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I’m afraid I have some sad news for you, Night Vale. Local establishment Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria is shutting down today, after repeated health code violations, multiple citations for paying its employees below the federally mandated minimum wage, and complaints by concerned parents about the poor food quality, low lighting conditions leading to eyestrain when playing in the arcade, and smell of rotting flesh emanating from the animatronic band members, which ooze mucus and blood from around the eyes and mouth at least once hourly. The pizzeria has been in steady decline since the brutal murder of five children by a man dressed in a Freddy Fazbear costume took place on the premises a few years back, despite the owners’ desperate attempts to distance themselves from the event.
“What do you want from us?” howled the manager of the pizzeria during an interview last week, tears glistening in their sunken, sleepless eyes, their face scored with wounds that appeared to have been made by their own fingernails. “We gave you all. New menu options, new songs. Restricted our artists to the stage, replaced Freddy’s beautiful golden fur with brown. And still you abandon us!”
They then collapsed onto the hot and unyielding asphalt of the parking lot in front of the restaurant, lying there motionless as if willing it to become animate and swallow them up, and had to be removed from the premises to save them their dignity. “It’s a tragedy,” they continued, frantic, as they were lead away by the CEO and the restaurant’s lone security guard. “It is a tragedy. It is a tragedy but it is not your tragedy. It is not our tragedy.” All reporters, children, and parents in attendance felt momentarily very uncomfortable on the manager’s behalf before the feeling passed and they were free to once again go about their lives as normal.
As a last show of goodwill before beginning their municipally enforced downward spiral into the town’s debt-mines, Freddy Fazbear’s is offering one free kid’s meal to everyone who comes to say goodbye to the beloved singing bear. Bring the whole family and receive one free arcade token for every fifty purchased, half-off photographs of your young ones posing on stage with the band, and an extra hour in the ball pit. Members of the community with dietary restrictions are encouraged to attend, as the restaurant and dining experience is proud to offer vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, lead-free, and hematophagic options to any who request them!
ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ
Listeners, I know many of you are heartbroken over the loss of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, which has been a gathering place for the younger people and source of jobs for the older, but not that much older people of our town for over thirty years. Sure, the food was more expensive and of lower quality than many other local options, and the lights tended to flicker, and poor Sam Volodya, who owns the craft store, is still missing a significant amount of brain tissue after being savagely attacked by Foxy the Pirate back in 1987, but let’s face it: no one comes to places like Freddy’s looking for gourmet food or properly maintained basic utilities or entertainers who don’t have the jaw strength required to slice through bone like styrofoam. They come for the memories. So, in honor of our little town’s third favorite performing mechanical bear, I’d like to share my own favorite memory of time spent at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria.
A few years ago — I can’t remember how long exactly right now, but time isn’t real, so it doesn’t really matter — I promised to take my niece Janice to Freddy’s on her birthday. It was a pretty busy place at the time and all the cool kids were having their birthday parties there, so this was probably before the murder of those five children whose bodies were never found, or maybe we’d all just temporarily forgotten. Anyway, Janice wanted to go, but her stepfather refused, saying it was “creepy” and “unsanitary” and “a thinly-veiled plot to expose vulnerable children to deadly diseases and thereby weed out the ones with weak immune systems”. Please. So when the big day came around, I picked Janice up from school and we headed across town.
The parking lot was empty, which was weird, because the interior of the building was packed well past maximum occupancy as recommended by the fire marshal. Children were screaming, adults were screaming, beleaguered and overworked teenagers on their sixth straight hour of standing behind a counter were screaming. We were politely reminded by one of said beleaguered and overworked teenagers that we were under no circumstances to look the performers directly in the eyes and were shown into the crowded dining hall in front of the stage, where all of Janice’s friends were waiting. The birthday cake I had ordered for Janice was not there, having been sacrificed in order to appease the characters, or something, but that was okay, because there was pizza. It was… pizza. Nowhere near comparable to our station sponsor Big Rico’s, of course, but okay by non-Big Rico’s standards. No one does a slice like Big Rico’s. No one.
The children all sat around, eating their objectively passable but comparatively below-expectations pizza and waiting for the stage lights to come on. And come on they did, blindingly bright and flickering at such a rate that one child’s parent had to excuse himself to the hallway, where he spent the next several minutes convulsing violently and muttering in a tongue never meant to be heard by mortal ears. The curtains went up, and the band came on stage: Freddy Fazbear himself with his microphone, Bonnie the Bunny on guitar, and Chica the Chicken with her cupcake — cupcakes having been legally deemed musical instruments in a controversial ruling back in the 1960’s. They played a variety of music, ranging from classical, to original compositions, to covers of popular modern songs recorded hastily in the garages of the pizzeria’s employees on promises of overtime pay. The three animatronic friends danced and sang and played to the rapturous joy of all the children in the audience until Bonnie turned to the audience in the middle of Hey There Delilah, dropped his guitar, and lunged. The security guard — also a beleaguered and overworked teenager who, now that I think about it, I have not seen since that day — then ran onto the stage to restrain the wayward performer and told us all that we had to leave immediately.
Oh, it was just such a wonderful time, listeners. You just can’t help but feel a little bit of the magic of childhood in places like that, no matter how old you get. The only thing I regret about that day was that a certain someone with reprehensible taste in haircuts had the gall to show up late to his own stepdaughter’s birthday party and complain that I “kidnapped his daughter” and took her to “some kind of reanimated carcass-puppet show hell”. Some people, really.
It’s always disappointing to see beloved local businesses go under, but as the CEO of Fazbear Entertainment said earlier this year, “These characters will live on. In the hearts of kids, these characters will live on.” And that’s kind of inspiring, really. No matter what happens to us — if the fiction that is our lives is discontinued, if we move away, if we are brutally killed by someone we thought we could trust in an unsanitary restaurant in a small desert town and no one ever finds our bodies — we will live on in the hearts of those around us.
ʕ ◉ᴥ◉ʔ
Listeners, I have some wonderful news. The owners of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria have decided to donate Freddy and his friends to Night Vale Community Radio. Now, no one recalls receiving any notification of this, or even of receiving them them at all — Intern Nathaniel says they were all just standing around outside the station moments after the establishment closed its doors for the last time and that when he turned away for just a second to ask someone if they were supposed to be here they suddenly appeared inside — but this is great news regardless. Freddy and his gang are a big and well-loved part of Night Vale history, and we will be more than happy to take good care of them here at the station.
Why, right now Intern Nathaniel is spraying down the four of them down with the industrial sized bottle of rain-scented Febreeze we keep on hand for just such an occasion. They all look much happier already. Even Foxy, who’s been retired since... well. Since before I was old enough to go to Freddy’s, I think. Keep up the good work, Nathaniel.
Now, you may be asking, ‘Cecil, what is a community radio station, which by definition broadcasts in a purely audio format with no visual component, going to do with an animatronic band and an animatronic pirate?’ Well, I have no idea. But they’re here, so we might as well look after them! How hard can it be? After all, last year Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria reported only a couple dozen employees as missing to the city council and almost no fatalities at all, and that’s better than most of us can say. I’m sure the fact that they had to clean viscera out of the spare costumes exactly as many times as there were missing security guards is purely coincidental.
And now, traffic.
Oh.
Well this is just embarrassing. I must have put the traffic report down somewhere, and forgotten to take it into the booth with me. I’m sorry about this, listeners. Intern Nathaniel, would you mind running to the break room and seeing if I left it on the table or something?
Intern Nathaniel?
That’s odd. Listeners, just a moment ago, I could see Intern Nathaniel in the production booth with a few of the newest members of the Night Vale Community Radio family, but now he is no longer there. In fact, now no one is there at all. There are smudged fingerprints on the window between myself and their former location, and the door has been kicked down, but other than that there is no trace of any of them.
I’m… sure he’s just showing them around their new home. In as much as I can ever be sure of anything, which is not very much at all, really. Anyway, I’d better go find the traffic report. Sit tight, listeners. I’ll tell you if I run into Intern Nathaniel and our furry friends while I’m looking.
ʕ ◎ᴥ◎ʔ
I’m very sorry about the delay, Night Vale. It turns out, the traffic report was on my desk this entire time! I’m not sure how I missed that, as I am certain that I looked at that specific spot on the desk when I was first looking for it, but I have been certain of many things before. Sometimes things happen that contradict your memories, the memories of those around you, and occasionally even the logical progression of cause and effect, and you just have to accept that. You are legally required to accept that.
Oh, and I didn’t see Intern Nathaniel or any of our station’s newest residents, but they’re probably fine. So, without further delay: traffic.
There are roads. There are roads, dirt packed solid by foot and hoof and wheel. There are roads, vegetation cut in lines, trampled down, cleared away. There are roads, paved over. Hot, thick tar spread over vulnerable earth and smoothed and shaped to meet the needs of- um.
Hm.
I don’t know if you can hear this, Night Vale, but there is music in the studio. The music is not my doing. It is not coming from any of the station equipment, as far as I can tell with my limited human capacity for directional hearing. It is quiet, but not as quiet as it was moments ago. It sounds as if it is coming from a music box. Here, I’m going to be quiet for a moment, so hopefully you can hear this too, if you could not already.
…
There is no point in me asking if you recognized the song, listeners, because you cannot respond. Radio is a one-way form of communication, and I am sorry, but if you did, feel proud. Feel accomplished in having this knowledge that some have, but others do not. Having things that others don’t is the foundation of all positive emotion, or so I am sometimes told.
The song — which has grown louder still in the intervening pause, so I’m sure you can hear it now, if you couldn't before — is somewhat familiar to me, but I do not remember the name. It is… from an opera. Yes, I am sure of that now. I heard it in the Old Night Vale Opera House, back before it was torn down about twenty years ago. I was pretty young at the time, so I don’t remember the details all that well, but that is definitely where I heard it.
It was a love story, and I think this part specifically was about bulls? But it could be that the bulls were a metaphor. You know how theatre- oh! There you are, Freddy. You know, you’re not really supposed to be in the recording studio with me while I’m on air, but as long as you’re here, I don’t suppose you could tell us a little more about this song? It does seem to be coming from somewhere within your mechanical depths, after all.
Mr. Fazbear?