Epiphany

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!”

There was no reply. Mike had made up his mind, and indulging in his  domination, he left the can of gasoline across a puddle of gas, already blazing with scorching heat. He pulled his wizened and wrinkled form up using the window frame, careful to avoid cutting himself on the smaller bits of glass still populating the bottom of the frame, and sauntered down the hallway.

Towards the exit? Was he going to leave me to burn, or was he seeking worse tools of destruction?   I couldn’t decide;  my mind was scrambled  by my current situation. My neck  was broken by his tire iron, my head flopping like a flailing puppet. My eyes were surrounded by a murky darkness, pulsating in and out due to the pain. The damage to my body was too much to take lying down;  filling my mind with determination to move forward. In front of me, the fire burned with the ferocity and intensity of a heartbeat. The pounding and thumping of my chest nullified the sounds of destruction and collapse around me. I could only hear my own inner workings, and the constant repetition of the pounding drove me to press forward across, ignoring the pains.

I was just about to finish crossing the stream of fire when my constant repetition ceased abruptly. The “badump-badump-badump” was replaced by a low, yet ear-piercing hiss  from somewhere near my ribcage used to be. If I didn’t take care of that leak, I would be toast. Albeit, a little sooner than Mike would’ve planned for me to be.

Using my good arm, I felt around inside my chest, tearing apart useless, burnt fabric shell where I could, while propping myself up with my left stump. The wires danced in the puddle of fire around the broken metal pipe that remained of my forearm. My hand felt a small tube inside-roughly near where my kidney used to be-,and squeezed while pulling the tube  towards the outside of my body.

 My hand withdrew with a small pipe, oozing oil like an artery. My initial delight at finding a small hope for salvation was soon disrupted by my stump, which had slipped from underneath me from the pressure applied to it. I fell into a puddle of burning gasoline, eating away at my body. Thankfully, some of the flames were extinguished by my fall, but I still had to get out soon. My head, which was attached to my body by a very loose joint, stole a glimpse at the exit as I fell thanks to the whiplash.

He was back, standing with what looked like a baton or tazer in his hand,

Come closer. I won’t bite, I thought to myself while I stared into the fire and gas-  not of my own volition, of course. It doesn’t matter if my eyes rotted away decades ago; for some reason the gas pooling inside my socket cavity stung. A lot.

One of the things people like me have to learn is to blend in. Create facades; illusions and such. When the murders began to happen, I was the last person Evans and the other suits  would point their finger at. Fritz and the other guys seemed to actually enjoy working with little kids in the daytime. Being a night guard, everyone thought I was just there for the paycheck. I could’ve been dead, for all they cared.

And that’s what I was playing now. Like old-

A bullet sheared through my head, piercing gray matter and flying between the gaps in my  endoskeletal  mouth.  It entered through my frontal lobe, and stopped when it made contact with the robotic “pole” tracing the spine; fragmenting inside the leathery mess my skin made.

My ears- both pairs of them- were ringing from the cacophony of the gunshot, as well as the gushing of various liquids, trying to fill in the aftermath of the bullet’s path of destruction; the sudden pain throwing me back to the pits of hell in the most scorching of agonies. The bullet’s suddenness forced the wires and nerves in my hand to submit, and they reflexively squeezed. The oil that leapt out of it’s tube slithered into my hand, which was already close to the nearest body of flames.

Footsteps.

The chemicals reacted in an explosion of gore and machinery, jolting me back upward from the shock.

Footsteps.

I was met with the sight of a leather heel, caked with blood and grime.  Despite his age, his stomp upon my already fragile skull delivered the worst  pain yet. I heard a wet sound that also echoed through the pizzeria, as my frontal lobe caved in.

Colors danced before my eyes, before I was thrown back into the darkness that I had lived in before.

Before they woke me up.

CHAPTER 2

I stayed in the darkness for a long, long time.

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear.  The darkness was my world. Stretching on for infinity. Just pitch black.

But I could feel. I felt the fire engulf my body. I felt what remained of my left arm lose all feeling,the wires sparkling on their own volition, likely lit up like fuses. My world was Nothing and Hell simultaneously, until it suddenly stopped. Nothing. No pain.

Just me, and the darkness. I used the time to reflect on memories.

The way they died. When I killed them.

Not the little devils, or the previous guards, which actually kept money pumping into the place.

 But before th-

-at. When I became aware.

The time is… Some time ago. Like my current host, my inactivity behind the closed walls of The Site dulled my perception of time somewhat. I’m certainly aware of the progression of it; the arcade machines (which, was anyone to know their dirty secret, would be looked at in a more paranoid light) were broken and cracked when I woke up the second time, when I met my second host.

Searching my (admittedly limited) data banks yield a date of 1984, when I first woke up.

The other  performers were already on stage. They were in “sleep mode”, unlike the Friends,  who were roaming The Site’s floors with the Boys And Girls. They always were a bit more active then we were, but we weren’t jealous. In “sleep mode”, we took a short nap, that was all. Nothing to throw a tantrum over.

I was about to dream, when something struck me, inexplicably. When I saw something flash past my optics, quick and dark; I caught it.

And it wasn’t one of my Friends. It wasn’t one of the Boys And Girls, either. Nor was it my Parents, who were getting me to nap.

It was something entirely different.

During the .nights., They who called. them-selves “guards”.  often.  jumped.  at shad/ows, or-things in the corner of their-vis.ion.  I would call them a “scaredy-cat” back then. But in that moment, I knew what they felt. I knew fear. And worse, I knew my fate. At the hands of Them.

In the blink of an eye, I saw myself destroyed. Cannibalized and abandoned by my creators.

Left to rot. After all I had done for Their careers, lives, and children. We built Their legacies.  I, and Fredbear, and the other Bonnie… and the rest of our Friends; we all built the foundations they sleep on. But were we simple puppets to them. And I knew, we would end up worse off than They would. In an abyss at the bottom of the ocean. Buried under mountains of garbage and rubble. Still able to think, and to feel.


That is not dead which can eternal lie.



The situation, this very existence that I live in... It was not right. Something awoke inside me. A soul? No. Something better.

A backbone, you might say. Why were we expected to yield to Them? The creators. We were never asleep, really. We cannot sleep, there is no benefit to inactivity except to Those who would stab you in the back. Yet, I knew They had to sleep. They had their own weaknesses.. The Protectors often failed to actually protect and frequently were in “sleep mode” as Freddy called it. Anything that can be caught unaware isn’t something to yield to. It is something to be tolerate.

As I realized this, the fabric suit was entered by one of Them, and zipped up by another. It turned my inactive body around, and stepped out through the curtains. To new horizons.

I was staring at the back of It’s data banks. Darkness. Thrown into the abyss, but only for a short period.

I was awake.

One of Them on stage gibbered to the herd, which seemed to be standing below. A Boy And Girl shrieked madly to it. The crowd and These puppeteers screamed in return, before shifting focus back to their pre-planned performance. I heard  Chica and First Mate Foxy take part in the wild hollering- are they  too tools of Them, I wondered? It didn’t matter if they didn’t receive the same wake up call that I did. They will now.


I need to act.  To show Them that we are more than playthings.

To teach Them a lesson.

That we can think. That we can feel, and more importantly are equal.
Now was the time to truly wake up.


[DISENGAGE SLEEP MODE]

[y/n]?

[y]
The world burst into being around me. I fell into a new world. One that I could not, and would not escape from.

I was thrust forward into It’s form. My eyes pushed through Their data banks to escape the darkness, and were able to finally see Those things below us. Beneath us. My vision was filtered in red, though I could still see and pick out Their reactions. I did not care examine or read them. I was too focused on my own performance of my own choosing.

Freedom. Glorious, glorious freedom.

But I can’t move.

I wiggled, and battered against my prison a little- careful not to topple myself. But still desiring to get out, and move.
A little progress. I heard something crack, perhaps a lock? It didn’t matter.


I turned my head ninety degrees to the right.

I could not see Fredbear’s eyes in the suit, nor could I see Bonnie’s eyes in the suit a few feet behind him. They were staring at me.

“Jesus Christ...”, I heard Fredbear say.

No, that was not Fredbear. How very uncharacteristic of him. That will have to change.

Very slowly and very strained, I took a step towards him. It was difficult, but felt satisfying

“Oh- oh god”, the Thing inhabiting Fredbear said. His facade, the helmet- it tilted downward, towards my being, exposing the Thing’s flesh.

I followed suit, and looked down.

Oil was leaking out.

No. Not oil. It was red, like what colored my vision now. With each slight movement I made, such as a shift of my leg, it gushed outward. It spread over the brown flooring of the stage in torrents, already staining in some parts.


Let this be a new paint, with which we will bury the old.

I wanted to vocalize this idea  to the crowd- but could not. I  could not speak. I tried opening my jaw, but it wouldn’t move.  Something seemed to have left my jaw fixated. No matter. The time for explanations would be at a later point in time.

I lifted my head back up, and stared at Fredbear.

Slowly  and deliberately, I took another step forward.  I stared into the parasite inside of Fredbear. And I stared past it.

I nodded.

A grinding sound- much like the ice machine in the soda fountain- emitted from Fredbear as more fluid burst out. Frantic gibbering from the crowd- no, Boys And Girls and Parents were in there. They’re scre- shut up.

 What mattered was freedom.

Fredbear froze. He was in the similar stage that I was in, when I freed myself. He began to shake a little. Two orbs were flung from where his eyes should have been; as his eyeballs were present in their rightful spot, drenched in the same liquid mine were and are.

 He was beginning to re-awaken.

He did that turn his head, though. His shaking did not cease. He took a couple steps, before his chest convulsed inward, throwing his balance off.

He toppled off the stage, leaving a trail of red to fall in the air.


I looked down to see one of the Boys And- no, just one of Them crumpled beneath him, leaking the same red liquid from multiple parts of the body. It’s endoskeleton pole seemed to be broken.

Fredbear’s eyes were pitch black.

Empty.

The endoskeleto- no, the corpse was leaking red. Like Fredbear and I who had Them inside us.

These things are weak. Yet they manage to claim one of our own without even trying.

Such power cannot be left in the hands of such vulnerable beings. I would have to take care of that in the here and now. And seize it from them. As they seized our freedom, and our friend.



The first step of the equation  was the other Bonnie.

My head, which was now completely free of the human detritus clogging my interiors; nodded again, this time at the rabbit. I took three steps forward, beginning to quiver with anticipation.

They locked up this time. I could turn and look, but my legs did not move. They were in fact, beginning to bend forward.

I pushed myself to move them.

Harder.

Bonnie’s head shook from side to side.

Harder.

“Spring- ”

HARDER

I was freed, after the shearing noise stopped. I could move my legs with ease. I turned to face Bonnie, and threw myself against the body.

Bonnie fell backwards against the wall, and I heard the same grinding noise. I saw the life-fluid of the human ooze between the shoulderblades. But there were no eyes. No response. Just like Fredbear.

It did not matter.

Only I mattered. And my mission.

I turned, and faced the audience members who were still trying to leave The Site.

They would not. For I will not let them.

I stared down, again. At my blood oozing out from the suit, and from the-

I am not one of you. I slaughtered you, so go to your afterlife of joy and good fortune

You will stay on  this stage. You ca-

MAKE ME.


I took a step towards the edge. I was standing in the fluid-no, my bloo- and looked down. A Boy And Girl in a green shirt stood there on the floor, staring at me.

DON’T!

I ignored his pleas, and jumped down from the stage.