The story of love and life in a time of exile and despair. A Five Nights at Freddy's Fanfiction
It all began in the washroom of a fifth street cafe in Paris. The evening dew had just settled on the plates and glasses outside when Nick walked over to the back room. The crusty porcelain plates jingled as he strode over to the rooms gaping interior. Nick set them in the sink, grabbed his broom, and leaned against the sink. He closed his eyes and began to dream of another place, another time, somewhere on a train...
The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of burnt timber. Nick sat downon the bundle of canvas and bedding the baggage man had pitched out of the door of the baggagecar. There was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country. The thirteen saloonsthat had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion Househotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that wasleft of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scatteredhouses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The riverwas there. It swirled against the log spires of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brownwater, colored from the pebbly bottom, and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in thecurrent with wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their again by quick angles, only tohold steady in the fast water again. Nick watched them a long time.
He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many trout in deep, fastmoving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex surface of thepool its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the log-driven piles of the bridge. At the bottom of the pool were the big trout. Nick did not see them at first. Then he sawthem at the bottom of the pool, big trout looking to hold themselves on the gravel bottom in avarying mist of gravel and sand, raised in spurts by the current.
Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up thestream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were verysatisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in along angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through thesurface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface,his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current unresisting, to his post under thebridge where he tightened facing up into the current.
Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling. He turned and looked downthe stream. It stretched away, pebbly-bottomed with shallows and big boulders and a deep pool asit curved away around the foot of a bluff.
Nick walked back up the ties to where his pack lay in the cinders beside the railway track. He washappy. He adjusted the pack harness around the bundle, pulling straps tight, slung the pack onhis back got his arms through the shoulder straps and took some of the pull off his shoulders by leaning his forehead against the wide band of the tump-line Still, it was too heavy. It was muchtoo heavy. He had his leather rod-case in his hand and leaning forward to keep the weight of thepack high on his shoulders he walked along the road that paralleled the railway track, leaving the burned town behind in the heat, and shell turned off around a hill with a high, fire-scarred hill oneither side onto a road that went back into the country. He walked along the road feeling, theache from the pull of the heavy pack. The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill His muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind,the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs, It was all back of him.
From the time he had gotten down off the train and the baggage man had thrown his pack out ofthe open car door things had been different Seney was burned, the country was burned over andchanged, but it did not matter. It could not all be burned that. He hiked along the road, sweatingin the sun, climbing to cross the range of hills that separated the railway from the pine plains.
The road ran on, dipping occasionally, but always climbing hill. He went pm up Finally the roadafter going parallel to the burnt hill he reached the top. Nick leaned back against a stump andslipped out of the pack harness. Ahead of him, as far as he could see, was the pine plain. The burned country stopped of off at the left pith the range of hills. 011 ahead islands of dark pinetrees rose out of the plain Far off to the left was the line of the river. Nick followed it with his eyeand caught glints of the water in the sun.
There was nothing but the pine plain ahead of him, until the far blue hills that marked the LakeSuperior height of land. He could hardly see them faint and far away in the heat-light over the plain.If he looked too steadily they were gone. But if he only half-looked they were there, the far-off hills of the height of land.
Nick sat down against the charred stump and smoked a cigarette. His pack balanced on the topof the stump harness holding ready, a hollow molded in it from his back. Nick sat smoking,looking out over the country He did not need to get his map out. He knew where he was from the position of the river.
As he smoked his legs stretched out in front of him, he noticed a grasshopper walk along theground and up onto his woolen sock. The grasshopper was black. As he had walked along theroad, climbing, he had started grasshoppers from with dust. They were all black They were notthe big grasshoppers with yellow and black or red and black wings whirring out from their blackwing sheathing as they fly up. These were just ordinary hoppers, but all a sooty black in color.Nick had wondered about them as he walked without really thinking about them. Now, as he watched the black hopper that was nibbling at the wool of his sock with its four way lip he realizedthat they had all turned black from living in the I burned-over land. He realized that the fire musthave come the year before, but the grasshoppers were all black now. He wondered how long they would stay that way.
Carefully he reached his hand down and took hold of the hopper by the wings. He turned him up,all his legs walking in the air, and looked at his jointed belly. Yes, it was black too, iridescentwhere the back and head were dusty.
"Go on, hopper," Nick said, speaking out loud for the first time "Fly away somewhere."
He tossed the grasshopper up into the air and watched him sail away to a charcoal stump acrossthe road.
Nick stood up. He leaned his back against the weight of his pack where it rested upright on thestump and got his arms through the shoulder straps. He stood with the pack on his back on thebrow of the hill looking out across the country, toward the distant river and then struck down the hillside away from the road. Underfoot the ground was good walking. Two hundred yards downthe fire line stopped. Then it was sweet fern, growing ankle high, walk through, and clumps ofjack pines; a long undulating country with frequent rises and descents, sandy underfoot and the country alive again.
Nick kept his direction by the sun. He knew where he wanted to strike the river and he kept onthrough the pine plain, mounting small rises to see other rises ahead of him and sometimes fromthe top of a rise a great solid island of pines off to his right or his left He broke off some sprigs of the Leathery sweet fern, and put them under his pack straps. The chafing crushed it and hesmelled it as he walked..
Nick spotted up ahead in a closing clearing a woman standing in the shade. She wore a revealing tattered overalls that looked and smelled much like wet socks. As Nick approached, she turned to him slowly, arms outstretched, welcoming him to her. Nick approached hesitantly as he had believed this are would have been abandoned. He walked closer hesitantly at first, but gained more confidence and strove forward.
"Hello." He managed to squeak before she rushed towards him arms outright like daggers driving to his throat.
Nick tried to move, but his feet seemed like solid rock, melded with the soil after years of neglect. She leapt atop him thrusting him to the group and sending his pack flying off. He struggled under he impossibly powerful grip as he held his hands down with hers and his legs down with her knees.
"Hello..." She grinned revealing a perfect row of razor sharp teeth. Her eyes scanned Nick's body first his trimmed hair, his unbuttoned shirt, and finally his protruding pants. She made a sound similar to that of a cat mewing, almost like a "owo". She stared defiantly at his bulge, "What's this?" she gaped.