Jamie sat on the edge of his bed, watching the camcorder[1] intently.
A younger Jamie was sitting at the head of the table, staring down at the candles on the cake as they flickered. His sister stood to his left on her tippy-toes, and his mother stood at his right, both of them singing "Happy Birthday" to him.
After they finished, he blew out the candles, a toothy grin on his face. A male voice spoke from behind the camera.
"Whatcha wish for, bud?"
Jamie grimaced at the voice and skipped to the next video.
In this one, Jamie was dressed in a bright red Spiderman suit. Next to him was his sister in a batman costume, her curly dark hair popping out from the sides of its mask. Their mother was wearing a black dress and black cat ears, with dark blue whisker lines drawn on her face with eyeliner. The voice behind the camera spoke up again.
"Say 'Trick or Treat!'"
"Trick or treat!" They all responded.
Jamie once again skipped to the next video.
Now the family was sitting around the living room, unwrapping gifts under the warm light of a Christmas tree.
"What did Santa bring you, Em?" The man with the camera asked.
"Stickers!" The girl squealed with joy, a couple of the shiny stickers already on her face and shirt.
"Here!" She said, placing a doggy sticker on his fist.
The man chuckled. Of course Emmy would be more excited about $5 stickers than all the rest of her presents.
"Jamie, what did you get?"
"A video arcade!" Jamie responded, fiddling with a wire connecting the console to the TV.
"What do we say?"
"Thank you Santa!" Jamie and his sister said right before the video ended.
The next one was pointed up into the night sky as colorful fireworks burst and crackled.
"Happy new year! Welcome to 1980, kids!" The voice again said, turning the camera toward Jamie. The boy was hugging Emmy, who had her knees to her chest and tears in her eyes.
"What's wrong with your sister?"
"She's scared of the fireworks...they're really loud."
The video abruptly ended, and Jamie immediately noticed how much older he was in the next one.
"3, 2, 1, go!" Emmy shouted from behind the camera, pointing the lens at Jamie. At her signal, Jamie grabbed onto a nearby vine and swung on it, his feet just barely above a creek.
Right, now I remember, Jamie thought to himself.
That was the day they moved to Badgerview. When his mom was packing the car, Jamie took Emmy out into the woods one last time. They both hated that they had to leave, but they had no other choice. They couldn't keep the house without their father's paycheck.
"Kids, come on we have to go!" His mother's voice could be heard shouting.
The video clicked off, and the camcorder didn't play another one. Now that Jamie was no longer focused on the camera, he remembered why he had gotten it out in the first place. He was making room to hide Afton's clothes in his closet and got distracted.
Finally, Jamie got up from his bed and put the bag of clothes on the shelf atop his closet. It was annoyingly difficult when the makeshift cast on his arm kept unraveling.
He grabbed the camcorder and the flashlight on his nightstand and put them in his backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and headed downstairs.
"Are you going out?" Nabila asked as her son as he came downstairs.
"I already told you I'm going to hang out with Jason and the girls," he responded, putting on his sneakers.
"Right now? I just finished dinner."
Jamie stopped for a moment to think. She's trying to make things better...I should stay a little longer.
Finally, Jamie put his bag down and joined her at the kitchen table. As he sat down, Nabila gained a smile that he hadn't seen on her since before Emmy's passing.
"What happened to your arm?" His mother asked, eyes on the cast.
"Oh, I bent it the wrong way, it should be fine."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"Okay," his mother gave in, and an awkward silence fell over the room.
"What are you and your friends planning on doing?" She questioned.
"Oh, uh, we were just going to hang out and maybe go bowling or something," Jamie struggled, trying not to lie too much.
"Well I hope you have a good time."
"Thanks. The food tastes great, what's it called again?"
"Mansaf. When I was little my grandmother would make it back in Arabia. I wish mine tasted as good as hers," she answered, looking down nostalgically at her plate.
"Well I think it's delicious."
"I'll admit, it was quite difficult to find all the ingredients out here," she added with a laugh. "You should have seen the grocery store employee's face when I asked him for help.
Jamie chuckled, and then the two returned to that awkward silence once more.
"Your father sent something," Nabila broke the silence.
"Oh."
"It's on the counter. I didn't know if you'd want it or not."
Jamie cleaned his hand off on a napkin and grabbed the card.
It was a hallmark card with a small message and 100 dollars inside.
Happy 16th birthday, bud! Get yourself something nice with the money.
- Dad
Jamie took the money and threw the card out, a frown growing on his face. He then handed the cash to his mother, "Here, to help with bills."
"Jamie you keep that money to yourself, its for your birthday," she protested. He understood that it was insulting to have your child give you money to pay for things, but he wished she'd stop being so stubborn about it.
"Please mom, just take it. Think of it as reimbursement for you not going to work today."
The two waited for a moment, stuck in a stalemate. There was a knock on the door and Nabila hesitantly took the money. "Fine, but only because I don't want to fight with you on your birthday."
"Okay, I gotta go, thanks for dinner, ma."
"Have fun, don't stay out too late!" She said as he stepped outside and shut the door.
His friends were standing in the driveway with their bikes and skateboard. As soon as Jamie closed the door, they all cheered, "Happy birthday Jamie!"
"Thanks. You all ready to go?"
"Yup, where did you decide on?" Amanda asked.
"You'll see," he answered, getting on his bike.
The group stood in front of their old place of employment, abandoned and dusty after being shut down.
"Jamie...this isn't what I had in mind," Amanda said.
"Oh come on, it'll be fun! We can try to play the arcade games or break into the stash of alcohol."
"Sounds good to me!" Jason shouted before running toward the entrance.
"Wait, aren't we going to get arrested?" Kathryn asked, worry evident in her voice.
"Not if we're careful!" Jamie answered.
After Jason picked the lock to the front door, Jamie and Amanda followed him inside. Amanda was worriedly watching Jamie, and Kat was stubbornly standing outside with her hands on her hips.
"Kathryn, please? It's my birthday!" Jamie pleaded with her.
"Fine but we better not get caught. Colleges are going to be hard enough to get into without this on my record," she said, coming inside.
"Ooh, we should see if we can get the animatronics to perform!" Amanda said with glee, heading to the small control room under the stage. At their mention, Jamie glanced up at the robots. They seemed scarier in the dark.
Kat followed Amanda under the stage, and Jason and Jamie stood in the dining room watching the animatronics. Jamie pulled out his video camera and started recording as Amanda started pressing different buttons. The animatronics moved in short, stiff bursts. After a couple minutes, Fredbear's head stopped moving back and forth, locked directly on Jamie, eyes staring into the camera.
"Amanda, I think something's wrong with Fredbear!" Jason shouted.
At that, Amanda and Kat poked their heads out of the doorway.
"They were moving before but I think Fred got stuck. He stopped moving his head," Jason explained.
"Strange," Amanda responded.
"I'm sure something just broke, those things have been heavily used," Kat added.
"I'm gonna check it out," Jason said, hopping on stage.
"Okay, be careful," Amanda warned, going back to the control panel.
"Yeah, yeah, I will." Jason stood on his toes to look inside the yellow bear's jaw.
"I'm going to look around," Jamie said quickly before leaving the dining room.
Jamie slowly opened the door to Mr. Emily's and Mr. Afton's joint office. The first thing he noticed was the two desks back-to-back in the center of the room, covered in business papers. He turned on his flashlight to try to read them, but they all seemed like just a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo.
He tried to open the drawers in the left desk, and surprisingly, it was unlocked. He looked inside and didn't find much, just some spare metal parts and discarded projects. Jamie stopped when he found an ultrasound. Right, this is Mr. Emily's desk.
Jamie moved to the other desk and found some blueprints. They were for animatronics, but these had a complicated system of metal claws and teeth that made up their endoskeletons. The inside of their limbs, heads, and chests were just hollow enough to fit a person inside. However, these didn't look like they were made to be worn and performed in like the Spring Bonnie and Freddy costumes.
There was another blueprint labeled "illusion disk". It had a button to turn on and off, a small speaker, and a collection of wires inside. The note in the corner read "emit a random pattern of sounds to disorient".
Weird.
Then, in one of the last drawers, there were black leather shoes. They seemed clean, however as Jamie picked them up and inspected them, he realized there were dried drops of blood on the cuffs.
Jamie's mind suddenly went back to the night of the party, and the first thing he heard in the safe room: squeaking of shoes.
He brought one of the shoes out of the office and into the hallway. He knelt over the trail of bloody shoe prints and compared them to the shoe's tread.
They matched. Perfectly.
Suddenly, there was yelling, Jason's yelling, from the dining room. Jamie immediately dropped the shoe and ran toward it.
"Crap crap crap!" Jason repeated rapidly as he began to realize the weight of the situation. Fredbear's jaw had clamped down on his head when he was looking inside, and now it was beginning to squeeze down on him.
Jamie run up to the stage, frozen. Jason was struggling and squirming, trying everything to get his head out of the animatronic's mouth. He writhed and kicked and punched. He finally placed a hand on each part of its jaw and tried to pry its mouth open with his hands. Jason could feel the mechanical mouth start to clamp down more on his head.
Finally, Jamie hopped on stage and helped Jason pry his head free. Instantly after, the bear's mouth clamped down with a deafening crunch. It took Jason a moment to register the pain, when he finally realized that his hand was still in Fredbear's jaw and had been crushed by its metal teeth.
Jason stepped back from Fredbear, cradling his now bleeding hand.
"What happened?" Jamie asked.
"I-I don't know, I was looking inside and it just started closing it's jaw," Jason tried to explain, voice trembling.
"Oh my god Jason, are you okay?" Kat asked as she and Amanda rushed onto the stage.
"Um, yes I'm doing great thanks to you two. Love to have blood gushing out of my hand," he responded sarcastically.
"We weren't pressing any buttons, it did that on its own," Amanda defended.
"Here, Jason, we need to bandage it," Jamie grabbed the med kit from his bag and approached him.
"O-okay," Jason hesitantly agreed, letting Jamie wrap his hand.
After getting home and saying goodnight to his mom, Jamie closed his bedroom door and opened his closet. He was going to put Afton's shoes up alongside the clothes, but the bag wasn't there anymore.
For a moment, his heart dropped. Had his mom gone through his closet while he was out? He became exponentially more worried after not being able to find Afton's clothes anywhere.
Finally, he noticed a folded piece of paper laying on the ground. He picked it up and opened it, finding the words, "Your move ;)" written in neat, cursive handwriting.
Afton's handwriting.
[1] - lets pretend like camcorders weren't first invented in 1983 and that they technically wouldn't exist yet...
