Bygones (Request #Box)

Michael stepped further into the musty basement. His footsteps creaked on the aged, wooden stairs leading into the darkness. Dust rose and settled with each step as he felt the blackness envelop him. Michael stepped onto the basement floor, nothing in front of him but the cold wall of nothingness.
He flicked a switch on his flashlight, and pierced the darkness. At the end of his yellow beam was a golden rabbit’s decrepit form, slumped against the far end of the room. Michael had finally done it. He was here, in his father’s workshop.

One of them, anyways.

Michael’s fingers probed the wall around him, until they found a pull chain. With a tug, the basement was lit up. The bulbs had dimmed with age, but they would suffice.

The room was a mess. Nobody had been here in quite some time, Michael could tell. Dozens of cardboard boxes were scattered around the floor of the basement, while the tables lining the east and west sides were covered in different tools and robot parts.  Some animatronic parts were suspended from the ceiling, dangling on chains.  What caught Michael’s eye was the white trunk, next to the golden suit he had noticed upon entry. Two gold locks kept it shut.

It was here. That’s what Michael was really here for.  Not the gadgets or machinery. The trunk.  Dad told him it would be in the basement, where Michael was forbidden to go inside when he was a child.  It would have the information he would need to complete his task. Dad said this when he was asleep, before he finally woke up from the Bite. Before he was made whole again.


“Dad? ‘Zat you?”

Dad had also told him to ignore any sounds he heard when he did his job.

“I can hear your footsteps, mate. I know somebody’s there.”

It was a tinny, muffled voice. . A pirate’s accent. Michael stopped walking, and hesitated.

“Please, Dad. I know I messed up.”

It was in one of the cardboard boxes, on the west table. Another box was stacked on top of it, filled with something heavy; something metal.  Michael lifted it with ease, and dropped it onto the floor.  The resulting clatter bounced off the cement walls surrounding him, as dozens of voices cried out, trying to overpower each other’s volume. Michael could not make out what they were saying, nor did he care.  He had pinpointed the voice as coming from this box.

The lid had about six different layers of tape on it;wrapped around it in thick layers Michael’s thumbs punched two holes in the box, which he pried at and widened until he had torn most of the lid off the box.   He peered inside.

Mike could see glints of two orange LED eyes, buried underneath the toys, silverware, and other merchandise. His hands rummaged through the box, and lifted out the head.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I just want it to be over with,” the voice continued.  Foxy’s severed head had no jaw,  but still bleated through his voicebox, attached where the throat would be on a human. The machinery around the endoskeleton’s “cranium” had been withered and stripped away in age, revealing bloodied gray matter, secured inside a glass case.  The brain was suspended in a dull green fluid, perhaps formaldehyde. Attached to it were two silver eyeballs,  which were funneled between two narrow rings and plugged into the animatronic “eyes” themselves.  Michael gave the head a cursory glance before he set it on the table, and proceeded to the box.

“Where are you going?”

Paying the head no heed, Michael fished out his keyring from his shirt pocket, and pulled the trunk out from underneath  the table at the far end of the room. He slid in the same key to both locks and turned each one, before he pulled both of them off.

He opened the chest, and looked inside.

The first object of interest was a folder, filled with papers. Michael lifted this out first, and rifled through it. Within it were various photographs of a youth, sleeping in the bed Michael remembered most. He was hooked up to various medical equipment, with IV drips stationed by his nightstand. The first picture; a bloodied bandage covered his head. Second picture; the bandage was off, and his face was shown.

“Please, I’m sorry,” the fox said in a monotone voice.

The boy had brown hair and blue eyes, like him. As well as noticeably pale skin, like his father. The photographs were all taken from the same overhead angle, as if from a camera. More pictures showed the boy sleeping in his bed, until the very last one, depicting an empty bed. About seven pictures in total.

Michael had no idea what the fox was saying at the moment. His mind processed only the utmost valuable information.

After the photographs were papers, detailing the entry of a Michael Afton into an emergency room, and the subsequent withdrawal.  Signed at the bottom of both forms was William J. Afton, as the legal guardian of the child. Another medical document listed the child as “severely brain damaged”, and said that he would have various developmental issues in life were he to survive.  Michael folded this paper into halves, then quarters, and finally eighths until he slid it into his shirt pocket where the keys resided once more.

Beneath the folder were more papers.  These were blueprints of different animatronics.  The Funtime branded versions of Freddy and Foxy were first, providing a clear view of their internal workings with what looked like labels in specific parts of the robot’s anatomy. All text, except their name and “Afton Robotics” were covered up with a solid black line, presumably drawn by a Sharpie or something similar. A red ink stamp “SHRED” was slapped on to the paper, as well.

The rest of the blueprints followed suit, with Ballora, Bidybab, Fredbear, and Henry the Happy Clown all having conspicuous black markings on the blue background, accompanied by “SHRED”. Michael didn’t feel like lingering any longer than he had to here, so he rolled the blueprints into a tube and crammed it into his pants pocket. He did notice the absence of Circus Baby’s blueprint, and wondered about it until bits of it dropped out of the tube and floated to the ground like confetti.
At the bottom of the trunk was a manilla folder containing a picture of Afton Robotics from the outside, and a map of the perimeter enclosed. The map was stapled to a polaroid picture of a smiling little girl, who held the hand of a man too tall to fit in the frame. Michael didn’t have to see his face to know who he was.

He  tucked this paper under his arm, and was about to leave until his fingers scraped the bottom of the trunk, and felt something yield underneath. A loose bottom to the trunk?

Michael lifted the trunk, and shook it. The wooden panel fell out and hit the floor along with a folder, while a single photograph floated down from the box. Michael picked it up, and stared at it.

It was of Michael himself, laying on an operating table. Naked, with his chest cut open. Wires ran into his chest and out, attached to various pieces of machinery that laid on a surgeon's tray. His father stood at the table, wearing a blood spattered scrub suit. It was blue, with Though he wore a surgeon’s mask and cap, it was clearly him.

Michael tucked this and the folder under his arm as well, and was about to ascend the stairs when the voice called out to him again.

“You’re off to work again, dad?”

Michael turned his head.

“Will you come back?”

Michael came back to the table.

The head hesitated to talk, as Michael lifted it up.

“Who are you?”

Michael turned the head over in his hands, so that the glass dome was facing the ground.

“What are you?”

He let go.