Literature / T.O.T.

T.O.T. is a 2017 horror-comedy web novel written by Tyk 5919.

While trick-or-treating on Halloween, a young boy comes across a giant man inside of a realistic-looking werewolf costume. Once the boy discovers that the werewolf is in fact real, and is very eager to slaughter everyone within the subdivision the boy lives in, he and his friends find themselves in a fight for survival as they try to stop the beast from killing everyone in sight.

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T.O.T. provides examples of:

• Action Survivor: None of the four preteens have any weapons training and never fought monsters before in their lives. Nevertheless, they used whatever weapons they can find to fight off Maximus, and even then, this doesn't always work.
• Anyone Can Die: Made evident when Mark is killed off in chapter 9. By the end of the story, everyone is dead except for Dylan and Rachel.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Mark and his group don't shed a tear when they find out that Maximus killed Toby and his gang, all of whom were bullies who vandalized public property.
  • Sheriff Umberton and Tully, both of whom tried to cover up the Green Water murders and neglected to send police backup when Eddie and various civilians desperately needed it.
• At Least I Admit It: When Mark confronts Maximus in chapter 9, he calls him out on his definition of "fun," blatantly telling him that there's no excuse for murdering innocent people. Maximus just smirks at him and confesses to his sadism.
  Maximus: "I'm just...I don't know...I don't know what's wrong with me."
  Mark: "No. You don't get to play that card. I don't give a fuck if your mentality isn't the same as ours. You killed dozens of people. Innocent people. Own up to it!"
  Maximus (while smirking): "No, Markie-boy. I had fun. Sure...many people were killed while I was having fun, but hey."
  Mark: (Beat) "You're hopeless."
  Maximus: "So's humanity. Least I admit what I am."
• Badass Bystander: In the beginning of chapter 4, there's a random Crazy-Prepared man who sat near his front door expecting someone to break in so he could blast them away with his shotgun. He nearly kills Maximus after he tries to break in, and even succeeds in getting a grisly shot off at his face without killing the teenager he took hostage.
• Big Bad: Maximus Slade, the malicious werewolf who desires to slaughter everyone in the Green Water subdivision.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Umberton tries to be a major villain, but he's really just an incompetent police officer who'd rather cover up a series of murders through an absurdly-convoluted plan to save face and to gain sympathy from surrounding counties. When Giggs exposes him and Tully, she and the other officers subdue them very easily. And when Maximus gets to him, he's killed as easily as the rest of Maximus' victims.
• Bittersweet Ending: Rachel and Dylan survive and kill Maximus, but Mark and Boog are dead, along with dozens of innocents and several police officers. The eqilogue reveals that Rachel and Dylan weren't horribly traumatized by the events and continue on with their lives in peace, and even go back to trick-or-treating.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Umberton kills Tully and Leysha.
• Cerebus Syndrome: As soon as Mark dies, all of the humor in the story goes away, and it turns into full-on horror.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Every character, even the preteens, has no problem gratuitously swearing in front of one another.
• Crocodile Tears: When Maximus is confronted in chapter 9 by Mark, he pretends to have a mental breakdown and starts crying, saying he doesn't know what's wrong with him. Mark sees through it instantly and calls him out on it, and he immediately goes back to his Smug Snake demeanor.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Maximus is quite fond of these, as listed below.
  • Mark has his chest and abdomen torn open. And then his ribcage is broken.
  • Umberton has his tongue pulled out, has his stomach torn open, and then Maximus reaches inside and stretches out his intestines.
  • Boog has his spine broken, and is then set on fire.
  • Finally, there's Maximus himself. See Rasputinian Death below.
• Darkness Equals Death: As soon as the lights in the police station go out in chapter 11, the cops are gradually killed off one by one.
• Death of a Child: In spades.
  • Several teenagers and children are killed by Maximus during his rampage in the Green Water subdivision, all while he was posing as a trick-or-treater himself.
  • Boog gets the worst of it. His final moments are him telling his parents that he loves them dearly and that he's about to die, and all the while, his parents can't do a thing to save him because they left him home alone so they could go on a business trip hundreds of miles away from home.
• Decoy Protagonist: Most of the story focuses on Mark's point of view, and he even gets a chunk of Character Development as the story progresses. Despite this, Maximus brutally murders him at the end of chapter 9.
• Dirty Cop: Sheriff Umberton and Tully. When they learn about the situation in the Green Water subdivision, they decide to try and cover it up and pretend that they never received any calls from the area so the blowback won't affect their station. Giggs and Eddie openly point out how stupid their plan is, and it eventually falls apart in chapter 11.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being complicit in Umberton's cover up, Tully calls him out on how stupid he is after he murders one of his deputies and tries to kill Giggs. This happens after Umberton saw Maximus brutally murder two other deputies and was fully aware that without the proper manpower, they'd have no chance of surviving Maximus' wrath.
• Excrement Statement: In chapter 3, Maximus climbs onto a police cruiser and defecates all over the windshield just to piss off two officers and show them how much he hates the police.
• Eye Scream: Several, most notably when Maximus shoots a BB at Mark's eye, and when Boog stabs Maximus in his right eye.
• False Innocence Trick: After Maximus is wounded in chapter 4 by the Badass Bystander, he approaches a teenager and tries to pass himself off as a trick-or-treater who got shot by a crazy man. Then he quickly takes her hostage while she's distracted.
• Farts on Fire: In chapter 7, Toby entertains himself and his gang by lighting some of Maximus' farts.
• Fingore: Eddie Sanchez has three of his fingers sliced off shortly before Maximus kills him.
• Genre Savvy: Everyone. All of the protagonists are skilled in their knowledge of horror tropes and do the exact opposite of what would normally get an average horror story protagonist killed. Unfortunately, Maximus Slade is also very genre savvy...
  • In chapter 2, Eddie is informed about a possible double murder that was passed off as a prank. Instead of ignoring this information, he heads to the murder location, discovers that the murders were real, and tries to call for backup.
• Halloween Episode: The entire story takes place on Halloween night while everyone is trick-or-treating.
• Improbable Infant Survival : Defied. In chapter 2, Mark tries to call Maximus' bluff when he's holding a young girl hostage, stating that children typically don't die in horror stories. He snaps her neck immediately afterwards, and kills several other children throughout the story.
• Kick the Dog: Maximus does this throughout the story, but by far the worst case was when he made Boog answer his phone after his parents called him. And then he forced him to tell his parents that he was about to die screaming.
• Kill the Cutie: Both Mark and Boog, two of the nicest and most innocent characters in the story, perish before the final chapter.
• Killed Offscreen: Seconds before Boog is burned alive, chapter 11, thankfully, abruptly ends. Chapter 12 starts from a different scene altogether, but confirms that he did indeed die.
• Laughably Evil: Maximus frequently mocks or jokes with his victims and sometimes talks in a sarcastic tone. Which makes it all the more disturbing when he immediately switches from an over-the-top, comical villain to a bloodthirsty murderer who speaks nonchalantly.
• Made of Iron: Due to his Regenerating Health, Maximus is capable of taking a very, very brutal beating. Unless he's attacked with silver, of course.
• Mauve Shirt: Every named character who isn't Giggs, Eddie Sanchez, Maximus, or the four lead protagonists falls into this category. Even Umberton and Tully hardly do anything in the story before they're killed, despite being the main reason why no cops show up to help the heroes out.
• Mic Drop: In chapter 5, after Boog gives Maximus "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Dylan grabs a wrench and drops it on the floor, for obvious reasons.
  Boog: "Why'd you do that?"
  Dylan: "I don't have a mic."
• Off with His Head!: How Maximus Slade is killed, courtesy of a machete.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Averted. In chapter 9, Maximus is stabbed multiple times with silver weapons. So he just walks it off and patches up his wounds, right? Nope. The wounds are permanent, and for the remainder of the story, he's noticeably weaker and slower.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: For starters, Maximus Slade can talk, and has the appearance of a scruffy, anthropomorphic black wolf. He can also regenerate his health very quickly, even if he gets shot in the head, and he reveals in chapter 7 that he's been in his lycan form for so long that it became permanent, and he can no longer shift into a human again. Nevertheless, he possesses the same weakness all werewolves have: silver.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Dylan, who frequently spouts out lines of dialogue to lighten the situation whenever things become grim.
• Police Are Useless:
  • Justified with Giggs. When Mark calls her and tells her two people had been murdered, she immediately assumes he's pulling a prank and hangs up on him after receiving multiple prank calls that night. Once Giggs finds out that Mark was telling the truth, she's understandably horrified, and goes well out of her way to drive down to the subdivision to assist Officer Sanchez and to make up for her screw-up.
  • Inverted with Eddie Sanchez, the only competent police officer in the whole story who chases after Maximus and warns the residents of Green Water to barricade themselves in their homes.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Maximus Slade acts and behaves like a rowdy teenager, despite being a sadistic killer. Justified, however, since he was turned into a werewolf in his teenage years, and mentally never aged.
• Rasputinian Death: Maximus. He's shot and beaten multiple times, stabbed in the eye twice, stabbed repeatedly again around his body and neck, partially burned in a fire, and then has his insides blown apart after he swallows a miniature bomb Dylan shot into his mouth. Even after all that, he still didn't die; Rachel had to chop off his head to finish him off.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Several characters repeatedly call out Maximus on his sadistic behavior and how his excuse that he just wants to "have fun" makes no sense at all, since he goes around murdering innocent people.
• Running Gag: Everyone joking about Maximus' bad breath. It got so bad that when Dylan launched a miniature mine into his mouth, Maximus legitimately thought it was just a breath mint.
• Sacrificial Lion: The death of Mark hammered in that absolutely no one is safe anymore, including the four main characters.
• Sarcastic Confession: When Mark first meets Maximus, he off-handedly remarks that he's a "spooky scary werewolf who's come to eat all his friends." Mark dismisses this comment, up until he kills two people and reveals he is a werewolf.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In chapter 4, Maximus, at random, tries to break into someone's house by smashing a window. An alarm goes off immediately afterwards, and he's forced to run away.
• Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: The story frequently switches between Black Comedy and horror from time to time. Whenever the story focuses on the lead protagonists, it's usually lighthearted. Whenever Maximus comes along, the story blends into a disturbing combination of dark humor and horror, depending on whenever he starts killing anyone.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Sheriff Umberton and Deputy Chief Tully only appear in one scene in chapter 4, and for half of chapter 11. However, they're the sole reason why none of the police officers come to aid the heroes in the Green Water subdivision, and are indirectly responsible for several of the murders that took place that they possibly could've prevented.
• Smug Snake: Maximus is a lot more overconfident than he should be and frequently underestimates the humans' ability to fight back (as shown in chapter 4 with the Badass Bystander). He also tends to gloat and toy with his victims, as opposed to outright killing them.
• The Sociopath: Maximus Slade sees people as nothing more than toys or tools of enjoyment, and if they're not entertaining him, then they're not his friends. He reveals in chapter 7 that despite having "friends" when he was young, he grew bored of them over time, and even killed one of them.
  Maximus: "See, friends—they're like toys really—ah! Video games! We can all relate to that! They're video games. You play them for a while, you're havin' fun, but then you reach the end. You beat all the levels. You unlocked everything. And then you see no more use for it. So you leave it alone and let it collect dust. Or you sell it for some cash. Or you just do what I do and dispose of them."
• Time Skip: The epilogue takes place three years after the events in the Green Water subdivision.
• Toilet Humour:
  • See Excrement Statement above.
  • Chapter 7 is loaded with it, most notably when Maximus urinates on a jack-o-lantern, and when he passed gas repeatedly in front of Toby's gang, shortly before Toby starts lighting his farts on fire.
• Tongue Trauma: Shortly before Maximus kills Umberton, he rips his tongue out.
• Too Dumb to Live: Umberton. Despite knowing that a killer werewolf just murdered two cops right in front of him, he ignores Maximus altogether and steals a deputy's gun, where he kills two deputies and wounds another all so he can try to escape without facing jail time. Maximus promptly corners him after all the officers are dead and disembowels him.
• Villain Episode: Chapter 7 doesn't feature a single protagonist, and focuses solely on Maximus interacting with Toby's gang and revealing part of his backstory.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Maximus only wears a pair of blue shorts, and he remains shirtless throughout the entire story.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 9 has Mark and the group mortally wounding Maximus. Just before Mark gets the chance to kill him, Maximus gets the drop on him and brutally murders him, leaving his corpse for his friends to find.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: It's never stated what city, or even what state, the story takes place in. It's merely implied that the story takes place somewhere out in the country, given how small the local police station is.
• Would Hurt a Child: Maximus has no problem hurting or killing teenagers and children.
• You Need a Breath Mint: Maximus Slade has very foul breath, which everyone repeatedly brings up. When he and Mark went trick-or-treating in chapter 1, he received nothing but breath mints and gum.
  Maximus: "Why the hell did you get all the good shit and all I got was fuckin' gum and breath mints?!"
  Mark (while holding his nose): "Because your breath is scarier than your costume."

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