Chapter Text
Well.
Here you are.
Huddling in between the crevice of two arcade machines. A perfect sandwich of metal-human-metal. Playing the world’s worst game of hide and seek. Getting really intimate with the greasy cobwebs, arcade coins, and bits of candy wrappers that the staff bots couldn’t reach. A piece of stale gum has stuck to your sweaty palm, but that isn’t the focus of your worries.
You watch, with pure mortification running alongside feral adrenaline in your veins,
as your coworker continues to dangle, bleeding out like a slab of meat on a butcher’s hook. A disco ball of a corpse. They went quiet about thirty minutes ago, after screaming and gurgling and kicking and fighting until,
poof,
silence.
Beneath their feet, a dark puddle grows by the minute.
The wound puncturing their abdomen is deep enough to go all the way through, and when their body makes another slow, slow 360 rotation, the glimmer of the opposite end sparkles in the neon lighting with the wetness of blood. You catch their dead-eyed shocked stare, unable to look away. Lamenting the death of someone you had just met earlier today.
You wondered at which point they learned that screaming was in fact, making their situation worse, the torture extending and dragging on.
In organized intervals, the sandman looking beast would creep down from the ceiling on a spindly wire and shush them like they were losing a game. Or that it was past their bedtime. Long, metal claws would clamp their jaw, squeezing until at one point you swear there was a sickening pop, and their jaw hung slackened before they inevitably expired.
Now they were without a doubt, unmistakably, dead. You thought there would be a window of opportunity, a fire burning in your soul to rush in and play hero. To save their life at the risk of your own. But while they dangle, and the reality of the situation washes in after the initial surreal shock,
all you can do is watch.
There was no way this was happening.
This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go.
There was a plan, a whole team of you–
The soft thump thump thump of wheels pulls you out from your downward spiral. Your eyes screw shut, not wanting to watch your innards be ripped out and inverted to out-ards. When the cruel touch of death does not snatch you up from your pathetic hideaway, you allow yourself to reopen your eyes.
Like a moth to a flame, or bait to a trap, a damaged staff bot notices the mess.
It promptly rolls over to the grotesque scene without a hint of self-preservation. It beeps once, twice, scanning the floor, blissfully ignoring the human pinata just within its reach above. The tip of your coworker’s shoe barely misses its cranium for a light, playful
tap
as it mechanically bends to get a closer look at the staining carpet. Then, with a third beep, and the opening of its chestplate to retrieve something – it begins to clean up the
literal blood
with a dirty washcloth. Like it was any kid’s puke or spilled soda (maybe these things can’t detect
what
liquid they were hellbent on cleaning, a small grace)
You would laugh, if it wasn’t so mind-numbingly fucked up.
Instead, a low whine barely escapes your throat, the noise pitiful.
In the shadows, there’s a soft jingle of a bell, as if in response. The sound accelerates your heart rate to a dangerous tempo, and you almost faint. An hour ago, you thought it was a harmless, playful sound. Perhaps automated to occasionally loop throughout the Pizzaplex to keep the spirit of whimsy alive, despite its absolute ruinous and abandoned state. That was up until your coworker had. . .
. . . Your mind forcefully goes fuzzy, slamming a self-preserving wall down. Fast. No time to process all that right now, when your life remains in jeopardy. If you made it out of here, your therapist will need to hire a therapist.
Blinking through the darkness and creeping vignette around your panicking vision, you watch, fearing for the clueless robot. A sense of comradery binds you to humanize it.
If the staff bot hears the jingle, it is none the wiser. It continues to scrub and mop up the blood, as new droplets splatter the top of its head. The blood oozes down its face plate like its skull had been cracked in two.
Your mind acts in a quick flurry, scraping together the best of the worst plans you can muster on the fly. Your arm twists, wedging down between the machines, sinking lower. Every movement causes your own scabbing wounds to ache with inattention.
Gritting through the pain, you roll one of the arcade coins over. It plunks against the side of the bot’s metal frame unceremoniously.
Silence permeates the air.
You try not to tremble, practically vibrating in place.
There’s the sound of metal decompressing in the rafters.
You decide it is best to ignore.
The staffbot pauses its cleaning motions, the rag completely saturated, weighing heavy with the blood of your fallen ally. It peers up from where it sits on its ‘knees.’ Once it looks up, you notice it has headlights for eyes. One optic sensor is cracked and flickering dimly. It begins to stand up to its full height, and you wonder, in a flash of returning fear – are these guys any safer than the haywire animatronics? But certainly, if you could just… Get it over here. maybe you could hide inside it, like a messed up halloween costume. It would be far more mobile than the current situation you stuck yourself into. Or, maybe, it was hooked up to a telephone line, and could call 911, hell, it could call in a whole SWAT team at this rate!
After rolling something over with its wheel, it pauses on its trajectory to your hiding place. The object rolls away, but doesn’t get far. You dare to feel a flicker of hope.
Its the flashlight you dropped. Y’know, while running for your life to the nearest accessible coward waypoint as your coworker had a robotic arm twisting through their guts. Said robot had been chuckling and shushing the screams with garbling static that sounded like a splice of prerecorded voice lines. Because cowards, like you, are the ones who are sensible enough to survive a horror movie. In miraculous, stupid ways.
The robot stays perfectly still, processing the newest tidbit of information at the speed of dialup internet. It looks close to shutting down from the sensory input, and in this moment, you feel solidarity. You too wish to pass the fuck out. Then, once more, it bends - scooping up the flashlight into its claw-like hand, carrying it along as it resumes its route. A ray of light strobes around the darkened room, the robot’s arm twitching erratically while it moves. Disconnected wires spark at its shoulder.
Internally, you are cheering hysterically at the small victory, because – Yes, yes - bring that over here! Rejoice! It wasn’t all of the equipment you lost throughout this hellish night, not by a longshot, but it would prevent you from quite literally being in the dark. Which was necessary as a step two, because you certainly had a step two to this flawless plan.
It stops right before the crevice you’re wedged into, staying a wary few feet back. It tilts its head, scanning you. A nervous smile breaks out across your face, wishing your shoulders weren’t jammed in place, too crammed in to move a muscle. Because a friendly wave would really plead your case right now. All you humbly offer is a wiggle of your fingers thats more unsettling than inviting. The security badge you were outfitted with had been torn off hours ago.
“Hey.”
You whisper, dumbly.
A beep responds back. It’s eyes flicker red, erroring, failing to find you in the database. Just before it could begin to report you into the network as a trespasser, there’s a crunch.
A set of skeleton thin, mile long claws wrap around the staff bot’s skull. Completely encompassing its head in one palm, flattening it with the other.
The face plate creaks and groans as its metal warps and compresses, divots carving in wherever a claw touches.
There’s a twist, a pull, and a pop .
You flinch at the shower of sparks, catching a glimpse of a spiders spindle of limbs dragging metal back into the shadows of the rafters above. Retreating into its webs with a fresh catch. There’s a loud spinning whirr, a cord being withdrawn and wound up.
Above you, it sounds like a car is being torn apart. Metal scraping metal in a ear-piercing symphony. There’s harsh static. A low guttural growl. You don’t stick around for any more of this twisted show. In a flurry of motion as graceful as a newborn calf, you fight through the numb feeling in your legs and make a run for it.
Unarmed. No lights.
Fueled by god’s grace and your naive dream of making it out of here alive.
As you create distance between you and the horrors, you can hear the dying screech of a robot that shouldn’t be able to scream like that, oh god.
Silently, you thank the staff bot for its gracious sacrifice, a sufficient chew toy to keep the animatronic at bay long enough for you to run blindly into a new hazardous foray.
The only thought that carries you through this hell:
There has to be someone else left alive.
There has to be.
– the notion is enough to force your footsteps to bring you back to the break room, out of everything available. It was meant to be a safe haven.