Things that went bump in the night kept him up to all hours of the night at times. A creak of the stairs, a squeak of an unclosed door, a tree scratching on the window with that ear grating sound like when someone put too much force behind a knife on a plate.
But of course there were other things as well that kept him from sleep. Nightmares of the King, homework, thoughts and troubles, things that bothered him during daylight hours. Some nights it was simply too hard to sleep at all. Some nights like these where he just wanted to clear his head with a bit of volleyball. That's exactly what he did.
He grabbed his volleyball; his phone in case his mother woke to find him missing, slipped on his shoes and was out his window and walking down the street in less than three minutes. Track pants and a baggy t-shirt doing little to keep him warm in the frigid night air.
The park closest to his house was only ten minutes away walking at a reasonable pace and with his spacey brain he seemed to be there in no time at all. It was comforting, the silence of the playground and the park as a whole.
At this time of night not even the adventurous types were out and about, it was 3am by now. He sighed happily and tossed the volley ball into the air, it peaked and began to drop, closer, closer, closer until it was within reach of his best shot, his hand already waiting to slam the ball into the ground. The sound of skin smacking leather and leather smacking cement snapped through the air like a gunshot. He watched it bounce off the floor, rebound off the wall and come flying back at him as if someone had tossed it into the air.
SMACK!
The ball was hitting the floor again.
SMACK!
He began to relax.
SMACK!
One by one his worries faded away along with the worries of things that went bump in the night.
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!
Until they were nothing more than the lowest of background noises.
SMACK!
Just him and the ball and the wall in the park.
SMACK!
Footsteps rushed him from behind, but the ball was coming back. He whacked it away one last time and turned, the footsteps were far too close. A crow? A hand clamped down on his shoulder and pushed him back, unprepared he lost his balance and they slammed into the ground. Tobio's head bounced off the concrete underneath him, he felt dizzy and panicked, whoever was on top of him moved, straddled his hips and raised his arm, pinning Tobio's own with the other above his head as he writhed underneath the man to get away. He bucked his hips and tried to get his arms free, a feral laugh accompanying his frantic attempts to escape. His blood pounded in his ears, vision tunnelled, hearing making the man sound high and demonic with its twisted perception.
His eyes caught a glare of sliver in the corner of his eyes and all he felt was pain, a terrible screeching roar tearing its way from his throat as over and over again the man drove something into his chest. His blood was everywhere, warming his body at first but cooling quickly now that it wasn't in its proper place. Blood was meant to be on the inside not on the out. When it was on the out, something was wrong.
Copious amounts of blood became a puddle underneath them, and still, over and over again, the knife was forced into his chest scoring his bones and shattering them where it felt necessary to penetrate him deeper, deeper, ever deeper into his chest. Deeper into his cold, dead chest. He'd stopped struggling now, dead eyes staring forever into the starry sky. The laughter proceeded, the man though… He left… He left Tobio in a pool of his own blood with a present, a mask, a lovely mask, a crows' mask and a chest caved in with stab wounds, the shattered bones unable to hold up his leaky, tattered flesh, slowly seeping what was left of his blood into the small puddle created over his heart as if it didn't even exist and what was there was just empty space.