Collin stood outside Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. It was dark, and nearing midnight, the time he started his shift. Looking at the building reminded him of when he was much younger and always bothered his parents to bring him here. Though a bit late, at least he got what he wanted.
He was surprised he had been hired so easily. The manager didn't seem to care about much at all. Maybe they were having trouble getting a night guard. It would make sense, not many people like working nightshifts. At least, this was the case in his experience.
The 19 year old shook himself out of his thoughts. Daydreaming, it was a bad habit of his. He would often catch himself drifting off. That, or someone else would, but he could often save himself from that embarrassment. Nonetheless, it was a common feeling for him, the awkward person he was.
Collin Grey was tall and thin with light brown skin and long, curly hair that was often in a loose ponytail. He had big, warm, yet anxious grey eyes that hid behind thick, square, purple glasses. Though even with them he didn't have perfect vision, if he took them off he was legally considered blind.
Besides his uniform he was also wearing a woven bracelet with bright colours and a zigzag pattern. Though he knew it looked a little silly with the uniform, he wore that bracelet everywhere. His mother had made it for him and he loved the little thing. Speaking of his mother, her Indonesian features showed in his face. He looked quite a lot like his mom.
Collin walked into the restaurant, looking around. Everywhere his eyes went there were posters about the place's grand re-opening. He didn't quite remember what got the place shut down to begin with. Something about health and safety he thinks.
His eyes and feet wandered around the place, until he ended up in the main show area. The new animatronics sure looked cutesy. Whatever health violation the old ones caused, there was no way that was going to repeat. They were much different to the ones he saw as a kid. More child friendly and less scary than he remembered. Though back then, he hadn't thought they were scary; just a little funny looking.
While examining the animatronics, he heard a phone begin to ring. No one else was in the building besides him, so he immediately assumed it was for him. He followed the ringing to the room the manager had said was his office. He sat down in the office chair and picked up the phone with a quiet 'hello?'
"Hello, hello? Uh, hi. I see you're here a bit early, uh, Collin was it?" a friendly voice on the phone asked. It sounded like a guy. Collin was shocked when it said his name.
"Y-you know me?" he asked, silently cursing himself for stuttering in his nervousness.
"Oh yeah, of course! I've heard all about you, the new guy! Nightshift huh, yeah.. th-they were having problems finding a guy for that job. Who wants to work from twelve to six, huh?.. Uh, now you're probably wondering why I'm talking to you here. Well, I'm the dayshift guy, and it's part of my job to help new employees get settled in on their first days.. Or nights in your case. Y-you see, I've been with the company a while now, ya'know?" the person on the other end of the line tried to explained. 'Dayshift guy' Collin thought. If he did this with all new employees, 'Phone guy' would be much more fitting.
"What do I need to know then?" Collin asked bluntly.
"Well first of all, see that tablet in front of you?" Collin looked down at the desk. He made a sound of agreement before picking up the tablet. It turned on immediately as he brought it up to see it, making him jump.
"Picking that up, you'll see all your cameras. Make sure to flip through those and get used to them."
Collin did as told, looking through the cameras randomly, making sure to get a good feel for where everything was. He stopped on one camera which had music playing through it. It sounded like it was coming from a music box. He stared at the room, finding this a bit odd.
"I see you found the Prize Corner. Every once and a while try to wind up that music box, okay? That's the first thing. There should be a button on the tablet somewhere that lets you do that remotely. Just come back and wind that up for a few seconds every once and while, okay?" the phone guy stated.
"Okay... But why?" Winding up a music box during the middle of a night for no one to hear it but him and the guy on the phone seemed a little weird for that to be the case. There had to be a real reason.
There was silence over the phone for a few seconds, while phone guy was supposedly forming his response. "..There's this creepy puppet thing that likes to come out of its box when the music stops... I haven't seen it do that during the night, but people have told me that's the case. I've also been told there's a chance that if it gets out, i-it might come into your office? Now, we're not entirely sure why that is, and it should be perfectly fine, but just to be safe you should probably just keep it in there, okay?" Collin's stomach dropped. There was his reason. If he was being warned about this 'puppet', something was probably wrong with it. He made sure to wind up the music box before switching cams again.
'Parts and Service' the cameras location read. It looked so dark though. Looking around the tablet he soon found a button that let him turn on a light from the camera. He did so and what image popped into his face almost made him drop the tablet, making him squeak in surprise. That probably wouldn't have been very good.. Maybe he shouldn't be holding this thing so close to his face? It was so hard to see though.
And how was he supposed to know that there was a room full of the old, broken animatronics? They were in a withered state. Chika he couldn't see very well, but she appeared to be missing her hands and her jaw was broken. There was Foxy, who looked more rugged than usual, missing parts everywhere. Freddy was hard to see as well, but looked to be missing an eye and some of his costume in places, especially on his head. His joints looked rather loose, kind of like Chika's but not nearly as bad.
Last there was Bonnie who looked the most damaged out of all of them, missing his entire face, a whole arm and most of the costume over his legs and feet, the endo skeleton underneath showing through in many places. It was a shame; Bonnie always was Collin's favourite. He had a soft spot for small, fluffy creatures and the colour purple. Bonnie fit both those aspects in full. Plus, he was a cool robot with a guitar. It didn't get much cooler than that. The replacement just wasn't the same... Plus, it wasn't purple. Though there were other bits and pieces in the room, these popped out the most to him. They were... creepy to say the least.
"What?" the phone guy asked. Oh yeah. "What camera did you go on?"
Collin shook his head again, glancing at the camera's name briefly to make sure he was getting it right. "..Parts and Service." he said, still slightly shaken up at the image of those old, broken animatronics sitting in disrepair.
"Oh yeah.." the phone guy laughed nerviously. "I.. probably should have mentioned those guys. S-sorry to startle you like that." He said, seeming genuine, though sounding like he was still finding Collin's little jump funny still. "You shouldn't have to worry about that. Those guys shouldn't be able to move around anymore I don't think." those last few words left the black haired individual feeling a bit uncertain, but he passed it off.
He kept flipping through the cameras, checking the vents and hallway occasionally. "So what brought you here to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, Collin?" the phone guy asked.
Collin didn't really have much of a reason, but he gave his answer anyways. "It's my break from school. I needed something to do and this was a simple enough job, so I applied for it. That's all really."
"Right. What school are you going to?" he asked. What was this, an interrogation?
"Medical school." at least he seemed more interested than the manager had been.
"Oh, cool. You're going to be a doctor?"
"Paramedic, actually." Collin corrected the phone guy quickly. He seemed genuinely curious. It was always a good feeling when someone took interest in what you were doing.
"Okay. That could be really useful actually; I don't think we really have anyone else in the building that knows much about this sort of thing. It's a shame you aren't here around the day time, I bet the other employees would like to meet you." the phone guy said.
"Thank you, but I don't really think I'm that interesting." Collin stated honestly.
Phone guy laughed. "You're being modest! Plenty of the people around this place are more interesting than you'd think.. Especially the night guards. I enjoy talking to you guys." he yawned. "O-oh.. I should probably get going and leave you to it. I still have to do the dayshift tomorrow and you have to get to your own shift. I think you're fine so... See you tomorrow then." the phone guy said. Collin barely had time to say good bye back before the other end of the line had hung up. Bit odd, he hung up so abruptly, but oh well. Something told him he would be hearing from him again soon enough.
Collin was left alone for the rest of the night. Though he almost forgot about the music box a few times, everything seemed to go smoothly. He could have sworn a few times that he saw the old, broken suits move a bit. It was probably just the dark or the cameras quality playing tricks on him. It didn't take that long before it hit six a.m. He'd been talking to the phone guy for a lot of the shift after all, and thinking. He'd had the weirdest daydreams, most of which were about the animatronics coming to get him. It was a little annoying that he was being so paranoid. Those things wouldn't hurt a fly.
The medical student left the pizzeria soon after his shift ended. He waited a while longer before leaving though, out of curiousity to see who came to the pizzeria so early in the morning after his shift. It wasn't much of a surprise when the first person to come in was donning a janitor outfit.
According to the person's name tag it was a guy. Eric wasn't a feminine name last he'd checked. Even so, the person just had an over all female appearance to them. Collin passed it off as a lot of other things that night. This Eric had longer, wavy, platinum blonde hair that went to his shoulders, with dark but warm brown eyes. He was pale and slightly shorter than Collin. The night guard knew that he was pretty tall though, and figured that Eric was actually about average height.
Though he wasn't surprised, the janitor was. "What are you still doing here?" He asked. "It's passed six a.m., you can go now." His voice didn't help his feminine looks.
"I was just curious who'd be picking up where I left off here." he stated simply. Eric mumbled something. "I'm sorry?"
"Oh, uh... Well... Whatever, you can just go now." the janitor said, shaking his head. He walked passed Collin, though said something quietly to him while doing so. "Stay safe."
What did that mean? The job hadn't seemed at all dangerous. Well, other than that dumb puppet thing, but out of all the animatronics here, that wasn't a big deal. He didn't even see it as long as he remembers the music box.
Collin shrugged and left the pizzeria. He hadn't come on a car, but a bike. He figured his house mate would rather have the car just in case, and the place wasn't that far anyways; only a few blocks. It was rather convenient, and one of the reasons why he chose this job over many others. He wasn't a big car person anyways.
After a short bike ride, he made it to the house, leaving his bike in the garage before heading inside. He made sure to keep quite, as it was about 6:30. Collin didn't want to wake up his house mate, Alice. She definitely wasn't a morning person by any stretch.
Collin quickly went to his room and got out of his uniform and into some more casual clothes. No use wearing that around everywhere. The outfit Collin put on, wasn't really anything special, he mostly just picked out the first things he saw. He put on a dark purple long sleeved shirt with some baggy jeans and grey socks. He kept the bracelet on, as always and adjusted his glasses, pushing them back up.
He then went over to his bedside table. Normally people might have a picture, or clock or something on this table, but not him. Collin has a small pet rodent cage. Inside said cage was his small gerbil. She was white, with a tan coloured snout and tail.
"Hey, Gizmo." he greeted the small creature quietly. "Last night must have been weird for you, huh? I'm usually just here to feed you before I go to bed, but I wasn't here at all last night. You much be pretty hungry, huh?" he said, still talking to the gerbil, as if it would respond back. Of course it didn't, but he acted like it did and gave it some food, talking to the little thing more. If anyone saw him now, he'd get some very strange looks, that's for sure.
"Well, there you go!" he said after filling the gerbil's food bowl. Even if it was sort of 'listening' before, it wasn't now. Its head was already in the food bowl. "I guess I'll be feeding you when I come back from the pizzeria from now on, huh?" he laughed, again probably looking silly to anyone who may be watching. Luckily no one was.
Collin left the room and went to the kitchen. He may as well have breakfast early while he was here. He quickly got some cereal, making a mental note that they were almost out of milk. He or Alice would have to pick some up later.
After finishing this he went to various tasks, reading a book to playing video games and just generally lazing around. He loved playing his NES. And he was going to finish this stupid mega man level if it was the last thing he did! Much to his dismay, even after he beat it, there were five more.
"Cooollliiiinn!" a voice called from a different room. The medical student sighed. Why did she always call him like that?
"I'm here!" he yelled back.
"Oh good!" the voice's owner entered the room. It was Alice of course. She was only one year older than him with long, straight, auburn hair and bright green eyes. She was under weight, like him, but unlike him she had tanned skin. She was wearing a light green tank top with a long grey skirt and two long mismatched socks, one white and the other orange with pink and lime polka dots. She was also wearing big, red, square glasses and a black collar. Though she didn't have to wear her glasses as much as Collin did, she often had them somewhere on her just in case, and sometimes that place was on her face for once.
"I was worried you might have gone to sleep or maybe those creepy animatronics got to ya!" she said spookily, her hands up and fingers wigging to try and give a mock creepy tone. Collin just rolled his eyes. Alice was often like an older sister. And sometimes she was an annoying one,
"All those new animatronics are made to be super kid friendly, there's nothing dangerous about them. The old ones are in complete disrepair as well, so they're also completely harmless. To top it all off, I haven't even seen the puppet yet! There are no doors or anything for safety, so obviously the place is completely safe. They would get shut down if it wasn't." Collin said, trying to focus on his game, while talking mindlessly to Alice.
Alice just put her hands on her hips. "You never know. And I wasn't being serious anyways. There's no way a kids pizzeria is going to be dangerous. It's a kids pizzeria for flip sakes!" she laughed. "Though it's funny you got so defensive. Hey, do you have a partner there or anything? That'd be cool, you could really use more friends, Collin." she stated. Yep, this was definitely annoying older sister mode.
"Not really, the only people I've met there are the janitor and a guy on the phone." the dark haired boy said quickly, leaning into the TV a bit, trying not to get killed by any of the enemies in game.
"There's a guy on the phone?" Alice questioned.
Collin muttered a 'damn it' as his character blew up into blue circles and he got the game over screen yet again. "Yes. Yes there is, Alice. Apparently he's from the day shift and he was there to help me get settled in or something." Collin looked at her. "And before you asked, he also said there's nothing to worry about. He seems to know what he's doing so I think he's right in saying that."
Alice looked unsure. "Did he say his name? How do you know he's not lying? And how much can someone really know about a place that just opened up." she questioned. Great, time to be interrogated again.
Collin huffed with annoyance. "Re-opened you mean and he's been working there since the older location. He probably knows tons."
"What about his name, and why did the pizzeria close in the first place?"
Unless he answered her questions and left quickly, something told him this was never going to end. He got up, quickly saying "I read that it was just health reasons and he didn't say his name because I never asked. I'll ask tomorrow." as he turned off the gaming console and walked into his room. He needed to sleep anyways, for his shift tomorrow.
The rest of the day went by uneventfully. All that happened was Alice went out to get groceries, then got back, pushed Collin out of bed and got him to put them away. They then played Street Fighter, which Alice won at until she decided to go to bed again. Soon it came close to 11:40, the time Collin was aiming to get to the pizzeria by. He put down his book, grabbed his bike and left the house again. Though he didn't know it, things were going to get a much more exciting tonight.