jason

He developed a tic that imitates the calling of the chickadee some time after he started to hide in the woods. At first, it was fun hearing the birds answer, thinking there was one of them nearby, when in reality it was just a limping boy craning his neck and trying to put his accidentally dislocated jaw back in place after a bad tic fit. Now it feels mocking, like the forest itself is laughing at his annoyance.

His right shoe feels tighter than usual, and walking is getting difficult. He doesn't want to even peek at whatever is going on with his foot. He has vague memories of being smaller and everyone being worried about something being wrong with his foot. He remembers needles and scalpels, expectant eyes, people he can't quite place in rooms so white they made him dizzy, familiar and unfamiliar hands dragging him around.

Hands. Looking down at his hands scared him at first. They don't look anything like the ones in his memories. His fingers are thick and yellow at the ends, some wider than others, opened and bleeding, or infected and with no water to clean them nearby. He remembers hands with manicured nails, skinnier than his own, but also stronger. Strong, but gentle. Gentle hands that checked on him before going to sleep, gentle hands that cleaned his damaged skin with nice soap and wrapped him up in soft bandages. Gentle hands gripping the steering wheel, covered in blood. A body crushed under mechanical parts.

Tobias limps along the path in the forest, less discernible every new hour that inevitably arrives as he approaches the parts almost nobody wants to visit. He's not here to visit, he's here to hide. He's here so the fire doesn't reach him, so the dark, insistent tendrils can't get a hold of him. He's here so he can stay in control.

He remembers the gentle hands prying him with a spoonful of soup. He knows he has to eat, or he will weaken and die. Tobias doesn't know what hunger feels like. He wonders if it's similar to fear. As the anger and the excitement and the adrenaline wore down, more and more the farther away he got from the smoke and the brazen light of the fire, fear had begun to nest up in his chest, and after it carved enough of him to make itself comfortable, it never left again.

He pushes his hair forward on his face, adjusts the hood of his sweater often, makes sure he can't get any signals from his peripheral vision so maybe the crowd of bleeding children will stop chasing him.

"I don't know honey, he's staying as far as I know"

🃮

Tobias holds onto every passing thought he can, however painful, however frightening, however tedious. He doesn't want to slip into the fog again.

He tried to think of nice things, first. Blonde hair came to mind, and blonde hair came along with smiles and warmth and kindness. Blonde hair came along with care and belonging.

"That's Hobbes. He's a tiger...Yes, like the one in Whinnie Pooh. But better... Yeah yeah. And that's you! What do you mean he looks nothing like you? You've got the same nose!"

"The next time they say mean things about you, imagine you're a big strong tiger... Yes, exactly! And then they can't harm you, because you're stronger than them. And kinder. And funnier... I'm sorry they don't see that in you."

"You would rather study here at home? Well, I don't think mom would be against it. Are you sure you're willing to deal with dad though?"

Blonde hair came along with fear, eventually, as everything does. Blonde hair comes with glass shards and blood, with screams and screeching tires, and with that, the fog. So, eventually, he stopped thinking about blonde hair.

🃮

"D-d-d-da- d-daffy d-down d-d-d-d- No..." 

Tobias only remembers one song, and he can't sing it.

"D-d-daffy d-d-down d-di-dil-dilly has come t-t-to t-t-t-t- fucking hell!"

He knows the callings of the birds in the forest by heart now, and he doesn't just tic with the chickadee's calling, but also the blue jay's and, as culmination of his many attempts to stay aware of his surroundings, the word "squirrel!".

"Now put your tongue up and hold it there: nnnn. Let's try again, Toby."

"Connie! This retard you have for a son bit his tongue off!"

"You're doing well, Toby. Let's try pushing that sound forward. Can you move your tongue towards your teeth?"

"... Useless fuck. Speak louder!"

Tobias remembers one song. He remembers a warm, mellow voice singing it to him. He remembers being a child. The song makes him think about green eyes and open arms, about colorful rooms, about sour medication and encouraging faces he can't quite make out, fingers pointing to mouths he didn't want to look at...

"... t-to t-t-to-town with a yellow pet-t-t-ticoat... hmph."

🃮

It feels like years since the last time Tobias saw a wall. He remembers the walls of his bedroom, the way the smooth white mixed with his thoughts the last few days, the way yelling faces and hospital masks and blurring tears and stinging fists would come alive in the blank canvas.

He flexes his hand, the thin layer of filth cracks where his skin wrinkles. He's trembling, and it takes him more effort than usual to move.

He remembers when his room would flood with water sometimes, and if he opened the door it would spill over to the rest of the house. Lyra barged in like it was nothing, every time, and then he would drown in panic. But the floor would remain dry, or so she assured him.

The fruit is dry here, but it does its job. Anything the squirrels eat, he can eat too. Probably.

He remembers the papers in his hands melting onto the ceiling. He remembers the roof opening up to swallow him whole and worrying he'd be going without his sister or his mum. He remembers dreaming of running away, finding a way, any way, to get the people he loved to safety. He remembers pouring gasoline on the sidewalk and knowing it didn't matter anymore.

His cheeks are wet. He wipes them off with a dirty palm. The fog is coming back.

🃮

A closing of the simple lid that opened to the sun

Until the tender Carpenter

Perpetual nail it down

Tobias rests with his back against a wide, strong tree. There's a spider carcass in his gloved hand. He tears its legs off one by one, holds the little limbs between his fingers and examines them as if they were precious stones. He likes this one because it's real, because he can pick it up and move it around. He's gotten tired of having fake spiders crawl up his back, of turning away from his leg then looking at it again and finding none of the insects that were eating away at him were real.

He remembered the smell of whiskey not long ago. It smells like home. He remembers hating it. It brings home back but it also brings the anger back. And with the anger, come the tendrils, the force that wants to pull him back to the road and...

He holds the dead spider up by its last leg. It dangles in front of him, seems larger than it is, larger than the tree behind it. He pretends the spider is climbing the branches, as one would climb stairs. Stairs are also part of home. He misses his home. His home is crushed under a car. His home is on fire.

🃮

Maybe resisting is futile, after all. Food isn't nice in the woods, and he walks a little slower every time he wakes up. 

Tobias drags himself like a bag of bones through the trees, under the hollow branches, over the protruding roots. Cobwebs cling to his clothes, their owners long tossed aside. Leeches suck at his skin, but he walks on. The farther away he gets from the forest's heart, the worse it smells. Dark, gooey rope tugs at his feet, makes him trip over on himself, tries to drag him back on the ground like a worm, but he gets up again and walks on.

His ears ring so loud he'd be thankful if his head just exploded, but he walks on. He walks on until he hears steps that aren't his own. He's angry, and he's weak, and he's scared. He's tainted. He was tainted from birth. He has nothing left to lose.

🃮

"Hey, those shoes are nice."

Tobias chews on a cold sandwich, his free hand scribbles into the wet dirt. The bodies beside him are stiff, the night is windy, the moonlight rains through tree branches and thick clouds. He is crying. He doesn't know why he is crying.

"You're very strong, you know?" He glances at the faces of the corpses laying beside him, tears pooling on his long eyelashes. "That was a real st-strug- struggle... People aren't as generous as they teach you to be when you're a child."

The last few bites are hard to get through. He stands up impatiently, drumming his swollen fingers on the side of his thigh as he assesses what he can take and what he shouldn't.

"You have clean clothes... Well, they're stained now. But they're not covered in shit," he chuckles. His laugh dissolves into a coughing fit. That makes him remember to take the water bottles. "You don't mind if I just take your backpacks altogether, do you? It's not like you can use them anymore."

He turns one of the bodies over with a kick, pulls the backpack of its limp arms, tossing it aside to check later, then he moves onto the next one. That one has a belly bag. "Can't be bothered to ta-t-take that- that off... Oh, those goggles are funny."

He lifts them to his face. The orange tint makes everything look less threatening. Even beautiful. He turns towards the dead boy, "what'd you use these for, hm?"

He sits down on the crushed weeds again, puts the goggles on fully. They warm up the vacant faces of his victims. Orange is a warm color, blue is a cold color. Green is also a cold color. "The forest must be cold, I suppose. Are you cold?"

He yanks the backpack off the third one. The fourth one wasn't carrying anything. That one was the smallest, probably the youngest. Also the easiest to finish. He had curly hair and full lips. His eyes look sad now that his heart has stopped beating, even through the orange lenses.

"What's t-t-that face for? Were they mean to- mean to you?"

Tobias brushes the boy's hair away from his face. He tries to be tender, but he nicks his nose with one of his thick nails in the process.

"They were mean t-to me too, you kn- you know?" He drinks half a bottle of water in one go, then pours the rest on the boy's parted lips. "I d-don't remember much of how t-things used to be, anymore. I d-d-don't think I really had the chance to be mean."

Tobias lays down beside the dead body. The metallic smell of blood floods his senses, the moon peeks at him through the tall trees, ropes of tar wrap around his ankles and, this time, the fear that comes with them is welcomed with open arms.

"Mom told me to smile for the camera. She- She said I- She said I had the prettiest face. I cried t-that night for the way I looked."

The boy's nose forms a beautiful curve, illuminated in the lonely night, like a flower petal. It makes Tobias smile "...Are they t-telling the truth, mom?"

He slips a rough palm under his sweater, feels his lower ribs under his skin, feels his belly button poke out a little, feels the soft hairs over his abdomen. He's surprised to find there's softness left in his body, to find the rise and fall of his breathing so soothing, so even, like the twinkling of the stars above him.

"... Sometimes I wish I could feel the pain I deserve."

➵ Thank you, @ripdrhomo so, so much for inspiring me to write this piece and letting me use your words in it as well.

➵ I tried narrating this in past tense and then found it sounds stupid when I started writing the flashbacks. I'll learn one day... I learned a lot writing this, actually. The rabbit hole of information about CIPA and speech impairments took over me and it wasn't even that prominent in what I ended up writing.

It did add a couple of new headcanons to the endless list though. This character has accompanied me for years and years, and I've thought far too much about him, made a million drawings of him on the backs of my notebooks and in probably every single sketchbook I've had since I was 11.

I hadn't read his original story since like 2022 and still got surprised about how barebones the writing style is lol but it is a creepypasta after all and this fandom is built on those kinds of things. I love the way it has changed over time, the twink proxy slendermansion days and the way we treat the characters now that we've all grown up too.