If Spike thought his game of Slap and Tickle with Glory supplying the slap and bloody little tickle, had been agonizing, he'd been wrong.
Dead wrong.
Dead wrong as in, "Stake me now, I'll supply the stake!"
Curling in on himself in agony, Spike writhed, screaming as the blinding sulfuric acid Freddy splashed him with ate into his face and then his hands as he clawed at where his eyes had been. The grotty brown bear grabbed him by one ankle, dragging him like a broken toy out of the arcing remains of the last of the monitors in Security and out into the hall, the fire alarm and Bizet's "Carmen" echoing in his ears, the gonging boom of a broken Grandfather clock striking every hour at once as counterpoint.
The yellow rabbit had a little chat with Vinnie.
He mentioned that the man with white hair was not Vinnie's friend.
He mentioned that Maggie, if the man with white hair had his way, would be taken away from Vinnie.
Forever.
And that Vinnie might want to stop the man with white hair.
Freddy would be quite happy to help.
Yes, she would.
She would indeed.
Near full to bursting, Simon prepared himself for the best part of any meal – desert.
Simon always had room for desert.
The vampire's head banged off the side of the doorway, hard, adding a roaring in his ears to the burning in his face and hands.
He had to get away,
Some way.
Somehow.
Bumping along the carpet over concrete floor, Spike managed to straighten despite the agony of his face. Groping blindly, he grabbed with both raw hands what fell like one of the sweaty exposed pipes along the base of the wall and hung on hard so that the animatronic dragging him jerked to an abrupt halt, yanking his hip out of socket.
The hot water pipe, part of the old theater's overworked digestive system was slippery as he pulled, trying to ignore the new pain, yanking the electronic obscenity backwards, tipping it sideways so that it stepped on his other leg, breaking it below the knee with a wet "snap" before falling against the wall with a thudding electronic screech. In an avalanche of broken plaster it fell, landing on Spike in a clawing, thrashing heap.
Screaming, Spike jerked at the pipe again so that it groaned, pulling out of the wall in a gritty mildewed puff of dust against his raw face.
The pipe separated, spraying Spike with scalding liquid. With a yelp he pushed himself out of the way so that the stream hopefully hit his attacker.
There was a loud sizzling noise and the thing began to flail on top of him, the crackling of shorting wire and burning phake phun phurr mingling with the sound of water escaping drowning out Spike's labored breathing in his own ears as he dragged himself out from under the writhing Freddy, curling up beside the dying animatronic in a fetal position in the hot water.
Freddy had fallen.
Nonetheless, Simon was pleased.
You can't have a war without collateral damage.
And Freddy was collateral.
No matter. No worry.
It was all good: the world bred many Freddys.
Even the tall man would do, uncooperative as he usually was.
All Simon needed was the right goad.
But there was time for that later if things came to that.
The short, sloppy one, was useless.
Vinnie, the chattering fox child, on the other hand, was.
The yellow rabbit stepped over the man with white hair where he lay sobbing and rockng in the growing pool of hot water, to remind Vinnie of what the man with white hair intended to do with Maggie unless...
...stopped.