Freddy's Pizza

Death oriented on his next client and soon found himself parking in front of a pizza parlor, in the middle of the night somewhere in America. This was a strange place for someone to die, especially at this time of night, but he'd seen all kinds of strange deaths by now. Maybe someone stayed late cooking for the next day and got a really bad oil burn or something.

Zane got out of the car and strode into the restaurant. He was actually about ten minutes early. The restaurant was swathed in black and white tile below and children's drawings above, and much of it was shrouded in long shadows from a few flickering overhead lights here and there.

There was a large stage at one end of the large dining room, and a large teddy bear bigger than a person loomed on one side of it. Turning back to scan the room again, Zane jumped. A giant blue bunny, roughly the same size and shape as the bear, was standing stationary in the middle of the room, staring toward the wall. That was odd.

Zane moved on, following the compass on his watch toward his client, who was sitting in a back-room office of some kind. When he reached the door, the man took one look and hit a button that closed the door with a loud slam. Zane just walked through the door.

"Oh, it's just you…oh. Great, great, great," the man said. "Sorry, knee jerk reaction." He sunk down in his chair a little. "I – in a way it's not that surprising to see you. It's just, I was expecting something else to be there."

He turned back to his computer and flipped through a few camera views. "I should be fine for now…"

"Who were you expecting to see?" Zane asked, walking over to peer at the cameras. They showed scenes from elsewhere in the restaurant. A metal desk fan rumbled softly to the side. "And what is this place, anyway?"

"Not who," the man replied, flicking another couple of buttons and opening the door Zane had come through. "What." Another button – the light in the doorway on the other side of the room flickered and a disturbing yellow face lit in the window on that side. That door came crashing down.

"What is that?" Zane asked, feeling more and more confused. It had an orange mouth with white teeth and staring dead eyes.

"That's Chica. One of four animatronics here that are currently trying to kill me, and evidently are about to succeed, so I'd appreciate it if you let me concentrate. I'll try to explain."

"I think I saw some of them on the way here," Zane says.

The man flipped through the cameras again and checked the light on the open door. "This is a pizza place called Freddy's. It has these animatronics that perform like a band to entertain the kids. I'm the guy they hired to keep an eye on them at night."

As he talked, he continued to check doors and cameras in a continuous cycle. Without a sound, Chica disappeared and almost immediately afterward the man opened the door on that side.

"My name is Todd. This is only my third night on the job. But it's almost literally a nightmare. They move around at night. They leave their stages and work out the kinks in their joints. That's what the phone guy told me, anyway. He worked at this job last, or something. But it's more than that. Their wandering isn't as random as he says. They seem determined to reach my room, to reach me. I don't know why. But if one of them gets in here…" He paused for a moment, looked at Zane, and gulped.

"Well, I guess you'll see when one of them does. He said they'll think I'm a suit-less endoskeleton or something, and…well, it's not going to be a fun way to go. Oh, darn it! Why am I even still here?!"

He slammed the door on the left again, and Zane heard a couple of knocks.

"Oh, I really couldn't afford that. That was Foxy. Drains the power a little bit when he does that. Not sure if I'm going to have enough now…the other two are Freddy, the bear, and Bonnie. The first night wasn't that hard. I was not thrilled with what the phone guy said, especially about the consequences of failure, but it was fairly straightforward. Not much happened, really. It didn't seem that bad, so I came back on Tuesday, and then the phone guy says they get more and more active the later in the week it is?! And I had a couple of close calls, but I just managed to make it through the shift with maybe ten percent power left. But last night scared me. I almost died like five or six times. So, I don't even know why I came back again tonight! Maybe I liked the excitement of it or something…I don't know, I must be insane…ok, I'm going to stop talking now. I don't want a distracting conversation with Death to be the reason I go out."

Todd lapsed into silent concentration, completely ignoring Zane in favor of the doors and the cameras. Zane checked his watch. Three minutes. He decided to leave Todd to it for the time being and went out into the restaurant. He sat at a long table in the dining room and just watched. Now, he noticed the animatronics moving slowly around him. Not Freddy, he still stood as still as ever. But Chica and…Bonnie, was it? Moved slowly toward the back of the restaurant. Occasionally they made a motion that made Zane think they could be quite a bit faster if they wanted to. He spotted a smaller stage with a red face peeking and peering from behind a curtain – that must be Foxy. None of them seemed to notice Zane – but they wouldn't, since he was an Incarnation. That seemed a little funny though, and he wasn't sure why.

As Zane's clock ran twenty seconds over a minute, there was a sound like a large engine shutting off and the lights flickered a few more times and then went out. Zane could still see almost as well without them, but if he had been a mortal, it would have been almost impossible to see clearly in here.

Zane stood to return to his client. But before he left, the main stage caught his eye. Freddy was moving. His head turned toward the stairs near him, and he was beginning to make slow, deliberate steps toward it. His eyes glowed intensely.

Zane hurried straight through the wall into the office. Despite the dark, which was more like a dull dimness in the office, he was immediately apparent to Todd. "Well, I've done it now, haven't I?" Todd said morosely. "How long do I have?"

Zane checked again. "Seventy seconds. Can't you still shut the doors?"

"Not without power. I'm completely exposed…oh boy…"

They waited in the darkness. A tinny music box tune began to play, and strange sounds echoed through the building.

"I can't take it!" Todd muttered under his breath. "I can't take this waiting! I can't run, I just want it to happen already if it's going to happen…"

Todd stood suddenly and roared "Come on, Freddy! Come get me already, I dare you!"

Then he sat again and huddled into himself. "Idiot!" he whispered. "Idiot, why did I do that, just going to live a little less long…"

He lapsed into silence and began to shiver on his chair. Zane suddenly noticed glowing red eyes at the door on the left. Todd noticed an instant later and sucked in a breath.

Zane watched it happen in the next ten seconds. Suddenly Freddy was there in the room with them, and he had some kind of empty suit with him, which he set facing against the wall almost casually. His eyes drilled into Todd, and Todd screamed and began to move as if he expected to be able to run away. An instinctive reaction to danger.

Freddy's hand clamped around Todd's before he could go anywhere. Todd was pulled inexorably toward the massive bear and then lifted as the other hand took his waist. Todd was hyperventilating, his eyes staring. He could no longer make any coherent sound; he was so scared.

There was a deep furrow in the drooping empty suit that Zane realized was an opening into the back. It was a simple bear suit, nothing so detailed as Freddy himself, with his little black top hat and bowtie. Freddy paused with Todd midair, letting go of his hand to flip his body and guide his legs into the bottom of the opening. This was the moment Zane fully understood what was happening, and he recalled the dread on Todd's face as he'd spoken of this death earlier. No, not a fun way to go at all.

As the inner edges of the suit began to bite into Todd's legs and thighs he began to scream more earnestly. His body entered easily, with the proper force applied from the great bear above him, though Freddy might have accidentally broken something in Todd's back as he did. Arms went next, a comparatively delicate operation. You could hear the gushing blood now.

Zane checked his watch, but already knew it stood at zero. He approached the operation-in-progress and hooked out Todd's soul just as his head slid with a sickening crunch into the head of the suit. Immediately his anguished moaning, muffled by the suit, stopped.

So did Zane. He folded the soul on autopilot, surprised at what he'd just felt. He'd brushed Freddy's arm as he leaned in to do his job, and there was no question. The animatronic was alive.

Notes: So, if you've read the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony (one of my top 3 favorite series) you know Zane. Remember in Wielding a Red Sword, the Mars book, where every Incarnation faces some perversion of their office Perry invented and Mim compares them to the different elements/strategies in his war philosophy book? And Zane's thing was zombies? Remember how righteously infuriated he was, that it went so deeply against his death-philosophy? And that was only reanimated, soulless bodies. Just imagine how he'd react to FNAF animatronics, souls where they really shouldn't be. They're just so wrong...they go against everything he stands for. He'd hate them and pity them at the same time, and his anger would know no bounds. This is my attempt at such a reaction in a more thought out story. And remember, I don't own FNAF or Incarnations.