Chapter Text
A letter. A single, old piece of paper with brand new writing. The ink, the calligraphy proper and fresh, not even a month old. The paper was a stark contrast. Yellow and decayed, dying, wishing to be put to rest. Yet given purpose after its long, miserable existence. If only he could achieve such a purpose, such redemption.
The paper was gently set on the bed. Chris’s face was empty while his mind raced. Old feelings returned like an avalanche, pushing him under and crushing him beneath their weight. His mind was clear, yet in so much pain. He collapsed onto his bed as neural pathways, long frozen in defense, thawed and screamed.
At dead of night, silence befell the Tallis household. Chris lived in the basement. The house belonged to his sister Mabel and her husband Brian. Mabel was the only one willing to help Chris, not willing to see him rot in a psych ward.
Chris was grateful for his sister. The catastrophe of his mental health had managed to relax once she took him in. With this lucidity, he helped her take care of her kids when she was too busy. He’d pick them up at the bus stop, go to the school when they got sick or into fights. Chris tried cooking for his niece and nephew from time to time, but he only really knew how to cook for a single man living in an apartment. But Chris felt terrible for just how much his sister had given him.
The paper crushed between him and the mattress was exerting an unstoppable force on Chris. As if the paper was covering his mouth and nose, suffocating.
“Just... just stop, please...” Chris’s voice was rough, filled with emotion. He tried as hard as possible not to let it get to him, to suppress it back in the recesses of his mind.
The paper ruffled as his hand retrieved it from beneath him. At the bottom of the letter was the seal, the thing that made what was about to happen impossible to avoid.
The logo of a company long deceased was in the bottom corner. Long deceased was a lie, and he knew it. One man remained. One forty-eight-year-old, salt-and-pepper-haired man, living in his sister's basement. Chris V. Tallis, the last official – no, living - employee of Playtime Company.
Playtime Co was a memory locked away and buried deep underground. But it was spat right back up with this letter. No one believed the events that happened that day. Everyone viewed Chris as just a psychotic person, even the psychiatrists. But he knew it was real. He heard the death on that day. He saw death and its razor-sharp teeth only a millimeter away.
It broke him then, but it wasn’t going to break him now. The calligraphy of the letter was getting on his nerves, only he was allowed to write official letters for Playtime Co.
Two orange bottles glowed beneath the lamp on the nightstand. The word “sertraline” is branded on one, and “Lorazepam” on the other. He just needed to take them, and this could all go away.
Rustling could be heard through the basement door. A zipper can be heard, as well as the crunching of plastic bottles and the sound of plastic wrappers.
Chris emerged from the basement with a backpack full of water and granola bars. He walked to the kitchen island and grabbed a pink sticky note from Mabel’s workstation. He wrote a message and stuck it where he knew it would be found.
The front door of the Tallis household gently opened, then closed. The deadbolt quietly slid into place with a schunk. Chris walked over to his red car off the driveway, adjusting his suit on the way there.
It was weird. He felt so much more lucid, yet deathly afraid. His shoulders felt lighter, but he felt something looming over him. He got in the car and inserted the key. With a quick crank, the engine sputtered to life.
The sound of gravel moving beneath tire gently stirred awake a one Theodore Brandy, who saw the car drive down the road off into the distance. Chris’s nephew went back to sleep as the night returned to its quiet howl of wind.
Trees flew past as quiet, gentle night turned to vibrant morning. The gentle hum of the engine kept Chris calm as he approached his former workplace. His stomach protested harder as he approached the factory. It twisted and churned, trying to force him to turn around and return to his sister. To return to being a burden to his only remaining family.
But he couldn’t. As he crested the hill, the mega factory began exuding its presence. It demanded attention, work, and care. And like a moth to a flame, Chris was no longer able to go back.
***
Birds chirped throughout the neighborhood. Another night had passed, another good day had begun. Mabel's alarm clock went off, the constant buzzer forcing her awake. With one lazy swing of an arm, she slammed the snooze bar, and the buzzer ceased.
Throwing her legs over the edge of the bed, Mabel stood up and headed for the door. Brian woke up as the weight on the bed shifted.
She made her way down the stairs, the sun shining through the skylight. But once she made it to the base floor, something stood out. The basement door was ajar. That’s weird.
Her brother would normally come out once the kids had left for school. Entering the kitchen, she expected to see her crazy brother, but no, it was empty. She shook her head and walked towards the counter. She needed her coffee before thinking about anything.
Brian soon came down the stairs as well, making his way straight to his wife making coffee. He gently embraced her from behind, eliciting a light scoff from Mabel. He laid his head on her shoulder, looking back towards the main hall.
Something caught his eye. He gently let go and walked towards the kitchen island. It was a sticky note, pink. Just like the ones plastered all over Mabel's personal computer.
The sounds of glue being pulled away from marble filled the room. Brian began reading while Mabel's attention had been diverted from the morning brew.
“What was that?” She asked, a yawn ending her sentence. She turned to see her husband's body go from tired and slumped to straight and tense. She walked over to his side to see what the problem was. He was holding a sticky note.
She began reading. The exhaustion from her face vanished, supplanted by shock. The handwriting was poor, close to illegible, but she knew whose it was.
“I’m going back to fix myself. I’m tired of being your burden. Don’t come after me.”
Mabel bolted to the basement door. It swung open so hard it hit the wall and bounced back, cutting off her husband, who was right behind her. Chris’s basement was in disarray as usual, but a backpack and a suit were missing.
Just then, the sunlight shining down the basement stairwell hit something and shone a light into Mabel's eyes. Two bottles of pills were in the trash bin. Lorazepam and Sertraline. Both were prescribed to a one Chris V. Tallis.
Mabel pushed past her husband, who was playing a constant game of catch-up. She ran back up the staircase and out of the driveway. She froze only a few steps out.
The two-decade-old car was gone. The one Chris owned. Sadness and anger swelled up within her. He left in the middle of the night. She had no clue how to get to that factory.
Brian finally caught up to his darting wife, bringing her back inside. “Do you know where he went? I can go get him.”
***
The car door swung open hard on its hinge, ejecting the driver from his seat. Chris hit the hard gravel with a mind-shaking thunk. The mega factory went in and out of focus as his eyes struggled to adjust.
The parking lot is a barren expanse of development. The paved lot cracked and overgrown with vegetation thanks to years of neglect. The single red car and its driver on the floor are the only things this lot had seen in a decade.
Chris’s stomach got its way, with a final revolt, it forced its contents out onto the parking lot. He clutched his stomach and rolled onto his left to try to ease the incoming nausea. The man laid there motionless, regretting the last few hours of his life.
He pushed himself up, recovered enough to at least walk. He reached into his car and retrieved his backpack, unzipping the bag and grabbing a bottle of water. He pours water into his mouth and spits it back out.
The mega factory slowly came into focus. Smokestacks extending further back than the eye could see. Yellows and blues colored the exterior, really emphasizing that this factory was the birthplace of magic.
The entrance slowly approached as Chris took slow steps forward. This was the time to make a decision. He could turn around, go back to his sister and brother-in-law, his niece and nephew, a husk of a life lived in constant paranoia. Or he could pass the threshold, return to the last moment of clear lucidity, to the moment that he left himself behind.
A door was pushed open. A loud screech emanated from the joints. The air felt... different. Familiar, comfortable, and a bit more lucidity returned to Chris. But it wasn’t all fun and games. Chris’s lungs felt harder to fill, as if something was crushing the organs.
In. Hold. Out. Hold.
It was what the psychologists told him to do during an attack like this. Slow the breathing, but he needed more air. His eyes landed on the front desk, and it all collapsed from there. Chris, on the floor, grayed out and passed out.
The workplace was bustling as usual; Chris shakes his head as he refocuses on his task, overseeing his employees as they do their jobs. He sees something wrong and rushes over to the employees.
“Need some help?” Chris says, before helping the three other workers lift a particularly heavy box up, finding the free corner. His face scrunches in concentration as he helps the three other men move the box to its designated area. They drop the box on the conveyor, and they watch as it rolls off into the darkness behind the rubber flaps.
“Geez, what was even in that thing?” Chris said with a light-hearted chuckle, sweat forming on his brow. He surveys the men, trying to remember what group of employees these three were a part of.
“Where’s... Where’s the fourth guy?” Chris said with a puff, not remembering the employees' names. Who could blame him? He had more than two hundred employees to manage.
“Who? Marty?” One of them replies, “He got fired, don’t know why.” Another replies, Chris shakes his head.
“Got fired? I’m the one who does the firing up here, and I never fired him.” Chris said, stroking his chin in thought. “Whatever, I’ll look into it, I’ll help you guys until the shift changes,” Chris says. This is common for him to put aside his own job to help keep the train moving. It’s what earned him his nickname, CVT, continuous variable transmission, conveniently an acronym for his full name.
The gray veil began to pull back as Chris returned to the land of the living. He wiped his face with his hand, bringing the appendage forward to inspect it. He focused on his own fingers, his eyes bouncing around.
The background slowly became clear. A desk, the front desk. He pushed himself up onto his feet. It was time he faced his past.
He grabbed and pushed the push bar of the door. It opened without so much as a sound, as opposed to the first door. As his foot stepped on the tiled floor, he felt a great weight lift off his shoulders. A smile appeared on his face.
“One more shift, Ludwig. Then, I’m resigning.” He promised himself. This company was weighing him down for too long. He just needed to step in and realize it. Why carry a graveyard on your back for a decade?
As Chris walked around the front desk, he tried getting into the main hall, but it was blocked by some turnstiles. Checking around for the controls, he sees the hand receptacle for the grabpack.
The gentle sound of rubber outsole against hard tile moved to the left of the entrance, towards an employee's lounge with a color-coded keypad. Chris sighed. He knew the code was on the tip of his fingers.
The colors lit up as they were pressed down, one by one. The first code didn’t work. Chris tried again, and the door unlocked. Inside lay a grabpack, a bit worse for wear, but it seemed functional.
He retrieved it from its case and began inspecting it as the educational video played on the box TV beside him. Checking tick boxes in his mind as he did so many times before.
The question became about how he could carry both his backpack and the grabpack, momentarily forgetting the universal hook on the back for this very purpose. With a quick faceplant and chuckle, he got his grabpack-backpack combo on and made his way back to the front desk.
He fired the left hand, the blue one, at the receptor, and after a few moments, the turnstiles unlocked. He made his way through the twisting dark corridor. The walls a solid baby blue, and the tiles beneath his feet mostly white with a mix of colors here and there.
He stepped into the main hall and witnessed it, the Huggy Wuggy Statue. He smiled back at it, not able to match the sheer grandeur of the statue’s smile, but a good enough effort.
Still blue and fuzzy to this day, it seemed in near pristine condition. As if this thing hadn’t appeared in 1991. One of its hands was out like it was waving, his arm bending like a noodle.
Chris had to. It was forbidden at the time to do this, but he’s the only one alive, he was a higher up, he was the owner by law, he was the boss. And the boss said to let the giant Huggy Wuggy statue be high-five-able with the grabpack.
The blue hand launches to the statue's hand, and they briefly clap. Chris chuckled.
“Not so bad, a little bit of friendship, isn’t it?” Chris said to no one but himself. The room was cylinder-shaped, skylights letting in some natural lighting. It was so much better working here than down below, simply due to the sun.
“Standing still for a decade must be tiring. Good on you for keeping it up.” Chris said as he noticed a red scanner above the door to the Make-A-Friend machine room. MAF, they called it.
He headed to the warehouse. He knew there would be a spare red hand in there. They always had spares in the top-level warehouse. But nothing was simple in this factory. No, just like him, everything was more complicated than it needed to be.
A metal shutter blocked the path. The cable leading into the mechanism snaked across the roof into a nearby employee locker room.
Chris followed it into the locker room and found an outlet and power tower system. These were always strange to him. He always rationalized it as a safety feature of sorts, that only people with grabpacks should be able to enter or operate whatever these things guarded.
He launched the blue hand at the outlet, and it electrified the arm. He walked back and touched the live arm to the tower. His grabpack’s hand was automatically released once the connection was secured. The hand flew back into its slot, almost knocking him over due to momentum.
The mood shifted completely as he returned to the main hall. The Statue was gone.
“Don’t,” Chris said under his breath. He was trying to warn it, but he knew it would never listen to him. The words were more for himself than he would’ve admitted. It was to verbally remind himself not to break apart.
The warehouse was brightly lit by the lights and sunlight. Shelves stacked with random items for toys on the verge of being shipped out, common power cells, and the grabpack’s right, red hand.
The box for the hand was placed high out of reach for his grabpack. But the crane above could easily knock the sucker off and onto the floor. Chris grabbed a power cell and made his way up to the crane controls.
The screams of the fallen began to return. A moment he wished to never recall. Each step up the staircase was another ten screams for mercy, help, anything to save them. Chris grabbed the railing hard, putting most of his weight on the old metal.
The screams kept getting louder and louder, bouncing around his head with no means of escaping. Then he heard the high-pitched shriek of a monster, forcing his mind to refocus on the real world.
Widened eyes search every inch of the room, any sign of its presence. He would’ve run faster than he’d ever gone if he saw it. He looked back at the wall behind him. Watching as two corridors open and lead to the main hall.
He stands up from the front desk and walks back to see the statue mauling his coworkers. Its head snaps back at him, and he runs to the front door.
The straining arm slowly burned through his episode, the pain of gripping so hard bringing him back to reality. He was alive. They weren’t. There was nothing he could do now. He made his way up the stairs and inserted the green cell. He used the crane to knock the box over.
It landed with a dull thud. He made haste and went back down to retrieve the hand. With a trained eye, he ran an entire quality assurance test in his head. He gently nodded to himself before equipping the red hand.
The red receptor was waiting. He wanted to see the MAF one final time before leaving this place for good. The chills that ran down his spine as the empty hall, the distinct ornament missing. He shook his head and turned to the red hand scanner.
The hand launched forward, landing on the scanner. After a moment, the hand returned, Chris ready for the momentum this time. He made his way through the opening hallway.
He walked closer to the room where the MAF was located, a large opening for a grand room.
A door billowing steam blocked his path. He’d have to close it once he got near. But his thoughts were interrupted when a yellow hand grabbed the handle and slammed the door shut. Heavy footfalls could be heard retreating behind the door.
He wasn’t alone. He needed to hurry up. Speedwalking into the room, the shutters behind him shut.
This was mostly for when orphans visited. That way, they’d all stay in one place where they could be supervised. The only way out was a keycard or to make a friend.
He walks to the control panel of the behemoth. Unpowered and waiting. Beside the panel was a little sign that explained the origins and purpose of the machine.
Made by one Elliot Ludwig in the 60s. The founder of Playtime Co and his true boss.
Elliot made Chris’s first few years at the company fun. It was hard work, but that man could make anyone smile. Sure, he ran a tight ship, but it was only so fine-tuned because everyone was made to feel appreciated.
He kept reading the sign, how the machine was made to completely remove the hassle of painting or quality assurance...
“CVT!”
The letters ring through the offices of the factory’s first floor. His head snaps up, eyes homing in the direction of his name.
The door to his office opens gently, and an old man walks through. Elliot Ludwig, the owner of Playtime Co, walked into the room. The carpet pads the man's dress shoes against the floor.
“Ludwig,” Chris says, getting up from his chair and putting his hand out, “Good to see ya. Need anything?”
“Christopher, the MAF is malfunctioning. Could you check it out for me? I’d do it myself, but my hips aren’t what they used to be.” Ludwig jokes, eliciting a soft chuckle from Chris.
“Of course,” Chris pushes his chair beneath his desk, “And it’s not like I have a choice to just say ‘no’ to the CEO.” Chris jokes as well. They both chuckle.
“Damn right, now move it, son!” Ludwig plays on with the joke. He was always such a lively man for his age. He was never too serious, knowing when to take a joke and always being fair.
Upon entering the Make-A-Friend's machine room, it was evident something was amiss. The gentle hum of the mechanism was interrupted, missing something. Chris walked past the other employees trying to fix the issue towards the quality control section. He crouched down to the fuse box panel on the side and popped it open.
Scanning over the lights, all of them reported green for good. His brow furrows as he tries to come up with a more intricate issue. A voice broke through his thought process.
“Go slower,” Ludwig advises. Chris is momentarily pulled out of his mind.
A finger comes up to each of the fuse boxes, going over each of them one by one. His finger scans all the boxes once, twice, yet nothing.
But on the third pass, he felt something off. Near the top left of the fuse boxes, one of them was hotter. Without questioning a thing, he took his screwdriver out and unscrewed the box.
A barrage of black smoke shoots at Chris’s face, covering it in a soot-like substance. He coughs as the old man laughs.
“Atta boy!” Ludwig cheers. Chris fans the smoke away. The indicator was still green, but the fuse had blown, partially. He quickly replaced it, and the machine roared back to life.
“Slow and steady wins the race,” Ludwig says as he looks at the toys emerging from the quality assurance machine. “Y’know how much more expensive it would’ve been to get a team up here to find a blown fuse?”
“More than moving my finger over some panels, sir,” Chris replies, earning him a cold look from the CEO. “Sorry, I meant to say Ludwig.” Chris corrects himself. Ludwig made it clear that any worker at Playtime Co was a part of the family. That meant no formalities, even with him.
“Ludwig, I thought you were a clean, organized man,” Chris spoke as he walked up the stairwell behind him, remembering where the power circuit remained.
“Look at the state of things, thank goodness OSHA just left, otherwise we’d be shut down in the blink of an eye.” Chris continued his rambling as he launched a hand at an outlet and wrapped the grabpack’s arms around the power towers.
“At least I’m here, always cleaning up other people's messes for you.” Chris launched his other hand at a power receptacle, completing the circuit and powering the machine. “All better. Let me make a toy for my niece and nephew, just to make sure everything's working.”
“Heh, maybe a fuse blew?” Chris chuckled as he walked down the steps and towards the beginning of the assembly line. He used his grabpack to pull on the levers on the dispensers. They each deposited one part of the Cat-Bee toy.
“Cat-Bee, Pierre made this one. Good seller, but not as good as your stuff.” Chris said as he watched the parts move through the machine. Popping out on the covered assembly line on the floor for viewing.
It really did do everything just like that. Just some power and a few levers, and voila, a Cat-Bee.
“Well, let’s see, does your machine still work, Ludwig?” Chris grabbed the toy out the end of the conveyor, the door waiting open for the product to pass through.
He brought the toy to the shutter's scanner and placed it. It passed the test, and the shutters began to open. Chris was happy. He faced his fears and never felt any better.
But everything quickly changed. Only two steps out of the MAF’s room, it appeared. The giant, animated Huggy Wuggy. It walked towards him slowly. Its smile turned into a sickly wide grin.
Two sharp sets of teeth visible in the red mouth of the monster. Chris couldn’t pass him. He’d be grabbed by its arms.
He turned on his heels and looked back into the MAF’s room. His eyes frantically searched for an exit, maybe a skylight? He couldn’t find anything.
The voice of Ludwig rang in his head, “Go slower.” Chris forcefully paced his search, and he saw it. The conveyor was still waiting for something to pass through it. He ran at full speed.
The conveyor lines were tall enough for a repairman to fit through. He heard the door shut behind him and relaxed. The door was removed from its place, and Huggy Wuggy gave chase.
Chris picked up and started running down the conveyor lines. A twisting maze illuminated by only a few red lights. The banging and screeching from behind him made him try to put as much distance between them as possible, even if it meant sharp turns into dark ducts.
He dared to look behind and witnessed the giant reach forward with its lanky arms, grab the sides, and pull itself forward as it was hunched into the small space. The teeth motivated Chris to keep moving.
The sounds of rollers spinning flooded his mind as his foot landed on a collapsed conveyor belt. He recovered quickly and continued to run. There really was no way of escaping this thing. He just had to run.
His heartbeat thumped loudly in his ear. Adrenaline surged through his body. He refused to die now. He refused to let go of the clarity he gained just today. He refused to abandon his sister and her family. He had to escape.
He stayed vigilant, looking at every crossroad for some light other than red. He noticed a brighter corridor and quickly turned on his heels. His body slammed into the duct at the sudden change in direction. He saw it, a loose vent cover leading into an open area.
A catwalk was suspended high in a silo, commonly used to leave the first subfloor via the conveyor ducts. Boxes had been stacked like a little staircase for ease of access. Chris flew through the vent cover as he jumped through without a second thought.
Time slowed as the man flew over a silo that seemed to continue down forever. He was going to fall to his death. He made peace with the idea, at least Huggy didn’t kill him.
Chris slammed against the catwalk, not bracing at all, thanks to not paying attention. He bounced once on his chest and again onto his back. He slid a few feet across the catwalk’s grating, the grabpack taking the brunt of the punishment.
The catwalk groaned angrily in protest at the sudden force of impact. The sound of Huggy approached through the vent opening. He needed to think fast. How could he escape?
A slow look up revealed the answer. Chris wasn’t to escape Huggy. He was to defeat him.
The lanky monster ejected from the vent hole, flying towards Chris. Chris launched both hands at a box resting precariously on an I-beam, right above the catwalk.
The box, with a little assistance from the grabpack, tipped over and fell directly above the catwalk. It intercepted Huggy Wuggy mid-air, pinning it to the catwalk.
The metal creaked and finally snapped after all the sudden stress, taking the giant Huggy with it down into the depths of the silo. Chris watched as Huggy bounced off multiple different pipe segments that jutted out from the silo walls, leaving behind splatters of blood.
“Shit....” Chris breathed out, backing away from the missing section of the catwalk at his feet. He turned around, pressing his face against the grated metal. “That was for ‘95, asshole.” Chris cursed down the silo, getting some of his old confidence back.
He took a breather. He needed to calm his heart. Everything that just happened was too quick for a man of his age. Memories of that day, August 8th, 1995, the day Huggy almost killed him then, flooded back.
But now, it couldn’t hurt anymore. It finally healed. The bleeding wound now scarred. He chuckled. “Third times the charm, Huggy.”
The catwalk led to a door with a large poppy flower painted around it. Chris stood up, ignoring the pain in his body, and pressed forward. Just like old times, overworking himself to the brink of failure. Now, it wasn’t for money or experiences. No, it was for survival.
The door led to a strange area. It felt domestic with wallpaper and cushions, as well as hardwood floors and pillows. He never remembered a place like this when he got here. Then again, he only stayed topside.
Down the room were two doors, one ajar, one closed. To his right, the ajar door revealed a cabinet in a room lit up in pink. Pillows on the floor and flower-patterned lights dancing on the ceiling. The cabinet held a Poppy Playtime doll in pristine condition.
“Ludwig’s first, right? Poppy Playtime.” Chris said aloud. He remembered seeing this doll around. It was what launched the company into stardom. Chris unlocked the box.
The lights shut off, and the door to the box creaked open. Quiet skittering can be heard.
“This way,” A feminine voice called, “You came back.”