through an old first-aid kit he had found under the bathroom sink. He pulled out peroxide, and a large bandage, and turned to face the boy.
Toby pushed back Chris’s hair from his forehead as he washed the small wound out, holding his head firmly in place as he winced.
“Quit moving, I gotta clean it out,” he muttered as blood gathered on the wet cotton ball he patted gently over the cut. He examined the wound over again, before peeling open the bandage, and placing it onto the boy’s forehead.
“You’ll be fine,” Toby awkwardly reassured as he finished up, avoiding the boy’s uncomfortable glances and turning around to put the supplies away.
“I know,” Chris muttered quietly, “my stepdad's hit me worse.”
Toby quickly stopped, his hands remaining still on the edges of the first-aid kit he had been packing back up. His heart sank deep into his chest, like it was revolted, or stabbed. He looked over at the little boy, who had not only spoken to him for the first time, but had confessed something, like he was on his knees in his bedroom at midnight silently asking God for help. Toby slowly made his way back over towards the child who sat uncomfortable, a bit sad, on the dining room chair.
“Uh, listen, Chris,” Toby stumbled over his words, trying to find something, anything to say. There was something small buried within him that wanted to be heard, something that had been beaten down for so long, that began to crawl, and scratch, and fight its way out of his throat. Toby sat down next to the boy, and there was a subtle, silent ambiance that settled over the two boys, battered and wartorn.
“I’m sorry,” Chris whispered.
“It’s not your fault,” Toby whispered back.
Natalie slipped off her work shoes as she entered the quiet house, darkened by the evening. She listened to the muffled sound of the TV playing cartoons from the livingroom as she shuffled tiredly down the hallway, and into the kitchen. Her overworked fingers dug under her ponytail, and wriggled the hairband off, letting her tangled hair fall on her freckled shoulders. Natalie turned on the squeaky sink faucet, and watched water pour into her cup, filling it nearly to the brim before she turned it off. The girl sighed to herself as she sat exhausted onto the dining table chair, and took a sip of her water. As she placed her cup down onto the table, she raised an eyebrow, and ran her fingers over the once-sharp corners, which had now been sanded down.
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🧺 —Laundry And Taxes
chapter 6. // (masterlist)
Toby woke up the next morning to a distant sound of something sizzling coming from the kitchen, accompanied by the song of the wildlife outside of his window. It was a cloudy day, the bright blue skies were hidden behind a sheet of gray. On these days, Toby had a particularly difficult time dragging himself out of bed. He didn’t want to talk to anybody, and he didn’t want to do anything. The boys tired, heavy eyes stared up at the ceiling. There was water damage which stained along the edges - it reminded him of the motel room back in Alabama. Toby caught himself toying with the idea of his past again, as if there was a secret to getting back to how everything used to be that was dangling in front of him. It taunted him like a piece of fresh meat to a hungry dog. His body slowly raised to a sitting position on his ragged and torn mattress, as he forced himself out of bed. As he shuffled out of his room, he felt as though there were weights tied to him, dragging him down.
The boy lingered outside of the kitchen, watching Jack as he cooked eggs on the stove. The smell filled the air of the open room, making Toby’s stomach growl as he breathed it in.
“I don’t have any bacon, so I hope you’re fine with only eggs and toast,” Jack spoke, without once looking up from his handiwork cooking slowly on the pan.
“No bacon for breakfast? You’re a freak of nature,” Toby teased back, making his way to the fridge to see what there was to drink. As there was no working power in the cabin, everything was cooled with ice. The way Jack lived was something very familiar to Toby. His small, old, isolated cabin in the woods felt more like home to the boy than when he was in the house he was raised in.
“No bacon. I don’t eat meat.”
“That's ironic,” Toby chuckled to himself, taking out a jug of milk and glancing over to the other. Guilt dripped down Jack's face as thick as tar, it screamed out from his dark brown eyes. It looked as though it was choking him. Toby couldn’t help but stare, before he realized. That guilt, the sickness Jack felt when he ate meat, the fact he couldn’t even bring himself to cook bacon for breakfast, or be around other humans, because of what he had done. All of those things, the guttural remorse, were exactly what made Jack so human, even when he was a monster, and it was everything Toby himself had lacked.
Toby had never felt bad for the things he had done, he never cared about anybody but himself. Nothing mattered to him, not even himself. It was a dog eat dog world, every man for himself. Toby had no intention of letting himself be as weak as to care about such unimportant things. If anything, Jack’s guilt was only a hindrance. It annoyed Toby, almost to the point of rage. ‘Bacon tastes good’, Toby thought to himself, ‘I’m not going to change my diet just because Jack is a pussy’.
Toby poured the milk into a glass, watching Jack finish the last of the eggs. Sunny side up, two slices of toast on the side. No bacon.
“So what? Are you vegetarian now? No meat at all, or just bacon?”
“Yes, I’m sticking to a vegetarian diet now. I can’t bring myself to eat any kinds of meat.”
“I heard human flesh tastes like chicken. Does bacon have the same kick or what?”
Jack ignored the question as he placed the sizzling eggs onto the plate next to him, and handed it to the pestering boy. The man took his own plate and left to eat on the front porch. Toby followed behind him, walking out into the cool open air of autumn. The two sat in silence as they ate their meals. It was a calm, still, sort of silence. Jack was always a quiet man, he never dared to say too much.
“You lucked out with this cabin,” Toby spoke through a full mouth as he gulped down his breakfast. Jack nodded in agreement.
“Back home, yknow in the other world, I had a cabin like this. I uh, I actually shared it with Natalie. Sort of,” The boy rambled to himself, as Jack sat silent looking at Toby, who always seemed to struggle to find the words he wanted to speak.
“Do you miss her?” Jack finally said, after a moment of watching the other pathetically grasp at an excuse to talk about the girl.
“Nat? Why would I miss her? She was a bitch.”
“I thought you two were friends, no?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. That's why we shared a cabin, it was our place to meet up,” Toby smiled to himself as words began to fall from his mouth, “I remember all the times she’d get pissed at me, or I’d get pissed at her, and we’d start going nuts. Throwing things, breaking glass. Man I can’t fucking count how many holes in the wall from my hatchets there were in that cabin. And don’t get me started on all the times she’d storm out, and I’d see her again the next day. Talk about crazy.”
“I’m sure you’ll see her again someday, Toby.”
“I hope not.”
Jack raised an eyebrow at the boy's rejection. He could tell that the girl was important to him, he saw the way his face beamed when he thought about her, he saw the way his body eased away from the tension he always held onto so tightly. The sun had never shone so brightly.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, she was cool. But it would just be awkward, and I don’t think she wants anything to do with me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know man. I guess it’s like… She spent so long trying to get away from me. It felt like every time I saw her, it ended with me angry, and her leaving. If she is in this world, I can only picture her happy alone.”
Jack was easy to talk to. He was an active listener of sorts, he was the type of person who never judged or shamed. Someone to trust, something solid to lean on. Toby found solace in the company of the man, a type of friendship he had never known. The monster man and the feral mutt. It was a running joke in the old world that Jack was Toby’s babysitter, and everybody would tease and ask how Jack could tolerate that troublemaker like he did. Only Jack saw the moments in the boy when the violence dripped away, and humanity seeped out from the callouses in his aching hands, and ducts of his desensitized eyes. The man kept this image of the reckless, callous boy in his mind, so close to his heart, it always shocked him when he heard the boy speak about himself as if he weren’t anything but a weapon. Because Jack knew, more than anyone, that humanity was found on mornings like these, while listening to a boy like Toby talk about a girl with his thumbs twiddling, and his eyes fixed to the ground. That image of Toby sitting there, cracking his chest open to the one person he could ever begin to trust, scrambling to find the right words to describe how it feels. That, to Jack, was what it meant to be human.
Later in the afternoon, Jack had decided to take Toby along on a walk. He said there was a place deep in the woods that he wanted to show him. Without having anything better to do, Toby followed closely behind the man as he led the boy through a hidden path winding between the tall trees that stood over them. The cloudy skies had begun to part, revealing a soft blue from behind the gray blanket, and a bright light peeked out, gleaming through the ceiling of orange and yellow autumn leaves that branched overhead. The overgrowth cracked and crinkled beneath their feet as the two continued through the nature, taking in all of the earth's beauty.
As the two men walked along the dirt path, Toby found himself picking at the tall evergreen trees that mixed in with the oak. When Jack questioned him about it, Toby shook his head.
“Natalie hated flowers mostly. But I remembered how much she loved evergreen trees. She always smelt like pine needles.”
He picked off another needle and flicked it onto the ground as he walked past, jogging ahead of Jack.
“I hated the smell,” Toby insisted as he shoved his hands into his sweater pocket.
Jack quickened his pace to catch up with the boy who was now huffing to himself in disdain. It seemed as though the more time that had passed, the more thoughts of that cruel girl filled the boy's mind. He wished to be able to forget about her, and he didn’t understand why.
“Do you still carry your hatchets with you?” Jack questioned.
Toby slowed down, glancing awkwardly over at the other like a bad dog.
“Uh, just one, why?”
“Why don’t you come out here some day and chop wood for the stove? You can put your skills to use.”
The boy thought about it for a moment. He had rarely ever used his hatchets for their intended purpose back home, he knew how to split skulls, not wood.
“I guess if I need to. But I’m trying to keep it sharp in case I need to… Yknow,” Toby said, dragging his thumb over his throat in a slitting motion and grimacing.
“Why would you need to kill anybody here?”
“You never know!”
Toby ran off ahead, hitting at tree leaves as he hopped along the path, occasionally glancing back to make sure Jack was keeping up. He would jump onto fallen logs, and climb branches. He seemed to have much more energy than he had in the morning, and much more restless. Jack smiled to himself at the sight of the boy carelessly fooling around in the woods, it was a nice sight to see. A teenage boy being something more than a cold-hearted weapon. It seemed as though, for a moment, Toby had reclaimed his innocence.
Jack led Toby off the path, and through untouched land, pushing past the growth and out into an open field. The two stood on top of a large, towering cliff which looked out over a twisting valley. The brilliant warmth of the sun beamed down, the skies were now clear and blue, the fall trees swayed gently. The wide green earth sprawled from the tall hill the men looked out from. It was magnificent, beautiful. Standing there on that peak, everything beyond seemed so small. They were on top of the world. The forest below lived on with orange and yellow hues, like a sea of rust. The sky appeared endless as it draped overhead.
For a moment, as he stared out at all of the grand radiance, Toby lost his breath. The colors were vibrant, and the sounds of the wildlife around him sang symphonies of nature. He had never witnessed anything like it before. The forest back in the old world was dim, dark, devoid of animation. He resided for so long in a place where life was something to be taken, and as he stood out over the sea of mother earth, in all of her vast entirety, he felt his chest sink into his stomach.
He took a deep breath in of the crisp, clean air. A light breeze swayed past him. And in one sharp exhale, Toby hollered out, and threw his arms up. He stood there, atop the hill, laughing and shouting out in victory. He looked over at Jack with a big smile plastered on his face, and Jack smiled back. There was a fire in his eyes, and he was so young. Toby grabbed Jack’s arm, and lifted it up with his, as he continued to shout out. Soon, Jack joined him.
The pair screamed their lungs raw as they laughed at the beauty beyond them. On that late afternoon, in the midst of that forest, on top of that hill, they were alive. It was horrific, and it was painful, and it was terrible, but they were alive, and they were more human than they had ever been before.
Finally losing his breath, Toby fell back, and laid chuckling to himself through heavy inhales and exhales, his back pressing into the meadow beneath him. Jack quickly joined him, and took a seat next to the boy, both catching their spent breath, smiling widely to themselves.
“That… That’s how I want to feel, every day of my life,” Toby panted.
“It’s wonderful.”
“I just need to work harder, do more. I think I’ll take your advice and put my hatchet skills to use.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” Jack said, smiling to himself that for once, Toby had actually listened to the words Jack so often preached.
A few days had passed, and October had come rushing in. Toby had begun going off on his own for hours on end. Jack never knew what the boy was up to, and he knew better than to ask. The man always did his best not to push Toby too much, worried that he might push back harder if he did. But there were nights when the boy would stumble back into the cabin, dirt crusting his jeans, and his eyes fixed into a glare. Jack would always warn the careless other not to push his body past its limits. Toby never listened.
“Be careful not to overwork yourself, Toby.”
“Hop off my ass.”
Toby pushed past the man, and placed his hatchet down onto the kitchen table. His hands were calloused, dirty. He never brought back wood.
“You need to let yourself rest at some point,” Jack suggested, looming over Toby.
“No, I need to work harder. I need to do more. Make all of this shit amount to something.”
“You talk like you’re fighting for a badge that says you deserve to live. You do not need to earn your place in this world, Toby. You’re going to hurt yourself pushing your body like this.”
Toby slammed his hands onto the surface of the table as he turned around to face the man standing behind him.
“I don’t give a fuck what happens to me, Jack. I don’t care if I’m overworking myself, I don’t care if I’m pushing myself too far. Get it through your thick fucking skull that I don’t care!”
Toby gritted his teeth and dusted the mud off of his clothes, before heading off into his room. There was a deep feeling of indifference to his existence, as if he had done far too much to have a place in the world. He was left with no choice but to continue fighting. If he couldn’t do that much, then what was to become of him? He couldn’t let that flame expire, he was hungry for revenge, to prove everyone wrong. He wanted to prove that he, too, deserved a spot in the colosseum of the living.
Jack couldn’t seem to get it through to the stubborn boy that he didn’t need to destroy himself to live. He couldn’t get him to relax. There was lightning in his eyes, it sparked from his tongue as he shouted, and it was in Jack’s best interest to stay out of his way.
The next morning, Toby stood out at the edge of the forest, swinging at a log, as Jack watched from the front porch sipping a cup of tea. Despite his handiwork with his hatchet, and how he gripped it as if he knew what he was doing, Toby couldn’t seem to chop wood in any way that worked. It felt sloppy, like he was missing the mark. Shouting out in frustration, Toby threw his hatchet down to the ground and kicked at the log, which prompted Jack to stand up, and walk over to the temperamental boy.
“You said I had skill! I can’t even fucking chop this log in half,” The boy complained.
“What do you envision when you swing your hatchet down?”
“Well I just go at it like I’m chopping off some heads.”
“There’s your issue, Toby. This is wood, not a neck. Different situations require different responses. You have a lot of skill with that hatchet of yours, but you use it as a weapon, not as a tool.”
Jack bent down, picking up the tool off the ground and handed it back to Toby who had anger worn on his face like a party mask.
“Try again.”
Toby glared daggers at Jack as he reeled back his hatchet as far as he could, before throwing it hard at a tree, and past Jack. There was a loud thud as it hit the bark, sticking out from the oak. Toby mouthed off silently at Jack as he kicked dirt and stormed off into the forest. Jack sighed to himself at the difficult situation, and went to pull out the tool which was lodged into a tree behind him.
Mid October had soon rolled in, and the woods had now turned into a decaying orange rust, leaves had begun to pile up onto the forest grounds. The nights had gotten longer, and Toby’s attitude and defiance hadn’t seemed to improve. He had begun to get restless, often attempting to start petty disputes with Jack, in which Jack never bothered to entertain. The man was very collected and calm, he never lost control over himself. It was a skill he had learnt as a demon, in all those fights against himself. Toby, on the other hand, often lost himself to dramatics and pride. Everything was a battle to him, and he needed to come out on top.
Toby had returned back late into the evening, as he typically did. Jack was standing in the kitchen, reading silently to himself, the light of candles illuminating the dark cabin. It was a quiet night.
Not looking up from his book he was immersed in, Jack took a breath in, smelling a strange fragrance. He felt sick to his stomach as the putrid, metallic scent strangled his nostrils. Lifting his head up towards the smell, he watched as Toby dropped a dead rabbit at his feet. The two stood silently, both looking down at the carcass which Toby had brought home, the blood of the animal staining his hands. The boy eyed the man's expression, which showed nothing but indifference. Jack remained quiet.
“Just thought I’d bring home some supper,” Toby spoke out, nudging the animal with his muddy shoe.
Jack looked up at the boy, before turning back to his book.
“You shouldn’t make messes that you aren’t willing to clean up,” Jack responded softly, flipping through the pages to find where he had left off.
Frustrated at the lack of response once again, Toby rolled his eyes and left for his bedroom, hatchet gripped in his bloody hand.
Once the boy had made his leave, Jack exhaled deeply, as if he had been holding his breath. He looked down at the decaying corpse at his feet once more, before picking it up by the ears, and bringing it outside. Jack placed it under a tall oak tree that stood on the edge of the forest surrounding his cabin, letting nature take care of the rabbit. He entered back into the house, and washed off his hands, before heading to Toby’s room. He knocked gently on the door, waiting for approval that it was alright to come in. There was only the sound of awkward shuffling for a moment.
“Come in,” Toby called out, prompting Jack to open the door, closing it behind him.
“Tomorrow I’m going into a nearby town. We need more ice, and food.”
“Get some more orange juice, maybe some peaches,” Toby requested as he laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
“You should come with me. We can stop by a local church,” Jack suggested, making Toby groan and sit up.
“Church? Seriously? Why the fuck would you of all people want to go to church?”
“Because, Toby, sometimes people need something bigger than themselves to look towards.”
“And that's supposed to make us feel better? Some random fucker in the sky saying we need to kiss his ass in order to be free of everything we don’t feel like carrying?”
“I’m not asking you to devote yourself, but it does help act as a guidance. To help you understand that you can let everything go, with no strings attached. You can give back what you’ve taken, and make your peace with the world.”
“Maybe try asking the world to make peace with me first,” Toby muttered to himself as he ran one of his hands over his other one, the rabbit's blood still stained into his skin.
“God can forgive you for the sins you’ve committed.”
Jack was never a religious man. He was brought to church every Sunday as a child, which ended up with him in college, where he wouldn’t have touched a Bible even if asked to. But Jack spent so much time alone, bastardized, demonized, he knew nothing else but to cling to the idea of retribution and begging to a God he was terrified of. He had spent too much time as a not-man who couldn’t kneel in church.
“I can’t imagine anyone would forgive me for what I’ve done.”
“I do. I forgive you,” Jack said. Toby scoffed.
“Don’t bother.”
The air grew heavy with tension. The fire and the deep sea.
“I know what it’s like to kill somebody, Toby. I know how heavy that burden is.”
“You don’t know shit,” Toby lowered his voice, his eyes darkened. Something of a warning for Jack to watch his mouth.
“It seems we always come back to these pointless conversations,” Jack sighed.
“Yeah? Well maybe say something useful. Preach some bullshit that actually fucking helps me for once.”
“You know, Toby. There is nothing I can say to help you. I realize that now.”
Toby’s chest tightened, he stood up face to face with Jack, his brow furrowed.
“You gonna just drop me off somewhere else like Tim and Brian did now too?”
“That’s not what I’m saying-”
“Oh really? No, you’re just saying that I’m helpless, right? That nothing is going to ever get better? Is… Is any of this ever going to go away?” Toby’s voice cracked as he choked back all the things he wanted to shout out.
“There is no big epiphany or deep conversations that can fix this for you. You need to take steps every day to learn how to do better for yourself, and I can’t take those steps for you, and I can’t make you do anything. I wish you would help yourself, but I see you make the choice every day to ruin yourself.”
“I don’t know how to fucking help myself!”
“You learn.”
“I’m sick of learning and I’m sick of this and I’m sick of you. I should’ve left as soon as I got here,” Toby spoke loudly, grabbing all of his things scattered around his room, and packing them into his backpack. Jack watched as the boy desperately grasped at straws. He knew better than anybody that he couldn’t save Toby, that he could only watch as he crashed and burned. There was nothing anyone could do for him, but gather around and look up to the sky as they watched his wax wings melt. Dread built in Jack’s weary heart. The terrible sight, seeing the beeswax drip away, as Toby recklessly disregarded his own limits, and the limits of everyone around him. He pushed and pushed, and Jack had no choice but to witness Toby wear himself down.
Throwing his backpack over his shoulder, he pushed past Jack, sniffling to himself as he held his hatchet tightly in his hand. Without another word, the furious boy stormed out of the cabin and into the night, as Jack silently watched. It was a quiet mid-October night, and the stars were dimmer than usual in the brooding dark sky. The waning crescent barely illuminated the gravel road. The silhouette of the boy was quickly engulfed by the dark abyss he walked out into.
Jack sighed to himself, once again in his lonesome company, and made his way back into his cabin. He repeated to himself that there was nothing more he could’ve done, but the guilt consumed him. His old friend had been right once again - it was his own mind that would be the death of Jack. The man climbed into his creaky, old bed, and tried not to think too much. He prayed for the first time in a long time that night.
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
the prologue. // (masterlist)
“We have to get out of here now, Toby!” The gruff older man shouted through a hurried breath. The man's arm was draped over Brian's shoulder, as they rushed to get out of the surrounding destruction. The trees that once stood so tall, unshakable, were shrieking and collapsing like injured tendrils. Skies once a cool gray were now consumed by a deep, dark red illuminating the woods. The earth beneath their racing feet was wilting and convulsing, as though it was attempting to reject a virus.
“I can’t leave without her,” Toby’s voice cracked with worry. As the forest collapsed around them, the younger boy desperately shouted out, hoping somewhere, she was still out there looking for him too. His heart was beating like a violent drum in his chest, his hands were bloody from searching recklessly through the debris.
Just mere hours ago, the group of men had been sitting idly in their meet-up point, a small worn down cabin deep within the depths of the woods. Staking out, taking apart guns and putting them together again, catching up on much needed rest. It wasn’t long though before they heard a series of loud, thundering booms roaring across the wide dark spread of the evening sky. They quickly exited to the outdoors, just in time to witness the blue-gray skies be overtaken by crimson clouds rolling in. The red hue that surrounded them was almost blinding, and everything fell silent. They held their breath, eyeing the environment for any sign of life or movement. It was as if, for a moment, every creature, being, entity, life, in that makeshift forest had died.
In an instant, everything exploded out into a rough and quick series of sudden demolition. It was loud, terrible, like the tortured screams of 5th hell, commanded by the end of the world itself. And if those men didn’t make it out in time, they would’ve been consumed by the destruction as well. There was no time to think, they needed to act, and they needed to act quickly.
Dread filled their strong hearts as they sprinted through the forest terrain. Shrill shrieks in the heavy atmosphere, loud crashing of trees collapsing, ground shaking, darkened red skies falling. Running faster than his legs could keep up with, Toby came to a sudden halt, which caused him to jerk forward and stumble for a moment before he turned heel and began to run back from where he came.
“What the fuck are you doing kid?” Tim shouted out after him.
“I need to find Natalie!” The boy screamed back as he continued rushing through the battlefield, trying desperately to avoid the hurling branches and rocks that had been picked up by the rough winds.
As he ran aimlessly around the wreckage looking for the girl the other men knew as ‘Clockwork’, Toby felt himself choking back grief, fear, a melting pot of despair and desperation. He shouted his throat bloody, yelling out her name over and over again, creating a dark symphony alongside the screaming trees. Everything was happening so quickly. The ground beneath him was collapsing. The life around him was shriveling and dying. He had no time, he needed more time, he pleaded for more time. Debris was flying around him, nipping at him, beating into his rushing body.
His knees got increasingly weak as he began to get dizzier and dizzier. His thoughts faded to static, a rough pressure in the boy's rotting lungs forced him to cough dryly until there was nothing coming out of his mouth but blood. Toby’s body collided into a tree as he stumbled through the dying forest. The smell of smoke overtook him, and he felt something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. It devoured him, robbed the fighting boy of his last ounce of strength. His dark, tired eyes gave in to the weight of the world, and he was swallowed whole by the sickness. The last thing he felt was his battered body crashing into the ground beneath him.
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 2. // (masterlist)
Toby wiped his dirt-stained hands onto his jeans as he stood over the 6ft deep hole he had dug in his backyard, the dark silence of midnight encompassing him. His arms were overworked and weak, strained from endless hours of laboring at the hole. Back where he was from, digging a grave only took about four to five hours, but here in the backyard of his childhood home, he had been working until dusk.
The boy turned around from his handiwork and picked up a dead rabbit which had been rotting on the grass behind him. Grabbing it by the ears, Toby tossed the body into the grave. He stared at the carcass for a moment, devoid of any purpose, before his face scrunched in repulsion. Toby gripped the handle of the shovel, gritted his teeth, and began to cover the rabbit back up with dirt.
Once the dark skies brightened with the morning summer sun, his mother had awoken to see what her son had been doing throughout the night. She caught him sitting in the backyard smoking a cigarette staring out at the forest that wrapped around their home, graveyard dirt on his sneakers and animal blood smeared on his hands. At six in the morning, Connie rushed out and asked him what happened, and demanded he put the cigarette out at once. Her boy only looked at her in a daze, as if death had meant nothing to him. Toby shook his head, brushing his mother off as he pushed past her and headed inside. As Connie looked out at her yard, she noticed for the first time how many dirt patches there were. From that point on, it had only gotten worse as his mother insisted he start to get out more, talk to more people, do more things. Her ignorant attempt at aiding her troubled son.
A jingling melody of a bell filled the air of the corner store as Toby walked in; his attempt at going out more. He looked as he always did, tired and a mess. Feral, ruthless, diseased. He glared through his thick brow at the cashier, something of a warning sign. As he walked past aisle after aisle, the boy occasionally pocketed a chocolate bar or two. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead brought him back to the times he was able to get away with nearly anything, and nobody dared to try to stop him. Without buying anything, Toby made his way out of the store, before being stopped by the man behind the counter.
“You gonna pay for those?” The cashier pestered.
Toby stopped in his tracks, shame turned into anger, and anger turned into violence.
“Pay for what?”
“Those bars you stole. Either you pay for ‘em or I call the cops.”
His jaw clenched as he felt a familiar burning sensation boiling in his chest. It was righteous, it moved him. He took one of the stolen chocolate bars out of his sweater pocket and chucked it hard at the older man.
“Have your fucking chocolate bar then.”
Toby spent his time in the world eagerly awaiting the day he were to wake up from his fever dream of a new life. It itched and clawed at him, a loud sort of desperation for what once was. He needed answers. He knew far too well that he wasn’t built for this world, and he needed to go back to the place he was made for. The world which shaped and molded him with violence into nothing but a weapon. And what is a weapon in a world with no war?
Toby stepped back, gaining momentum before kicking the basement window of the local library in. He wrapped a spare piece of cloth around his arm and pulled out the shattered frame of glass, before crawling his way into the building which was now closed for the night. If he wanted answers, he was going to get them.
The boy walked around the faintly nostalgic library, looking aimlessly for the newspaper archives which he knew to be kept in the back. Toby had been on similar trips to libraries in his days as a proxy. To get rid of evidence, or to find some. This time, he was hellbent on finding any articles that would prove he wasn’t completely alone in this strange world.
Once he found the large filing cabinet that held numerous documents and archives, he slid open the drawers for articles from 1990-2010s. The boy sat on the cold floor of the silent library, sifting through newspaper after newspaper. He skimmed over every word, looking for any evidence. The first thing he noticed was that there was no Jeffery Woods manhunt, which used to be front page on many different papers for awhile back in the late 2000s. The second, was that as he read over an article that used to contain a small segment about a recorded series titled Marble Hornets, it seemed that the entire column had never existed in the first place. The space was now replaced with retail advertisements.
There was a jingle of keys heard from down the hall, and the sound of heavy-booted footsteps, which was slowly approaching the archive room. Toby whispered cuss words to himself as he quickly shoved the documents back into the filing cabinet and snuck out of the room, utilizing his knowledge on stealth to not get caught by the security guard. To his luck, the boy managed to wriggle his way out of the open window he kicked in, and ran out into the night. All he gained was the knowledge that Toby had nothing left of the life he once lived. Or the war he once survived.
It was a constant uphill climb of a life for the boy. A Sisyphian punishment. The boy couldn’t sleep well that night, worse than the previous nights, and the next morning his mother insisted he were to get out of the house and go to the park, or the mall. Toby decided disgruntledly to visit the park, possibly he could find signs there, beyond the trees. The desire for answers consumed him, his light at the end of his tunnel vision. The boy approached the playground, eyeing his surroundings and making mental notes of all the people, and things, in the area. The tall, mighty oak trees painted the surroundings green, the sky was clear and vastly blue. A perfect summers day.
Quickly, he noticed a small group of older boys sitting on and by their bikes, one of which was mocking Toby’s strange twitches and jerks as they whispered and laughed amongst themselves. A real comedian. In that moment he was dragged, tossed, thrown, kicking and screaming, into the past he once lived. Back when he was first seventeen, back in middle school. The hunger for revenge. He may have had the body, but he wasn’t that same kid anymore, Toby wasn’t weak anymore. And he wasn’t going to let anybody mess with him ever again.
Without a second thought, Toby turned around to face the group, fire and fury in his dark eyes. He approached the boys, and like a rabid dog, he tackled the one who was making the jokes to the ground. Toby grabbed a fist full of his hair, and drilled his other fist into the boy's face repeatedly, ignoring the desperate attempts from the older to squirm out from under him, screaming. Everybody looked at the violent scene, mortified.
Back when Toby was seventeen for the first time, he drew clear lines that he wouldn’t cross. Things he wouldn’t do. But as he grew older, angrier, he crossed those lines and gained the dangerous knowledge that the world wouldn’t come to an end if he did bad things. He could hurt people and still wake up the next day. As he continued to scream at, and beat the other boy bloody, Toby could’ve sworn there was a line there once.
The drive back home with his mother after getting picked up at the police station was tediously long. Toby was trying his best to ignore Connie's disapproving silence as he glared out of the passenger window at the passing city beyond them, darkening into evening skies.
“What has gotten into you?” Connie spoke, exasperated. Toby continued to ignore her.
“Well?”
“It doesn’t matter, just drop it,” He responded, irritation growing in his tone.
As the two made their way into the house, Toby was greeted by his older sister leaning up against the kitchen counter. Toby felt words breaking in his throat, he stared at her like an angry bear. Lyra stared back frightened at his swollen eye. They saw each other with a strange surprise. The boy avoided her gaze, turning his head down to look at his feet like a bad dog as he pushed past her and made his way to his bedroom.
Soon thereafter, Toby had begun getting into petty fights with his sister, and often talked back to his mother. One particular evening, Lyra had shouted at her brother for being disrespectful towards their mom. She had made an unsettling offhanded comment about how Toby was going down a terrifyingly familiar path. A path the family had seen his father go down for years before Connie mustered up the courage to kick him out.
“You think any of that shit matters to me? None of this is real, none of it” Toby yelled back, waving his hands around and laughing to himself.
“What the hell is wrong with you? I’m real, you’re real, mom is real. And look at how you’re treating her.”
“You? You shouldn’t even fucking be here right now, you’re supposed to be dead!”
Lyra paused at the cruel words of her little brother. The boy gave her half of his orange one morning, and broke her heart in the evening. They both cross lines they shouldn’t. They’re both afraid of their rage.
“Just… Enough. I shouldn’t even be here right now. So do us both a favor and stay out of my business.” Toby lowered his voice at his sister's surrender and without another word, left again into his bedroom.
That night, as Toby laid silently in his bed, facing his bedroom window, he saw a fraction of light creep onto his wall as his door opened. A small shift of weight pressed down onto the mattress beside him.
“What happened to my sweet boy?” Connie spoke with a deep sorrow in her voice. No words could ever explain to his mother what had happened to him. Nothing he could say would ever make her, or anyone, understand the unfathomable. Toby gave her no response, and minutes had passed before Connie sighed and took her leave.
As his family had laid to rest late into the night, Toby quietly climbed out of his bed which creaked as his weight shifted. Grabbing an empty old backpack, he made his way into the darkened kitchen and began piling in canned foods, water bottles, and money from his mothers purse. He paused for a moment before entering the garage, where he knew he could find a familiar old hatchet sitting idly.
He stared at and took in all of his surroundings, and listened to the quiet ambience of the house. Toby knew that this was a home for a boy, not a killer. He had lost his innocence so early, shaped with horror from before he could remember. Toby wanted terribly to look out at the house he stood silently in and feel something good, something happy, like a distant memory that would make him smile warmly to himself when he thought back to it. But no matter how hard he tried, all he could remember was the battlefield. Constantly fighting to survive, wondering if he would ever make it out alive. Quickly, he scribbled a message onto a post-it note and left it on the fridge for his mother to find in the morning when she realized her son was no longer there.
“I’ll come back this time, mom.”
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 11. // christmas special // (masterlist)
AN: Helloo to all the readers of L&T, happy holidays to everyone and Merry Christmas for anyone who celebrates :] Heres my present to you 🔥
Standing on the station platform, tickets to Alabama in their hands, Natalie looked out at the approaching train. She leaned over to the boy waiting patiently next to her, and told him that she had never been on one before.
“Seems like we experience a lot of firsts together,” Toby grinned as Natalie punched his arm.
The girl sat on the window seat, resting her head in the palm of her hand as she looked out at the passing scenery. Toby laid back in his seat and closed his eyes, everything was in motion. The white winter landscape was complemented by tall, passing evergreen trees. Natalie watched the unspoiled morning skies mingle with the fluffs of clouds, and listened closely to the pleasant chatter of the two passengers seated behind her. By the sounds of it, they had only just met on that train, and were both headed south to see family. She glanced over at the boy resting quietly beside her and thought to herself how strange it is to meet someone you must’ve known lifetimes before.
The pair held fire in their eyes and their bags over their shoulders as they hurried down the streets sprawled with snow. Once they approached their destination of a tiny house decorated with an abundance of Christmas lights, Toby knocked heavily onto the front door. After waiting for a minute, the door creaked open, a familiar tall, blonde man wearing a Santa hat stood with a toothy grin on his face, welcoming the two inside. Brian gave Toby a hearty pat on the back as he led the boy to the living room, Natalie following silently close behind.
“Good to see you’re not in handcuffs yet, man.” Brian said
“Yeah, good to see you’re still growing out that awful mustache,” Toby teased back. In the living room, Tim sat in his recliner chair with an afternoon beer in his hand. He was sporting a red Christmas sweater that presented the words “Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal”. Beside him, there was a small Christmas tree perched atop the coffee table. Toby snickered to himself at the sight as he walked over and played with the plastic pine needles.
“Damn Tim, you really went all out this year huh.”
“Cut the shit,” Tim said, swatting the boy away.
Brian sat himself down onto the couch and grabbed the remote, turning on the television to whatever sports channel was on, letting it play quietly in the background. Taking a seat beside Brian, Toby looked over to Natalie who had been awkwardly lingering in the entrance, her arms crossed over her chest, her body pressed to the wall. The girl glanced over the room of men and furrowed her brow. She never liked proxies. Toby stared at the disinterested girl for a moment, watching her quietly reside in her own little world, before Brian spoke, catching the boy's attention.
“So you’re living in North Dakota now? How’s the weather up there treating you?”
“Uh, yeah, it’s alright. I’m used to all the snow from back home in Colorado, so it’s not too bad.”
As the two men continued to exchange their small talk, filling in the silence that hung over the room, Tim took another sip of his beer.
“You still hellbent on getting back to the old world?” Tim chimed in, causing Toby to look over with an irritated glare.
“So what if I am? Whats it matter to you?”
“Just wondering,” Tim lifted his bottle to his lips once again as he turned his head to look over at the football game. There was a long pause of tense silence for a moment, Toby’s gaze still directed at the man in a trained glare.
“Better to just leave all that shit behind anyways, right?” Brian said, leaning over to Toby to recenter the boy's attention over to their friendly conversation.
“Sure,” Toby muttered, looking down towards his feet for a moment, “What’re you up to now anyways?”
“Just working, trying to save enough up to get back to school, you know?” Brian groaned as he threw his hands back, stretching the tension out of his tired body.
“Yeah? Where do you work?”
“If I tell you that, I’m gonna have to kill you,” The man teased with a grin, to which Toby rolled his eyes in playful annoyance. Natalie watched from a distance as the men caught up with each other's lives, as if there had been no brutality between them. She watched as Toby joked with his colleagues; ones who had beaten him bloody many times before. She watched as Toby’s hands reached for the remote to switch on a channel that played Christmas music; hands that have killed countless people. She watched as Tim eased himself into the casual chatter, throwing in a sarcastic comment or two, bickering with the boy sitting across from him. They were a lively bunch, and as Natalie leaned back against the wall, her indifferent expression subtly hinting disdain, she wondered what gave them the right to act as if nothing had happened. The girl was no saint, and she knew this to be true, she was cruel and vicious, a killer, but she would never find herself sitting amongst men like these, pretending as if blood didn’t drip from her mouth from all the throats she had ripped out. They were rotten and vile, and it seemed her best friend was the worst of the worst.
A soft knock to the front door put a quick stop to the conversation, and Brian walked over to the entrance, past the girl who hadn’t said a word since she arrived. Toby’s head peered up, listening closely to the sound of Brian inviting somebody in. He wasn’t told of anyone else joining them that Christmas evening. As the stranger entered the living room, both Natalie and Toby’s eyes widened. The familiar man held his hands in the pockets of his dark gray sweater, his dark eyes glancing around at the three lounging around the room. Jack smiled awkwardly at Natalie as she shamelessly stared at his newly human appearance, her gaze meeting his. Toby, on the other hand, had been staring out of discomfort. The last conversation he had with Jack had been a fight months ago back in Mississippi. He knew Jack was never one to hold a grudge, yet the boy couldn’t help but feel a weird sense of unease when the man sat down next to him.
“Good to see you again.” Jack smiled.
“Yeah.”
Brian entered back into the room with a case of beer, breaking through the stiff atmosphere, and sitting on the couch next to the two others. He pulled out a bottle and handed it over to Tim, who had already drunk through his previous one, and then handed another to Jack, who shook his head.
“I’m not drinking tonight,” he declined.
“Suit yourself,” Brian exclaimed, popping off the cap and taking a sip. The four men talked amongst themselves as Natalie listened in, drumming her fingers along to the beat of the holiday tunes quietly playing from the TV. She couldn’t help but glance over at the clock, counting down the minutes until she could be free from that dreadful place. When she initially agreed to come to Alabama with Toby, she hadn’t considered how out of place she would feel. Tim never liked her much, Brian and her never really talked. They had both deemed her a weak point for Toby back in the old world — something in the way. There was always the expectation that she would turn on him, sell him out, be his downfall. And in a way, it was true. Whenever Brian snuck a glance over at the lingering girl, he noticed she would always be looking at Toby.
Once the clock had struck 5pm, Tim pulled himself out of his seat, tapping Jack to follow him into the kitchen.
“You too, Toby. I ain’t preparing dinner all by myself.” Toby groaned as he stood up, shuffling irritatedly behind the two men. As he passed by Natalie, he nudged into her with a sore smile, to which she playfully hit him back. The two would laugh at nonsense together as though it made perfect sense, bumped into each other as though it was an embrace. There was an awkward tenderness between the youths who had never been loved, and had to figure something out. Natalie had the tendency to lie through her gritted teeth. Not intentionally by any means, but she deluded herself for so long, so desperately, she was nearly a master at the art of self-deception. Brian had noticed this feat, and on that lively Christmas evening, begun to pester the girl.
“There’s plenty of seats, you don’t need to keep standing around you know,” he called out to the girl who only raised an eyebrow at him. He nodded his head towards the empty chair across from him, and Natalie huffed with annoyance at the bothersome man as she strolled over to take her seat. Brian sat with his bottle in his hands, the sound of bickering coming from the kitchen filled the open air.
“You and Toby live together now, huh?”
“I guess,” Natalie said with a stern look, crossing her arms as she leaned back into her chair, staring at Brian as if she were in an interrogation. The man only smiled back at her, his Santa hat draped over his head.
“Good to hear he’s found someone who tolerates his bullshit,” Brian said as he reached into his case of booze, “Want a beer?”
Natalie shrugged her shoulders in agreement as the man pulled out a bottle.
“Just remember, you can’t save that kid.”
“Great. I never wanted to. I wouldn’t know how to anyways.”
“So, do you love him?”
“What’s it matter to you?” she glared at the man.
“You got a fire between you two,” Brian continued to tease as he handed the drink over to the girl, who snatched it from his hand.
“Then I guess I should ask Santa for an extinguisher this Christmas.”
The man grinned at the witty reply, chuckling to himself as he glanced over towards the boy angrily storming into the living room, ranting to himself. Toby huffed as he collapsed into the couch beside Brian, sinking into himself.
“Toby, get your ass back in here,” Tim shouted out from the kitchen.
“Go fuck yourself,” the boy shouted back. Brian grimaced awkwardly as he took his leave, taking one last look at the girl who had once again been staring at Toby, before making his way into the kitchen to help with dinner.
Once Brian was out of the room, Natalie switched over to sit herself down beside Toby. She nudged her shoulder into him as the boy looked back at her.
“Stop being so cranky Toby, it’s Christmas.” The girl spoke as her eyes met with the boys who stared back at her. Toby let out a deep sigh and leaned into the girls side. He was warm, she was cold. The smell of the turkey and stuffing breezed past the two as Brian waltzed into the room once again, this time to alert them that dinner was ready, and to come get their plates.
The group, with food piled onto their plates, sat together as they made up for all of the lost time. On that drunken Christmas night, with loud chatter and laughter filling the fireplace warmed air, everything was fine. Bloodshed was past, sickness had wilted away. As five human beings sat victorious in that livingroom, ridden with battle of another world, their festive cheer only confirmed the triumph of man. The war was over, and they had earned their evening.
Toby sipped his booze as he watched Tim stumble over to his seat, sharing a tale of a time he had lied his way out of a speeding ticket.
“You’re a great actor, you should star in a film,” Brian teased with a grin.
“I will strangle you,” Tim threatened.
Natalie felt a hand shift over onto her own, and glanced down to see Toby’s fingers interlocking with hers mindlessly. She thought well of him. Even when he drank, she thought he was a good boy. The girl squeezed his hand back, and drifted away from the jokes and festivities to lose herself in her thoughts. He had already made plans to head back to Colorado to spend Christmas morning with his family, leaving Natalie to catch the midnight train back up north.
Once the late night tiredness had washed over the group, Toby found himself arguing with Tim, who alongside Brian, had too many drinks to drive the boy to his destination.
“How am I supposed to wait until morning? You agreed you’d drive me tonight.”
“I could drive, I haven’t been drinking.” Jack spoke out, stepping between the argument. Toby looked over at the man with his offer, and scrunched his brow with reluctance, before ultimately giving in and agreeing to the new arraignment.
Toby stood at the door with his backpack over his shoulder, saying his goodbyes to the drunken Brian and Tim as he waited for Jack to gather his things. Natalie hung around by the boy's side without a word as she waited for him to finish chatting with his colleagues. As Jack slipped on his shoes, and opened the door to head for the car, Natalie threw in a quick goodbye to her friend, and snuck away back into the livingroom as she waited for her train back home, which was going to arrive in two hours.
Tim and Brian chatted with each other as they sobered up, and cleaned the dishes in the kitchen, leaving Natalie alone in the other room after Toby and Jack had left. She leaned back into her chair as she stared mindlessly at the fireplace, watching the flames dance and flicker. In her dreams, her house is always on fire. She couldn’t bring herself to let go of the violence, even as it burnt holes into her. The dead girl with nothing to lose, the horrible girl who can’t escape. A loud ringing from her cellphone snapped the girl out of her daze, bringing her attention to the number presenting itself onto the screen as she flipped it open. It wasn’t one she recognized, but as she hesitantly answered the call, she knew the voice on the other end well.
“Merry Christmas, Natalie.” The woman spoke roughly. She sounded tired, a bit irritated.
“Mom?”
“Just thought I’d call and wish you a good Christmas. But if you don’t want to talk to me, just say so,” The woman snapped. Natalie’s heart began to beat like a snare drum in her chest. She hadn’t heard her mothers voice in years, it made her sick to her stomach.
“Why would you bother calling me?” The girl asked quietly, and harshly.
“I guess it’s a crime now to want to talk to you since you left home. You know damn well you’re all I have left, so show some respect to your mother.”
Natalie scoffed. It seemed she hadn’t changed one bit.
“Sure, whatever, Merry fuckin’ Christmas.” She slammed her flipphone shut as she ended the call abruptly, squeezing her eyes shut as she felt a flurry of rage and shock. The walls felt like they were closing in on her, suffocating, choking her. Natalie quickly stood to her feet as she rushed out the front door to get some fresh air.
The outside was quiet as she sat herself on the front door step. It was late into the night, and everything was still. Natalie blinked back the sting of tears rising to her eyes as she took a deep breath in of the frost and mildew. She knew something bad had happened, she tried her best not to think about it. The Christmas lights hanging off of the edge of the rooftop reflected off of the white ground, sparkling. Suddenly, it began to snow. The girl watched as the snowflakes danced gently down through the night sky, landing on the streets and in her hair. Natalie felt warmth fall down her icy cheeks as she surrendered to her tears, quietly sobbing to herself as she looked out into the dark. Despite everything, the world was still so beautiful.
Toby stared quietly out from the passenger seat window, watching the snow as it fell. Jack remained silent as he drove down the highways of Alabama, keeping his eyes straight and his hands firm on the steering wheel. The boy sniffled to himself once in a while, coming down off of his evening buzz. He had always hoped for a mother, a father, something bigger than himself to tell him who to become. But as he stared out of the window into the dark abyss of the night, wartorn and battered, the world seemed so empty.
A few miles into the drive, Jack pulled the truck into a gas station parking lot, announcing that he was grabbing himself a cup of coffee, and that Toby should take a bathroom break before they continued with their long drive to Colorado. The bell jingled throughout the store which was nearly completely empty as the two men entered, Jack heading towards the coffee machine, and Toby to the toilets. The boy pushed past the door and quickly noticed all of the vandalism scribbled onto the walls, like a page from a book had been torn apart and plastered everywhere. His hand ran across some printing on a bathroom stall and read over a confession of sorts a passerby had left in a place they must’ve known they’d never return to. He read the admissions of guilt spread across the room, as if God had been listening. Memories of the old world rushed into his mind like the Great Flood, and he thought about all of the times he would wake up in places like these, thrashed and wrecked, with no recollection of what had happened, or the times he’d find himself leaning over the dirty sinks coughing up blood. His lungs must’ve been rotting. He never knew of anything that didn’t hurt.
Toby spent no more time in that bathroom as he rinsed his hands and quickly left back outside to the truck. Jack quietly placed his coffee into the cup holder next to him and continued to drive down the dark highway, into the night. The silence remained still between the two men, only the occasional car passed by them. Toby tapped his fingers against his knee as he thought to himself.
“You’re living in Alabama now?” He awkwardly asked, avoiding eye contact as Jack glanced over to the boy.
“Yeah, I am. I moved there mid-November. I thought it’d be easier for me if I was around people I knew. Like dipping my toe in the water,” Jack explained. He had turned away from his college room with his head down, running to Latin texts in the depths of an isolated forest. Jack started to find himself seeing the dead through the midst of the maple and oak trees which dangled hanged men from its branches. It seemed that he had no choice but to face what he had done, and find himself in the bustling streets of humanity once again. He wrote letters to his mother explaining a false reasoning for why he had left his education. He wrote them praying. Every letter he received back he collected as punishment for the sins he had committed. Jack kept them in a box under his bed.
“And you? Has North Dakota been keeping you busy?”
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Toby replied, fiddling with his thumbs as he kept his gaze down to his feet, “I actually started a small lumbering business for myself. Chopping wood and stuff.”
“That’s great to hear. Good for you,” Jack smiled.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Of course.”
“I mean, thanks for helping me out. Always putting up with my bullshit,” Toby eyed his shoes, he didn’t want to see the satisfied look on Jack’s face. He didn’t want to think about how smug he must’ve been after hearing those words fall from the troubled boy's mouth.
“You’re not as difficult as you think you are, Toby. I’m not the only one who puts up with you.”
Toby looked over at the man driving, and shook his head. He remained untended to, like an overgrown tombstone, sick with decay. It was as if, from the moment he was born, that boy had never needed anybody else. He never asked for help, or reached out for support.
“I’m on my own. Always have been.”
“What about Natalie?”
“What about her?”
“She’s always been by your side, hasn’t she?”
The boy stayed silent for a moment. Toby didn’t know how to tell Jack that she, too, had left him to dig his own grave many times. She, too, loathed him. It didn’t matter, he thought, he didn’t need her, or anyone, anyways.
“Everyone who tries to stomach me eventually chokes me back up, Jack. Nat isn’t an exception.” There was a childlike loneliness in Toby’s voice as he spoke. One that made Jack quickly come to the unfortunate understanding that Toby wasn’t a soldier, or a war hero, he was just a boy. And the burden of always being the one who grits his teeth and fights an old man's battle must be far too heavy for a boy to carry.
“Does that bother you?” Jack asked. Toby shrugged his tired shoulders.
“After you’ve done and seen all the shit I have, nothing really bothers you anymore.”
Jack looked over at the other once more, a golden boy made to conquer, his eyes were desensitized and dark. Toby was entirely indifferent to himself and the world around him. He knew nothing of the time that had passed him, only that somewhere, at some point, there was a war being fought, and he was now far from the battlefield. That boy had long since lost his innocence, and his homesickness lasted forever.
“Do you actually feel bad for the things you’ve done?” Toby spoke again.
“You know, Toby, my guilt doesn’t mean anything. Apologizing while I killed someone doesn’t make me any different than someone who didn’t. I still took somebody’s life, I still sinned.”
“When I killed my dad…” Toby’s voice trailed off for a moment, “It was the happiest I had ever been, like all of those years of fear finally amounted to something. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. I'd rather have all of that suffering make me into a monster than for it to be for nothing at all."
“You don’t think you had any other choice?”
“It had to be done. Sometimes things just have to be done.”
“I understand,” Jack replied softly as he continued to drive.
“Hopefully God understands,” Toby said quietly to himself, turning his head to look out of the window once again. He tried to describe something unfathomable. Fate, the God neither of them believed in, whatever explained it.
"I guess just knowing that somewhere, my dad is still out there... I can't help but miss him. And I don't know why." The boy confessed, staring up at the stars in the night sky as they shined down brightly on the two men. There was a sense of knowing that he would be carrying that rage with him until he died.
“Do you love your father?”
“No, I hate him more than anything. If you met him you’d understand. Why else do you think I do the things I do?” Toby sat up straight in his seat, chuckling sorrowfully to himself, “I became the exact thing I was so fucking scared of growing up. And nothings going to fuck with me ever again.”
“You’ve suffered enough, Toby. I know you have a lot to carry, you did what you had to do to survive, I get it, but you can put it all down and still be safe.”
“I know that, I’m not stupid. I know I’ll have to listen to everyone someday and just let all of this anger go. But it’s like it clings to me like some scared little kid and begs me not to. And I’m not going to betray myself like that.”
“It takes some time, but there’s always the option to make peace with the past whenever you’re ready. You just need to stop looking in the wrong places for redemption,” Jack said.
“Yeah you’re right, time for me to become Mr. Goody Good,” Toby joked back.
“It really is that simple, you know. One day, wake up and decide to be kinder to yourself, and maybe others. You have been through too much to treat yourself so badly.”
The boy stayed silent, the quiet ambience of the drive filled the air. Toby hadn’t realized that he had been doing nothing but torturing himself the entire time. He didn’t know how to treat himself with anything but violence.
“I’m proud of you, Toby.”
The words Jack spoke drilled holes into the boy's burning chest. Toby looked over at the man who was staring ahead, keeping his eyes on the road, before turning his gaze back down to his hands. He had to do the impossible when he left it all behind, but he was alive, and that was his start. The boy was given no other choice, he needed to make his way in that world, it was just another thing that had to be done. He had always assumed that everybody around him looked at him through his fathers eyes, full of hatred and disgust. Toby assumed that his bitterness had left him intolerable, and it had never occurred to him that there would ever be people in his life who would tolerate him anyways. The praise of his violence in the past was replaced with a soft ‘I love you regardless’ when Toby bared his teeth. He then thought to himself how awful it was that his happiness hurt too.
Soon, the sun began to rise over the western landscape and Jack pulled up to Toby’s mothers house. They sat silently for a moment in the truck before Toby spoke.
“Thanks for everything, Jack. You’re a good guy.”
“You too, Toby.”
The boy dragged his tired body to the front step of his childhood home and waved as Jack drove off back to Alabama. It was late into the day, and Toby hadn’t told his mother he was coming over for Christmas. He thought for a moment about all of the time he had spent fighting against the world, and he had slowly come to the understanding that soldiers either die, or they return home from the war. As his luck would have it, on that snowy Christmas afternoon, it seemed he had made it out of the combat zone alive, regardless of what he had done. And now, it was his job to find peace for himself despite it all.
When he entered through the front door with a spare key his mother had given him, he glanced over the empty house, a tall Christmas tree standing in the livingroom. Toby called out for his mom, and sister, only to find that nobody was home. He turned around to look at the driveway, and noticed both of their cars were still there. Closing the door behind him, a sense of dread building, the boy quietly made his way through the house, cautiously examining every room. In his mothers room, he noticed a suitcase on the floor which had been half-packed. Toby bent down to look through the items packed away, before jerking his head up as he heard the sound of the front door opening.
Toby slowly, and silently, walked towards the entrance of the house, lifting his hands up as he prepared himself for a fight. A loud scream filled the house as Lyra jumped at the sight of the intruding boy, putting her hand over her chest as she realized who it was.
“Jesus, Toby! What's wrong with you!” She yelled as Connie quickly rushed in after her screaming daughter, only to relax as she saw her son awkwardly apologizing.
Connie rushed up to Toby, hugging him tightly and laying a kiss on his cheek. Lyra rolled her eyes and shook off the lingering adrenaline, walking up to give her little brother a hug as well. His mother explained that they had planned a surprise trip to North Dakota to visit him, but he had gotten to them first.
“We were down the street visiting Mr. Mulner and his wife. You remember Caroline. She had a fall a couple of weeks ago. Everyone in the neighborhood has been bringing them giftsfor Christmas," Connie explained to the boy the exciting happenings in her life as Lyra rinsed off an empty cookie tray in the kitchen sink.
“Wow, spreading Christmas cheer. How’d you get Grinch over there to come with you?” Toby teased, nodding his head over to his sister who only rolled her eyes.
“So, are you going to be leaving again?” Connie asked with concern in her eyes. She could never keep tabs on him anymore.
“Yeah, eventually. I’ve been living up North with that girl I was telling you about and-”
“You’re living with a girl?” Lyra interrupted with shock, having been listening from the kitchen.
“Shut up Lyra, don’t act surprised,” Toby argued back.
“Don’t fight on Christmas you two,” their mother scolded with a sigh as she rubbed the bridge of her nose.
Toby spent the day with his family, helping his mother cook dinner, and listening to Lyra’s latest gossip. The sun seemed to set as quickly as it rose, and the evening draped its darkness over the sky once more. After dinner, Connie went to bed early, and Toby sat in the livingroom with Lyra as they bickered over which Christmas movie to watch.
“Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie you dork,” she said.
“Fuck you, Die Hard is absolutely a Christmas movie.”
The warm glow of the lights that wrapped around the Christmas tree illuminated the livingroom as Lyra groaned and turned on Die Hard. Toby thought about all of the things he had talked about with Jack, and wondered if Natalie had gotten home safely yet. He thought about how strange that the place he thought of to be his home was no longer the place he sat in, but instead a small, old farmhouse in North Dakota. So many things had changed in such a short amount of time, and for once, as he sat by his sister under the roof he grew up in, he felt as if he could make something more for himself. For once, he felt a sort of happiness that didn’t hurt.
“Merry Christmas Toby,” Lyra whispered over to her brother, reeling him back in from his thoughts as he looked at her with a smile.
“Merry Christmas.”
#tombwrites#tombfic#creepypasta#ticci toby#creepypasta fandom#creepypasta headcanon#ticci toby headcanons#toby rogers#creepypasta ticci toby#ticciwork#natalie ouellette#eyeless jack#brian thomas#tim wright#ticci toby fanfiction#ticci toby fanfic#ticci toby creepypasta#ticci toby headcanon#clockwork x ticci toby#creepypasta clockwork#creepypasta fanfiction
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 9. // (masterlist)
Toby stood aimlessly on the train station platform, finally arriving at his destination. With his backpack on his tired shoulders, the boy continued out onto the streets of the small town called Rosbury. Reaching into his pockets, Toby pulled out a crumpled piece of paper which he had previously hastily written down a potential location he could find the girl named Natalie. The area was relatively pleasant — flower pots lined up alongside locally owned businesses, most of the residents were elderly people, it was a farmers town. A warm breeze waltzed past the boy, brushing through his messy brown hair. Rosbury was the type of place where everybody knew everybody, and Toby knew this to be true as he gained himself more strange and cautious looks than usual. A look somebody would give to a stray dog.
Walking through the streets of downtown, he checked the paper once again, and looked up towards the building in front of him. It looked to be a run-down bar with a flickering light-up sign which proudly presented the faded words: “The Bulldog Tavern”. The boy took a deep breath to collect himself as he pushed past the door, hoping they wouldn’t ID him. He looked around the pub, which mostly remained empty besides an old disheveled looking man sipping a beer in the corner and a man tending to the bar. The bartender peered up at the boy and gave him a curious look as Toby approached the counter.
“I’m looking for a girl named Natalie,” Toby said, leaning over to the man, catching a glimpse of his name tag reading ‘Hank’.
“Who’s asking?” The man, supposedly known as Hank, asked. He was a bigger man, his sleeves rolled up to show off his tattoos. He looked to be about in his late 30s.
“An old friend of hers.”
“Our lady bartenders have a lot of ‘old friends’, sport.”
“Well is she going to be here tonight?”
“You’re better off trying your luck elsewhere. I wouldn’t waste my breath on that girl if I were you.” Hank picked up a rag and began to wipe down shot glasses as he continued to brush off Toby’s attempt at getting answers.
“What do you mean by that?” The boy asked, lowering his eyebrows into a fixed glare.
“Couple nights ago some drunkard was causing issues and she threw the bastard out all on her own. She's a tough one, I don’t want to know the mess she’d make of a kid like you.”
Toby’s eyes softened as he listened to the words the man spoke, a grin creeping onto the corners of his mouth.
“That’s my girl,” the boy smiled to himself. Hank put down the glass he had been cleaning and leaned in close to Toby, tilting his head slightly.
“You never told me why you’re lookin’ for her.”
“I just… I haven’t seen her in awhile, and I’ve traveled all the way from Colorado so I could visit her. That’s all.” Toby responded, making it a point to sound more desperate than he was. Playing innocent was a helpful trick the boy had learned back in the old world. He always had a knack for acting.
Hank sighed as he grabbed the pen from his shirt pocket and wrote something down onto a notepad sitting near him. The man tore the paper off and handed it to Toby.
“Cause her any trouble and she’ll put you six feet under, kid.”
“Trust me, I know.”
With the help of directions given to the boy by locals, he found himself walking down a dirt road heading west from the town, out into the country. According to Hank, Natalie had been living with her grandparents in a house a few minutes out of Rosbury, only a 10 minute walk. Toby looked around at his surroundings as he walked, keeping a mental note of the path he was told to take. The autumn trees that lined one side of the road had been visibly overtaken by the early November chills, nearly barren completely, the dry copper leaves piling onto the earth beneath the branches stretching for the blue skies. The few leaves that remained alive danced under the beaming sunlight, creating a landscape of browns and reds. On the other side of the gravel path, a wide green and yellow grass meadow draped across the land. In the distance, Toby could see a small house, painted blue, or gray. His heart began to beat faster as he stepped off of the road and onto the fields to cut across the rolling hills of farmland. With every step he took, his pace quickened. With every step he took, his view of that quiet blue-gray farmhouse became clearer.
He saw her from across the field, sitting on the front porch. He watched as she glided her charcoal pencil across the page in her sketchbook, wearing headphones, unaware of the world around her. She was as beautiful as he remembered. Toby didn’t quite understand why his legs moved as fast as they did, like he was returning home from war. He didn’t understand why he desperately scrambled towards her, calling out her name loudly as he ran.
Natalie looked up at the noise, pulling out an earbud. It took a moment for her to process the appearance of the figure running towards her through the vast green distance between them, but she could recognize those tired brown eyes anywhere, and that lanky boyish frame.
The girl threw aside her art supplies as she quickly brought herself to her feet. A convoluted melting pot of shock, surprise, and relief washed over the two as they both ran to each other, their bodies clashing together like a crackle of a bonfire, embracing each other tightly.
Toby touched her, and touched her, and touched her again. He looked at her as if he had just discovered God. With a shaky breath, he spoke.
“Where have you been?”
“I’ve been here the whole time. You’re the only person who’s been able to find me,” Natalie said, leaning into his warmth, she stopped for a moment, pulling away before continuing, “How did you find me?”
Toby smiled at her, his hands tracing her freckled arms.
“I guess I just know you too well.”
The two sat in comfortable harmony on the front porch of the farmhouse, sharing a cigarette as if there had been no time between them. They looked over at the farmland and meadow. Natalie explained that she had woken up in the new world on a bus headed for North Dakota, with no memory of how she got there. She told Toby she first knew something was different when she realized she had both of her eyes, and no stitches or scars. And that she had been living alone in the farmhouse for a couple of months, having lied about her grandparents. Toby took in every word she spoke, the sound of her voice was enough to make him forget everything that had happened between them.
“Did you ever think of me? Or, I mean, did you ever think about any of the others?” Toby stumbled over his words as he spoke.
“I guess so. I went over some newspaper articles awhile back but couldn’t find shit on you, Jeff, or anyone. So I assumed I was the only one here. I didn’t want to think about it too much, I’ve been focused on just getting by,” Natalie tapped the building ash off of her cigarette before taking another long drag, her arm draped over her legs.
“You didn’t bother looking for a way back home?” Natalie met Toby’s gaze and blinked at him.
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
The boy huffed and turned his head back to stare out at the scenery before them.
“You sound like Tim.”
Natalie rolled her eyes at Toby’s attitude and looked down at the smoke rising from her cigarette, and the charcoal that stained her fingertips.
“I can’t think of anything back there that is any better than what we have here.”
“Freedom,” Toby spoke quietly as he continued to stare out at the afternoon horizon. Natalie burst out in a laugh at the boy's answer as she flicked her finished cigarette to the ground, shaking her head with amusement.
“Freedom? Are you kidding me? You weren’t free, Toby, you were like a fuckin’ puppet.”
“I wasn’t a puppet, Nat. You don’t know shit about what it was like,” he refuted, his tone quickly growing defensive. It seemed as if the girl had a skill at getting under his skin.
“You would’ve killed yourself if you were told to.”
“If it had to be done, yeah, I would’ve.”
“You’re such an idiot,” the girl hung her arms over her knees as she spoke.
“I had the whole world in my hands, Nat. Nobody fucked with me, and if they did, I was allowed to handle it however I wanted to.”
“Oh, so you just wanted the freedom to protect your ego. Got it.”
“Sure, whatever. ‘Cause now I gotta sit here and take whatever bullshit comes at me. I can’t carry my hatchets around, and I don’t even have my mask or goggles anymore.”
“Good, they looked dumb. I like you better without them,” Natalie teased.
“Shut up.”
The pair sat on the porch talking amongst themselves for hours. They had a lot of catching up to do. Natalie fought back a smile as she talked to Toby. She felt warm when she was with him, as if she was surrounded by the sun. They were together in the most brutal sense, like the handshake of two boxers before a fight. Toby had hoped that Natalie got over their last fight on her own, and that the shift in circumstances had allowed her to let him into her life once more. He traveled all that way to see her.
Soon, the skies had begun to fall into a gradient of oranges and pinks as the sun set behind the subtle hills. It was getting dark quickly, and Natalie decided to break the unfortunate news to the boy that she only had one bed, so he had to sleep on the floor.
“What am I? A dog?” Toby complained.
“Do you really want me to answer that?” Natalie placed an extra blanket onto the floor next to her bed, and tossed down a pillow. Toby grumbled to himself as he laid down onto the makeshift bed, watching as the girl crawled under her own covers, on top of a real mattress.
The room quickly fell into a pitch black, overrun by twilight. Crickets outside of the window sung so loudly Toby could hear the melodies from inside. As he laid silently, Toby looked up towards the ceiling. It was an old house that creaked every so often, as if time had been releasing its breath through the wood floors and chipped wallpaper. Some moments had passed, and the boy remained still as he listened to Natalie tossing and turning in her bed. It seemed as though her sleep had been tortured as well. As the two laid in their respective spots, Toby broke the silence.
“Do you ever feel like you’re a virus that the world just constantly tries to reject?”
There was a short moment of silence before Natalie muttered “I guess,” in reply.
“I want to go back to a time where it was easier to survive.”
“That’s just it, Toby. I don’t want to just survive anymore. For once in my miserable life, I want to try living.”
“I don’t know, it just sucks. I want all that excitement and direction again. At least back then I knew what to do with myself.”
“Honestly, I kind of like it here. I haven’t had anyone try to jump or kill me,” Natalie chuckled to herself.
The sound of crickets continued to flood the room as the boy paused for a moment, placing his hands over his chest, rising and falling as he breathed in the dark, quiet atmosphere. He thought to himself.
“If a portal opened up right now that would take us back home, would you come with me?”
“Why would I go back to the past I’m trying to move on from?”
“You gotta, Nat. I can’t leave without you.”
“Then I guess you’re staying here with me.”
Another moment of silence fell over the two as the stubborn boy began to lose himself in thought. Natalie climbed out of her bed, and silently laid herself down beside the boy on the floor, awkwardly curling her body in with his. They rarely ever got this close. Toby’s heart began to beat fast as his chest tightened, he didn’t know if he was nervous or sick. She smelled like pine trees and smoke. Toby ran his hand down her sore back as the girl gently laid atop his chest, listening to the rapid drumming of his heart.
As the two laid on the creaky old floor in comfortable silence, Toby held Natalie close. He didn’t dare to move or speak, terrified he would scare her off. He had lost her time after time. They had a history of fighting, and leaving, just to find each other again. The boy wondered to himself what time they spent together would be their last. Toby closed his heavy eyes and laid a soft kiss on Natalie’s messy hair which tangled along her shoulders. The pair melted into each other as they shared a burning warmth, slowly drifting off to sleep.
When Toby awoke to the bright morning glow shining through the window, he found himself to be alone on that bedroom floor. Natalie was nowhere to be seen. He half-expected it. A sigh escaped his lips, one mixed with relief and disappointment, as he wandered out into the hallways of the house, rubbing his eyes. He made a note to himself of all the things he noticed needed to be fixed. Most of the lights didn’t work, some floorboards were rotting, and the pipes in the kitchen were leaky. Toby wasn’t entirely sure how long he would be staying with her, he was sure he’d be kicked out soon enough, but he thought that he could help fix some small things while he was there.
He made his way out onto the front porch, the sun shone brightly in his dark eyes. The autumn air was chilly, and fresh in his rough lungs. As he stood on that porch, he looked out across the countryside and breathed in. On that November morning, ripe with anarchy, ridden with war, he was alive. He was alive. Toby stretched his body under the blue skies, and shouted out in victory, disturbing the few birds who had yet to fly south for the winter. The boy laughed and threw himself into the fields, rolling into the grass. He closed his eyes as he sprawled his body out under the sun.
“Someone woke up on the right side of the floor,” Natalie teased as she leaned over Toby who was laying atop the meadow. She held a paper bag full of various groceries in her arms.
“Shut up,” he said through a few heavy breaths and a smile as he jumped to his feet. The girl grinned and rolled her eyes in response as she walked towards the house, Toby following closely behind.
Natalie placed the bag on the kitchen counter and began to put the food away. Toby leaned onto the island counter and watched as the girl placed everything in its respective spot. He explained to her that he had noticed some wreckage in the house, and that he intended to fix it for her. Natalie raised her eyebrow at him as she grabbed a few cans of food.
“And how are you going to pay for that?” Toby paused for a moment at her question. He hadn’t planned that far.
“I dunno,” he said, scrunching his eyebrows in thought.
As she continued to place cans of food into a cupboard, the girl smiled to herself.
“You gotta get a job, dumbass.”
“Fuck that! Give me something else, c’mon,” Toby whined as he draped his arms over the island.
“How else do people make money, Toby? Use your head.”
The boy thought for a moment, searching for something to refute her claims. But as always, Natalie was right.
“I don’t know, I’ll figure something out.”
“What about Jack? Didn’t you say he taught you how to chop wood?” Natalie suggested as she finished putting everything away, and turned to face the boy across the countertop.
“Uhh, yeah. We sorta… Fell out before I could get the hang of it,” he admitted, looking away as if to avoid the girl's scolding stare.
“What's it like to burn everything you touch?” She teased, crossing her arms.
“Come here and see for yourself,” Toby grinned slyly, turning his gaze back to meet hers. Natalie leaned in towards the boy and grabbed him by the collar of his sweater, pulling him close over the counter that separated the two.
“I’ve ripped boys like you to shreds.” A red tint flushed Toby’s cheeks as he disregarded her threats. He must’ve been in trouble again, but he paid no mind to that. She was so close to him. She was close enough to kiss. The boy shook the thought out of his head quickly and pulled away from the girl who was now smiling mischievously at him.
Later that evening, the two found themselves in the kitchen once again. This time, they were attempting to cook potatoes and veggies for dinner. Toby leaned against the counter as the two bickered over who was messing up what.
“If you don’t get out of my way, I’m going to stab you,” Natalie half-jokingly threatened the boy who was standing in front of a drawer she needed to get into. Putting his hands up in surrender, Toby backed away. The girl huffed to herself in annoyance as she began to shovel food onto her plate, sitting herself down at a small wooden table in the corner of the kitchen, the boy following. To say their dinner was inedible was an understatement. Natalie gagged at the first bite of her food, causing Toby to laugh out, before taking his own bite, and gagging as well.
“You put too much salt,” he said.
“You’re the one who added the damn salt,” she argued back.
Once they had painfully choked down the disaster of food they prepared, Toby got up to clean the dishes, and Natalie left to take a shower before bed. As the girl locked the bathroom door behind her, she tried her best not to look at herself in the mirror. She ran the water and let it run over her fingers for a moment, testing the temperature. Natalie stood idle for a moment, watching the water trickle down into the drain, before turning it off. Taking showers was always difficult for her, ever since she was a young girl. She didn’t want to spend any time alone with her body, and she couldn’t admit she was unclean. A part of her feared that if she stood bare under that warm running water, only blood would flow off of her. Natalie scoffed to herself for being so weak, and turned the water on once again, quickly taking off her clothing and jumping into the shower. She closed her eyes as she washed, running her fingers through her shampoo-filled hair, brushing through the knots. The girl held her breath for every minute she was under the downpour, only letting herself relax once she had changed into her pajamas.
Natalie exited the bathroom and noticed Toby was finished with the dishes. She wandered into the bedroom, to find that he wasn’t there. Confused, Natalie turned to head into the living room, where the boy wasn’t to be found either. She stood under the doorframe, her hands grasping the bottom of her old gray t-shirt, and thought to herself for a moment. Quickly heading back into the bedroom, she checked to see if his backpack still remained at the foot of her bed. It seemed to have disappeared with him. Natalie furrowed her brow and fought back against a flurry of disappointment and anger. How could he eat her food, sleep in her room, piss her off, and then leave without bothering to say goodbye? The girl scoffed to herself and shook her head at the predictable nonsense of the person she knew too well. This was Toby’s way of getting her back, his way of getting the last word. Natalie picked the blanket and pillow off of the floor and threw it roughly onto her bed. She grabbed a pack of cigarettes from her nightstand table and a lighter before heading outside. She needed a smoke more than anything, the rage was practically seeping off of her.
As the angry girl swung open the front door, she was met face to face with a surprised looking boy, holding a plastic bag in his hand. Toby stared at her for a moment, his eyebrows raised as he eyed the irritated scowl of the fuming girl.
“You good?” He said cautiously. Natalie felt the tension drop from her body as she dropped her shoulders and let out a deep huff of air. She closed her eyes shut for a moment as she collected herself.
“I thought you left,” she admitted casually.
“Yeah, I was buying a couple drinks from the corner store before they closed.” Toby glanced down to the girl's hand which was tightly gripping her pack of cigarettes.
“You’re gonna crush those,” he said.
“Whatever, maybe next time you leave without telling me you can go buy me a new pack.” Natalie pulled out a smoke and placed it between her lips. Toby chuckled at the snarky reply and took a step back as she pushed past him onto the porch.
“I didn’t think you’d be so bothered.”
“I’m not,” Natalie spoke calmly, lighting her cigarette.
“I got you a chocolate bar.”
“I don’t want it.”
“I think you do,” Toby said, digging into his bag and pulling out a candy bar, handing it over to the stubborn girl. Natalie stared unimpressed at the grand gesture as she leaned against the white wooden post holding up the porch roof. The boy waved it around in her face before she ripped it out of his hand and glared, annoyed at his antics.
“Cut it out, dickwad.”
“Or what? Gonna tell me to leave?” Toby teased, a playful grin spread across his face.
“You’re so annoying,” she replied, groaning as she looked over into the dark nightly void surrounding them, her cigarette perched between her two fingers.
Toby followed Natalie inside once she had finished her nightly smoke, and threw his backpack to the ground of the bedroom, quickly noticing his bed on the floor had been put away.
“Wow, you were really mad at me huh,” he said, astonished.
“Shut up, asshole,” she muttered as she climbed into her bed.
“Gonna make me sleep on the couch?”
“Just sleep in my bed tonight, I’m too tired to make arrangements.” Natalie buried herself under the covers and reached over to turn the bedside lamp off. As the light flicked off, Toby stood awkwardly in the dark. It was a small bed, an old twin sized mattress, and Natalie was a tall girl who took up a lot of room. He slowly approached the bed, trying not to brush up against her as he climbed in and laid himself down beside her. Natalie laid on her side, with her back facing the boy. Toby closed his eyes as he listened to the sound of her soft breathing, inhaling the smell of her cheap shampoo that lingered on her still-damp hair. He missed spending time with her, his best friend. He missed their arguments, he missed making her mad. Though he laid beside her, Toby couldn’t help but feel as if there was a wide distance between them that would begin to hurt if it had gotten too far. She was never his, and he was never hers. Yet, despite this, he couldn’t help but agree with Natalie when she made the comment the next morning that she had finally gotten a good sleep for the first time in a while last night.
That morning, Toby laid quietly in the autumn fields, breathing in the air of upcoming winter. A melody of bird calls filled the open blue sky. The girl he thought impossible sat beside him, sketching her charcoal pencil against the paper. He never knew much of peace, but he thought it must’ve been a lot like this.
“When are you wanting me to leave?” The boy asked, listening to Natalie quietly mutter to herself as she erased undesirable lines. She stole glances at Toby’s face every so often, examining his appearance as she continued to draw.
“You can stay if you want, I don’t mind.”
“For how long?”
“Until I get tired of your bullshit,” she grinned. Toby sat up and shook the leaves and dirt from his hair, criss-crossing his legs. He stared at the girl sitting across from him, a large dark green jacket draped over her, a sketchbook propped up on her knees, guarded from his view. Her hazel green eyes looked brighter in the sun, and so did the freckles marking her time-kissed face. She still looked as if he were staring into a 6ft hole in the ground. Her limbs were long and slender, but she was tough. Her hair was a caramel brown, messily dragging over her shoulders. Everything about her appearance felt to the boy as if he had just done something terrible. Everytime he looked at her, he felt sick, like he had robbed a store, or swallowed pills. When she glanced up at him once again, Toby quickly looked away. He hated when their eyes met. He hated when she smiled smugly at him. He hated her bruised knees and the way she looked at him when he made her laugh. He hated her. And more than anything, he was curious to see what she had been drawing.
#tombwrites#tombfic#ticci toby#creepypasta#creepypasta fandom#creepypasta headcanon#ticci toby headcanons#toby rogers#creepypasta ticci toby#ticciwork#clockwork headcanons#creepypasta clockwork#clockwork creepypasta#creepypasta ticciwork#ticci toby headcanon#clockwork x ticci toby#ticci toby x clockwork#ticcitoby#ticciwork headcanons#ticci toby fanfiction#ticci toby fanfic#clockwork#natalie ouellette
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 10. // (masterlist)
In that tortuous year, winter had come early. Natalie continued to work at the bar in town; the locals loved her southern charm, and she made enough tips to keep herself satisfied. Meanwhile, Toby swallowed his pride and began to chop wood, selling his gathered lumber to townspeople and small businesses. The snowfall had been heavy that December, which the boy paid no mind to as he traveled through the abandoned meadows that laid still under their thick winter frost. Toby gripped the handle of his hatchet as he swung it hard into the thin trunk of a tree looming over him. His hands were better off tearing down nature, taking lives. He wouldn't know how to be kind if he wanted to. As he pulled the blade out from the log, he reeled it back once more and swung it again at the trunk. The boy thought back to the times he had cut off limbs, chopped off heads, he could nearly smell the stench of blood and death as he swung his hatchet once more. He envisioned a crimson red splattering onto the snow as he hit against the tree again, and again, and again. Toby breathed heavily to himself, huffing as he watched the tree collapse to the ground with a loud thud. His cheeks were flushed with windchill, his hands were shaking as he released his grip from the handle of his hatchet, dropping it to the ground. Without another word, he made his way back into the house.
He found Natalie in the spare room, sitting at an easel. The boy watched as she painted a beautiful winter landscape, adding blotches of red into the snow — a morbid detail she typically added in her personal projects. Toby smiled to himself in amusement, it seemed as though she read his mind. He put his hands onto the back of her chair, breaking her from her canvas.
“Done with the wood already?” She asked.
“Just taking a break. Do you wanna go into town with me to buy some Christmas lights?”
Natalie stretched her back as she stood to her feet, matching the boy's height, shrugging in agreement.
Toby walked up and down the aisles of the small hardware store, Natalie by his side, eyeing the stock as they searched for what they had initially come for. Once they had found the array of Christmas lights, they bickered over the options. Toby insisted the rope lights were better. Natalie knew they weren’t. Accepting his defeat, the boy allowed the girl to grab the box of lights she wanted to buy, and followed her to the register. Grabbing change from his pocket as the shopkeeper ringed them up, the man looked at Toby and told him that he’d need to pay for the chocolate bar as well.
“What?”
“I saw you put one in your pocket, you’ll need to pay for that.”
“Bullshit you saw me pocketing one of your dumbass bars,” Toby snapped as he dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, “Get your fucking eyes checked.”
“I apologize sir, I thought-”
“Yeah? You fucking thought?”
“Toby, watch your damn mouth,” Natalie scolded, grabbing him by the hood of his sweater and pulling him back from the shopkeeper who was now drenched with confusion and nervousness. She sorely apologized, groaning in frustration as she dragged the difficult boy out of the scene he had caused and out into the open streets of the bustling town.
“What the fuck is your problem, stupid mutt?”
“Why do you care? When did you get so soft, huh?” Toby sneered, crossing his arms and avoiding his friends glare. He knew he had done wrong, but stupid mutts bite back.
“I care about all of that bullshit, because I care about you. So stop getting yourself into trouble.”
Natalie continued walking down the street, quickening her pace as Toby jogged to catch up. He followed beside her as they wandered around the downtown area, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the chocolate bar he had insisted he didn’t steal. Natalie glanced over at him and gave him a look of disbelief and irritation.
“What?” Toby asked, taking a bite of the bar.
“You are fuckin’ insufferable,” the girl shouted out as she sped up once again, walking in front of the boy.
Natalie sat herself down at a park bench, Toby sitting down beside her. When he looked at her, she turned away.
“C’mon Nat, you’re not actually mad at me, are you?” She didn’t give him a reply.
“Just over one stupid chocolate bar? You used to shoplift shit with me all the time, we’re not really upstanding citizens.”
“It’s not about that, Toby. It feels like…” Natalie’s words trailed off as she shook her head, “Whatever, nevermind.”
Toby nudged into her, prompting her to continue telling him what she was going to say.
“It feels like what?”
“It feels like I finally have a fuckin’ shot at leaving all that bullshit behind and just being normal for once. You know how nice it is to go to work and talk to people who don’t look at me like they know what I’ve done? I don’t want all of that to be thrown away just because you can’t handle paying for one stupid chocolate bar.”
Natalie looked out at the snow which draped over the play structure. The cool air burning in her lungs. Toby pulled out his wallet and handed her a $5 bill.
“Go fucking pay for it yourself then,” he muttered as he stood up, leaving the girl alone on the bench. She cursed under her breath as she went to catch up to the boy, brushing up against him. When she reached for his hand, he didn’t pull away.
In the old world, Toby was contorted and twisted into nothing but a weapon. Gunpowder and ash darkened his muddy eyes. The boy had been lit on fire, ordered to burn forever, and then forced into a world where he was told to find peace. Natalie was his best friend, she was always cold. She would wear sweaters in the heat, and she was indifferent to the summer sun. Despite the boy’s desperate attempts to prove he’s as horrible as he thought himself to be, Natalie enjoyed holding his hand. He was warm. The type of warmth he couldn’t hide under a layer of snow no matter how hard he tried to bury it. Only she knew how good he truly was.
The two friends strolled around the lively town, fingers interlocked, frost falling cold on their cheeks and jackets. A cruel boy, and a grotesque girl, neither bowed their heads as they passed the old Church, the world at their feet. Toby had slowly come to terms with the idea that he would never truly have a place within the earth they wandered. And finally, hell froze over. Natalie slowed her pace as they walked past a desolate skating rink, lit by fairy lights and the early evening setting sun. The day had fallen short, and the skies had already begun to darken. She tugged at the boy to follow her off of the sidewalk, and onto the rink. She admitted she hadn’t been on the ice in years. Natalie’s hand let go of Toby’s as she glided across the ice as much as her boots would let her. As Toby slipped and stumbled over to her, he watched as the rink lights shined in her eyes. For the first time in a while, she looked happy. The two youths slid around the icy field, Natalie snickered as Toby fell to the ground, only to let out a yelp as he dragged her down with him. Sitting on the cold ground beside each other, there was no war, no enemy. Toby threw his head back as he laughed, Natalie threw a playful punch into his arm. She brought herself back up to her feet, there was something so beautifully morbid about the way she carried herself, like the moon holding itself up in the night sky. Quietly, indifferently. The boy had a strange feeling, a knowing, that when she inevitably leaves his side again, he would still look up at the moon and think of nothing but her.
Hand in hand once again, the pair hollered out and rushed through the snowy country roads, the illumination of the stars reflecting off of the white blanketed fields. Their faces were flushed, the cold air scorched their lungs as they ran, laughing, exiled. Toby never knew why Natalie stayed by his side, but he knew he would give his life for her. Neither of them had felt so alive in ages. Natalie saw how Toby lit up, burning brighter than the sun. His mother never knew what to do with him, and it seemed neither did God. Drunk with frost and excitement that kept them warm, they rushed into the house. They kissed for the first time that night. It felt as though they had kissed a million times before. In another life, perhaps.
The adventurous night had ended as quickly as it had begun, and Natalie had woken up before her wild friend. She quietly sat up in bed, it was a cloudy day, perfect weather. Her eyes glanced over to the sleeping boy and watched for a moment as his chest slowly raised and fell with his soft breath. A smile crept onto her face as she thought to herself that she had never seen him so quiet. Natalie climbed out of bed, trying not to wake Toby up, grimacing as the floorboards creaked under her weight as her feet hit the ground. He had always been a light sleeper. She assumed that he felt the need to always be prepared for war, even while resting. Natalie looked over her shoulder, hoping that he hadn’t awoken, and to her relief, he remained fast asleep.
The girl sluggishly made her way into the kitchen to prepare herself a well-needed pot of coffee. As she poured herself a cup, she tried not to stare at the knives sitting on the counter. Natalie lied to herself, deluded by the idea that she enjoyed being alive. She made a point not to feed the misery that followed her around like a stray dog. In her entirety, that girl was nothing more than kitchen knives and shattered glass. Strange, and mortifying.
She leaned her tall, lanky body against the countertop as she took a small sip of her drink, feeling the warmth in her cold hands. Throughout her time in North Dakota, she had tried to change. The girl would lick the blood off of her lips after biting her tongue, she would make it a habit to grab onto something solid when she felt like punching a wall. In the new world, Natalie had tried to become something more than she was. Something prettier, nicer on the eyes, softer, kinder, more awake. She took a deep breath as she inhaled the reek of death that surrounded the house she lived in, a smell that wasn’t there before she moved in. Putting her cup in the sink, she couldn’t help but stare at the knives sitting on the counter.
Natalie slammed her hands onto the surface and turned to make her way back into the bedroom. She shook Toby awake, half-expecting him to jolt up and attack her from the sudden intrusion. Instead, the heavy-eyed boy gently grabbed her hand, taking a deep breath as he took in the world around him.
“When did you wake up?” he groaned, rising to a sitting position and rubbing his eyes.
“About a half hour ago,” Natalie replied, standing over him as Toby climbed out of bed, still half-asleep, “You should come hang up these Christmas lights with me.”
Toby held onto the rusted step ladder he had dug out of the old, worn down shed as Natalie reached up, hammering in nails into the beam of the porch to hold the string of lights. As she climbed down, the girl put her hands on her hips and eyed her handywork, nudging the boy with her elbow to look at it as well.
“What’d you think?”
“Hmm, I think it’s a bit crooked,” Toby heckled. Natalie rolled her eyes and playfully shoved the boy, to which he shoved her back, pushing her into the snow. Laughing as she fell, Natalie grasped at the snow, and threw a piece of ice at his head.
The boy blinked to himself for a second, before reaching down with a mischievous grin, picking up his own piece of ice.
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare.” Natalie threatened, scrambling to her feet as Toby reeled back his arm, throwing it hard at her.
“That hurt, you asshat!”
“Oh right-” He whispered to himself in realization as he jogged up to the girl who was rubbing her injury with her hand.
“Uh, you okay?” Toby was never sure how to tell when he had gone too far, and never knew how badly he had hurt the ones around him. Natalie’s hair fell over her face, she looked away from him. The boy cautiously put a hand on her arm, running his thumb over where the hard piece of ice had hit her. Before he could mutter out a sore apology, the girl tackled him to the ground, snickering as she shoveled snow onto his face.
“You’re such an asshole,” she said through her laughter, sitting herself on top of the boy who laughed alongside her in relief. Shaking the snow off of his head, Toby laid in the cold, and mindlessly put his hands on Natalie’s back, staring up at her. She flashed him a toothy grin, like a beast's snarl before it devoured its prey. He liked the way she looked when she smiled, he liked the way her laugh was more of a cackle. Loud and shameless. Toby lifted his body, flinging the girl off of him and they both stood up, turning to look at the red and green Christmas lights which reflected the sun.
Once inside, Toby watched quietly as Natalie peeled an orange with her bare hands. He had always used a knife to cut his. He wondered what she would've done if she had gotten those hands of hers onto him.
“It’s so damn suffocating in this place” she replied, ripping the fruit in half and giving him the other piece. Natalie walked past the boy, and kicked the old wall that confined her, the paint had been chipping.
Toby turned around to face her, tossing the orange in his mouth.
“Wanna run away?” he suggested as he chewed.
“Where?”
“I dunno, we can go to Alabama for Christmas.”
The girl thought about it for a moment, before ultimately agreeing, rushing into the bedroom as she began to toss necessities into her bag. She wanted to get out of that house as soon as she could. It turned out to be another thing she ran away from. Toby lingered in the doorway of the kitchen for a moment, hoping that Tim and Brian wouldn’t mind hosting a get-together.
#tombwrites#tombfic#creepypasta#ticci toby#creepypasta fandom#creepypasta headcanon#ticci toby headcanons#toby rogers#creepypasta ticci toby#ticciwork#clockwork headcanons#creepypasta clockwork#clockwork creepypasta#clockwork#natalie ouellette#creepypasta ticciwork#ticci toby headcanon#clockwork x ticci toby#ticci toby x clockwork#ticcitoby#ticci toby fanfic#ticci toby fanfiction#creepypasta fanfiction
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 13. // (masterlist)
Toby sat in the livingroom, leaning back into the couch as he watched whatever movie was playing on TV. In the distance, he could hear the old house phone begin to ring. He groaned in annoyance as he sluggishly pulled himself up from his comfortable spot and picked up the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, Toby. How’re you?” The familiar voice of his older sister flowed through the call.
“I’m alright, what’s up?”
“Uh, listen, don’t worry yourself but…” Lyra’s voice trailed off for a moment, “Frank came by the other day, wasted. He got into a fight with mom and… We have it handled, so don’t freak out or anything. I just thought you should know, ‘cause we’re going to be getting a restraining order against him.”
Toby stood in silence, trying to process the load of information that had been dropped on him. In all honesty, he had found himself blissfully unaware that his father had still been alive in this world. He had hoped to keep it that way.
“Wait- Wait. So what happened?” He asked.
“Nothing major! He just came by last night all drank and pissy, and started fighting with mom a bit. He hit her so-”
“He hit her?”
“She’s fine, Toby. I only told you because I wanted you to know about the restraining order.”
“Is she pressing charges?” Toby asked, and there was another moment of dreadful silence.
“You know she wouldn’t do that. It was hard enough to get her to even consider no contact.” Lyra nervously laughed, trying to ease the tension. She could feel the anger pouring from Toby’s end of the call.
“Yeah, thanks for letting me know. If you ever need me to come back, Lyra…”
“God no, don’t waste your money on a train ticket over Frank being a douche. You’d be poor by the end of the month,” She laughed again. Toby smiled melancholically at the joke, his sister had been the only one with her head screwed on straight once again.
The call ended quickly, and Toby stood still. He held the phone tightly in his hand, his lip twitched. There was a sense of something bubbling up inside of him, a furious sort of energy burning through his body. He found himself again confined in the walls of his childhood home, but he was eleven years old, and he could smell alcohol pour from his fathers breath. Toby was only a child when he looked up and saw blood on his fathers hands, some days it was his, some days it was his mothers. Now, it was the boys turn to wear blood like a glove, to wield that righteous anger. To become it.
Soon after the call, Toby’s dreams began to drift away from killing random people, and would bring him back to murdering his father over and over, again and again. One night, he fell into a dream where he was once again a 12 year old boy, and he would wrestle with his father, only to end up stabbing him to death. He drove the knife into the man's body too many times to count, and when Frank pleaded, cried for mercy, the voice to come out of his mouth was Toby’s. The boy shot up in bed, jolted awake. His breath trembled for a moment as he swallowed, trying to collect himself. He didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t know if he wanted to know what it meant.
Toby squeezed his hand, balling it into a fist as a confirmation that even after he had lost everything, he still had his ability to fight. He still had his anger, and it moved him. The boy was always frightened by his rage, how loud it could become, how violent. Toby had become what he feared the most, and now the only thing left to terrify him was himself. He was the killer, and the horrified witness. He was his father’s son. A soft ticking from the clock on the bedside table filled the night, alongside Natalie’s slow breathing. Toby looked over at the sleeping girl, adjusting his eyes to the dark. He looked at her bare arms, and then down to his. For many years of his life he had grown accustomed to the appearance of bruises littering his body. He learnt ways to hide them, because he didn’t want to be taken away from his mother. As a little boy, he was scared of his father, but even more, he was scared of losing everything he knew in the walls of that battlefield house.
The next morning, he stood with Natalie in the kitchen as he cracked eggs into a pan. He hit them against the edge harder than usual. Natalie blew over her hot morning coffee to cool it off, which felt like daggers in Toby’s ears.
“Can you cut that out?” He muttered, annoyed. She raised an eyebrow at him and put her cup down onto the countertop.
“What’re you cranky for?” She asked.
“Nothing. It’s just annoying.”
Toby scooped the scrambled eggs off of the pan and onto a plate, sliding it over to her, and putting the rest on his own. The boy took his food and left for the livingroom without another word, he wanted nothing more but to be alone.
Sitting on the couch in his solitude, Toby picked at his eggs with his fork. He wasn’t hungry. All he could think about was the feeling of taking his fathers life. The struggle the man put up, the smell of booze and smoke, the blare of the old TV. He remembered how it felt to have all the years of fear and anger finally pour out from him, through the hands that gripped the kitchen knife that slaughtered his creator. Then, he began to plan.
Toby never really stopped to carefully plan out his steps before taking someone's life. When he killed his father, it was an eruption of brutality, rage, and sickness. When he killed anyone else, it was on a whim, or had to be done. He imagined it would be most difficult to pinpoint Frank’s location. He couldn’t hold down a job long enough to keep a house on his own anymore. He must’ve been in cheap motels, or couch surfing, or sleeping in his car. And he called Toby the failure of the family, the boy thought to himself.
“Are you still moody?” Natalie’s voice brought Toby out from his brooding thoughts. He looked over at her standing in the entryway, leaning against the wall, and shook his head. The girl walked, and sat down beside him, picking an uneaten piece of egg off his plate and tossing it into her mouth.
“If you’re still upset about what happened-”
“It’s not that, Nat. Something different, it doesn’t matter.”
“Well if you’re going to be a prick every morning, then I think it does,” she poked. Toby rolled his eyes and stood up to clean off his untouched plate of breakfast. Natalie walked after him.
“Whatever you got going on, you don’t need to take it out on me,” she continued as they walked into the kitchen, Toby scraping his uneaten food into the garbage, and running his plate under the water in the sink.
“You don’t get it.”
“Try me.”
Turning off the squeaky faucet, the boy turned around to face the shameless girl.
“It’s just stupid shit with my dad. But my sister said she has it handled, so whatever.”
“I thought your dad was dead?”
“Not here. Not anymore.”
“What’re you going to do about it then?” Toby furrowed his brow at the girl's question as his gaze met the tiled floor.
“I think I’m going to kill him.”
Natalie leaned over the island counter, resting herself on her elbows, staring at the boy with a sick understanding. Through all the time they had known each other, neither of them had really bothered, or wanted to, talk about their fathers. But there was a mutual feeling that they both experienced a similar type of rage.
“If you want to kill him, then kill him. I’m sure there's meaning in that somewhere.”
“You really think?” The boy lifted his head up, feeling relieved at the support from his best friend, the one person who understood.
“Sure, if you think it’s a good idea.”
“It has to be done.”
“Slenderman tell you that?” Natalie teased.
“No, Natalie, I told myself that. Because I can fucking think for myself. I hate my old man more than anything and if I don’t go to heaven when I die because I killed him, then so what. I can take that to my grave, I don’t care.”
“I know what it’s like, Toby. I get it. My dad was a piece of shit too, I’d kill him again if I could.” She stood up straight and walked over to Toby’s side, brushing up against him.
“Whenever he drank I’d put a chair under my doorknob so he couldn’t come into my room and start shit. Or all the damage to my eardrums from blasting music so I couldn’t hear my parents fighting,” Natalie snickered to herself at the absurdity of it all. Toby looked over at her.
“My dad used to grab my hair and just slam my head into the wall. It pissed me off so much I wanted to cut it all off,” the boy shared.
The pair stood beside each other in the kitchen, under the soft afternoon glow shining through the window, leaning against the counter. They talked about their childhoods, family issues. They opened up about things they knew the other understood, a type of understanding they couldn’t find anywhere else. A type of understanding they wouldn’t dare look for anywhere else.
Natalie shared how she grew up in a small, dirty mobile home. There was a graveyard beside her house that seemed to seep into the walls of her livingroom. It was as if the dead lived there, and in a weird way, they did.
“It’s been hard for me to look at a knife and not think about killing them all again.” Natalie said.
“I get that,” Toby replied softly.
“Do you really?”
The boy gave Natalie a look, raising his eyebrow at her in question. She only shook her head.
“It’s dumb, really dumb. I have some weird resentment towards you for having your mom and sister in your life, because I never had that. I was always alone, and I’m pissed that you weren’t too.”
“Why’s it my fault that you had a shitty mom?” Toby spoke in a rougher tone, a growing hint of defensiveness at the girl's confession.
“I never said it was your fault. So what if my mother didn’t love me, it’s not a big deal. I’m just envious, I guess.” Natalie’s tone had grown rougher as well. The walls were rebuilt around the two, leaving them at a distance.
“Well you still had your brother.”
Natalie slammed her hands onto the countertop and quickly grew furious.
“What do you know about my brother?” She glared with furrowed brow, storming out before Toby could sneak a word in. The boy scowled back at the sudden anger and huffed to himself, crossing his arms in disdain. He stayed in the kitchen for a moment, defensive rage seeping off of him, before he heard the front door open, and slam shut. The house remained quiet.
That night, Toby slept on the couch, and Natalie hadn’t spoken a word to him. Neither of them apologized, they were both stubborn to a fault. Instead, the resentment would build, and linger, and stay until either of the two decided it wasn’t worth the energy anymore. But that night, Natalie laid alone in her bed. She listened to the ticking sound, like a time-bomb inside of her. The twilight shadow danced on the roof of her bedroom, and she wondered when it was going to end. Or if it even mattered in the first place. And in the desperate attempts to put the past behind her, she made the terrible mistake of shoving it down so deep she hoped she’d forget it was there. She beat down the rage, the terror, the agony, and told herself to get over it. Some nights, like this, she remembered it all. She remembered what it was like to be a little kid, hitting her head against the wall, hoping it’d stop, and it hurt. It hurt to remember. Natalie closed her eyes, and breathed in softly as she choked it all down again, and told herself to get over it. And then, all that remained was the rage.
Forgiveness had taken the two longer than usual, and for the remainder of the week, they didn’t talk, and Toby continued to sleep on the couch. He spent most of his time in the woods, Natalie spent most of her time at work, or in her room. One day, Toby had come back into the house to hear a series of loud bangs and clatters coming from Natalie’s art room. He cautiously approached the room, one hand remained gripped on the handle of his hatchet holstered on his belt, and he slowly opened the door. Toby’s eyes widened at the massacre.
Natalie stood over a demolition of her paintings slashed and disfigured. It was a crime scene of art, a tragedy. Toby stared down at the mess, and then to the girl standing amongst it holding a knife. Her hair fell over her darkened eyes.
“I can’t stop destroying things.” She spoke softly, in a tone of confession. As if she were at the feet of God begging for atonement. In a way, standing across from Toby, she was. And he had to bear witness to her sin. Natalie pushed past him, the knife in her hand, and Toby silently watched her leave.
“I’m going into town. Don’t bother coming with.”
The boy remained still, holding his breath until the sound of the front door closing confirmed the girl's leave. He looked over the sea of Natalie’s paintings torn to shreds, snapped in half, there wasn’t a single survivor. Toby sighed to himself as he walked over, and began to clean up the mess. He saved the paintings he thought could be repaired, and reluctantly tossed away the ones that were beyond rescue. As he worked through the destruction, Toby saw an old sketchbook of hers, dated from before she had woken up on the bus to North Dakota, to a couple of days after Toby had found her. A title was hastily scribbled at the top in marker: “Important”.
He didn’t mean to invade her privacy, he just couldn’t stop his hands from flipping through the pages. He looked at sketches of corpses, girls torn apart, bugs of all kinds. He saw drawings of a boy being tortured and maimed, it was a reoccuring theme. Then, there was a gap in the dates, and it seemed the style had changed to something more concise, more knowledgeable. Toby flipped to the last few pages, and stared for a moment, his heart beginning to beat quickly in his chest. There were portraits which looked awfully a lot like him. The messy hair, the tired brown eyes, the gash that used to be on his cheek, until the last two where he looked as he did now. Of all the girls' art, gore, guts, revenge, the portraits of the boy were touched only with a subtle sort of peace and tenderness. A quiet sort of fondness.
Toby’s trained glare softened, and a smug smile twitched its way onto his face as he closed the sketchbook and put it back in its place, eyeing the title once more. He closed the door of the room behind him, and decided to spend the rest of his day glued to the TV.
Later in the night, as Toby laid on the couch drifting off to sleep with a movie playing in the background, he was suddenly awoken by a loud slam. Toby quickly sat up, and rushed over to the noise. He watched as Natalie drunkenly rushed into the house, stumbling as she ran into the bathroom. She only got half of the vomit into the toilet. The boy crouched down beside her as she groaned over the bowl, he could tell she was beyond wasted.
“Fun night?” He joked, to which Natalie only groaned again in reply. Toby fought back a teasing smile as he held her hair back, letting her choke out the last of the alcohol content burning in her stomach. Natalie fell back and propped herself up against the wall, wiping her mouth sloppily.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Toby suggested as he stepped over the girl and turned on the bath.
The boy squeezed his eyes shut as Natalie sat naked in the tub, the shower head off the hook and in his hand. She stayed quiet as she held her knees up to her chest, hiding herself in case he looked. He didn’t dare to. Toby ran the water over her hair, and down her back, cleaning off the drunkenness and soil. The girl sniffled to herself, staring mindlessly at the water pouring into the drain as it ran off of her. She felt as the boy worked shampoo into her tangled hair, his hand gentle on her scalp. He leaned over the tub, silent for a moment, eyes still closed.
“I’m sorry you didn’t have anyone there for you as a kid, Nat. I wouldn’t have ever left you alone if I knew you back then,” Toby said softly.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t mean anything to me,” She said back, in a quiet tone, nearly a whisper, “I spent so much time screaming and begging for someone to help. And no one ever did, so I realized quick that nobody was coming to save me anyways. I guess I lost hope awhile ago.”
“But you’re still angry, aren’t you?”
“Nobody is as angry as a 16 year old girl,” Natalie half-smiled as she continued to stare at the drain.
“The thing that still gets to me is that the cycles never really end, you know? I never cared about dying because I was left to die night after night and still woke up again in the morning. A few hundred years ago there must’ve been a girl just like me, and now she’s 6ft under. I guess I’m just coming to terms with that. For once, I don’t want to die.”
Toby stayed silent for a moment as he washed the soap out of her hair, holding his hand on her forehead to prevent the water from running into her eyes. The air was heavy, and the bathroom lights glowed warmly, an old yellow tint on the tiled floors, the rusted bathtub. She closed her eyes and choked back a sob. She leaned into his touch. Only the sun had ever been that close.
“Toby?”
“Yeah?”
“When you first got here, remember how I told you I woke up on a bus headed for North Dakota?”
“Yeah.”
“I lied. I came to this world back in the place I grew up in,” Natalie spoke as quietly as she could, fearing her words would slur and crack with her grief-ridden rage.
“I remember being so disoriented, having my damn eye back. Everything was blurry for a moment, I just heard the sound of someone choking. And… And I looked down, and my vision started to clear up, and I saw my brother…” She paused for a moment, and took a deep breath before continuing, “He was on the floor, overdosing on some pills, choking on his own vomit. I didn’t bother to save him.”
Toby reached over, and in his blindness, felt around to turn the water off. He passed the girl a towel, and sat still.
“Do you regret it?” He asked.
“I regret not killing him myself.”
He listened as Natalie slowly climbed out of the bathtub, and walked past him. He listened as she changed into the pajamas he had brought over for her. He sat still with his eyes closed until she told him it was fine to look.
Toby slept in the bed again that night, and held the girl close to his chest. As he slowly drifted off to sleep, breathing in her smell of smoke and evergreen, she spoke quietly.
“I’ll be gone in the morning.” Natalie pressed her head close into him, listening to the boy's heart beat with nervousness.
“That’s fine, Nat. I’m just going to enjoy the time we have tonight then.” He whispered back.
Natalie had woken up first that morning, and quietly snuck out of bed. There was something about her. A blank look in her eyes, tired. She used to be kind, polite, easy on the eyes. That didn't last very long. She wasn't a girl anymore, or a sinful daughter, and as she poured the coffee into a mug, she hoped that the caffeine could fix it, just this once. And staying true to her word, as she sipped the last of her drink, she left before the boy had awoken.
Toby, alone in the room, sat on the creaky old bed. He tiredly shuffled down the hallway and into the empty kitchen, the smell of coffee still sitting in the air. He must’ve just missed her, the boy thought. Toby grabbed a bowl from the cupboard, and made himself a cereal breakfast, still half-asleep. His eyes met the scenery outside the window, the farmland looked magnificent blanketed in white snow, dragging over the hills. Toby only wondered what it'd look like painted red.
He wasn’t entirely sure when, or if, Natalie was going to return, but she stayed in his thoughts. He thought she laughed like a wildfire, and smiled like God. They had been best friends for years, and he realized, in the most horrible way, he really did like her. And to his relief, she came back to him early into the afternoon. The girl seemed to be in a better mood, grotesque as ever, indifferent to the world, though there was a remaining feeling of awkwardness and irritation from the night before. Natalie told Toby about a farmers market in town, if he wanted to go with her, and he did.
The two walked around the bustling paths of the market, staying close to each other's side, disregarding strange looks. There was little crop to buy during the winter markets, so a lot of the locals would sell personal creations, or baked goods. It was early February, and a particularly warm day, to their luck. Little frost gathered on their jackets, their cheeks were barely flushed with windchill. The sun beamed down on the two as they wandered through the market, chatting over what to waste their money on. Eventually, Toby found himself talking with an old man who had been selling his woodwork. Natalie stood by his side quietly, groaning to herself about the crowd of people that surrounded them. She hated crowds, she hated people. Toby had a way with them, it was easy for him to make conversation, though he wasn’t always the best at it. He could reel anybody in with a quick joke, or an engaging question. Natalie never knew how he did it.
For a second, in the midst of the open air chatter, she thought she heard someone shouting her nickname from the old world: “Clocky”. She quickly glanced around, then brushed it off, before hearing it again, alongside Toby’s name. Natalie looked over the sea of people once more, lowering her brow as she scanned faces, and grabbed Toby’s hand to catch his attention. Being dragged away from his conversation, he asked what the issue was, before he noticed an expression of disbelief trace the girl's face as she looked into the crowd. Toby turned his head in the direction she stared, and his eyes widened.
“No fucking way-”
“Clocky! Toby!” The familiar girl shouted out as she waved frantically, running towards the two, pushing past the people in her way. Her black hair was tied up in a ponytail, her smile was wide.
“Nina?”
#tombwrites#tombfic#creepypasta#ticci toby#creepypasta fandom#creepypasta headcanon#ticci toby headcanons#toby rogers#creepypasta ticci toby#ticciwork#clockwork#clockwork headcanons#creepypasta clockwork#clockwork creepypasta#clockwork x ticci toby#ticci toby x clockwork#natalie ouellette#creepypasta ticciwork#ticcitoby#ticci toby fanfiction#ticci toby fanfic#ticci toby creepypasta#ticci toby headcanon#creepypasta nina the killer#nina the killer
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 8. // (masterlist)
AN: MB BOUT THE WAIT Ive been adjusting to new medication but Im getting the ball rolling again. Im gonna try and post daily or every other day :]
Toby awoke the next morning to the muffled sound of arguing coming from the living room. It sounded as if somebody was fighting over the phone. Sluggishly, Toby walked out of his room to see what was going on. As he quietly lingered in the entrance, he saw his mother crying to herself as she continued to quietly fight with whoever was on the other end of the call.
“Mom? What's wrong?” Toby called out, causing Connie to jump and quickly hang up.
“Nothing, sweetie,” she assured softly as she wiped her tears and stood up to head into her bedroom. Toby watched her for a moment, trying to push down the worry he had felt.
He made himself a bowl of cereal before sitting down on the couch, turning on the TV to a slasher film which had been playing on a channel for Halloween. As Toby watched the killer brutally hack a woman to pieces, the boy’s face scrunched in disgust.
‘That's not accurate at all, come on’ he thought to himself as he took another bite of his breakfast.
As he gulped down his cereal, he couldn’t help but put himself in the position of the killer on the screen. Toby couldn’t help but imagine himself as the one to drill that knife into the chest of the pleading victim. He couldn’t stop from wandering into the terrifying depths of the decayed forest in his mind. Hatchet in his hand, huffing as drool drips from the deep gash in his cheek, blood staining his shoes. His dishes clattered as he dropped them into the sink, turning on the water to rinse them off. Running his hands under the cool downpour, Toby’s gaze turned over to a small orange container hiding behind the toaster on the kitchen counter. His brow creased as he turned off the tap and grabbed the bottle, quickly realizing it was full of pills. The boy tilted his head slightly — he hadn’t refilled his medication in months. As his eyes scanned over the label, he could feel a strange sort of sickness bubbling up from his chest and into his throat.
Toby swung open the door to his mothers room, causing her to take a seated position from the bed she had been laying on.
“Are these yours?” He asked, holding up the bottle of antidepressants. Connie rushed over to the boy and grabbed the pills from his hand.
“Where did you get this?” She demanded to know, guilt pouring from her eyes.
“I found them on the counter. Who were you on the phone with earlier? Was it Frank?”
Toby’s voice got louder as his mother stayed silent. The boy let out an exasperated sigh as he stared at the woman who promised she was done with that man for good.
“Are you fucking kidding me? After everything he did?” He began to shout as Connie did nothing but avoid looking her boy in the eyes, shame dancing on her aged face, her eyes more tired than usual. Toby scoffed and left the room, closing her bedroom door hard behind him, and storming out of the house.
He hadn’t thought about where he was going, his feet were moving faster than his mind. It was almost instinct for the boy to end up at the park, standing by the edge of the forest which surrounded the area. Toby sighed as he took a seat on an empty park bench, leaning back as he attempted to collect himself. The sound of children's laughter filled the crisp October air, the trees had begun to drop their orange and golden leaves, forming decaying piles of foliage on the ground below the swaying branches. He turned his head over to the playground as he made a mental note of the families chatting amongst themselves.
Toby watched as a father pushed his young daughter on the swing. The boy assumed the girl must’ve been starved at home, judging by her small size. He looked over to the monkey bars and saw a middle school boy call out to his parents to watch him cross over the bars. Toby thought to himself that the boy must be looking for attention in public because his parents would never give him the time of day at home. They must spend all their time arguing, he thought. It made him sick, watching all of these families feign innocence. He knew the truth, Toby knew the types of things that happened behind the scenes with people like this. He had seen it back in the old world, and back in the place he grew up in. He knew that behind the smiles and laughter, behind the childsplay and parental praise, there was only violence. At least he had the balls to admit it, he thought to himself as he stared bitterly at the people around him. Once again, Toby had felt as though he was deemed nothing but a leper. Sick, cruel, rejected. The autumn heat was gentle as the warm rays danced on his pale skin. He couldn’t seem to take deep breaths, his chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself slowly. He didn’t understand why the park choked him, devoured him whole. Toby thought that it must have been because he was so close to the forest.
Suddenly, his maggot-filled train of thought came to a halt as Toby noticed a little boy awkwardly standing idle beside him. He grimaced as he looked over to the child, who was holding something in his hands.
“What do you want,” Toby muttered, looking annoyed at the presence of the boy. Without a word, the small, sickly looking youth placed a rock into Toby’s hand and then proceeded to run off back to his mother, who had been watching closely the entire time.
Confusion took over his initial repulsion as he glanced down to examine the gift. It was a regular rock, there was nothing special about it. Toby looked up once more, and watched as the young boy quietly clung to his mothers side, standing close towards her leg, not daring to play with the other kids. His mother chatted with another lady who had also brought her child to the playground that warm weekend afternoon, laughing over the latest gossip. Toby felt himself being overtaken by a feeling he hadn’t felt since that night on the porch with Jack, back in Mississippi. Something he didn’t have a name for. It felt like a heavy coat, or like a quiet prayer that somebody you love would linger in the doorway a bit longer before they took their leave. He squeezed the rock in his hand and tried to shake off the weight that washed over him and stood up, making his way back home.
The walk back to his house was quiet. The subtle ambience of nature and man mingled in a harmonized symphony; there was a pair of siblings putting out decorations for the quickly approaching Halloween, and a few cars whizzed past the boy. He tried not to think about what would’ve happened to them if they had met him while he was still branded with the mark of a proxy.
As he opened the front door, he noticed his mother humming along to the radio as she washed dishes and prepared for dinner. Neither of them said a word as the boy silently shuffled past, and headed into his room. Toby placed the rock the young boy had given him on the surface of his dresser, sitting it neatly beside the portrait of his family.
The following day, Toby found himself shopping with his mother, following her around mindlessly, lost in his own thoughts. As they passed the home renovation section, he eyed the axes locked onto the wall, ignoring most of what Connie had been saying to him. Something about how the pipe under the sink had been leaking, something about what to make for dinner. Something about a clock. Taken by surprise at the word, Toby’s heart skipped a beat, it nearly knocked the wind out of him.
“What?” He asked.
“We need to get you a new clock,” Connie repeated. Toby remembered that he had destroyed his previous one, and shook the shock off. The uneasiness took hold of him.
“No, it’ll be fine.”
On the drive back home, Toby had gotten himself excited over a box of candy he had bought for himself, though he knew deep down his sister would take half of it as soon as he took his eyes off of it. It was some sick revenge of hers for all of the years he would steal her Halloween candy. He looked out the window at all of the passing buildings of the city, listening to the music playing on the radio. As the song faded out and the next one chimed in, he immediately recognized the sound, and his heart dropped. Toby quickly scrambled to turn it off, feeling the same sense of dread squeezing his chest as he did in the store.
“What was that for? I thought you loved that band,” Connie asked, glancing over at her son who looked as if he was going to be sick.
“Not anymore.”
The band that had been playing was Three Days Grace, he had loved their music since their first album. The girl he knew as Natalie loved their music as well. It was something they typically bonded over. He would secretly try to impress her by stealing CDs or downloading their music onto his MP3 player. Toby hoped the car ride would end soon, he didn’t want to think about it anymore. He didn’t care for clocks, or Three Days Grace. He didn’t want anything to do with her, and insisted to himself that it was better off if she had died alongside that forest in the old world. There was little to no chance she had made it into the new world anyways, there was no use in dwelling.
Over the next few days, Toby asked his mother for homework to do to keep himself busy. She had printed out a large booklet on various math and sciences, which he had gotten a quarter way through. The boy sat at his desk, tapping his pencil against the table as he bounced his leg. He was never good at math or science. He hated all the rules and logistics. Toby couldn’t force his mind to focus on the nonsense questions as much as he wanted to. He stared down at his empty paper for a moment before looking up through his bedroom window, peering out at the dark nightly forest that draped around his backyard. There was a burning desire within him, like he was missing something. He was unable to stop his mind from wandering into the past again. Toby thought about Natalie, and the last time he had seen her. She had forced him to make a decision, that he would come with her and leave everything behind, to get out while they still could, or to stay in that forest and watch her as she left. Being the stubborn boy that he was, Toby told her off, shouted that she didn’t understand, demanded that she leave him anyways, because he was better off without her nagging. And she did. Without screaming, or fighting, she left him alone in that abandoned cabin that they had made into their wreckage of a home.
She didn’t want anything to do with him or the life he lived. Natalie wanted better for herself, and Toby knew that wasn’t realistic. He knew better than anyone that there is no life outside of the warzone. He knew the bitter truth that you cannot make a human being out of a weapon.
Toby groaned and leaned back into his seat. Even when she was gone, that girl haunted him. She tortured his sleep, overtook his thoughts. All he wanted now was to be free from her. And a small part of him only wanted to see her again. That small part quietly hoped that somehow, by some miracle, she wanted to see him again too.
“Haven’t you taken enough from me?” He whispered out quietly. Toby closed his weary eyes for a moment, and the only thing he could picture was how she looked when she was mad at him. The way she glared at him with her one good eye, the way her brows creased, her shoulders raised. The way she crossed her arms and scoffed. The tone of voice when she told him to shut up or to watch his mouth. Frustrated, Toby dropped his head onto his desk with a thud and grumbled to himself before lifting himself up and grabbing his cellphone.
He hesitated before punching in digits to a familiar phone number. It rang for a moment as Toby waited impatiently, until he heard a click as the man on the other end of the call picked up.
“Hey Brian, it’s me.”
“Toby? What do you want man, it’s past midnight,” Brian groaned, audibly having just been woken up.
“Do you have any information on Natalie? Where she grew up, where she might be?”
“Jesus christ, go to sleep.”
“I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t important man, please just help me out,” Toby pleaded.
Brian sighed to himself for a moment, “I’ll figure something out for you tomorrow, alright? Get to bed already.”
Toby smiled victoriously to himself as he hung up the call, heading over to his bed. He thought to himself as he laid his head onto the pillow, that maybe, the girl would finally stop tormenting him if he saw her again and got the last word. The world around him was quiet as he drifted off to sleep.
That night, he fell into a dream where he sat on an old, stained and torn mattress in an abandoned cabin which was full of smoke. Beside him, sat Natalie.
“What’re you doing here, Toby?”
“I came here to see you Nat, I came all this way to find you.”
The two found themselves standing face to face in a snowy wasteland, smoke was rising from her mouth and draped around her face, covering her like a mask.
“Don’t you know how to leave me alone? I don’t ever want to see you again.” Mountains of ash and smog poured out as Natalie spoke. She turned around, and began to walk away from the boy, leaving bloody footprints as she left. Toby followed after her, but was weighed down by something, and could only drudge through the heavy snow as the distance between them grew further and further.
“Nat, come back! Fuck! Stop walking away, don’t be a pussy about this,” he shouted out. The girl's tall silhouette disappeared into the horizon, and Toby stood still in the snow, anger burning through him like a wildfire.
“Fuck you, you stupid bitch! You always do this shit, I’m fucking done with it!”
As he screamed out, Toby jolted awake, breathing heavy through the sting of lingering anger. His empty heart was beating fast as he placed a hand over his chest, falling back onto his bed. The sun began to rise, lightening the skies of dawn. He closed his eyes again as he fell back asleep.
Later in the morning, Toby awoke to a soft knock on his bedroom door, and his mother calling out that there’s someone on the phone for him. The boy quickly went over to grab the phone from her hand, closing his door behind him.
“Your mom sounds like a sweet lady,” Brian teased through the phone.
“Shut up dude. Do you have anything for me?” Toby asked, still half-asleep.
Brian told the boy that he had found a ‘Natalie Ouellette’ residing in a small town in North Dakota, but that he couldn’t confirm she’s the one that Toby was looking for.
“Thanks, you’re the best.”
“I know.”
Toby ended the call and quickly scribbled down the information Brian provided before it slipped his mind. He decided that he was going to take the chance and head to North Dakota as soon as he could. There was no more time to be wasted. To him, it was comparable to a bandaid that needed to be ripped off.
Toby sat at the dinner table later that evening, picking at his food as he listened to his sister share about her day at work. He had already begun to pack his bag, and mapped out a route to take. He wanted to be gone by the end of the week, and didn’t know how to break the news to his family.
“Uh, mom… I know I just got back home, but I have an old friend I need to visit in North Dakota,” Toby mumbled to himself, staring down at his plate of food to avoid the looks his mother and sister were giving him. Connie raised an eyebrow at the boy as Lyra glanced over at him, taking another bite of her dinner slowly.
“She’s a good friend of mine, and I-”
“She?” Lyra blurted out, mouth full of food. Toby looked up at his mother, who gave Lyra a nudge to mind her manners.
“What’s her name?” Connie said, interlocking her fingers and feigning excitement.
“Uh… Natalie.”
“You met her before right? She’s not just some creepy old guy you met on the net?” Lyra asked, leaning into the conversation.
“Yes Lyra, she’s a real person. Is it really so hard to believe I have a friend who’s a girl? Jesus you guys.”
“No no sweetie, it’s not that. Just, wow, all the way up north? She must be a very good friend,” his mother spoke as she continued to work at her food. Toby furrowed his brow as he ate.
“Yeah. She’s my best friend.”
After an awkwardly long dinner, Lyra went into her room, and Connie continued the conversation with her boy as they cleaned off the table.
“When are you leaving?” She asked softly.
“I was hoping sometime tomorrow, or the day after.”
His mothers eyes widened with a hint of sorrow.
“That soon? How are you getting there?”
“Probably just hitch hike,” Toby said as he placed the last of his dishes into the sink.
“You know, aunt Lori almost got killed doing that.”
“I’ll be fine mom, I know how to handle myself.”
As Toby attempted to brush his mother off, she put her foot down and stood in front of him, placing a wad of cash from her purse into his hands and squeezing.
“Use this money for a train and something to eat, please.”
“I don’t want your money, I promise I’ll be fine.”
“Please Toby, you know my heart can’t take anymore worrying.”
Toby looked into his mothers pleading eyes and took the money, nodding a thank you as he turned to his bedroom for one last sleep in his own bed. He wasn’t sure when he would be back home, he never liked to plan too much.
Lyra leaned over towards Toby, who was sitting in the passenger's seat of the car while their mother drove. It was a spot Lyra usually sat in, but Toby had claimed rights to the seat as it was his ‘going away present’. She pestered him about the trip from the backseat, the boy's bag sitting beside her. He quietly prayed to himself that no one would notice the hatchet residing inside of his backpack.
“Take some pics for me once you get there. My friend has family in North Dakota and she said the scenery is nice,” Lyra requested, which Toby agreed to.
Once they reached the train station, the boy grabbed his bag and threw it over his shoulder. He gave his sister a side hug, and a quick goodbye. Connie tried her best to contain herself as she stood composed in front of her son. It wasn’t easy for her to accept that her little boy was grown up now. Toby reached for his mother and brought her into a tight hug, letting the embrace linger on a bit longer than usual.
“You be safe, and you know I’m just a call away if you need anything, and don’t forget to watch your health, and be careful. If you need me to send you more money or clean clothes or-”
“I’ll be alright, mom. I mean it. The trains gonna leave soon,” Toby interrupted his mothers worried ramble as he squeezed her hand in a bittersweet goodbye.
“Goodbye sweetie, I love you” she said softly, squeezing his hand back.
“I love you too.”
Toby took his seat on the train and held his bag closely beside him as it began to move slowly down the tracks. Staring out the window, he watched his sister wave wildly at him as he passed, which he awkwardly waved back to before his family fell out of view. He chuckled silently to himself as he reclined into his seat. The countryside was beautiful this time of year. Dense forests painted with rust and sunset danced along the tracks, occasionally he’d spot a deer or a coyote. He had never been on a train before, nor had he ever been up north. Toby thought back to his time with Jack, and the paintings that he had made which hung up on his wall. It was as if they both had been discovering the new world in their own ways. Then, he thought about what Tim had told him, that this world was a fresh start for all of them, a second chance. As he looked out at the world passing by him, for a moment, he almost believed it.
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 15. // (masterlist)
“I’ll see you tomorrow!” Nina exclaimed, pulling her pink knitted scarf over her mouth as she waved goodbye to her coworker, pushing past the front glass door and out onto the windy streets painted by early springtime frost. The girl made her way down the bustling downtown roads, the soft chill reddening her puffy cheeks as she quickened her pace. As she passed by the townhouses and little local shops, Nina glanced up towards a particular apartment and noticed a large red sign swinging with the strong breeze, the words reading in a blocky white: “FOR RENT”. She stopped her in tracks, heart beating a little faster, her honey doe eyes sparkling in the sun that barely peeked from behind the cloudy skies overhead. A large smile etched its way onto her face, an eager sort of excitement creeping up from her chest. She ran all the way home that late afternoon.
Nina scrambled into the living room of that tiny, quiet farmhouse, nearly tripping over her own feet as she slid and hopped over to the two boys sitting on the torn up couch, watching whatever channel was blaring on the old TV. Chris turned his head over towards his erratic sister, and Toby raised an eyebrow at the girl as well.
“I found a place to move into,” she shouted out, beaming as bright as rave lights.
The loud thud of the box echoed throughout her new, and empty, apartment as Toby dropped it down onto the hardwood floor. Bold black letters announced itself atop the cardboard flaps holding everything in place, reading in bubbly cursive: “Ninas Stuff”. Chris wandered through the tiny apartment, his quick footsteps pattering as he ran through the halls and into the rooms, playing with no one but himself.
“How’s it feel to finally have your own place?” Toby asked, looking at the girl who was deep in thought.
“It feels so good, really freeing. I was thinking of getting a loveseat to put over here, and then I can put the TV there. I want like, a flatscreen or something, yknow?”
Toby watched as she slowly made her way around the living room area, gesturing her hands out to show where she was picturing everything would go. As Nina continued to talk, Toby slowly made his way over to the window, and peered out over the street.
“You gotta be careful too. Don’t forget that anyone can break in,” he interrupted.
“Duh, I’m not stupid,” she grumbled back, “can you not talk to me like I'm useless?”
Nina crossed her arms and stared at the boy, who continued to look out of the window. The muffled sound of cars speeding past, engines roaring outside, and people loudly chatting amongst themselves as they walked by, filled the open air.
“I’m just being realistic,” Toby said, turning to face back at the girl who was glaring daggers at him.
“You’re not being realistic, you’re just being an asshole.”
Toby shrugged his shoulders and walked towards the door, the old flooring creaking under his steps, the ambience of the streets outside pouring into the silent apartment.
“Make sure to lock the door,” he said as he tried his best to ignore Nina’s irritated pouting from behind him.
As he walked through the downtown area, the boy tried not to think too much about the junkies riding past on stolen bikes, or the men with tattoos of gang symbols. He tried not to look at the same type of people he’d meet back in the old world. Not proxies, not ghosts or ghouls, but something worse. It was a different type of society living in the cracks between buildings, in alleyways and unassuming houses. It was something normal people wouldn’t bat an eye at; but he knew. He knew the types of things that go on in areas like these, it was something he’s experienced many times before, in the old world. Toby continued down the street, past the old, rotting buildings, the ones with chipped paint and smashed in windows. He scowled a warning at anyone who looked at him as he walked past the old brick buildings tagged with graffiti and boards on the windows. It was early into the chilly evening, but late enough where certain types of people would be around more often than not. Toby made sure he never left the house without a pocket knife, just in case.
When he approached the run-down bar, the neon light sign overhead giving out, poorly flickering the name “Bulldog Tavern”, the boy thought he should’ve felt a sort of ease of his nerves that he didn’t. When he pushed past the door, and into the dim pub, wooden floors, wooden tables, warm light shining off of the bottles on the shelf, people gathering in after their shifts at work, music blaring, his nerves only got worse. There was a red neon sign illuminating itself on the beam over the bar counter, giving off a soft glow down onto the bartender, who Toby knew better than anyone.
Natalie wore her hair back, sleeves rolled up, apron on. She had a sickeningly sweet smile plastered on her face; the fake kind she’d use when she wanted something. To Toby, it was almost terrifying, like the horrible smile a predator would give before devouring its prey. And he knew better than anyone that when that girl smiles at you like that, you’re better off running away.
Toby casually made his way into the bar, watching as Natalie chatted casually with some customers who seemed to have already had too much to drink. They were a group of five, maybe six, and they were a rowdy bunch. The older men sported thick graying beards, some bald, wearing vests and jackets with familiar patches. The boy sat at the front bar, a few seats away from the loud drunken men, and watched quietly as Natalie served them another round of beers. He furrowed his brow at the sight, arms crossed as he leaned into the counter, trying to make sure the girl didn’t fall out of his view. Every roar of laughter, insult, tone change, cuss word, made Toby squeeze his fist shut. He didn’t know why it made him so tense; he didn’t know why he could do nothing but glare and sit alone with irritation choking him.
Toby continued to stare without a word as Natalie wiped down cups from across the bar, the tiredness on her face being quickly replaced with a fake-warm friendliness whenever one of the men dragged her back into the conversation. Showing off, flirting, making a big scene, tossing her around in their bad jokes like she was a ragdoll. She laughed her fake laugh, a loud cackle laugh, as if the jokes they had made were funny. As if the stories of crime and violence they told meant anything. And when she finally glanced over towards the boy, and noticed his familiar scowl, she just as quickly dropped the act.
“What’re you doing here?” Natalie asked, making her way over to Toby as he continued to look at her with disdain tracing his face.
“I was just in the area helping Nina move in. How's work?”
“Work’s great. You look stressed, need a beer?”
“Sure.”
Natalie grabbed a bottle from a little fridge under the counter and popped the cap off, handing it over to the boy, who immediately took a heavy swig of the drink as soon as it reached his hand.
“I’m off in an hour if you want to go home,” she said.
“I’ll wait.”
The girl looked down at Toby for a moment, before sighing in surrender at his stubbornness, and walking back over to the lively section of the bar. She continued to make drinks for new customers, reapplying her charm and take-no-shit attitude the locals seemed to love. Toby took another sip of his beer as he kept a close eye on her. Smiling, laughing, raising her eyebrow. Taking no shit.
The boy tapped his finger impatiently on the empty beer bottle, his dark eyes still fixed into his usual glare. He waited and listened to the men talk about the same things he had witnessed in the old world. Bar fights, petty theft, guns, money, drinking too much on a Thursday night. Toby watched as Natalie’s coworker came in, tapping her on the shoulder and taking her apron from her. He waited impatiently as she made her way into the back room, letting her hair down, and grabbing her coat.
She met Toby outside of the bar, the night skies dark, only illuminated by the warm glow of street lamps shining down on them as they walked down the street, and past business lights pouring out from the boarded up windows. The boy matched her pace as she slowed to light a cigarette, perching it in between her overworked fingers.
“You seemed to be making some interesting friends,” Toby said.
“I’m just doing my job,” she muttered as she took another long drag of smoke, inhaling the mountains into her dying lungs.
“Yeah, cozying up to guys like that. Definitely in the job description.”
“What is your problem?”
“I’m just saying that those types act all tough, but I bet you they’re all too pussy to do half the shit I’ve done.”
“You haven’t done anything in this world, Toby,” Natalie said in annoyance, brushing the boy off as she continued to walk down the darkened streets of downtown.
As he followed behind her, he had come to the terrible realization that the girl was right. The dreadful truth that everything he had become, everything that he had seen, committed — none of it was done in the world they walked in now. Toby had never intended to become what he was. A killer, a weapon, a false prophet. He knew nothing of peace, or time, only that he had lived through a war that no longer existed. And he wasn't even left with the scars to prove it.
As they entered into the moonlit serenity of their home, the pale light settled on the old floorboards, Natalie quickly made her way into the bathroom to run herself a bath, while Toby sat down in the livingroom to watch cable TV. He pressed his thumb down on the remote, the screen flashing on to a news channel which had been in the middle of discussing local politics. The boy leaned back into the couch, half-watching the nonsense plastered on the television. His eyes fell heavy as he barely processed the words the woman discussed with another man on screen. As his body grew tired, melting into the couch cushions that cradled him, Toby continued to listen as the news channel switched from local politics, to local crimes. There was a sour taste in the boy's mouth that grew more and more as he began to listen intently to the woman explaining that the horrific failed break and enter last month that left one child dead, and a family devastated, was still under investigation. And that anyone with information should call the number that proceeded to flash on screen.
The world around him fell as short as his breath, as if the room had taken a step back. Toby watched the news like he, himself, was trapped behind a TV screen. There was a soft tightness gripping the heart beating in his chest as the number was announced once again through muffled noise that didn’t process properly in the boy's brain.
Call the number if you have any information on the crime.
The horrific crime.
The one that left a child dead, and a family devastated.
Toby felt the room spin around him as he wondered how many people called numbers about his crimes. He wondered how many children he left dead, how many families were devastated. He felt the couch cushion swallow him whole as the world slipped past him, the news switching to commercial break.
Call your insurance company today.
Call your doctor about the newest heart medication.
Call your mother.
Call the number if you have any information on the crime.
The sudden, loud blare of the house phone ringing out shattered through the glass box Toby found himself in, yanking him back into reality. It stopped for a moment, the boy thought he must’ve imagined it, before another loud drill of the phone rolled across the heavy air of the living room. Like it was taunting him, like it knew what he had done, or not done. Not here. Not yet.
Toby brought himself to his feet and slowly made his way over to the ringing phone, he barely felt the floor under him as he stepped down. He barely felt the button under his finger as he pressed the answer key.
“Hello?”
Silence. The quiet infomercials danced around in the space behind him.
Call about the newest product.
Call for more information.
“Hello?” He asked again, unsure if he had actually said it the first time.
Silence again. Toby waited, not saying another word as he counted the seconds that passed in his head, the soft static buzzing from the other end of the call. The long air of silence lingered, draping itself over the time that had been passing the boy by as he stood, awaiting a voice on the other line. He thought about what he would’ve said if he heard his mother on the other end, screaming a sob as loud as he remembered the other woman did through the broken window pane that dreadful night; wailing about how her baby died, her poor child. Toby thought about how much his mother must’ve cried alone after Lyra died. And how much more after he left her behind. And still, the silence screeched through the call, suffocating him. The room twisted mercilessly around him, Toby felt himself losing his footing, he tightened his grip around the phone, hoping it would offer some sort of support if he fell. He felt his chest strain so tight, he couldn’t seem to breathe.
“Toby?” A familiar voice rang out.
“H-hello?”
“What are you doing?” Natalie said, standing in the doorway of the living room, hair wet, freshly changed into pajamas. Toby quickly hung up the phone and placed it back onto the holder, shaking his head.
“Nothing, I thought we had a call but it was just silence.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” the boy said as he walked past her, avoiding her raised eyebrow and crossed arms. Avoiding her demanding voice, the silence that fell around it, and the infomercials quietly playing on the TV behind him.
Call the number if you have any information on the crime.
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TOMB FREAK.
🪦. Tomb - male- 19 yrs
> I write headcanons for Creepypasta (check out my laundry and taxes fanfic) (and the AU @creepedverse made by me and my friends) (the creepypantheon AU can be found under the #tombtcp tag)
% Asks OPEN, requests OPEN [guidelines]
# Messages open for anyone 18+
@ DNI if you don’t want to see TicciWork. Or if you're proship, thats fucking weird. Or if you moralize/dehumanize people with personality disorders gtfo
& BYF I DO NOT WRITE NSFW, I yap so much, I advocate/talk about mental health issues openly, I might post dark content/themes (dead dove, artistic form), I'm blunt but I dont mean to be mean, I like to be joyous and whimsical so keep petty negativity away. I believe in creative freedom. I can and I do reclaim the r-slur.
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⚰️. INTERESTS: MY GIRLFRIEND, psychology, Creepypasta, Slenderverse, Homestuck, loud music, creative writing, learning, philosophy, 2000s-2010s, art, poetry, movies, film making, House MD, hopecore, positivity, old technology, classic literature, collecting random shit (coins, books, postcards, porcelain dolls), scrapbooking, Minecrart
.xx
“Vixi Liber Et Moriar”
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🧺 — Laundry And Taxes
chapter 5. // (masterlist)
The drive to Mississippi was long, tiring. Every bump in the road made Toby’s stomach turn. He felt horribly motion sick, squeezing his eyes shut as his nausea grew with every mile they drove. Toby leaned himself up against the window, trying to ease his disdain for car rides, as Brian and Tim sat in the front, talking casually amongst themselves. Tim had an old classic rock CD blasting, Van Halen raging from the stereo of his busted red pick-up truck, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel along to the beat. Brian turned around to face the boy grimacing in the backseat.
“Still alive back there buddy?”
Toby only groaned back in reply, making Brian chuckle to himself as he turned back to face the open roads. The scenery of the countryside was beautiful, the autumn sun beat heavily onto the men. Tim turned down a desolate gravel road, driving into the depths of a forest. The trees were tall, mighty oak, the green leaves had only just begun to decay into golden yellows, and rustic orange.
The truck pulled up to a small, isolated cabin, which resided in the midst of the woods. Toby felt a wave of dizziness overtake him as he stepped out of the vehicle, nearly throwing up his breakfast.
“I'm never getting in a car again,” he grumbled.
“Yeah you said that last time,” Brian teased, flashing a smug toothy grin.
As Toby collected himself, he examined the area around him. It seemed as if there was no civilization for miles, all that surrounded the creaky old cabin was wilderness. Through the sway of the yellow leaves, and the harmony of bird song, the area was calm. Toby thought to himself that it was a ‘very Jack place to live’.
It was only a moment before he saw a familiar figure walk out of the front door of the cabin, and down to where the men stood. He was smaller than Toby remembered. The first thing he noticed was that the creature's skin, once gray and decaying, was now a healthy caramel tone. The second thing he noticed was that Jack wasn't a creature anymore. The third, was his eyes.
“Holy fuck! Eyeless Jack has eyes now?” Toby blurted out. Tim smacked him over the head.
They were human eyes, very human. Jack seemed to stare for a bit too long, not used to having pupils or irises. They were darker than Toby’s, as if the open tar-filled wounds resided still in the whites of the man’s eyes. Darkness bled out from under his eyelids, and kissed his sunspots and moles.
“Nice to see you again too, Toby.”
Jack always spoke in a low tone, fearing that if he spoke too loudly, God would hear, and find him in all of his tainted unholiness.
Brian leaned in and whispered something to Jack, and the three men made their way inside the cabin, suggesting to Toby that he wait outside as they talked, and that he should explore the forest.
Frustrated at being left out of another important conversation, Toby grumbled to himself as he walked out into the woods, examining the nature around him. Everybody in his life viewed Toby as a naive, idiot boy who didn't know any better. A troublemaker from birth. A stupid kid. He was an inconvenience, a labrat, something in the way. Anything but a man with his own autonomy. He had given his life to the hands of his father, and then to the hands of The Slenderman. Toby thought back to Tims words, and how right he had been. The boy didn't know who he was now that the leash was gone. He didn't know what to do with himself without commands.
Inside the cabin, the three men stood and discussed what was to be done with the boy who wandered aimlessly and irritatedly outside.
“He can't stay in Tuscaloosa. He keeps thinking he’s fuckin’ sick, meanwhile the kids just losing his goddamn mind,” Tim stated, “I think we should just throw him in the deep-end and let him drown if he can't learn to swim.”
“That's the issue. The method you keep trying to attempt with him is too cruel, Tim. Healing takes time, baby steps, like treating an open wound. Sorry to say that your less than ethical solutions aren't the most helpful,” Jack refuted.
“He’s a tough kid, he’ll survive.”
“Sure. We all know he’ll survive, that's all he knows how to do. You and Brian know what living looks like, but he doesn't.”
“Want my honest opinion? It’s in everyone's best interest to keep him locked away forever. The worlds not gonna play nice Jack, and he’ll go down fighting no matter what. It’s hardwired into his brain.” Tim continued, “The kids built to be unpredictable. Do you really honestly have a fuckin’ clue whats going to happen with him? ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t. He could do fine, become a normal guy, or he could never change and find himself in prison for murder some day. So go ahead, let him free into the world, I couldn't give two shits. I’ve been cleaning up his messes since I can remember, I’m done being his babysitter.”
Brian stood silently, watching the two men grasp at straws. They couldn't agree on much, but they all knew it would be detrimental to let Toby go off on his own as he was now. Unstable, a wreck, violent. He wouldn't only cause problems for himself, and civilians, he would cause problems for the men as well. In that cabin, on that late September afternoon, they were eager to find a solution.
“If he reaches out for help, Tim, would you be there for him in the ways that he needs? You know he looks up to you and Brian, whether any of you will admit it or not. Are you going to keep beating him under the guise of keeping him safe?”
“I’m not his damn father, and it ain’t my responsibility if he looks to me as a role model.”
Suddenly, Brian chimed in, finally speaking after a long time of silence.
“Well, I for one think you guys should stop viewing him as some fucked up problem, and start viewing him as a human being,” he stated, “Stop treating him as a damn psych ward patient you read about in your fancy textbooks. He’s a grown adult.”
“He sure as hell doesn't act like one,” Tim said.
“Maybe he acts like a child because everyone treats him like one. Ever thought about that?”
The room went silent for a minute, both Tim and Jack taking in the words Brian preached.
“Let him make his own decisions, and for the love of god, let him make mistakes. You think you're helping, but you're looking at Toby as a problem you need to fix. He’s fully capable of helping himself, he’s got two legs and a heartbeat.”
“Thanks for having common sense,” Tim said.
“And fuck Tim, Jacks right. The poor kid looks up to you and you beat on him like his old man? I get how it was back as a proxy, we both needed to do some shitty things to keep him in line, keep us safe. But you’re going to let that chance to make things better slip past you because of your ego? Come on man.”
Tim sighed, and shook his head, his arms crossed. He looked over at Jack, who stared back at him.
“Here’s the game plan. Toby is going to stay with Jack, away from people, away from Alabama, but with someone he can talk shit out with. I trust that you can handle it, you’ve handled him before.”
Jack nodded in reply at Brian's direction. It seemed that man always knew how to take charge of a situation, and set things straight. In the midst of chaotic discussions, Brian would always sit back and take time to come up with the most viable solutions. It was an honorable trait of his, something people around him admired.
The three concluded their meeting, coming to the agreement that Toby would be left with Jack for now. It was the best option for all of them. Jack had always been a good balance for the boy, someone he went to when he was injured and bleeding out, someone he went to when he was fighting with Tim, someone to lean on. Toby had war tearing through his teeth and he wore his anger like a badge of honor. This was in contrast to Jack, who was a rather passive being. He was calm, collected. The two had their differences.
“You fucks done with your super important meeting?” Toby shouted from the edge of the forest that surrounded the cabin porch the men were standing out on. Tim furrowed his brow at the snarky boy, always talking back, always causing trouble. Brian put a firm hand on the man's shoulder, as a friendly suggestion to just let it be, and led him towards the truck.
As Tim climbed into the driver's seat, Toby made his way to the backseat door, before Brian stopped him.
“You’re staying here, with Jack.”
Toby’s eyes widened as he scoffed, slamming the truck door shut.
“Really? You’re leaving me here in buttfuck nowhere?”
“Yup. That's exactly what we’re doing. Deal with it,” Brian said proudly, seating himself in the passenger's side and closing the door. The beat up truck sputtered for a moment before the engine began to roar. Rolling down the window, Brian added on.
“You might want to get your bag from the back.”
Toby glared daggers at the men as he angrily grabbed his backpack from the backseat, swinging it over his shoulder, and backing up from the vehicle. He flipped off the pair as they drove away down the gravel road, leaving him in the dust.
“It’s not so bad here. I have board games,” Jack spoke softly, standing behind the furious boy.
“Oh, you have fucking board games. Great,” Toby replied sarcastically, huffing to himself as he turned around and headed into the cabin, closing the front door hard behind him.
Jack stood alone on the front porch for a moment, looking out at the scenery. It was so beautiful. He hadn’t seen trees, birds, blue skies, in so very long. Every time he took in the earth around him, it felt like a peace he hadn’t tasted since he was a young boy. Standing under the nurturing sunshine, it reminded him of his mothers arms around him. The chirping wildlife sung to him, hummed like his sister had when they were children. The swaying oak trees spoke to him in ways they hadn’t before he was stripped of his humanity. They looked magnificent. Autumn was his favorite time of year, he loved the way it smelt, the way the leaves sounded when they crunched under his claws. Jack looked down to his hands. They were soft, slender. Human. He kept his nails short, he was tired of scratching at everything he touched.
The man was meant to be with his family, it was his goal since he woke up in the strange world, it only made sense. Earlier that fall season, he had made his way down the country roads back to his home in North Carolina, hoping that he could find solace and forgiveness within the pews of the church he grew up in. But falling victim to fate's hands, he lost his courage along the way, and instead found himself an isolated home in a forest in Mississippi. Jack thought that ending up in that forest was a result of his Sisyphean punishment. He always wondered what he did to deserve his curse.
Jack decided to spend no more time with his thoughts, an old friend had once told him that his own mind would be the death of him some day. Jack believed that to be true. The man took one last embrace of the view in front of him, and went inside to check on Toby, who he was sure was causing trouble with all the time he had spent left to his own devices. To his surprise, the boy was doing nothing but examining Jack’s collection of old paintings hung up on his livingroom wall.
“You paint these?”
“I did.”
Toby stared intently at the canvases presenting articulate landscape oil paintings, the colors were vibrant, the strokes were neat.
“They look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime man,” Toby smirked to himself as he turned away from the art to face the other. It was hard adjusting to the man's fresh, humanly appearance. It was hard looking him in the eyes.
“You can stay in the spare room, but we’ll need to clear it out,” Jack stated, leading Toby down the small hallway and into a dark, musty bedroom which was full of empty canvases, boxes and stacks of old books. Toby breathed in the reek of the area, it smelt like library and earth.
The two spent the day organizing, and moving things around to make space for Toby to sleep. They swept up settled dust, and cleaned off the old mattress which laid on a rusty metal bed frame. As long as Toby had a roof over his head, he was happy to call anything home.
As nighttime fell and darkened the rooms, Jack lit candles to provide light. He told Toby about the first night he had spent in his cabin, and how he wasn’t used to needing light, so being engulfed in darkness once again was a very strange feeling for him. He admitted there was a part of him who didn’t want the sun to rise that night, but knew that his desire to see the morning light beam across the wild woods outside was stronger than his comfort in blindness and monstrosity. Jack shared his thoughts and experiences as if he was telling a tale of mythology, or reading from one of the classic philosophical literatures he had lying around. He had wisdom beyond his years aching in his bones, and it dripped from his tongue. Jack had only hoped that someday, Toby would truly hear what he was saying.
By the time it had reached midnight, Jack had called it a day and went outside onto the front porch to enjoy the darkness he was so used to. Toby knelt down in his room, and rummaged through his bag, taking out all of his essentials. He placed his hatchet underneath his pillow, and kept his belongings near in case he needed to make an emergency escape. It was an effortless decision, something he had done many times before, as if he insisted to himself that danger was always just around the corner. The boy sat on the creaky bed in silence for a moment, partially expecting something awful to happen then and there. He shook his head at himself and stood up, making his way outside.
The front door creaked open as Toby slipped out into the night, standing next to Jack who was leaning against the wooden porch railing, staring out into the dark abyss of the forest. It was very quiet, besides the chirping of the crickets singing out from the meadows around them, and the occasional sway of the branches with a soft breeze that danced past.
Jack glanced over at the boy who hadn’t said a word and instead stood silently looking out into the darkness with the man. He never minded the silence, it was something he was very accustomed to all of those years in his lonesome.
Jack enjoyed being alone, or rather, he needed solitude. He had first woken up in the new world in his old college dorm room, but quickly fled, leaving behind his education and people he had once called friends. This way, no one could see what he had become. He feared himself more than he feared God. And he didn’t want to hurt anybody.
“Do you ever…” Toby tried to speak, breaking the silence, but his words trailed off. There was a moment of quietness as his unspoken words lingered.
“Do you ever feel like no matter how hard you try to get over something, it just has you by the neck? Like your past is all you are?”
Jack thought to himself for a moment, as Toby took a deep breath, like he had just confessed something horrible.
“Not really, no. The past is in the past, only you get to decide who you are today.”
“But that's the thing, I don’t even know who I am.”
“Nobody does. Make something up.”
“Easier said than done.”
“That’s life, isn’t it? Someday you need to wake up and tell yourself that you’re ready to be happy, and then against all odds, be happy.”
There was a heavy weight in Toby’s chest, something he didn’t have a name for. Something he hadn’t felt in years. The moon peered out at the men from behind the sleeping trees, illuminating out across the forest. Everything was still, it was calm.
“Yknow, I’ve always seen you as someone more human than me,” Toby spoke again, smiling sadly to himself. He had witnessed Jack in all of his demonic entirety, fangs and talons, snarling like a beast, feasting on the carcass of man. And yet, Toby had always felt as if he were more of a monstrous abomination than the other. He never understood why.
“I could say the same about you.”
Toby chuckled, “Yeah in what world am I anything close to human.”
“This one.”
“This world is bullshit.”
“Maybe so. But we’re human, and we’re alive, aren’t we?”
Toby sniffled, fiddling with his thumbs as he rested his arms over the railing. There was a long pause of silence as the two enjoyed the stillness of the world around them. Another smile crept up onto the boy's face.
“I can’t fucking believe Tim and Brian just left me here like that. I hate those fuckers, seriously.”
He shook his head and turned his gaze down to his feet.
“All that hate must be heavy to carry,” Jack replied, glancing over to a deer who had run past the two. It seemed the world had remained awake alongside them.
“But it’s mine, right? I’m a very hateful person if you can't tell.”
“I was too. You get tired of hating so much eventually, and you’ll realize it doesn’t get you anywhere good.”
The boy looked over at Jack with a raised eyebrow.
“I can’t imagine you being hateful,” Toby said as Jack looked back at him, meeting his skeptical gaze. Jack grinned at the boy, as if he had a secret to share.
“Do you know why I tolerate you?”
“Wow, okay. Uh, no Jack, why do you tolerate me?”
“Because I used to be just like you.”
The words of his friend caused Toby to let out a loud laugh, throwing his head back before looking back over at Jack, and realizing he was serious.
“You’re fucking with me.”
“I’m not. I was so very angry at the world after I had turned into a demonic creature. I was angry at God, I was angry at humanity, at myself. For the first while, I enjoyed hunting and killing people. It felt as though I was gaining back the power which had been stripped from me. I took nothing seriously, not death, not man, because the world never took my pain seriously. And I hurt a lot of people in the midst of my anger and hunger for revenge.”
“So what changed then?”
“I met a girl-”
“Oh, you fucking met a girl huh?” Toby rolled his eyes at the cliche.
“I met a girl. Who had spent months tracking me down, because I killed her brother.”
“Oh shit.”
“She had gotten me by surprise one night, I could smell the anger and betrayal dripping off of her. And I felt her knife pressed against my throat.”
“So? You couldn’t die anyways right?”
“It wasn’t about that. I didn’t fear for my life. It was the fact that she didn’t know if I was immortal, and she had that knife to my throat, and still, despite it all, she let me go.”
There was no snarky or curious comment from the boy this time.
“I had taken everything from her, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to hurt me. She was so angry, so ridden with despair, she was sobbing so loudly it was almost guttural. I realized then that people don’t need anymore anger in their lives, and they don’t need anymore pain. Hurting others only makes you more miserable in the end. If you want to live your life thinking the world is always out to get you, go ahead, give yourself an excuse to fight. But believe me when I say, it gets tiring, and it gets too heavy, and someday you will need to learn how to put it down, because that anger isn’t yours to carry anymore.”
Jack stood up straight, taking a deep breath in, inhaling the night air. He smiled softly at Toby, an expression of kindness they both know neither had experienced in a very long time.
“The world isn’t as bad as it seems, Toby. I hope you’ll come to realize that soon. You deserve to rest, you’ve fought a losing battle long enough.”
No more words were exchanged, and Jack headed inside to get himself some well needed sleep, leaving Toby outside to give him time to think about what he said.
The boy wanted to feel better, he did. He knew that Jack said important things - things that should’ve changed his life. But Toby wanted more, he needed more important conversations, more words of encouragement, and guidance. There was a desperate need for someone to tell him what to do. But he stood there alone cradled by the night skies. The stars looked brighter than usual, and they stared down at him as they had done to men centuries before him. Toby thought about all of the wars people had fought in history, all of the other proxies, all of the other kids who must’ve been beaten worse than him. And he wondered what made his suffering so special, what gave him the right to stand there under the endless night sky and insist that he had it bad.
He stared off into the distance, trapped in a daze as he looked out at the dark woods. Toby waited for something to happen, to see a tall faceless figure beckoning him, to see the branches move like tendrils, to hear the trees scream. He waited, and stared. And as still as he remained, the world around him matched. Nothing happened, and everything was fine.
Shaking himself off, he sighed and turned away from the forest, and back into the cabin. As he sluggishly climbed into bed, he felt the hatchet bulge out from under his pillow. His hand reached under, and gripped the handle as he drifted off to sleep. It was all he had left, and he clung to it as a child would cling to his mothers arm. Having lost everything he knew, that hatchet was all he was now.
#tombwrites#tombfic#creepypasta#ticci toby#creepypasta fandom#creepypasta headcanon#ticci toby headcanons#toby rogers#creepypasta ticci toby#ticci toby fanfiction#ticci toby fanfic#ticci toby creepypasta#creepypasta fanfiction#creepypasta fanfic#eyeless jack
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