Today was a very special day. Vanny had gotten up early to prepare for tonight.
She wasn't good at many 'normal' hobbies, but she had learned to bake cakes quite well in the past.
As soon as she had found out that William's favorite flavor was red velvet, she set out to learn how to make the best red velvet cake she could possibly bake. It took quite a few attempts for her to make it just the way that William had liked, but he had been very pleased and surprised when she had woken him up on his birthday with the enticing scent of his favorite dessert. She made a cake for him every year after that; it didn't matter if he was around anymore to eat it.
The first time William's birthday came and went with him absent was hard on her, but she found comfort in baking his cake and consuming it all over a period of several days.
She had drug that yellow rabbit suit back out on that first lonely birthday to set up in William's chair at the table. She had sung to it, then presented it with a slice of cake. It smiled at her like it always did but didn't partake in the sugary dessert.
Maybe he wasn't hungry...?
Despite having told herself that she wouldn't, Vanny had broken her own rule of not dragging the suit out to converse with; but it was for a special occasion! Taking it out once a year was acceptable, she rationalized. There was a huge difference between spending every day with it and one day a year with it. It was William's birthday, after all. She couldn't celebrate it alone.
Vanny would spend William's birthdays with the empty suit; giving it cake in the early morning and talking to it throughout the day. The rabbit kept her company and watched movies with her as the day drug on. She would tell it how she was doing as if William were inside, listening to every word she spoke with great interest. Vanny referred to it as William, and she did a somewhat decent job of convincing herself that he was in there. It was just for one day, she would remind herself. Taking one day to pretend that all was well wouldn't drive her completely insane. She would snuggle against the suit that night, then return it to its place inside of the closet in the morning.
It was only once a year that she really pulled it out to converse with. She would check on it throughout the rest of the year occasionally to make sure that no mice or anything of the sort had been damaging it, but kept it secluded in darkness for the majority of the time.
Today was William's birthday, and as had become customary, Vanny drug the rabbit out just like she had done for the past seven years. William had been gone for seven years.
Vanny had never been questioned about the teenager's disappearance two years ago. He had apparently become rather troublesome with his parents and it was suspected that he had skipped town. He'd always complained about how terrible Hurricane was.
Vanny was never a suspect, yet the town's weariness of her lingered.
She was a weird recluse who had killed her boyfriend.
Vanny hadn't really been mentally well seven years ago, but her sanity had thinned even more since then. The only human interaction she ever had was when she went into town once every week or two. What was the point of going into town? She had William right here in front of her.
Vanny smiled up at the rabbit sitting at the end of the kitchen table. He hadn't touched his birthday cake as per usual, but Vanny was enjoying her own slice with a giddy smile plastered to her face.
"I had a dream about you last night." Vanny began as she set her fork down for the time being.
The rabbit waited for her to continue patiently; never interrupting like the gentleman he was.
"Henry was with us… We were down by the forest." Vanny blinked and looked down at her cake, pondering to herself in silence for a few moments. She had never actually met Henry despite living in the same town. In the past, she had wondered if he had something to do with William going missing. It was highly unlikely, though. William had always described him as a huge pushover. Henry was big and could certainly look intimidating but the man was just a huge teddy bear. Vanny didn't know much about Henry other than the fact that he and William had been business partners when they were much younger. By the way that William had spoken about the man, Vanny came to quickly assume that there was more to their relationship than just business partners. Will had even slipped up a couple of times and referred to Henry as a friend.
Something had obviously happened between the two that made William uncomfortable, so she never questioned him about their past together.
Besides some stray photos of William and him that were tucked away in drawers, the only time she had ever seen Henry was a handful of times she glimpsed him in the grocery store after she… began living alone. There was usually a brunette child with him, clinging to his flannel shirt with a death grip. When Vanny had initially seen the child in the store, a sick, twisted thought reared its ugly head.
She would be fun to kill.
Despite Vanny's itch for violence, she had swallowed down her urges and hurriedly finished shopping before rushing back home. That child was the daughter of one of William's friends. Even Vanny wasn't going to sink that low. Henry had obviously meant something to William at some point in time, so hurting him wasn't something she was willing to do
Vanny took another small bite of her cake and cleared her throat, brushing off the cold chill that shot down her spine. Her tired eyes drifted up to meet the purple ones at the end of the table.
"Do you miss him?" She asked it in a soft voice. 'William' didn't reply. He smiled and let the silence stretch on, leaving Vanny to fill in the blanks for herself.
"Do you miss Henry?" Again, 'William' didn't respond. Vanny shifted in her chair, then stood to her feet. Her gaze shifted down to the uneaten cake in front of the rabbit.
"Do you… miss me?" Even though there was no sound that broke the deafening silence, Vanny could hear William's voice in her head. It wasn't a hallucination; she had just heard that horribly wonderful man say it so many times that it was burnt into her very being.
'Yes, darling.'
The use of pet names had become common for them. While they were by no means sickly sweet about it, the occasional use of 'darling' or 'dearest' was enough to send Vanny's corrupt little heart into a racing mess. Butterflies filled her stomach and chest, making her tremble every time she heard it. She was completely smitten with William; even the tiniest scraps of affection would send her head over heels into a lovestruck daze. Vanny's throat tightened when those sweet words didn't actually fill her ears. The room was still, filled now only with her soft, broken sobs.
Eight years was a horribly long time to wait for your boyfriend to come home. Vanny had never fully given up her hope, though. Some small part of her still held onto the belief that William was coming back despite what a rational person would have come to assume.
He was gone for good.
Vanny couldn't accept that he was gone; she had clung to everything he had ever owned, desperately longing for his return with every passing day.
Time hadn't been kind to her, however. Time had changed both her and Hurricane over the span of those eight years. Quite a few of Hurricane's residents had left, most likely in search of greener pastures that weren't stained with the sins of a horrible, rumor filled past.
Vanny stayed. Despite it all, she'd never leave. It didn't matter if William had left her of his own will. If there was even a small chance that he had been taken and was trying to find his way back, Vanny was going to stay. There was no proof of anything to support him being taken or him leaving by choice; so the woman stayed, waiting patiently for her lover's return.
Vanny had noticed the changes around Hurricane but barely noticed the changes that had happened to her. Her hair had lightened considerably and her eyes had become dull and tired. She'd chopped the majority of her hair off, keeping it much shorter than she used to. It once reached down a little past her shoulders but now it didn't even touch them.
Vanny had by no means gotten fat, but her once slender figure had thickened noticeably. With nobody around to stay pretty for, she'd struggled to care what she ate.
She and William usually snagged a few children every couple of months from out of town to have their fun with, but the only person she had killed on her own was that teenager who had attacked her. Her urge to kill was there, but just like her emotions, it was dulled.
It took too much effort to clean up the aftermath, so Vanny didn't bother with killing.
Hurricane had succumb to the passage of time as well. Small mom and pop stores were closing and the town was essentially dead. Vanny had heard recently that Henry and his daughter had moved away, and she couldn't say that she blamed them. Despite it all, though, Hurricane felt like home to her. It was the safest place she had ever known, despite the presence of two serial killers; one being herself. The town had a horrible past and a bleak future, yet someone had decided that there was still a buck to make in this corpse of a town.
The land that Freddy's sat on had been purchased by a newcomer several months ago.
News always traveled fast in Hurricane, even to the recluse. Much to the town's disgust, the new owner of Freddy's intended to make the building into some kind of sick attraction.
The stories of the missing children had spread much farther than Utah, and the man who had purchased the building knew that. People would come to gawk at the piece of dark history. It was already being advertised, even though many of Hurricane's residents begged Clay to put a stop to it. The owner of the soon-to-be attraction, Fazbear's Frights, was breaking no laws.
He owned that land and could do with it as he pleased, and if he wanted to make a living off of the misfortune of Hurricane's still-grieving residents, that's exactly what he was going to do.
Vanny had initially been angry when she'd caught wind of what the man was doing.
Sure, it was a way for William's name to live on, even if the public wasn't sure who the masked killer was, or even his name, but Freddy's was partly William's. He had designed those robots; he had made them from the ground up with Henry and he had made something to be remembered. Even though Freddy's had been shut down for over ten years, the wounds were still much too fresh to be pulling a stunt like this. As much as Clay despised the idea of drawing people into Hurricane just to gawk and stick their noses where they didn't belong, there was nothing he could do.
Vanny knew that there was nothing left in that building that William cared about, though. He'd gotten everything of value to him out of there and had stashed it away in different corners of their house. The animatronics weren't currently Vanny's roommates, though.
She knew well enough by William's stories that they could be dangerous when activated; she hadn't been filled in on why, though. She assumed that he'd simply made them that way; it was William, after all. That was why when word spread of an animatronic being found, Vanny was sent into a panic. That new bastard of an owner had something that didn't belong to him; he could have the building and the money from tourists that William had managed to make a legend for, but the animatronics were his. Nobody else was allowed to have his creations; only her.
The same night that Vanny had caught wind of the discovery of the animatronic, she prepared to go and retrieve it. She and William had broken into plenty of places in the past, so breaking and entering wasn't something new and scary to her. If she was really lucky, they hadn't changed the locks just yet. Vanny slid on a baggy flannel jacket that was much too baggy on her, fished an old key out of William's belongings and slid her knife into its sheath on her hip.
When she stepped outside, the night air was cold and brisk. There was no sign of any approaching storms, and the weather was perfect. Vanny pulled the front door closed, locked it, and then headed down the driveway to the car. If all went well, she'd be coming home with an important gift for William when he got back. She briefly wondered which robot the new owner had managed to dig up.
Only time would tell, and hopefully, time was going to finally be kind to her.