A Day Off?
Something was poking my face relentlessly, attempting to wake me up. While it worked, I was too comfortable to get out of bed, so I pulled the sheets over my face.
"Ginny, it's been fifteen hours. I think you've been in bed long enough," Amy said before actually managing to pull me out and onto the floor. That girl was stronger than I expected.
"Well good morning to you too, you naughty kiss-o-gram, you," I grumbled, stretching and heading for the bathroom. I got this feeling that I looked like a red-headed raccoon because of the black smudges on my hands when I rubbed my eyes.
"How do you know about that?!" she asked.
"I know all!" I yelled mysteriously before shutting the bathroom door. My smudgy eyes proved my assumptions of messiness, and once my face was somewhat presentable, I went back out to Amy.
"The Doctor gave us a bit of time off while he searches for Rory and Thomas, so I figured we could do some stuff," she said.
I rummaged through the dresser for some sweatpants, "Sounds like fun. What did you have in mind?"
"I was thinking we could find something in the TARDIS. The Doctor did say there was a swimming pool, so there's bound to be lots to do."
When she mentioned the swimming pool, I'm pretty sure I stretched into a Grinch-style smile because the look Amy gave me was of both horror and excitement.
"Get a swimsuit on, Pond. And meet me in the kitchen when you're ready."
The red-head nodded and left my room shortly after, and when I turned back to face my bed, a navy blue, polka-dotted one-piece was just finishing its materialization. I smirked.
Amy was already in the kitchen when I came on the scene. She was sporting a purple bikini under her thin black cover-up. We departed down a corridor after having breakfast.
"What's the pool like?" Amy asked.
"Well that's the thing. It's not really a pool at all. It's more like..." I tried to find the words to describe it again, "It's more like a really big indoor water park themed around spaceships and stuff. You're gonna love it."
After a bit of walking, we came upon a door with a decal depicting a man swimming in water over the top, and a small keypad to its right.
"This must be it," Amy observed. I nodded and approached the door, trying to open it only to be greeted by a rather unpleasant noise, followed by the following words spoken in monotone.
"Please select theme, then wait two minutes before entering the pool."
An interface screen popped up with several of these themes; among them were pirate, space, deep sea, and glacier. There were seemingly thousands more, but I didn't take the time to scroll through all of them.
"Pirates?" I suggested.
"Why not?" Amy agreed. She selected the theme, we waited for two minutes, and finally the doors opened.
So it turns out the pool wasn't a pool, and the TARDIS was just playing with us. Instead of pirate ship themed water slides and such, we were actually being ambushed by a robotic band of rogues. The shock when a virtual pirate first began to chase me and Amy down was immense. Now, we were tucked away in a small Blacksmith area.
"Did you see an exit anywhere during all of that?" Amy asked as I took up a nearby rapier.
"No. What I think is that we have to play through the room, kinda like a video game. Oh my gosh, that's so cool!" I exclaimed.
"Yeah, cool! A video game with virtual pirates that could destroy you! Awesome!" Amy was sounding more and more panicked by the minute, "You know, we should've just gone with our original plan and watched a movie."
"You're right," I cracked open the exit to the Blacksmith, "If you want to stay in here I can signal you when all the pirates are gone."
"You kidding? Splitting up always leads to bad endings. I'm coming with you."
"Okay, grab a sword and start swinging."
Thanks to my constant re-watching of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, I had learned to a degree a decent amount of sword techniques. Once we had gotten enough knowledge under our blades to keep us alive, we broke through the doors with a ferocious battle cry, and found ourselves in a completely different area.
By completely different I mean COMPLETELY different. It wasn't even from the same time zone! The place looked more like an office from the late 1980s than a port city from the 1600s. By the looks of things the place was poorly kept; the paint was peeling off the apparently steel enforced walls in some places and wires were cascading down them in others. Blank television monitors were scattered and piled on top of each other in the corners of the room, and several posters lined the walls and some were even crumpled up on the black and white tiled floor.
"I wonder what this setting is," Amy thought out loud, picking up and unraveling a discarded poster from the ground, then read from it, "'The New Face of Fun. Join Club Fazbear Today.' What's Fazbear?"
"I don't know. Here's another one," I glanced to the poster on the wall, "'Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Grand Reopening!' So whatever this setting is, it must take place at some sort of Chuck E. Cheese place called Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."
"And apparently this place has something new about it. But what's new? I mean, this place is pretty rundown if you ask me," Amy added.
"I agree."
Just then, a phone on the desk began to ring. The suddenness of the sound actually caused both of us to jump slightly. It rang three times before a voice recording actually began to play.
"Hello? Hello... uh... what on earth are you doing there? Didn't you get the memo? Uh, the place is closed down, uh, at least for awhile," whoever this guy was sounded really nervous, "Someone used one of the suits. We had a spare in the back, a yellow one, someone used it... now none of them are acting right."
"Them?!" I asked in a panicked tone and was soon shushed by Amy.
The phone guy continued on in his nervous rambling, "Listen, j-just finish your shift. It's safer than trying to leave in the middle of the night. Uh, we have one more event scheduled for tomorrow, a birthday. You'll be on day shift, just wear your uniform, stay close to the animatronics, make sure they don't hurt anyone, okay? Uh, for now just make it through the night, uh when the place eventually opens again I'll probably take the night shift myself. Okay, good night, and good luck."
Phone Guy then promptly hung up, leaving us to have a full on freakout session. And by "Us," I really mean me. Amy had somehow come to terms with the impending doom of whatever awaited us in the ventilation systems to either side of us and the long, ominously lit hallway before our eyes. When I looked back to Amy, I now noticed that she was wearing headphones that were plugged into the phone we just got the message from. She took them off after maybe a minute and told me what she learned.
So apparently we would have to act as the night guards at this Freddy Fazbear place, making sure the animatronics which are left in a free roam state don't reach the office or cause any trouble. We've got a flashlight and a mask to stop the animatronics if they come through the hallway or air ducts. Oh, and there's this one puppet thing we have to keep at bay by winding a music box at the prize counter.
Amy and I, both of us being rather skittish when it comes to haunted children's attractions, decided to take turns going to the prize counter and keeping an eye on the cameras. We kept in touch through our phones, watching each other on the security feed. We made it for perhaps three hours until things became... more playful.
It was about 3:30 in the morning according to the camera's clock. Amy was winding up the music box without any sign of animatronic mayhem, thank goodness.
"Okay. I'm coming back now," she said. I switched the cameras on to monitor numbers eleven, nine, ten, and seven in that order. Once we got to the gaping hallway we just ran for it with the flashlight on.
"Amy, you're doing great. I've spotted nothing near you," I said.
"Oh that's a relief. I was starting to think I saw-" the Scot's voice suddenly cut out and was replaced by static.
"Amy? Amy, please say you're there."
"I'm here, Ginny. I just thought I saw something and dropped my phone."
"Oh thank goodness. Where did you see it?"
"Check camera seven?" Amy sounded panicked. I shakily switched cameras, immediately regretting my actions.
"Amy, run! Just run!" I yelled into the phone. The yellow Freddy suit the Phone Guy was talking about earlier was staring right into the camera, black, shimmering eyes showing no known sign of life.
I heard frantic footsteps coming down the dark hallway, followed by a swoosh of flaming hair in the dimly lit security office.
"Are we safe in here?" Amy asked me quickly.
"You shouldn't be running in the halls! It's against the ru-ru-ru-ruuuules!" an eerily chipper mechanical voice sang in the hall, causing Amy and me to scream and hide behind the filing cabinet, holding each other in sheer fright.
"What do we do?!" I whispered. Both of us were silenced by the clanking footsteps of a large bear-shaped figure whose shadow could be seen by the pair of us.
"Come on out girls. You don't have to hide from me. Freddy's your friend! He won't hurt you!"
There were a few more clanking footsteps here and there, followed by a dead silence other than the static of the camera monitors and the whir of a small desk fan.
"Do you think it's gone?" I asked, my voice shaking.
"I'll check," Amy said, making a motion to get up. I quickly pulled her back down behind the cabinet.
"What if it's still there? That thing could kill you!"
"I've got the mask, remember?" As if to prove her point, she brought the Freddy Fazbear face down over her own, "It'll be okay. Don't worry!"
From there, Amy continued to stand up and shuffle to the desk, despite my wishes otherwise. After a few looks around the office, she turned to me and gave a thumb's up. I breathed a sigh of relief and slowly came to my feet, but when I looked back up again, I quickly took my sigh back as a gasp.
Amy was gone.
Whenever I tried calling her name, I was received with no sound. Even the camera monitors seemed to stop their static buzzing, and the desk fan was no longer spinning.
"T-this isn't funny, Amy. I'm serious. Y-you'd better come out here right now, or there's gonna be heck to pay!" I was too frightened to sound intimidating. There was a sudden slamming of metal, causing me to pull a jump and shriek routine. I found nothing more than a filing cabinet and a small Freddy figurine. The toy must've fallen off the top of the cabinet. I relaxed for a moment, then heard delicate footsteps coming up behind me, nothing akin to those of the animatronics; Amy was back.
I gave a breathless laugh, "You are messed up in the head for scaring me like-" I stopped mid-sentence when my turn around was met not by a Scottish kiss-o-gram, but a slender, puppet shaped doll with an eerie white mask with what seemed like purple tear tracks under the eyeholes. At least, that's all I was able to make of the thing before it pounced on me, a scream erupting from my mouth before everything faded to black.
Thud, "Okay, okay! I'll do a bit of tinkering with the virtual reality matrix before we pick up Rory and Thomas!" Thud, "And I promise there won't be any danger this time, so please put the bear head down!"
I could recognize the pleading voice as the Doctor's. Amy must've been giving him quite a hard time.
"Your satanic pizza place of terror scared us nearly to death!" Amy scolded, followed by one more thud before the bear mask dropped to the ground, which was pretty soft going by the lack of a dropping sound.
"And I'm so sorry you two had to go through a glitch that major after dealing with the Weeping Angels. Truly, I am."
Upon hearing the word "glitch," my eyes flew open. I had been haphazardly lain on top of a large beanbag in what appeared to be an arcade lobby. The walls sported various neon colors and the floor resembled the same black and white tile as in Fazbear's. I turned my head slowly and could clearly see Amy, looking unnaturally furious with a cringing Doctor. Eventually her expressions relaxed and the Time Lord brought down his defenses. I sat up, rubbing my head.
"Wait a minute, that nightmare was a glitch? Like, a video game glitch?" I asked. Both traveler and companion looked relieved to see me and hurried over to help me to my feet. I batted both of them off soon after, repeating the same "I'm fine, honest," to each and every one of their, "Are you sure you're okay, Ginny?"s.
"Back to my question, that was a glitch all along?" I asked again as we left the arcade-style room.
"Yeah. That area is supposed to be a virtual reality hall with thousands of settings to choose from. It must've glitched out of pirates and into Five Nights at Freddy's because of a leak from the pool. The two are right next to each other as it turns out," the Doctor explained.
"And it also turns out that we were stolen from what would have been an awesome day off because of that glitch!" I exclaimed.
"Don't remind me of that, Parks. Amy has made it quite clear just how agitated you both are about it." The Doctor rubbed an assumably aching shoulder and winced.
"Oh I heard every bit of that as well. Seriously, Amy? There are better ways to let loose your panicked nature than by assaulting aliens with bear masks."
Amy laughed, "Sorry! But a psychotic golden robot had just attacked me! What else did you expect me to do?"
We all laughed that time as we strolled down the TARDIS corridor and into another adventure.
Yes, I've been sucked into the Five Nights at Freddy's craze, and it just seemed like too good of an idea to pass up! Also, yes! I'm not dead! Real life has just been a bit of a juggling act lately and I haven't had that much time to write! By the way, it's been over a year since WIBTR was first published! YAY! Thanks for all the support and patience you've shown over the year. It really means a lot to me that you guys are still reading my stuff even though I always take a ton of time to get anything published. Truly, it warms my heart. I can't make any promises about being more prompt on chapter submissions in the future, as the school play and prom are on the horizon, but I will continue to write as long as I have avid readers! Thanks for everything so far! -Raggedy