Lie To Me~Ticci Toby X Reader

Chapter 1 Are You The Rabbit?

'The circle with the X running through it.' the psychologist observes.

You nod 'Y-yes. I know this is stupid but it was enough to scare the living shit out of me. I woke up in cold sweat and screaming my lungs out since I was feeling slender hands wrapping around my neck.'

It was the incident that started it all.

From that night onward, dreams of darkness, pain, suffering, of someone watching you, of following and reaching out to snatch you plagued your mind constantly; the symbol of the O and X appeared almost everywhere you ran, along with images of a dark, dangerous forest and a tall faceless creature looming around and constantly looking for something, ruining all the normal dreams and making you wake up in cold sweat. It seemed like it was searching for something –or rather someone– and from the moment it started, there was no going back. Soon enough, you'd wake up to find your room covered from the ceiling all the way to the floor in pages and pages of weird-ass drawings of the same creature and urgencies not to look at it, that it follows and warnings that you cannot run away no matter how much you tried. Fucking scared you out of your wits. As if that wasn't enough, it didn't take too long for you to start sleepwalking, waking up in weird places all across town and feeling as if someone was watching you; you could always swear you caught a glimpse of a shadow moving from the corner of your eye, feeling the hair on the back of your neck stand up as the crippling feeling of someone watching you every single minute of the day crawled its way inside your brain and utterly terrified you. You took a few days off from work since you were too scared to set foot out of the door. Sleep was absolute torture and even properly feeding yourself became a struggle.

Of course, your body couldn't take the strain and the anxiety brought along severe deterioration of your health with fever and nose bleeds, since your blood pressure was skyrocketing, along with severe loss of weight that left you only but a shadow of your former self. You stopped going out of your house and grew paranoid of anyone and everyone trying to come in contact with you; someone was definitely after you, you knew it by the deep shadows that moved across from your apartment at night and anyone coming close to you could be the one responsible for your pain and suffering. Eventually, you never left your house and worked from there, only getting but a few hours of sleep every day and cut ties with your family and your friends around you; becoming utterly reclusive until one day, when your mother burst through the door like freakin Rambo in full swing and dragged you by force to miss Roxanne Ackerman's office, a well respected and highly intelligent psychologist who swore to help you in any way she could.

True to her word, it didn't take her long to figure out what was wrong with you. It was called Paranoid Personality Disorder, which along with severe depression episodes and extreme anxiety, tortured you into believing everyone was out there to get you. A rare disorder, it appeared in people around the age of 21 and was treated with a cocktail of antidepressants like Zoloft and Zanax, which left you as soft as pudding and knocked you out cold in the nights. After three whole months of paranoia and insomnia, the dreamless escape the drug-induced sleep brought was something along the lines of salvation. The dreams stopped and along with intense therapy lessons, your paranoia ebbed away a bit, even if you still feared going out at night and still noticed the shadows watching you from afar; a few times, you thought you caught a glimpse of an orange flash or a red frown inside the shadows but they disappeared as soon as they appeared, leaving you to double the dose of the drugs for the next intake. Alas, the sleepwalking continued non-stop, even if you refrained from venturing out. Roxanne was reassuring you that this too should pass in time, only if you continued your therapy and your pills.

Yet it didn't stop. It only escalated and after one particularly calm night, you woke up in the hospital, bedridden and with many of your ribs and both of your legs broken, surrounded by doctors and more nurses than what you could count. All you could recollect from your scattered mind was a fluorescent orange glow and the bright headlights of the oncoming car. Various cuts and wounds covered the majority of your body and your feet were so badly wounded and raw, as if you ran through the thick forest barefooted; the couple driving the car said you had practically ejected yourself out of the forest and without giving them enough time to stop they had hit you head on. They feared you died but still drove you to the hospital where you woke up a few days later groggy and disoriented; the police came in and took a statement from both of you, but before you had the chance to talk to them further, miss Roxanne burst in and informed them about your condition. After that, the whole thing was dropped off with a few sad shakes of the head and worried glances your way and eventually Roxanne suggested you moved out of the town. A change of scenery and a new house at a rural area would be just the right medicine for you.