Author's Note: This chapter is entirely a flashback; Mike and Jeremy's story will continue in the next! Also, this contains some adult content but it's fairly tame. (It's far more what's implied than what actually happens.)
1982
"Think you've got the hang of it yet, Deputy?" Derrick asked in an overdone Western drawl as he and Clyde made their rounds through the pizzeria. His words had their desired effect on the rookie security guard he had been charged with training, who had remained uncharacteristically sullen ever since it had been announced he would be changing positions in the company.
"For crying out loud, would you stop calling me that already?" the former training coordinator pleaded, tugging the brim of the ballcap that was part of his uniform over his flushed face. "So I'm only being made a deputy security officer at the satellite location, at least if it ever reopens, and you get to stay here as chief security officer. Stop rubbing it in already!"
Pausing under a disco ball suspended from the ceiling of the dining area, Clyde glanced upward, seeing thousands of tiny reflections of himself peering back pensively from the mirrored tiles. He was wearing one of Hermie's old uniform shirts, which gaped at the neck and threatened to slide off his much-slimmer frame altogether, and he'd had to fold the fabric over on itself several times just to tuck the shirt in. Though he had been permitted to order a new uniform from the supply catalog, until it would arrive he had resigned himself to feeling like a kid playing dress-up.
"What exactly is eating you, anyway?" Derrick demanded, perplexed at his coworker's irritability. "You finally got what you wanted; I thought you'd be thrilled when Faz did an about-face and announced you could have the job after all."
"You're right, I guess I should be happy," Clyde said, scuffing the rubber sole of his tennis shoe over a piece of chewing gum that had become encrusted in the carpet. "But it makes me heartsick to think about what led to my landing it." Just a week before, he had been onhand to witness the horror of seeing Hermie arrested right at their workplace, and after being charged with the murders of the five missing children, the former guard remained in jail without bond.
"Do you think he really did it?" Clyde asked, looking imploringly at his mentor and daring to raise the question for the first time. "I can't see how. Sure, he was rough, but underneath that he seemed like a decent person. I just can't reconcile the crime with the guy we knew."
Derrick slapped a hand to his forehead in disbelief. "Look, if you want to be taken seriously at the satellite location, you've got to drop the whole 'naive kid' act. No offense, but I can tell you always see the good in everyone and you couldn't bring yourself to believe anybody could be capable of anything remotely evil, yet you can't ignore the fact that, what do they call it? - forensic evidence - was found in the backstage room. That's enough for me to believe those kids met with a bad end right here at the restaurant and he had something to do with it. Really, who else could it have been?"
Clyde shrugged helplessly. "I can't even begin to guess. And while it's beyond disturbing to think we might be working alongside a killer if it wasn't Hermie, it's worse to think of him being wrongly accused of the crime."
"Suit yourself, but you do know everyone laughs at you behind your back over this one, right?" Clyde stopped short again, and Derrick was inwardly thrilled he had undermined his confidence in yet another way. "Oh, you didn't know? Yeah, the general consensus is that you're either incredibly clueless or nuts for believing Hermie's innocent. Or both."
"Whatever, let 'em believe what they want. I kinda caught on pretty early that recording safety training tapes for the company wasn't going to win me any popularity contests, anyway," said the rookie officer, glancing around to ensure they were far out of Faz's earshot before pulling a worn leather wallet from the pocket of his jeans and thumbing through its plastic sleeves.
"Just between you and me, though, doesn't this make you have flashbacks about what happened at the diner?" he asked. His eyes stung as he gazed down at the wallet card depicting a soaring angel inside a gilded frame, a memento from his best friend's funeral that had been a painful experience to attend as a teenager. "It's been six years and I still can't believe Buddy was senselessly murdered behind our workplace," he sighed. "Just when I thought I had finally gotten over it, someone victimized more kids here, only this time it's even worse because five lives were lost. It's like someone's targeting these restaurants, or they're cursed."
"It was a coincidence and nothing more," Derrick snapped, turning his head sharply away to avoid looking at the prayer card that Clyde held. "While it may be weird that lightning struck twice at our workplaces, there's no room for superstition in this line of work."
"You're probably right," Clyde conceded. "And I guess I am naive. Until they found the evidence in the backstage room, I really wanted to believe the best-case scenario, that those kids had just impulsively went out for a joyride and they'd come back any day now, maybe with your car a little banged up but nobody would mind because at least they were safe and that's all that mattered."
"Hey, whatever you had to tell yourself," Derrick responded uncaringly. Though he and Clyde had been coworkers at the precursor to the pizzeria, Faz was unaware either man had ever been employed there. Clyde had been paid under the table as the establishment's dishwasher and Derrick doubted he had ever bothered to even obtain a work permit, but he had his own reasons for keeping his employment at Fredbear's Family Diner a well-guarded secret.
Standing before the mirror in the employee break room, Clyde saw to his appearance with a plastic comb before replacing his ballcap, taking care not to crush the wings of hair that stuck out from either side of his face just under the hat. He was not much for following trends and had kept the same hairstyle from his high school days, but in his mind it suited him well enough and was still reasonably fashionable. Fumbling through his locker for a canister of breath spray, he gagged on the harsh taste of the stuff, its spearmint scent mingling with the strong cologne he'd "borrowed" from Derrick's locker and liberally doused over himself.
The guard-in-training removed a piece of paper from the pocket of his jeans and unfolded it with trembling hands, once more reading the words on the note Marjorie had discretely passed him while he'd made his rounds and still trying to convince himself he hadn't imagined the entire thing.
Meet me in the backstage room on your next break. I have something to tell you. - M
The handwriting, executed in a graceful looping style that perfectly suited the young woman behind the penmanship, was inked in pastel blue instead of the company-issued red or black ballpoint pens the wait staff typically used. The former Fredbear performer had never been anything less than affectionate and even playfully flirtatious with him, and yet he'd soon realized she approached all her coworkers with the same warmth, though she was noticeably cautious around Derrick. Clyde had long harbored feelings for her that went beyond mere friendship, but he had been far too shy to act on them and hadn't even allowed himself to entertain the thought that the attraction could have been anything but one-sided.
"You, uh, wanted to see me?" he asked, pushing open the door to the backstage room and promptly finding himself seized and pulled inside. Marjorie stood before him with her arms crossed over her chest, appearing just as anxious as he felt with visible concern in her deep brown eyes. During her days as a costumed spring-lock performer it had been necessary to wear her hair in flat braids tight against her scalp, but now her hair was pulled into twin textured ponytails.
"Ssh!" she reprimanded, which struck him as an unnecessary gesture because the high volume of the band and at least a hundred screaming children singing along just on the other side of the door would surely drown out any noise he could make. "Nobody saw you slip in here, did they?" Clyde shook his head, explaining that the others no doubt assumed he was out in the parking lot taking his usual smoke break.
"Great." Her face finally lit up in a far less guarded, mysterious smile. "By the way, I overheard some of the jabs Derrick's sent your way, but I just wanted to say that you look good in the uniform and I think you'll make a great security guard. Now like the note said, I have something to tell you, and only you, but first you'll have to, um, lose the shirt."
Whoa. His face positively burning, Clyde nonetheless fumbled with the buttons and slid off the garment, standing awkwardly in his undershirt and cringing under the gaze of the many spare animatronic headpieces stacked on the shelves all around him, their empty eyes seemingly locked with disapproval on his unimpressive form. Over the summer he had diligently tried a weight-lifting program, only to see no change to his physique whatsoever and ultimately grow discouraged and abandon his efforts. Forcing himself to brush aside his own discomfort and imagining Marjorie wouldn't want to make all the moves herself, he snaked an arm around her waist and drew in close, only to freeze when her eyes grew wide with surprise.
"Clyde?" she asked, her voice strained as she finally caught the mint on his breath, mixed with the overpowering cologne he had obviously splashed on just before their clandestine meeting. "I'm so sorry, but this isn't what you think at all. I feel lousy for misleading you." As his hand dropped from her waist and he shot her a mortified look of apology, she shook her head at her own failure to foresee how he might have misinterpreted her note and especially her almost-immediate instructions to partially undress.
"I promise this will be worth your time, though. You see, I think I've figured out something, and you're the only one I can trust with what I've found," she continued, trying to save face. Crossing the room to a clothing rack, she flipped through the hangers in search of the garment she'd come across earlier, pushing aside the crisp white collared shirts and pressed slacks worn by the wait staff and the striped referee jerseys used by the arcade's game technicians before finding the lone blue security guard shirt. "Here it is! Try this on for size."
Shrugging into the garment and still lost in confusion, Clyde smoothed a hand over the embroidered name patch. "Hey, this is Hermie's, too! Only it fits better. Thanks!"
"I figured it was an older style; most of those were left behind by former employees," she explained, mentally adding, but I didn't exactly bring you back here just to give you a more appropriate uniform shirt, surprised he had missed the clue.
"Consider that 'Exhibit A,' and here's 'B.' I found it in the break room," she said, pulling out a large photo album she had carefully stashed on a storage shelf and pressing it into Clyde's hands. "I was over at the satellite location when most of these were taken, but surely they're more familiar to you."
The pictures inside the book documented the flagship location from its origins, with the first page containing several glossy shots of a beaming Nathan Faz wielding an oversized pair of scissors to cut a ribbon stretched across the restaurant's front doors on its opening day. The following pages soon gave way to even more lighthearted pictures taken after-hours once the guests had left for the day, with various workers clowning for the camera in every way possible, their arms draped over the shoulders of the amazing spring-lock mascots the pizzeria had acquired.
"Wow, this brings back memories," Clyde admitted. "Ha, that's Jason. He and Shawn and Hermie were our revolving cast of spring-lock performers, though after the suits were retired, only Hermie stayed on, as a security officer." He grinned down at the photo of a lanky man in his early twenties crammed into a coin-operated rocketship ride meant for a child, his long legs pulled up tight to his chest and nearly reaching over his head. Though Jason had tried to maintain a stern expression, the mirthful spark in his eyes suggested he had likely burst into hysterical laughter once the picture had been snapped.
"I really miss those times," the rookie officer said wistfully, Marjorie taking a seat beside him on the table he was leaning against. "You'd never believe half the mischief some of those goofballs got away with, but we were all so carefree in those days, long before the spring-lock injury and the fire and the product recall that management tried to hide and now the missing kids. We really had no clue what lay ahead." When he turned the page, Marjorie sharply seized his wrist.
"That's it!" she exclaimed. "Once I saw that photo, I stopped right there."
"Oh right, that was the nineteenth birthday party they threw for me after work," Clyde remarked, not grasping the significance of the old picture of himself seated before a large sheet cake aglow with candles, his coworkers standing behind him and grinning deviously.
"I must say, even if those were happy times, you look downright apprehensive there," Marjorie said, noting his hesitant smile in the photo, and when she took Clyde's advice to turn the page, she promptly broke down into giggles.
"You poor thing, they smashed your face right into your own cake!" In the "after" picture, the training coordinator was smiling gamely for the camera despite looking vaguely put-out at the frosting covering him, his coworkers a blur of practical jokers in the background, laughing and congratulating each other on their prank. "How's that any way to treat a guy on his birthday?"
"Beats me, but it's kind of a Fazbear Entertainment tradition for the first birthday you celebrate with the company after your date of hire, so just a heads-up when your big day rolls around," Clyde warned jokingly before scratching his head. "Sorry to be so dense, but aside from the comedic value, what's so important about these party pictures?"
When Marjorie drew his attention to who was in the photos, he mentally rehearsed the names: Nathan Faz. Jason. Shawn. Hermie, and a few others who had since moved on to other careers.
"Huh, I almost forgot Hermie used to be a regular stringbean like the rest of us," the rookie officer said, pointing out the younger version of his coworker standing behind him, his hand poised behind his head and ready to shove him toward the cake at the opportune moment.
"Bingo!" Marjorie cried. "He must have really bulked up quickly in just two years, right?"
Clyde nodded. "Once the spring-lock suits were retired he threw himself into the bodybuilding thing and had an enviously high level of success with it. I guess he wanted to be stronger for the security job. Just between you and me, it was rumored he'd gotten more than a little help from steroids, but I never felt it was my business to ask." Marjorie waited for him to grasp the final connection, but he had fallen silent, closing the book of sunnier memories with a sigh. She rose from the table and picked up one of the costume heads from the shelving that ran the length of the room.
"Would you feel safe revisiting old times just once more and putting on my old Fredbear costume?" she gently asked, startling him with the strange request. "The cops seized that one as evidence, but they were both built to the same dimensions." In the weeks since the fire at the satellite location, management had made the decision to store the company's remaining Fredbear costume at the flagship pizzeria, no doubt feeling it wise to remove anything remotely unsafe from the building considering the satellite's track record with disaster.
Here I was, thinking we might kiss a little and instead I'm putting on a bear suit, thought Clyde, though he had to admit his feelings for Marjorie were so strong that he would have jumped through a flaming hoop at that point, had she only asked. She watched him with trepidation, biting her lower lip as he twisted the hand-crank on the side of the costume he was wearing, expertly withdrawing the interior spring-lock mechanisms until they were a safe distance from his body.
"It still fits!" he joked once he had everything but the headpiece in place. Making a few wisecracks about having kept his girlish figure, he executed a dramatic yet clumsy twirl with his arms held out, showing off for Marjorie's sake before catching himself against the nearby table. "...And that's why they never let me on stage as a performer, thanks to my two left feet. Really, we were all insane back in the day for agreeing to wear these, or at least training others to wear them, in my case." Clyde took a deep breath from exertion, feeling his ribcage brush against the interior of the costume where the mechanisms were recoiled. "I almost forgot that even for a beanpole like me, there's hardly any room to breathe in them." He froze in sudden realization, and Marjorie snapped her fingers in approval.
"Exactly! The Hermie we know couldn't wear that suit today if his life depended on it; he's far too muscular now. You and I, Derrick, Shawn and Jason are all on the extremely lean side, and Hermie once fit that description too. So you tell me how he could possibly have been the one in the suit going after those poor kids."
"Right. There were even physical height and weight restrictions in place for the performers. You're a genius," Clyde said reverently, pulling himself up to sit on the edge of the table amidst the scattered spare parts that made up the animatronics' endoskeletons and feeling a jolt of pure joy when Marjorie settled next to him. "And all this time, you actually believed me when I insisted Hermie had to be innocent. I had no idea."
"I'm going to the cops after work," she vowed. "This will completely exonerate him. They may have confiscated the other suit as evidence, but it's so complicated that I doubt they have any idea how it actually works. I've barely been able to sleep at night, dealing with the rumors that he'd wind up on death row." She shuddered so violently Clyde put a hand lightly on her shoulder out of concern, his eyes full of gratitude for her detective work.
"Hey, Deputy, you in there?" Derrick's grating voice came from the other side of the door, accompanied by sharp knocking. "Break's over, so tell your little animatronic buddies goodbye and get back out here." Clyde and Marjorie exchanged panicked looks, both knowing there would be no way to explain themselves.
"On second thought, maybe this is what you think," Marjorie said, impulsively drawing in close to the astounded rookie officer and dropping her voice to a low whisper. "Just go along with it."
Clyde hardly had to be told twice.
"What in the name of all that's..." Derrick's jaw dropped once he'd swung open the door and caught sight of his trainee, locked in a passionate kiss with the coworker snuggled on his lap. Crossing his arms over his chest, he laughed condescendingly, causing Marjorie to gasp and pull away slightly from Clyde, whose face had flushed a bright shade of crimson. "This is entirely too rich. You two have been spending your break time making out back here? While you're wearing the Fredbear costume?"
Derrick doubled over in a fit of helpless laughter, which at least gave the other two time to separate, convincingly playing the role of a couple who had gotten carried away and had just been discovered in an utterly embarrassing situation.
"But hey, I'm not judging!" he proclaimed, throwing his hands up in an exaggerated shrug. "What you do on your own time is your business. I'll meet you back outside."
"We'll never hear the end of this, but like I said before, you're a genius," Clyde remarked once the guard had left them alone. "Guess I'd better get back out there. You think there's anyone at this restaurant that won't find out about us by the end of the day? We know him well enough; he's going to get a lot of mileage out of this." Marjorie just laughed and clamped a hand to her forehead, knowing she would be fending off rumors and sly remarks all day.
"That was admittedly a last-minute plan, but at least it fooled Derrick," she admitted. "You really should get out of the costume right away, though. You're all..." Letting her voice trail off, she gave Clyde a cautious hug before returning to the dining area.
Right. I'm all sweaty and flushed and my heart is racing a thousand beats a minute, which is a really bad situation to be in while wearing a spring-lock suit, the rookie officer thought as he began to undo the costume.
"I'll never underestimate you again, Deputy," Derrick said when Clyde had rejoined him on their rounds, once again dressed in the oversized uniform shirt. "You twisted little deviant, I never knew you had it in you! So was making out in the Fredbear costume your ideas or hers?"
"Sorry, I don't kiss and tell." His trainee put his hands on his hips, genuinely grinning for the first time since the tumultuous events of the past few weeks. This was perfect. The senior guard was already preoccupied with what he'd witnessed, and although Clyde suspected he would use it to his advantage and attempt to blackmail him, it would serve quite well as a distraction while Marjorie worked to exonerate their innocent coworker.
