A/N: This didn't come out like how I planned at all, hence the severe shift in tone… but that's just naturally the way of the writing process, ain't it? Anyway, go on and take a stroll down—
Montgomery's Lane
"—and then I says—hahahaha, wait, wait, wait... and then I says, "hey, that's not a snake, that's my tail!""
The laughter that rumbled up out of Montgomery's throat was so genuine and heartfelt that in another time, it probably would have gotten a chuckle out of me. It was a raunchy joke, incredibly so, definitely not the type for an animatronic to tell a bunch of prepubescent kids, and I could only wonder who in the world had programmed it into him. But that aside... I wasn't really in a position to laugh.
And neither were the six other kids around me.
Apparently, I wasn't the only kid who had inadvertently gotten themselves lost in the nightmarish maze that was Freddy Fazbears Pizzarium.
I glanced up. Suspended from the cavernous ceiling on razor thin wires were two words outlined in neon green lights: Montgomery Lane. That was the only indicator to let me know where I was. And it wasn't much help mostly because I didn't know where in this blasted pizzarium Montgomery's Lane was to begin with. Was it an off-shoot of the Gator Golf attraction or some entirely new place by itself? A future new attraction for Montgomery maybe? I didn't know.
"I wanna go home!" One of the kids was crying, and hard. Snot ran from his nostrils, his face was cherry red, and he looked seconds from hyperventilating as he squirmed in his chair.
He was most likely squirming because, like the rest of, he was bound to his seat with barbed wire coils that stretched from our shoulders all the way down to our ankles. The barbs were wickedly sharp, sharp enough to draw blood at the slightest prick. The crying boy had streams of blood leaking down his legs due to frantically trying to kick himself free.
The rest of us, the smarter ones, we just watched him suffer. There wasn't much we could do except not do what he was doing.
Montgomery Gator whirled around to face the sniveling boy. His stocky form towered like a skyscraper, casting a chilly shadow over the boy. Thanks to his shades, I couldn't parse his expression but his stance, the way he leaned side to side and shifted his head, he seemed perplexed.
"You wanna... what? You wanna go home?" The words left Montgomery with a foreign flare and a mechanical clink let us know he had just blinked, stunned. "You wanna leave the party? No! No, you can't do that, Henry—not when we're all having such a great time!"
He took Henry by the shoulders, those robotic claws grasping tight and squeezing that coil of barbed wire into flesh. I winced when he let out a ringing cry of pain. Fresh rivulets of blood spurted free like miniature geysers, gushing between Montgomery's claws and turning them a murky cherry red.
"See, Henry? Look at that, now you've got the spirit!" Pleased, Montgomery clapped the boy once more over his bloody shoulders—once more causing him to shriek—then turned to address the room. "Anybody else wanna go home?"
After a second glance at Henry as he sat crumpled, half-hidden in Montgomery's shadow and sobbing, we all shook our heads.
"I'm... I'm fine." The girl next to me shuddered but shook her head again.
"Ah, Melissa, I knew you'd have my back!" Montgomery lifted one of his massive hands, which was big enough to comfortably clutch any of our heads like a basketball. It gleamed and dripped with the Henry's blood. "Slap me five!"
Doing so would have more than likely fractured her hand at the wrist because Montgomery didn't seem to possess the programming to know his own strength. Whenever he told us a joke or a story, he would gesture wildly, and the several times a claw or his tail whooshed past me, the pressure alone had me thinking I was going to die. And even if Melissa was feeling the "spirit", she couldn't. The barbed wire made movement impossible.
Montgomery didn't seem to catch the reason behind her inability to high-five him and his elongated muzzle sagged into a rigid frown. He wound up slapping himself five in a shower of crimson droplets and pumped an arm. "Even when you're left hangin', Montgomery, you're never alone!" The muscle that bulged there should not have been there given he was robot but there it sat, both impressive and defiant of reality.
This room, this 'lane', whatever it was, a suffocating frost squeezed the air, making every inhale feel as though ice shards were stabbing my throat. Every exhale almost saw my breath fog before my eyes. There was a throbbing pain on the back of my head. I'd probably been caught unawares by Montgomery while trying to figure out how to escape this hell.
So now I found myself wondering how I was going to get out of this one. All six of us were gathered into a circle, in the middle of which stood Montgomery. He was the show, the main attraction, and we were his audience. He said he needed to test out some of his latest jokes for tomorrow's show. After hearing that first joke, I could fully see why the metal death wire was needed. It wasn't that it was bad—like I said, I would have laughed in any other situation, it was just... you know... I really wanted to go home.
And so did the six others around me. I could tell this because one of them had straight up peed their pants. To make matters worse, whenever Montgomery moved, he stirred up the normally stale wind and I would catch the barest hints of this acrid stench that caused my nose to wrinkle.
"Um, Mr. Montgomery? Sir?" One of the boys next to me had spoken up, but when Montgomery turned to him with that massive frame giving off an unsettling creak, he shrank back in his chair.
"It's the joke, isn't it, Charlie?" Montgomery started before Charlie could reopen his mouth. Montgomery thudded himself with a palm, the sound like metal hammers banging together. My ears wanted to bleed. "I didn't time the punchline right at all. That's what you're gonna say, isn't it?"
Charlie immediately shook his head. Montgomery took a lumbering step in his direction. The ground rumbled under Montgomery's weight and my nose twitched with a new scent. Dread.
"Don't lie to me, Charlie!" Montgomery snapped, his voice booming forth with such force that Charlie's hair was blown back.
"N-no, I wasn't—" Charlie started, looking alarmed at Montgomery's abrupt attitude shift. "I j-just need to use the bathroom!"
"Oh, sure! Now you need to use the bathroom!" I couldn't see it but I was pretty certain Montgomery had just rolled his eyes with an exaggerated flair. Something hostile flicked through his form; his tail thrashed behind him, almost catching Henry upside the chin. "You didn't have to use it all day but now, all out the blue, now you gotta use it, right? No! You just wanna get away from my jokes!"
"I—what? No, I don't!"
"You said they stink!"
"I never once said th—"
"I'm tryin' my best, alright? You think it's easy coming up with new material every blasted night before the curtain goes up? I have to be ready! I have to be on my game! And I can't do that without an audience!" Now his tail was slamming into the tiled floor with dangerous force, splintering it even. "You're sayin' you don't wanna be part of my audience, Charlie? Is that... that's what you're saying..."
The horror that transfigured Charlie's face was palpable, I felt it ripple down my spine and squeeze at my heart. "Wh-whoa, whoa... I... I never said—listen," Charlie started weakly. Since he was restrained from the neck down, he could only slowly shake his head, trying to calm the irate gator. "I just—"
"Just WHAT, Charlie?" Montgomery roared, and when his tail slammed into the floor, the entire circle quivered. A couple of kids yelped when they were jostled into the barbed wired, including me. It felt like several needles had punctured the skin on my side, catching in the flesh. "I know..." Montgomery was nodding rapidly. His shades bounced, reflecting the neon green of the sign above. "You just wanna go so you can make fun of me with Freddy—"
"That is not what I—"
"—or talk about how I'll never be a star with Roxanne—"
"I don't even know where to find—"
"—or choke on some pizza with Chica while you laugh at me!"
Charlie looked scandalized, his mouth flapping open and shut with no words to save himself from those accusations, just inane blusters. A part of me wanted to help the boy sputtering beside me, but I didn't know how. There was this cloying stench of doom clinging to him, growing more and more pronounced with every furious snap of Montgomery's fangs. All that ire wasn't even aimed in my direction and it felt like I was beginning to melt.
"You... Charlie, you don't want me to succeed..."
"Someone needs to tighten up your hearing cords, Montgomery—I never said anything like—"
But just then Montgomery grew eerily still. Mid-rage, he just slumped over, defying gravity to rest at a forward slant, like he had planned to leap forward but lost interest half-way through. His arms dangled limply, his tail lay motionless.
God, please—please let him have run out of power. I squeezed my eyes shut and shot out a prayer to every deity that existed in the modern world.
And yet, not even the feverish sounds of my own grinding thought process could block out Montgomery's next words.
"Well...sorry, Charlie... but the show must go on."
Montgomery's tail blurred out of sight. I felt something whoosh past me followed by a horrible squelching noise. Something cold and thick splashed up against the side of my face. I think it was right before Melissa's mouth opened in what I assumed was a ringing scream that I realized I had stopped breathing some time ago. My chest burned something unholy and it was only once I'd finally inhaled that my ears took in all the sound it had shut out.
Melissa's scream was the main reason I found girls annoying. So pitched and shrill, like nails down a chalkboard. She wasn't alone, though. The other kids were crying their throats raw, leaking tears and snot in equal manner.
I knew Charlie was dead. I didn't need to look over to see that. When Montgomery's tail slithered back, it was saturated in blood. The smell of it was overpowering, my stomach flipped end over end with nauseating force. That neon green from on high had somehow intensified, bathing everything below, all of us, in its sickly emerald tint. It only caused Montgomery's chassis to glisten in the cold gloom. The blood that dripped from his illuminated tail looked more like sludge now.
"Now then..." Montgomery made an exaggerated show of coughing to clear his throat, something that an animatronic would never need to do, but he did it anyway, and it brought about a crushing wave of silence. Then those piercing red pinpricks just barely hidden behind his star-shaped sunglasses honed in on me. "Gregory..."
My butt clenched.
"I don't think Charlie really had to use the bathroom," Montgomery mused, stroking his chin with a couple claws. His tail listed side to side behind him in a lazy fashion, causing each kid it swished by to tense up. "I think he was just lying. I think... he didn't wanna hear anymore of my jokes." He started tapping his chin. "I dunno why, though... 'cause my jokes are awesome. Aren't they, Gregory?"
They really weren't.
"They sure are, Monty. Most awesome jokes I've ever heard."
But I dared myself to speak the truth.
Something like relief shuddered through Montgomery's premium metallic body and he relaxed a little. His tail calmed itself to a standstill and he seemed to regain that optimistic attitude from earlier. "I knew it! Charlie just didn't know what true comedy was!"
"He really didn't, Monty," I replied.
"So then, really, what's the point of being here if you don't have a sense of humor? When someone tells a great joke, you're supposed to laugh! Right, guys?"
He was addressing the entire room—lane—whatever—now, turning left and right to the remaining kids, all of whom managed to nod through their trembling. My nose twitched; I would swear a couple of them had peed themselves. The boy directly across from me, Henry, he looked deathly pale and his eyes had trouble keeping focus. He was probably dying from blood loss, or about to go into shock. I didn't know, I wasn't a doctor.
What time was it? Who knew. There was no conceivable way to get a fix on on that while we were trapped into this entirely open yet suffocatingly enclosed space. Not like it mattered. How could we escape this situation? My brain baking in my skull trying to figure out an exit strategy—but none sparked. Maybe we could hold out until the Pizzaplex opened again? Only—dang... what if Montgomery just left us all tied up while he went on stage?
Having received the response he so obviously wanted, Montgomery faced me once again, looking far more energetic than before. He suddenly aimed a claw at me.
No, not at me. At the corpse next to me.
"Hey, wait... with that big hole in Charlie's chest, you know what—I could probably add ventriloquism to my act!" Montgomery announced, entirely blown away by his own thought process to the point where his tail gave an excited flicker.
Next to me, Melissa let loose a choked whimper. "Please, d-don't," she uttered.
Montgomery didn't hear. Well, he probably did, but she wasn't who he was looking to hear from. His eyes were still trained on me with a hawk-like intensity.
"Whatta you think, Gregory?" His tail slithered across the ground threateningly, waiting for me to give any answer besides the one that would make Montgomery's day. "It'd be good for the act, wouldn't it?"
Melissa was vehemently shaking her head, sending her frazzled blonde locks into a tizzy, but I didn't spare her a single glance. I got the suffocating feeling that if I avoided Montgomery's gaze, even for a second, I'd be standing next to Charlie.
Wherever he was.
"I think that'd be a pretty great idea, Monty," I lied through my teeth, and I was almost knocked sideways when Montgomery's tail jabbed forward like a scorpions stinger.
I tried not to look, but I couldn't help it.
And when I did, when my stomach churned with a nauseating fervor, I instantly regretted it.
I had never seen a dead body before, especially not one so horribly mangled like Charlie's. The impact of Montgomery's tail had knocked the chair over and Charlie's corpse went back with it, flopping lifelessly, thudding heavily. His eyes were open, glossed over and staring forever yet seeing nothing. Rivulets of blood escaped his slack mouth, painting his teeth a sickening cherry red. I couldn't even begin to fathom what his last thoughts must have been. Montgomery's tail burrowed back into the same hole, the one that had punctured flesh and tore through Charlies' ribs like they were little more than twigs.
"Alley-oop!" Montgomery cheered when his tail lifted Charlie's sullied body into the air.
It was like watching a marionette doll struggle to move after being cut from its strings. Charlie's arms and legs were sickeningly limp, swaying and jerking with every movement of the tail trying to make the unnatural look natural. Glistening strands of red leaked from those pale fingers, dripped from between his strands of hair—
"I'm gonna need to practice this a little bit, huh Gregory?"
My throat was bone dry to the point where every breath was almost a wheeze, like my lungs didn't know how to lung properly. Thankfully, Montgomery wasn't looking at me anymore. He was busy trying to figure out the right angle to tilt Charlie so that his head swung about convincingly, a terrifying mockery of life that was no longer there. I didn't think it was possible to do something so grotesque with an almost childlike sense of purpose, of wonder... of even confusion as Montgomery came to the realization that he would have to flip Charlie around on his tail—and did so with a few well timed yanking motions that flooded the floor with copious amounts of blood and several clumpy things I'm pretty sure was supposed to remaininside the body...
"Hello, my name is Charlie and I don't work so well anymore," Montgomery continued in what was supposed to be an impersonation of Charlie's voice. But it wasn't. Nowhere near. An animatronic could do many things, but altering their tone on the fly to impersonate a human was not one of them. Trying to do so only pitched Montgomery's voice to an ear-bleeding level, like each word was physically grinding itself into our ears, clawing and digging, struggling to fit.
Next to me, Melissa had adopted a look of utter horror. Her head shook side to side as if unwilling to believe that this was happening, that this was her reality. No words left her mouth even though it hang open; her bottom lip trembled with the urge to scream—but she didn't dare.
I watched as Montgomery jerked Charlie's body about, lurching him toward the other bound kids and splattering them with blood despite their best efforts at scooting as far back in their chairs as they could.
"Ha! Look at you all!" Montgomery boomed, flexing his chest proudly and giving each of us a broad yet deranged smile. Based on how several little screws suddenly clinked to the floor, I seriously doubted that Montgomery's steel-plated jaw was made to beam so wide. I knew for a fact it wasn't something programmed into him, to smile in such an eerie fashion, that he was going against protocol while gaining more and more of this warped conscious. "It's pretty good, right, my ventriuliqoisum? Would you believe this is my first time doin' it? Really, it is!"
That it was his first time was painfully, horrendously obvious, but we all nodded anyway. A couple kids even managed to force the most sickliest of grins onto their faces. They had to be close to retching all over the floor. I know I was.
"Well, maybe I could use a bit more practice, just to be sure," Montgomery reasoned, and my heart seized when he started to inch Charlie in my direction. "Hey, Gregory, mind givin' me a hand with some new material? We only got a few more hours until we open up!"
A few... a few more hours?
Of this hell?
I blinked, unaware that I was starting to hyperventilate the closer Charlie creeped toward me, the tips of his worn shoes dragging along the blood smeared floor. The smell of death was one I don't think I'd ever be able to forget, it clogged not only my nose, but my senses, choked me from the inside out. The chill eking from the corpse before me was almost tangible; it clung to my skin, numbing me all over—I could almost see my reflection in those eyes that stared back so blankly—
"Hello, my name's Charlie and I'm not sorry! What's yours?"
Melissa was absolutely sobbing now as she tried to shuffle, tilt, and hobble her chair away from me, away from the corpse being pushed into my face.
I chose to remain quiet at first, because any quick attempt at talking would have only seen me vomit. I just held Charlie's dead gaze, inhaling that fetid stench as slowly as I could, forcing my stomach to settle.
"Hello, Charlie... I'm... I'm Gregory."
The End