It was the middle of the spring semester at college. Andrew had a frustrating day. He had a paper for one of his English classes that he had to get started on, but he didn't know what to say on it. He went to bed that night feeling frustrated.
It was Fear's turn for Dream Duty that night. It was a good dream that night; he knew Andrew would be enjoying this one.
However, down in Dream Productions, something went wrong. One of the mind workers slipped up with something, causing the equipment to malfunction.
The screen at Headquarters became distorted by static, like a bad signal for the radio or TV.
"What the hell?" Fear whispered, raising an eyebrow. This has never happened before.
And suddenly, a massive jolt of electricity traveled from Dream Productions to Headquarters, through all the equipment, and hit Fear.
"YEEOOOOWWWW!" He shrieked. His body and twitched danced in spasms. He began flashing like a light switch being flicked on and off.
The commotion was so loud and bright that the other five emotions woke from their slumber.
"Fear?" Joy called out, "What's going on out there?"
The other emotions rose up quickly. Anger, on the other hand, was not happy about being woken up.
"What's the big idea, Fear?" He demanded.
They all awoke from their room and headed downstairs to see their fellow emotion writhing in pain.
"Woah! Fear!" Disgust shrieked in horror.
They all stood back and watched. None of them knew what to do.
"I don't know how to approach this scenario," Logic stated, still looking as bored and uninterested as always.
Thankfully, after a couple more seconds, the lights faded, and Fear collapsed on the ground. The lights in headquarters went out, only a little light coming in from the glow of the massive library of memories outside.
The others stood back another moment, all waiting for Fear to get up and say something. Even Anger had forgotten how mad he was for being woken up. Now his face was filled only with concern.
"Fear?" He asked. "Buddy? You okay?" He took a step closer.
He stopped though when Fear seemed to be growing a little bigger. His arms got more muscular and harrier. His torso bulged out more as though the skinny emotion had been working out more. He grew to the size of a large refrigerator (or what would be a refrigerator for their size).
Disgust and Sadness both gasped.
Fear turned to face his five friends. All of them stayed quiet, waiting to see what he would say.
He glared at them. And then he took a deep breath and let out a great roar, bearing sharp teeth he hadn't had before.
The other five stood back, shocked.
Fear's angry glare shifted all around the room, and then he finally turned to the large console.
He leapt toward it, his hands – claws now, rather – grasped the sides of one end, nails digging into the metal. The metal screeched as Fear tried to wrench the console from its rooting. Wires snapped and sparked.
The other emotions stood in place, still too shocked to move or say anything.
Fear got one end of the console up off the ground, the other side still down, leaving the whole device leveled like a ramp.
"This is bad," Logic stated finally. "We should stop him."
Anger shook his head, snapping out of his stupor. "You're right!" He said. He charged toward Fear. "Hey knock it off!" He shouted. Logic followed at his usual pace.
Fear turned toward them. He smacked Anger with the back of his hand, sending the red emotion flying back. He smacked into Logic, and both went tumbling back.
Anger grunted in pain.
"Ow," Logic stated, as though he were saying a normal sentence.
Finally, Fear – or rather, the monster that was once Fear – had wrenched the console free from it's roots, and shoved it off, sending it sliding into the wall. On the floor where it once was a torn-up floor revealing sparkling wires and circuits.
"Fear! What are you doing?" Sadness called out.
Without any indication that he heard him, the monster reached down into the circuitry, grabbing handfuls of wires, and yanked them up through the floor. In his grip, the wires turned purple. The purple glow traveled through the wires and into the inner-workings of Head Quarters. Soon the entire room turned purple. The purple traveled down the pole holding Head Quarters up from the Abyss. The dome brightened up from its black nighttime setting. But this time, instead of its normal, bright sunny setting, it turned into a dark purple.
Andrew's eyes shot open, suddenly feeling absolutely horrified. He could see the wall across from his bed. What was actually his roommate, Tom's closet, now appeared to him like a large hole had been blown in the wall with explosives, and out from that hole, Freddy Fazbear and his three animatronic friends, from the video game Five Nights at Freddy's, seemed to be standing there, staring at him.
Andrew couldn't move. Even if he could, he didn't want to. Part of him wanted to turn over and try to ignore the animatronics, but another part felt that the moment he looked away from them, they would attack. So he just lay there, unable to move.
Back in Headquarters, the monster released the wires, and then turned back to the other emotions. He gave another snarl, and then leapt through the window, smashing through the thick glass. He landed on the slim glass beam connecting Headquarters to Alcoholic's Island, and scurried across into the mindscape, like a squirrel running across a branch.
The other emotions, after another couple of seconds, finally snapped out of their stupor. Joy turned to Anger and Logic and rushed to their side to help them up.
"You guys okay?" He asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Anger replied.
"I am in pain, but not injured," Logic answered, rubbing his head where he had been hit.
"Oh man, this isn't good," Disgust said. "Andrew's awake. Tonight's really not a good night for this, not when we have so many papers coming. What do we do?"
"We should uh…" Sadness stuttered, "…I'll call some mind workers. Let's try to get the console fixed."
Within a few minutes, a few mind workers had arrived. Most of them were working on fixing the console, while one more had approached the emotions to talk. This one carried a clipboard, and he had a big nose and a walrus mustache, with his hard hat so low you couldn't see his eyes.
"Alright," he said. "Well the damage ain't all that serious. Don't worry. We'll have it fixed by morning."
"Okay, that's good," Joy replied. "But what about Andrew? Will he go back to sleep?"
"Eh, don't worry about it." The worker said with a shrug. "It's the biology department's problem now. Give him about thirty minutes or so. Eventually he'll get so tired that he can't stay awake any longer.
"Isn't there anything we can do to help him?"
"Nope. Don't look like it. Not with all your controls offline. He won't be feeling or thinking anything other than sheer terror 'till we get this fixed."
"What about Fear?" Sadness asked.
"What about 'em?"
"How long is he gonna stay like this?"
"I dunno." The worker replied, shrugging again. "Maybe he'll be better in the morning, maybe not."
"How did this happen anyway?" Joy asked.
"I wasn't there for the whole thing so I don't know that much," the worker answered. "Something about some a few fear and anger memories, some stress, one of the other workers doin' something really clumsy. I dunno exactly."
The worker looked back at the other workers doing their work.
"I'm gonna go back to work," he said. "You guys just hang back until we get it fixed, or go back to sleep or something."
None of the emotions really felt like sleeping. They were all too worried about Andrew and Fear.
They looked out the window. They could see parts of Long Term memory turning purple, as though a purple liquid were pooling over all the memories shelved there. It was obviously Fear's work.
Sadness spoke up. "I'll bet Andrew could get back to sleep more easily if Fear wasn't… uh… doing that."
"Well then it seems the best thing we can do for Andrew right now is clear," Logic added.
"Might as well," Disgust said. "Nothing we can do here."
"Okay then, let's get our tranq-guns," Joy said as he headed over to the weapons closet." They each got a tranquilizer rifle.
The train of thought was running again now that Andrew was awake, so they were able to hop aboard and take it to Long Term Memory.
"Alright guys," Joy announced as they all waited around in the car on the train. "I want to make this clear; based on all the horror movies and horror movie satires we've seen, splitting up in this case is suicide. So rule number one is that we are all going to stick together, all five of us, got it?"
Everyone nodded and murmured in agreement. Fear was normally Andrew's most dominant emotion, and therefore the leader of the six of them. Joy was second in command, since Andrew overall had a good life and a lot to be happy about.
"Do we know for sure that all the memories and Headquarters will return to normal if we can snap him out of this?" Sadness asked. "Can we even snap him out of it? Will tranqing him work?"
"No guarantee about anything," Joy replied. "We don't know anything about any of this, but it's definitely worth a shot if you ask me."
"I'll take that chance," Disgust said with a nod.
"I'm gonna beat his face it for all this!" Anger growled.
"Woah man! Calm down!" Joy exclaimed. "It's not his fault! He doesn't have any control over any of this!"
"Yeah!" Disgust added. "He just got zapped. It's not like he chose to go on a rampage and tear everything apart."
"Eh, I guess you guys are right," Anger sighed. "I'm still pretty pissed about all this!"
"Yeah, we're all pretty frustrated," Sadness replied.
"Frustration will accomplish nothing," Logic stated.
Right at that moment, the train came to a stop. Everyone hopped out of the car. They could see the library that was Long Term Memory. All of the memories on that shelf had been turned purple, no doubt filling Andrew with more fear and dread.
The emotions wandered slowly around the mindscape for a while, rifles at the ready. They occasionally passed by a mind worker who had encountered fear. No one was bleeding or seemed to have a serious injury other than a concussion or a bruise. Some vehicles and equipment had been destroyed. Occasionally they encountered a few other mind workers, a security force. They were dressed in SWAT uniforms and also carried tranquilizer rifles.
Joy made sure they would use non-lethal means to subdue Fear. Logic reminded him that the only way to die here was to disappear from Andrew's memory in the Abyss. Still, nobody wanted Fear to be hurt.
After a while, they encountered someone else. He was sitting up against a shelf, groaning in pain, clutching his ribs, dressed in a familiar black cloak.
"Werdna!" Joy exclaimed as he ran towards him and knelt down at his side. "Are you okay?"
"Uh… hey guys," Werdna replied turning towards them.
"What happened?" Sadness asked.
"What do you think happened?" Anger growled. "Fear got him!"
"That was Fear?" Werdna asked. "For a second I thought it was Bigby Wolf."
"Well, last time I checked, Bigby can't do that!" Anger replied, gesturing the shelf of purple memories.
"Yeah, that's a good point," Werdna chuckled lightly.
"How could he get you this bad anyway?" Anger asked. "I mean you're a wizard. What about your magic?"
"My magic was no match for his brute force," Werdna replied. "My spells seemed to bounce off of him like bullets bounce off the Hulk. He tore through them as if they were just smoke… which… it is all just smoke, but you know what I mean."
"Can you get up?" Joy asked.
Werdna lifted one hand as smoke began to flow into it, forming a crutch. He used it to push himself up off the ground. Joy backed away, seeing he could get up on his own.
No sooner had he gotten up that they heard a growling noise. They looked up to see Fear looking down on them from atop one of the shelves.
Logic was the first to raise his rifle and shot a few darts.
Fear leapt down and charged at them, but Logic kept shooting, and the others joined in.
Several darts stuck into Fear's shoulders, arms, head and chest. Finally, he collapsed and started snoring.
Very quickly, all of the memories in Long Term Memory turned back to their normal colors. Fear's muscular and hairy body shrank down again to his normal skinny stature.
Werdna and the other emotions were silent for a moment. It had all happened so fast.
"Well, that was a tad bit anticlimactic," Sadness said.
"Ah, who cares," Anger shrugged. "It's over. Now let's go back home." He picked up fear and slung him over his shoulder. "I won't pound him now, but we'll have a very serious talk in the morning."
"I'll go tell the mind workers that the problem's been dealt with," Werdna said.
The emotions all turned and headed back to the Train of thought, ready for bed. Hopefully the mind workers would have the console working again soon. They knew Andrew would be tired the next day, but nothing a little Red Bull wouldn't fix.
Author's Note: Long before college, I remember having quite a few instances of sleep paralysis during high school. This was just the most recent instance I could most vividly remember.