The teacher stood by the darkened wood desks at the front of the narrow classroom, fingers meshed together and a stern look on his face while the parents entered the room and quietly closed the door behind them. A quiet family, business-like, strict and very formal. The mother, still wearing her work uniform, tottering on absurdly high heels, and the father in his jacket and tie, a small hat on his head that was somehow maintaining balance there.
As they walked to the front of the room, they passed their unfortunate offspring who was sitting in the middle row of desks, one arm propped up so his chin was cupped in his hand, eyes staring at the rotting wood of his desk where someone had found a needle or a sharp object and written into it in their classroom boredom. The entire room was boring - dark, threatening, more like a prison than a school. Outside it was quiet - the other children had already left, eager to return home.
Only one such unfortunate child couldn't relish the freedom of the end of the day, and here he was, sat at his desk, waiting for fate to decide on the scales. He was dressed too smartly for any school - excluding the first day, of course. Many children were comfortable in any kind of leisure wear - tidy, but still comfortable for them to move around in. He himself was dressed in a white button-up shirt with a bowtie at the collar, looking more ready to attend a party or an important dinner than to go to school. Only his white shirt was covered in flecks of mud and some scrapes of dirt from being outside.
He kept away from the adults as they spoke, but he wasn't miserable, nor was he fed up. He was content, having expected this outcome and was patiently waiting for it to end. For, you see, Freddy was incredibly intelligent for his age. Not only was he well polished and groomed on the inside, his mind was just as much cleaned. Holding facts and calculations that others in his class struggled with. Which is what made him the prime target.
He glanced towards the window, staring outside rather than at the horribly unkept desk he was sat at. Only the contents of his desk were pleasing to see - the crude writing, the dark musky wood of the desk, even the horrible squeak of its aged legs were best left ignored.
Usually, Freddy wouldn't stare out of the window - he'd be focused and sharp, but this time something had caught his eye, or so he thought. He shifted his chair closer to the window, leaning up a bit to peer out. He could have sworn he saw a person - no, not an adult, but a boy like himself out there, rooting through the rubbish bin where the grotesque dinnerlady shoved the leftovers. It had been a glimpse, but Freddys sharpness hadn't caught up in time and when he'd looked properly the other was gone. He was beginning to imagine it when something made a cracking noise on his desk, and his head whirled around to look up at his teacher calmly. Any other child would've jumped out of their skin - their teacher was particularly cruel.
"Freddy, you may go now. Think about how you act next time you're handling your classmates."
Freddy didn't have the idiocity to respond to the comment - it would be a punishment waiting to happen, so he nodded his head obediently, and slid to his feet, walking as far ahead of his unfortunate parents as he could.
The teacher wouldn't have believed him had he tried. The boys in his class were brutes, constantly roughing each other up in fights and picking on the squirrel-like kids who were petrified of them. It wasn't a surprise to say that Freddy had gotten on their wrong side far too often. They provoked his intelligence and his constant smart remarks back aggrovated them into trying to start a fight. Freddy wasn't the best at combat but he was smart enough to predict how they were going to act. The first time it had happened he'd done nothing but watched their actions, but now he'd practically studied their fighting to a point that he avoided most of their hits. It was a shame his intelligence didn't get him further in responding to their commentary.
It was a long walk home for Freddy and his parents, who were talking to one another quietly. Freddy could conclude they were either talking about him or business matters, so neither really mattered to him, and he focused on his own thoughts, only being pulled out of them by the one thing that distracted him every time.
He knew it was coming up, so he waited and slowed his walk until his parents were ahead of him, before he stopped walking and nimbly crossed the road. The road was almost empty of cars because not many people could afford to run them, so he didn't have to worry about looking both ways. The reason he crossed the road was not far from where he'd crossed, so he walked briskly towards it so he could just stop for longer and marvel at it through the window.
The local pizzeria. He'd heard about it from other kids from a distance, how they'd had parties there, how the mascots walked around and greeted kids and how generally it was a playful environment. Freddy was by no means childish, but he did have the curiosity that often accompanied children and so it was this that made him stop every day. Looking through the window at the children inside eating their pizza, a mascot towering over them and making hand gestures.
The pizzeria had no name, and the mascots were equally as nameless - to Freddy, that was. It would have been creative to add names to the place, to make them more memorable, but it wasn't a good idea to dwell on it. His parents never took him there and never would, by the looks of it. They had a disliking for greasy restaraunts like this, and a particular disliking for mascots. They were demeaning, apparently.
Freddy simply put it to the idea that, one day, when he was older, he'd go in just to see for himself what it was like, what he'd missed. But right now he had limited time and had to walk a little quicker to catch up with his parents, who had reached the end of the road surely by now. He managed to tear his eyes away from the small stage where the mascots were climbing onto, and turned to run across the road after his family members.
One day, maybe he could own a place like that. He knew his parents would want him in business and with a mind like his it would be stupid not to, but he liked the atmosphere that came with places like that. And he wouldn't be doing the greasy work like cooking or the work like dressing in a suit. He'd be designing it and running it himself, and he already knew who his mascot would be.
At home, Freddy had only one possession in his room he cared more for than anything else, and that was his old stuffed bear named Goldie. He'd never given Goldie his name - his parents had always played the name on the gold fur that Goldie had used to have, and as he grew up the name seemed to stick. But the gold fur didnt, as it faded to a musky cream and then almost to grey. But Goldie was special because, in a way, Goldie gave Freddy his childhood. He brought about Freddys imagination and his need to learn more about everything. And Freddy, despite being more mature now, still loved his bear. Only once he'd slept without Goldie nearby - when his family insisted on washing the bear to try and get the grey out - and that was the only time Freddy had had a nightmare. It had been dark, with only two eyes staring at him, then two hands reaching out. Not for his throat, not for his chest - for his eyes. He'd woken up at the 'touch' and been unable to sleep for the rest of the night. Goldie made him feel safe. Yes, Goldie would be his mascot at his future pizzeria.
Freddy Fazbears Pizzeria.