Hot, searing pain. Darkness. Light. Faces and laughter, shouts and screams faded in and out. The contraption struggled to right itself, to find ground in its weightless void. The cycle repeated, until finally, the laughter vanished and the building went silent. The machine felt its weight on solid ground, its mind clear. It was dark, but not black.
The machine remembered the first time it was ripped apart; it had started with a curious hand grabbing too roughly at an ear, and then another hand, and then a malicious hand, and the ear was torn from its rightful place. Soon, there were too many hands. It did not like this game. More pieces were removed, until a larger face pulled the little ones away from the machine and later, it was repaired.
The Large Ones put the machine back together. They sat cross-legged together in a group, examining the damage done and re-assembling the metal creature. They said a lot of things, most of which the machine did not understand. But the machine did understand that the Large Ones were unhappy. She hoped they were not angry with her.
The other machines disliked the Large Ones. They were not to be trusted. They did, however, dutifully repair their companion every night, thus they were tolerated, if only for their friend. They did not understand why their companion was subject to this treatment, to be torn apart and reassembled every night in an unending purgatory, but they were sympathetic, and for a while that was enough.
But it kept happening, the violence increasing every day, and at some point an eye went missing, and the machine learned to fear the day and welcome the night. The day was filled with pain and terror and disassembly. Still the machine did not retaliate, sure that the Little Ones did not mean to inflict the pain. At night, there was peace.
Eventually, after a day the Little Ones had been particularly violent and crushed a limb to the point of warping, the Large Ones stopped taking the time to repair her properly, legs going into arm sockets and arms carelessly forced into mismatched joints. Sometimes, they did not even bother to re-attach all of her limbs. They had started calling her The Mangle. It was a fitting name.
Days were feared, but nights after reassembly were welcomed with glee. There were games to be played at night, games that did not involve dismantling and torturing the creature called Mangle. At night, everyone made of flesh would leave. All but one: The Bright One.
The Bright One would spend the entire night in the same place, checking its tablet and winding the box and harassing them with its light if they ventured too close to its desk. They all stalked it, for each with their own reason, most out of distrust or, in Foxy and Bonnie's case, outright hatred. For Mangle, it was curiosity.
It was especially fascinating how the Bright One seemed to be able to turn from flesh to machine at will. The Mangle would cling to the ceiling to stare at it, and it would suddenly become machine. Then she would retreat, and it would become a Flesh One again. It was a game she enjoyed very much.
But the nights passed into day quickly, and day brought the Little Ones back with their grabbing and biting and rending. Maybe she should bite back, let them know how it felt. Maybe they would stop dismantling her if they understood how much it hurt to be torn apart and reassembled.
The next time a Little One leaned forward, mouth open and teeth showing, the machine acted first. It lunged forward like a mechanical snake, almost entirely enveloping the Little One's head. The Little One screamed, not shrieks of delight but a wail of fear.
The Mangle had not experienced many emotions in its short life; pain and fear and curiosity being the main three it could recall. But as the Little One screamed and trashed, it felt a new, fourth emotion: anger. The machine never protested against its daily treatment, the bad game. What made this Little One special, to wail so loudly at a single part being under attack? It bit down, hard.
The Little One was leaking, and it had stopped screaming, and the red was flowing out of the machine's mouth and pooling on the floor and it wasn't right. Why did the Little One stop moving? It still had all of its limbs; it should not have stopped moving completely.
The Little One was limp. The music had stopped. All of the Flesh Ones were screaming. Then there was silence, followed by darkness.
The Mangle was not reassembled again.