I’m a huge Chuckie Cheese fanatic. I use the sites under the name “Cheezefan 101.” I used to work there. I still have the Pasquale outfit in the closet, along with several plastic spiders, a coca cola souvenir cup and a big ol’ bucket of plastic pasta that cost 6,000 tickets.
There’s…something you should know. I worked at the place from 1995 to 1997, when things took a strange turn for the worse. Indeed, the “cheese” as we call it in the biz, is not all that it’s cracked up to be. Eggs. Listen carefully because I don’t want to frighten you. I know you’re easily scared and this story is easily going to make you lose your sanity because of how much has been covered up by the Chuck E. Cheese Corporation over the years.
	The training videos they showed us were… a little odd to say the least. I had filed an application through AOL instant messenger when it was just an up and coming technological marvel, and I was approved almost immediately for a minimum wage position. Make the dough. Cook the pizza. Butter it up. Deliver service with a smile.
Or so I thought. Indeed I loved going in there and seeing the little rascals playing in the ball pit, swinging about in the pirate ship game, winning tickets and collecting various, various prizes. Some say the only prize I tried to win was my mortal sanity, after all was said and done.
	I first knew something was off when I saw the training video. The man never took the Pasquale outfit off and they never broke character. It was really weird. A character named P. Farnabus Q. Cheeze was seen in the background but he never interacted, nor were they ever included in the original cheese lineup. Later, Munch, the large purple whatsit, would replace P. Farnabus, who I believe was deemed “too weird” for American audiences (Chuckie Cheese originated in Canada.) Now, you probably don’t know that Chuckie cheese was created by the guy who invented Pong. This is important, but I want you to remember that for now. Later on you’ll understand…everything.
	The training room was fine. A little cold. Pasquale was shown baking up the pizza and telling us how to cook it. “Be sure to butter it up with our special butter sauce! Muy Biene!” Pasquale costume kissed his plastic lips, the head looking a little off. “I could go for a whole bit pie of that cheesy, cheesy, cheese pizza right-a now!” His head turned a little and I noticed that the Chuckie Cheese logo, which usually contained a little rat giving a thumbs up, had a small, masonic symbol on it. I didn’t know Chuckie was a mason.
	The training video was really long. They showed us how to prepare the dough, make the sauce, and put the piping hot pizza in the oven. “And be sure to cook-a the pizza. Always use a glove!” Pasquale winked a sinister wink. I was getting a strange feeling. “Otherwise this may happen, and the chuck won’t like it.” Pasquale costume reaches into the piping hot oven with his bare hands and takes out the pizza, screaming violently. “OH MY FUNKING GOD!” He yelled, and there was a weird CG laugh stapled on. He had visible blisters all over his hands. His reddened, burning hands were not puppet hands. They…were human hands.
	“I CAN’T COOK PIZZA THIS WAY!” He screams. “MY ART IS RUINED!” He takes out a knife and begins to slice his own arm off at the wrist! The training tape immediately cut to a bunch of kids playing in a ball pit. As if that never happened. Then Chuckie Began to talk. “You know, remember, don’t play on the machines until after dark.” What the hell did that mean? “Oh, you can play bouncy gyrocopter or horse ride for a quarter, but nothing’s gonna cure that deep depression when you’re too old to take a ride anymore.”
They showed us how to feed tickets into the machine. How to award prizes. The whole thing. The weird part was near the middle of the video, when you just see chuckie standing there, in the dark, not saying anything. His eyes glisten in the moonlight while the little lights of the machines twinkle.
“It’s nice to be here after hours.” Chuckie says. “At night when the machines are down and the families are gone, you can get the LARGE QUARTER.” He said. Large quarter. He picked up a large coin with the chuckie symbol on it. A chuckie cheese token. He continued. “Place a LARGE QUARTER into the LARGE GAME SLOT. DO NOT LET THE COSTUME TOUCH THE GROUND!” What did that mean?
Evidently the costume was some sort of holy cloth for the cheese foundation. “If any chuckie cheese costume touches the ground, be sure to immediately burn it.” You see a chuckie employee burning a costume outside while the plastic nose melts into nothing.
This- this was too weird for me. But they made us sign a nondisclosure agreement before we became a part of the Chuck E. Cheese family.
That was the weirdest part. They had me take a blood test. Not a drug test, like a normal employer, but a blood test. I was thinking about that in the last few minutes of the training video when chuck yelled “CHEEZY BLOOD! CHEEZY BLOOD!” He spurted a blood pack all over the pizza and walked out of the kitchen with it.
“Remember, don’t open the machine.” What? Don’t open the machine? “WHEN YOU TAKE THE TICKETS OUT, DO NOT OPEN THE MACHINE!” Chuckie sounded sterner now. More stern than he had ever been.
Well, I was convinced. As soon as this goddamn training tape was over I was gonna go open a machine. Why wouldn’t they let us open the machines? How were we supposed to get the tokens out?
Chuckie had red eyes, smiled and his teeth grew incredibly sharp, violently sharp, not even carnivorous, but like a trash compactor. The manager shut the tape off. “That’s- that’s enough for today.” It was my manager, Reuben. “What was that about?” I said. “Didn’t you like the video?” He laughed. “They do things a bit different in Canada. Different humor style, but don’t worry, the cheese foundation is all American.” “You’re putting blood on the pizza!” I yelled.
“Blood on the pizza? That’s a violation of so many laws I can’t even count. Tell you what. Come back tomorrow and we’ll sort this all out.” He quickly pulled the training video out and put it in a black slipcase that was…unmarked. “Come back tomorrow?!” I said. “Yes, yes, come back tomorrow, all will be explained during the big quarter cheese chunk training hour.” He physically pushed me out of the front door, forcing me to leave my big gulp and orthopedic back pillow behind.
That night, I had a nightmare about the manager putting blood in the pizza for some masonic ritual involving various doppelgangers of the cheese friends.
I was gonna have to do it.
I was going to break into Chuckie Cheese and finally figure out what the HELL was going on.
I got on a black nightsuit, some goggles, and a pair of non-slip sole shoes. While I was breaking and entering, the pizza kitchen can be quite greasy in the late hours, and I didn’t want to trip and fall.
	I jimmied the lock using a small knife, some fish bones, and a rubber hammer. I climbed through the window anyway, worried that there may be a security system. A red laser grid wire protected the floor. This seemed like a lot of security to protect a bunch of cheap souvenirs and ski ball games.
Or so I thought.
Or so. I- Got really confused at what I was looking at.
I went into the back closet, being careful not to trip the wires. I found it, behind Reuben’s desk.
THE BIG QUARTER. I picked it up and silently crept over to the other side of the room. The quarter was heavy and had burn marks all over it. Why the hell would the Chuckie Cheese corporation mint something like this? I saw the slot behind the back wall. I put it in.
All of the machines turned on immediately. All of the rides began to move in unison. The entire thing was lit up at once, you could probably see it from miles away. The car rides honked. The slot machines rolled. The animatronic puppets began to dance at a rigorous pace, as though they were going to break!
I took out my screwdriver, and began to unscrew a machine. The chicken machine. My favorite game. I unscrewed the four main screws and popped the top off. What I saw next shocked me to the very core of my being and I will never forget it.
To my horror, there was a dead chuckie cheese employee inside. Wait- not dead, moving! The lips were sewn shut and it had a horrified expression on its face, it was hooked up to an IV that fed him intravenous pieces of food that were attached to the ink on the ticket pieces. What in god’s name. The words “ut in honestis sacrafice caseo” were burned into his chest. I later found out that meant “In honorable sacrifice to the cheese.”
The other machines started to knock and bang. There were people in all of them! Stuffed in side. I didn’t have a chance to save him because something happened next that truly terrified me.
The characters. They were human. I know what you’re thinking- it’s just a suit. It wasn’t a suit. That was- their skin. A furry rat man walked out with a crooked nose and hobbly, warped teeth. He looked sinister and his cap wasn’t even well fitting. The real chuckie cheese had arrived, and he was covered In ugly, patchy fur for his oblong kneecaps and bulging dough chunk gut. Pasquale too. The Italian man leered at me, angrily, holding a ladle covered in what I hoped to god was just pasta sauce.
And the others. Jasper T. Jowls, a crying dog-faced man whose skin looked like a worn out leather shoe. His banjo was missing strings and his suit was ill-fitting. Helen Henny, whose bloody chicken wings had glued on feathers and a sewn off beak. And Mr. Munch, whose fur was so strong and thick that you could barely see anything but his oversized, glossy human eyes. Blood in his purple whiskers, and when he opened his mouth an endless gullet filled with all kinds of esophageal bacteria that clung to the sides of his sickly, sickly skin.
He leered at me with kind of a look. “Please the cheese.” He said. “Please the cheese!” They began to corner me and I was hit with a ladel square on the head. The police arrived. I had tripped the wire! Good. I was about to blow the cover on this whole fucking thing. “Thank god officer they’re real monst-“ Oh my god. The officer, the cop, was wearing a chuckie cheese costume. He pulled the gun on me and led me into the back of the police car.
They put me in “Cheeze Jail” a place where bad employees are forced to watch crappy reruns of that shitty show they show on the screen. I was allowed to eat pizza dough chunks and baconaise, a form of bacon flavored mayonnaise. After eight years, they let me go. But by then it was too late. The chuckie cheese had closed down, replaced by a bowling alley and all evidence removed. To think that the cheese corporation would bind employees to the floor and forcefeed them tickets, all so that they could save a few more dollars on their electric bill. Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe I’m just some “crazy guy!” on the internet, huh? Just some “ca-razy guy making up stories about a pizza restaurant for children!” I fucking- DARE YOU to go open one of those machines right now.
They say the pong creator went nuts in his final years, all those infinite hours of bouncing the ball until he finally lost it. They say he started a pizza chain because he wanted to create the first human AI. That he failed, and the only way he could compromise was by starting a cheese-based religion that required real intelligence, living flesh machines. Just put a man in a ratsuit, feed them pizza, some flashin’ lights, and they’ll show up in droves, he said. He was right.