"I know women who crawl through shit for a fur coat!" (Barbara Streisand as Claudia Draper in "Nuts")
"Damn, not again!" exclaimed Charlie Dunrail, Henry Dunrail's only surviving child. Funtime Freddy was once again laid out on the floor beside her worktable under a cheap plastic tablecloth that was sticky with Chica's Magic Rainbow Punch, flavor #7 (blue). She scanned the incident report casually taped to its forehead – smoking, it had toppled over backwards in the middle of a performance — another burnt-out battery pack.
The third one this month.
Shit. More expenses.
Because they had to power "his" extra-large mass, Freddy's packs had to be custom made. It would be SO much cheaper if she could swap it out with one of the smaller animatronics that her father had built and she'd inherited, gaining sole proprietorship with surprisingly little resistance on the part of Wolfrum and Hart, her father's silent partner, after his extremely messy death last year, but NOOOOOO.
And as for the father she'd worshiped? The man who'd protected her from the scandals and the deaths related to his creations when she was small? The man who'd spent hours teaching her how to build and maintain the foundation of the family business? Was flat out fucking homicidally nuts.
You heard me, Sunshine.
N.U.T.S. Nuts.
Going through his papers after the separation, Charlie quickly discovered that all the injuries and deaths her father's animatronics had caused that Wolfrum and Hart had so casually covered up over the years weren't always Mr. Afton's, dear ol' dad's OTHER business partner's, fault, starting with personnel.
Not long after the "minor" technical problems, which plagued the early days of Fazcorp started, dear old dad personally started hiring nighttime security guards who later disappeared without so much as a letter of resignation.
Charlie wasn't stupid; after noticing this and several other discrepancies in Fazcorp's business records, she followed the blatant paper trail which ended at Fazcorp's back door around the time Fazcorp's animatronics suddenly went from clumsy blundering idiots to uncannily graceful creatures with basic A.I. – only there were no invoices for advanced electronics to go with their increase in performance. As for the missing "employees" who never appeared on Fazcorp's payroll, he'd kept all their applications, like trophies. She'd found them neatly arranged in precise alphabetical order in a big manila envelope casually tucked in among the invoices for titanium struts and fun fur in assorted tacky colors.
The entire chain had one of the best electronic security systems in the region – her dad had designed and installed it himself. Why the hell would Fazcorp need night guards to watch the place after hours with such a blue ribbon system in place?
And why were so many of them rootless individuals with little or no background in security? She'd shuffled through the applications stamped "hired": homeless, the hard to employ, recovering addicts who'd burned all their bridges, students looking to pick up a few bucks on the side, even a few that might have been runaways lying about heir ages – every last one of them a loser nobody would miss.
Speaking of losers, she even remembered some of them from when she was little girl. There was been a messy, smelly little man, what was his name? Jeremy Fitzgerald? She dimly recalled him as an unkempt mass of dark hair with a flat voice that sounded like "Shaggy" from "Scooby Doo" that was always eating. She remembered his sharing a bag of Cheetos with her just before he clocked in the first and last time she ever saw him. Then there was the big scary blonde dude who'd towered over her, reeking of beer, belly overlapping his belt, blue eyes bloodshot, the cheap rent-a-cop uniform straining at his shoulders – that had been Mike.
Swaying, he'd stared down at her red-faced and sweating before lumbering past her into the security office that night – her father quickly pulled her away and back into the car and on the way home before sundown that night.
She'd never seen "Mike" again.
Which suited Charile just fine. The big man's expressionless blue eyes had been… terrifying.
Only she saw the same "look" a few days later when her father stopped in at Circus Baby's to make a quick repair. The big pink and white teddy bear in a shabby tuxedo that opened the door for them on their way out had the same eyes. So what if they were two expressionless painted plastic orbs?
Plus, it smelled.
Bad. Like the dead cat that had baked on the street for two days in front of Charlie's house earlier that summer until the street cleaner had sucked it up.
Without warning, Funtime Freddy locked eyes with her before with a gap-toothed razor-blade grin, it suddenly bowed and with a flourish of it's snapped off broomstick cane that she didn't remember it having before, removed it's hat, and rolled it from one paw to the other over it's shoulder, locking eyes with her as it deliberately bounced the battered hat off of one heel, catching it midair one-handed before placing it back on it's head with a flourish and a second bow before opening the door for them with an eerily delicate motion of one massive, stubby paw.
Astonished at this unexpected display of grace - Funtime Freddy had always been a big clumsy doofus even for an animatronic - Charlie had gaped up at her father. The expression on his face caused Charlie to have a meltdown on the spot; a meltdown so violent that he snatched her up and fled the building, the thing's voice, a juddering patchwork of conflicting songs and voices: "Have a nice day!" which only made her scream louder and piss herself, soaking both of them before he could load her into the car.
Anyway, the more Charlie learned after taking over Fazcorp, the more deeply she found herself woven into the evil. So deeply that now, as she knelt and released the hidden catch on Freddy's chest, causing it to pop open and reveal what it held with a fetid puff of air, that the faded odor of dead rat under the floorboards that most of the animatronics gave off no longer bothered her. She could always hold her nose as long as tossing some random loser in a cheap uniform under the bus in one location or another every so many weeks kept things quiet after closing time and the bucks rolling in. So what if once or twice a month a still-warm black garbage bag found it's way into the dumpster out back and the place stank of Clorox?
Though lately, requests for new toys were… down. Oh well, less paperwork!
Mr. Dunreil's daughter unscrewed the leads after a blast of canned air cleared off the bone chips and worse that filled the body cavity of the bear. She pushed aside a pair of large dusty boots and a shabby leather wallet, barely glancing at the space on Funtime Freddy's motherboard where a chip should have been.
She'd noticed the discrepancy the first time she'd had to change the big lunk's battery after bringing it out of long-term storage. Despite missing a major control chip, the thing operated smoothly enough to be worth keeping active: so far not one booger eater in a party hat got it's toes stepped on and it didn't walk through random walls, so she'd dismissed the gap then as now, more intent on getting fatass up off the floor and back greeting the evening's onslaught of the overindulged spawn of the bourgeoisie and their 8th place trophies.
Oh, and speaking of shit dear ol' dad failed to mention under the heading of "things that aren't listed in inventory", how about that nasty little piece of work, Circus Baby?
When it approached Charlie the first time, she'd been sitting at her father's desk at the back of the restaurant a month after his death, irritably searching through his handwritten repair logs for individual animatronics for the namesake of Circus Baby's because it was missing from the inventory Wolfrum and Hart had given her as part of the settlement.
Suddenly the missing mascot hopped up on the desk, demanding that she hire another security guard or the deal her father made with it was o.f.f. off!
Startled, Charlie scooted backwards in the battered office chair, nearly tipping over backwards onto the floor. Catching herself on the edge of the desk, all she could say was, "Where the Hell have you been since dad died?"
Circus Baby crouched down so that it was nose to nose with Charlie. That was when she noticed it breathe and it's teeth looked like it could effortlessly punch holes in sheet metal.
And oh yeah, it's costume wasn't stiff molded plastic like she'd always thought, but a leathery carapace that from a distance looked like a painted on red tutu. and that those weren't cute li'l pigtails decorating the sides of its head.
Charlie stifled a scream as it leapt onto her, slamming her backwards into the office chair, which hit the floor behind her with a rattling thud that echoed in the empty building. Placing both stubby hands on either side of Charlie's head it leaned down, smeary red mouth gaping slightly, nostrils twitching as it sniffed her up and down before with a grin, it started bouncing on her chest, making it almost impossible to breathe, "Yes," it chortled in between impacts, "You'll do, you'll do!" The long red curving horns framing its face grazed Charlie's, dangerously close to her eyes. "Do as I say, look the other way. Reap the rewards – in your father's footsteps – ohhhhhh, yessssss, you'll do – or ELSE!"
Lungs straining, Charlie tried not to struggle. Struggling only made Circus Baby heavier. Instead, she nodded, giving out a gasping squeak that she hoped sounded like assent.
"Goood, gooooooood…" it cooed, adding, "Ice cream?"
Ears ringing, Charlie nodded, vision going dark. She felt the thing that was Circus Baby's hand with it's nozzle laden fingertips slide into her mouth, followed by the surge of something soft and cold filling it, her assailant's tinkling laughter like endlessly breaking glass.
Gagging and gasping, Charlie sat up alone a few seconds later, spitting out the diarrhea that overflowed her mouth and dribbled wetly down her chin. She fell face forward out of the chair, landing on her knees and vomiting until all that came up was green bile.
Sick sense of humor aside, Circus Baby held up her end of the bargain. Anyway, business was business; sometimes you have to make sacrifices.
The second time Circus Baby came out of the shadows from wherever it lurked, Charlie was slightly more prepared.
Prepping a little boy in a propeller beanie that blew up balloons when you put a quarter in his mouth that she'd picked up on the cheap at a business liquidation auction, the thing tugged on her apron at knee level.
Prepared or not, she still jumped, looking down into it's seamed, half-decayed clown's face. It yanked her down to ear level. Firmly covering her mouth just in case, Charlie learned that Baby needed something.
Something useful.
Something easily cobbled together using cheap tasers from a nearby electronics store.
And collars. Don't forget the collars.
All she had to do was wire the collars with the guts from the tasers, which could be tweaked to bring out more voltage while tapping into the wearer's battery pack, and then make a master control with a simple adjustable push-button switch.
No problem – Charlie could do it in her sleep.
As to exactly WHY Circus Baby needed such hardware, Charlie decided that as long as productivity was maintained and whatever it was that tore up the "night guards" she was hiring roughly two or more a month cleaned up after itself, who cared what the little freak wanted her to do?
Speaking of night guards, tomorrow morning she might actually have to PAY the latest one over at Freddy's– he'd somehow lasted four full nights!
Damn.
She'd have to see what happened tonight in the hopes that her "silent partner" would get off it's ass and do what it did best so she wouldn't have to empty petty cash tomorrow morning by writing a check. Even at minimum wage, retaining "long-term employees" wasn't cheap.
With this in mind she finished the collars and gave them to Circus Baby before waking up gasping just before sunrise, chest aching in the middle of her workroom floor at Circus Baby's, panties full of spiders and maggots writhing in her bra with Circus Baby nowhere in sight.
Two hours later, Charlie found the usual double strength Hefty bag against the inside of Freddy's back door, tied shut and still warm. Obviously petty cash was now longer in any danger of a raid.
That, and Freddy and the gang all sported collars where they lay in their cradles plugged in for a nice day's invigorating recharge. Still, Freddy's neck looked a bit scorched where it's new collar (complete with little red bow tie) encircled its neck, but hey, business is business and a little 409 took the soot right off followed by a quick spritz of pink and white Krylon.
The following week, she saw Circus Baby once more while getting ready to retire the nightmare figure of "The Mangle" by running it through the scooper in the scooping room followed by a trip to the recyclers while pushing the grotesque walking scrap heap down the hall on a hand truck. Things had been quiet since she'd issued those shock collars: the general destruction in the night wasn't as bad, and the main performers had been unusually functional during the day – plus there had been no requests for night guards, which meant less paperwork—woo-hoo!
Not only that, but profits were up, and the little Siamese cat acrobat she'd retrofitted with a new gyroscopic internal stabilizer was working out beautifully. Thinking reasonably good thoughts she'd pushed the Mangle down the back hall and through the double doors leading to the scooping room behind the back loading dock. Clutching at where an arm should have been, Circus Baby suddenly scuttled across her path. Charlie stopped dead in her tracks as the nasty thing paused in the dim light of the service corridor, and hissing, bared it's irregular teeth at her before scuttling back into the shadows.
Once Charlie's heart settled, she'd continued her way to the grinder, grateful that this encounter hadn't ended with various bodily orifices and/or undergarments overflowing with unsolicited vermin – though that might change later. Circus Baby was whimsical that way.
You know, seeing as the price of several high tech metals had gone up – the Mangle might not be the only animatronic to be "retired" tonight.
Like, how about Bellora the Ballerina? As well as being a failure on the part of Charlie, the thing was extremely limited and took up space., Better yet, how about axing the big, dumb bear that once scared the crap out of her as a little girl? Once she removed the illegal inner portion from both great big high-maintenance/low profit pains in the butt and tossed it into the dumpster out back, she could break twinkle toes and fatso's electronics and exoskeletons down, salvage their battery packs, and shove their nearly 300 pound bulks piece by piece into the rotary jaws of the scooper, maybe get a hundred or so if the price of gold went up again.
Yeah, Funtime Freddy would be next and then Bellora: the insurance settlement from the failed venture where under Wolfrum and Hart's management Fazcorp set up a satellite ¼ size party house in some podunk town, Sunnyvale, or Sunnywood or whatever, (See, "Nightshift".) was running out fast. Charlie needed to make some major upgrades: what with video games and shit, even the little kids weren't impressed by a giant walking toy, so profits were down. Time to branch out into virtual reality or something like that.
Charlie flipped on the lights in the scooping room and set the scooper to "grind", only to abruptly learn that a new player had entered the game when a man-shaped outline pulled itself out of thin air right in front of her with a sharp report just as she started to feed the Mangle feet first into the twin rotary blades of the scooper. In a slow-motion swish, the world re-shaped itself around her so that gasping, Charlie found herself looking down at a face that could be loosely described as an extremely pissed off angel's.
Only angels didn't look bent on murder – unless you counted the angels in those lame-ass brochures some local holy roller handed you whenever you walked past a gay bar or an abortion clinic – those were choc-a-block STUFFED with pissed off angels, ready to slap down some instant righteous justice on the unrighteous.
That, and this one was wearing a pink and white tuxedo while waving what looked like a policeman's baton instead of the cane you'd think would go with a tuxedo. No, scratch that, it was wearing combat fatigues, a buzzcut, and a "USMC" t-shirt with the sleeves torn off; exposing arms that looked like a whole fleet of VW Beetles all trying to get into the same parking space at once.
Or did he?
It?
Because as much as looking directly at the flowing, shifting thing roughly gripping her one-handedly up against the ceiling made Charlie's eyes hurt, it was decidedly a man waving a policeman's baton threateningly in her face.
Or was it a homicidal teddy bear?
A pissed off angel with a broken nose?
And was that really a policeman's baton or something worse, with maybe fingers on one end?
Whatever it was, his/it's ears were bright red, adding to the overall aura of pissed-offedness. Charlie screamed as it's face rippled, one second Funtime Freddy, the next something made of glittering titanium struts dripping blood, or was it a man wearing a goofy cartoon bear mask with eyes that oozed black tears? A pissed off angel? Or was it a man who'd had his lips torn off so that his teeth were exposed all along his flayed jaw up to his ears— only those weren't teeth that glittered in the cheap overhead fluorescent lights, but razor blades jutting aggressively from his exposed gums.
And then it stabilized into the big, sweaty overweight guard she remembered seeing as a little girl, only this time he wasn't fat and he wasn't drunk. Charlie screamed when he released his grip on her, allowing her to fall before he caught her one handedly by the back of her coverall just before she landed face-down on the scarred black and white tiled floor of the scooping room. Flipping Charlie midair like a rifle, her attacker caught her by the front of her coverall, shaking her until her teeth rattled and her dull mousy bobbed hair fell over her eyes, blinding her as baton slid into the back of his belt, he cradled the Mangle like a child against him as he raved silently at her, the sound of static and snatches of song he gave off slamming into her like fists as the very air around her went thick and dark.
In a black slow-motion swirl he/it dropped Charlie to the floor, standing over her, still cradling the Mangle as he leaned over her, baton out, the cords in his neck standing out like cables, static almost deafening, black-steel teeth glittering, blue eyes no longer flat and dull – he stank of old death and electricity, blood dripping off of him.
No, not blood, green ichor.
Charlie frantically scooted backwards on her butt towards the double swinging doors to the outside hall. Her attacker caught her again, easily picking her up before shoving her against the wall, leaning in, mouth working in silent fury. Unable to control herself, Charlie pissed herself, urine dripping off the toes of her sneakers as he lowered her into the stinking puddle she'd just made.
Despite of her situation, Charlie looked down at what she was standing in and made a tiny noise of disgust.
Her assailant's eyes followed hers; then he threw his head back and began laughing in a jagged electronic screech. Humiliated and terrified as she was, Charlie noticed that there was a raw, oozing stump where his/it's tongue should have been. Thinking the beast distracted, she tried slipping away the second she felt him relax his grip so that she almost made it to the door and perhaps safety.
He/it grabbed her by the collar, dragging her behind him like a rag doll through the double doors and back into her workroom, easily tossing her onto the gleaming metal surface of her worktable before gently laying the Mangle beside her. He bent over Charlie as she woozily sat up, one huge, disproportionately short hand on either side of her, mouth working as if he was trying to say something, only to slam both fists into the table, denting it badly in a hissing roar of static before pausing, head down, reddening even further as with one hand he gripped her arm, the other hovering over the gleaming surface of the worktable.
For a few seconds his/its appearance shuddered, so that it was a seriously pissed off angel with electric blue eyes that scrawled "Fix her." with one stubby finger in large block letters gouged deep into the metal. He/it met Charlie's eyes before adding, "Or else." before exploding into a tornado of rage and blue sparks, overturning trays of tools, sending technical manuals and papers flying. Screaming, Charlie fled beneath the bench until it slowly settled into a sullenly rotating mass of images, energy and dark beside the table, slightly taller than a man.
Hoping that if she did as he/it asked it would go away and leave her alone, Charlie nervously crawled out and started working on the Mangle in the syrupy air pressing in on her. She reached for a worn-out control chip – why waste the good stuff on something that was still slated for scooping the second the pissed off angel wasn't looking? The Mangle was, after all, hers to do with as she pleased, and salvage was what Charlie pleased.
Piece by piece, the bear, angel, pocket-sized electrical storm reassembled itself into more or less a man wearing a battered Funtime Freddy Mask and the ragged remains of a night guard's uniform. That was when Bon Bon, the hand puppet that started out as a prank by one of the kitchen staff, climbed out of his/it's shirt pocket and inched it's way towards his/it's right hand.
Charlie paused within the unreality of it all and stared at the self-propelled puppet arranging itself over the large blunt nailless hand-paw. It's mouth worked a few times before it said in a raspy tenor southern fried voice, "I wouldn't do that if I were y'all."
"Do what?"
"Use broken parts to fix what's broken – pull that shit again and I'll rip y'all's fuckin' head off and shit down y'all's fuckin' windpipe." It added, pop-eyes rotating like a frog's. "Even I know the difference 'tween shit and what's not."
Charlie dropped the substandard chip and quickly reached for a good one before sliding it into the motherboard, eyes unsuccessfully trying to focus on the writhing mass of solid and shadow writhing and spinning around her.
"Pull that a second time and y'all won't know what hit you." The voice was calm, but Charlie could feel the violence running through it as it directed her through what it wanted her to do so that within two hours, the Mangle was missing it's second head and was sitting up with two legs instead of three damaged ones dangling over the edge of the work table as she used rubbing alcohol to buff off the dried sap from it's unscheduled journey through a South American jungle (see, "Nightshift"). After consulting her father's old blueprints and replacing the water-damaged battery, she slid the original fursuit she'd found hanging dusty in a locker back over it's now gleaming endoskeleton.
The suit was nasty, but the google-eyed horror directing her didn't seem to care as Hopscotch the acrobatic little Siamese cat she'd been working on earlier scampered out from behind the massive puppeteer and his swirling cloud of… of...
…nightmare.
Charlie jumped, knocking the alcohol soaked shop rag off the edge of the worktable. Hopscotch looked her directly in the eye, stooped, picked up the rag and handed it to her, "Don't be like your dad. Do the right thing." It said in a high, light girl's voice, adding. "Give her what you gave me right now, or else."
"What the hell are you doing here?" Bon Bon snapped. Charlie felt every hair on her body stand up. Blue sparks sizzled off of everything in the room, which swam in and out of focus around her.
"She's MY twin, not yours!"
The pissed off angel surfaced in the turmoil, storming down upon the smaller being, waving the baton behind him at the darkness that flared out from behind him like a ragged cloak, snarling. "Puck, I told y'all to stay in the Maze until it's safe!"
"That could be forever and she's my SISTER!" the little cat screamed back, her voice Dopplered past Charlie who was now on her knees, gripping one of the steel legs of her worktable to avoid being sucked into the growing void that filled the center of the room.
"Son of a bi…, y'all don't listen… I'm the adult here - what I say goes and that's an order!"
"Bite me!" the little anthropomoriphic cat screamed, followed by, "Oh shit. She's found us!" in a very, very small voice as suddenly the floor beneath her paws….
…rippled?
The two entities froze.
The floor rippled again.
The little cat's blue eyes flared and dimmed as it reached up at the angel with both hands like a toddler, "Don't let her take us? Please? We don't want to go back."
The underfoot checkerboard tilted sideways even as it stayed in place. Charlie felt herself being pulled away from the anchoring table leg. Tools slid past her with a clatter, followed by the Shaggy Dog, who was also slated for scooping, blank sad eyes staring up at the churning non-existent ceiling as legs stiff in the air it slid on it's sticky, matted back towards the growing oblivion.
The angel reached down and grabbed the cat, putting it on one broad shoulder. The worktable bounced in place, Charlie looked up at the tabletop above her and gaped. The Mangle, which had been stolidly seated on the worktable despite the chaos, slipped down onto the unstable black and white squares the indoor wind making it's fur stand on end. Eyes glowing and arms spread wide, it tottered towards the huddled center of the dark vortex swallowing Charlie's workshop.
The Mangle fell forward as with a roar, Circus Baby's smeary red mouth erupted beneath them in a cresting black and white tidal wave, "Fall back! Fall back!" the angel bellowed, gathering the battered pink and white fox in one arm as he spun, a hint of broad wings trailing behind him in the air, "If you want to come with us, do it NOW!" In full battle dress the creature leapt over the carcass of the Shaggy Dog and dodged Bellora the Ballerina as placidly demure, it approached them en pointe, eyes downcast, hard plastic arms rising gracefully as the rest of Baby's face pulled itself free from the floor, jagged teeth gnashing, every piece of paper in the room whirling around them all like a cloud of terrified doves.
As Charlie held on for dear life, she saw to her horror the angel's stubby paw reach out and snag her family's betrayal of dozen's of disposable losers out of midair as the clipped shut folder flew past in slow motion.
And with the sound of a ringmaster's whip, he folded reality around him and his burden.
And disappeared.
With a gasp, Charlie woke up on the floor beside her own bed in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets, the alarm blaring.
She reached up to the bedside table and squinting, pulled the clock towards her so that she could read the tall red numbers on it's plastic face.
3:00 p.m.
Chest aching with every breath she took, Charlie dressed and then made coffee in the kitchen downstairs. When the phone rang around 3:30, she answered it dully between sips. The voice on the other end of the receiver wanted to know if she knew somebody'd dumped bricks into the scooper, putting it out of commission, and that Bellora the Ballerina had been found in the scooping room repeatedly banging face first into the wall behind the scooper when it was supposed to have been decommissioned and junked last night along with the Shaggy Dog.
That, and the workroom looked like somebody had released a bull in there when nobody was looking. An angry bull.
Oh, and the latest night guard just quit without bothering to even so much as leave behind a "Fuck you!" note on his time card.
Anyway, it was a big mess at Circus Baby's, and they really needed her there to assess the damage and file an insurance claim if one was needed.
All right. All right. She'd be in in half an hour to see what could be done.
She'd fix the scooper.
Then she'd dump Bellora into the damned thing, still on. Not for the valuable metals inside it, but for the sheer pleasure of watching something that had disappointed her be destroyed at her own whim if she couldn't dispose of the others.
Only when she got there, Bellora, the Shaggy Dog, the freshly repaired Mangle, Hopscotch the Siamese Acrocat, and Funtime Freddy, lay quietly in their cradles, plugged in for a deep recharge as if nothing had happened.
So Charlie left them alone.
For now.