Eyes Wide Shut: 1

“One, two.”
Left foot, right foot. A click and a clack.
“One, and a two, and a three and a four.”
Left foot, right foot, turn-and-twirl.

I stopped spinning, and stood still as I listened intently to my four newly minted dancers. I heard their shoes stumble and squeak on the floor. I smelled the sweetness of the black substance that made up their insides, which sloshed around in their chests as they moved. Then they stopped.

“Again,” I said. They squeaked once more, but this time I heard a soft “clink”, from somewhere in the middle. Contact.
Someone was too close, and someone made a mistake. But who? I stepped closer, and craned my head downward. Then I bent down. The shuffling of feet, from the center of the lineup told me which one. I reached down, and wrapped my hand around the thing, lifting it up to my face.

Its legs kicked, and its arms flailed futilely against my hand, trying to make its escape. His. “It” was a he. The tanktop told me that, as my thumb ran down the figure. His chest was still soft, and the head still supple. My thumbnail found the center of the doll, and I felt the urge to dig it in. Instead, I whispered “Again”, and let him crawl down my arm to the ground, his form twitching in the process.

“Back in formation,” I commanded. “But separate yourselves more.” I held out one hand to form a wall a safe distance from the far end of the line. “Again,” I said.

I listened to the two taps on the floor, and felt a foot make contact with a finger. The leg was appropriately extended, though the dancer lost balance, and fell over. I scooped her up with a hand, putting her back on her feet.
“Well done,” I said. “That’s it for tonight.”
I moved towards the exit vent, and crawled through, reaching my arms out for any wayward dancers. I crawled out into the office, and stood up. I waited for a few seconds, attempting to isolate any abnormal sounds, like tapping or scuttling. Then I took two steps to my left, and bent down to reach the cabinet. I pulled the first drawer out, and probed the contents with one hand, rooting through unsorted papers and merchandise for anything moving.

I moved onto the drawer beneath, and dug around in papers and more toys. The final one yielded only cleaning products and cloth. Slightly annoyed, I turned to my right, and took three steps toward the cabinet on the other side of the room, upon which a toy gypsy was situated. I reached for the top drawer, and put my hand inside, expecting to find something. It had apparently been emptied of its contents some time ago, as my fingers found only a few candy wrappers. The middle drawer contained toys, and the third drawer had a few boxes of crayons and stacks of paper.

I waited in silence, listening for any of the noises I associate with my dancers. They couldn’t be in Circus Gallery, or Freddy’s domain. I had warned them against going anywhere near the areas. Circus Baby and Freddy refused to see my dancers as anything but vermin, albeit for different reasons. They couldn’t be in Funtime Auditorium, either. That was Foxy’s home.

Foxy. Some time ago, she had attacked me. Over something as small and insignificant as one dancer. He came late; I was annoyed. And before I could move, she assaulted me. The mute freak leaped onto me, and targeted my eyes. I fought back, of course. I dug my nails into the crevasse between her snout and her face, and pulled. I heard her distorted scream, as the wires and cables snapped. I rolled onto her, as my dancers formed a circle around the two of us. None of them wanted to step in, or to intervene.

By this point, the instigator of this incident was long gone, and at that moment I did not care about Marty or Mikey or whoever had missed the cue to arrive. I was focused on Foxy, and Foxy alone. I reached around her body, and seized her tail. I moved my hand down to the base, and wrapped my hand around it. Then I placed my other hand over the middle joint, and pulled as if I was cracking a crab’s leg. Or as if I was punishing a disobedient dancer.

This prompted her to scream, and lash out with more violence. After a few minutes of continued struggle, the two of us separated, having reached some semblance of a stalemate. Foxy crawled through the vent to the security office, while I retreated to my wall to lick my wounds. Though my eyes were damaged, I could still see.

My vision was dimmed noticeably, but I did not need light. I successfully retrieved the remaining dancers, who did not struggle or run. Instead, they remained where they were. They would normally climb onto me, and disembark as I moved from wall to wall, upon which their pods were affixed. I thought I had instilled in them that nightly routine, but that night they ignored it. That night, they waited for me to scoop them up, and they waited for me to slide them safely into the sleep-inducing pods I had so meticulously spat and spaced. I left them in an isolated corner, away from my other children. I would decide on their fates later. They would join the refuse created by lazy, disrespectful, stillborn, or otherwise flawed dancers, or I would give them another chance. I decided to think about this later.

 In the process of putting my dancers to bed, my thoughts were more focused upon him. The one who turned renegade. Did he think Foxy- saccharine, silent, SEDITIOUS Foxy, whose “true voice” was unknown, would be a better caretaker? What drove Foxy to fight for such a trivial thing? I thought about the bizarre situation as I shut myself down, and decided that I would try to ignore it as best I could.

When I woke up the following morning, I found myself faced with pitch black darkness. This was not the first time it had happened, and it was not crippling. It was more of an inconvenience. I would ask for repairs in the rare event an employee arrived, and I would stay away from Foxy for both our sake.

That was some months ago, and my requests have been unanswered since. I was moving along well, in spite of it. I moved near the glass to Funtime Auditorium, having found nothing in the cabinets. For a split second, I wondered if Foxy could see me. I turned away, and was going to return to my gallery when I heard something scratching on the ceiling.

I shot an arm up, and crushed the thing in my hands without hesitance. When I opened my hand, and felt the thing in my fingers, I knew that it was nothing more than a cockroach. It's flailing antennae and the rough carapace told me as much. I wiped the bug’s remains on one of the posters, and returned to my den. To my home.

What was once a place of comfort was something else. The sleeping dancers did not seem so quaint, and the mumbling, broken pile of discarded rejects did not seem so distant. But I slept nonetheless. I dreamed, even. I dreamed about Mister Afton.

It was a nightmare.