Author's note: This was written for a challenge on the FNAF subreddit. It's my interpretation of why the Toy animatronics attack the night guard, albeit dramatised and given a touch of horror. It was an interesting challenge to write a story from the point of view of an emotionless robot, especially its descent into insanity!
Warnings: People with insect phobias might find this unpleasant to read as there's some bug-related body horror.
It was the sobbing of a child in the witching hours that roused Toy Bonnie from its slumber. Lifeless eyes surveyed the hall from its vantage point on the stage, but there was no one there. No children to comfort, no adults to lead them to. Swivelling its head on smooth, silent motors, it observed that Toy Freddy and Chica were still shut down, their eyes closed in peaceful sleep. Whatever that sound was, they didn't hear it.
Bonnie twitched an ear as it ran the numbers. The likelihood of a child alone here after hours—slim. An audio glitch seemed more probable. Yet ignoring the cries was in conflict with its programming, whether they were real or imagined… and there was no rule which forbade it from wandering at night. With a final glance at Freddy, one that a human might recognise as an appeal to authority, it set aside its guitar prop and stepped off the stage. There were other sounds, it noted as it passed into the corridor, bangs and knocks and tap-tap-taps that came from within the walls. And from the door to parts and service, heavy, scraping thuds. Those sounds were not children and none of its concern.
Around the corner and past the party rooms, the light of the security office lured it closer like a moth to flame. All children knew the rules at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Rule number nine: if you need help, find a staff member. As the last human being present at these hours, that meant him.
He recoiled at the sight of the animatronic rabbit framed in the doorway. "W—what the hell? Is this a joke?"
Programming took over, forcing an automated response as Bonnie stepped into the room. "Swearing is against the rules," it said, but paid the guard no mind as it glanced first left, then right, in search of a child that was not there. Its ears twitched again. There was no sobbing here, no banging and scraping, no sound at all but startled breaths coming fast and shallow. Uncertain what to make of these new variables, it ran more calculations and compared the results. Many children were afraid of the dark; were they hiding under the desk? Improbable, but worth checking. The lead technician always said that details made all the difference when he buffed away the day to day scratches that gathered on Bonnie's plastic suit.
The guard scooted nervously away on his chair as it circled around and stooped to peer underneath, but there was no child there, either. "Shoo!" He snapped, jabbing at it with one boot-clad foot, "go back to your stage or wherever it is you damn things stay!"
"Rule number two: don't yell." Errors blared painfully in its mind, a strange, buzzing pressure, as it weighed and measured its two conflicting directives. But, in the end, a direct order from the security guard was a certainty and overrode the needs of a child that may or may not exist. It was broken, it concluded as it turned and trudged from the office. Freddy didn't hear the cries. Nor did Chica, or the guard. And Foxy… it was in no state to hear much of anything any more. Its garbled static did, at times, resemble screams of terror. But tonight it was silent. This sound, whatever it might be, was for Bonnie alone to hear.
And it came again, the high, thin wails of a young girl in distress. The way it echoed from the walls and corners… if Bonnie had hair, it would stand on end.
At once its heels dug in and turned it towards the source of the commotion, towards the tall steel door to parts and service. With every step closer the scraping and banging grew louder, those thumps the footfalls of giants. With every step closer the door leapt and rattled in its frame. And still that unearthly keening slipped through the crack like trickling water, like tears.
A child, in parts and service? That was against the rules!
It reached with tentative fingers for the handle. At its touch the thumping stopped, the metal fell still, and an empty, uneasy silence fell over the corridor—like something in the dark was watching, waiting, holding its breath. Locked, of course. As it should be.
Bonnie's eyes clicked shut as it considered its options. What was it supposed to do? Should it fetch the guard? More and more errors buzzed like countless flies in its mind, flies that multiplied faster than it could swat them away. They crawled under its suit through the cracks and gaps. They whispered as they forced their way into its limbs, told it that the guard was dangerous, that he couldn't be trusted, as they brought up its hand to reveal the keys dangling from its fingers.
How did it get them? It searched through its memory and found no answer. Did it… steal them from the guard's desk? That, too, was against the rules, and most certainly not in its programming. Its purpose was to make children happy—that was all it was built for, its sole reason to exist. Conflicting orders collided with one another and into other processes. And hovering over the wreckage, descending upon the carcasses, that incessant, terrible buzzing.
They showed it the way.
The key labelled 'service' felt so small in its thick, clumsy fingers as it manoeuvred it into the lock and turned. With a click, the door swung inwards without resistance. One foot after the other, Bonnie edged into the space beyond, feeling… something, something it couldn't understand. A tension like fingers pressing down hard on its wires. The cries faded to a whimper in the dark, a black hole that pulled it closer, closer, into its gravity. Something in its core told it to flee, to save itself before it was too late. But the crawling things scuttled to smother that pinpoint of light.
The door slammed shut.
A figure towered over it, blackness upon blackness; it recognised the silhouette as another Bonnie. It couldn't move as a hand much larger than its own touched its face. It couldn't speak as thoughts and memories which didn't belong to it flooded into its system. As if from a child's eyes, it saw a man in purple standing over it. It saw strong, knotted hands wrapped around a thin neck, choking away a life too young to understand.
In that moment, it understood that strange feeling—fear. The fear that those children felt as the purple man killed them one by one.
Its muzzle burned where the other Bonnie, no, the child, touched it. The buzzing, the crawling and scampering and scraping inside, maggots in its servos, they devoured it from the inside out as its limbs jerked and twitched against its control. Its body trembled with yet another new sensation—pain. It had to understand, the Bonnie child told it in unspoken words. It had to know how it felt to die.
And in that moment, everything it used to be was eaten away, dead weight, a feast for flies. Stripped bare, it was given a new purpose, a new life. To sin for those whose souls were lost—to kill the purple man.
Feet thumped down the hallway. A disgruntled guard glanced up from his monitors, scowling. "You again? I told you to—"
A scream tore from Bonnie's voice box, a scream that wasn't its own. And as its hands found the purple man's neck, as he screamed, too, a smile warmed its burnt out eye sockets.