Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria loomed ahead of Mike, beneath a dull November sky. This was its fourth location over the course of eighteen years, and he couldn't understand how it managed to survive this long. The diner of course didn't last as a Ma-and-Pa-type, but that probably said more about the tenacity of Big Business than whomever Fazbear Entertainment initially bought this trademark from.

Perhaps things could've been different, with this place. The murdered child might have been a one-off occurrence. However, whether Freddy's death resulted from the black hole of luck experienced by this place or actively contributed to it, Mike had no idea. Despite that, the restaurant still had a few successful years throughout the mid-eighties. Children went missing there once in a while throughout, but that was explained away as a children's restaurant providing a hub for predators. The investigation that led to the arrest of an employee was what struck the franchise off its feet. Jeremy's injury six months later kept it thus far in perennial flailing motion.

Management probably should've just given up, after that. Everything from the environment to the animatronics were obviously too dangerous. And yet, here it all was. They'd downsized heavily since 1987, but they hadn't given in yet to the good fight.

Finally summoning the nerve to step inside, Mike found Golden Freddy and Golden Bonnie replaced at the stage area with upgraded models of Freddy Fazbear, Chica, and Bonnie. He couldn't believe now that he'd ever come here, for any reason. What would his parents think? He didn't even know how to get hold of them anymore, to ask. Dad, his wife, and their daughter lived somewhere in Richmond. Mom, her husband, and the boy and girl she'd taken in as stepchildren were lost to Mike in Kentucky. Or Tennessee. He couldn't even remember which. Mike had no way to contact them, nor any way to rely on them in such a tough situation. Neither could talk him out of this, before someone finally noticed him.

"Hey there!" A guy Mike hadn't ever seen around before approached, enthusiastically punching the palm of his opposite hand. "You Mike?"

"Yes."

"Okay, good. It's not all the time you see some random guy wander in from the street. Not always desirable, you know?"

He laughed, but a chill rode down Mike's spine when he saw that the animatronics on stage all stared vacantly at him. Jeremy mentioned back in the day that the animatronics had been fitted with facial recognition technology. These ones compared him right this minute to the child predator databases they were connected to.

"Fritz, by the way." Fritz extended his hand, shaking Mike's with great fervour. "Fritz Smith. I'm the day manager. Thanks for answering the ad so quickly."

Day manager? "Scott's not around anymore?"

"You actually just missed him. Well, by that I mean he moved on last week. Saturday was his last day. Or, Sunday was, but he was chomping at the bit to get out of here, I guess."

"That's too bad. What was he moving onto?" Mike followed Fritz through the dining area, back toward the Employees Only section. Overworked college kids brushed by with more pizza for the families that came here today, while Mike idly wondered if one or any of these guys happened to be his housemates without his knowledge.

"He has family up in Cleveland. He didn't talk much about them, but I overheard a phone conversation one day. Mom was sick. She was probably slipping too quickly for him to care about one more night here, after so many years. The higher-ups are a little miffed, but I'd personally forgive the fella of a grudge if it were up to me."

"Yeah." Scott had done so much for the restaurant. Mike knew that, even without being around. Jeremy got to know Scott a bit while working as the night security guard, and although Mike never noticed as a teenager, Scott was here the day that Freddy got hurt. In fact, it was Scott that flipped the breakers for the stage and allowed Freddy a week longer of life before he finally succumbed to his injuries. Jeremy never mentioned whether or not Scott was here when the diner was still open, but Mike didn't doubt it. No way could this place run so smoothly if it started right over from scratch every single time it reopened. With Scott onboard, the newest owners or operators had a walking and talking manual, constantly ruminating on further ways they could better the place.

"Anyway, if you want to throw your stuff down wherever," Fritz invited Mike to do, once they'd reached the office. The breeze from a fan greeted him, after passing by the stifling heat of the kitchens. It wasn't a very cold day outside either, for this time of year. "I can give you the floor tour. You've been here before, right?"

"Only the Birchfield location, when I was younger." Without his jacket on, Mike halved in size. Compared to the muscles hiding beneath Fritz' work shirt, Mike resembled a string bean. He was also consciously aware of the fact that compared to Fritz, who probably had five or six years of age on him, he had less hair since his hairline already began to recede. Fritz pulled off the babyface look just fine, whereas Mike probably looked like a pedophile with his gaunt cheeks, sallow tone, and general inability to smile. No wonder the animatronics' gazes followed him toward the east hall. They must have algorithms, to determine which patrons were more likely than others to harm a child. Creepy. Useful, considering the clean record this place boasted since Jeremy's accident, but creepy.

"So you probably know the layout then, huh?" Fritz asked. "I'll show you around, anyway. Not that there's very much to see, but it'll be good for you to get familiar with the place before you're expected to see anything out of the ordinary on camera."

"Thanks." Mike folded his jacket over the back of the office chair.

"I'll also apologize in advance that I can't tell you absolutely everything you need to know. Luckily, that's still left for Scott. He made some tapes over the course of his last week to pass onto his successor. They should come in a lot more handy than me."

"Cool."

"Anyway, let's get that tour underway. I'll introduce you to everyone, too."

Mike noticed the same trend here that existed in any sort of customer service job. The bubbly extroverts worked in the front with the patrons, and those who Mike related mostly with worked in the back. One of the line cooks already looked as if his will to live had been sucked out by this place. Maybe he'd just been here longer than most of the others. It was also easy to tell that this place didn't have much budget for maintenance. The wallpaper peeled in places, and a lot of everything needed to be replaced. The animatronics appeared their age.

"What's going on here?" Mike jabbed a thumb at Pirate Cove. The curtain remained pulled, and an Out of Order sign situated outside. "Foxy's broken?"

"Sort of. Well, yeah, long story short. I don't know what Scott was thinking when he left, but all four animatronics were disassembled and jumbled in a big pile when I opened on Saturday morning. What a disaster. We had a birthday party to host that day, and no attractions aside from the game corner." Fritz sighed in recalled annoyance. "We got Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica all working again, but Foxy still isn't a hundred percent. Until someone comes over from the Norton location to give him a look, he's just going to have to stay behind his curtain."

"No complaints, there." Foxy was still a relatively new attraction when Jeremy worked this job. He was apparently too cute and friendly-looking, since child patrons took complete advantage of that and tore him apart into the pile of barely recognizable metal dubbed the Mangle. The very parts of the Mangle that may have been responsible for Jeremy's injury were reused to build the revamped pirate Foxy. Morbid curiosity overtook Mike for a moment. He'd never seen the Mangle, nor Foxy, and he'd like to look into the eyes of the thing that took his best friend away from him.

On second thought. . .

"Hey, whatever happened to the other animatronics?" Mike asked. "There were way more than these at one time, right?"

"I'm not sure where exactly they wound up. I haven't seen them in years."

"What about Golden Bonnie? Golden Freddy?"

"Gosh, I haven't seen them since. . .'87, I guess. They went along with the others, to shed as much of the restaurant's bad image as we could, as Scott put it. Golden Freddy of course hurt that kid pretty badly back in '83 or '84, and Golden Bonnie. . .well."

Mention of Freddy put Mike off for a moment on considering Golden Bonnie's fate. It was unfortunate that some creep decided to use the suit to lure children into the back.

"I think that's basically all you need to know about the place, until Tuesday night-slash-Wednesday morning rolls around. Like I said, Scott's going to be a lot more helpful than I am. I'm only here in the day time." Fritz chuckled, a nervous sound to Mike. "And just so you know, Management doesn't tolerate lateness, so I would strongly advise that you not only punch in before midnight, but be in the office by then. If we go back there now, I'll give you a key. . ."

Just like that, Mike had a job. Were it not at Freddy Fazbear's, he'd consider it strange that he didn't even have to interview. He couldn't remember if the same were true for Jeremy six years ago.

And Scott was gone. Fritz mentioned that Scott was doing the night security job, so did that mean he'd accepted a demotion within the chain of command? Perhaps that was why, while Mike kept a constant eye on the employment advertisements for something better than his current deal, he failed to ever see this ad before now. Scott, after being there for so many years, could keep a handle on things. Or maybe, as Mike hoped, things had cooled down.

It hadn't sunk in yet for Mike, what he slated to do come Wednesday's wee hours. He was going to be locked inside that building for six hours a night, five nights a week, until the restaurant finally closed for good a week before Christmas. This might not be the same building as where his brother got hurt, and the animatronic responsible was nowhere to be seen, but the creepiness still existed. More disturbing, he would be doing the exact same job that destroyed the Jeremy that Mike knew. What if Foxy was just as dangerous as the Mangle? At least this location had doors on the office, that Mike could shut himself off from the rest of the pizzeria with. Jeremy never had that luxury.

Speaking of him, it was hard for Mike to justify coming out of the house today without popping in for a visit. It'd been a few weeks since he last passed by the Fitzgerald abode. Losing his job threw his schedule quite out of whack.

Tina Fitzgerald, Jeremy's mother, answered the door. She gave him a warm smile before making room for him to step into the house. "Come in! I was actually just thinking about you, wondering how you've been doing."

"Fine," was always Mike's answer. He wasn't going to tell Tina about his employment status if he didn't need to. She'd become a second mom to him in the past, when his own family fell apart. From fifteen years old until Mike dropped out of high school in the fall of his senior year, he called this trailer home. Jeremy became a second brother to Mike, after Julian and Mark distanced themselves in the aftermath of Freddy's death. After Jeremy's accident though, Mike had no choice but to back off from the Fitzgeralds. Jeremy wasn't well enough to take care of himself, and Tina had her hands full with him. Their family struggled with finances too, now that Tina could no longer work, so Mike couldn't even forget his guilt long enough to accept something like a dinner invitation. Every meal counted in this household, for those who actually belonged to it.

"Jeremy's in his room, if you wanted to say hello."

Mike passed down the tiny hallway, first by the office on the right that had once been converted into his temporary bedroom. Jeremy's was the next door, before the bathroom. Some sort of sports broadcast sounded through the flimsy walls. After knocking, well aware he wouldn't get an invitation to come in, Mike admitted himself.

"Hi." Jeremy laid on his bed, remote control in hand. Sure enough, basketball players darted back and forth on the TV screen. Their shoes squeaked nearly constantly.

There was a chair crammed into the corner, that Mike usually sat in when he came. He moved the few articles of clothing that had landed there on their way to the laundry basket beside. There still wasn't a time when Mike came over that Jeremy's appearance didn't make his stomach drop and flip. His forehead appeared tiny, but only because it now started so shortly above his brow. It extended back much like the curvature of a normal skull, until parallel to the ears. There, it was plain to see that something, once upon a time, had taken a chunk out of this shadow of Mike's former friend.

"Hey, man. Remember me?"

"I'm supposed to be excited to see you, right?"

"Good to know you still feel that way," Mike said, making Jeremy chuckle. "Yeah, we've been friends for a damn long time."

"Thanks for coming to visit, then."

"Sure."

Would Freddy resemble Jeremy, had he survived? There was only so much the doctors could do to fix his head's shape. Even with all the bandages on, when Freddy still laid in the hospital, his head was more obviously a flattened type of egg. The doctors showed the family a diagram of the sources for Freddy's seemingly random internal bleed when all was said and done, and no one could ignore that the points resembled Golden Freddy's teethmarks.

"Where are you working these days?" Jeremy turned off the TV so that he could actually visit with Mike. He had too much trouble with distractions, and it took years for Tina to train him to ditch those in order to pay attention to his surroundings.

"I just got a new job today, actually. No more mopping floors for me."

Jeremy pointed a finger at Mike, one eye squinted. "Mike, right?"

"That's me."

"Oh my god, I can't believe I didn't recognize you." Jeremy chuckled. "Man, my memory really sucks. You're doing okay? You know I worry about you."

"Do you? How come?"

"I don't know. I'm sure you're up to something worth worrying about."

Jeremy had no actual idea. "Are you working tonight?"

With that question, Jeremy automatically checked his wrist for a watch he hadn't worn in years. "Yeah, I think I am."

Of course, he actually wasn't. One of the results of Jeremy's accident was complete lack of knowledge as to how he wound up in this state. In his head, he still worked at the old location of Freddy Fazbear's. Thankfully, only prompt ever brought that to his mind. He had no actual plan or motivation to leave this room and make a living for himself. The only reason he ate was because Tina put food in front of him. It never mattered how hungry he was.

"How's it going there, at Fazbear's?"

"Oh, fine. Once you get used to the animatronics at night, it's really not that bad."

"Is it weird, when they walk around?"

"Kind of. You've just gotta know the tricks. They give me this Freddy Fazbear head, right? I just put it on and poof! I'm magically invisible to them."

Mike needed to keep that in mind. Perhaps he could find one laying around, to use similarly. "It works?"

"Like a charm. What did Scott tell me? That if they see me without a suit on, they'll think I'm an endoskeleton. It's against the rules for those to be without suits—might wreck the magic for the kids, you know—so the other animatronics do the clean up. Helps keep the company from hiring just one more guy, I bet. Such a bunch of cheapskates. I already only make minimum wage. Betcha they'd give me a pay-cut, if they could."

Mike laughed. Out came the Jeremy he once knew. How long would it last?

"Oh well. I'm not an idiot with those animatronics. I keep the Freddy Fazbear head on as much as I can, keep the vents sealed, and that old strobe light my grandpa gave me comes in super handy for the hallway. It's all good."

"Right."

"D'y'ever worry about me?"

"Why? You've got it all under control."

Jeremy liked that answer. He smiled as the TV came back on. The basketball game had progressed along, the previous losers pulling ahead. Mike cared probably as much as Jeremy did. With his distraction returned though, Mike faded away into the background.

It'd been like this too with Freddy, in his last few days. He wasn't much up to watch TV, unable to see and all, but he could sort of carry on a conversation. He'd turn his head in the direction Mike's voice came from. The injuries made it difficult to recognize the person beneath the bandages. A new lack of fear alone changed everything.

In ways, Mike was happy to never know the extent of Freddy's brain damage. Maybe, in a way, it was better for Mom to not be tied to the house taking care of her son like Tina did now. Mike personally witnessed the alternative for the Schmidt family's fate, and it really wasn't much better. He only wished he could believe like Mom and Dad that Freddy was now in a better place.

Mike didn't like to think about it now, since it was practically irrelevant, but he and Jeremy had a massive falling out over Jeremy's job as the security guard. He could quietly tolerate that Jeremy went to work there, since it didn't necessitate his presence, and the rent on their apartment had to be paid. He made a point never to ask how it went though, preferring instead to quietly sit beside Jeremy on their puny sundeck at 6:30 in the morning, where they sucked back a few beers before heading to bed.

Jeremy waited until he had something important to say about Freddy Fazbear's, before bringing it up in conversation. "You know, I think that place might be haunted."

"Haunted?" Mike's stomach sunk at the very thought.

"Yeah, like. I don't know. Lots of weird shit goes on around there. It's almost like the animatronics are smarter than they should be. And I don't mean smart as in like a calculator or some shit. I mean like, this technology shouldn't be rotting away in a pizza joint in southwest Virginia. It should be protecting Fort Knox."

"Okay."

"Except it's not. And tons of weird shit's been going on around there. Not right now, I guess, but last summer. That whole investigation thing? They're saying that Vince did it, but I dunno, man. Sure he's quiet, but you know how you just get feelings about people? I don't think he could even hurt a fly. He's a goddamn vegetarian, for God's sake."

"What's that got to do with the place being haunted?"

"I think those kids are still around. Maybe in the animatronics." Jeremy paused. "And that's not all, man. Golden Freddy? He can't move at all, but there's this laughter. Whose idea was it anyway, to make those things able to laugh? Golden Freddy's is so distorted and low-toned that sometimes it sounds more like. . .crying."

That was all it took for Mike to understand what exactly Jeremy insinuated. He wouldn't hear about it, forcibly so. Generally, back in those days, Mike was as quiet as his current self. When it came to Freddy however, bare mention sent him flying off the handle. Jeremy to this day still boasted a crooked nose from that particular fight. Mike regretted it immensely, given the horrors that soon awaited the only friend he had left in the world. At least now, steep in the aftermath, Jeremy couldn't remember it unless prompted. His mind—Freddy's too—had been damaged to the point where they practically matched the animatronics in intellect.

Mike stood, once he'd watched enough basketball. At this point in his stay, he'd grown completely invisible. He experienced the same phenomenon in the trailer's main area. Tina sat at the kitchen table, beyond the living room, with her face in her hands. Quietly sobbing. Mike didn't say anything to her. He just let himself out.