Timelines make my head hurt. I just wanted to write a little something about miserable dead children.

I was picturing Chica as "I" and Bonnie as "you", but honestly either character could be any of them. I don't actually expect Purple Guy to have given a lot of thought to matching his victims' genders to the genders of the animatronics.

Unbirthday

When the screaming has given way to gurgling and blood oozes from the seams of the spare, I say to you, in the secret soundless speech of the unliving, It's my birthday.

It's not that I wanted to tell you in particular. It's just that the others have moved on already, and I want to tell someone. I think of the birthdays I had Before, not many of them. Every year I'd run downstairs in the morning and say guess what day it is? Mom would guess and guess until I started to panic, fearing she really didn't know, and she'd sweep me up in her arms and kiss my cheeks and open the cabinet where she'd hidden my present.

Did you want a party? The sneer in your unvoice makes up for your frozen expression.

I just wanted someone to know, I say.

How do you know?

I know from three days ago, when I saw the TV, the news, through the office window, and it said it was three days until Easter. My birthday was on Easter. Mom used to decorate my cakes with malted milk eggs. Funny I should remember that, and our guessing game, when I can't remember Mom's face or my name or how long it's been since the last time I licked frosting off malted milk eggs.

You don't care about all that, though, so I just say, I know.

You don't say anything as you shuffle out of the backstage into the party room. I'm not surprised. We all go months without speaking to each other now, not like at first. At first, when we thought this couldn't be real or forever, when it was just a crazy adventure like in a cartoon and we were going to defeat the monster through the power of friendship, we would talk all the time, about where we'd come from and what we would do once this was all over. Hug our moms and dads, eat our favorite foods, never come back here again, that's for sure.

But the conversation dried up around the same time as the optimism. What's there to say, now, that can't be said with the screech and bark of a voicebox? We can't even make small talk about the weather.

I think about weather a lot. Rain on my face, sun on my shoulders, snow on my tongue.

I follow you to the party room and stand a few feet behind you, resting my eyes on you like they're heavy things you're helping me carry. You must feel them, because you ask, what do you want?

What don't I want? I used to make long birthday wishlists, talking dolls and ponies with hair you could brush, things made of plastic with painted-on faces. How could I possibly have appreciated how much I already had? Scratching an itch, crawling into bed, taking a bath, brushing my hair, having a drink of water, being light-limbed and soft-skinned. Laughter. Dreams.

I can't remember her name or what she looked like, but I had an older sister, Before. She and Mom would scream at each other and she would storm up to her room in tears, slamming the door behind her. It's hard being a teenager, Mom told me, clucking her sympathy. You want so much, and it's all just out of reach.

Although I don't know which birthday this is, or would be, I think I must be a teenager. Each night feels like a thousand years here, so there's no gauging time, but I want so much, and absolutely all of it is far out of my reach.

My friends are getting cars for their birthdays, I tell you. They're wearing makeup and staying out late and being asked to prom.

Your friends are right here, you say.

I hate you. It's not fair.

Your eyes slide toward the backstage door, indicating the body twitching its last in the spare. Nothing is fair.

I hate you even more. As if it's any comparison. As if any of them could possibly appreciate our suffering. At least they lived long enough to go to their proms.

I think they would understand if they knew what it's like for us. If they felt the grief and the anger we feel, and had as few outlets as we have, they would hurt anyone they could get their hands on, too.

If they felt the regret we feel, if they knew what it was like to be perpetually tortured by one little mistake, a moment too many out of Mom's sight, a shade too much trust in nice-seeming men wearing teddy bear costumes, if they heard the voices in their heads screaming stupid stupid stupid and knew in their bones, in the only organic matter to which they could lay claim, that it was their fault, and that live burial in a moving sarcophagus was their rightful punishment for being so stupid, they would have to forgive us for behaving badly.

Don't you ever think about it? I say. What we'd be doing if we weren't here?

No.

Don't lie to me. I don't hate you anymore. In fact, I feel a little sorry for you, even as I know you're probably feeling sorry for me. I go over to the sound system and turn on some music, tinkly and upbeat. Let's pretend.

What? you say.

Let's go to prom. Just for a few minutes. I extend an arm to you. Dance with me.

Why should I?

Well, you said you were my friend.

Our fingers aren't dexterous enough to lace, but I can put my palm against yours. My neck doesn't bend enough for me to lay my head on your shoulder, but I can look into your eyes. They look back at me, bulbous and unblinking, crusted with blood and mucus. What a grotesque pair we make. I might laugh, if I were on the outside watching it, and not on the inside (un)living it.

We move in circles around the party room, wrapped in the sounds of ridiculous children's music and creaking, clunking machinery. If I close my eyes, I can imagine myself as a teenage girl in a long sparkling dress, dancing with a boy during a slow song at prom. I smell his cologne and feel his warm hands on my waist. He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. You look so beautiful, he murmurs.

After a little while, I open my eyes. I want to smile, although with this face, it's probably best that I can't. Tell me I'm beautiful.

But you said not to lie.

I should have expected that. It shouldn't hurt as much as it does. I just thought… I step backward, away from you. You don't care what I thought. Inside…

Inside? What, your soul? Your unvoice is cold. Your soul isn't beautiful. It's covered in blood.

I hate you again. I know that you like to think you've driven out all the human in you, that it's easier for you to pretend you've always been a monster, but do you need your lies so badly that you can't tell me just one?

I would be almost grown-up by now, I tell you, in the closest thing my unvoice can make to a shout, and no one's ever called me beautiful, not even once.

I want to cry, and remembering that I can't makes me want to cry more. I want to feel my face getting hot, my throat tightening, my nose starting to run, but all I can do is moan, the noise crackling in my voicebox. I smash my hand down on the sound system until the music stops.

The pain feels huge inside me, it takes up the whole world. There's no way to let it out. I could drag the guard's body out of the spare and tear his limbs from their sockets, but there'd be no relief without resistance. I hate him for being dead already. I hate the others because I know this wouldn't have gone any differently with them. I hate my mom because I bet she's forgotten me, I bet she doesn't even care that it's my birthday and I'd be a teenager now.

I hate everything and everyone, except the one I should hate most. It's hard to feel anything so strong for someone I didn't know even as well as I come to know the night guards. I never so much as saw his face.

I hear you come up behind me. Your mom probably did, you say, when you were little.

Then you walk away, leaving me alone in the dark. I was afraid of the dark Before. I guess I still am.

I know most others would hear little kindness in those words, but that's probably the kindest thing any one of us has said to another in a long time. Beauty, inside or out, is beside the point; whatever you suppose my mom did when I was little, you admitted that I had a mom, that I was little, and if I was, so were we all. You lowered your shield, if only for a moment, to offer me a small measure of comfort.

It's not much, hardly anything, but it's enough. If it weren't, what could I do?

xxx

...is the FNaF fandom even still a thing?