Chapter 8
Playing With Fire
In the darkness of the room the computer screen buzzed lazily before the somewhat rejuvenated man. Empty bottles of alcohol, some old some fresh, decorated his computer desk and the surrounding area like a rustic shrine to a god of inebriation, and a half-eaten meal lay unwanted. Nearby his bed was in disarray, blankets scattered all over the floor from when he crawled from out under them. Mike didn't like to call himself a slob, but if anyone came in here that would be the first thing that would come to mind.
He hadn't even bothered saying hello to his mother when he burst through the door; a mere nod was all she got from her son as he brushed past her. She didn't mind however, she knew her boy worked hard night and day. The strange bandage on his hand made her worry, but she would ask him about it after he had time to rest.
Mike's last burst of energy was consumed by ringing up his day job and calling in sick, and with feeble arms he clung onto the rails as he ascended the stairs. He hadn't even bothered removing his clothes when he crumpled onto the bed like a discarded ragdoll; he was fast asleep before his face hit the pillow.
He had slept in far longer than he intended to; the sun had already set hours ago and now the waning, pale moonlight cast a faint glow across the floor. During the evening the sound of honking horns and abusive drivers cursing to all in their way drifted up from the street below, but at this late hour silence dominated the urban streets, with only the occasional moan from an alleyway drunkard to disrupt it.
It had felt like mere minutes ago that he had left that hellish place he called work, and it felt like not a second had passed since he had collapsed on his bed in exhaustion, his body still trembling from the trauma incurred last night. Slumber had been but a brief respite from the terror of reality; not nearly enough to provide solace for what had happened to him, and what was yet to come. And yet despite all that he was preparing leave for that destination within the hour for a third time, this time knowing full well the horrors awaiting him with open, mechanical arms.
But not before he figured out what he was up against.
He had taken a shower, redressed his wound, devoured a crappy TV meal and now in the final moments before he braved the embodiments of fear themselves, he would resort to good old Google to find out what he could. It was logical after all, the internet was by far the largest source of information available to all of humanity covering every possible topic, and if there was a place he could investigate into a shady restaurant and it's continuously quitting employees, cyberspace would be the place.
Opening up a tab, he tapped in 'Freddy's Fazbear's Pizzeria' and clicked on the first link that came up. A brightly illustrated webpage bearing the now familiar trademark colours and logo of the restaurant came up, touting itself as the official website for the franchise. Like the pamphlet he had seen in-store it was of poor quality, and resembled a high school homework assignment more than an 'official' piece of programming.
It appeared to be made with some sort of basic program and had few resources, mostly outlining things such as the menu, opening hours and biographies of the animatronics. In fact, most of it had been copy pasted directly from the pamphlets, complete with spelling mistakes and grammar errors! What a joke. The rest of the website was nothing more than testimonies from people who probably don't exist remarking on how much they and their children love Freddy Fazbear's, complete with smiling pictures of customers and staff. He paused to look at a picture of Maria smiling for the camera in the kitchen, and another one of Edwin kneeling with a child.
As fun as it was to mock the awful web design, it provided no useful information on the restaurant's history or its employment record. He didn't expect to see anything like 'Hey, this place is a really dodgy place to work and here's why!" written in bright neon letters, but there should have been information for prospective employees at the very least. The only reason he became aware of the job position in the first place was after hours of scouring newspapers, and even then the ad itself was small, and vague. He had heard on the news multiple times over his life that Fazbear's was supposed to be a high-quality, famous restaurant, and yet they couldn't afford a decent website? Or even a noticeable newspaper ad?
Returning to google, he typed in 'Freddy Fazbear's night guard job', waiting patiently for the results to come up. But nothing came. The screen froze and twitched for a moment as if the whole computer crashed, before he was redirected to an empty search page. At the very bottom written in italics were the words "Due to a legal request submitted by Fazbear Entertainment® all results for this search have been removed."
He stared at the screen, struggling to analyse the message. In all the years he had wielded the internet, he had never seen something like this occur. Blocked search results? The hell was that about? If it were something illegal then it would be understandable, but on what grounds could a franchise, particularly a near-bankrupt one, force something like Google block searches? He didn't have an estimate, but it would certainly take a gargantuan amount of funds just for the legal matters.
'Fazbear's missing guard'
'Fazbear's incident'
'Fazbear's employment records'
'Fazbear's r34'
'Fazbear's dangerous animatronics'
'Fazbear's animatronics'
'Fazbear's news'
It didn't matter what he typed in. The moment the search included Fazbear's or anything related to it, the computer froze and the same message appeared. To make matters worse, it wasn't restricted to google. Bing and every other search engine all had their own message, apologizing that they were unable to provide any results.
"Just what the hell am I dealing with here?" Mike pondered to himself as he switched off the computer. Through some method Henry or whatever legal cronies he had were actively censoring information regarding the animatronics, employment, or anything else that could get them into trouble, which meant that they must know about the danger the robots posed. And if that were true, then why the hell were they covering it up? Why weren't they making an active effort to stop them? To destroy them?
Mike's stomach churned with rage and disgust when it became apparent to him that his employer had been willingly sending men to die and for no apparent purpose. There was no way all those guards made it out alive being completely oblivious to what was going on, and most of them would have disregarding the phone guy's warning just like he had. What could possibly drive Phelps to commit all of these sadistic actions? Had the animatronics threatened him? Was it for money? He was an asshole for sure, but Mike severely doubted any man could be that irredeemably evil.
He had set aside a whole hour to do research on the topic of his workplace, and even with the greatest archive of human information at his disposal he couldn't find a single fact. But he wasn't going to give up just yet. The fact that this company was intentionally trying to hide the truth only made him more determined to find out what was going on in that damned restaurant. This was no longer a matter of personal curiosity, but an urgent crisis that needed to be solved. In less than five weeks from now Fazbear's Entertainment was shutting down for good, and at that time Henry would probably destroyed all remaining information. If he wanted to shine the light of truth on these events, he would need to do it before then, or never at all.
But he would have to worry about that later. It was 11:30 now and he needed to leave for work. It took about 15 minutes to reach his destination so there was no danger of being late, but he had a few things he needed to do before he braved his third night at Freddy's. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he left his room, bounded down the stairs and said goodbye to his mother before stepping outside.
The return trip to work felt completely different than the walk he taken earlier to get home, almost to the point where he felt like he was in a foreign land. The bitter winter air was now much harsher and bit relentlessly at his ears, and he kicked himself for wearing nothing but a shirt and jeans. The wind picked up and died away again in swift but brief bursts of activity, the barren branches of trees twisting and writhing under its force. If he stared too long, it began to look like they were beckoning him, urging him to press onwards towards the monsters that waited for him. Along the footpath the grass shimmered with dew under the moonlight, ready to turn into a savage frost by morning.
It would have been a pleasant, peaceful walk if not for the pounding within his own chest as he anticipated the events of the night. He was a madman to return to that place, he would gladly admit it. But somewhere in that addled mind of his was a spark of curiosity, a self-destructive desire to understand what those things were, and what drove them to kill. And if he was honest, being killed by supernatural entities sounded like an almost cool way to die.
The glass doors before him felt like an arcane barrier; a foreboding threshold to another dimension where evil was at home. Once course they were just ordinary doors and he could see Glen wiping down the tables inside, but it was more an instinctual feeling than something that could be seen with the eye.
Upon entering the room, that same uneasy feeling remained consistent. Physically, it looked no different than it had the previous nights, but the knowledge of what resided in here had permanently changed his perception of this building, and maybe even reality itself. Were they awake yet, subtly observing him from behind the curtains? Did they ever sleep at all?
Speaking of the boy, he smiled and hastily greeted the older man the moment he came through the door, abandoning his job mid-way. His hair had been trimmed back and cleaned but still hung heavily over his eyes, bouncing back and forth as he ran, giving him the appearance of a sheepdog bounding happily towards its master after a long day of work. Mike was beginning to think this kid had no friends, the way he was so eager to greet him after… what, three days of barely knowing him? Either that or he made a hobby of latching onto people.
"Hey! You're back again!" He hailed him with a friendly
I don't think I've ever seen anyone come back this many times. You must really like this job." He said, still smiling.
"Pffffft!" At that horribly inaccurate statement Mike's eyes rolled in his eye sockets fast enough to damage them. "It's the complete opposite, mate. Just promise me you'll go to college so you won't end up taking shitty jobs like I do." He held up his bandaged hand before the teenager, letting the sight of the wound sink in.
"H-How'd you get that? You're just sitting there all night, aren't you?" A tremor of anxiety rippled through his voice, the earlier cheerfulness fading away to Mike's regret. Damn, what was he doing, spooking this kid like that?
"Yeah, and that's why it sucks. Sitting there all night gets really boring, so boring I fell asleep and got myself hurt."
"Wow… And I thought cleaning this place was a boring job." He looked from Mike's wound to the cleaning products he held, and back again. "Working by yourself is kinda lame, isn't it." He let out a dejected sigh.
"Yeah, I s'pose." There was a moment of awkward silence between them, the sort when no one has anything to say. For a moment Mike considered saying goodbye, when it struck him that as unlikely as it was, Glen might know something about this place that he didn't. At least one employee must've looked into this themselves.
"Hey Glen, is it ok if I ask you a couple of questions?" He sat down at the nearest table and indicated for Glen to do the same. The boy remained where he was in hesitation, unsure of this sudden interrogation he was being roped into out of nowhere. But with a subtle nod he shifted into the seat opposite him, one soft brown eye looking at him expectantly from under his fringe.
"Uh, sure, what is it, Mike?"
He paused, seriously considering what to ask the boy. He had to be careful about what he said; otherwise Glen would dismiss him as crazy, or even creepy. He definitely wouldn't insinuate the animatronics were alive, or even suggest that something was wrong with the establishment. This kid had happily worked here for years, oblivious to what was really going down and Mike didn't want to ruin that for him.
"Well, what do you know about the guards, and why they keep quitting?" That was a safe first question, and appropriate to the circumstances. It would be natural for him to question this and Glen wouldn't think otherwise.
"I don't really know anything…" The boy thought seriously, fidgeting with the cleaning cloth in his hand. He didn't notice it, but Mike shot quick glances at the curtains in the room, watching for any premature activity from the enemies Glen was unmindful to. "All I know is just that. They keep quitting. I always see them come in on their first night and say hello, and by the next night they're gone, with another guy in their place. They never come back or leave an explanation or anything… It's like they just vanished. I've never seen anything like it."
"So you never got any proof that they actually quit?" Mike asked.
"Huh?" Glen looked at him in confusion.
"You say they quit, but then you also say that you never see them again. How do you know for sure that they quit?" Glen's eyes widened, as if he had never considered it.
"I… That's what Mr Phelps tells us! I don't know how he knows, but he always just says that they quit, and he never explains further." He trailed off, looking down in intense thought. "They have to have quit. What else would have happened to them?"
It was ominous, so ominous. Anyone would immediately see something wrong with that. It was easy to just insist that this job was awful enough to make every man who signed up for it quit out of disinterest and leave it at that, but the sense of unease, the feeling that this strange pattern was not yet explained, would lurk in the back on the mind of anyone who thought about it. His heart began to pound just thinking about how many men must've signed up for this job, completely unknowing to the trap they had walked into. And of those men, how many were left alive?
"Hmm, I guess you're right Glen. They must have quit." The youth nodded eagerly, as though he was eager to put this uncomfortable prospect behind him. "Second question, what do you know about the animatronics?" Mike continued.
"The animatronics?" Glen glanced at the stage and back again, scratching his head. "What about them? They sing for the kids at scripted times during the day, and that's all there really is to them."
"You… haven't seen or heard anything strange about them? Not at all?" Mike hastily checked his watch as he spoke, taking note of the time. He had to hurry up, midnight was steadily approaching and he didn't want to be caught in here when the lights went out.
"I haven't seen anything. They've always been up on stage where they should be when I come in to clean, nothing out of the ordinary. Although…" Glen drifted away midsentence, as if he had remembered something important.
"Although?" Mike pressed on, digging for an answer.
"Um, A few months ago one of the cooks was talking about how they came back at night because they left their wallet in the restaurant, but the building had already been locked up." He paused, biting his lip as he fought to remember the details of that seemingly unimportant discussion so long ago. "They said they saw Bonnie walking around the dining hall, as if it were looking for something. We went and spoke to Mr Phelps about it, and he just said something about a disabled free-roam mode before angrily reminding us all about the company policy." He let out another sigh. "The day after that, that cook was fired for 'unprofessional behaviour' and Mr Phelps introduced the new policy, which says no one but the night guard is allowed on the premises between the hours of 12:00AM and 6:00AM."
So there it was. More proof that Henry was willing to turn on his own employees to conceal the truth. On one hand, he was taking measures to protect employees from the animatronics, but Mike severely doubted it was for a purely benevolent reason. After all, less exposure meant less chance of this information getting out where it couldn't be censored.
"Um, do you need anything else from me? It's getting kinda late." Glancing at Mike's watch, Glen began to behave agitatedly, shifting around in his seat as though he desperately needed the toilet. Just like last night, the prospect of being here afterhours seemingly terrified him.
"Alright, one last question. What's up with that fourth animatronic?" He pointed in the direction of Pirate Cove, Glen turning over his shoulder to see where he was pointing. As always it remained untouched, but nevertheless that dark gap was still a foreboding sight in the otherwise bright room. He half expected those piercing white eyes to appear and fire lasers of hatred at him.
"Oh, that thing. Its name was uh… Foxy? Yeah, Foxy." He said, staring at the curtains alongside him.
"Ahahaahaaa! What a crappy name!" Mike burst out into laughter at the surprisingly inappropriate name, making no effort to hold back his sudden surge of amusement. "That's the sort of name I would expect from a washed out prostitute!" He raised his voice to a loud volume, hoping his insult was carried all the way over to where the target of his mockery lay. He had been told many times over the years that it was a bad idea to poke the bear, or in this case mechanical fox, but in this moment where his enemy was powerless it was simply too tempting to not go ahead and kick it while it was down.
"Yeah, it is kinda lame isn't it." Glen let out a chuckle to accompany Mike's great big guwaff, more perplexed by his bizarre reaction than amused by his joke. Once again unware that he was party to Mike's scorn of a paranormal entity in the same room as them. "But anyway, that thing has been in there as long as I've worked here, and far longer than that if I believe the other employees. I've only seen it once or twice since we're not really allowed in there, but it looks like a piece of junk, all tattered and stuff." He said.
"It's a piece of junk alright. But why is it like that? It can't have always been in that state." He said in a tone that begged the question. In all honesty he was curious as to why that machine was in it's dilapidated, dejected condition. So far it behaved no differently than the others; other than its swifter, more concise plan of attack. Perhaps Tom had lost his temper in a particularly egregious manner and taken it out on the animatronic, like Mike had seen him to twice now? Or perhaps it was victim to another one of Henry's beloved budget cuts, banishing it to its dark domain where it lurked balefully. If either of those cases were true, then Mike could understand where it's malignance came from.
"Uhhh…" Glen paused again as he mulled over the rumours and speculation fed to him by the other employees. "I'm not entirely sure, but I think there was an accident of some sort? Um, before that it sung like the others, I think. But it was sorta a 'baddie' that the others didn't get along with. I'm not sure what kind of accident it was or how it happened, all I know is that robot was involved in something and as a result it was decommissioned. It's been sitting there ever since." He turned back to Mike and shook his head. "I know it's just a piece of metal, but I kinda feel sorry for it."
"The Bite of '87…" Mike uttered to himself as those four words hit him like a jolt of electricity. Although vague, he recalled the man on the phone mentioning an incident regarding the animatronics, and chances were this was exactly what he was referring to. "Glen, does the bite of '87 ring any bells?" He asked, almost desperately. An image of Foxy's serrated teeth flashed through his mind, causing him to shudder. The word 'bite' alone left little to the imagination about what could have possibly gone wrong.
"The what? No, sorry, I've never heard anyone mention that." Glen shrugged apologetically.
"It's okay, I didn't expect you to know." His inward sigh and disappointed reaction contradicted his comforting words. "Although I wish someone knew something about this place." He added.
"I'm sorry I wasn't much use…" Nervously eyeing the time, Glen leapt up out of the chair as he spoke. "Oh, Edwin! If anyone has information to share, it'll be Edwin. He's been here for a while, or so I've heard." Gathering up his things, he hastily booked it for the entrance without turning back. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, but I gotta go. See you tomorrow… hopefully."
Mike watched the teenager sprint away from the building in silence, the sudden solitude of this building bearing down upon him. He was alone, but at the same time not alone. Last night he had been utterly defenceless, a sitting duck completely unware to the monsters that closed in on it. Had he not checked the cameras, he would've died that night, just like the many guards before him.
Tonight however, he wouldn't be so vulnerable.
Getting up out of his seat, he meandered his away across to Pirate Cove, intently watching the curtains for any sign of movement. Even as he stood right before them, nothing occurred. This in itself was useful information. He was here alone and within reaching distance of the curtains, Foxy could have easily pulled him in and torn him apart without consequence, and yet it didn't. The guard steeled his nerves and bit his lip, before parting the curtain and setting into the interior.
Pirate's Cove was exactly what one would expect for a themed background. The wallpaper held the theme of a tropical island against the backdrop of an ocean, with chests of treasure and other pirate themed objects scattered around. In the corner of the area a large, multi-layered prop in the shape of a pirate ship stood dominate, its sails taunt and its wood coated in dust. It was definitely the most impressive thing in the building, enough to outshine even the main stage. Attached to the roof were several light fixtures much like the ones of stage, focused on the centre where Pirate Cove's eponymous star stood alone.
In the light he was nowhere near as scary, in fact now that Mike could clearly see his exceptionally poor condition, it looked rather pathetic. Massive tears rip and gashes all along his body left his costume in tatters, and his endoskeleton clearly visible. In the dark the others could easily be mistaken for giant, misshapen animals, but in any level of light the damage dealt to this machine made its true nature apparent. The upper part of his legs was a dirty brown which clashed with the rest of his body. Mike wasn't exactly sure what was wrong with them; at first he had thought them to be an old pair of Freddy's legs, but it seemed as though the designer had intended them to be a pair of shorts. The lower half of his legs were completely exposed, nothing more than metal. That explained why he had heard that distinct clacking sound as Foxy had sprinted down the hallway the night before.
As the man cautiously approached it, it made no move to react or acknowledge his presence. Rather, it stood motionless in the centre of its domain, jaw slightly agape as if addressing an audience of cheering children.
"Remember me?" Mike asked, in an almost snide manner. "What about this? Do you remember doing this to me?" He held up his bandaged wound before the animatronics eyes, forcing it to take a good look. "That's right, I'm back again."
Mike's gaze drifted to the pirate's hook, held in a menacing pose. As expected the metal attachment held firm to his limb, but where the hook connected to the base Mike could see that it could be unwound and removed. A naughty smiled formed on his face as he seized the same weapon that had injured him last night, carefully screwing until it came off with a satisfying squeak.
With an almost predatory gait he walked around the animatronic until he stood directly behind it, and without another word rammed the foxes' hook right up its own ass, in-between the small gap where it's leg attached to its hip. The animatronic made not a single movement to respond, but from deep within its jaw Mike could hear a satisfactory nggh of pain.
Stepping back, he grabbed the animatronic by the shoulders and shook it back and forth. Rather than move individually, the legs moved as one unit causing the machine to teeter back and forth clumsily. As Mike had hoped, by jamming that piece of metal in that unmentionable place, it had gotten tangled in the metal crossbeams and effectively immobilized the lower half of Foxy's body.
"There we go!" In a last display of defiance he leant up to the fox and whispered into its ear. "Now let's see how fast you can sprint down that hallway, hmm?" And with that he left Pirate's Cove with a chuckle. As he crossed the dining hall he paused to yell at the stage just once. "And you other three clowns should be grateful I have no more objects to stick it where the sun doesn't shine, or you'd all be like you're little friend over there!" It didn't matter whether they knew what he meant, as the night begun they would see soon enough if Foxy tried anything.
As he entered the office, his fortress of operations, he let his backpack slump of his shoulder and onto the floor as he sat down in the rickety chair. Unzipping it, he retrieved a packet of cigarettes and a lighter, slipping the former into his mouth without another thought.
So, today he had made his first attempts at understanding the situation he had been unwittingly thrown into, and they had failed miserably. He had learned very little from Glen, and the internet was no help whatsoever. Like Glen had suggested, tomorrow he would speak to the kindly old man Edwin and see what the restaurant's oldest employee knew. As it stood, Edwin was quite possibly his only chance at obtaining any real information.
But that had to wait until tomorrow, which he wouldn't see unless he survived tonight. In one sudden burst the building descended into darkness as his third shift begun, the light of his lighter illuminating the room in an orange hue as he lit his cigarette. He took one mighty puff, letting the smoke fill his lungs up, before ejecting it up into the air in a single, giant puff, watching as it drifted up to the roof.
Most men would have quit this job by now, never to return. And those that dared to come back would have not made the incredibly stupid decision to mock and abuse the monsters that hunted them. The euphoric feeling buzzing through him right now was a volatile mixture of fear and reckless, self-destructive audacity. He hadn't just poked the fox, he had rammed a hook up it's ass. He was tampering with powers beyond reckoning, mocking monsters from beyond reality, playing with an all-consuming fire.
And it felt bloody amazing.
A/N: I don't know what adjective would be best to describe my depiction of Mike. I'll come back to it when I find one that combines the meaning of the words scaredy-cat, brave, stupid and suicidal.
I haven't had time to probably develop any of them, but in tandem to the question I asked earlier, who is shaping up to be the OC (i.e Glen, Tom, Maria, Edwin and Henry) you like the most, expect to like the most, or want to see more of, and why? Since they're original and not canon, I'd like to put in extra effort to make them interesting characters and not forgettable inserts that you can find in any other fanfiction, which may require development over several chapters.
