Trapped (A Ticci Toby Story)

Chapter 15- Closure

"Go." Hoodie says over his shoulder.
And masky takes off in the direction in which I came.
I wanted warn him. I wanted him to know what kind of person Tom was, but I can't speak.
My heart beats against my chest like a hammer against cloth.
A frantic rhythm that reminds me that I was a alive.
I wasn't going to die.
Not here,
Not now.
With hoodie standing over me protectively, I try to fill my lungs with the air I deprived them from.
But each breath was hardly a gasp, the fear in my body constricting and depleting me of what little I had.
"Breathe." Hoodie soothed. "Toby, breathe." his tight grasp was the only thing keeping me from falling to my knees. "We're here now. It's going to be okay."
I swallow a gasp.
"Are you alright?" He asks.
And I nod and I lie.
I wasn't okay.
I wasn't going to be okay.
Not while Tom still breathes.
Not until I seem his body as lifeless as he left so many others.
Small and broken.
"I kil--killed his wife" I say through my teeth. "That's why he's trying--trying to kill me, I thought--I thought you were him. I thought--"
"He really shook you up, huh?" He asked and I could hear the slight smile in his voice.
It brought a sense of warmth and familiarity to my being for just a moment.
A nod, taking it in and savoring it.
Just for a moment.
"Y--yeah." I try to smile.
"Christ, you..." he pauses and looks me over, "look horrible."
He reaches over his head and pulls off his mask.
So familiar, tired, worn, but the same.
He reveals his face, twisted with worry, and tight with a grimaces.
I didn't want to see his expression pained like that.
Because of me.
I look away from him and I feel his gloved hand pull my head up, reviling the marks around my neck.
I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow tightly under his gaze.
"Why would you let him push you around like that?" He asks.
"I--" I stop myself before the words 'I didn't' instinctively left my mouth.
Because of course I did.
I let him do this to me.
I try to think back to before I stopped fighting him, before I saw him as an inescapable all powerful being.
To the night he killed her and I saw everything he could take from me.
Just a single thought or her fate shook me to my core and made me weak.
I breathe and my traumatized gaze meets his and I am about to answer him when his eyes leave mine and flick to the treeline behind me.
My blood turns to ice and I nearly jump out of my skin when the sound of foot steps finally break through the constant hum of wind in my ears.
I turn and see masky crossing the clearing behind us.
His expression dark as he eyes me.
Studying me.
I find his mask in his hand, but I see no blood.
"Where's Tom?" I ask.
"He backtracked." Was all he said.
And that was all it took.
I break down internally.
Silently.
Tom was still alive.
He was still breathing.
Thinking, moving, loathing,
A threat to me and all that I care about.
Masky walks past me to hoodie and I can no longer move.
"The storm is heading East. The closest shelter is a mile north." He informed.
The tall, thin, fozen trees around me begin to sway to my unblinking eyes.
My head pounds with my heartbeat.
"We can follow along the ravine, this should protect him from the wind, but this is only a temporary solution." hoodie countered.
Speak.
I tell myself.
But I forget how.
A pulse and a pulse,
Confusing my soul.
A pulse and their words are the same.
A pulse and my mouth moves, words too low for even the keen to hear.
"I will stay here."
Here in this place.
I will never leave.
Cheryl was right in her own little way.
I wasn't going to leave her.
Though my body has left, I will never leave.
Like so many others.
Never at peace.
I will never go home.
I will stay in my own personal hell.
Never at rest.
Never free.
A deep voice pulls me out of the haze.
One single word, but I don't know what he said.
His hand on my shoulder catches me and I realize I was tilting.
I steady myself and straighten.
My heartbeat fading from my foresight.
I find Masky holding onto me.
"You let him get away." before I forget how. My words, like reading from a foggy script, I keep going, slowly waking back up into reality. "You let him live. You chose to. I know you chose to. This was a choice.... Why?"
"He isn't my concern." His deep voice still managed to surprise me.
Somehow pulling me even more awake to the real world.
He was really here.
"Do you know what he did...to me? Aren't you angry?" I mumble, finally, it all begins to settle in. He was betraying me. Tom was going to get away with this.
He was going to get away with every beating he delt me, with every tear shed by those I love, with the murder and the hell that will always torment me.
And Masky didn't care.
I can see it in the expression I hated.
The one that meant he wasn't going to change his mind.
Hurt and betrayal never amounted to the rage I felt now.
In this moment, standing in front of the ones I counted on for so long.
"What he did isn't important." He said.
"Yes it is." I whisper. I see Alex's lifeless eyes, and it hurts. It hurts so much. "Yes it is!" My voice breaks.
Never leave this place.
Not while he was still alive.
I can't live like this.
I can't allow this.
He needed to die. He needed to die now.
I need to end this tonight.
Even if it kills me.
Masky knew my mind as easily as I known his because even before I had a chance to turn away from him, he pulls me into a hold I can not get out of.
"I'm not doing this with you, Toby! I'm done with your games!"
"Let go of me!" I scream.
I squirm and I fight, by my arms are still locked behind me.
His hold like an iron clasp, pinning me into submission.
Just like him,
Just like him,
Just like him.
"Toby, calm down." Hoodie tried to sooth, keeping his place incase I manage to break free and run.
I shake my head an throw myself to the side. Masky doesn't let go.
"No!" I hiss through gritted teeth. "I swear to god I will never stop! Not until he's dead! You can't force me--let go!"
It didn't matter if they drug me back, they were going to slip up eventually and I will make their life hell until they do.
I wasn't going to rest until I gained the closure they refused to give me.
"And what?" Masky challenged. "Do you think you have ANY chance of winning this? You had four months to to escape and you didn't! Look at yourself!"
"LET GO OF ME!" I yell over him.
"You're weak, Toby!"
"NO!"
His hards are too similar.
I pull against him and I know I have no chance of getting away.
Each time I try, dread crushes my chest more and more.
"LET ME GO!"
He's in control and I am only a victim.
My breathing grows louder and louder until I can't breathe anymore
I'm suffocating.
"let me go!" I choke, fear shaking my voice now.
And he lets go.
I fall into the snow, on my hands and knees, but I'm not the one who moves.
Masky steps away from me, shocked.
A flurry of snow falls past us.
The harsh wind blows the small flakes into fast specks or white that fill the air.
In the silence, I can almost hear them hit the already fallen snow before I hear hoodie's footsteps.
"Are you okay?" he breaks the silence. I can't answer.
My words are absent.
I don't know why this happened.
I don't understand the tremendous amount of fear that overcame me over something so mundane.
I've been held down before under different circumstance by someone with intentions to hurt me, but I didn't feel this unbearable dread.
Why now?
I trusted masky.
I know he wouldn't hurt me, but that didn't seem to matter.
"We won't hold you like that anymore. W-we know that now, but we can't afford... We don't want..." hoodie trailed off uncertainty.
"Why can't you just get rid of him?" I whisper.
My body was getting to heavy to hold up. Without the adrenalin, I can feel the weakness creeping its way back into me.
My arms began to shake an all i wanted to do was lie in the snow.
I didn't want to fight anymore.
I closed my eyes and hoodie grabbed onto my arms and helped me to my feet.
"You're starting to worry me, kiddo." he said.
And I smile.
"Im not a kid--"
And that was it.
My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach and I swayed on my feet.
The kids.
I left them in that hole--
Why did Tom back track?
He--
Jane.
Oh god no.
Please, no.
Without thinking I begin running in that direction, but I am stopped almost instantly by hoodie's quick grasp.
"No--" I say, panicking. "I'm not runn--follow me--please--"
And he let's go,
And I run.
The tracks in the snow bleed together under my feet, the branches come and go and the snow around me becomes hypnotic.
My mind falls into a daze and all I could focus on was following the tracks.
How stupid and selfish I am to let them slip my mind.
How desperately I needed them to be okay.
I feel the needles of an ever green brush across my face and I stop in front of the tall stone wall.
"Marco?" I call.
I fight to hold my frantic breaths.
Afraid that I may not hear the small boy's voice.
My eyes search the snow and I see the heavy set of prints left behind over mine.
Tom had come here.
"Marco!" I try again.
I pace the wall, trying to get a glimpse of movement, anything that would indicate that they were okay.
I stop in my tracks when I see Marco's small head poke out from over the ledge.
His messy dark hair, and chattering blue lips.
"You found grownups?" he asked in a chattering voice.
Oh thank god.
I breathe a heavy sigh of relief and quickly rest my head on the stone.
"Are you okay?" I ask, ignoring the confusion and displeasure on the proxies faces.
"I'm okay..." Marco called down."....it's cold."
I hear him sniffle and I smile a shaky smile.
"I know. We'll find shelter soon, just hold tight."
I look over to the others expectantly.
"You didn't say anything about kids." Hoodie mumbled.
"I didn't... have time." I countered.
I know masky and hoodie didn't care for kids. This was a fact that was made clear very early on in my life when they compared me to a child.
I understand clearly if they had it their way, children wouldn't exist.
But that didn't matter now.
These boys were everything to me and I wasn't going to let anything happen to them.
I find Maskys eyes, his clearly pissed off expression and set jaw,
I made it clear that I wasn't leaving here without these kids.
And he knew it.
He holds my gaze a moment longer.
"Is he the only one?" Masky finally asks.
I shake my head. "No. There is another." I glance back up to Marco where I can see Sam peeking over from the other side of him.
Masky follows my gaze and sighs heavily.
He says to hoodie;
"quickly. We need to move."