Trapped (A Ticci Toby Story)

Chapter 12- Recessions

"Ben," my voice softly sounds over the quiet clashing and and slashing of his video game. "What is it like to die?"
I finally ask the question that brought me out of my bed over an hour ago.
He looks at me, clearly taken off guard by my question.
In that brief moment of distraction, his avatar is killed by the monster's he's been battling.
"Uh." he says absently before turning his attention back to the end screen and hitting 'Restart'.
The washed out colors of the screen cascade around is in the dark space, causing his already pale skin to look paper white.
His body is stiff and his eyes are wide.
I silently plead for him to answer this for me with my own eyes.
Just once.
But he doesn't even look at me.
My question is already brushed aside and dismissed like the way the others always seem to do when they deem my questions unnecessary.
Always unnecessary.
I lay my head against the arm of the sofa in disappointment and bring my attention back to his game.
I try to ignore the sense of betrayal that sank into my heart.
I wasn't used to this... Ben was the only one I counted on to tell me the things the others won't...
He never held out on me before.
I clutched the shirt over my chest in attempt to ease that dark and heavy feeling that I wasn't able to identify yet.
I lowered my eyelids and focused on the feeling, trying to match words to its bitter sensation.
Hurt,
Sadness,
Disappointment,
Confusion,
Shame.
He uses a power up, being indicated by an over exaggerated yell and a flash of light blue light across the room.
I closed my eyes against it and listen to the sounds.
A slash,
A grunt,
A growl,
... A soft melody.
"....Why do you ask?" Bens voice finally breaks the silence.
I open my eyes to find him watching me from the other side of the couch.
"Uh."I quickly pealed myself up from the cushions "You died before, right?"
He shifted uncomfortably, obviously not paying as much attention to the game as he once was.
Three more slashes.
"Yeah man, I guess." he shrugs.
"You guess?"
"yeah, I guess." he pauses his game and looks at me like I've lost my mind. "What's this all about?"
"Did it hurt?" I ask.
His expression deepens.
"You're asking me if it hurt?"
"'Yeah, I guess.'" I quote him.
He let out a breathless laugh and shook his head like he couldn't believe he was having his conversion.
His red eyes dift towards the ceiling as if he was remembering the details of what happened to him all those years ago.
"It hurt." He finally said, losing his smile. "It hurt a lot."
"But you're still here." I pointed out hopefully.
His expression drops to a seriousness that didn't belong on him.
He tosses the controller onto the coffee table and gives me pointed look.
"Where is this coming from?" he asks again, not allowing me room to side step his question again.
I shrug suddenly feeling uncomfortable.
I hold my arms over my chest and sink into myself.
"I... I just wanted to know?" I say dumbly.
He narrowed his eyes.
"So let me get this straight. You're trying to get all the little details of dying because you're curious?"
I felt the confusion I felt twist my features into a scowl.
I didn't understand.
It sounded completely rational to me.
He continued, completely ignoring my confusion and cutting straight to the chase. "So it wouldn't be a problem if I told Tim you asked about this, right?"
Fuck.
"No, wait I-- "
I almost wanted to smack myself.
I could have played it off cool.
Ben had no real reason to know there was anything else behind my question.
I'm such an idiot.
His face darkened and he waited for me to clarify.
My heartbeat sped up.
"I want to die." I admit quickly before I realized how bad that sounded.
I threw my hand up to stop him before he had a chance to stand and do something irrational... like wake up masky in the dead of night.
"Listen!" I pleaded.
He didn't move.
His face set like stone, his lips pressed into a serious thin line.
The words spill out of me before I had a chance to consider them.
"Hoodie and masky work so hard to keep me alive all the time because they aren't supposed to let me die, right? but if I die I can stay home all the time and play video games like you and they wouldn't have to look after me anymore. Everyone wins!"
"If you're dead, you're dead, Toby."
"But you aren't!" I say again.
"That's different. If I had to choose between this or gluing my dick to a random bus seat, I would choose the latter."
My shoulders drop.
"That sounds.... Very inconvenient."
"It is."
"You've done that before?"
"What?" He pulled away from me in disgust. "No, I was talking about being dead."
"how is this-" I gestured to his paused game on the large TV, "worse than doing that?"
"It just is." he answers vaguely
"But how?"
"Because I don't want to do this!" he yells.
My arm drops down back to my side and I stare at him.
He's... Never yelled at me before.
He pushed his face into his hand and sighed, but didn't say anything else.
Maybe he was done talking about this, but I wasn't satisfied with leaving my questions without answers.
Not when this conversation only brought more.
I bit my bottom lip and looked away from him.
"I-I don't understand..." I say slowly. Not knowing why he would rather do that than this was driving me insane. "You want to glue--"
"God, Toby, no." He said into his hands before giving a small, sad, laugh. "Just forget about the dick part, we'll get back to that later. You're missing the point." he sighs again and pushed back the blond locks of hair that fell over his eyes.
He hesitates, trying to find a way to explain this to me.
He closes his eyes and says; "... One day... You will die, brian will die, jeff, that drunk guy down the road... You will all die and I will be here... Still here in these walls, doing this." it was his turn to gesture to the TV.
We stare at it, quickly falling into a silence.
I watch the screen behind the pause menu, a vast sky drifted though the cycle of the day, fading into deep colors of orange and into twilight as the clouds zipped by.
Sally already told me the struggles of immortality. Her family was gone, but that didn't need to happen to us too.
I didn't understand why Ben wasn't seeing this.
"Not...." I say slowly, "if someone makes a deal with zalgo and brings us back too. Like that dead guy did to you." I shrug.
He shook his head, completely dismissing the idea.
"My freedom is gone, Toby. My life... This isn't living." he looks at me with such sadness in his eyes that I had to look away from him.
I dig my nails into my pants and wait for the guilt i felt for him to waver.
It lingers on.
Thoughts of dying for good made me scared.
It was a fear I carried since I learned about it's existence and I only worsened with the idea of not having a way out of it.
It was just as mysterious as it was permanent.
"But, I....Ben, I'm afraid to die."
I could hear the smile in his voice when he says; "There are fates far more devastating than death, bro." I look at him. In the dim light, I could see he was smiling when he said "lets say you actually did die. Maaaybe you pissed off jeff a little too much and he offed you." I flinched and his smile widened. "its okay. Maybe jeff feels bad about it and finds our enemy and bargains for your soul back. I don't know, maybe he offers him three bucks."
"Three bucks?" I ask in bitter disbelief.
"Okay. Three bucks and those badass fruit snacks sally hides on the bottom shelf." he corrects.
I accept that answer. Those fruit snacks are pretty awesome when I managed to eat one behind the proxies backs.
"The milky pink ones are the best." I agree.
"Oh, absolutely." Ben nods. "Anyways, zalgo agrees and takes the three bucks, the fruit snacks, and jeffs soul. Not only do we lose our favorite asshole and a box of fruit snacks, Zalgo also has your soul and all of slender's deepest and darkest secrets."
"but I don't know anything about slender."
"Try telling that to him." his voice becomes serious. "Until then, he has the rest of your unnatural life to pry the information out of you and there is nothing any of us can do about it."
My heart sinks to that and I fold my arms over my stomach.
Ben leans back and I could feel his red eyes watching me.
"I don't want to scare you, dude" he says. "but all of us know that once we are dead its better for us to stay dead."
"No... Its okay." I shrug, trying to push down the fear that I know is completely rational.
"Um." I swallow hard. "Jack said that the fear of death is instinctual for every living creature and even a newborn child will do anything it knows to survive."
"Course he did." Ben says, now digging through his pockets.
I watch him pull his hand from his front pocket and lift his back to dig for something in his back pocket.
"what are you looking for?"
"Something to piss him off."
"who?"
Ben stops and looks at me like I've lost my mind.
"what?" I ask.
He smiles then, but doesn't answer.
"what?" I ask again, slightly annoyed with him.
"You don't know what time it is, do you?"
"No?" my eyes flick to the time displayed on one of the devices under the TV.
4:57 A.M.
Only two minutes before I start my training for the day.
My heart seems to stop completely and I bury myself deeper down into the couch, trying to hide behind its plump cushions. "Why didn't you tell me?" I whispered frantically.
He shrugs, smiling.
"Thought you knew, man."
"Ben, they are going to kill me!"
"Ha, probably."
"Do you think they'll believe I just got up before them?" I look down at my clothes and cringe.
They were the same clothes I wore for yesterday's training.
Dirty,
Grass stained,
and masked with the scent of sweat.
"Nah. You're screwed." he smile grows and he lights a joint he already had between his lips.
The flame lights his face in a amber glow for just a moment and disappears, leaving behind a bud of glowing red embers.
He takes a long drag before letting it go with the air in his lungs.
The smell of the smoke abuses my senses with the smell of sweet skunk.
"That stinks." I say, scowling.
He takes it from his mouth and examines it between his fingers.
"You think so?" he asks.
"You don't?"
He shrugs nonchalantly.
I sigh a deep sigh and pick myself up from the cushions.
I seriously doubted that masky was going to go easy on me today because I decided to skip sleeping.
I hung my head, feeling the weight of my eyes and yawned.
The dark room and the soft melody of the games title screen was already putting me to sleep.
"hey man." ben finally says. "I won't tell them about our talk, but try to learn a thing or two from them."
"I know." I say bitterly.
It wasn't like I've heard this a thousand times in one way or another.
I could hear movement upstairs now.
We must protect ourselves from evil! Zalgo bad! We're all going to die!
I roll my eyes outwardly.
"No. I don't think you do." Ben says, suddenly serious. I look at him to find his black eyes watching me, and his face hardened again into that haunting look. "One you're dead, you're dead, Toby. There are no second chances."