I'm totally into Five Nights at Freddy's right now, not a clue how that happened, but this story came to my mind. It started out as a one shot (see "Janus" on my profile), but I wanted to make a full story. On deviantart you can also find some of my artwork - search for "Cedidit". (Can't include links - sorry.)
I'll cover the 1987 timeline, the missing children and the Bite of '87. This is just a little prelude.
This not a Purple Guy x Phone guy fanfic (though my storylines tend to do whatever they want without asking for my permission... I haven't planned it, but lookwhat happened last time I said something like that.)
It's named after the song "Monster" by Imagine Dragons; check it out!
Anyway, enjoy!
"There's nothing to worry about."
Vincent shot his friend a doubtful glance, but didn't say anything.
The summer sun was burning down on them, but Vincent didn't notice. To any outsider, he would appear perfectly calm, but inside, he was cringing for every passing second. The heat didn't make it better either. He hated it so much.
"How did you get this job in the first place?"
Scott rubbed his already sunburned neck. He was small for a man, a foot smaller than his best friend, barely more than five feet six. The wide uniform shirt with the restaurant's logo couldn't conceal his somewhat chubby shape. A round face with big green-brown eyes looked over the empty street, with neatly trimmed traces of beard on his chin in the same rusty brown color as his short hair. He looked no older than a high school student at best, despite being already past his college years.
"You know, my Dad isn't all for helping me anymore and that... he's friends with the manager of this place. Uh.. well, not actually friends, more like the manager owed him a favor."
"And now you're the security manager? How did that happen? You started like three weeks ago."
Scott smiled nervously. Almost all his smiles looked like that, unless he was really hooked on something. Maybe that was part of the aura of adolescence that surrounded him.
"I'm not... I'm just sort of doing his job. Low budget and all that. It's nothing worth overtime, actually. Come on, let's go before the boss wonders why we're standing here. Stop being so nervous. He'll love you." There was not just a bit of jealousy in Scott's voice.
Vincent shrugged and opened the glass door. Over their heads a robot bear with a hat and a bow tie presented himself to the visitors.
The temperature dropped what felt like twenty degrees in a split second and they were greeted by noise. The windows were frosted over with foil and relatively soundproof at that, but in here, it was impossible to ignore. Voices, faint traces of song, laughter, a baby crying. The walls were gray, colorful triangles sprinkled into the mass. On the height of an adult's waist, a green and blue two-row chessboard pattern ran along the wall, framed by a red line over and under it. The paper-mach image of pizza slices competed with colorful posters of the restaurant's mascots.
"It looks like this everywhere," Scott said. His tone left open if that was an apology or not. Everything was bright, and colorful, and pumped up to ridicule.
There was a short corridor on the right. Dimly, there was the outline of a door at the end, with the sign "Employees only". In the right corner were two walls forming a sort of separate room inside this room. They could see small children running around something on the floor, laughing wildly. Something round flew through the air like a tiny cannon ball.
Vincent caught it in an automatic motion before it hit his face.
It was an eyeball.
He needed several moments to understand it was plastic and glass. One golden eye, the shining outside scratched and full of tiny, dirty fingerprints.
"That's mine," a high-pitched voice said. Vincent looked down at an approximately five year old girl with blond pigtails. From her attitude she could have been the boss of the whole company.
"Huh?", Vincent asked, still wondering about the eyeball.
"Are you stupid? That's mine. Give it back."
There was a significant pause before Vincent answered. "You shouldn't throw it around then," he said. God, he hated it when kids were like that.
The girl's nostrils flared. In a second, she would cry for her mother or someone else and all hell would break loose.
Scott handed the girl the eyeball. "Please shut the door in Kid's Cove, yes?" The girl looked at him as if she wanted to start a fight anyway, but then she turned on her heels and marched back to the opening between the two walls, which turned out to be a door. She vanished and it slammed shut.
In the brief moment before that, the two adults could see a mess of limb-like parts piled onto each other, a white-pink hand and a vaguely fox-like head. The kids were throwing it around, ripping out every piece they could find.
Vincent flinched when Scott slapped his shoulder and pushed him towards the next room. "I know. But the customer is king. You won't have anything to do with them."
While they walked, swerving around customers – mostly kids in various states of disarray due to pizza – Vincent made a mental layout of the place. The Entrance, Kid's Cove. Next was a giant room, impossible to overview. They were greeted by a wave of the music they had heard all along, blended in with the background. The text was some lunacy about how everybody was happy, but Vincent recognized the melody as a part of Richard Wagner's opera "The Flying Dutchman". Any classics lover would have run away screaming.
The air was hot and smelled of fast food.
"There are three cameras alone for this room," Scott said. "The Show Stage, the Prize Corner and the Game area." He pointed in different directions.
They swerved around a carousel and some tables with balloons and ridiculously big gift boxes to reach the exit. Vincent got a look at the stage. The three famous animatronics were on stage, performing for the kids that were mostly running around screaming. Freddy Fazbear, Chica the Chicken and Bonnie the Bunny. It was incredible how fluent they moved, considering they were robots. And frankly, somewhat disturbing. Freddy's ears twitched and he turned his head as he sang in a clear bass voice. The blue eyes locked into Vincent's and the young man froze.
"They're pretty good, huh?", Scott said. He sounded so proud as if he had built them himself. He didn't seem to notice anything was off.
Freddy looked at them, No he was looking right at Vincent, as if he was actually seeing him, and didn't turn his head away. This was a bad joke. The eyes were plastic, after all. They only looked alive by a trick of light.
Vincent turned around and shook his head. "Yeah... really. Interesting technology, too."
"That's why the boss will be glad to have you."
They left behind the big room and followed a corridor along a hall with the bathrooms on the right. Here, too: Chessboard floor, posters, paper-mach pizza, glittering stars hanging from the ceiling.
In front of them was a room titled "Parts / Service" with another sticker "Employees only".
They turned to the left, down another hallway with two doors on both sides. It was loud. It was really loud.
"The party rooms," Scott explained.
They stopped in front of a huge metal rectangle. It wasn't a door in any way, rather the opposite, and looked like it belonged in a bunker. The office was rectangular. On both sides were big vent openings. In the middle stood a desk with a metal fan and something like a computer tablet. More stars swung from the ceiling, now mixed with cables and flexible pipes, moving in the stream of the air conditioning. A big poster of the animatronic band "decorated" the wall. The entrance was framed by piles of ancient screens on both sides.
Scott knocked on the metal frame and the man at the desk looked up. He was in his sixties and thin as a skeleton, with a tanned, broad face and a mob of neatly trimmed gray hair. The eyes were very light, almost translucent, and their gaze could have cut through a brick wall. Where everything else had been spared with mass, his hands made up for it. They seemed as big a shovels.
"Ah, Steven!"
"Uhm... my name is Scott," Scott said in a tiny voice. The man stared at him and then laughed.
"Of course. Sorry." His piercing gray eyes focused on Vincent. "I always make jokes like that. Excuse me. And you're the young man Scott said would like to take the night shift?"
They stepped into the office and in front of the desk. The old man stood up.
"My name is Adrian Laroche. I'm the manager of this restaurant." He let his gaze wander over him. Vincent knew exactly what he saw:
A tall young man, 26 years old, not muscular, rather scrawny, with a slender face and that kind of everyday attractiveness nobody really noticed. He was mediocrity in person. Except for one thing.
His hair was an even color of lilac, matching his eyes. At night, one might mistake it for black, but at night all cats were gray, or so the saying went. It was purple, pure and simple. The hair was usually down to his shoulders, but more or less pulled back into a ponytail now, except a few wild strands that had refused to be tamed and fell around his face and into his forehead.
How often had he already heard people ask if he was "some sort of punk". It wasn't even that he saw it as an insult – that particular movement was merely one more stream in so many new surges of rebellious youth. The real insult was that nobody accepted it was natural, a condition no doctor had been able to explain. Every last hair on his body was this color, and eyebrows and the traces of beard proved that to everyone who bothered wondering, even if it wasn't obvious against his pale skin.
"Vincent de Briss," he introduced himself after a few seconds, not turning his eyes away.
The managed nodded and looked down at a file. "I hope you understand we had to make a few inquiries about your person. It's mandatory for establishments aiming at young customers."
Inquiries? "Of course."
He didn't smile, didn't show a reaction. The old man did, though. "It says here you have a degree in engineering. I'm impressed. And relieved, to be honest. The company is on a tight budget and frankly, we can't afford a repairman all the time. Kids are so violent these days."
Vincent thought of the mess in Kid's Cove. Some passionate part of him cringed at it.
"Of course, the work will be included in your weekly payment. Did Scott tell you everything?"
"From 10 PM to midnight everything gets cleaned up and I'm to watch the monitors from 12 AM to 6 AM and take care nobody breaks in."
"Exactly. Well, if you feel like it and get bored, you might want to check out the animatronics in storage. Scott will show them to you later. We are currently switching between various casts: The old animatronics, the new toy versions and the original two. The old ones should be put into storage sooner or later, but the company is still working on the systems for the new band. They wanted to make the characters more kid-friendly and all that. Also, they have facial scanners tied into the criminal data banks. They call the police if a predator comes near the kids. There have been a few glitches, so they're out of order right now, except for Toy Foxy in Kid's Cove.
And then we have the Spring Suits. It would be great if you could check them out first. Spring Bonnie and Golden Freddy were the original mascots of the first restaurant, or so I was told. They are animatronics and can be worn as suits, but there have been... problems in other locations. But maybe that was only these new manufactured ones. Anyway, I'm glad to have you here. You may call me Adrian."
He offered his hand. Vincent stared down at it. "That's all?"
Adrian laughed, showing broad, white teeth. "Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's."
Tell me what you think.
I can't guarantee my time line will be 100% perfect, considering there are so many questions still left even now. So I sort of figured out my own time line which I'll stick to.
I'm already working on the first chapter, so stay tuned.