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I couldn’t believe what they were telling me.
I had only been working for the company for a few years, working my way up comfortably into the position of maintenance. It was my job, the one I proved the most aptitude with, to fix up the entertainer robots that Fazbear Entertainment put at each location. Nowadays, I felt like I had made a mistake; the company was pretty much going under, and now here I was, stepping out of the comfort of my jeep to look at some filthy horror attraction that was being made about all the creepy stories people told about the company’s restaurants.
Sighing, I began to traverse the parking lot, an asphalt desert with only the occasional yellow line to keep me company on my odyssey to the front door. A light breeze whispered from over the treetops, accompanied by the subtle buzzing of the barely-functional streetlights that let me see my path.
Eventually, I got to the glass doors, pushing them open - God, they nearly fell directly over. What a dump this place was. I already missed the polished floors and cheesy music - and cheesy smell, for that matter - of the pizzerias I had worked in before, apparently the last attempts from the company to save their own skin.
Immediately feeling an uneasy air inside the dark lobby of Fazbear’s Fright, I ran a hand through my chestnut-brown hair, making sure I wasn’t spontaneously mutating from the unkempt atmosphere of the place. Perhaps it was all for ambience, or realism, or something; I really didn’t care for any of that. I never did. The mysteries surrounding the company were something I made sure not to get involved with; after all, it’d be hard to keep a job if I could testify against my boss in a police case. This was something of a dream job, and it was the only real way I could get the position with my failed college degree.
The yellowed tiles practically cracked under my heel as I walked, surveying the area as my eyes adjusted to the inky blackness. There were various childrens’ drawings pinned onto the wall, haphazardly. I gave a forced chuckle to myself, wondering if the kids would get royalties for their work.
Continuing on, I finally rounded a bend to find the metal door that led into the beginning of the attraction proper. From here, reality would seem to bend and make way for… mediocre ambient lighting, spooky noises, and ugly, ancient relics of the company’s history used as props. It wasn’t my job to inspect the building, though - I’d leave that up to the technicians.
Apparently, they had a real, working animatronic, one they’d pulled out from the putrid depths of one of their first locations. I hadn’t heard much about it, but evidently, it was something of a big deal. They told me they had crammed it in the maintenance room so it didn’t get loose in the establishment before it was ready; yeah, real comforting guys. There were always rumors of the animatronics moving around, strange noises if one passed by in the middle of the night… I didn’t exactly want to hear that my ‘patient’ was going to get up and strangle me.
With a hefty shove, I pushed open the metal door to the maintenance room; it was almost entirely touching the floor, thus friction became my enemy as I made my entrance.
Once I was finally, actually, entirely inside the room and had hit the pale light switch next to the doorway, it didn’t take me long to spot it. I was used to these things being far bigger than me, most of them between 7 and 8 feet tall compared to me barely reaching 6 feet, but something about this one seemed… even bigger.
It was a rabbit animatronic, probably one of the Bonnie character’s basic ancestors. It had matted, plushy golden fur on its exterior - I legitimately could not tell if it was meant to be such a gross shade of yellow or it had just decayed THAT much. It was sitting on a big metallic table in the center of the room, in an almost human pose, both of its ears slightly drooped along with its head. There was a severe amount of rips, tears, punctures, every other kind of orifice across every surface on the rabbit - it made me laugh. How did anyone let a prized performer get in such a state? Did it NEVER leave that safe-room or wherever they kept these things?
Apparently, it was a ‘springlock’ model. Allegedly, these things could turn from costume to animatronic in just a few seconds with a special crank, but the management specifically told me they were planning to keep it in animatronic mode. They didn’t even want me to fix or replace any part of the costume - like, seriously? It’s one thing to make something scary, it’s another to show your laziness by letting a half-decayed robot bunny out into your establishment. Any fellow maintenance people would die not of fright, but of laughter, especially if they didn’t have a high opinion of Fazbear Entertainment. That’d be something I’d do - come here for a laugh to see how much the company had gone downhill. Then again, it wasn’t directly the company that made this place.
“Alright,” I said aloud to nobody in particular, “Let’s see what we can do.”
My task was fairly simple. Just get the thing in proper working order so it could walk, maybe talk, and move into various poses it could use to spook some unsuspecting patrons. Simple, of course, didn’t mean easy. I decided to begin with removing the mascot’s head, so I could work on the endoskeleton head underneath and finetune the facial movements.
I stepped closer experimentally, shutting the door behind me. When nothing happened, I took another step, and reached for the rabbit’s face - and then heard a crash. Jumping lightly, I turned my head to the side, seeing that… a box of props had fallen from a shelf and was now scattered across the floor. Fantastic.
Grunting, I crouched and set the box upright, gathering all the depressing props strewn across the tiles and returning them to their prison of broken dreams before placing it back up on a shelf, jumping to push it firmly against the wall. I brushed off my hands and knees, turning back to face the table - it had moved. Honest to God, it had really, actually moved while my back was turned. The thing’s head was now pivoted towards me, almost facing directly to the side, and its ears were now almost pointing straight up. The stray wires decorating the sides of its face seemed especially illuminated in the room’s lighting.
It was now that I was beginning to notice the rancid smell coming from the thing. I sure hoped they had disinfectant in here, maybe a few gallons of it to be safe.
It had to just be my mind playing tricks on me, right? I probably had subconsciously moved it while looking at the props that had fallen, before walking over to them. Yeah, that had to be it, or at least that’s the story I was telling myself as I stepped closer again, squinting at the rabbit. I once again reached for its face, met with its gross, yellowed smile.
The moment I placed a hand on its snout, however… its golden eyelids slid open, prompting me to jump backwards - nearly hitting the wall. The dark void of its eyes was filled by ghastly white irises, staring into my very soul as the worst clicking noise filled the air. The creature was standing up, on its own. My breathing quickened, pressing myself against the wall as if that was supposed to be safer.
Snapping out of my trance, I rushed to the door - like heck was I going to stand there in the presence of an active, possibly haunted animatronic rabbit. I wasn’t going to die like this, no way, no how… the door was jammed. Of course. I should’ve grabbed an oil can and got those hinges moving smoothly before I slammed it shut so hastily. I cursed under my breath, turning back to face the monster standing in the middle of the room as it stared right back at me, an awful, almost human-like breathing coming from somewhere in its chest piece.
With a seething hiss of some kind, it took a creaky step forward, raising an arm - which gave me an opening. I dodged by hazardously rolling underneath the arm as it swung and grasped at thin air. Thank God the thing was so laggy as it was activating. Now I had more room to work with to figure out a way to escape, watching closely as the creature lowered its arm. One benefit of this kind of job, I was used to paying attention to every little detail.
And that’s how I began to notice; the creature’s movements, they were almost too human for comfort. Uncanny, that was the term I was looking for. It was different from the so-called hauntings of previous locations - this seemed more like something was inside the suit, controlling it and growing increasingly frustrating at its disability.
It let out that awful hissing noise again, pivoting towards me and taking a few steps towards the table, slamming both hands - paws? Grabbers? - on the surface as if to support itself.
Except it wasn’t supporting itself. It grabbed the edge of the table, using that robotic strength it had to flip it at me! With an alarmed, dreading screech, I dove out of the way, hitting my head on the opposite corner of the room, as my vision blurred, all sound in the room, including the machine-like noises of the entity, turning into a high-pitched squeal in my brain until I could focus again, my eyesight returning to a dark figure looming ominously over me. All I could see were those horrible white eyes in the middle of that lumbering shadow. My heart was beating about a hundred times per second - oh, how I wished I could rip it out and use it as a battering weapon.
I tried to force myself into a mobile position, but as much as I hated to admit it, the towering animatronic was faster, and it grabbed my shoulder violently with one hand raising me up and letting out a screeching, yet muted, hiss from between its locked teeth. It turned to the light, using its other hand to viciously grab my other shoulder, dangerously close to my neck. Practically forced to, I looked into its eyes.. And saw something that truly horrified me more than the position I was in. A dull, rotted red color surrounded the inky abyss that was its eyes. That was human flesh. There WAS something inside there.
I winced as I heard springs clicking, knowing that was probably a cue preceding tragedy… and it threw me down violently. I blacked out on the spot, watching the room practically fly away from me as I slid across the table and tumbled onto the floor, a splitting pain filling almost every fiber of my being.
I woke up a few hours after, a horrible cotton feeling in my mouth, the floor beneath me stained in crimson. “Thankfully,” the impact had mostly bruised me and maybe broke a bone or two; I hadn’t lost a ton of blood, and though my arm hurt like all get out, I was able to pull out my phone and call for an ambulance.
I didn’t tell anyone about that thing - they could deal with it themselves. It was somewhere in that building, and I’ll be darned if it was gonna be MY problem to deal with the company’s mistakes anymore. I was stupid, but not stupid enough to walk back into that deathtrap. I felt bad for the poor sucker that had to walk into a horror attraction with a bloodthirsty animatronic shambling around, probably trying to find a way to escape or something. I never paid enough attention to the rumors to know who that could’ve possibly been.