Chapter Text
Charlie longed for the nights with no dreams that she used to have, surrounded by the warmth of the mindless dark. She didn’t have to think about her mother or her father, her brothers, the children trapped in machines and the man who stole their lives. But she hadn’t seen that peace in a long, long time.
Tonight’s nightmare wouldn’t even be considered a nightmare at first. She’d loved it.
Opening her eyes, the first thing she noticed was the familiar layout. It was the old Afton house, the one she’d interviewed Mike in when she first came to Hurricane. To think that was the first and last time she’d ever gotten to see him…
“Charlie.”
The sound of a familiar voice snapped her from her confusion. It was Mike, still wearing that same Metallica tank top he’d been wearing when she first met him. He was okay.
“Mike!” She hadn’t even realized it wasn’t real, no time to question how this was happening before she hugged him. “Oh my God, Mike…!”
“It’s been a while, huh?” His voice wasn’t raspy anymore. “They’re all waiting for you in the kitchen, y’know.”
“What? Who?”
Mike pulled himself from her grasp. “Everyone. It’s your birthday, remember? Now c’mon, there’s a cake with your name on it waiting for you.”
She followed him without another thought, and he was right. In the kitchen, about a dozen people stood around the dining table, a giant cake sat smack-dab in the middle. Balloons littered the ground as Vanessa, Jessica, and Carlton all lingered around the front, Evan and Neil close behind, all with knives. “We’re ready to cut the cake!” Vanessa cheered.
Behind the rest of them stood the old Glamrock band from the Pizzaplex. “We have missed you Charlotte,” Freddy beamed.
Charlie suddenly felt tears dripping down her cheeks. “You guys really pulled this off all for me, huh?” Sniffling, she wiped her face with her sleeve. “I love you guys… Wait, where’s Dad?”
“Right behind you, birthday girl!”
She turned around, and-
The light disappeared. The house disappeared. The people disappeared, everything disappeared. She stood in the void, almost alone.
Standing opposite of her was her father, but not how she wanted to see him. His salt-and-pepper hair was coated in brain matter and viscera, blood gushing from the bullet hole dug through his head. His posture was warped like the twisted trees in the wasteland, spindly branches reaching out as they begged for an end, any kind of end. His eyes were a milky, dead white, the color and life sapped out of them. Scraps of yellow fur from the Fredbear suit stuck to bloody patches of his skin.
It was his corpse.
The thing that was once her father stepped closer, his walk jaunty and strained; his bones cracked underneath his own weight. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for your nineteenth birthday.” He tried to smile, but his teeth had rotted away. “Does this make up for it? Sweetheart?”
Charlie stumbled back, her tears now falling faster than they had before. “You’re not my dad,” she stammered. “You’re not my dad, get the fuck away from me!”
It stopped, hurt slipping across its dead, drooping face. “But I love you,” it cooed.
For a moment, its words had an impact. But she knew better. She didn’t know what happened to her father; he’d given up the last pieces of himself to revive her. She already knew he loved her.
“Stay away from me,” she snarled, winding up her fist, “you sick motherfuck-!”
Charlie woke up as soon as she made contact. One day, she thought. It’s only been one day and I’m already freaking out…
In the dark, a mirror sat opposite of her bed, barely visible in the cold moonlight that seeped through her window. Charlie saw her silhouette sat alone in the looking glass, the look in her eyes one she couldn’t even read. Was it fear? Want? Need?
Taking a breath, Charlie reached for her phone and opened her texts. It was 1:35 in the morning, but she didn’t care. She opened Vanessa’s texts and began to type.
Can we talk? she wrote.
—
Carlton could remember his first shift at Freddy’s like the back of his hand. It haunted him nearly every night.
“Let’s go over it one more time,” his father grumbled, arms crossed as he leaned against the back office door. “Then you’re on your own. Where’s the taser?”
“The top desk drawer.” Carlton pulled it open, gesturing exhaustedly at the piece of equipment inside. They’d already done this song and dance three times.
“And what do we use the taser for?”
“To shock the animatronics in case they get out of line.”
“And what do we do with the animatronics during the night shift?”
“We stay away from them in the office,” Carlton sighed, “and if we have to leave the office we keep as much distance as possible.”
“Wrong, you’re forgetting something.”
Carlton threw his arms up, his robotic one quite a bit heavier. “What now?!”
Immediately his father grabbed his wrist and squeezed it tight. “Don’t fucking sass with me,” he snarled, and then threw it down. “If you have to leave the office, you lock the door inside too. You cannot let those…” His father glanced out the window toward the main stage, Freddy and his band of animals staring right back at him. Carlton hadn’t noticed it then, but the animatronics’ eyes seemed so much more alive that night. “...Those beasts in here.”
“Why do they even have a free-roaming mode at night?” Carlton asked, cradling his sore wrist.
“Jen-” His father cleared his throat, correcting himself. “Ms. Emily said their servos will lock up if they aren’t allowed to.”
“Then why do the technicians keep bolting them down to the stage?”
“It isn’t your business, or mine either frankly. They’re just following Ms. Emily’s commands.”
Carlton resisted the urge to call bullshit as his father looked down at his watch and smirked, “Your first shift starts in five minutes. You think you’ve got everything handled?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then you’re damn wrong. Call me only if you actually need me.” Without another word, his dad strolled out of the back office, and Carlton watched with narrowed eyes as he left the pizzeria.
“Jerk,” he muttered under his breath as sat down, flipping open a random company manual. The hours passed slowly; midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock. Carlton checked the cameras again, his eyelids sticky with sleep. Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica were still in their places, and so was Foxy. The place was empty except for them.
He glanced back at the door in the corner of the office. His dad said it was just random storage, but Carlton knew better. Images of Jason’s dismembered parts flashed in his mind, fleshy bits and pieces left to rot on the floor by the woman inside. Her cruel smile flashing through the dark haunted him just as much as his friends’ screams. The way she had that stranger in the Fredbear suit ready, a simple signal setting him off on such a rampage, just to make sure no one lived to see whatever they were doing…
But he’d lived. Why did he, out of all of them, get to live? The man in the suit was right there, he could’ve just snapped his neck or bashed his head in so easily! Maybe he wanted me to live, he’d thought, trying to muster the energy to open up his eyes again. Maybe he wanted me to find those bodies. Maybe he wanted me to notice their blood dripping from those animatronics’ mouths. Maybe it was a taunt.
Perhaps it was just the horror of remembering what he’d seen, but he could feel something was wrong. Not in the past, but the present.
Was he the one who killed William too? he wondered. The possibility of William having done all that wasn’t one Carlton believed in. He’d known him all his life, he couldn’t have, surely!
“Carlton.”
Flinching, Carlton covered his ears. He could hear William’s voice so clearly, was his mind trying to mock him? He couldn’t help but think back to his first night in the hospital after that monster took his arm, the way he could hear John’s voice so clearly. “It’s not real,” he whispered, “it’s not real, it’s not real…”
“Carlton, look at me.”
Tears slid down his face as he nearly pounded his head against the metal desk. “Leave me alone. You’re not real, leave me alone!”
“Carlton!”
Suddenly, the feeling of stale, matted fur met his shoulder, and he immediately knew who it was. Whipping around Carlton tumbled wordlessly out of his chair, scrambling for the office door as he stared wide-eyed at the thing behind him. Covered in years-old blood stains, a yellow bear suit loomed over the new guard, its eye sockets empty as it stared back at him. The door in the corner sat wide open; he’d been hiding in there the whole time.
The man in the suit.
Carlton screamed as the costume reached down toward him, kicking the beast as hard as he could and sprinting straight out into the dining area. Then as he looked around, the obvious finally became apparent. Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica were all gone, the stage left wide open in their wake.
Beelining toward the front doors, Carlton desperately pulled at the handles as he heard the sharp snap of metal on metal. They were locked, his dad’s doing.
He didn’t get the chance to look for his keys before Fredbear had already caught up to him, inhumanly fast as he took Carlton’s hand. “Get away from me!” the redhead screamed, punching as hard as he could.
The bear let go, tumbling backwards, and Carlton started toward Pirate’s Cove when he saw a familiar face looking back at him. It was Foxy, taking careful, janky steps toward him. Somehow, in the shadows of the pizzeria, his red fur and wear-and-tear looked gruesome. Then he saw the tiny bits of blood and oil dripping from the fox’s jaw, and he realized why Foxy was still out of order.
He swore he could’ve heard Jason crying out for him as he raced toward the repair room to grab something, anything, to defend himself. Then Bonnie and Chica stepped out of there too. “Carlton?” he could’ve heard Marla ask as Chica tilted her head.
His heart pounded against his chest as he spun around, realization crashing down on him. He was surrounded.
Tumbling back into the employee break room, Carlton jumped as he felt something grab him from behind. Brown hands, covered in old snarled fur just like Fredbear’s.
Freddy.
“Let go of me!” he screamed, tears in his eyes as the rest of them crept closer. “I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die!”
They all stared down at him as he devolved into a sobbing, snotty mess, shivering in the animatronic bear’s arms. Only when he calmed down a little did he realize that he wasn’t being dragged off somewhere, or crushed to death, or anything. The other animatronics were keeping their distance. Even Foxy was trying to clean off the blood from his snout.
“Carlton, it’s us.”
He stopped, cold shock striking him like lightning. That was John’s voice. The same strange, ghostly John who had comforted him in the hospital. The same John he’d been friends with for so long. Carlton looked up, slowly stepping out of Freddy’s grasp, and saw the brown bear looking down at him with soft eyes.
“It’s me,” John said as the bear opened its mouth, as if trying to speak. “Carlton, it’s me. It’s John.”
“Don’t you remember us?” Lamar asked as Bonnie took a step closer.
Carlton looked at them and felt his chest begin to tighten with not fear, but grief. Jason’s remains had been found in Foxy, Marla’s in Chica and Lamar’s in Bonnie. William’s corpse had been pulled out of the Fredbear costume, his friends’ supposed “murderer”. John’s remains had been in Freddy…
“We just wanted to say hi,” Jason stammered. “Mr. Afton was supposed to lead you to the kitchen, and we were gonna surprise you with a birthday cake.”
“We know it’s a late birthday,” Marla added, “but… Well…”
“Oh God.” Carlton pushed his way out of the crowd and toward the nearest trash can, leaning over as his stomach did somersaults. All this time, for two years, he hadn’t been going crazy. He’d been hearing them every time he went to Freddy’s. They had possessed the animatronics.
“I know this is a lot,” William said, suddenly standing next to him, “but we can explain. Okay?”
“...Okay.”
“Happy fifteenth birthday, Carlton.”
—
Ralph knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night; he didn’t even bother breaking out his sleeping pills. Instead, as the clock struck 1:38, he sat alone in his home office, guzzling energy drinks like they were the elixirs of life. A part of him considered calling his daughter to keep him company over the phone, but he couldn’t bear the thought of wasting her time like that. She needed her rest.
So do you, the sensible part of him called out, but he ignored it, eyes glued to the security footage on his computer. They were why he’d noticed the rabbit thing in the first place, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t use them now.
He scowled as he watched a police car slow down in front of his driveway for a moment, and then speed off less than thirty seconds later. The woman who had interrogated him- Jessica was her name, right?- had tried to convince the police to keep someone on guard at his home for his own safety. Instead, they settled for sending someone to check every hour. The question of whether they were incompetent or malevolent ate away at his mind, but he tried to shake the thought away and focus once more.
A minute later, the crackling sound of broken glass rippled through the halls, and Ralph saw a notification from the camera situated at his back porch. POTENTIAL BREAK-IN, it read in flashing red letters. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.
Ralph scrambled to lock the door behind him, putting his ear up to the wood for just a moment to listen. Faintly, he could hear the sound of metal dragging against the floor a few rooms away, and he flicked off the lights in his office, realizing exactly where the creature was heading as he scrambled to find his gun.
The sound got closer, too close for comfort, and finally Ralph stopped. He held his breath as the shadows of two mechanical feet appeared under his door, and something knocked outside.
A minute passed, then two. Another knock. Then a third. Ralph covered his mouth as he choked down a whimper.
Nothing moved, and…
The shadows disappeared. Ralph waited for a few more minutes, listening, but there was still nothing. Or at least, he couldn’t hear anything above the pounding of his own heart.
Checking the cameras, he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. His house was empty except for himself. The only strangeness left was his destroyed back door and his open front one; the creature outside must have left that way. Clever, he couldn’t help but think. It waited until the cops had passed to attack…
He stepped out and looked around. The space was normal aside from the open door, his office right next to it. Ralph wondered if he should heat something up in the microwave for a late-night snack when-
A blur of metal sprang out from the nearby coat closet, fabric flying as the thing crashed into him. With a loud thud Ralph fell to the floor, and he barely had time to look up at his attacker before something sharp plummeted down towards his chest.
Ralph scrambled away, but not quick enough as an agonizing pain pierced through his stomach. He screamed as the monster yanked the knife out and swung down again, and again, and again.
Ralph Coppelia died two minutes later.
—
Vanessa’s eyes burnt with strain as she scanned Fazbear Entertainment’s website from top to bottom, each new section pulling at her sleepless mind. She would have saved this for tomorrow, but even with her sleeping pills she couldn’t seem to get any shut-eye. She would’ve taken dreams or nightmares or nothing, anything but the cursed exhaustion of her own stress.
But at least she could put that stress to good use, right?
Blinking hard, she rubbed her eyes and went back to the home screen. Just one more look-through before I go through the code; after all that surely I’ll get some sleep, she thought.
For what felt like the twentieth time but was really just the third, Vanessa read off the front page: ‘Welcome to Fazbear Entertainment, where fantasy and fun comes to life! Here on our website you can find the following: information on our locations, subscriptions to our streaming service, our online store, and behind-the-scenes information and news on all our endeavors!’
Vanessa went to the next tab, labelled LOCATIONS AND ENTERTAINMENT VENUES. She saw the usual, although compared to previous years there were significantly less than before. On the Hurricane Pizzaplex’s page it said, ‘The Fazbear Entertainment Pizzaplex in Hurricane, Utah offers the ultimate fun for all ages! Watch our state-of-the-art animatronics perform, try our new buffet including food from a variety of cultures and diets, win tickets and prizes in the Fazcade, and more! Sign your child up for a private birthday party today! LOCATION OPENING JULY 30TH.’
She checked everything again. Nothing new of course, and she definitely hadn’t missed anything. It was like the website was purposefully trying to be as boring as possible to deter any deeper look into it. Admittedly, it worked pretty well.
Stretching, Vanessa nearly fell off her bed, exhaustion finally beginning to tick away at her. But she couldn’t let it win now, it was time for the main event: analyzing the source code.
When you analyze source code, you usually don’t get anything interesting, just the building blocks of a website. Vanessa wasn’t expecting much, but being a former cybersecurity worker had taught her a lot of things. You check everything and you keep your expectations low.
So, she checked. And she was damn glad she did.
The entire website was built on spaghetti code; everything was connected to something else, there was absolutely no way of detangling anything unless you wanted to delete the entire site, or at least a decent chunk of it. Stranger, it was changing in real time, her computer’s fan chugging along faster than she ever knew it could as it tried to process it all at once. It was like the code was alive, a living, breathing beast within itself.
The code was purple, the same shade of purple as Jeremy’s eyes.
As soon as the realization hit her, Vanessa’s computer began to smoke, the fan going into overdrive. Then the keyboard lit on fire, and as the device immediately blue-screened she saw for a second something else hiding behind the computer’s glitching. A face, but not a human one. It almost looked like the Fredbear costume, rubbery and worn with time.
Her computer let out an ugly, grading screech as the fire grew, and finally Vanessa stumbled for a nearby water bottle and splashed the device. The fire disappeared, and so did her computer’s functionality.
Only then did Charlie’s text come through, breaking out from the grasp of her apartment’s shitty Wi-Fi. Vanessa looked from the text to the remains of her computer back to the text, and finally she sighed to herself, “Why can’t I just have a normal life?”
—
Jessica had relatively better nightmares, at least compared to the rest of her friends. They were still the same nightmares she’d had for a few years: Neil, all those animatronics, Fredbear, chasing her to the ends of the earth. They always caught her in one way or another. Each ending featured a different demise, but the worst was always when Neil grabbed her. Every time, he’d strangle her, that same cold, betrayed look in his eyes. You should’ve saved me, he’d always scream.
Strangulation was always the most personal demise.
When she gasped awake, sweat pooling down her back, she immediately glanced over at her alarm clock. It was two in the morning. Mildly frustrated, she began to drag herself to the bathroom when she heard the faint sound of typing coming from Charlie’s room. Knocking on her door, the blonde droned, “Are you awake in there?”
There were soft footsteps, and then Charlie cracked open her door, the blue light of her phone nearly illuminating the whole house. As Jessica recoiled from the light, Charlie quickly turned it off, muttering, “Sorry… What’s up? Wait, why are you awake?”
“Gotta take a piss.” Wiping the crust from her eyes Jessica said, “I’d be asking you the same thing, but knowing you I’m a bit afraid to ask.”
“Vanessa and I’ve been texting.”
“At this ungodly hour?”
“To be fair, I started it. I had a nightmare, and… Well, I just needed to talk.”
“About your nightmare?”
The mechanic shrugged. “Among other things.”
“Y’know, if you need to talk about your nightmares, you don’t have to go waking Vanessa up. I’m here if you need anything.”
“I know, but this nightmare, it made me realize…” Charlie hugged herself, and to Jessica’s surprise she saw tears dripping down her face. “I don’t know how all this stuff with Fazbear Entertainment’s gonna work out for us. We all nearly died in more ways than one last year, and…”
“I’m aware.” Jessica flinched at her own words. “Sorry, that was blunt.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m just scared that me and Vanessa’s last memories are gonna be terrible. If one of us dies, or both of us die… I don’t want our last moments to be bad. I couldn’t live with myself if she died and I knew the last time I hung out with her I didn’t make her happy. I just can’t. I just want her to be happy.”
As soon as the last word slipped from Charlie’s mouth, her voice cracked and she let out a sob. She covered her mouth, trying to stop herself, but she couldn’t. Jessica pulled her into a hug. “You’re the best girlfriend Vanessa could’ve asked for,” she whispered as Charlie wept into her shoulder.
Charlie let out a weak, hiccuping laugh. “I try,” she whimpered. “I really do try…”