Five Ticks 'Til I'm Yours (Dark Ticci Toby x Reader)

24

You had heard a psychologist talk about it on TV once. It was one of those crime documentaries, one of those interesting, amazing survival stories. Girls kidnapped for months suddenly escape. Attempted murder victim survives horrors. Human trafficked teenager fights back. Those type of stories, the type that made the audience shiver in a strange mixture of shock and intrigue. It was called dissociation, or something like that, you couldn't quite remember the exact term.

Basically, it was a coping mechanism people in extreme stress would use. Often used by torture and rape victims. It's pretty straight-forward, the victim would pretend they were a spectator watching all the horrors happen to them. They would disassociate themselves from the actual events. Kind of like those third-person dreams where you're watching everything happen, but aren't actually present.

You understood it a bit better now, considering the past half hour was spent with you consciously on the sidelines, watching as a terrible man did terrible things. Jeff had cut the poor girl open, had taunted her, broken bones, laughed the entire time, took photos and videos he promised to send her loved ones, hell, he promised to make similar videos of said loved ones. There were other things too, worst things that your brain was simply tuned out, as if it was trying to forget, as if forgetting would make all the trauma disappear.

You would probably need intensive therapy for the rest of your life.

Good thing your life was about to end any second now.

The moment the terrible man got up, admired his handywork, and began to leave, was the moment the disassociation stopped and you realized you were the girl. That moment you felt it all, only for a brief second, before you felt nothing.

It was hot in the hallway, hard to breathe too, smoke flowed about the corridors, thickening the atmosphere. What exactly would kill you? What would the autopsy rule as cause of death? There was so much to choose from. Internal bleeding, external bleeding, asphyxiation, blunt force trauma, burning. You hoped it wasn't burning. You didn't want to lay there, half conscious, and have to feel your skin, flesh, and bitter soul burn away.

If there was a God, which you were beginning to doubt at this point, hopefully he would be merciful enough to just choke you out with the smoke and end it all.

Unfortunately God wasn't that kind.

The fire, which was melting away most of the building, began to lick at your feet. The heat that was bothersome was now unbearable. You were going to burn. Some sliver of self-preservation made you reach out and dig your fingernails into the wooden floors, dragging your broken, battered body further from the flame.

It was slightly more bearable, but then the flames caught up again.

Kicking off your shoe, which had quickly caught on fire, your reached out with both hands and dragged yourself further away. It hurt, not terribly so, most of it was all a distant aching at this point. But the floors were hot, everything was hot, and your shattered, sensitive hands felt as if they were clawing at hot glass.

Still, the fire was worse, so you decided it was worth it and dragged yourself further again.

Why wouldn't you just die already? It hurt to wait for it. Can't it all be over already? Can't you just bleed out already? Desperately, you craned your aching neck up towards the ceiling, taking in deep breaths of smoke. Your throat sizzled, the smoke travelling straight into your lungs. After three, violent, bloody coughs, you couldn't find the strength to do it again.

Giving up, you decided to let the fire consume you. It would be agony, sure, but hey, hopefully you'd be dead quickly. Thirty seconds at most, it couldn't possibly take longer than that to burn to death right?