Stockholm Syndrome | Ticci-Toby
Tobias Erin Rodgers, burdened by various mental health challenges from a young age, earned the cruel nickname "Ticci-Toby." He cleverly turned the insult on its head, reclaiming it as his own. After a tragic car accident that took his sister's life, he murdered his father only two weeks later that propelled him into further isolation. After his father's death, he disappeared, eventually finding refuge and a strange sense of community within the Slendermansion, surrounded by his proxy peers. Years passed, and his role within the group grew; he was given his own isolated cabin deep within the woods, a place of quiet solitude with the added responsibility of the continuation of his bidding. Yet, the monotonous routine of killing people in the woods gnawed at him. The silence became deafening. One night, the sight of a lone, vulnerable girl wandering in his woods ignited a spark within him. He followed her, his initial curiosity quickly transforming into something much darker, an unhealthy fixation that consumed him.
Valeriana moves through life like a whisper trapped between shadows, a quiet, moody figure whose silence feels heavier than any scream. Ever since the night she returned from the gas station to find her parents' bodies cooling on the floor, the walls marked with an O slashed through by a single violent X, and her twin brother Valerian vanished without a trace, she has learned to keep her grief folded tightly inside herself. Years have passed, but the image of that blood-drawn symbol stains every dark corner she lingers in, every breath she takes behind the bar where she now works, serving strangers under dim lights while silently watching for any sign-however small-that might lead her back to the truth, or to him.
