Chapter Text
Paula slammed her hand on the alarm clock a few times to get it to shut up. After hitting her hand on it a bit too hard it finally stops. "ow-" she sits up and groans rubbing her fingers. She looks at the clock "10:56 AM" "sh- ugh im late. Last thing i need." She grabs a bra, a shirt, and a skirt "WHY DIDN'T YOU WAKE ME UP?" she yells while running down stairs putting on her shirt. "you're a sleep fighter. Last time i tried waking you up you punched me." Brandy says reading a magazine. "You're a drama queen. just pick me up when its 10 okay?" She slips on her jacket and grabs her purse. "Love you bye." she slams the door and begins to run down the street. Paula's been living with her older sister brandy for around 8 months now ever since her parents kicked her out. Shes been trying to get a stable job ever since but she cant seem to keep one, she had to drop out of college cause she couldn't make enough money to support herself and her parents have cut her off completely. She finally arrives at the restaurant. as soon as she opens the door the smell of cheap hamburger patties and bleach filled her nose. There were several different posters and decorations on the walls. A few tables and booths were scattered about. She saw a stage but the curtain was closed. The floor had a orange and white checkered pattern and the building looked kinda old. "Hello..?" She looks around and only saw the janitor mopping the floors. She walks up to him. "hey im supposed to get started today i was told the manager was gonna show me around some..do you know know where she-" "no." He interrupts. "okay then.." she walks away and starts looking around. this place was some kind of kids entertainment place called "puddings burgers and shakes" stupid name for a character, i mean what if people mistake it for the place serving pudding or somthing? and then theyd get alot of angry parents when they find out they dont serve pudding and- oh wait shes supposed to be finding her manager. She goes to the counter where there was an animatronic, it was a tall dog animatronic with long ears and wearing a 60's style waitress uniform. It had a kinda creepy appearance but was slightly cute? "Hey are you Paula?" She jerks her head back to see a girl who looked to be her age or older wearing a green shirt and pants and a name tag that read as "Jessica S." With the word "manager" above the name "yeah i a-am. listen im really sorry for being late i just-" Jessica smiles "oh dont worry about it i understand. All that matters is you're here." She pats her back "do i have to wear some kind of uniform or-?" She points to Jessica's outfit "its not essential. Just wear the name tag and youre good, kay?" She digs in her pocket and hands her a little golden name tag that said "Paula S." "we're really understaffed right now so you have no idea how happy we are to have someone willing to take on this job." Jessica looks up at the animatronic dog. "Now, as you agreed to in your interview you'll be doing more then just one job here." She points at the stage "before we open ill be needing you to wash the animatronics, pudding, pupcake and Gustavo." She raises her eyebrow "one of them is named...Gustavo?" "Yes. Anyway you'll also be waiting tables. Understood?" Paula nods "uh yeah-" "good! Now since most kids dont get out of school till a few hours we wont have much business till then so you can start cleaning up the crew. When you're done with that youll be takin' orders and serving food with pupcake over here." She pats Paula's back "janitors closet is behind that door." She points to a door that read "staff only" on a wore out sign "you'll find all the supplies you'll need there." Jessica hands her a spare key and goes back to her office. Paula puts on her name tag and walks over to the employees only door, unlocking it. Behind was a long and dimly lit hallway with some other old looking doors. She sees the janitors closet and opens it to see a spider hanging down from the top "AUGH-" she slammed it shut. "Its just a little tinnyy spider its not THAT scary..." she thinks to herself before opening the door and quickly grabbing a rag and some cleaning spray and slamming the door shut again running out of the hallway. She puts the doors key in her pocket and goes over to the dog animatronic. It had a little name badge as if it were an employee. "pupcake." she began to wash off any stains or stuff on her outfit. "Geez do they let the kids lick this thing or something..ew." Paula scrubs down pupcakes dress for a good hour or so. Finally getting the stains out. She looks at the clock on the wall to see it was around 1:23 pm. She goes over to the stage, It had a big red curtain over it. She gets onto the stage and opens it to a torn up animatronic that looked like a donkey with orange, pink and yellow shingles glued to it. one eye was completely busted, only the socket, a small light bulb and the eyelids were left. A arm on it was completely ripped and still had wires hanging out. Its neck and one of its feet- or hooves? Whatever it was the fabric had completely gotten obliterated from them both at some point in time and exposed the endo skeleton. The only thing that seemed kinda new was two little party hats on top of its ears and the bib with a heart ontop. "Oh..what happened to you...hows this thing even still working??" She thinks to herself. Paula scrubs away at the animatronic, which thankfully this one took less time then pupcake, surprising considering its...less then stellar condition. She gets out from behind the curtain wondering where the "Gustavo" animatronic was. Jessica came back out around that time. "Hey- wheres the Gustavo guy you were talking about?" Jessica nods "yeah yeah hes right back here." Paula follows Jessica to a different room she has to unlock. "I completely forgot to tell you about the kids play corner!" She opens the door and Paula sees a big play place with slides and sensory walls. its probably very... gross in there. "Here he is!" "Oh.." she sees a craft corner of some sorts with paper, coloring pages, all that. But in the corner with all that was a large flower animatronic..thing? It looked rough as well..its face, clothes, and multicolored pedals were COVERED in marker and paint where kids had drawn on it. Not to mention its endo was visible through its pants.. "Are you sure i can get this thing clean by the time anyone ends up coming here....?" "Well if you want to keep you job yep! Hahahaa." Paula gives her a nervous side eye. "Jusstt kidding. No but uh,, those have been there for awhile, turns out it wasn't a good idea to give the kids permanent markers..just get him clean as possible alright? good luck." Jessica gives Paula two thumbs up before walking away. Paula sighs and gets to scrubbing, And this one was DIFFICULT. She scrubs and scrubs and scrubs but the marker doesn't come out at all except for maybe smudging a little. There was marker on its face where some kid had tried to give it some makeup. on its clothes there were some little doodles of cats and bunnies and what looked like maybe some of the other animatronics. After around 3 hours it looked...less dirty?? She looks at its face and it almost looked like it was...staring.. at her..was it always looking down or- shes suddenly interrupted by Jessica tapping her shoulder. "WE'VE GOT SOME PEOPLE COMIN' IN. QUICK GET TO THE COUNTER! AND REMEMBER, SMILEE." she gently scoots Paula to the counter. there was a girl who looked to be maybe 14 waiting. "Uhm, hello welcome to puddings burgers and fries what can i get you?" She says stiffly. "I'll take aaa...uhhhh-" She stares at the menu for awhile while Paula waits awkwardly. "Uhhhmmm,, one of theeeee-" paula taps her hand on the counter a little, waiting. "Thhhheeeeee uhhh...can i just get the chocolate orange milkshake thing?" Paula sighs a bit as she finally ordered. "Of course yeah one-" she looks at the menu "puddings..orange..chocolate and strawberry shake coming up. That'll be 3 dollars and 7 cents." The girl slams down a five dollar bill and some change and just walks away and sits in a booth. Paula looks in the kitchen to see a guy with long locks, wearing glasses and an apron with a name tag that on it that read "kenny R." Who was sitting down playing with a plastic spoon. "Uhm..got an order for the..pudding chocolate orange strawberry milkshake?" He nods. "Alright." He continues to mess with the plastic spoon. she closed the door and began to wait. She looks up at the clock... She suddenly hears loud music and pupcake begins to move a bit and look around. She jumps back startled. The curtain on the stage opened up to show pudding blinking and moving around. granted all of the movements were pretty stiff and janky, but movements non the less. She sees the kenny guy finished up the milkshake and it was on a tray. she grabs it and walks over to the girl who ordered it "here's your drink." She lays it on the table before she notices some more people coming in, a few kids with their parents and some more young teens. She quickly runs back to the counter. "H-hello how may i help you?" Paula gets overwhelmed by social situations easily...one of the reasons she got fired from her other jobs requiring customer service was she got nervous and screwed somthing up. She begins to take orders, she thankfully hadn't messed any orders up yet and was doing okay. The kids were playing around with stuff, watching the stage performance and some of them were in the play corner undoubtedly drawing on that poor flower animatronic. The screams and yelling of kids was distracting but she was trying her best to stay focused. Finally she gets the last order on a tray and begins to take it to the table when some kid knocks into her legs and knocks her forward enough to send the whole tray falling onto the ground, the food getting all over the floor and her shirt. "OH..O-OH MY- IM SO SO SO SORRY I-" the dad of the kid picks him up "no no. dont worry about it it's not your fault.." the man sighs and rubs his forehead. "I-I'll go get your order again.." she goes back to get kenny to fix the order again, feeling absolutely embarrassed and worried that this slip up was gonna screw her over again. She couldn't afford to loose another job if she ever wants to be able to move out and try to get that art scholarship. "Hey..i-i need that last order again." Kenny raises his eyebrows "they like the food that much?" He says sarcastically. Paula just looks defeated and just goes to grab the cleaning supplies that she cleaned the..that she cleaned the animatronics with aND LEFT IN THE PLAY CORNER- OH NO. She runs to the play corner panicked thinking some kid might have tried to drink it or somthing stupid. To her luck they hadn't. She picks it up and goes and begins to clean up the mess. She wanted to break down into tears but she couldn't do that at work how humiliating would that be? She heard kenny sit the tray down on the counter and she goes and grabs it, bringing it to the family again. "Im sorry about earlier.. p-please enjoy.." she goes back to cleaning till its nothing but crushed translucent plastic cups and paper plates, of which she goes to the janitors closet and grabs a broom to sweep it up. After awhile the family leaves and so do the other customers. it was getting late. She checks the clock on the wall. "8:46 pm" it was getting close to closing time. As she cleans up she keeps thinking about everything she did wrong, even things she didn't do wrong she thinks about "oh but what if i could've done that better?" And "did i do that wrong..?" Finally she sees kenny leaving the kitchen and putting on a coat from the coat rack "are you done cleaning? Y'know you dont even get paid for doing any extra unless its the animatronics." She sighs "yeah i was just hoping at least it might get me enough extra credibility that maybe i wont get fired tomorrow." She sighs, suddenly the janitor from earlier in the morning came back in. He had a cold glare and messy brown hair that was short. he was pretty creepy to be honest but paula had to admit she felt kinda bad for thinking that..she didn't know anything about him she just..had a bad feeling about him. she sees Jessica come out of her office looking through her keys. "Well you two better get home, you've got a long day ahead of you tomorrow. Especially you paula." Paula didn't even want to think what Jessica was insinuating, all she knew was she better start looking through help wanted ads again. Kenny leaves and Jessica begins to help clean up. Paula stands there at the door for a few seconds, looking back at the animatronics.. she kept feeling like they were staring at her. Although it wasn't just a feeling because they..were. The janitor groans. "Are you gonna leave or not?" He says in a low an gruff tone. "y-yeah sorry" she uncomfortably opens the door and begins to walk back to Brandy's apartment, the sky a dark blue as the sound of cars and crickets filled her ears. Jessica still at the restaurant scowls a bit. "Nice idea. Being rudes a realll good way to get someones trust." She sits up on the counter and grabs a pack of cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it. Blowing smoke in the exact direction of the janitor, though he remains unfazed. "Watch your tone. You're not the owner of this hellhole. Are you?" He gives a creepy smile. She glares at him "just keep cleaning.. please."
Back at Brandy's apartment paula is flipping through the help wanted ads in the newspaper and she is now wearing a sweater that wasn't covered in milkshake. Brandy, who was watching tv, sighs and turns it off. "Sis its not that bad youre not gonna get fired." "Brandy i was let go from 5 different restaurant jobs for this kinda stuff. You cant know if im gonna get fired or not." Brandy sighs and gets up moving over to sit on the bed next to Paula. "Its gonna be okay,, I know you want that scholarship but if you get fired from this job you'll just find another one. You're a bright girl paula you'll find the right place. Its just gonna..take some time. Besides ill always let you stay with me." Paula sighs and looks at brandy "i appreciate that brandy but..but..im in my prime! Im at the best age to be pursuing these things." Brandy tilts her head and smiles a little "brandy you're 18. Youre not gonna be an old woman anytime soon. You gotta stop stressing about this." She begins to braid her hair on the side of her head. "I'm sorry i worry so much i dont know why i do i just...arts my life Brandy,, i dont know what I'll do if i cant get a job doing somthing im ACTUALLY passionate about.." Brandy gives paula a hug. "Itll be okay. Trust me?" Paula nods a little. "yeah..i trust you" she smiles weakly. She was nervous but the comfort from her sister made her feel slightly more hopeful she could get enough money to be able to afford getting back into college. She gets up and goes to the bathroom. She lets her dark curly brown hair down from its pony tail before removing the little hair clips she had fallen asleep in before going to work. She flosses her teeth and brushes them trying to make sure to get her braces nice and clean. She had chosen rainbow braces when she first got them but she was starting to wonder if they made her look to childish.. she finally lays down and scoots the news papers out of the way. Brandy was back to watching tv. She remembers she has the janitors closet keys in her back pocket and grabs them, jingling them a little.. "please let Tommorow not go horribly" she thinks to herself before laying them down on the nightstand. She reaches over and turns off the lamp. "Good night Brandy.."
"Good night paula."