As I parked my car on the side of the old dirt road, I took a look at the derelict structure before me. The sign, though faded and dirty from years of neglect, read "Fredbear's Family Diner." The silhouette of what was once a drawing of a cartoon bear was present next to the text, though time had eroded its colors to a dismal, lifeless gray. Dry, chipping paint created a complex web of cracks along the surface if the building's walls, and dusty windows provided no view but of darkness which swathed over the building's interior. The image was completed by a simple white sign in front of the padlocked door which said in large, bold red letters: "CONDEMNED."
My name is Fritz Smith. I am a former employee of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a chain of family-oriented pizzerias and the spawn of a corporate buyout of the Fredbear's brand. I served as a janitor there for several months. Every day I would come into work, keep silent, just do my job, and take the paycheck at the end of the week. I observed other employees from a distance, but otherwise I made no associations. I have a personal policy against rocking the boat in the workplace. However, I ended up violating this policy after the events that had transpired in my last month of employment at the pizzeria, during which the company that owned the establishment, Fazbear Entertainment, came under heavy scrutiny. Too many of the details were kept clandestine for me to say with certainty what had occurred, but I do know that several children allegedly went missing while visiting the restaurant. One of the employees did some digging, and started talking about the chain's progenitor, a small place known as Fredbear's Family Diner. I remember how twitchy and secretive he was in those days; so different from his ordinarily amicable, if awkward persona. He was always an odd fellow, but I had never seen him so anxious before. He never spoke with me about it, but I did overhear him making plans with the night guard to investigate the old diner.
For all I cared, that could have been the end of it; but that Sunday, there was an incident with one of the restaurant's animatronic mascots, and the poor guard, having been called in during the day to cover for another employee who had just been terminated, ended up with a crater where his frontal lobe used to be. I remember that day well – mopping up blood, sweeping away shards of bone, and gagging on the foul stench of spilled brains. I took up his regular guard duties that night, and found out the next day when I received my pink slip that the pizzeria had closed down because of the controversy surrounding recent events.
It was then that I received a phone call from the employee who had been researching Fredbear's (with whom I had never exchanged names), pleading to me to skip town posthaste. I remember his sorry sobbing. He was more distraught than anybody over what had happened to the night guard. I took pity on the poor soul, but chose not to comply with his request; instead, I decided to do him what I felt was one better and probe the old diner myself, on behalf of both him and his fallen friend. As much as I wished to simply dismiss his crying as weak-willed sentimentality, hearing such pitiful lamentation broke through to the emotions that I always tried so hard not to let gain sovereignty over me. That's why I found myself at an abandoned rest area dozens of miles away from civilization.
While I walked towards the decrepit structure, the wind whipped up a swirl of dust, bringing a harsh sting to my eyes. My vision blurred, making the darkness inside the restaurant appear to dance before me, as though it were a whirling swarm of fitful wraiths. Though all else settled after the passage of a few moments, the faintest hint of movement seemed to linger in the shadows even after my sight returned to me.
Approaching the door, I observed the rust-caked padlock and the aged chains which stymied my progress. I possessed no means to circumvent these obstacles, but I was able to discern that the bolts in one of the door's handles were very loose. I grasped the handle, pulled, and it quickly yielded, scattering yet more dust in the air. Another mouthful of ancient dirt was worth being granted passage into the ramshackle restaurant. The door creaked noisily as it opened. I stepped inside, and as the door shut behind me, all the world seemed to be separated from me; I had not noticed the ambient whispering of the wind and rustling of the grass until it was shut out from me. The silence came as a shock. Shutting the door had sealed out all noise, all reality.
The few streams of sun leaking through the holes in the wall proved insufficient in lighting the restaurant alone. I drew the yellow flashlight I had stored in my coat pocket, flicked its switch, and it produced a long, weak ray of light which illuminated the squalor of the diner. I saw before me a cashier's counter placed in front of a wall which segregated the area of entrance from the rest of the building, leaving room to the sides for patrons to be ushered to their seats or for employees to find their workstations. My flashlight lacked the potency to reveal anything beyond this partition. I took a deep breath of dust-filled air, and trekked onward down the right-hand path.
The echo of my footsteps filled the void of silence which constituted the restaurant's interior; I couldn't decide if this lone sound alleviated or compounded the eerie atmosphere of the place. This was all I heard as I made my way to the dining area.
Upon entering the large room I was immediately greeted by the musk of decaying, weather-eroded wood, combined with the scent of dust which persisted throughout all of the restaurant. Tables and chairs were scattered about, all coated with years of accumulated grunge and adorned with ribbons of dried paint. To the left of the room was a large set of double-doors leading to the kitchen, as well as two other doors which presumably led to some kinds of closets or management offices. To the left were the bathroom entrances and a visibly-broken emergency exit, its hinges violently smashed and its surface littered with deep scratches. Most notable, however, was the stage at the posterior end of the room. It consisted of black-stained boards of decaying wood; in the back was a large red curtain, half-eaten by moths. I chose to approach the stage, curious of what the curtain concealed.
The decrepit wooden floor very nearly collapsed as I traversed the platform, each step conjuring resounding creaks and snapping noises. Thankfully, as I parted the curtain with my arm and surveyed the area beyond it, I found three short steps leading back down to solid ground. Once I had reached the stable surface, I swept my flashlight across the backstage area. No items of note, simply typical stage performance supplies. I shone my light upon a costume rack which was located near the back wall, which, curiously, held nothing but a single coat hanger. I was just about to turn back when something on the wall behind the rack caught my eye – a large, deep gouge in the wall. I backed up to see the whole of it. The inscription proved to be quite sizable, as I was at the back of the room by the time I was able to perceive its message:
"IT'S ME"
Before I could take a moment to ponder the engraving, a raucous crashing noise coming from the dining area impacted my ears. I jerked in the direction of the sound, sweeping my light across the room. The curtain fluttered in the breeze which infiltrated the building through the cracks and holes in the walls, but there was no other movement in sight. I made my way back to the stage and past the curtains, and moved in for the kitchen door.
The kitchen was, by far, the darkest room in the restaurant that I had visited thus far. Nary a source of illumination was in sight; I was completely at the mercy of my flashlight. What little my beam of light could reveal was a filthy set of counters, with a blackened stove on the left, a rusted grill on the right, and dirty utensils strewn about the floor. A large refrigerator was lying on the ground, dried collections of unidentifiable fluids scabbing the tiles beneath it. I took care in stepping around it. As I stepped over the fridge, however, another clattering sound burst from before me. My muscles quickly constricted as I instinctively took a defensive pose and shone my light in front of me, only to find that I had merely kicked over some tin cans that were scattered on the ground. I breathed a sigh of relief as my body loosened up. That was, until I really took in what I was witnessing. The cans, they numbered in the dozens, possibly over one hundred, every single one of them empty. The one I had just knocked over, lying at the tip of my foot, was half-empty. The remainder of its contents were splattered all over my shoes. Still wet.
I left the kitchen. I wrote off the cans as having been torn open by hungry animals. I know not why I chose to believe such a conclusion; I suppose I was too agog to investigate the diner for my own good. Alas, a sense of danger did not register with me. I pressed onward in my expedition, towards the bathrooms.
While the door to the men's bathroom was wide open, the women's restroom, peculiarly enough, was locked. I did not feel particularly inclined to cause such a ruckus by kicking down the door as to attract whatever rabid vermin I was convinced populated the diner, leaving me with only one option; the men's room it was.
Shutting the bathroom door behind me to avoid the aforementioned pests, I found myself immediately lost in a pitch-black void. I had to remind myself to turn on my flashlight, though its luminescence was more meager than I would have liked. The walls and floor were made up of tiles, the spaces between each tile deeply imbued with ancient grime. There were three dirty urinals and three stalls. I glanced at the urinals; they were coated in various dark crusts and stains, but contained nothing of note, so I walked towards the stalls. Every footstep produced a sound which refracted off of the walls, assailing my eardrums with a most potent echo; I had to relegate the perception of this sound to my subconscious, lest all my thoughts be drowned out.
I checked the two stalls that were closest to the entrance first, as their doors were open. Both were roughly the same – scratched-up walls housing filthy toilets, both completely drained of water, with barren toiler paper rollers positioned next to them. The stalls were, for the most part, unremarkable, but the scratches on the walls gave off the slightest impression of purpose. They appeared random, but something about them planted a seed of doubt in me. Still, they lacked a discernible message. I moved on to the final stall.
The exceedingly loud creaking noise produced by my opening of the stall door proved unbearably cacophonous, almost causing physical pain as the sound waves bounced off of the bathroom's walls and bombarded my eardrums. This sensory assault distracted me in such a way that I ceased breathing through my mouth as I had since I entered the restroom, and instead let air in through my nose. Upon doing this, a horribly pungent odor invaded my olfactory sensibilities, causing me to double back in disgust. I stopped for a moment to let myself get over the reaction, before moving forth to inspect the smell's source.
Inside the toilet laid a huge pile of dried fecal matter. The porcelain itself was heavily stained with brown, some dark yellows, and some red. A white powder coated the pieces which resided deeper in the bowl, while those atop were occupied by an innumerable amount of flies. I vacated the stall immediately, simultaneously attempting to resist the lurching within my stomach. I swiftly exited the bathroom.
I stood outside the restrooms with my hands pressed against the wall parallel to their entrances, breathing heavily in an attempt to inhale what was, relatively speaking, fresh air. I coughed and gagged numerous times, no doubt alerting of my presence any living thing that may have been inhabiting the diner. I didn't care. I needed relief from that horrid miasma. It took several minutes, but, gradually, I managed to calm down. Silence returned to the restaurant. In this calm, I finally realized: The feces I had seen in that stall was most certainly human.
I decided it was finally time to leave. I got on my feet and made my way back to the entrance from which I arrived. I moved past the tables, past the cashier's counter, and approached the door. I placed my palms on the handles and pushed.
The doors did not yield.
Somehow, something had jammed the doors. I tried desperately to open them, violently shaking the handles, but my efforts were fruitless. I began hyperventilating. I jerked my head around, scanning for any open windows that may have been nearby, when a faint sound coming from the dining area stopped me in my tracks.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I ceased my rapid breaths. Right there and then, I should have run. I should have kicked the doors down, sprinted for my car, and escaped. Yet my feet towards the dining area. Call it curiosity, call it stupidity, I was drawn toward the noise. Alas, curse the human mind.
As I approached the source of the sound, it grew louder – not just because of proximity, but because whatever was creating it was intensifying its actions.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I sauntered through the dining area once more, trying to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. Upon getting close enough to the stage, I realized it was coming from behind the curtains. It grew louder still.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I stepped onto the stage, the boards creaking underneath me once more. My hands were shaking. My mouth was dry. Dread crept underneath my skin. Yet I could not cease!
Thump. Thump. THUMP.
My hand parted the curtain. I stepped beyond the partition, and into the enveloping darkness of the backstage. The sound was so loud, it was all I could comprehend.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Though it seemed to be coming from all around me, I knew the sound was coming from the farthest end of the room. I brought my flashlight up and shone it upon the source to finally reveal what it was.
Nothing.
The sound had abruptly terminated.
I was dumbfounded. I did not question the silence. I did not feel any more or less safe. I did not think at all. I was simply at a loss. Unconsciously, I took one step backward.
CRACK.
Suddenly, the flimsy wooden floor collapsed underneath me. Splintered wood scraped against my sides as I quickly dropped into a dark abyss, falling several feet until my back thudded against a hard concrete floor, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I gasped for air, then found myself coughing in pain at the expansion of my damaged back and ribs. I was hacking and sputtering for well over a minute before I stopped to take in my surroundings. In spite of the hole above, the place I was in was utterly devoid of illumination. I felt around for my flashlight, greatly worrying that it may have been lost in the fall. Thankfully, my hands soon found it. Unfortunately, its light was far more pallid than it had been prior to my descent. Still, I was satisfied enough to have something to combat the dancing shadows which surrounded me.
I was in a dank, barren concrete cellar with a ceiling of wood. Its smell was predominantly one of musty water and dust, but it was permeated ever so slightly by a hint of rot. The occasional resonance of a drop of water was all that existed to puncture the quiet. I shifted my hands to prop myself up – the ground was of a near-gelid temperature. I stood. Turning my flashlight in all directions, I found myself near three walls, the cellar only stretching onward north of me. I began to walk.
The darkness stretched on seemingly forever. No matter how far forward I walked, my beam of light never hit a wall. I was most certain that I could have no longer been underneath the diner. Where was I?
After what could have been an eternity of walking, I finally spotted a wall. Not just a wall; a wall with an old wooden door in the center of it. I approached it, but as I did so, an inexplicable dread gripped my being. I was standing right next to it. I placed a hand on the doorknob. Whispers. I could hear whispers. Deep, subtle whispering. They moaned and whirled, infiltrating my eardrums. And yet, I felt no winds. Was I finally going mad? Had I already gone mad long ago? A cold sweat coated my pores. I gulped.
I opened the door.
The whispered halted abruptly, allowing silence to flood back into the basement. I stood petrified for several seconds. My mind was blank, and yet, my hand forced the flashlight ahead of me. I turned it upwards and shone it into the small room before me.
A squatted figure stood in the center of the room. The ground beneath it was coated in dark brown crust, and the walls around it were covered with deep gashes, the one directly ahead of me reading "IT'S ME" as I had seen before, right behind an old wooden ladder that led up to a trapdoor. There would have been utter silence were it not for the sound of tearing meat. Positioned underneath the figure in the center of the room was a large, bloody hunk of viscera, a set of sharp, jagged teeth messily rending it to pieces. Its vicious snarfing and snarling were unmistakably that of a rabid animal. The creature ceased its consumption of its meal and turned its head. Two piercing white pinprick eyes locked with mine. Slowly, the creature began to shift.
It stood up.
Just as this happened, some of my flashlight's lost potency returned to it. I was only able to look for a moment, but it was more than enough to identify the thing.
It was a man. Easily over six feet tall, he wore a dirty white undershirt, had bare, calloused feet, and was clad in a tattered, blood-soaked lavender suit. His bright eyes and teeth were the only visible features of his face, for he concealed it with what I could only conclude was a mask depicting the diner's mascot, Fredbear: A cartoon bear of golden fur.
The man's jaw dropped, a horrible, high-pitched, feral screech emanating from him, piercing my ears. He rushed at me, moving impossibly quickly, far faster than I could have possibly reacted. I was only barely able to brace my footing when he rammed into me, one hand powerfully gripping my left arm like a vice, causing me to drop my flashlight. I tried to wrestle him away, but a sudden surge of sharp pain struck my right shoulder. I yelped, feeling as though part of me was on fire. The whole struggle was immensely disorienting, limbs flailing about in a mindless fight between a predator and its prey. Desperate, I slammed my knee into his groin. He doubled over, allowing me to scoop my flashlight off the floor, then turn and run down the hall.
I started to run. Looking at my shoulder, which was still throbbing in pain, I found that I had been stabbed with a large shard of unidentifiable bone. Every step I took moved it around in the wound, further tearing sinews and blood vessels and causing yet more agony and bleeding. It was unbearable, but I had to keep going. I had to escape.
I had only managed to run so far down the hall when the man jumped me from behind, tackling me to the ground. I rolled over to see him on top of me, head hanging just above mine. His mouth was wide open, his teeth broken and soaked in blood. His eyes, though totally white, managed to convey a crazed lust for death. He brought his head down, burying his teeth into my neck. I screamed, and scrambled for something to repel him. Knowing I had mere milliseconds to come up with a solution, I instinctively grasped the bone in my shoulder and tore it out of my flesh. I used it to smack him in the temple, separating him from me. In his moment of disorientation, I jammed the bone deep into his right eye, shredding the squishy, delicate membrane of his eyeball, producing a messy deluge of crimson. He screeched and fell back, writhing in torment. I followed with a hasty kick to his chest, knocking him onto his back as he screamed like a pig at the blade of a knife.
I scrambled to bring myself up and bolted down the hallway once more, both my shoulder and my neck hemorrhaging profusely. My balance suffered, and my vision began to fade in and out of blackness. Gouges appeared on the walls, first seeming random, then spelling out, "IT'S ME!"
I was almost to the end. Finally, I could see liberating beams of light streaming from the hole I had made in the ceiling from my entry. Surely, I could bring myself back up there if I just made it! Just a few more feet!
Then, after my vision returned from yet another fade, I found myself surrounded by pure blackness. My flashlight had ceased functioning, the air around me grew deathly frigid, and the sound of my footsteps echoed as though the room stretched on for miles around me. I stopped in my tracks. I was at a loss.
"Hello?" I called out.
I waited. Once my cry dissipated, there was silence. I was ready to yell again, but the sound of whispers kicked up in a breeze of cold air. The same whispers as before. They began soft, but gradually grew louder; yet, I could not apprehend their meaning. Still, they became more and more cacophonous, until it felt as though their source was directly within my head. I shut my eyes and grasped my ears, desperately trying to shut them out, but it was to no avail. I could hear tongues; babbling and chanting in a language long dead, long forgotten. I screamed, but I could not hear myself over the hellish whispers. They drowned out all thought, reducing my mind to nothing but pain and terror.
Then, suddenly, they stopped.
I opened my eyes and uncovered my ears. I looked ahead in the darkness. That's when I heard another voice; a single, deep, evil voice:
"IT'S ME!"
A flash of red light blinded me momentarily, sending a sharp spike of pain through my brain. Upon opening them, I saw the familiar golden image of Fredbear standing before me, posture slumped, arms hanging limply, jaw agape, left ear missing, eyes and mouth substituted with empty black voids. It was a mascot costume. The same reported to have been used to lure children away back at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
The costume took a step forward. As it did, blood began to gradually seep out of the seams in its body. Another step. The costume's visage began to distort, as though it were a picture on a broken computer screen. Another step.
It was right in front of me.
The thing simply stared at me with its empty eye sockets. A rattling noise faintly emanated from its insides, but otherwise one could have sworn it were inanimate. All it did was stand before me, towering above my height. My vision faded to black again.
When my sight came back, the costume had grabbed my shoulders and put its face right next to mine, jaw tearing wide open much farther than it should have been able to. A horrible, ear-splitting sound came from its mouth, a simultaneous screeching of metal and a deep, demonic roar. Thick, chunky tar oozed from its eye holes as shadowy tendrils, black as the night, burst from its mouth. All I could comprehend was horror, even my most basic instincts failing to act. The tendrils crawled into my mouth, nostrils, and ears, writhing around within my brain, and yet causing no physical damage. Nay, they encroached upon my very essence. I violently seized as blood began to leak from my eyes, filling my sight with dark red. My brain felt as though it were about to burst, my mind deteriorating into a hellish phantasmagoria.
Then, just as quickly as it had started, the vision stopped. The thing was gone. The streaks of blood under my eyes had disappeared. The dark void around me had vanished. I was lying on my back, looking upward at some kind of light. I knew not where I was; if I was still underground or if I were somewhere else entirely, I could not tell. I felt weightless, as well as tired. Oh so very tired.
I shut my eyes and let sleep take me.