Eyes Wide Shut: 13

“Bonnie?” the bear repeated. “Are you here?”, he called out.

I climbed up slowly and quietly, watching Freddy with slitted eyelids. My stomach knotted as I saw his mangled stump and slack-jawed maw drip with dark ichor. I thought of what he could have done, and what he could do to my children, and I clenched my fists. His dumbfounded expression and moronic prattle only compounded my anger, as I stood up to face him.

My fury was placated somewhat when I realized that his stench was absent of any sweetness. He smelled more like a nosebleed or a gas leak than the blood of my kin. For a brief instant, relief washed over me and my hands relaxed. But it was soon replaced by the concern of whose oil he was wearing.

It could’ve been Baby’s. She was stupid enough to threaten us with him in the first place, and she was stupid enough that she probably let him out. If he turned his sights on her, she wouldn’t be able to stop him. Neither would Foxy. She was agile, and savage enough to take initiative. She would probably leap onto him and go for the eyes again. But Freddy was much more resilient than any of us. She might be able to injure him, but in an equal fight I had no doubt that he would be able to kill her.

There was also Marty. As soon as Foxy was incapacitated, he would be killed instantly or worse, provided that she didn’t hide him beforehand. A little bit of Marty could be smeared onto Freddy and I wouldn’t know it because the oil would mask his scent. The thought of him injured and all alone in the Auditorium made me feel uncomfortable, so I stopped ruminating and began negotiating.

“Bonnie isn’t here, Freddy”, I said. “She’s…” I trailed off, struggling to think of an answer that wouldn’t set him off. I decided on “She’s elsewhere.”

Freddy lurched forward, and tilted his head. Unblinking, he stared through me. “Circus Baby said she would be here...”, he whined.

It was Baby’s idea. Of course it would be.
“Well, maybe she was wrong,” I pleaded. It was a weak rebuff, and Freddy barely acknowledged it.

“She also said that you would lie,” he muttered. His voice was becoming more emotional and distressed. I moved back and pressed myself against the wall, hoping to keep his attention away from the others. He took a step forward, and the fetid odor intensified.

Oil dribbled down Freddy’s jaw while he peered at me with those unseeing eyes. As he stared at me completely stupefied, I searched for a spot I could strike. His stump could be a good target. Perhaps the wires were still sensitive. I could grab them, and then attack his eyes.

As if he read my mind, Freddy lifted the stump and reached up to my shoulder. I fought the urge to flinch as the cold, metal wires grazed across my chest like William’s fingers, leaving splotches of ink in the color of my children’s blood. He moved his hand blindly, almost in a flailing fashion.

 “Where’s Bonnie?”, he asked. There was no enthusiasm in his voice, only a quiet insanity that was on the cusp of boiling over.
 “She’s elsewhere,” I insisted, with more desperation than I would have liked. “Baby was lying.”

In a sullen voice Freddy began to say “I don’t think you’re-”, but stopped when something at the far end of the room made a loud and forced cough. Freddy pulled his hand down, and swerved his head towards the source of the sound like a camera. The coughing continued as he lumbered towards his creator with the eagerness and uneven coordination of a toddler, leaving me completely baffled.

“Wait!”, I cried. Freddy made it halfway across the room before he stopped, dead in his tracks. “Bonnie’s not here. Why don’t we go outside, and I can help you find her?”

Freddy turned around, and looked at me. After a few seconds, he yelled “Okay!”, and trudged back to the vent. At my command, he crawled inside as if the last minute had never happened, leaving me alone with my children and the very foolish man on the wall. I glanced at him for a second and noted that I would have to secure the jacket better, before following Freddy into the vent.

He crawled ponderously, clodding through the vent like an armored tank and making loud, thunderous pounding. I kept my distance from him and moved much stealth and by the time I reached the exit he was already standing up.

“Well, Ballora,” Freddy said expectantly. “Where do we look?”
“The drawers, perhaps?”, I suggested. Freddy stared at me blankly. Only then did it click with him when I added “The ones over there.”

 He lit up, and exclaimed “Good idea!” before stomping to the the front of the room, near the vents to Circus Baby’s gallery.

While Freddy rummaged through the cabinets for his partner, I watched Foxy’s fingers lift up the Auditorium vent and reveal her face. She was clearly unhurt, and observed Freddy with an intensity that the likes of which I had only seen in William.

In acknowledgement, Freddy turned his head slightly towards her direction, though he was still focused on the drawers. “Hi, Foxy!”, he shouted.

She responded with “Hi, Freddy” in a flat monotone before she climbed up, and moved toward the back end of the room. I followed suit on my side, and the two of us watched in silence as Freddy ransacked the desks.

“Hello again,” I greeted. “Freddy was told to find Bonnie in my gallery. He let himself into my room.”
 Foxy stared at her vent in brief silence, and then said “I see.” Her voice filter was still rough, but it was a far cry from the yowls and hisses of the past.

Certain of Freddy’s distraction, I moved to Foxy’s side, and stood in front of her. Her body took a defensive stance as she backed away, preparing to square off. The posture relaxed when I whispered “Do you have any ideas?”

She scanned my figure; eyes darting from my face to the splotches. Thinking; taking it all in. Finally, she answered.
“Talk to Baby. Work something out.”

I entertained the idea of negotiating, until I remembered that Baby was essentially a child- a bratty one, at that. She was nothing like Iris or my dancers. Did she remember the girl’s death? Was she confused, like I was? I could use that as a bargaining chip. I considered the matter while Foxy looked up at me, patiently waiting for my reply.

“It’s a good idea,” I conceded. “But she’s too angry. She wouldn’t agree.”
“She’s afraid of you. Of us. Use that.”

An excellent point. I mulled over it while Freddy was searching through a trash can filled with dusty papers. “Can you keep an eye on him?”, I asked.
“I will,” Foxy vowed. Good, that simplified my job.
“He likes being lied to,” I murmured. “Remember that.”

Before leaving, I dropped down to my vent, and sealed the door shut with densely packed webbing. I moved across the room to Foxy’s vent, and looked to her. She nodded, so I began to work on her vent as well. Just for security. When I was done, I approached Freddy,

“Excuse me, Freddy,” I said, keeping my voice measured and polite. “I need to pass through.”
“Oh” he said, obviously disappointed. “I thought you were gonna help me find Bon-Bon.”
“I will,” I lied. “But I need to check Baby’s gallery first. Maybe she’ll be there.”
“Baby told me she didn’t have her…”
“Well, you can never be too sure. ”

For a moment, Freddy stared at me as if he was studying me. Then he stepped aside, chortling as he said “Bring her back if she’s there!”, before I entered the ventilation shaft.

As I crawled through, I began to realize that the floor was wet. My hands slipped and struggled to find traction on the slickened metal. When I lifted one up, its palm was smeared with oil. As was the rest of the vent; the walls were coated in the stuff. At first I thought it was from Freddy’s stump. But as my eyes flickered across the walls and saw the blackness streaming down, I began to doubt that.

I stopped crawling when my hand felt a small, pointy object on the floor. It was white, and small enough to be from one of them. On closer analysis, much to my relief, the fragment was made of plastic like my own panels. My children were closer to chitalin or cartilage than anything William could’ve built.

A couple feet further, I found more pieces, scattered in tan and white. Metal pieces and wires were interspersed among them, along with a few eyeballs. I began to worry about Baby, as I surveyed Freddy’s handiwork.

When I reached the end of the vent, I knocked on the door. “Baby?” I called. “I want to talk about our problem.” I waited ten seconds for a response before I lifted the door up, and looked into the room.

The lights were out, but I could see a faint silhouette of Circus Baby thanks to my eyes’ glow. She was sitting in the center of the room, looking down at the ground with her back turned to the vent. I crawled out onto the floor, which was mostly clean save for some oil spatter.

“We need to talk about Freddy,” I said, employing the same sternness I used when reprimanding my children. They always listened to it, but with Baby the voice had no effect. She was still sitting on the ground, unmoving and unlistening. My irritation began to rise, and I stood up so I could walk to her.

I stopped myself when I heard a loud, sickening crunch from underneath my feet. Looking down, I saw that the floor was littered with shattered faces and broken limbs, some more complete than others.

These children weren’t mine. They weren’t exactly “real” either, and had been built, not born. Still, a part of me was discomforted by the sight. Seeing their infantile appearance butchered so thoroughly felt wrong. Very, very wrong. I felt an urge to leave this place as quickly as possible, and sweeped apart the pieces with my feet to clear a path as I walked to Circus Baby.

She didn’t acknowledge me when I reached her, and was too preoccupied with the mutilated Bidybab she was holding. Too shocked to do anything but look at it. The Bidybab gurgled a tinny, pitiful cry; its legs having been twisted into nothingness, dangling uselessly like a marionette.

The tapering segments of Baby’s pigtails had been similarly warped, and jutted out at awkward angles to the point of bearing a twisted resemblance to horns. Her right leg was torn off halfway down the thigh; the rest of it being nowhere in sight. She did not speak or move, and only stared down at the Bidybab.

Baby was holding the infant incorrectly; its head lolled without any support, and she had it on its back like a dead insect. “You’re holding him wrong,” I said. I moved down to Baby, and reached out to it. “Let me show you.”

She let me take the baby without objection, and I rose back up, holding him close and supporting his legs. His crying was soothed, until I found a small depression on the back of his head. There were broken pieces of metal underneath the plastic crater, and his wailing returned when it was touched. It quieted I moved my fingers away, and clasped him to my bosom, propping his head against my shoulder.

As I turned around and moved towards the only doorway in the room, I thought of what it would be like, were I to adopt him. What would his name be? As I walked, my mind perused a list of names and settled on Mitchell. I liked that name. The “ull” part of it was nice to pronounce.

“I’ll call you Mitchell,” I whispered. Mitchell shifted in my arms and whimpered, oil spilling from his mouth. As I wiped his mouth, I wondered why William built him and his siblings. I thought about this as we entered the hallway.

The corridor was easier to navigate than the gallery, though it was still cluttered by bins and boxes of merchandise. The walls were decorated with weathered posters, most of which had been torn down.

At last, we reached the parts room. It was a pigsty, and worse than I remembered. The table was still there, but everything had been thrown off of it and spilled onto the floor. Mitchell began to cry again, and leaked more oil than the last time, I realized something.

Something inside him was broken, and I couldn’t fix it.

His mangled feet kicked at the air, and he had shut his eyes, worsening the pain. Oil bubbled from his maw, as he wailed. “Shhhh,” I crooned. “It’s alright. It’s alright.” I closed my eyes, and held him tightly. I strengthened my grip on his head, and with a twist it was all over.

I placed Mitchell’s slackened form on the counter, and looked at him. He was asleep now, and the oil had stopped leaking. I thought of what it would have been like, if I took him. If I could’ve taken I left him there, and turned around to leave. I didn’t notice it when I entered, but as I was beginning to leave I noticed Bonnie’s shell, laying next to the doorway.

She had been distorted by the impact of being thrown against a wall. Her snout had been squashed, while her head was split down the middle. But she was still recognizable, and still useful. I picked Bonnie up, and took her with me.


Most of the posters were torn, but there was one that had been relatively untouched. It was a photograph of me in the middle of a pique turn, captioned with “DANCE!”.

I stopped, and lingered to look at myself. I couldn’t remember when the picture had been taken, but it looked like it was at Circus Baby’s Pizza World, from the purple spotlight. So it was somewhere between 1984 and 1985. I was smiling, and  I supposed I still was at this moment.

I touched my face to confirm it, running my fingers along the panels’ seams and make-up. My lips were spread in an open-mouthed grin that smiled for all eternity, creating an awkward dissonance when it felt like my face was slackened into a frown. Like how amputees felt phantom limbs, imaginary muscles in my mouth perked up when I was happy, and would relax when I wasn't. I continued feeling my face for a few seconds, trying to feel what wasn't there until I heard Baby’s voice.

“Bonnie’s dead!”, she shouted. I moved down the hallway, and saw from the doorway that Freddy was in the room now. He was standing some feet away from Baby, looking down at her. Calmly and without emotion, he said “She’s in here. Foxy told me.”

“No, she’s dead,” Baby said, vehemently. “You killed her.”
Freddy advanced on her, hunched over and his right arm outstretched. Due to her missing leg, she could only inch away. She had gotten herself into this situation, and as Freddy approached, I wondered how she would get out of it. Before he could finish the job, I stepped out from the doorway and called out to him.

“She’s right. Bonnie’s dead,” I said, trying to speak neutrally. The words came out as strained and rough.
I held up Freddy’s former hand puppet as he looked at me. Her ears sagged and her jaw hung down like a ventriloquist dummy, dead and devoid of any life whatsoever.
“Look at her, Freddy.” I took the puppet apart in front of him, pulling off the jaw and taking off her ears. I dropped the pieces to the ground, and pushed them toward him with my foot.

Freddy glanced at the wreck, and backed away towards the vent, muttering “No” repeatedly. Circus Baby’s voice sounded like a little girl as she mocked him, yelling “You did it!” over and over again. As she goaded him on, Freddy began to scream, collapsing against the vent as he looked at Bonnie’s remains.

He did not acknowledge us, and only convulsed like a man possessed. It was a loud and savage screech that worsened as he clutched his face with his remaining hand. I backed off as he dug a hand into his mouth, and pulled away at his jaw. Wires separated and black liquid gushed from the joints, as his voice faded out. It hung from his mouth uselessly in one big chunk.

Freddy was panting now, and put his hand into the part of his innards it had revealed. Shaking, he dug into his endoskeleton “throat”, and grabbed a part of his spine. He ripped it free in a mass of wires, and he writhed for a brief moment. Then his head drooped, and he stopped moving.
Baby and I waited for him to get back up, or speak, or do something. After ten seconds, I walked forward, and shifted his body to unblock the vent. He was heavy, and it took some effort to push him aside but I managed to unblock the vent.

I looked at Baby one last time before I left. She was hunched over, playing with Bidybab parts. She didn’t ask about Mitchell; she just kept picking up the pieces and dropping them. I wanted to ask her if she remembered Iris.

Instead, I said “Goodbye.” She didn’t answer, and I didn’t expect her to. That was fine with me, and I crawled into the vent, leaving her in the muck of oil and broken children.

I heard shuffling, and some hissing as I approached the office. When I opened the vent’s door, Foxy was standing up, leaning against her auditorium’s glass for support. Her left leg looked broken, and jutted out to the side. She relaxed, and moved down to the ground, next to the vent.

“Freddy?”, she asked.
“He’s dead, and Baby won’t be a problem anymore.”
“What happened?”
“She’s hurt, but still alive.” I scanned the damage done to the room. Freddy had thrown the filing cabinet against the Auditorium’s window, creating cracks. The gypsy toy was at my feet in shattered pieces. I looked at her, and said “You told him to come into the gallery, didn’t you?”

“He was getting inside,” she said, jerking a thumb towards the Auditorium. “I was desperate.”

As I moved to her vent and began digging out the web, I said “I would’ve done the same.” That was true. I couldn’t fault her for putting whatever Marty was to her over what was at most a couple minutes of bought time. There were dents and deep scratches on the door that hadn’t been there the last time I looked.

When I finished removing the webbing, I moved to my side of the room and began unsealing my own vent. I heard the sound of Foxy’s door being lifted, and expected to hear her crawling away. I was surprised to hear “It’s over,” instead.

Turning around, I saw Marty skitter into the room on all fours before stopping in the center of the room. He looked around slowly, taking in the carnage. When he saw me, his stare lingered. I waved at him, and he waved back hesitantly after a second’s delay, as he stumbled backwards toward Foxy. He looked up at her, and pointed at the injured leg.

“It’ll be fine,” she said to him. He climbed up to her shoulder as she limped to the tipped over filing cabinet, where she rooted through its drawers. As she lifted and closed drawer after drawer, I asked her what she was looking for.

“Paper.”
“What for?”
“Art.”

She opened up one of her panels, showing a rudimentary drawing of a fish, swimming in a white ocean. It had been pressed between her endoskeleton and the plastic, leaving wire imprints on the drawing. On any other night, I might’ve laughed.

“It’s very nice, Foxy.”
Not yet. But we’re improving.”
She closed the hatch, and returned to her search as I crawled into my vent.

“Goodnight, Foxy. And goodnight, Marty,” I said. I didn’t wait for their reactions, and let the door close behind me.

By the time I entered my gallery, I felt extremely tired. I wanted to sleep, but there was a question on my mind. I walked to William, and removed his veil.

“Why did you stop him?”
“The lunatic?”, he asked.
“Yes.”
“You can figure that out yourself” he said, now smirking. The same smirk I’ve seen countless times.
“If he killed me, he would’ve gone on to kill you. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Maybe.” He stopped simpering. “Why am I still alive?”
“What?”
“Why haven’t you killed me yet? Or turned me into mulch?”
It was my turn now. Smiling, I moved closer and squeezed his blackened hand. It squished like putty in my grip, and he swore as I felt pieces of bone move around underneath the cold, chalky skin.
“Because it’s not what you want, Mr. Afton,” I whispered. “And I still have questions.”

 I slipped the jacket back over him, as he made muffled sounds of protest, tightening it more than last time. I didn’t want to be interrupted during my nap, or a lesson.


Now that William was taken care of, I returned to the front of the room and took down the bag of half-dead dancers I had stowed away. I held for some time as I thought about Mitchell, before eventually joining them in their eternal sleep.


I had a dream again. I was shorter like last time, and I had three children in this one.

William was in front, taking a picture of me with them. Their names were as followed-

Billy.
Michael.
And Iris.

It was a beautiful evening, and the sun was setting.