:Ticci Toby:{A Rewrite}

8

A year and half has passed since then. Toby was in the 8th grade now, being 15 years old. His birthday was just around the corner. His final year in Junior high. The kids never laid back, in fact the bullying only got worse. Toby was shoved and locked into lockers, pushed down the bleachers in the gym, humiliated constantly, and to top it all off, when he came home, it was a different story completely.
His dad started to gamble, and Lyra was thinking about getting a GED and getting into college. His dad lost a lot of money from his games and addictions. That broke up the family even more. Lyra had been upset for days about not having the money to get into the school she wanted. She was very close to just giving up completely on her dream life. She was 19, about to be 20 in three months. Lyra felt like her life was meaningless.
Toby of course was there to comfort her like she had him those past years. Everything suddenly felt so nostalgic. Toby picked up the biting and picking habit even harder. His hands were very much scarred. He ended up giving in and bandaging them up himself to avoid infection. It wasn't as bad as he thought it was going to be now that he's grown out of that mindset. To prevent himself from biting the bandages until they ripped, he resorted to chewing on hoodie strings until they were practically little fibers. He may have accidentally completely digested some before.

Toby had a cassette player, given to him by Lyra. It had a tape with one of his favorite songs. Toby liked listening to songs by Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Pink Floyd and many more. He was given all of the tapes of his favorites though.
He was currently walking home, carrying a bag of milk, bread and eggs. They needed groceries and was given the task to go pick them up. Toby had headphones on so he couldn't exactly hear anything, he didn't think he needed to.
That was until a rock was thrown hard at the back of his head. He almost didn't feel it but he could tell something hit him.
He pressed pause on the cassette tape and lifted one side of his headphones to turn and see where this mystery rock came from.

To no surprise he was met with three other boys standing behind him, bikes propped up on an old candy store wall.
"Hey ticci!"

Toby rolled his eyes and put his headphones back on, ignoring them. Another rock was thrown at him, making him snarl a little in annoyance.
"C'mon talk to us!"
They bickered at him, laughing as a group.
"What'cha got there? More pills for your little disease?"

The more they spoke, the more echoed their words would become in his mind. His hands were becoming sweaty from how tight he was gripping the bags. Toby continued to ignore them, trying to be the bigger person.

He kept walking, but kept his music off in case anything were to happen, and knowing his luck, it did.
The sound of bike wheels rolling caught up to him. The three kids were on bikes, peddling beside him slowly as he walked. He knew they just wanted a reaction from him, and they weren't going to get it.
Toby came up to an alleyway, turning into it to escape them, but they followed him, tossing rocks as they did so.
He may have forgotten bikes weren't like cars, and could fit in more narrow spaces.

"Where ya going? This is poor folk ville." The kids cackled as one of the boys screeched up in front of Toby, stopping their bike in his way.
Toby finally stopped, keeping his gaze down. An alleyway, no one was around, asshole kids surrounding him. He was going to die here wasn't he.
"Hey, uh, what do you say we play a game, a game called, make the freak bleed?"
One of the kids suggested, earning a predatory gaze amongst the other two kids.

Toby felt his heart sink a little. He was a little scared, yeah, but nothing he couldn't handle. The other male pulled a sharp pocket knife from his pocket, parking his bike.
Before Toby knew it, he was being held back, the bags were ripped from his hands and thrown to the side, spilling the milk and breaking the eggs. They stepped on the bread, completely ruining it. Well there goes dinner for the next week.
"Okay seriously fuck off!" Toby screamed, baring his teeth and kicking at the kids who held him by his arms back. It didn't help that these boys were more fit, and actually had the strength to do whatever they wanted.
It wasn't hard to hold him, as he didn't have much strength to pull, but he sure as hell didn't just sit there.
"Don't be so skittish, we're just gonna draw one of your little symbols..or well, carve it in ya!" The boy laughed, getting a sense of satisfaction when the two others brought Toby to the ground, holding him as he kicked and tried to free his arms.
"Wh-why are you do…do-doing this!?" he may have even started crying by now but he honestly couldn't tell.
"Is the baby freak gonna cry! What?! Don't want a 3D tattoo?!"
The blond boy started to carve deep into Toby's side. Making a circle as best as he could then deeply cutting an X through it, laughing loudly as he did so.
Toby honestly just watched. He was still slightly crying, yes, but showed no reaction to pain. His vision was a little blurry yes, as one's body would react to pain, but that part just wasn't there.
The blood dripped down smoothly, getting onto the ground and staining anything near it. The cuts were so deep that the amount of blood that seeped through was almost lethal. The kids were laughing and remained holding him down as if he was struggling anymore. His body didn't want to move, no matter how hard he wanted to.

They were carving it perfectly into his abdomen. He didn't see the cuts, but feared his intestines were gonna fall out. He couldn't feel where they were cutting, or how deep it was. He just knew he saw a bunch of blood.
"Why aren't you screaming?! Huh!"

"...you..act like i can feel it.."
Toby thought out loud , his voice croaky and hoarse.

After a minute of staring up at their blurry figures and echoed laughter, finally they pulled back, letting go of his wrists. They left red marks on his arms from gripping so hard and his struggling not making them look any better. He felt every muscle in his body go limp.
The kid who cut him grabbed his face with a strong force, almost hitting his head on the concrete. "And don't even think about telling the police, if so, I'll kill you." his voice was threatening honestly, he was just still sitting there wondering what he did to deserve this.
Toby was left in the alleyway like a dying dog. He glanced weakly at the destroyed groceries and broken cassette tape that fell out of his pocket. His headphones were all bent. Everything was ruined, and now he was going to have a scar.

Toby found himself slowly rising to his feet, coughing blood. His nose was bleeding.
Toby pulled the strength together to start limping home. He was two hours late than the time he promised to be back. So he's late, and now completely empty handed.
He held his stomach the whole way back. Blood stained his clothes and hands. He took the back way so no one saw this disturbing sight of a boy walking as if he wasn't bleeding out.
It was really windy out, and he could kind of make up the sound of tv static?
He turned down the street to see the figure standing on his street, right in front of his house.
"...what are….you doing here….you can't be here…"
Toby weakly squeezed out, clinching himself tighter, as if he was hiding his injury. "Did…you do this to me." he narrowed his eyebrows towards its still standing figure.
"Did you make them do th-this to me?!" he screamed with all of his lungs, finally dropping to the ground to a high pitch ringing static in his ears. "stop it stop it!! You were so nice to me before!"

"ㄥモ匕 爪モ 卄モㄥㄗ ㄚ口∪…."

"工 匚丹れ 卄モㄥㄗ ㄚ口∪….."

"工 匚丹れ Ｓ丹∨モ ㄚ口∪……"

"No! No! Stop!.." Toby held his ears, getting up the best he could.

"工 丹爪 ㄚ口∪尺 ム口刀."

"工 丹爪 ㄚ口∪尺 Ｓ丹∨工口尺."

"No! Y-you're not real! You were never real!" Toby opened his eyes again to see that it was completely gone.
He could still hear the faint static, this was the first time it's ever spoken to him. It was almost telepathic. Toby scrambled himself home and crawled in through the back window. He didn't want to be seen, he just wanted to disappear.

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