Michael scratched at the collar of his dress-shirt. It was snowing heavily outside, but the weight of his jacket paired with the rough material of his suit made his body feel unbearably hot. He was standing by an old white sedan, the one Henry let him borrow, albeit reluctantly, after Michael crashed his own truck into a fence on a late night of binge drinking. William Afton was dead. Presumed missing for nearly a month before some poor urban explorers stumbled upon the stench of his decayed flesh in an animatronics body. Michael had gotten the call from the police, feigned despair, and when they finally hung up, laughed until he was choking on his own saliva.
Michael didn't quite feel human for the next few days. Well, if he was being honest, he hadn't felt human since he was fifteen. Or even a decade before that. Hearing the cracking and crunching of his brothers skull in the jaws of Freddy; listening to his parents argue for hours into the night over Williams negligence causing their daughter to be mangled like livestock inside another creation of his; coming home from school to find the house silent and his mothers body swaying slowly from the rope tied to the ceiling; those kinds of things changed people. But now that William was gone, he felt...
He didn't know.
He should be happy, he tells himself. The monster was finally gone. William couldn't hurt anyone anymore. All the murder and violation done by his hands would come to an end. But at the same time, he finds himself longing for something that never was.
He wished his father had loved him the way he should have.
So, for some godforsaken reason, Michael turned in a job application for the graveyard shift at the local Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, trying to find some semblance of answers after he spent years of his life sitting by and waiting for them to reveal themselves. It was like William had never left. Some days, Michael half-expected to walk into his house and see William sitting on the kitchen table, grimacing at the sight of his son before looking back to a newspaper. There were days Michael jumped at the slightest sound of creaking floorboards under his feet, feeling the phantom pains of his father's hands around his neck and reaching for his belt. On those days he turned to booze, and staring down the empty beer cans across the coffee table, he thinks that maybe he isn't so different from William after all.
And so Michael, after a quick smoke break in the freezing winter, found himself in the garage that his father buried himself in for the last years of his life. William kept his belongings there. They used to be neatly organized, but after losing Evan, the office space turned into a mess of papers and concept sketches and random gadgets. No one was ever allowed in there. All of the family found that out the hard way. Michael felt the phantom presence again as he reached for a specific box jammed in between the desk and the wall. Dust fell onto his fingers and clothes as he pried it open. Inside was a VHS tapes, unlabeled and clearly well-used. He remembered the nights when his father would come into his room, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a camcorder in the other, placing the two gently on the windowsill before sinking his teeth. Whenever he misbehaved, William would wag the tape in front of his son's face, saying nothing, but the taunting gleam in his eyes yelling, "Keep back-talking me and I'll show this to everyone you know."
Michael stared at the tape for a long while. The cold plastic felt like a bomb about to burst, that he would somehow be exposing his shame to the entire world if he did so much as squeeze it too tightly. Or that William would come in with a fit of rage and bend him over the desk and leave him bleeding through the night. But he paused, thinking to himself that William never let anyone into the garage.
The monster was finally gone. William couldn't hurt anyone anymore. All the murder and violation done by his hands would come to an end.
Michael was there now, breaking all of the rules and swallowing his instinct to run, and no punishment would come. He rummaged through the toolbox at the far end of the damp room, taking a hammer and pounding the tape until it was in pieces. The noise of cracking plastic was deafening. There was never a sound so beautiful to him.