Black Out (VI?)

Panting, I put my ear to the door to confirm the dissipation of the ominous, advancing phenomenon. Silence.

After a few seconds, I attempted to open the door, but failed. The knob didn't even turn. I probed the frame to check if it was jammed-only for my fingers to be greeted by the plaster wall. The other side of the doorknob was embedded firmly in the wall. I could see, somehow fitted between the crevice formed by the door and the wall, the same poster of the foxes that was on the door, spread over the wall. It was distinctly smaller, the size of a comic book. It was around when I felt my fingernails scrape the door's wooden surface, that I realized that there shouldn't have been a door in the first fucking place.

No amount of money was worth the tricks and hallucinations this place enforced upon my mind. I turned to walk down the hall towards the door, and wait outside for Phil to come out from wherever the hell he was; when I realized that good ol Freddy was currently taking over the graveyard shift for us. He shut the door on me a while earlier, meaning I'd have to trudge through the mind-searing emptiness of the party room to get to the other door.

Well, maybe Fred-head could let me in if I asked politely. The door may be closed, but the door for reason was open with him. I chuckled to myself about that as  I sauntered down the hall and knocked on the window, after straightening my purple cap. The cheaply installed window shook, as I looked down at my tablet just to affirm to myself that I wasn't in the closet or some other weird area. A flood of bright light seared my eyeballs, even as my neck was down.

Cupping one hand over my brow, I looked into the window.

Aren't you a sight for sore eyes, I thought.

Freddy stood in front of the window, but there was more than "something" amiss. His eyes were empty, and dripping a dark black substance I couldn't identify. Bits of red clustered around the head and shoulder areas, mixing in with the black as well. Combined with his eight-feet height, he was quite intimidating. I wondered what drugs the eggheads were taking when they redesigned this guy, and realized that things were a bit more serious now that I was impersonating an employee.

Jittering like a coffee addict, he reached out to my right and touched the door button, still staring down at me. His left arm dripped a web of black, like a cape, between his "armpits". I realized the tangled bits of red were flesh. The pressure on the door was released, and it swung up into it's slot.

I gave him a shaking thumbs up. His head, with a sound exactly like the camera's, turned to meet me as I left my window position and briskly walked into the office. His head slowed down it's turning just as I was almost behind him, his chin now at his left shoulder. I heard a loud crack, the sort of sound you would hear if you threw a melon at the ground. I stood paralyzed, almost at the exit door, and the head kept turning towards me.

"You.." I paused, not sure what he'd listen to. "You uh, can leave the office now. I'm here on shift."

An electronically altered voice emitted from..somewhere near the animatronic's mouth. It sounded more human and less cartoonish than the Freddy I remembered, though. Like a man's voice rather than a Saturday morning cartoon. It still had the filter, though.

"Sure, partner! Glad t'see you could make it tonight, Phil!" His body didn't move at all to signify the talking.

Freddy stooped a bit and lowered his head to get out of the office easier. His head was turning back to it's regular position now.

He stopped walking when it made "eye contact" with me.

"Please, don't do this to me" the head said. The filter was completely removed from the voice here, unmistakably that of an adult man.


"Please, do-" His voice was cut off as the robot body began walking away, muted by a blast of radio static.

I touched the door button immediately, and the door slammed shut once more.

	I reached out behind me to feel for a handle or exit doorknob, and felt nothing.

I spun around, and found myself face to face with a mural of Freddy and his gang of robots, stretching to the ends of the security guard's office. The wall was constructed of concrete, and nary a door's framing to be found. I checked to see how long it was until opening on my watch.

5:48.

Goddamnit, I hate this place.