Angel of Vengeance, Chapter Four
a Five Nights at Freddy's/Doctor Who crossover
Dark, but not alone anymore.
She peered out through the gap under the bottom shelf of the storeroom. The new guard was curled up on the floor, his back to the storeroom door. She struggled to remember the faces of the guards who had come before, spending their nights being hunted until, inevitably, either they had fled or were killed.
This one had not been there long enough for true terror, and as she examined his face in the dim light from under the door, something in her stirred. She did not know what it was.
Why had he hidden in here, of all places? Here with her?
He must be very stupid, or else very afraid. Even the other animatronics rarely came in here, leaving her alone where they wouldn't have to look at her, be reminded of what they struggled to remember, the horrible thing that now was just a metallic buzz in the back of her brain, lost with all the other memories, the yesterdays that never were...
He had his ear pressed against the door, and his eyes were wild. Listening.
For the newcomer? Yes. Oh yes, that would terrify someone into running straight to her twisted endoskeleton and powerful steel jaws. She knew that.
Yes. She knew. A metallic buzz, tasting of orange and smelling imposdibly of nutmeg, began to grow in the recesses of her mind.
She was remembering.
No. No! She would not let it happen again!
Foxy stared at the paper on his hook, with the crudely drawn angel snarling up at him. Then he shrieked, wrapped his fingers around the paper, and tore it off of his hook. He crushed the paper as hard as he could, rage driving his fingers to close harder than any human ever could, harder than he ever had any reason to do. The rubberized plastic over his endoskeleton shifted and bent under the strain, but did not break.
He looked up at the other animatronics. They were staring, silent and motionless.
Why was he so angry? He had no idea, and the rage began to seep out of him.
Freddy turned and examined the wall. He grasped the picture of the blue box and pulled it off.
There was another message.
"FREDDY: PROTECT YOUR FRIENDS"
Bonnie's ears twitched, and then the giant rabbit picked a picture entirely at random and pulled that off. There was a message there as well.
"BONNIE: IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN UNLESS YOU CHANGE IT"
Who wrote these? Foxy had trouble thinking of any time but the present, but even so, somehow he knew nobody should be able to do this. This was very much not normal. No one should know which animatronic was going to pull off which picture.
Chica took a turn, ripping off a child's picture of herself with a full tray of pizza.
"CHICA: IT CAN ONLY MOVE WHEN YOU AREN'T LOOKING"
Foxy looked at the crushed paper in his hand, then again at the text on the wall. There was something he hadn't noticed before. The edges of letters were poking up from the picture below the one he'd ripped off. He ripped the next page off.
"AND YOU AREN'T LOOKING, "
Freddy moved to clear the next paper for him.
"ARE YOU?"
Jeremy back was cramping and he was starting to feel sharp needles stabbing up his left foot. He wanted desperately to move, but he still couldn't shake the thought that something was shut in here with him. The sweat from before was cooling on his skin, leaving him feeling cold and clammy.
He shivered, and his numb foot slipped out from under him. He came crashing down on his backside and barely stifled a cry.
Ah, it didn't matter anymore. Might as well get comfortable. He stuck his left foot out straight in front of him, then set the flashlight down and started massaging the back of his knee, trying to get circulation back into the foot.
Less than a week at this job, and it was all gonna end. This was gonna be his big break.
He smiled sadly in the darkness. Big break? A minimum wage job being chased around by freaky robots all night? Yeah, he'd screwed his life up all right, if this was his big break. Maybe at least now it'd be over.
Sally. He'd tried so hard to forget, but sitting in the darkness made it really hard not to see her face, smiling at him, trusting him. That was why he'd run off, of course. She'd trusted him, and he'd failed her, and he couldn't face that.
No. Not just failed. He'd betrayed her.
You couldn't recover from a thing like that. Screw up that badly, you were garbage. He'd been crazy to try and make another go at life. His mom had hauled him out of the dark pit of despair he'd buried himself in, dragged him to the cabin, dried him out, made him look at himself in the mirror. She'd dragged him to the meetings, made him see himself as worth giving a shot. It was really for her that he'd gotten this job, and she'd been so proud, even though it was a stupid job whose only requirements were "alive" and "too dumb and desperate to say no".
But it was gonna kill him. He should have said no to the job, should've held out for something else. Awful hard with his record, but he should've tried. And he'd known that at the time. Truth was, he'd only barely cared. And pretty soon it wasn't gonna matter.
He figured he should be relieved. But somehow he wasn't.
It was oddly disquieting to realize he actually didn't want to die yet. He wanted to live. He didn't want to die, his future sucked away by this creature that looked like a statue but somehow could move like greased lightning when it wanted to. His mother needed him, yeah, but he had his whole life ahead of him. He'd screwed up a lot in his life, but he was still young. He couldn't undo what he'd done and certainly not what he hadn't done, but he could move forward, and right now, he wanted that very much. He wasn't just afraid of the unknown now. He was afraid of never getting to see what the future held.
He wanted to live!
And then he heard it again.
Stone, scraping over lineoleum, doubtless leaving huge gouges. Asshole manager better not want him to buff that out.
And then it stopped.
Oh sweet Jesus. It was right outside the door, wasn't it?
Nothing like terror to concentrate a man's life on God, right? That's what they said at the meetings. Well, no, not exactly. He was supposed to recognize the Almighty and surrender himself, having realized in the depths of his despair and dependency that it was God who would understand and forgive. But he didn't deserve God's forgiveness. Maybe that's why an Angel was coming to kill him.
The door handle jiggled. Jeremy held his breath.
It was locked, right?
The handle clicked. Yes. Locked. Just like the weird British phone guy had said. Jeremey exhaled. Well, at least he was sorta safe, right?
Then the door jumped from a violent impact on the other side. He leapt to his feet to get away from the vibrating door, and heard another impact.
Something was trying to bash down the door. He didn't think it was the animatronics.
Under the shelf, now completely ignored by Jeremy, Mangle started to come out.
-* TO BE CONTINUED *-
(c) 2017 Kirstin Jones/Calli Arcale, all rights reserved except those granted under terms of service