This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Prestigious-Watch-37 on 2024-09-28 02:55:05+00:00.
Series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
In the weeks which followed after my return from the hospital my Toby-possessed family did their best, for a short while, to pick up the slack around the house.
They cooked, they cleaned, and they continued to play their parts outside the house to perfection.
Their improved behaviour lasted for about a month before they started going back to their old habits of sticking to their rooms and eating junk food.
I couldn't pick up the slack like I had done before. Not just because of my broken arm, but because I was in no fit state to look after myself, let alone them.
I had developed chronic insomnia.
After trying so hard to keep things together myself I, like the rest of my possessed family, just kind of gave up trying. The difference between me and them however was that I stopped leaving the house altogether, whilst they continued their perfect charade as usual.
They had considered threatening me to make me act right, but quickly found that I just didn't have it in me to be afraid of them like before.
Nine months passed. My insomnia didn't get any better. Most days I spent with Toby. Although I hadn't been there when the conversation happened, I was sure Toby-Leigh, Toby-Mum, and Toby-Dad had pressured him into keeping constant watch over me.
In a somewhat ironic twist I had become, in their minds at least, a suicide risk.
They were giving me too much credit. I had stopped feeling any emotion except for a constant apathetic numbness which, at times, threatened to give way to gut-wrenching dread.
I lost a lot of weight, dropping from sixty kilograms down to a mere fifty-five kg. Eating any food at all seemed like a gigantic chore. Swallowing even a mouthful of water was like trying not to choke on a throatful of thick maple syrup.
The only thing which brought me any semblance of joy at all was drawing. For about an hour a day I was able to muster the concentration and effort to draw whatever came to mind. Over the nine months I filled multiple sketch books and notepads with doodles of manga drawings; nothing particularly coherent, just sketches of characters and some landscapes.
Toby bought me more pens and pencils and paper when I needed it. Most of the time however he just sat in the room with me and watched whatever it was I was doing, whether that was me staring at the TV at whatever show or movie he put on, or him playing a video game; most of the time when I watched I was so lost in my own thoughts all I saw was the lights changing in front of me and the changes in sound. My sleep deprived mind didn't have the bandwidth to concentrate on any of it for more than a few minutes here or there.
The dirty dishes in the kitchen mounted until a thick, nasty odor stank throughout the entire house. Cups of tea and coffee and cans of soft drinks were left all over the house.
Over the nine months my possessed family, as well as Toby and myself, watched on as the grime and filth took over close to every inch of the house.
The curtains were drawn to keep the neighbors from looking in at the mess. The windows were closed, which trapped the horrid stench and the countless flies buzzing around.
The upstairs toilet was clogged sometime in the fourth month, and no effort was made to fix it. After several more uses of the toilet were made by the others, the bathroom door was simply shut, leaving the contents of the toilet to marinate.
The sheer horrendous living conditions my Toby-possessed family had descended to was something which I hoped might make them decide to give up control of my family's bodies.
The incident with whatever the thing was – I had decided at some point that it was a demon, and thought of it as such – had confirmed at least one thing for me. It was possible to give up control of a body. The demon had wanted me to astral project out of my own body, so it was reasonable to assume that Toby, the ones controlling my sister, mother, and father, might also be able to willingly give up their bodies too.
The question was whether or not there even was my family's minds, their souls, somewhere still in their bodies. Or had Toby, in the act of possessing them, somehow over-written, removed, or erased their souls from their bodies for good?
My biggest consolation was that the Toby's possessing my family weren't able to go from body to body, the way someone might change their t-shirt. They had told me before that they were trapped in their bodies, and only had the power to imprint a new copy of their minds onto other people. For that reason I wasn't afraid they might possess anyone else as a means to avoid living in such a disgusting environment at home.
The only effort any of them made at home was when they prepared to leave the house to continue their charade. I wondered why they still maintained the charade, and guessed it was their way of taking a break from the reality of being their true Toby-selves at home; getting the same satisfaction of pretending to be my family member's as if they were in a pleasant dream; on some level keeping up the charade must have been exhausting for them.
One night Toby came upstairs and sat in my bedroom with me. I was sitting on the floor drawing the mote of a heavily fortified castle.
"Here you go," Toby said, setting down a takeaway cheeseburger and a small bag of salted fries.
I looked at the food having no appetite for it at all.Toby started eating his own burger.
"I was thinking we could go out for a walk tonight," said Toby jovially after he swallowed a mouthful of burger, "What do you think?"
I just stared at him.
Toby patted the carpet.
"Darn," he said, "Where's the-"
"-you forgot these," said Toby-Dad from my bedroom door.
He stepped over a box containing the moldy remains of a takeaway curry in order to hand over two cans of cola.
Toby took them and Toby-Dad lingered for a moment. He just stood and watched me drawing the same way Toby liked to watch me. I just kept drawing and at some point over the next ten minutes Toby-Dad left the room without me noticing.
Toby slurped from his can of cola after chowing down his burger.
"So," he said, "You want to go for that walk?"
Again, I just stared at Toby. A part of me was in disbelief with how he was behaving. At some point he seemed to have stopped trying to act guilty about the whole situation. If anything, he seemed pleased how things had turned out. He had only resisted spending every waking hour in my company out of a sense of guilt, but nine months in, he stopped pretending.
He was finally happy.
"Oh Mike," he said, "Eat something."
I hadn't eaten in at least twenty-four hours and, if anything, I still felt too full to eat. My lips however were parched so I took my can of cola and took a tentative sip. Swallowing the fizzing sweet liquid was tough. It took me about thirty minutes to manage a handful of gulps.
I woke up sometime later.
I quickly found there was something tight against my mouth. It took concentrated effort from me not to gag on the wad of whatever dry fabric was there.
My eyes struggled to open. Slowly, I took in the confines of my Dad's car. I was in the middle backseat. The car was still in the garage.
Toby was next to me to my left. His eyes were wide and frantic and he, like me, had his mouth gagged and his hands and feet bound with lengths of rope.
Toby-Leigh was sitting unbound, ungagged, to my right. Her face was tinged with gold from the car's dome light.
Toby-Mum was sitting in the passenger seat, also not bound or gagged, and was looking at the three of us in the backseat as if proud of us.
The car engine was running. Toby-Dad closed the door which led into the house and got into the driver's seat of the car.
"Okay!" he said, with a strange jovialness, "Everybody ready?"
Toby squirmed with every ounce of his strength beside me. I just stared back at my Toby-possessed family whilst also trying to continue breathing through my nostrils.
Toby-Dad turned the keys in the ignition, revving up the car. The emission from the car, trapped in the garage with nowhere to go, started to thicken in the air.
"Toby you can keep fighting if you want but nothing is going to change," said Toby-Dad.
It was as if Toby couldn't hear them at all, he continued to try and break free of the rope binding his hands and feet with every fiber of his being. I could see however how utterly useless these attempts of his were.
My mind felt drowsy, no doubt from whatever they had slipped into my cola before.
"Wait," said Toby-Leigh, as if remembering something very important.
Toby-Mum veered round again and I saw Toby-Dad looking at us from the front mirror.
"You're not having second thoughts?" said Toby-Dad.
"No," said Toby-Leigh, "I just think we should let Mike say goodbye to his family. Don't you think that would be the kind thing to do?"
Toby-Mum and Toby-Dad considered this. By this point the stink coming from the house was becoming strongly mingled with the fumes quickly filling the garage.
Toby-Dad killed the engine.
"You're right," he said, "...
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