Sorry that its later than usual, but I had a busy weekend and a busier week. Well, enjoy!

Chapter Four: Risotto (1982)

The cake - all three layers of jam, cream and vanilla - wobbled like a jelly as it was dropped unceremoniously onto the plate. For a moment, it seemed inevitable that the great tower was about to be toppled, but then it came to a rest and the crisis was temporarily averted.

Milford, swathed in his golden bear suit, took the plate unsteadily, balancing it on the flats of his yellowish paws. He tensed as Joe stuck a bunch of candles into the doughy mess, before whipping out a gas lighter and burning them up with a wick of orange flame.

Before anything else could go wrong, Milford stumbled through the kitchen doors and into the diner, which was now appropriately darkened. Unfortunately, the light cast by the candles was so diminished that it barely illuminated any of the rooms layout. So, Milford, already unsteadied by the precarious plate and his stuffy costume, had to navigate a minefield of chair legs and crawling toddlers to reach his objective.

And when he reached that objective, it started to cry.

"Happy Birthday to you," Milford sung, which only succeeded in accelerating the tide of tears on the little boy's cheeks.

Eventually, the bawling of the child grew too much for Milford, and he lay the cake on the table and retreated quickly back to the storeroom.

"God, I hate birthdays," he groaned, taking off the golden bear head and setting it down atop a nearby box.

"Aren't the brown and gold costumes basically identical?" Joe replied amusedly.

"Yeah, but gold is much more of an eyesore."

Joe nodded, and Milford noticed the extra effort that his colleague was putting into sustaining his smile.

"You okay, man?" Milford asked.

Joe shrugged. "It's nothing. Me and the wife had a spat. We've been going through a rough patch lately."

"Oh."

Joe assumed a mischievous grin. "Never mind about me. What about Jenny? Are you gonna ask her?"

Milford blushed fiercely. "I don't feel ready yet."

"Grow a pair, man. You've been working with her for over a year now, and anyone with eyes can see you fancy her!"

Milford looked round as James stuck his head through the door, his potato-like head looking slightly more boiled than usual.

"Barnes, Roberts!" he shouted. "Get to work! Table Five are missing their cheesy fries!"

Joe gave Milford a knowing smile and his eyebrows popped up as though pushed out of a toaster.

"I'd better go, Barnes," he smiled.

"See ya Roberts," Milford replied.

As Joe left through the door, Milford started to remove his costume, preparing to change it over for the usual brown edition. As he was pulling off the pants he heard Andrew run into the room, dressed up in his purple Bonnie suit.

"The kids keep pullin' my tail!" he protested, indicating the fluffy ball on his bottom.

Milford couldn't help but laugh. "At least you don't have a hat. Usually, I'd just let them take it, but the younger ones keep putting it in their mouth!"

As Andrew took a breather atop a box, Jenny came running in, her eyes darting like pinballs about their sockets.

"Has anyone seen the chicken suit?" she asked breathlessly.

"Chica," Andrew corrected. "'Her name is Chica."

Jenny smiled wryly. "Have you seen it, Andy?"

Andrew, cradling Bonnie's head in his hands, grinned toothily. "Nu-huh."

Jenny, exasperated, looked hopefully towards Milford. "You seen it, Mil?"

Milford indicated a yellow pile in the corner, and Jenny rushed over.

"They're about to riot out there!" Jenny laughed, donning her bill.

The sound of children shrieking indicated that they were heavily anticipating the Fredbear band's next gig, due to start in a few minutes time.

Milford, pulling on the pants of his brown Fredbear costume, slipped over and landed haplessly on his back, legs kicking like an inverted tortoise.

"Help," he muttered weakly, hearing the sound of catatonic laughter from Jenny and Andrew.

Andrew rushed across the room and pulled him up, and Milford, trying to recover quickly, headed straight for the torso of his costume.

"Hurry up, Mil!" Jenny called, still sniggering.

"Bear with me a second," Milford retorted, barely even remorseful for his awful pun.

The sound of the intro started to play out across the diner, accentuated by the whizzing and cracking of confetti and streamers.

It was truly the chorus of frantic, chaotic insanity. And it greeted Milford every hour, five days a week.

Such was life at Fredbear's Family Diner.

Five O'Clock came about as it always did, and for once Milford was not pleased to see the back end of his shift. It meant that he could stall no longer.

The moment he had been bracing for had arrived.

"Jenny?" he called out, prompting the brunette to turn around with a quizzical look on her face.

"Yeah?" she replied.

Milford swallowed the pebble in his throat. "Are you doing anything right now?"

Jenny smiled. "Yeah. I'm packing away for the day."

"No, I mean... after work. Are you doing anything then?"

Jenny brushed aside the strand of hair that covered one side of her face, a whole new understanding crossing her amicable expression.

"No," she answered. "No, I'm not."

Milford let out the hurricane in his lungs. "Do you want to grab a bite to eat? There's a Mexican takeaway down the street. Their nachos are unbeatable. What do you think?"

"I think I'll go grab my poncho," Jenny giggled.

"Great," Milford mouthed, feeling anything but as the room revolved around him as though built upon a spinning top.

He looked to the side, noticing Joe huddled in the corner, giving him a covert thumbs-up.

"I'm just going to put the costume back," Milford explained, retreating slowly into the back room.

At that moment, James came out of his office, tie swinging gently. By the look on his face he looked as though he was about to storm the whole world by force.

When he got outside his visitor was already waiting patiently on the lot. By the fine quality of his grey and black-pinstriped suit, he meant some serious business.

"Hi," the man said upon seeing James. "You must be Mr. Stoke?"

"Mr. Fazwick, I presume?" James replied, thrusting out his hand for a shake.

The man ignored the handshake, slapping a small paper card onto James' palm. James turned it over and examined it, taking in the words 'Fazzes Entertainment' and Henry Fazwick, both printed in large bold text. Next to them was a logo of a white clown-like figure with purple eyes and a smile like a crescent moon.

"I wanted to talk about selling the diner," Henry explained, a charismatic smile bursting onto his face.

James frowned. "It's not for sale."

"Well, not sell exactly I suppose," Henry corrected, blinking quickly. "I want to create a brand... A franchise!"

James' hard expression fell, and like the inside of a marshmallow roasting on an open fire, he started to soften. "I'm listening."

"You- WE, have the potential to create something big here. Something world-changing. Your biggest competitor is Chuck E. Cheeses? How would you like to drive them out of business?"

James thought hard. He'd like that very much.

"All you need is a good team. People dedicated to excelling - pushing without limits. You'll have the whole of Fazzes Entertainment backing you, and you and I will be very rich men. You already have the trump card you need..."

Henry pointed to Fredbear's smiling head, immortalised atop the diner's towering sign.

"What do you say?"

James stared at Fredbear for a few seconds, before looking back at Henry and beaming.

"Shall we go for coffee?"

It was dark when Milford and Jenny came walking down the beaten path to Milford's place. Their flashlights, like yellow sabres, cut through the darkness cleanly.

"Since I started working at the diner I've been able to get my own place," Milford explained. "So there's that..."

"Dressing up as a teddy bear has advantages," Jenny laughed.

"Yeah... The power of minimum wage."

"Well, I think you make a great Fredbear anyways."

Milford reached his door and fiddled with his keys. Jenny stood back, admiring the desolation that surrounded his urban abode, from the scuffed and flickering streetlight in the corner all the way to the brown scrubs sprouting from the clumps of soil that were scattered around like lunar craters.

Eventually, the two were inside. Milford led Jenny through the mess strewn around the floor - a mass that could only indicate a bachelor pad.

"You want a drink?" Milford asked.

Jenny didn't seem to hear him. She was preoccupied in her snooping of her new surroundings, and had hit the jackpot with Milford's study, a room that apparently doubled up with his bedroom, indicated by the mattress huddled in the corner.

Milford flicked the light switch, and the room was illuminated by a creaky, discoloured bulb that hung from the ceiling.

Immediately, Jenny noticed the boards on the walls - wooden canvasses that were enveloped by an ocean of papers. Drawings, mostly, depicting all sorts of designs. On one, there was a picture of Fredbear with a modified, sleeker design that lost all of the stuffiness of the original's fluffy tomb. Another showed an altered Diner sign, shaped like a slice of pepperoni pizza.

"What's all this?" Jenny asked, her eyes scanning over the various images like a photocopier.

"It's become a bit of an obsession," Milford replied sheepishly. "Improvements to the diner... and to the costumes."

"I like this one," Jenny pointed, indicated a poster that had been pinned on dead in the middle of one of the boards.

Milford smiled. "Foxy."

The character, a brownish-red fox, was roughly the same size as Fredbear, Bonnie and Chica, but with the notable difference of having a black eyepatch over one of his peepers, as well as a rusty grey hook replacing his right hand.

"Is that a new character?" Jenny inquired.

"It was just an idea," Milford explained. "Come on, stop looking now. It's embarrassing."

"Not a chance," Jenny laughed.

"Come on."

"What? Are you afraid I'll cramp on your non-existent life."

Jenny turned to find Milford right in front of her. He smiled and said softly "I have a life outside of that Diner."

"No you don't," Jenny whispered, leaning up against Milford and kissing him gently on the lips.

Milford was caught by surprise, but he reciprocated the action, moving his hands down to Jenny's sides.

After what seemed like an eternity had ticked away, the pair broke off the embrace. They stood there, two rigid poles on the corner of a street. Then, finally, Jenny spoke.

"Can I have that drink now?"

Andrew looked at his watch.

11:23.

The world outside his apartment had turned from a grey and cloudy overcast to a liquorice veil of dark. The only light across the street came from the spasmodic red flashing of the burglar alarm by the bank.

It was time.

Andrew opened his satchel, taking out the Fredbear head that he had concealed there after Milford had left. Carefully, he placed it in the centre of the carpet, in the middle of a circle of table salt he had created to serve as its prison.

With a spark, Andrew lit the candles on either side of the circle, before sitting cross-legged in front of the stuffed head.

Time to begin.