When my parents brought Toby home from the hospital, I didn’t think much of him. How could I? He was red-faced and screaming most of the time. I was sixteen then, far too old to bother with him too much. Maybe when he grew up we could be friends, but to begin with, he was just an inconvenience.
I hated my parents for having another baby. I thought they’d waited too long; sixteen years between kids was a long time. How did they expect me to have any sort of reaction to him that wasn’t disgust? We’d certainly never have anything in common. Besides, they both had full time jobs as scientists at some organization. How did they expect to juggle their careers, a teenager and a baby?
I didn’t want anything to do with him. I avoided him as much as I could, but sometimes, it was unavoidable. Sometimes my parents would force me to babysit. It wasn’t so bad, though. Normally, I’d just put him down for a nap and play video games until my parents came home from wherever they’d gone.
Sometimes, though, I was forced to fulfill my brotherly duties. Whether it was feeding him, changing his diaper, or just comforting him as he cried. These were the times I hated the most, and I soon learned that I didn’t have a paternal bone in my body. I hated it so much that I vowed that I would never have kids, then I immediately felt guilty; it wasn’t Toby’s fault I hated him. Maybe it was just my own issues with no longer being an only child. I never told anyone how I felt about him – my friends wouldn’t understand, and my parents would get mad at me, so I kept it all in, silently going about my life as if I didn’t resent him.
My dad had a heart attack about a year after Toby was born. It wasn’t too serious, just a small one. He didn’t want to go, but my mom had forced him into the car and raced to the hospital anyway. Which left me looking after Toby. Again. I gave him some food then put him down for a nap. All I wanted to do was play video games with my friend. I was just about to level up my half-orc character, and between schoolwork and my job at the local coffee shop, I hadn’t had a chance until now.
As soon as I booted up my PC, the baby monitor next to me began to scream. I remember groaning, wishing I’d left it in Toby’s room, but I stood up and grabbed it anyway. My mom had enough to deal with without coming home to a screaming baby. I went into Toby’s room and looked at him in his crib.
What the fuck? When I’d put him to sleep, he’d been clean, but now, he was covered in a strange black goo. It coated his skin and the blanket I’d laid underneath him. I didn’t know what it was, but it seemed to coming from him. It poured out of his nose and his mouth as he wailed, and I felt the familiar pang of revulsion in the pit of my stomach as I backed out of the room. Was this normal? I pulled out my phone as I headed to the bathroom, but a quick Google search told me nothing. There were no posts on Reddit or any baby blogs about this. Maybe something was wrong with him. I briefly considered taking him to the hospital, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that my mom would blame me for whatever was happening to him.
I jammed my phone back in my pocket and sighed as I began filling the bath. I’d never actually bathed Toby before, but how hard could it be? Fill the bath just enough, but not enough to risk him drowning, add a little soap to create bubbles for him, dump some toys in for him. Simple, right?
I went and grabbed him, stripping him. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop the goo from getting on me, and even though I do feel bad about this now, I did swear at him a few times as I tried to wrestle him out his clothes. Finally, I managed to undress him and put him in the bath, keeping one hand on his back to stop him from falling deeper into the water. He immediately stopped crying, and he looked at me. His eyes bored into mine. The hair on my arms stood on end.
Here’s the thing: sometimes, I think I see things. I don’t actually see things. It’s just… do you ever get that feeling that you’ve forgotten something? That’s what happened then. I could see with my eyes that Tony was naked in the water, but my brain told me that I was wrong. I must have missed a layer of clothes I hadn’t noticed yet. Why else would there be a zipper running along his back?
I could feel it as clearly as I could feel the warmth of the water against my other hand. It was definitely there. Confusion swept through me, and I tilted Toby forward slightly, trying to see if I was feeling things, but sure enough, there on his back, was a long zipper. Gleaming metal winked at me, and it took every bit of my strength not to pull my hand away in disgust. I could see now that it wasn’t an extra layer of clothes I just wasn’t seeing. It was actually sewn into his skin. I could see the way the metal pulled at the skin of his back, pulling it taut and making him look almost like one of those bears you get with the voice inside. It was then that a thought struck me: when he was born, my parents had taken him to work with them. They’d told me that it was to show him off to their coworkers, and I hadn’t bothered to care too much; I was way behind on homework at the time. But when they’d brought him back, he’d been screaming more than normal, and I kept finding bloody clothes in the trash. Eventually, it had stopped, so I didn’t think about it again.
As I felt along the zipper, a horrible feeling overtook me, and I felt myself reaching underneath my own shirt, feeling along my back. Did I have a zipper too? I felt around, morbidly eager, but I could only feel skin, smooth and unmarred.
Did my parents do something to him? I didn’t exactly know what they did for work, but I knew that they were both experimental scientists. I never asked what experiments they performed, but now, I wish I’d taken more of an interest.
Toby was still staring at me. Now that I think of it, I don’t think he blinked even once the entire time. A shiver ran up my spine, and something seemed to call to me. I was sure I heard a voice in my head, telling me to pull down the zipper and look inside. On one hand, I wanted nothing more than to run, to sprint out of the house and never look back. But on the other hand, I wanted to listen to the voice. I wanted to open the zipper and see what exactly was inside my brother. I don’t know why, but I was sure that I’d find wires and metal mechanisms. Maybe I’d watched too many movies, but I couldn’t stop my brain from coming up with theories that Toby was a robot. The black goo could easily be oil, leaking out of him due to some kind of malfunction.
The next thing I did was by far the most stupid thing I’d ever done in my life. I grabbed the slider. I pulled. The teeth of the zipper made the same noise they did on a pair of jeans, and a horrid stench filled the bathroom. I reeled back, gagging. It definitely didn’t smell like oil. It smelled like rot, like something had died deep within him and had been decomposing for the past year. My stomach roiled and my eyes stung. My foot hit the toilet, and I fell backward, closing my eyes against the smell.
I don’t honestly know how long I stayed like that. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to look at Toby anymore. Hopefully, Mom would be home soon, and she’d deal with whatever he was.
Eventually, the smell subsided a bit, and I dared to open my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that the bathroom was darker. Sunlight was still shining through the window, so it wasn’t evening yet. I glanced up at the light and screamed.
Toby wasn’t in the bathtub anymore. Instead, he was dangling from the light fixture, dangling on two long, spindly legs like a spider. Six more legs jutted out from his back, and I regretted opening his zipper. I tried to shuffle backward, but my back was already against the wall. The door was on the other side of the room. There was nowhere else I could go.
Toby was still staring at me. The goo had started pouring out of his eyes now, dripping to the floor like dark tears, and I couldn’t look away. He looked more like a monster than anything I’d seen in any of my video games, and fear gripped me. I couldn’t move. My breath came shallow, the smell pouring into my nose and mouth, threatening to choke me. Toby shifted, and I flinched, my instincts finally kicking in.
I scrambled to my feet and sprinted toward the door, praying that it wouldn’t stick like it normally did. My hand gripped the handle, and then I felt something grab my waist. I looked down and screamed again. One of Toby’s legs was wrapped around my waist, gripping tightly, and I felt myself be pulled backwards. My feet left the floor, and the screams kept coming. My baby brother pulled me closer, then turned. I was facing the hole in his back, the zipper still gleaming at me in the low sunlight, and I reached my hands out. My hands gripped the baby hanging from the light and pushed, trying to get away from him, but the leg around my waist tightened painfully, and I cried out. My hands slipped from his body, covered now in the goo still pouring from him, and then everything went dark.
I know where I am now. I can hear everything Toby can hear. I could hear my parents scream when they got home from the hospital and met the same fate as me. They’re here too. Toby got them just like he got me. We can’t move. We can’t talk. We can’t see anything; it’s too dark here. But we can listen. So far, Toby has taken three foster families. Nobody has thought that he’s the culprit. They always assume that there’s a kidnapper on the loose, taking the parents and older children but leaving the baby. They don’t know we’re right there in the room with them. There are about ten of us now. Stuck here, inside my little brother.
As I hear the screams of his latest family as his zipper opens, I can’t help but think again: I wish my parents had never had him.
The Tay Smith Effect 