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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Prestigious-Watch-37 on 2024-09-11 13:59:57+00:00.
I had given an immense amount of thought to how I might kill Toby, but talked myself out of it every time.
The truth was, I wasn't a killer.
It wasn't that I couldn't just grab a knife and hack into Toby's neck. I was certain I was capable of doing that.
The same way I was sure I could, hypothetically, bring myself to humanely slaughter an animal. Like ripping the head off a chicken.
The difference between a chicken or other farm animal was that Toby had a soul. Or something very much like it. The fact he had been able to carry over whatever essence it was to him to my family members was proof that were was something ethereal at work behind the blood, muscle, bone, and nerve endings that makes up human beings.
A chicken I could kill because animals don't have souls, at least not the type that could, possibly, maybe, be of the kind that carry on into some kind of afterlife.
I'm not religious, though my parents were vaguely, culturally Christian.
The more I considered killing Toby, and how I might go about it, the more I had to wrestle with the profound questions that came with taking a life.
The closest I was able to come to convince myself it would be okay to kill Toby, thus potentially severing whatever astral connection he had accidentally (so he said) used to take control of my family, was killing him in self-defense. That I could do.
But that was the problem. Toby wasn't out to kill me.
Weeks ago it had been revealed to me in my bedroom, with Toby-Leigh, and Toby-Mum present, that Toby was a suicide risk.
It was because he had tried and failed to take his own life that this whole mess even got started. He had astral projected into my sister without realising what would happen (again, so he said. But for the most part I did believe him.)
It was possible Toby would kill himself, take his piece off the board, without me having to take matters into my own hands.
A part of me held out hope he might take his own life. At the same time knowing I was hoping for someone to commit suicide sat with me as a constant sickening dread. Never in my life have I wished ill to anyone and I hated that Toby, by his actions, made me wish harm on another person.
I just wanted my family back.
My not-family stopped pretending to be normal around me at home.
Toby-Leigh and Toby-Mum had taken to wearing male clothing, for the most part, instead of anything Leigh and Mum would usually wear. Most days I would find Toby-Leigh sat in her room wearing the same old sweatpants and a large black hoodie. She had started to put on some weight because she ate a lot of junk food whilst she occupied her time playing video games and watching movies.
Toby-Mum was the same. Almost identically so. She spent the majority of her time also in sweatpants, though she had come to favor wearing Mum's usual pink fluffy bathrobe as her comfort-wear of choice. She, like Toby-Leigh, had started to put on weight because she too enjoyed eating an unhealthy amount of junk food.
Toby-Dad did the same thing upstairs in Mum and Dad's bedroom. He just sat in bed, ate junk food (Dad kept the weight off easier because of his job in construction); either watching TV or browsing the internet on his laptop.
The three of them hardly talked to each other except when it came to keeping up appearances outside of the house.
To their credit they were able to pretend to be my family outside of the house to a perfect degree. Toby-Leigh continued to hang out with all her friends, going to parties and on shopping trips. As far as I could tell she took little joy in doing these things, but was able to pretend she was enjoying herself in front of 'her' friends.
But the second Toby-Leigh got home she raced upstairs and changed into the same tired hoodie and sweatpants and kept to herself in her room.
Toby-Mum made outings to catch up with Mum's usual social circle of friends. Keeping up with all the gossip, birthday parties, and so on. Toby-Mum and Toby-Dad even went to a wedding together and pretended to be perfectly normal the entire time; I had gone with them to keep an eye on them, fearing they might become a danger to themselves or anyone that the party who might've seen through the masquerade, but nobody did.
There had been one moment when my Uncle had poked fun at Toby-Dad about something trivial. I didn't catch the start of the conversation though I think it had something do with Mum gaining weight. For a brief moment I saw the killer intent in Toby-Dad's eyes. He had taken hold of the cutlery nearest him at the reception dinner. It wasn't that Toby-Dad was angry about 'his' wife's weight being brought up as a topic of conversation, but I think Toby-Dad was afraid that my Uncle might have put two-and-two together. As soon as Toby-Dad was sure that my Uncle was just making a bad joke, and not actually investigating any strange change in behavior, Toby-Dad put down the knife and simply played along with my Uncle's poorly thought out joke.
I had been on edge for weeks waiting to be woken up in the middle of the night and threatened again, or for something, anything drastic to happen. But nothing did.
I did however stick to the golden rule of spending the majority of my time hanging out with Toby. Mostly this involved me playing video games whilst Toby watched. He became something like a shadow, there but hardly ever talking, just watching. It was like he had possessed this adjacent role in my life, vicariously being around me the majority of the time but never so much that he got in the way.
Never in my life had I met a more nothing of a person. There simply wasn't that much to Toby. He didn't have strong beliefs on things. No hard opinions on books or movies. No funny observations. He ate whatever was easiest to eat. Had given up drawing because he wasn't interested in keeping up the daily grind of getting better. I had spent the best part of two months in his company and hardly felt I knew him any better. At best he brought about a strong sympathy in me for how pathetic and lonely he seemed. I could understand that because (and especially because of everything going on) I felt lonely myself.
I missed my family and my friends. I stopped hanging out with my friends for fear of dragging them into this mess. I'd had to deal with a slew of upset calls and text messages for a few weeks but eventually my friends, each in their own time, gave up trying to hang out with me and seemed to accept that I no longer wanted to spend time with them (of course I wanted to spend time with them, but I loved them too much to drag into the hell that was my life.)
Toby-Dad spent the majority of his time at work. I think the Toby inside of him must have enjoyed the construction job Dad did. Out of the three, Toby-Dad seemed the most at ease stuck in the body he was in. Still being a guy must have also played a big part of that too.
Mum's role of buying groceries and making dinner fell to me. Nothing was said between me and Toby-Mum beyond me asking for money to pay for the groceries. It felt wrong to ask for the money, but I sucked up my pride and asked because I needed to make sure my family had access to regular meals to keep them somewhat healthy. There had been two weeks of nightly takeaway orders delivered to the house, expensive orders. I took it upon myself to do the shopping and to cook the meals to make sure the Toby's didn't bankrupt my family's savings out of sheer laziness.
I had considered learning how to astral project, but an experience I had three months after returning home from university made me decide never to attempt it.
I had finished cooking dinner for everyone, washed up, and spent an extra hour cleaning around the house (they all were happy to live like slobs, but I wasn't.) After putting away the laundry, I tiredly climbed the stairs and went to my room.
I lay in bed for a while staring off into the darkness. Too in my own head to drift off to sleep easily but also too tired to feel up to anything but laying in the dark. I didn't remember falling asleep.
I woke some time during the night and knew right away I wasn't alone in my room. The thing was, I couldn't move at all from the neck down. My face also felt stiff, with just my mouth and eyes moving freely. I was paralyzed.
"Mike?" whispered a voice.
I knew the voice right away. It was Leigh's. Or rather, it must have been Toby in Leigh's body.
"Toby?" I whispered back.
My entire body was rigid, and felt hot under the bed cover. For a moment I feared a repeat of what had happened last time was about to occur. But, from what I could just make out in the near pitch darkness of my bedroom, there wasn't anyone around. Toby-Leigh must have been in my room somewhere, at the far end in the darkness, but I couldn't make her out and I couldn't raise my head or sit up to attempt a better look.
"It's me," said Leigh's voice, "I've missed you so much."
I didn't understand. Toby-Leigh saw me everyday. I had served her dinner earlier at the dining table (the only time my possessed family gathered together in the house anymore was when I presented them with food.)
"I can't move," I whispered, choking the words out with great effort.
"I...
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