Jeremy approached the desk, minutes after clocking in, having stumbled and floundered around the building as he usually would.

On his way over to the restaurant, Wolfie Sanchéz had rolled past him on his way to the nightshift. Wolfie wasn't supposed to be out after ten, even he knew that, but there she was on her skateboard, wandering after hours.

Jeremy Fitzgerald wouldn't say anything. He never did. Besides, he never went to church.

Not in his life, ever.

He was gonna go to hell anyway, why kid himself.

Anyways, it wasn't his problem, and the eerily polite Sanchéz family never asked him about anything.

Jeremy stood in the office. Afton's office, to be specific.

What was that on the wall? He tripped over a set of golf clubs trying to get to what looked like a gun safe mounted beside the wall, realizing that there weren't any windows anywhere inside the building.

Like, at all.

And there was tons of room for them, too.

Jeremy set the free-standing red and purple bag upright and put the clubs in, not sure which went where and that Afton wouldn't notice.

Once righted and more careful in the dark, Jeremy pulled out his cheap flashlight on the keys he'd received as a janitor when the place was still Friendly Bear's Pizza Parlor and shone the dull beam onto the safe. He actually really liked being a janitor, even now when even more kids were showing up and making things sticky. Something about knowing where to be and what to do felt nice.

He was right.

Definitely a gun safe.

Small town, everyone owns one. Hell, this county boasts one of the best junior sharp-shooters in the whole damn county. But why on earth would anyone bring their guns to work? Especially here? Where there were kids and at least one overworked security guard.

Jeremy had to check. It seemed Mike hadn't seen this before the call Jeremy had received yesterday.

He brushed a greasy hand on the spokes wheel and let out a "hmmmmm..."

Combination lock. Where was the code?

Code, code, code, ah!

Ah-hah!

Nosey little Jeremy, who always found his Christmas presents in July, ran to the security office.

He pulled out a drawer and pulled out a yellow sticky-note, triumphant smile on his stubbled, unwashed face. He ran back to the office, out of breath.

Grass really took it from ya!

He rotated the dial.

'93-87-78'

Open sesame!

Guns. Both large pistols.

But like, why? It's a children's restaurant, and the only reason it would be needed ever was if there was an intruder and Mike needed to be armed.

But Mike didn't know about these guns, right?

Even the security book Mike was using to log evidence of this unusual case had scribbles of what this could be for.

Jeremy shuffled a few ammo boxes around. No notes, nothing. He closed the door with a creak, taking note of the raw, unfinished edges of where a power saw had been used to cut the wall to embed the safe in. The safe was newly installed.

What little Jeremy knew about this was growing stranger and stranger the more he studied it.

Even in the upper south/lower midwest, it was unusual. Almost everyone had a gun, even Barney Cowatch did, but who would keep them here in kiddieland? That was like bringing a grenade into a MacDonald's PlayPlace!

Should Jeremy call someone?

But like, who?

The Ghostbusters? Everyone knew those dudes were a bunch of NYC phonies with good lighting and some fog machines!

Jeremy was already threatened with criminal charges for drug possession, so that was a big fat nope from the police. He turned, making sure the safe door was locked and reset to zero where he'd found it as he hurried back to the security room. He pulled out an unlit weedstick.

He'd need it, to calm his nerves, maybe even think a little, never mind it would slow his brains and stupify his thoughts, liquidizing his brain into a pile of mush after a day or so being clean.

If Jeremy was paying attention, he would've noticed the giggle of a girl as something slithered behind him.

And then, it wrapped it's metal body around him like a snake on a rat, blunt falling from his open mouth with a scream, a battery shocking him until his long suffering heart exploded in his chest like a wet, red balloon.

Blood spewed from his gaping jaw onto Charlie's discarded toy dog as the metal snake-fox ripped out his frontal lobe with its teeth. Screams echoed unheard into her plastic skull as Jeremy's eyes rolled back, falling to the floor. The monster's metal shriek that had startled the janitor turned cashier, turned short-lived night watchman.

'That shit turns people into animals, Jeremy.'