"We're here, sunshine!" Funtime Freddy declared, the door to his stomach cavity swinging open. "Sure is homey, isn't it?"
Millie unfurled herself, staring at the rundown abandoned factory with a scrunched up nose. "Yeah, if you're a rat, maybe."
"That's a different mascot we don't talk about, cupcake. And I don't think he'd like it here either!" Freddy giggled at another one of his jokes that didn't make a lick of sense.
"Now, be careful Millie!" Bon-Bon warned, looking worried as he connected back to Freddy's wrist. "We don't know what we're going to find here, so please stay close and stay on your guard."
"Is anything showing up on you guys' proximity sensors?" She asked, looking around. The factory itself was huge, but was connected to an even bigger warehouse. It would be a lot to explore, and it definitely didn't look very architecturally sound.
"Nothing so far, but the Stitchwraith didn't show up on our sensors before anyways." Funtime Freddy said, a gleam in his eyes. "Looks like we'll just have to treat it like a scavenger hunt. Shame Easter has already passed, since we'll be cracking an egg or two!"
"I guess we'll have to." Millie said reluctantly, unease twisting in her stomach.
They went ahead and made their way up to the factory, where the front door was slightly ajar. They slipped on inside, making their way through the dimly lit corridors, their only light coming in through the dirty windows. Broken glass, old tools, and garbage littered the floor, along with a healthy sheen of dust over everything.
The trio wandered through the hallways without much fanfare, until Bon-Bon pointed out a few different potted plants adorning the windowsills, seeming to struggle to stay alive. Curiously, the plants lead down a single corridor, which the group eagerly followed. The hallway was littered with various locked rooms, but opened into a much wider room with an open door that led outside, towards the warehouse area.
They slipped through the door, eying a trash compactor with various scratches and scuffs down its sides and near the key-slot. It looked as if some of the metal had been twisted and gouged, almost like a symbol of desperation. "What happened here? I don't think a person could do that..." Millie said, leaning down to inspect it. She tried to open the trash compactor door but found that it was locked tight, unyielding to her human grip.
"Who cares? What about that little shed over there?" Funtime Freddy inquired, looking curiously to the small building across the way. "The door is open, cupcake."
Millie felt a chill go down her spine. Realistically, she knew that the little shed was likely some sort of storage for the employees who had once worked here, but it still gave her shivers. A little run down building in the middle of this decrepit concrete and metal jungle, right across from a damaged trash compactor, lying between an abandoned factory and warehouse, right where it would be invisible to anyone passing nearby without taking the time to investigate? Chills.
But it definitely was the perfect hideout, wasn't it?
"Let me go first, Silly Millie." Funtime Freddy said, stepping ahead. They approached the shed together, Funtime Freddy pulling the door open without ceremony.
Inside, they found exactly what they had been looking for, just missing the key component. It definitely looked to be the Stitchwraith's hideout-the floor was littered with toys, scrap metal and animatronic parts. More frighteningly there were black stains all over the floor as well-and a few viscous black pools gleaming wetly, seeping into the concrete floor.
"It's like the stain from the distribution center…" Millie murmured, feeling goosebumps form on her skin. Something was twisting in her stomach, a feeling of dread that told her to run. "Why are there more here?"
"And some look...fresh?" Bon-Bon said, voice hard. "Be careful."
"I wasn't planning on diving in anytime soon." Millie dug her nails into her palms, trying to steady her nerves. She let her gaze sweep over the room, taking in everything surrounding them- things like old dolls, vintage toys, and animatronic exoskeletal and endoskeletal parts. It looked like some kind of childhood nostalgia graveyard.
Her eyes traveled over all the old junk, past the pools soaked into the floor like dark blood, and landed on the windowsill, where a flowerpot sat on the window. Two fragile red flowers wilted within the dry soil, curling towards the small amount of sunlight filtering in. She felt herself drawn to them, a speck of bright color within the sea of dead metal and blackness.
She heard Funtime Freddy shuffle about, examining the horde of junk at their feet with Bon-Bon, as she approached the window. She took care to not step on anything, especially the stains, and let herself tune into how the flowers made her feel.
They made her sad. They were struggling. They were dying.
She noticed something underneath the pot and gingerly lifted it up, swallowing hard. It was her journal, from all those months ago! The cover was faded, as if hands had traced it over and over again. She flipped it open to the third page and stared down at the poem she had written all that time ago-the one about forgiveness and hope. The edges of the pages were frayed, as if they had been turned many times.
Millie suddenly felt like her skin was on fire, and the feeling of being watched crashed down on her in a smothering wave.
She turned the page.
A crudely drawn picture of a little boy, in a field of flowers holding a baseball bat in one hand and a much larger man's hand with the other was at the top of the page.
At the bottom, there was another boy, incredibly thin with no hair, laying in a bed with the same baseball bat. A woman stood next to the bed, holding a bowl of something.
Millie put a hand to her chest. Oh.
She flipped the page.
The next one had a drawing of a boy with shaggy hair wearing an alligator mask and eating pizza. It was drawn differently than the first set of pictures, more advanced and skilled in its linework, as if drawn by someone else.
The feeling of eyes on her penetrated through her skin now, reaching down to her bones.
With a shaky hand, she turned the page.
It was another drawing. The same boy, but sprawled out, X's scrawled over his eyes and covered in red. The whole page was filled with it.
Millie's breath caught in her throat. Her nightmares.
She was looking down at a depiction of her own nightmares.
She turned the page again.
WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY
Millie clasped a hand over her mouth. She looked down to the very bottom of the page.
Go back to page one.
Millie realized she had skipped the first two pages, instead flipping right to where she knew her writing would be. She turned back, finding pages of her own messy scribbles. Accompanying them now though, was a new one, seemingly drawn by the first artist.
It was her.
"I don't understand…" Millie mumbled, then shut the journal. She simply couldn't take anymore, and didn't want to see what else was hidden within its pages. "Freddy?" Her voice was choked, the numerous violent images that the distribution center stain had gifted to her rushing back, smothering her.
"What is it, sunshine?" Funtime Freddy said without turning around, seemingly very interested in something at his feet.
"I found my journal. There...were more things drawn and written in it. I think that whatever the Stitchwraith is, there's more than one spirit in there. There's drawings of the boy from my nightmares, and then another one who looked like he got sick. And there was a drawing of me, on the page before my poem. The poem, what it's about… The drawing of me… When they came that one night, and kept gesturing to it… I think they really were asking for our help. They just didn't know how to ask in a way I could get, or maybe they...couldn't." She swallowed the lump in her throat. "Freddy, Bon-Bon, what do we do?"
"Hm. Well, you met the Stitchwraith in a cemetery the first time, right?" Funtime Freddy said coolly. "I think I know why they were there now, Silly Millie." He turned, holding a broken off tombstone in his massive hand.
In Loving Memory of Andrew Lopez.
You will always be remembered.
"That's one of the boys." Millie whispered. She didn't know how, but she felt it deep in her bones. That was the child murdered by William Afton, the murder she had seen play out over and over in her nightmares. "The second brainwave in the hospital."
"He was the vengeful little bugger, huh?" Funtime Freddy chuckled, but not unkindly. "This is a nice tombstone though. Don't you goth girls like to do those grave rubbings with charcoal? This would make a nice one, hm?"
Before Millie could answer, the air went unnaturally cold. Bile rose up in the girl's throat, a feeling of sickness curling her stomach and almost keeling her over. Her head felt white hot, not unlike when she touched the original stain. Distantly, she thought she heard deep breathing, then flinched when it sounded as if it was right by her ear.
"Millie! Watch out!" Bon-Bon cried, waving his little arms and snapping her out of it. "The pools, they're moving!"
"Wha-?" Millie looked down and gasped. The black pools seemed to grow, spreading out across the floor and directly towards her. They gleaned cruelly, almost seeming to invite her in.
Millie squealed, leaping over the closest pool of black stretching toward her, and ran right into Funtime Freddy's side. "Freddy! What the heck is going on?!" Her stomach lurched and she heaved, desperately trying to keep what was inside of her stomach from spilling to the floor.
The animatronic and toy parts began to move, a disturbing rattling and scraping filling the air as the junk piles moved of their own accord, metal groaning and heaving as they approached the trio.
Millie shrieked then, clutching Freddy's leg. The bear's eyes narrowed, and he swiftly kicked an outstretched mechanical arm into the wall, the old junk sparking as it crumpled to the floor. "Not sure sunshine, but I have a pretty good feeling it has something to do with agony." A doll dressed up in a pretty blue gown lunged through the air with her tiny hands outstretched for Millie, and Freddy swiftly batted her away with a swing of the tombstone.
"Freddy!" Millie gasped.
"Don't use the tombstone, Funtime Freddy!" Bon-Bon cried. "That's going to end up being important!"
"Well, my hand wasn't free." Funtime Freddy shrugged, placing the tombstone back down. "What did you expect me to do?"
"I don't know, use your feet like you literally just did." Millie hissed, swinging her own foot to knock away a hopping jack in the box. A tremor ran through her body when she did, but she much preferred touching it with her shoe than the alternative. "We… We need to find the Stitchwraith. I don't know what's going on here, but it's not good." Her head was spinning, the sick feeling growing ever stronger. "I feel really bad. Really, really bad."
"We need to get rid of that blackness!" Bon-Bon said. "It's pooling around everywhere."
"We can't touch it," Funtime Freddy said, stepping back and guiding Millie with his hand.
"So what do we do then?!" MIllie asked, her voice rising in pitch.
Funtime Freddy knocked away a chirping toy plane. "I… don't know, Silly Millie."
A golden rabbit costume head shot through the air, its face splitting open to reveal a multitude of terrifyingly sharp teeth. It latched onto Funtime Freddy's arm just below his wrist, making the bear guffaw. "Why why, aren't you just the little star of the show? Can't say I like someone stealing my thunder though, golden custard!"
Bon-Bon beat at the costume head with his little paws, his violet eyes wide with fright. Millie gasped, backing away in fear as Funtime Freddy began to wrestle with the toothy rabbit. A furred purple arm grabbed her by the ankle and she shrieked as it began to drag her back towards a puddle of black, reaching her arms out for help. "Freddy!"
You made a mistake coming here, child.
Millie kicked desperately at the hand clenched around her ankle, her heart threatening to beat right out of her chest. The voice was a mere whisper in the back of her mind, but it left an icy freeze in its wake. All the hairs on her arms stood straight up as she skidded her feet across the ground, trying to escape her captor and avoid the dark pools.
You think you are capable of something? Anything? You, your agony… it will only add to my power.
"Who in the world is chattering on?" Funtime Freddy grunted as he ripped the rabbit head off of his arm, the teeth shredding his metal and snapping wiring within his endoskeletal frame. "It's not very polite to just start babbling on without a proper introduction!"
Millie balked. So they could hear the voice too… It wasn't just her. She glanced at the black pools and grimaced. It felt as if they were radiating pure agony, reflecting, no...amplifying her own distress.
You think you have free will, do you? You are nothing but machines, and she is nothing other than a dead girl walking. A mistake to come here. A mistake.
Millie managed to wrench the arm off of her with her other foot, sending it skidding into one of the pools with a splash. The black seeped into the purple fur, gunking it up and making it spasm.
Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.
She suddenly felt very dizzy, the image of the little boy-of Andrew-laying in a puddle of his own blood overlaying the arm in the black pool. The arm in the agony.
She blinked the horrible image away, backpedaling from the puddle of agony.
Her vision cleared, and the Stitchwraith stood right in front of her. She gasped, unsure if it was another hallucination or not. She stumbled back and tripped right over a remote control pizza patterned car.
The last thing she saw before the Stitchwraith darted forward and grabbed her arm was Funtime Freddy's bright blue eyes and his metal hide stained with oil and lubricants. She noticed that it was the first time he had ever looked truly afraid.
The Stitchwraith's metal hand closed over her own, and she realized then that they were definitely real.
Burning hot pain lanced through her before solidifying right behind her eyes.
She saw Andrew in the alligator mask, playing arcade games with a wide smile on his face.
She saw the sick little boy, clinging tightly to a plush baseball bat, talking to his father over the phone.
Jake.
She then looked up at a massive golden rabbit, a man's dark eyes looking through the eyeholes. He fluttered his wrist, beckoning her to come closer.
No, not her. Andrew.
He followed, eager for VIP treatment and getting to try the newest arcade game.
He saw the knife too late.
Jake's entire body shuddered with pain as death throes rocked his tiny, frail body. Death was not peaceful.
The afterlife wasn't peaceful either.
She heard both of the boys crying, and something else laughing, and felt her muscles twist in pain as she was invaded by sharp metal. Or was it Andrew trying to fight off his murderer? Or Jake's final death rattle?
She screamed.
And then there was nothing.
A/N: This one was quite the doozy. You'll just have to wait and see what happens next. :) Thanks for all the love and support you guys! This has been one long, crazy ride, but it's almost over. If you've enjoyed the story thus far, please consider visiting my tumblr chicatenders and donating to my ko-fi, linked in my blog description. Take care!