CHAPTER 4

Wednesday – By Trisha Valentine

I know my mother said the animatronics moved around at night, I know everyone online who claimed to be a former guard said they moved around at night, so I'm not quite sure why I didn't expect Golden Bonnie to move around at night.

Frankly, it didn't look like he should have been moving at all. Or staring into the camera, or climbing through the vents, or literally anything else he was doing. I got a good long look at him when he stood in front of the office window, much longer than I would have liked. My god, he looked terrible, he was so old, he was actually kind of hard to look at. That thing should not have been functioning, I don't care how well these things were built. Especially considering how rusted his joins were, and how many snapped wires were jutting out of him. How was he even doing so much as walking? When they said they found a working robot, I thought they just meant it was in mostly one piece, and they could maybe turn it on and it'd blink or could move its arm or something. I didn't think it'd be able to actually walk around or climb through the damn vents. Seriously, why was it doing that?! Who is that helping?!

I always heard the rumor online that the animatronics used to climb into the air vents, but I was never sure if it was true. Those things only had so much AI, surely they couldn't even think to climb into a vent. I always thought it was maybe one freak accident that the internet blew out of proportion. But after this, oh, I'm a believer.

I don't know why they had to install such huge vents in this place. They said it was for better airflow, as an enclosed building like this could get hotter than the furnace of Hell if not properly ventilated. And I can back that statement up, because half the time during my shift, the ventilation didn't even work. The wiring in this place was so faulty, it was actually kind of amazing. And due to the sweltering temperature, how horrified I was that a giant bunny seemed to be targeting me, and the fact that I probably wasn't getting enough oxygen, I started hallucinating.

That's right. I began having horrifyingly vivid hallucinations. Yeah, Chaz warned me that I might start seeing things if the ventilation shut off, but… Oh god. I didn't know it'd be that. I'd rather not go off on a tangent about how I almost had a heart attack four times in one night, but let's just say that maybe I shouldn't have stayed up 'til 4am so often reading the supposedly true horror stories of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza all those nights. I was not ready for BB…

My first two nights were boring as all hell, but hey, at least I wasn't seemingly being hunted down by a rotten killer robot. Or seeing a phantom Freddy hobble down the hall due to the lack of oxygen getting to my brain, I'm sorry, I said I wasn't going to go off on that. And you want to know the really out there thing about all this? Stupid me, I actually agreed to come back in on Wednesday!

I only had to do this night shift business for a week, and then we opened, and then I'd get to do the day shift. And if the theory that I had read so many times about the animatronics only trying to get to the guards because they wanted to be near the people was correct, then Golden Bonnie would be happily occupied with all the people that came through during open hours. Now, that theory doesn't exactly explain all those night guards who went missing and were rumored to have died at the hands of the animatronics, but for my own peace of mind, I just had to lie to myself and go with it until the week was done.

I guess at least I didn't have to worry about the "he thinks I'm an endoskeleton" theory. Because every former employee I saw online said that was a giant lie that they were only told so management didn't have to tell them the real reason. Which I guess was a good thing?

So, Wednesday night came, my second night with Gold Bonnie, and the fourth night overall. Just three days left, I thought I might as well just finish it up. I knew how to ward Bonnie off now, so it shouldn't have been too terribly hard. Now, even if Bonnie was only trying to get to me to be around people, I was not about to let him come in my office for that or any reason. All those rumors about those night guards who were slaughtered by the old animatronics were stuck in the back of my head. Even if I was lying to myself about what he was trying to do, I couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling that he had intentions that were far from friendly. He seemed to be distracted enough by the sounds of BB's voice box over the intercom, I just had to hope that he didn't eventually catch on to the trick.

I began my shift as normal, immediately checking the cameras, and playing BB's voice to keep Bonnie in place. While doing that, I listened to one of the old training tapes Chaz had left me. I think they were about how to wear the spring-lock suits or something. How fitting. They were thinking of playing them over the speakers when the place opened to make it feel even more authentic. I just had to listen to them all and make sure they were, like, appropriate or whatever. I decided to do only one a night, as I needed to really pay attention to where Bonnie was. So far, everything on the tapes was fine, if questionable, but the guy sounded way too peppy. If he had sounded more deadpan and job-hating like every other training video or audio I'd ever seen or heard, maybe that could work. But this dude sounded too much like he enjoyed his job, or was at least a good actor. I didn't think it would work, but I was going to keep listening to them. Something about this guy's voice was oddly calming, and his tone was actually kind of uplifting.

For the first hour, nothing really happened. Bonnie behaved himself and followed BB's voice. Everything was working perfectly. And then I noticed it was getting a touch warm in my office. Like, uncomfortably warm. I was also getting troublingly short of breath. That vintage desk fan they found was not doing a thing in this situation, why did I even have that thing on? I played BB's voice in a room far away from the office before going to turn to my other monitor. But as I swiveled my chair over, who should I see jump at me but Foxy. No, not the lamp. A rather decrepit and nightmarish hallucination of Foxy. He was a first, most of the time I just saw BB or Freddy. Welcome to party, Foxy. God, I should not have looked up all that stupid horror art all those times. Why do I do these things to myself?

After destroying my vocal cords due to the amount of screaming I was doing, I'm pretty sure I blacked out for, thankfully, only a few seconds. When I came to, the warning lights were blaring, and I quickly went to reset the ventilation, praying to whatever powers may be that Bonnie was far, far away from me.

When the ventilation finished being a jerk, and I put out the fan after it caught on fire, I turned back to the camera feeds, and to my great horror, I didn't see Bonnie anywhere. My heart practically stopped as soon as I heard the sound of clanging metal echoing from the air vents. I opened the monitor, frantically searching for Golden Bonnie. I finally found him, making a damn bee line for my office. Thank merciful god I was able to get that thing sealed up before he could get through. Making me then realize how weird it was that we had way to seal the vents from the camera monitor. I know they said they wanted to keep this place safe from burglars, but this was kind of pushing it. Whatever though, sure as hell helped me out.

And that's just kind of how it was all night. Yup, all damn night. Play BB's voice, get Spring Bonnie away from me, reset the audio, try to ignore my weak grasp on reality and lack of oxygen, reset the ventilation, hope and pray that Bonnie wasn't anywhere near me. Just that for several agonizing hours. I tried staying calm, and just repeating to myself that I was fine, everything was fine. Even if Bonnie got in there, he wasn't going to do anything to me! Even though every person online claiming to be a former night guard, and my mother who was a former night guard, said otherwise!

I was in the middle of flipping out over my delusions of Freddy Fazbear jumping at me, when I heard the clock tower outside chime the 6am bell. I must've blacked out, because the next thing I remember was waking up, face down on my desk. I looked at the time on my phone, it read 6:15am. I had been out for fifteen minutes, and Bonnie was nowhere to be seen. He did something like this the previous night too. He was in my doorway, and I was sure he was about to barge in there and rip my arms off or something, and then I heard the morning bells, and he just kind of… walked away. Hey, I ain't complaining.

When I was leaving, I just happened to glance down the hall, and saw him just sort of hanging out in the corner. I looked straight at him, and he looked at me, but he didn't do a thing. He didn't come closer, he didn't look at me especially maliciously, he just stood there. Weirdly enough, my mother had told me something similar to this situation. She said that there was one night that Freddy was right outside her door, and as soon as the clock hit 6, they all stopped going after her and shut down. While Golden Bonnie didn't shut down, he did stop coming for me. I wondered what that was about…

As much as I was telling myself that he probably wasn't going to do anything during the night, I was failing miserably to believe it. There was something about the way he looked, the way he sometimes stared into the camera, and just how darn determined he seemed that was telling me that the whole "the animatronics are just looking for people to entertain!" theory was kind of, you know, not true.

Thursday night happened, and while Spring Bonnie did seem more determined, which was a hint troubling, I was organized enough to the point where he didn't even get near my office. Really, Thursday wasn't terribly different from Wednesday, so I'll try not to bore you with the details. Play BB's voice, reset the audio, start hallucinating, reset the ventilation, reset the video, get Bonnie out of the vents, ponder life choices. Rinse and repeat. And something on the training tapes about the spring-lock suits causing grotesque maiming. If I sound rather dull about all this, it's only because I'm trying to refrain from being overdramatic. This was actually quite horrifying!

Despite my heart racing a million miles a minute after every night, I was always able to pass out on the couch almost immediately after I got home. First couple nights, I didn't go to sleep until like 8 or 9am, but emotional turmoil can really take it out of you apparently.

When I woke up late in the afternoon, I called up one of my friends and asked her if she wanted to buy my Bonnie cosplay. She had always wanted to cosplay Bonnie, but never got around to making a suit. I didn't say why I was suddenly so willing to sell it, but my reasoning should be a little obvious. I couldn't have that thing hanging in my room anymore…

I was shaken, terrified, and my mother was starting to notice. She wasn't exactly a fan of me being a night guard for this place when I told her they found a real animatronic. She was always okay with me being interested in Freddy's, and even helped my friends and I with our cosplays. Hell, she was overjoyed when I told her I got the job at the theme park. She saw no harm in the interest of the pizzeria's history, or even liking the characters. I asked her once why she wasn't bothered by me loving the heck out of Bonnie or Foxy or any of them considering her experiences. She said, "The animatronics and the characters are not the same thing. The characters are harmless, it's those animatronics that weren't right."

So, predictably, as soon as I mentioned to her that they found an old Bonnie animatronic, she had a minor freak-out and had been badgering me to quit, insisting that it wasn't safe to work with it, especially at night. I told her that the thing was so ancient, that it couldn't possibly work. Of course it did, but I wasn't going to tell her that. But then she started noticing how exhausted I looked when I got home. If I was just sitting in a chair looking at cameras, I shouldn't be so worn out. I didn't even tell her about the faulty ventilation that was making me see things. I insisted that I was just tired from the long walk from Fazbear's Fright to my car. I don't think she was buying it really, but she didn't pry any further, at least that day.

I told Chaz that they needed to do something about Golden Bonnie, and he told me that he should have been shut off. Obviously he wasn't, there had to have been some kind of glitch going on with him. I was told they'd try to fix him and the ventilation at the end of the week. The only problem with that was that it wouldn't matter then. I was having trouble this week, and I wanted something done about it now. But I was just told by management, "We can fix it on Sunday, just hang in there for two more nights, okay?"

Then the dumbest response in the history of humankind then left my lips, "Okay."