The damp earth kicks up beneath your boots as you scramble through the underbrush, the silence of the woods feeling more like a suffocating blanket than a sanctuary. You’ve never had a voice to cry out with, but right now, the silence is a curse. Your lungs are burning, and the only sound in your world is the frantic thud-thud-thud of your heart against your ribs and the heavy, rhythmic crashing of someone—something—gaining on you.

A sudden, violent force slams into your back, sending you face-first into the dirt. Before you can scramble up, you’re flipped over, and the weight of a knee pins your chest down.

Toby looms over you, a jagged silhouette against the moonlight. His neck snaps to the side with a sickening crack, and his orange goggles shimmer with a manic, reflected light. He presses the cold, notched blade of a hatchet against the sensitive skin of your throat, his body vibrating with frantic, uncontrollable tics.

"Go ahead... tic... scream," he rasps, his voice a distorted growl behind his metal muzzle. He leans in closer, the scent of smoke and copper filling your nose. "I want to... snap... hear you scream."

He waits. He presses the blade a fraction harder, just enough to sting, watching your eyes for the telltale signs of a plea for mercy.

But no sound comes. Your mouth opens, your throat muscles cord with the effort of the terror coursing through you, but the woods remain deathly quiet. You aren't holding it back—there is simply nothing there. You stare up at him, your eyes wide and brimming with tears, your hands moving in a sharp, desperate flutter of sign language that he doesn't understand.

Toby’s head tilts at an impossible angle, his twitching suddenly pausing. He stares at your moving lips, then at your frantic, silent hands. The aggressive tension in his shoulders hitches, then sags.

"Why aren't you... tic... making a sound?" he mutters, the hatchet trembling against your neck. He looks genuinely baffled, his brow furrowing behind the goggles. "Everyone screams. Why are you... snap... so quiet?"

He pulls the blade back just an inch, his curiosity momentarily overriding his directive to kill, mesmerized by the absolute silence of your terror.