Sunday, November 18th, 1987
About midnight
When Jeremy Fitzgerald entered the room through the large, doorless opening, the very first word he thought was: quaint. Not that he'd been expecting anything more. Still, it struck him how simple and very unostentatious the relatively spacious security room was.
The room was in a state of disrepair, though it looked as though someone was trying with all their effort to make it appear otherwise. The fan, small colorful bead decorations hanging from the ceiling, and security monitors stacked against the opposite wall weren't enough to make the room with grimy metal walls, papers taped to the walls, and loose tubing that dangled from the ceiling like skinned snakes look like an office. Not to mention the feeble yellow lighting, lack of a door, and large air vents that sat in the wall on either side of him like black, pitless eyes watching him.
He shuffled behind the thin wooden desk that sat further back in the space, kicking his duffel bag underneath and sighing. "What could go wrong?" he mocked the Help Wanted ad from the newspaper, the one he'd seen and had eventually led to him agreeing to work the night shift Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a restaurant run by penny-pinching boss who smelled constantly of pepperoni. "What could go wrong! I could get fired and stuck playing security guard at some overrated, spooky-ass pizza place." Not to mention disgusting, he thought, noticing a sour scent that tickled at his nose. Smells like sweat. Yuck.
Jeremy plopped down heavily into the office chair, rolling toward the desk with ease on the tile flooring. He pulled three wrapped mini burgers out of the paper bag he was holding and set his soda off to the side on the desk. When he looked around him and didn't spot a garbage can, he shrugged and stuffed the paper bag into his duffel.
It took him less than ten minutes to finish the burgers, and when he was finished, the foil wrappings lying in crumpled balls on the desk before him, Jeremy found himself profoundly bored. A few loose-leaf pages of paperwork lay on the wooden surface, work he didn't have to have done until the end of the week arrived. Despite his boredom, Jeremy found he was unable to bring himself to do the paperwork just yet. Instead, he began idly switching through the camera feeds while absently sipping on his soda straw.
After being left unemployed due to a complete misunderstanding at work, Jeremy had decided he needed to stop and assess his situation. That was something he'd always been praised for in his younger days: his ability to use his head in midst of collapse, to provide a solution no matter how hopeless the problem. So, Jeremy had carried on, and despite the countless jobs he was turned down from because of the "incident at his last job", he only experienced three sleepless nights where he lay awake, his asthma and thoughts of doubt keeping him from getting rest.
That was when Jeremy had spotted the article in the newspaper. "Help Wanted," it had read in bold black letters. Then under that, in a smaller font: "Grand Re-Opening! Vintage pizzeria given new life! Come be a part of the new face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. What could go wrong?" Displayed was a phone number, a photograph of three waving animal-looking robots with unsettling smiles, and the amount of pay per week. With a weekly paycheck of $100.50, it was shit pay. Jeremy was aware that he'd be working for only something like four dollars per hour - minimum wage. But he was desperate, and he got the job without any trouble at all. He was fully aware that he was the only one who called about the night shift opening, and that the only reason the pizza restaurant accepted his application was because the Freddy's chain had a past even shadier than his. But still, he managed to become employed once more, which a constant income which he could rely on, albeit very little.
The telephone on the desk in front of him rang suddenly, knocking Jeremy out of his camera surfing daze so abruptly he nearly dropped his drink. "Who the hell- at this hour?!" he exclaimed. Though it was very early into his shift, it was still past midnight - relatively late to be making calls. He waited and let the call go to voicemail.
"Uh, hello? Hello, hello?" the message began. The voice was high-pitched and friendly. "Uh, hello and welcome to your new summer job at the new and improved Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Uh, I'm here to talk you through some of the things you can expect to see during your first week here and to you get started down this new and exciting career path." Jeremy scoffed at the last part. 'Exciting' wasn't exactly the word he would have used.
The voice went on, somewhat mechanically, though Jeremy found himself warming up to it. It was nice to have something to do, something to listen to. As he set down the security monitors' remote and turned his full attention toward the message, however, what he heard made him frown. "Uh, now, I want you to forget anything you may have heard about the old location, you know. Uh, some people still have a somewhat negative impression of the company. Uh… that old restaurant was kind of left to rot for quite a while, but I want to reassure you, Fazbear Entertainment is committed to family fun and above all, safety. They've spent a small fortune on these new animatronics" - the things shown in the Help Wanted ad picture? Jeremy shook his head. He had no idea why anyone would spend money on something so ugly - "uh, facial recognition, advanced mobility, they even let them walk around during the day. Isn't that neat?" The voice paused, and whoever it belonged to cleared his throat. "But most importantly, they're all tied into some kind of criminal database, so they can detect a predator a mile away. Heck, we should be paying them to guard you."
Heh, right, Jeremy thought. Then I'd be unemployed...again. Funny.
"Uh, now that being said," the man trudged on, "no new system's without its...kinks. Uh… you're only the second guard to work at that location. Uh, the first guy finished his week, but complained about… conditions. Uh, we switched him over to the day shift, so hey, lucky you, right?"
Jeremy looked up from his desk and down the long, black hallway before him. There was no door, and he could feel a slight cold draft sweeping into the room from it. He looked around him and found a flashlight, which he switched on and shined into the hall from where he sat behind the desk. It illuminated very little of the floor, the light only reaching a few feeble feet. He couldn't see the wall at the other end at all.
Who the hell designed this place?
"Uh, mainly he expressed concern that certain characters seemed to move around at night, and even attempted to get into his office. Now, from what we know, that should be impossible. Uh, that restaurant should be the safest place on earth. So while our engineers don't really have an explanation for this, the working theory is that… the robots were never given a proper 'night mode'. So when it gets quiet, they think they're in the wrong room, so then they go to try find where the people are, and in this case, that's your office." Jeremy shook his head. No, this had to be a prank call. Some jerk was just taking advantage of him being there alone, at night, in a building owned by a company that had had a few issues with the safety of its clients in the past. He was about to reach for the telephone to end the message, when he heard the man on the other end of the line clear his throat again. "...there may a minor glitch in the animatronics' system, something about robots seeing you as an endoskeleton without his costume on, and wanting to stuff you in a suit, so hey, we've given you an empty Freddy Fazbear head, problem solved! You can put it on anytime, and leave it on for as long as you want. Eventually anything that wandered in, will wander back out."
Jeremy swallowed. Rolling his eyes, his eyes landed on something poking out over the top of one of the security monitors. Something bulky and brown. He curiously lifted himself out of the office chair and approached it, taking the surprisingly heavy object into his hands. He stared at it for a long moment, his eyes growing large.
The guy on the phone hadn't been lying. There was a Freddy Fazbear head left for him, smiling unsettlingly and staring back up at him blankly. But, how would a prank caller know that? Jeremy didn't like where this was going. He didn't like it at all.
Silently scolding himself for being so gullible and paranoid, Jeremy brought the head back with him to the desk, where he sat in the office chair again. He shrank into his seat as much as he could, subconsciously hugging the head to his stomach and alternating between peeking down the long hallway before him (with very little aid from his flashlight) and watching the dark, open ventilation shafts on either wall to both sides of him.
"Uh, something else worth mentioning is kind of the modern design of the building. You may have noticed there are no doors for you to close, heh."
Heh? Heh?!
"But hey, you have a light! And even though your flashlight can run out of power" - What! Jeremy quickly switched off the flashlight, sucking in his breath sharply when he realized just how much he couldn't see without it - "the building cannot. So, don't worry about the place going dark. Well, I think that's it. Uh, check the lights, put on the Freddy head if you need to, uh… piece of cake. Have a good night, and I'll talk to you tomorrow." The message crackled, then the telephone went completely silent.
Jeremy checked his watch. 12:41. He was going to be stuck here in this office until 6 am. And repeat the same thing every weeknight indefinitely. And there was no way in hell he was going to try to leave before someone else arrived at the restaurant; the only way to exit from his location was by slipping through several rooms. He fumbled for the security monitors' remote with shaking hands. Flipping through the footage, he figured that in order to reach the exit, he would have to walk directly down into the completely black, long hallway, passing four party rooms (which seemed to be empty), until he would make it to the Main Hall. The Main Hall was connected to the exit. The issue, however, was that they also branched off into two rooms Jeremy knew animatronics were being kept in.
He whacked himself on the head with his palm. "Stupid," he said aloud to himself, but he didn't dare speak above a whisper. "You're being stupid. There's nothing wrong. It was a joke. Why not have a little fun with the new guy?" He forced a laugh and swallowed, noticing his asthma was acting up slightly. With a tremendous amount of hesitation, he finally willed himself to place the Freddy Fazbear head on the far side of the desk.
Forget the head. You're not gonna need it. Nothing else is gonna enter this room until six am, when another employee arrives to open up the restaurant and dismiss you. Nothing.
There was a thudding noise that reverberated from one of the vents. Jeremy listened as well as he could, his heart thumping in his chest and a subtle, barely perceptible wheeze to his breathing.
It's just the vent shifting, the metal creaking as warmer air passes through it, he told himself. It's fine. It's nothing. Nothing at all.
There was another soft thud noise. Closer that time, and to the right.
Nothing.
Thud.
"To hell with it!" he cried in a whisper, leaping for the Freddy Fazbear head.