As the party participants file out, I head to the mechanical section, only to be interrupted by Sarah.

"Woah, what do you think you're up to?" she gasped hurriedly, nervously gripping my right arm, sweat pouring from her face.

"Well, since there's no more parties for a few hours, I was going to see if the mechanics needed help," I began, with a worried look spreading on my face. "But I guess you don't want that?"

Her eyes darted to the left, then right. "Follow me," she motioned to a corner, "I'll explain."

We walked rather conspicuously to a dark corner to the right of Pirate's Cove. I could swear I saw a pair of white, dead eyes near the back maintenance door… "Listen," Sarah started, exhaling, and smiling forcefully. "I know you want to..." I stopped paying attention to her, seeing the eyes dart everywhere, I rubbed my eyes to see the eyes approach the stage then disappear before reappearing behind Chica… "Are you even listening?!" she shook me.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," I said, not really, "Something about wages?"

"No! God, this isn't like you Silan, what I was saying..."

"I know you're trying to be helpful, but I trust the mechanics to do their job, so please refrain from bothering them, okay?" she said, though I felt like she had left something out.

Suddenly, Chica began spasming, shaking, whirring, and moving spastically. The vir vir of her legs as she ran around, no pun intended, a chicken without its head off, had caught the attention of the head mechanic, Jamie.

"Shit shit shit!" he cursed under his breath as he ran past us. He grabbed a baton from the guard rack and proceeded to jam it in one of Chica's joints, causing her to just stop suddenly, and fall over.

"Hey, I need a hand here!" Jamie yelled, and as I sprang to help, Sarah stopped me, and I watched as six mechanics helped Jamie move Chica to the mechanical section. As I moved my head back to Sarah to speak with her, I saw, in my peripheral vision, a pair of white dots bursting off the back of the stage and flying towards the back door, and as I began to walk towards it, Sarah called me. I turned my head towards her office to listen.

"Silan? The Junior mechanic says she needs help with Chica, so if you want to be helpful..." Sarah called from her office.

"Yeah, of course!" I yelled back, semi-bitterly, and quickly looked back to the backdoor to see it shut with a limb of purpleness darting out.

What the fuck?… I shook my head, and decided to check it out later.

I strode to the mechanical section of the pizzeria, amazed at the inner-workings of all the animatronics.

If there was something I should be proud of...I guess it could be that he instilled a mechanized interest in me...he taught me everything about these guys...I wish he hadn't ruined what he worked for….why murder when you build masterpieces like these?

The shining aluminum and dazzling copper outshone the dark brass and volcanic-like steel, like a piece of artwork. To these mechanics, these were pieces of a puzzle, but to me? To me they were the limbs of a walking talking doll. Weird, I still remember all the joint sections and designations.

As I admired Dad Afton's handiwork, I heard someone call from the inner room.

"Hey! Can I get someone's help?" I heard a young voice call, stressed. I rushed to see a young ginger-haired teen working on Chica's joints.

"Hey, can you help me get this stick out of its leg?" she said. I saw clearly the baton from earlier protruding from her right thigh joint. I saw that the mechanics were trying to pull it roughly, which only provided resistance. Of course, that's how it was meant to be. See, if a random metal piece snapped and was stuck out of the character, there was a chance a child could grab it and hurt themselves. A rare occasion, but Dad Afton said it happened more often then you'd think. So he purposefully added hydraulics at the joints' core, so there would be resistance when anyone tried to pull on it.

"That's why," I stated, enthusiastically. I walked up to Chica's head, and pressed a few steel points, similar to springlocks from the earlier models, and watched Chica loosen up, and opened the mouthpiece.

And there it was. The horrifying, disgusting, gut-wrenchingly, soul-stabbingly foul spell of a smell forced it's way into my nasal cavities, burning the nose hairs that existed and leaving a graveyard-esque taste inside.

I jerked backwards and fell on my ass, gagging the entire time, the smell was enough to kill a skunk, but that's not the worst part. Inside...there was a mangled corpse, eyes popping out, bones snapping out of their places, and puke-blond hair was stuck everywhere inside….and the worst part? I recognized the corpse...it was a child's, one of the children that was at the earliest parties, as I remember specifically her mother asking if I'd seen her.

There was a dead child inside the animatronic. I started crying, for no explicit reason, other than horrendous memories, I started weeping, opening the floodgates, snot coming from my nose, and then the vomit came. I left a pool of fluids on the ground, and when my senses came back to me I felt a lot more than one presence. I saw the worried look of Sarah, and the whispering mugs of the mechanics. The junior mechanic looked aghast.

"What's wrong? Are you sick?" Sarah asked, putting her hand gingerly on my shoulder.

I started blathering, no English discernible, and I finally stopped, took a breath, then said, simply.

"Don't look inside Chica," I said, over and over again, and understanding, as well as horror, spread across everyone's face, excepting the younger employees. Sarah was pacing back and forth, pulling on her hair, tears in her eyes, saying insanely, "Not again, not again! It wasn't him..it wasn't him..god he's still out there...oh god why? Why?!"

I didn't blame her. I looked back over to the animatronic. The junior mechanic rose, a look of curiosity spreading on her face. No one was quick enough...she took one sniff and look inside the suit and fell back, grasping the ground and crabwalking backwards into her superior. This look of pure fear and astonishment spread on her face, stating Why? What was that? Did you know? Why didn't you tell me?

Anger spread amongst the older mechanics, some quickly left to look the grounds...but I know he's gone. Those eyes….it was him.

"He's not in prison," I whispered, with a deadpan blank expression etching itself into my face.

Sarah stopped, lunged down onto her knees next to me, putting her hands on my shoulders, shaking me.

"Goddamnit Silan, don't you get it?! It wasn't him, it wasn't Will!" she repeated over and over again.

I knew better. Those dead eyes were his...but how did he escape? Suddenly, I got a text from my mom.

"He killed himself. Guards found him dead this morning."

It didn't take a genius to figure who she was talking about, but I didn't buy it.

"Sarah, I saw him," I began. She jerked her head up, staring into my eyes, searching for the truth, when suddenly an even more disgusted, traumatized face spread across her own. She knew I spoke the truth.

"How did he get out?" she spoke emptily.

"He didn't..." I said, raising my phone to her face.

"No! Goddamnit, it he's dead, he can't be here!" she screamed, almost for her life.

I didn't know the whole truth. What I knew, was that my uncle had been here. And he had murdered that child. And we were defenseless.