I sighed as I stretched out on the thick black plastic of the trampoline. I had come to visit my parents that summer, and as always they had begun to fight when the alcohol came out. As I lay sprawled out on the trampoline, staring at the slowly dimming sky, the sounds of my angry parents having a “discussion” faded in the background as I remembered all the moments I had on the trampoline… and with him.
10 YEARS BEFORE
I laughed loudly as I jumped on the trampoline my parents had just gotten, enjoying the feeling of being in the air before slamming back onto the fabric. Attempting to do a flip, I landed face first, crumpling into the trampoline and rolling over with a small “ow.” Hearing a slight, muffled laugh, I sat up, looking around the property before spotting a boy with messy brown hair peeking over the wooden fence next to my house, dirt covering his face. Once he saw me looking at him he ducked down, trying to hide, but I could still see the top of his head.
“Hi!” I exclaimed, scrambling off the trampoline and running over to the fence, hoping to make a new friend. “My names (Y/N), but you can call me (N/N)!” He still wouldn’t look back over the fence so I tried to pull myself up, but I wasn't strong enough. “What’s your name?” I asked, hoping to make a new friend.
“T-Toby.” He finally peeked over the fence, his brown eyes a little wary.
“Hiya Toby!” I said excitedly. “Do you wanna come over and jump on the trampoline? It’s really fun! I’m trying to do a flip but,” I sighed, shrugging my shoulders dramatically. “It’s kinda hard.”
He looked over at the trampoline and then back at my grinning face. “Uh, ye-ah. That soun-d-ds fun.” His shoulder jerked, looking kinda painful. I stared at it, worried for my new friend.
“Hey Toby? Is your shoulder ok?” He seemed to shrink and just kind of nodded.
“It d-does that-t. I c-can’t feel it.” I stared at it for a second more and then shrugged. “Ok!” I stepped back so that he could climb over, which he did easily, jumping over the fence.
“Come on!” I yelled cheerfully, grabbing his hand and pulling him to the trampoline. We jumped on, and Toby eventually came out of his shell, laughing and jumping and doing amazing flips that he tried to teach me how to do.
Eventually his older sister Lyra came out, looking for him, and jumped the fence too. That summer the three of us became inseparable, especially after Toby and Lyra’s parents separated when Lyra was sixteen and Toby and I were fourteen. Soon after that Lyra got a job and Toby and I began to hang out, just the two of us, usually laying on the trampoline and laughing at random things that the other said.
Sometimes all three of us would sneak out and go to the trampoline and lay there on our backs, side by side, and stare at the stars together, talking about the future and murmuring our fears and worries into the night, with the soft sound of cicadas and frogs in the night air.
On Toby’s sixteenth birthday, I kissed him. Lyra was at work and wouldn’t be able to get off until late. She was sorry, she said, and promised to make sure she got off on his next birthday. Toby and I were laying on the trampoline, staring up at the stars, and I made a joke about how one of the star formations looked like a penis, and he laughed and we looked at each other, and it was in that moment that I realized that Toby and I weren’t twelve anymore. Toby was well on his way to manhood, and you could see it on the way that his jawline was sharpening, how his face wasn’t so round anymore, and how his shoulders were broadening. I knew I wasn’t a child anymore either, although now, looking back, I feel like we were still those children who met so many years ago. Toby’s skin was pale in the moonlight, and his amber eyes seemed dark and encompassing, seemingly older and yet still holding a bit of the energetic child he was back when we first met. I leaned in a tiny bit, my eyes flicking down to look at his bitten lips for a split second before I looked back into his eyes.
The world seemed to still, the insects and frogs to quiet, and then I reached up, held his soft white cheek, and kissed him gently, feeling his lips mold against mine. I stayed there for a moment, and then pulled away. Staring into his eyes, I sat up, suddenly realizing what I had done. What if he didn’t feel the same? I didn’t need to worry, however, because Toby pulled me back down, kissing me gently but surely, running his fingers through my hair.
After that night, it was an unspoken agreement to keep the kiss secret from Lyra, but we started to spend more time hidden in each other’s rooms, laying next to each other on the bed and laughing and kissing, and it was probably the closest thing to heaven that I knew.
Then his seventeenth birthday came, and that terrible crash, and his dad came back and suddenly Toby didn’t want to be around me anymore. He became withdrawn, his anxiety kicked up, and his mom started homeschooling him. I heard his mother screaming at him one day, voice shaky and shrill. Apparently he had taken to biting the flesh off his hands.
I tried to contact him. I texted and called, I would knock on his window, and when he wouldn’t respond I would leave notes taped to the windowsill; I went to his front door and tried that, but his ass of a father wouldn’t let me in. I tried for two years, and then there was a terrible fire, the entire neighborhood aflame. The Roger's house was almost completely burned down, and my house had been severely damaged, but somehow the trampoline had been completely unscathed. The police approached my family while we were by the fire trucks and asked if they could speak with us, specifically me. They asked me when the last time I saw Toby was, and if I knew where he would go to hide. I told them that I hadn’t talked to Toby for two years, and when I asked why they were asking me, they told me that he had killed his father and set the fire. All I remember after that was falling. The world seemed dull, and after they said that he was assumed to have perished in the flames, I kind of just gave up. I had lost Lyra, and now I had lost Toby. I even lost Ms. Rogers. She moved away, a broken woman who had lost her entire family, leaving no way to contact her. Some people said that she went to an asylum, and others said that she moved in with a relative, and still others said that she had moved to a cabin in the woods and became a witch. I don’t know what is true.
A couple weeks later, a story was featured in the news about the murder of some grade school kids that had been hacked to death. The hatchet that had been found in one kiss skull was supposedly one that Toby had been seen with, and due to the lack of body found, he was assumed to be alive and murderous.
That was three years ago, and each night I still have nightmares where I’m burning and Toby is there, burning with me, his skin melting into grotesque patterns, staring at me with an almost intimidating blank stare. No matter how much I scream and cry, reaching for him, he does nothing, just stares at me. . Eventually he disappears into wisps of smoke, wafting into the forest air, and his sister comes to me from the fog, exactly as I saw her the night she died. Huge gashes are all over her body, her right arm bent at an unnatural angle, her neck almost flat against her shoulder. She reaches towards me, and right before she makes contact, I wake up.
Suddenly, I’m jerked out of my thoughts by the snap of a branch. I sit up and look around, realizing that it’s completely dark outside now. A soft breeze blows, prickling goosebumps erupting across my skin.
I jump off the trampoline and start heading inside, occasionally looking around on my way to the back door. I slip inside, locking the door behind me, and go to my room. It was actually converted to a guest room when I moved out, but it still has the dark blue walls Lyra and I painted it. Curling up under the thick gray comforter, still in my clothes, I screw my eyes close, hoping I would get a peaceful night's rest.
@creepy-bi-day here’s that toby fic that was supposed to be fluff but ended up not lmao
