Princess hummed flatly to herself as she entered the dance studio's lobby, just past Elmore's high school, ballet bag over her shoulder in the air of a cool summer morning.
"Hello there!" Laynie said from her desk over a People magazine. She was filling out a bunch of quizzes and flipping to the back of the magazine for the most desirable answers. She was currently on the quiz to determine if she was 'Sexy or Sweet'.
Laynie, who also worked as a fry cook at Daisy's, was trying to get 'Sexy'.
Of course.
Princess waved, full lips curling shyly, then she continued to march to her usual room of mirrors. She snatched the lanyard and stepped down the hall of the studio, unlocking the door and twisting the stainless steel handle.
It squeaked open.
Princess blinked.
Who the hell was this guy?
A boy with curly red hair stood in the center of the room dancing. He picked up his feet and stomped it back down, making a loud, almost mechanical-sounding clack and he turned his head side to side as he…
...Tap danced?
No, it was something a little more intricate than tap dancing. Princess watched him in silence.
It was just Dollie Mae's boyfriend.
Except his hair was bright red, and something about his reflection was wrong. It seemed to flicker and snap, not quite lining up with the figure she saw.
"Vinnie?"
The boy's gold eyes finally fell on Princess in her ballet slippers and tide orange leg warmers with a click, staring at her blankly. He rocked forward, then cocked his head, stiffly, almost robotically.
Vinnie's face looked stiff, thin, artificial.
"I-I thought you were in California…" Princess bowed her head, feeling cold.
He put up his hands, one gloved, the other bare and skewered with a slim pirate's hook. He stiffly flexed his untainted hand, each segment squeaking. He rattled, forward, all grace and speed disappearing from his stiff legs.
Princess gasped and slammed the door shut.
She'd rather give him his privacy and go to the next open room.
Princess tried to shrug off her encounter with a possibly intoxicated Vinnie and started her warm-up stretches in the empty dance studio down the hall.
Side, side, splits, stretch. Leg on her left, then right. Practice spin, practice spin, leap, bow.
Something was very wrong here.
She knew it.
It was like this oh-so-familiar and welcoming building was breathing down her neck, like a predatory beast.
Princess sighed, and did a few dips, heels together. She looked at herself in the mirror as she did the splits, crunches, push-ups...
The designer of her new ballet costume to be debuted in Branson was some trashy brat from the L.A. projects. She'd come up with a new idea for the Fazbear Girls, which used Princess's talents as a ballerina. Princess rather disliked Maggie, especially after she told Princess she was slow and talked funny.
Princess couldn't help but notice all the disappearances, and hoped that Maggie would 'conveniently' take a trip back to glamorous California. She couldn't wait to turn her nose up at snooty, trailer-trash Maggie, and her shitty friends, including Missy Custer, when they sashayed left-stage.
Henry had rigged the purple and yellow LED lights into the dancer's tutu that stuck out stiffly, and Maggie had bought a brand new blue leotard and had Dollface add big, puffy satin sleeves to it. Next up was the costume jewelry and blue pointe shoes, or maybe regular dance slippers with white balls of fuzz tacked onto them.
Princess would have to get her legs waxed again soon, she thought to herself half invested. And screw doing that at home like Ma would nag her to, she'd rather cough up the money for a real salon the next town over or so.
How did she even let herself get talked into doing this? Performance season was coming up soon, and she just didn't have time to rehearse both for Fazbear's, the Nutcracker, and county contests!
Wishing Lilly was there to help keep her company and practice her part for this year's production of the Nutcracker, Princess sighed, dipping down into another round of pilés.
Spin, spin, leap.
Having the entire mirrored room to herself had its perks, and so she took a running leap for the radio, landing almost silently in the drop dead quiet room. She knelt to the speaker, took out her phone and pulled up the songs she was supposed to rehearse with.
She scrolled through, then found the icon sent to her via text.
Got it.
A weird and unfamiliar intro played once the speaker picked up the Bluetooth signal. Princess took a long drink from her water bottle, thinking about the choreography.
The closed door creaked open, making her jump out of her skin, water dribbling from her pursed lips.
"Hey girlie!" It was only Laynie.
Princess pressed pause on her phone, embarrassed as she wiped her chin with the sleeve of her orange sweatshirt.
"How ya doin'?"
"I am doing great, Ma'am." Princess took another swig, pretending that she hadn't nearly crapped her leotard with fright. Other than a strangely behaving Vinnie, Princess was the only one here at 7:30 A.M.
"Just wanted t'make sure y'all're okay! I can't wait t'see what yer comin' up with!" Laynie smiled, round face scrunching up.
Laynie had been a pretty good dancer before her initial scrape with the white trash lifestyle. She'd turned that around after her third kid, even going through AA for good measure.
Regardless of what the town said about Laynie, Princess liked her and enjoyed caring for her kids at her mother's daycare.
"Do ya want me t'close t'door fer ya?"
Princess nodded her head, a light, shy smile on her full lips. Laynie winked and closed the door.
Princess checked her pigtails in one of the large mirrors. It was still in place.
She adjusted the crown between her blue pigtails. Izzy's mom always did a good job dying her hair. The dye was always just right and Princess was even allowed to talk to Izzy when she wasn't feeding her chickens or doing homework.
Sometimes, they'd bring Lily and they'd all get their hair done and do homework together.
Many, many long hours were spent during the winter huddled around a heater and gossiping over bio and algebra.
Princess grabbed her phone, rewinding the strange song.
"Could a body close the mind down?" Princess danced in the dimmed lights, stiff tutu lit like a firefly infested field.
"Stitch a seam across the eye." She tried to keep it from being slow and graceful. She wanted to be jerky, distorted, disturbing.
"If you can be good you'll live forever, if you're bad, you'll die when you die." She wanted to make herself disjointed.
"Hearing only one true note. I'm the one and only sound." She felt that. Princess didn't relate kinda 'felt that' but heard it resonate in her head like a whisper in the dark.
"Unzip my body, take my heart out, 'cause I need a beat to give this tune." She twirled en Pointe.
"Bang Bang" Pilé, heel turn, pilé.
"Oh the body swayed to music. Oh the lightning glance." Sway sway swish, dip forward, up.
"I would give it all, and all, maybe you would give me less for half a chance."
Too busy to notice her changing reflection, Princess spun, enamored by the tiny lights in her disc shaped tutu. When she was little, it was suggested that she become a ballerina to feel her body, to become aware of herself. The only person who could teach her for a long time was Raina.
Raina was the one who taught her to face her stage fright by closing her green eyes while dancing. It got to the point where Princess could do entire performances with other girls, eyes shut tight. "Hearing only one root note, planted firmly in the ground."
Sudden grace to clash, Princess swayed to one side, twisting her legs, then hips into a lazy circle and rotating her entire body.
"Undo my heart, unzip my body and lend to my ear a clear and deafening sound."
This was Princess. There was nothing else but the thought of music and the sound of her feet hitting the floor. This was her roots, her core, her life giving blood.
This was why she competed year after year, this was her fire.
"And if I need a rhythm, it'll be to my heart I listen." Leap, spin, dive. Princess flew, unsure of the next set of lyrics, but confident enough to put down another step.
"If it doesn't put me too far wrong, and if I need a rhythm, it will be to my heart I listen if it doesn't put me too far wrong." Princess kept dancing, feeling like everything was falling into place. Her reflection stayed in place, while Princess kept twirling and walked backwards, en Pointe once more, and fell into a back leaning dip.
"Everybody smile, please. Nobody pays no mind to me." Without being noticed, her reflection stopped. It smiled empty at its owner, en pointé, hands delicately held at its sides.
"Finger in position on the switch, a little flash photography." It put it's hand on its side of the mirror and stepped forward, forcing the skirt to lift up in the front. Princess spun and fell to her knee, other leg outstretched, eyes still lightly closed.
"Taking a picture of you." Pre-chorus! Princess felt her heart jump from excitement at the sound of a xylophone and the accompanying rattles. The spector's pink eyes fluttered open, smirking at her.
"Taking a picture of-Taking a picture of me. Taking a picture!" Oh hell yeah! This was Princess's favorite part of dancing to a song with lyrics.
"Ramalama, bang bang."
Princess moved forward to the singer's rhythm, trying to emulate a doll, feet pulling forward then back, carrying her along like a crab. The reflection seemed to grow larger, a politely terrifying smile still playing on its lips like a violinist.
"Flash bang, big bang," Princess took a running leap, turning it into a cartwheel.
Wolfie could definitely do something more demanding and creepy, but Princess wasn't even trying to come up with choreography anymore.
This was Princess's solo. Not Wolfie's.
"Bing bong, ding dong, dom dom do dom dom" Princess grabbed her leg, and with her other foot flat, did a full 360 turn. Hard to do around the disc skirt, but she did it!
She refrained from showing pride in such a basic move.
"With a hammer bang bang, flash bang, press gang."
The reflection was now of a seven foot tall woman in a blue and white leotard and purple tutu. Little diamond earrings adorned her ears and matched the pearl comb tucked into her bun. She took the glasses from her sculpted face and crushed them like a can in her perfect hands.
"Bing bong, ding dong, hum hum ho hum hum." Princess fell to the wood floors, and twisted her body like Wolfie would, then turned it into a roll, tucking her chin in and standing in one flow. Raina had been the one she'd told first, about Princess's interests.
Princess had told Raina everything.
There had been no secrets.
She'd even told Raina about her real feelings towards other girls.
"With a system of a bang bang, crash bang, big bang."
The dissonant drums rattled her ears and kept her going, even as her legs burned and screamed for the music to stop for a break.
"Boing boing, boing boing, dumb dumb do dumb dumb!" Y'know, maybe getting talked into being a Fazbear Girl wasn't so bad. It was fun pretending to be Bonnie onstage and other than dance recitals she didn't get to- ulp! Finally catching a glimpse of her "reflection", Princess stopped.
"With a system of a bang-bang, crash bang, big bang."
She stepped to the Polish woman in the mirror.
That wasn't her.
"Boing boing, boing boing, dum dum do dum!"
She cocked her head.
The lady who looked nothing like her mirrored her motion. Her black hair was pulled into a tight bun, hazel eyes trained on Princess. Princess could fall into those eyes, and how familiar they were. No, they weren't hazel.
They were pink.
"Keep on, keep on, keep on, keep on..."
Forgetting dance, forgetting rhythm, forgetting life itself, Princess put a hand up, then down. The reflection mirrored it perfectly. The smile widened, revealing sharp, metal teeth.
"And if I-and if I need a rhythm, gonna be to my heart I listen." She looked up at the woman in the mirror. She pulled into a perfect side split. The mirror followed.
"And if I-and if I need a rhythm." The woman looked familiar to Princess. Maybe this was a weird dream? Whoever she was, she definitely wasn't Princess's reflection.
She couldn't quite place this woman.
"It's gonna be to my heart I listen."
She put her hand to the mirror. Princess felt confident in the smooth, cold surface of the glass.
Until she wasn't.
"And if I and if I need a rhythm, it's gonna be to my heart I listen."
The music melted in her ears as she felt the larger hand on her own as she pulled up from her splits, hands never leaving the mirror, like she was on a wire. The lady leaned forward, coming out of the mirror with an inhuman groan.
"Keep on, keep on."
Princess screamed, feeling the all-encompassing might as her hand was grabbed.
"Keep on, keep on." She screamed again, feeling like her hand was being crushed as the twisted ballerina's jaws unhinged. Princess was too scared to fight back. She attempted to head butt, but found herself dizzy on the floor, Laynie stammering over her in a panic.