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The sound of electronic humming and the tick of the plastic clock drove Len into the thralls of boredom. Her fingers twiddled a pencil back and forth as she looked down to the many doodles she had drawn over the back of the training manual. The smell of mildew since dulled, whether it be from her becoming used to the stench or other scents now overpowered her senses. Her fingers tapped against the wood threads of the desk as she skimmed her eyes over the white static of the monitors. It was no wonder the last security guard did not want to come back for another night in this place.
Len groaned and leaned back in the chair.
Her eyes shifted over to the pile of audio tapes sitting next to the answering machine. Without knowing what else to do, and with five hours and thirty minutes left, Len shoved in one of the tapes, hit play, and kicked up her feet on the desk.
"Hello, hello!" the voice on the recording called through the crinkling noise of a poor quality speaker. "Uh… if you're listening to this then you've just been hired as the newest face to represent Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria!"
"Pizzeria?" Len mumbled with a curl of her lip. Her eyes closed and she nestled her head back onto the armchair's headrest. "… that explains some of the smell."
"—and, just… aware…wander at night…"
Len's eyes cracked open to peek at the machine.
"… now, if you have any concern, there are doors—are doors—are doors-doors-zzzzzz…and the power—zzzzz…"
Rocking forward, Len struck the side of the machine with a sharp slap. Her effort to correct the recording did nothing but cause the tape to jam. With pursed lips and a groan, she collapsed in the armchair.
"And… I'm back to square one."
Her head rolled to a side and she looked over the monitors. The cameras were mounted to have a static feed. She saw the same ten rooms, from the same ten angles, on the same tiny, ten screens. On the following nights, she would need to bring something to preoccupy her mind, but for the moment, she stood up from her chair and gave a stretch.
Deciding that she could not spend the next few hours swiveling in an armchair and listening to the dull hum of a computer screen, she picked up a small, plastic flashlight that was sitting on the desktop and stepped out from the security room. At the maintenance worker's leave, he flipped off the house lights, abandoning the rest of the diner to succumb to the thick veils of darkness. Len hesitantly moved forward with the sound of fallen posters, tattered and stained, crunching beneath her feet. It was the only sound she could hear. The air seemed thicker now and she did not know why. Heaviness fell over her, weighing down her shoulders, slowing her steps when she at last entered the main area of the dining room.
The only source of sight she received was from wherever the small beam of light from her flashlight fell. Particles of dust danced and disrupted her view. With a slight move of her wrist, the light shifted over the three animatronics perched above all else on the raised platform of the stage. The light struck their eyes, casting fractured gleams to scatter elsewhere.
Len had seen more than enough horror movies to know that what she now looked at would be perfect for a poster. Five Nights in Hell, the title she considered as she strut through the perfect set. To keep the play of shadows from resurfacing the childhood fears she knew, Len thought over a script for this play. A group of friends, she thought, though cliché as it was, trapped in an amusement park. Abandoned, decrepit, left to rot. There would be a jock, the cocky one, pulling his friends forward and egging their trespassing. Two girls: a slut, cliché, and the typical virgin, cliché. The slut always dies first, Len thought. Horror movie 101, but… maybe in this movie, the friends with morality would be the first to die. Martyrs for the group lost in the labyrinths of roller coaster rides and funhouse mirrors.
With her mind wrapped in the play that kept her fears at bay, Len did not see the edge of the banquet table she now approached. Her hip struck it and a loud and groaning creak of rusted metal snapped her out from her imaginings. Her hands fumbled the flashlight as she also tried to steady the table from collapsing. Her heart thumped into her throat and climbed its way up between her ears. The echo of the creaking metal bounced off the cracking walls and replayed time and time again. Len lifted her gaze, and the flashlight, to peer once more around the room.
Shadows shifted, creeping and slithering away from the beam of light she shed. As the echo continued of creaking metal, Len felt a rush of cold prickle through the air and force her to stand still.
That sound was not from the table.
She turned, her light flickering.
Len shook the flashlight. Batteries rattled.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," she hissed at the faltering light.
Her eyes rose again to follow the sound, though faint as it was. One foot, and then the next, she crept forward through the dining hall, listening, straining her thoughts to focus. Part of her tried to distract her from the unknown source of the eerie, metallic sound. Her thoughts pulled her away from the unknown to focus on what she did know. The doors were locked, the maintenance man saw to that. There was only one exit from this place and she did not hear anyone open the door. With how still it was in the interior of the diner, she could probably hear a breath from rooms away, so it was safe to say that she was alone.
Len rolled her lips together and felt the creases of skin she bit off during her wait for the maintenance man to let her into the building.
She continued to the south corner of the dining room.
When Len came to the door of the kitchen, she stopped.
Her head cocked and she leaned her ear close to the door. She heard the creaking, louder now, just beyond the door frame. The door swallowed at her light that gleamed bright on the handle. Len pushed a hand flush to the door and cracked it open to peek into the kitchen. Counters and cabinets threw long, dark shadows across the whole of the kitchen. Before Len could focus on the thick black of the unknown her flashlight could not reach, she caught a glimmer of movement.
The rack of pots and pans above the stretch of counter-tops swung back and forth. Not wanting to enter any further into the veils of shadows, Len stayed at the side of the door. Though her fear prickled the hair on the back of her neck, she heard her reason whisper from her lips.
"Fucking rats."
Without turning her back to the kitchen, Len stepped out from the room and quickly returned to the light of the security room.
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She flipped through the camera feeds just to hear the sound. More than once she caught herself terrified at the darkness outside the doors directly at her sides. She did not know who built the diner, but they did not put much thought into how terrible of a design the security room was. Despite how hard Len tried to distract herself, she felt as though something was standing just past the precipice of light, staring at her.
It felt like waiting in line at the movies and knowing there was someone standing behind you in line, too. It was like the heaviness of a presence, of eyes burrowing into the skin of her cheek, unmoving. With how little power there was left, Len did not want to waste her time anymore by flicking on the light just to put her worries to rest. There was nothing in the diner, she told herself. The door never opened and she never heard footsteps.
She flipped through the camera feeds.
Just then, she heard a sound.
Her finger stopped pressing forward on the keyboard.
Heat flooded her cheeks and ears.
Shifting and searching, Len looked out to the darkness at her right side. It was the metallic sound again, but louder. She had heard the noise before from countless cartoons. A drop of pans and silverware, cue the laugh track. Except, Len did not feel like laughing this time. All that Len felt like doing was sitting still until 6am.
4:23am.
Just a little longer, Len.
"It's the rats," she whispered to herself. "It's… it's just the rats."
Len forced herself to look back at the monitors.
The screens rapidly switched and faded by as she tried to use the static to drown out the noise of whatever it was scrounging in the dark of the kitchen. It worked, for a moment, until she came to the screen of the stage.
Cold with confusion, fear, and hesitation, Len stared at the green-tinted screen and the scatter of static.
Only two characters were on the stage.
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