Rating: T for mild profanity, perilous situations, implied violence, tobacco use
Setting: 1976, in a small town
Summary: For as long as he could remember, he'd been drawn to bully those weaker than him. On a sun-splashed summer afternoon, he becomes an unlikely hero to children at a summer day camp by chasing off a suspicious driver lurking around the park in a purple car, setting the course for the afterlife he is thrust into all too soon. A short Puppet origin story.
Author's Note: Five Nights at Freddy's and all canon characters, settings, etc. are the property of Scott Cawthon. This is a non-commercial fan tribute and was not written for profit.
You are free to use any original concepts, headcanons and characters from this fanfiction in your own work (fanfiction, art, etc.) if you'd like.
Views expressed in this fanfiction do not necessarily match the writer's.
"Heads up, loser!"
Clyde Miller turned just in time for a water balloon to strike him square in the chest, dousing his t-shirt. The children seated at the picnic tables around him looked up from their coloring projects and burst into laughter at the unexpected sight of their day camp counselor thoroughly drenched.
"Aww, real funny, wiseguy!" the teenager sputtered at the sudden barrage, drying the large frames of his eyeglasses on the corner of his shirt and peering out for the culprit. "If it wasn't ninety-five degrees in the shade, I'd have it out with you." Placing his hands on his hips, he confronted his aggressor, a teen close to his own age standing next to the laundry basket of water balloons with a smirk plastered across his face that practically dared the other boy to make good on his threat.
"Hey, those are for the water fight later," Clyde argued. "What brought you here, anyway, Buddy? Don't you have anything better to do than pester a bunch of kids at summer camp?" Around him, the children brushed drops of water off their papers and resumed coloring, pretending not to listen to the heated conversation between their counselor and the newcomer.
Buddy. The teen detested the nickname that had been bestowed upon him early in childhood, and in recent years he had made no small effort to remind everyone around him that he was by no means anybody's "bud." He'd only reluctantly settled for the nickname because he hated his birth name even more.
"I've no choice in the matter, Clydesdale," he shot back, using his nemesis's equally-hated nickname and pulling a packet of papers from the pocket of his jeans. "Who can sign off on these and what do I gotta do around here?" Clyde stared at the teen, clad in his usual striped bandanna and a jet-black t-shirt. Buddy favored monochrome, dreary outfits, but his dedication to his personal style was even more impressive in the suffocating heat.
"You're helping at the camp?" the young counselor asked incredulously. "Let me guess, court-ordered community service, right?" He couldn't imagine any other reason that would have brought the most notorious bully from high school to the town park, where the recreation council held its free day camp every summer for local children. He and Buddy had a certain history together; the previous school year, the older teen had welcomed him to high school by blackening his eye just for mistakenly using a stairwell that was supposedly forbidden to freshmen. Clyde had steered clear of the aggressive bully ever since, always fearful he'd return with a new way to torment him, and he had assumed the summer camp would be a safe refuge his enemy wouldn't think to tread.
"You got it, a full hundred hours. If I can offer you any advice, it's not to get caught out in an alley four hours past curfew with a can of spray paint in your hand," Buddy suggested, grinning as though he hardly remembered the stairwell incident. "Also, develop some reflexes, already! You didn't even duck when I nailed you with that water bomb."
"'S'cuse me for not expecting that," Clyde grumbled. "At least the kids know better than to throw these before it's recreation time. But the senior counselors are over that way," he said in resignation, pointing to a nearby pavilion where a group of adults were going over some sort of paperwork, "and, I dunno, if you're looking for something to do, maybe you can help cut out more of these. Today's theme is 'theater' and we need forty more of 'em." He held a white paper mask, cut from a paper plate and glued to a tongue depressor, in front of his face, invoking an involuntary shudder from the other boy.
"Eew, those are creepy. I never liked those theater masks myself," the bully admitted, his eyes falling on the bits of paper that had been cut from the masks to create holes for the wearer's eyes and mouth. "Seriously, who thought kids would dig that as a craft project?"
"Beats me," admitted Clyde, "but we're also making paper-bag puppets. Less talk and more cutting." Ever safety-conscious, he passed his new helper a pair of scissors, his hand protectively clutching the closed blades and earning an eye-roll from the other teenager.
The sun was directly over the pavilions by the time Buddy had finished the stack of masks while Clyde wrangled the restless children from one activity to another, and he wiped sweat from his brow. If he was going to complete the community service requirements and avoid more serious trouble, he had resigned himself to putting up with his school mate, who he'd already dismissed as a hopeless case. Gazing over at him, he rolled his eyes to see Clyde showing a young camper how to make a paper bag puppet's mouth move as though it was talking.
"Why are you always grinning like a fool when we're both stuck in the worst pit of Kiddie Hell?" he demanded of him some time later, as they carried a heavy drink dispenser to refill it at the pump near the town's maintenance building.
Clyde looked around cautiously, ensuring there were no children in earshot. "Hey, you may not see it this way, but for most of these kids, this is the best thing that'll happen to 'em all summer. The kids with money are away at Disney or a real sleep-away camp or something. Didn't you come here yourself as a kid? I dunno if your family had it any better than mine growing up, but with nine of us kids we didn't go on too many vacations." His face reddened slightly. "Still, this day camp was something to look forward to every year." To his surprise, Buddy nodded, the glint of understanding in his eyes.
"Okay, I get it, but what I don't get is how a square like you got roped into doing this. Nobody our age in his right mind would be caught dead here, so what exactly did you do?" This had better be good, he thought with anticipation.
"Uh, after the last day of school, I just filled out an application with the rec department," Clyde answered naively, drawing a low whistle of amazement from his school mate.
"I-I meant, I was wondering what kind of trouble you'd gotten yourself into to be ordered to help out here!" he exclaimed. "You're seriously doing this for nothing?" His rival nodded, still not understanding the disbelief, as they returned to the pavilion and set the drink dispenser on the end of a picnic table.
"Not quite for nothing," Clyde admitted. "I mean, it's unpaid - I've got my dishwashing job and lawn-mowing gigs for that - but these little guys really look up to us, and that's something."
Nerd. Buddy shrugged, emptying a pouch of drink crystals into the tall dispenser and stirring it with a long wooden spoon.
From the corner of his eye, Buddy caught sight of a child sneaking glances his way, or rather at his artwork. To demonstrate the craft to the children, he had taken a paper bag and created a true monster of a character, using a marker to scrawl a hideous, toothy grin, bloodshot eyes and devilish horns on the paper, and the boy seated closest to him had meticulously copied the entire design onto his own art project.
"That's really neat," the child admitted when he discovered his mimicry had not gone unnoticed. "I wish I could draw like that." Buddy waved away his praise, feeling a little self-conscious. In truth, he rather enjoyed expressing himself through artwork, but he kept his drawings hidden away for fear of being mislabeled as a hopeless dreamer or worse. Guys his age weren't supposed to sketch fantasy creatures and landscapes from faraway worlds, or so he'd been told.
"Aw, uh, thanks, and I suppose if you really like it, you can have mine, too. I'm not taking it home." As the child's face lit up and he eagerly ran off with one bag over each hand, Buddy had to admit that it felt good to give something away, even if it was a halfhearted attempt at creating a character out of a lousy lunch sack.
"Hey, there any more where these came from?" he asked at lunch, holding up an empty tray that had held sandwiches provided by the recreation department. "These kids ate them like they were going out of style, and they're still hungry." His mind flashed back to his own childhood summers at the camp, when it seemed as though he could never get enough sandwiches, sliced fruit and trail mix. Not surprisingly, he had returned to school that autumn a full three inches taller than the year before.
"Sure, there's enough bread and peanut butter back at the township building to feed a small army," said Clyde, watching with surprise as his rival hefted the tray above his head like a waiter at a fine restaurant.
"Then I shall return, kiddies, with sandwiches for all!" He bowed grandiosely to the young diners.
Huh, what's gotten into him? the counselor was left wondering.
"Y'know, the kids really look up to you," Clyde told his helper later as they sat on a table watching the campers run wild, waving their decorated theater masks around. It felt strange to be talking to the other teen almost as if they were old friends, but by late afternoon he no longer felt his stomach twist with apprehension when Buddy approached, and he was slowly losing his fear that the bully might sucker-punch him when he least expected it. "Seriously, it's not fair. One day in and you're already their hero."
Buddy pulled his mask over his face in response, sticking his tongue out through the hole for the mouth. "Aww, it's nothing. I just didn't feel up to dealing with fifty cranky, hungry kids, so I threw more food their way." He paused, letting the mask drop to reveal the sharply-angled features of his face. "Hey, uh, speaking of lunch, I sorta noticed at school that you skip it more often than not." He smirked at the teen, who was nearly as tall as and lean as himself. "You trying to lose weight or something?" The camp counselor's face reddened behind the lenses of his glasses.
"Sorry, I guess you hear that a lot, too?" Buddy quickly corrected himself, and before he realized what he was doing, he'd blurted out that he'd only taken notice because he himself sat alone most of the time, and he admitted how much he detested trying to find a table to eat where he wouldn't be treated like an unwelcome dining guest, how he usually downed his food in a rush while hiding his face behind a comic book and darted out as quickly as he'd come in.
"Y'see, I hate lunch as much as I think you do," he admitted to Clyde, who was stunned to learn the bully found it just as hard to fit in at school as he did. "But since you're not half-bad after all, maybe in the fall do you wanna sit together?" He grinned, pretending to throw an imaginary item through the air. "When the next food fight breaks out, I'll keep you safe. I have pretty good aim and a good pitching arm."
"I'd like that," Clyde said quietly, a small grin crossing his face. They sat in awkward silence for a moment before Buddy abruptly changed the subject.
"Hey, is it just me or has that car passed by more than a few times?"
Clyde followed his gaze to the gravel road at the edge of the park, a good football field's distance away. Behind the row of pines, he briefly caught sight of a vehicle's fender and tail lights as it rolled past. The teenager shrugged, brushing off craft glitter that stubbornly clung to his arms.
"I wouldn't worry about it," he said dismissively. "Maybe the guy's lost. But we could have the kids stay up here anyway, if you're freaked out about it."
"You're probably right," agreed Buddy. "Did you get a load of that, though? What kind of weirdo drives a purple car?" He stared out at the pine trees for some time after the suspicious car had disappeared.
(( Continued... ))