"Hey, Mike?" Randy asked hesitantly as they stood in the re-creation of the security office. "There is one thing I sorta forgot to tell you. This place is sick, man."

"Of course it's downright sick!" Mike tried to reassure him. "The guests are gonna love it."

Randy smiled and shook his head, examining a toy figure of Chica that was sitting on the desk next to similar models of Freddy and Bonnie. "No, I mean it's got, like, that sick-building syndrome you hear about or something. This place has really bad air; I guess cramming all those dank and moldy relics in here wasn't such a hot idea after all. But on the bright side, my dad's sorta coming around on this whole thing, and he even sent over a work crew to install some vents and ductwork to try and make it better, along with fire exit signs and all that legal stuff you need." He sneezed, pulling a tissue from his pocket. "Not that it seemed to help, though; I've had a pounding headache all weekend and I sure hope you don't have mold allergies. If you do, you picked the wrong place to work, but I'd understand if you need to back out."

"Naw, I'm blessedly unaffected by mold," Mike informed his employer with a dismissive shrug.

"Good to hear. But hey man, since I already showed you the place, is it cool if I, like, tell you the rest over the phone? I've got to bust outta here or my head's totally gonna explode. Getting barely five hours of sleep all weekend and living off of deep-fried junk from the concession stands sorta did me in." Randy finished with a laugh at his own expense. "Heh, after spending my whole life here, you'd think I'd have learned by now that you can't live off that stuff, but I just can't quit it!

Oh, yeah. There's one more thing I almost forgot: your new threads! Go ahead, pick one out, I'll explain later," he said, gesturing to a pile of clothing on the desk that Mike had already recognized as the company-issued security guard uniforms from the pizzeria.

He found it at the bottom of the pile, the very shirt he'd worn five years ago. Holding it out at arm's length, he could still make out the faint sweat stains on the undersides of the sleeves. The light blue fabric was slightly mildewed, as was everything salvaged from the waterlogged building.

"Sweet, it's like it was made for you! Just your size and everything," Randy exclaimed after he'd tugged it on, while Mike struggled to keep a straight face, recalling the last time he had worn the shirt.


November 14, 2014

Mike stormed across the parking lot toward his beat-up station wagon, his employment at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza having just come to an abrupt but not entirely unexpected end.

"Schmidt!" shouted his former boss, who had escorted him roughly out the front door. "I need the damn shirt back!" The newly unemployed security guard fumbled with the buttons as he walked, stripped the garment off right in the parking lot and crumpled it into a ball, which he flung back at Nathan Faz.

"Take it!" he yelled, beyond incensed. "And while you're at it, take this, too!" Standing shirtless on the asphalt, he flashed a series of obscene gestures in the general direction of the man he had worked for, as well as the restaurant itself and all it contained. "And for the last time, I did not tamper with your animatronics!"

When you burn bridges, Mike, you sure like doing a thorough job of it, Faz thought to himself, shaking his head in dismay. He had far bigger things to worry about than his mediocre employee, as his business was in its final death throes, financially speaking. Listening as the engine to Mike's ancient car failed to turn over, he rolled his eyes as the irate man tried in vain several more times to start it, finally giving up and exiting the car, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

Though the manager felt a twinge of malicious amusement when Mike impulsively brought both fists down on the hood, creating yet another large dent on the vehicle, the words he yelled as he stalked off in absolute frustration left him with sudden and unexpected sympathy for the guy.

"Why does everything have to be so hard?"

Faz fought the urge to run after Mike as he set off on foot, but instead he resigned himself to returning indoors, where he stood before the show stage, looking up at the trio of characters and contemplating the imminent demise of his business.

"I've been asking that myself for a long time, Mike," he said softly before setting about shutting down the place. There were so many unpleasant tasks that had to be done - cancelling vendor contracts, selling off the kitchen equipment, and so on - before he could lay his once-thriving enterprise to rest, and he dreaded them all.


"Okay, I've really got to split soon because this bad air is killing me, but you've probably guessed by now that you're not going to just be the attraction attendant, but an actor in this whole thing," Randy informed Mike. He gestured around the mock-up of the security office. "Man, the guys who worked this job for real? They were the ultimate badasses, and nobody even knew it, but they were downright legendary. I did my research, and get a load of this: the animatronics didn't shut off at night! In fact, they got really aggressive, like they had minds of their own, and the guards had to keep them from breaking out of the building or whatever. I guess it was cheaper to hire the night watch than to actually fix the malfunctioning robots, but those guys who worked there had pure guts, and they did it all for minimum wage. Hard to believe, isn't it?" The entrepreneur shook his head in disbelief as Mike listened in awestruck reverence.

"Anyone who could handle that kinda work would have all my respect," Randy mused, while Mike took sudden interest in the rusted fan on the desk, trying to hide his reaction. "But hey, your job's pure cake. Like I said, we didn't find any animatronics for you to watch over."

Just as well, Mike wanted to tell him. Once Randy left, he clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his old chair, contemplating the reality that, as a former, washed-up security guard roleplaying a successful security guard in his prime, his situation couldn't have become more ironic.


1982

"Hey, wait, kiddo!" Clyde called out, while a child skidded to a halt just past him on the tiled floor just outside the restrooms, loosened shoelaces trailing dangerously behind his sneakers. "We have a motto here at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza: safety first! Now, before you head into that jungle gym, those shoes need tied so you don't wind up falling and hurting yourself. Go ahead, let's see you do it." Noticing the boy's helpless headshake and realizing he was probably too young to tie them himself, he smiled and dropped to his knees, lacing up his tennis shoes. "It's okay, I can show ya how it's done: 'Over, under, around and through, meet Mister Bunny Rabbit, pull 'em through!' See? Now you're good to go!" He tousled the boy's hair, exchanged a high-five, and rose to his feet, the youngster departing with a shy and quiet gesture of thanks before pitching headlong into the ball pit in the jungle gym.

Clyde turned to face Derrick, who was patrolling the grounds and fixing him with a look of sinister amusement. In the past two years following the spring-lock failure, the satellite location had quickly earned its reputation for being the most trouble-prone in the small but growing franchise, thanks to a long series of relatively minor yet preventable accidents involving patrons and employees alike. Management had frequently requested Clyde's assistance with improved safety training, and things were only just gradually beginning to turn around.

"Well, aren't you just good with kids," Derrick sneered, having given up long ago on trying to make nice with the ambitious training coordinator. Clyde, however, had steadfastly failed to grasp his thinly-veiled hostility and still maintained the belief they were friends. "'Meet Mister Bunny Rabbit,' really?" A shoe-tying poem from nursery school; that's beyond sad. What do you see in all these rugrats, anyway?"

Unfazed, the other man flashed his usual good-natured grin. "Uh, they're our valued customers, y'know, not to mention the lifeblood of this enterprise and our entire livelihood, so we oughtta treat them nice. Not to mention they're so adorable!" His grin widened, at least until he noticed the security guard's scowling face. "What do you have against 'em, anyway?"

Derrick grimaced, subtly bringing a hand down to rest on his damaged leg. More than you might think... Once Clyde had left, no doubt in search of another child to save from an untied-shoe catastrophe, he rested a hand on the plywood wall that had sealed off the safe room.

"Meet Mister Bunny Rabbit," he repeated slowly under his breath, his mind a polluted waste pit of the darkest thoughts imaginable. His fingers ran over the screws that held the board to the drywall behind it; in their haste to erase any trace of the safe room, the work crew had hardly done a thorough job, leaving the panel easily removable by anyone with a screwdriver and enough unsupervised time on his hands.

"Or maybe they should meet Mister Bear," he mused, suddenly recalling the golden Fredbear costume that had languished in the backstage room for the last two years. He rubbed his hands together in the most deranged fashion, not even caring that he no doubt resembled a classic movie villain.

You poor sap, trying to make this place safer, he thought to himself, peering around the corner into the dining area where Clyde was actually scaling the jungle gym, trying to guide down a child who had apparently ascended to the top and then became too petrified to make her way down. You think you can save them all...but you can't.

You can't.