A/N: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, fav'd or followed so far. I can't promise for any consistent release schedule but I'm aiming for a new chapter every Monday. If you're confused about the chapter title, it means 'Breadstick.' In the spirit of Hannibal (a fantastic TV show) I have decided to name chapters after Italian cuisine (because its a pizzeria, you see?). In this case, it refers to a light appetiser, which fits thematically with the content of the chapter.
I hope you all enjoy!
Chapter One: Grissini (1981)
Milford Barnes squinted at the shape opposite himself in the mirror. He saw a tall man with short, cropped black hair, a small, wiry beard and glistening blue eyes.
What he didn't see, however, was motivation.
A voice blasted at him from the living room.
"...and brush your hair!" his mother called, concluding her outburst of criticism which Milford had, by now, lost any attention to.
"Nobody is going to see my hair under the bear head!" he shot back, before somewhat unconsciously brushing a few loose strands off of his freckled forehead.
"Lose the attitude!" his mother retorted. "You're working with children. They don't want to hear moaning and groaning from you!"
"Well, neither do you!" Milford growled, tensing his back. "So can you please be quiet!"
He heard his mother tut - practically felt the air ripple as she shook her head voraciously.
"You'll be late!" she scolded.
"I already am!" Milford yelled, backing out of the door and slamming it shut behind him.
In his haste, he had forgotten to pick up his wallet or keys, leading him to have to stubbornly tap upon the window. His mother opened the door and thrust out her hand, pink dressing gown sleeve flapping in the morning breeze. Milford snatched his forgotten possessions and hurried off, muting the sound of his mother as she shot criticism after him.
The bus into town was running late. As usual. When it finally rounded the corner, black clouds of exhaust fume blowing out of the cracks in its bodywork, Milford was over ten minutes behind schedule.
Fredbear's Family Diner was located in the centre of town, about five stops from Milford's home. The area in which it was built was pretty rough, which was contradictory to its child-friendly ambitions. When the bus pulled in across the street, Milford caught his first look at a pristine new building in the centre of a graffiti-layered suburb.
The eye of the storm.
Fredbear himself adorned the imposing signpost that towered next to the restaurant. It was the first time that Milford caught sight of the cartoony character that he would be portraying, six nights a week, for the foreseeable future.
He didn't immediately strike Milford as being someone of significance. Aside from his multicoloured, cone-shape party hat, there was little to distinguish him from any other cartoon bear. Although his eyes were considerably larger and whiter than a typical teddy bear, his textures were identical. Rugged, brown fur with cuddly, posable arms and flat, clawless paws.
Fredbear's spherical, saucer-like eyes followed Milford as he crossed the carpark towards the entrance. A large, red banner hung over the doorway, gold text reading 'GRAND OPENING.'
The manager who had conducted his interview was already waiting for him in the lobby. Whereas Milford was wearing casual clothes, James was dressed in a full suit, complete with a blue-checkered tie. With his thinning hair and long, spindly body he looked remarkably like an ostrich - an image which Milford had to suppress for fear of giggling.
"Mr. Barnes, I presume?" James asked, smiling thinly. "You're late."
Milford scratched at his head as he noticed all of his co-workers around him staring bemusedly. "Sorry, sir. The bus was late."
James clasped his hands together and tried to grin, only half-successfully. "Can't be helped I suppose. Myself and the employees were just introducing themselves, but since you've just arrived, we'd better start over."
An invisible sigh swept around the room as James turned to the nearest employee and gestured to him.
"I'm Joe," the first man said, waving wearily. "I scrub the dishes."
Joe was reasonably young - Milford estimated that he was probably around his own age, in the early 20s. He had a kind face, but one that seemed drained and aged, almost as though his whole life had already been swept out from underneath him.
The man next to him, a round, Asian man by the name of Hai, was the next to greet Milford.
"Hello," he said. "My name is Hai, and I'm the cook."
Milford nodded to him, pondering the amusement he would've had in the event that Hai had greeted him with 'Hi', rather than 'Hello.' He supposed that was probably the reason Hai had avoided it.
The next employee was a middle-aged woman, who introduced herself as Wendy. She had fiery-red hair and a tad bit too much lipstick, making her look somewhat flushed. She seemed friendly enough, as somebody who worked as a waitress was sure to be.
When Milford looked at the next employee, he was immediately shocked to see a young woman, no older than himself. To say she was pretty was a disservice - she was BEAUTIFUL. Far too good-looking to be working a greasy, thankless job like this.
"I'm Jenny," she smiled, extending a hand with pink nailpaint towards Milford. "You can call me Jen, though. I'm also a waitress here."
"Hey Jen," Milford replied, putting on his best grin as he shook her hand. "Nice to meet you."
He felt incredibly self-conscious as he greeted Jen, and for a moment, it was as though he were in a broadway musical where all eyes were on him. At such close proximity to her, Milford couldn't help but fret as to whether he had in-fact remembered to brush his teeth that morning, or if a spot might have cropped up on his nose since his rendezvous with the mirror earlier that morning.
James, who rolled his eyes slightly at Milford's bumbled response, turned to the last employee. "This is Andrew," he explained. "He's our janitor."
Milford looked at Andrew, who was gazed at the floor tiles. His posture struck Milford as peculiar, in that his back was hunched and his hands were tucked in close to his chest, somewhat like those of a T-Rex. He had thin, brown hair and a little wispy goatee Andrew, retaining a lack of eye contact, grunted something close to a greeting, to which Milford smiled in what he hoped was a friendly manner.
"Well, the last thing that remains is to introduce you to the final member of our little team," James said, walking across the diner to a tucked-away closet, opening the door, and disappearing inside.
He reappeared a few moments later with a severed head, tossing it into Milford's hands.
"Fredbear," James explained, returning to the group bearing the torso of the bear's costume. "I'm sure you'll all get along famously."
Milford turned the head over in his hands, admiring the hollowed eye sockets and goofy smiling mouth which he would soon be filling.
"Right," James cried. "Enough fucking about. We open in five hours, and we need this place operational. Hop to, people!"
(-AOTB-)
At 2:00pm, Fredbear's Family Diner opened its doors for the first time.
After that, not much happened.
Milford sat on a stool in full costume, idly kicking his legs for about half an hour, before James came out of his office looking flustered.
"What, no customers!?" he exclaimed, looking about frantically. "Barnes!"
Milford snapped out of his daze, turning to look at James. "Yes, sir?"
"Get out onto the street and bring in some customers!"
Milford groaned inwardly as he arose from his stool and the comfort that it offered, and made his way to the doors.
The car park was just as deserted as it had been earlier that day. The streets were fairly empty, and those who did patrol up and down the labyrinths of pavement did not look like the type of person who would want to eat with a teddy bear.
Still, Milford wasn't being paid for being successful - rather, it was by the hour. So he didn't mind the distraction. The hot air in the diner had made him swelter inside his costume, like some kind of a fluffy iron maiden.
Finding a street corner with a bench, Milford sat down and removed his bear head, soaking in the fresh air.
How had it come to this? Minimum wage for playing a stuffed animal?
At one point, Milford had been dead-set on a career in electrical engineering. He had studied often, but found himself succumbing to procrastination, like playing video games or watching the TV. It was a shame that motivation failed him at a certain point. He had always had a lot of fun building cars with his dad in his uncle's workshop over the summer holidays. Once, they had even built a little robot that danced about the desktop. It was the logistics that he failed to comprehend.
Because it was boring.
Noticing a woman with a pram approaching to his right, Milford quickly put the Fredbear head back on, stood up, and did his routine, just as he had practised.
"Hey there, friend!" he exclaimed. "How would you like to come and eat some pizza with me?
The woman scowled at him.
"Piss off."
Milford's theatrical posing ceased immediately, his arms dropping to their sides as the woman hurriedly took her young child away.
"Tough break, huh?"
Milford swung around to see Jenny standing behind him, chewing on a wad of gum and smiling.
"Yeah," Milford laughed. "I suppose it is."
"Well, for the record, I think you look incredibly cute in the bear suit," Jenny giggled.
Milford was glad for the bear head as his whole face blushed fiercely at her comment.
"Are you local?" she asked.
"Yeah, I live about half an hour away," Milford explained.
"I drove in," Jenny replied. "An hour or so. I live up near the coast, you see."
"Oh, right," Milford said, feeling somewhat awkward as he stood around in the bear suit.
"You ever been a mascot before?"
"Never," Milford chuckled. "Why, is there some kind of initiation?"
Jenny laughed. "Yeah, we have to pin you down and squirt mustard down the back of your neck."
Upon reflection, Milford realised that he must've been pretty quiet at this point, as Jenny suddenly put an arm on his shoulder and fell about laughing.
"We don't really," she exclaimed. "I'm new to this kind of thing too! I used to be a club singer, till I got tonsillitis. Now, I can't quite reach the same notes."
"Ouch," Milford replied. "That's rough."
"Yeah," Jenny nodded, still smiling rosily in spite of the turn of conversation. "I'd better go back now. See ya later!"
"See ya," Milford waved, turning away and accidentally thumping a man with a briefcase as he passed.
"Sorry, mate," he called out to the man, who stormed off cussing in a hushed breath.
Around forty minutes later, James came out looking for him, and ordered him to return to the proximity of the restaurant.
The rest of Milford's shift passed uneventfully. He ended up reclining on one of the brick walls around the car park until a teenage yob on a bicycle threw a beer bottle at his head. After that, he sat near the doormat of the diner until his watch bleeped at 5:00pm, signalling the end of his shift.
As he went to hang up his costume in the storeroom, James stood in the middle of the dining hall, ranting about their lack of business.
"It's the bear!" he proclaimed. "I knew Fred was a stupid name!"
Milford bade his goodbyes to his fellow employees - who were similarly inactive - and made his way towards the bus stop as the clouds started to disappear beneath a velvet black sky.
It was around 6:00pm when the bus finally pulled into Milford's stop. The driver offered no apology for his half-hour absence, only showing mild interest as Milford flashed his return ticket and took a seat near the back.
He was about halfway home when it struck him.
"Shit, my keys!" he realised. "I left them in my locker!"
Since there were no more buses that evening, Milford had to get out and run back to Fredbear's. He assumed it would be shut, but there would likely be some kind of night guard to let him in.
The moon hung bright in the sky as Milford arrived back at the diner. Breathless and disgruntled, he rapped on the window of the front door, only to realise that it was in fact still open.
Quickly pushing inside, he headed straight towards the storeroom, ducking past the tables and chairs strewn about in the starlight-illuminated room.
Opening the door, Milford immediately saw that he was not alone in the room. He saw a man bent over, examining something on the floor. In his surprise, the man turned, revealing himself to be Andrew.
"Mifford?" he grunted in a muffled voice.
Milford didn't reply. He was too busy focusing on what Milford had been working on. He felt nothing in his body, no life in his legs or feet. No impulse to run.
All he could do was stare in silence.
At the pentagram on the floor.
That was drawn in blood.
To Be Continued...