Broken (Ticcimask, Masky's Side)

Chapter 5 - Nightmares

I was awoken by a strange noise coming from the corner of my room, and I tried to ignore it. As my mind slowly woke up and processed what was going on, I decided the noise wasn't going to stop, so I opened my eyes to try to figure out what the noise was.

I traced the sound to Toby -- who was sleeping on the air mattress I had put in the corner of my room for him. He was whimpering and muttering indecipherable gibberish.

Suddenly, he started to say coherent words in-between his gibberish, "Lyra. . . I'm sorry . . . no . . . stop." He then just repeated the word no amidst his gibberish -- with Lyra occasionally being heard also.

Watching the brunette in this state made me feel a bit bad for him. I thought about waking him up, but he jolted awake with a strangled cry. He sat there utterly still for a few seconds before he started shaking and, eventually, crying. He, then, collapsed back down on the mattress and curled up into a crying, shaking ball, and he started talking to himself.

"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" he keep repeating, his voice growing in volume with each repetition until his voice was a distraught wail. At this point, I couldn't stand to let this continue anymore.

"Toby," I called out quietly. Toby gave no response, and he continued his yelling. I repeated myself a bit louder, and I got no reaction. I, then, hesitantly walked over to the fellow proxy and gently placed a hand on his shoulder to get his attention.

He froze at the sudden contact, and I took my hand back on instinct. He slowly lifted his head to look at me, and he seemed a bit scared for a second before realizing it was me.

"M-masky?" he asked, sitting up and wiping away his tears with his sleeve. Before I could respond, I started to cough, and I, hastily, walked across the room to get my pills from my nightstand and took two of them. I, then, noticed that my mask was sitting on my nightstand and that it was 1:10 in the morning.

"S-sorry," Toby said quietly.

"Huh? Sorry for what?" I asked, giving him a confused look.

"I w-woke you up, d-didn't I?" he asked looking at the ground in guilt.

"Yeah -, " I answered, inspecting the amount of pills in my pill bottle briefly before continuing, "but I would have been awake soon anyways." I counted the pills in the bottle I was holding, and I noticed I was missing half of them. Realizing that meant my entire supply had probably been robbed, I opened my nightstand drawer to count how many pills I still had.

"O-oh . . . d-do you t-think I woke anyone else up?" Toby asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I glanced over at him before returning to counting my pills and answering, "no, my room is sound-proofed." I discovered that half of the pills from each bottle were missing, and I gave an annoyed huff at that fact before putting the bottle I had been holding in the drawer with the others. I knew who did it, but I decided I'd deal with them in the morning.

I turned my attention back to Toby, and he still looked pretty shaken up. Now don't get me wrong -- I don't care about the twitchy little brat -- but . . . for some reason, I felt compelled to try to help the kid. I mean, I'm the only one who would be awake right now, and I can't just let a fellow proxy suffer, right?

"You had a nightmare I'm guessing," I commented, trying not to seem too interested.

Toby nodded his head yes with a slight twitch, and he meekly said, "y-yeah . . . I-it was j-just stuff from t-the past . . . n-nothing new."

A pang of sympathy shot through me at hearing that. I could, obviously, tell he was lying about how bad it was affecting him, but I knew better than to pry for more information about it.

"Alright," I said, feigning casualty. I, then, remembered that I hadn't actually eaten dinner, and I was getting pretty hungry. "I'm going to go get some food," I stated. Before Toby could really respond, I put my mask on and walked out to the kitchen.