Epilogue
The blonde girl moved through Spriggy's like she was giving a tour…to no one.
Caught in shadow-upon-shadow, the rooms hunkered within the protective walls of the old burnt restaurant. The empty lobby, posters still bare of glass. The long hallway, with more glassless posters. The security office, its monitors lit up, showing static. No one was watching them, though. The kitchen, all shiny and still. The Parts and Service room, a mess of robot parts…and empty blood-stained metal chairs. And, of course, the dining room, where the animatronics stood rigid on the barely lit stage.
The animatronics, once lively and energetic, now had their faux-fur riddled with holes, and through these holes, their metal endoskeletons beneath were rusting, with tiny, barely visible wires poking out of gaps in the fur.
Everything was totally quiet.
The blonde girl went on down the back hallway. All the doors along the hall were closed, except for one, at the very end.
The blonde girl went through the door into a small - hardly more than a closet-sized - room. She looked at where light from the hallway landed on the room's bare, dusty checkerboard floor…and beyond that to the rusted animatronic Sprigatito slumped in a corner. The Sprigatito was reclined against the mildewed cement block wall.
Not a Sprigatito. A woman. A woman in a horrible costume. A twitching woman, slouched in a massive spread of blood. It was rust-colored, dried blood that was stuck to the floor. Maybe forever.
The girl watched the woman from the doorway, taking satisfaction in her suffering. The girl wanted that suffering to go on and on as long as the stain on the floor was there. Maybe longer than that.
She backed out of the room, and closed the door, sealing the Sprigatito into a black, black prison.
THE END