Chapter Sixteen: Fear Is A Powerful Motivator
They were back.
The nightmares.
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the death of Jeremy, or maybe it was just bad luck, but whatever it was that caused them, Damien sat up in his childhood bed, holding tightly a flashlight and his favourite golden teddy bear.
He moved the flashlight from his closet to the two doors on either side of the room. He still didn't know why there were two doors, or why his bed was the only one in there and Ming's was gone, but that didn't matter now.
Damien scampered to the hallway door on his right and listened out of it carefully. He didn't hear anything but the distant barking dog. He clicked on the light to see the twisted and horrifying yellow Bonnie slink back into the darkness.
Wait...
Yellow Bonnie?
They had changed.
The nightmares that had once been Bonnie, Chica, Freddy and Foxy stalking him, now had only one monster lurking its halls.
The yellow rabbit that hunted him during his waking hours at work now hunted him at night too, in a horrible repetition of the nightmares that had plagued him for so many years as a child.
Damien wanted to cry. In all his nightmares he was small again, barely tall enough to open the doors, only a bite-size morsel for the monsters that tormented him.
'Keep going.' His yellow teddy encouraged quietly. 'You've beat them before. You can do it again.'
"I-I c-can do it again." Damien repeated, but still felt tears spilling down his cheeks, as he heard breathing coming from the left door. He shut it quickly, hoping that this technique would work on Spring Bonnie too.
There was children's laughter, just like the recordings at work, and Spring Bonnie left the door. It wouldn't be gone long, Damien knew, and he would have to keep up this song and dance as much as possible.
Maybe he wasn't fighting for his life in a hospital bed anymore, but something told him being caught would be lethal all the same. He couldn't afford to mess up.
He couldn't afford to be caught.
Morning couldn't come fast enough. The beeping of his alarm clock provided a welcome escape from the horrors in his dreams.
Damien sat up, panting, covered in sweat and shaking from fear. He took a moment to process that he was in his bedroom, a secure bedroom. Not the same one he had been hunted in years ago.
A flood of memories from the night before hit him like a tsunami. Jeremy, the attack, the drinking...
His plan...
Burning down the horror attraction, with that- thing- inside, ridding the world of the monster that taunted him, that killed a man just for being in Damien's place...
He would do it. He had to.
Maybe it was for a coworker Damien barely knew. Maybe it was for Ming, or his childhood friends... Or maybe it was for himself.
Whatever it was that was the final driving force in his decision, Damien knew he couldn't rest until he had burned the place to the ground.