More Than You Knew

2

Cradled gently in his arms as if she may break and shatter, James carried Veronica's dead body into his house; careful to make sure that he wouldn't be seen by his neighbors in the process. Tunnel vision had overtaken him, for better or for worse--Veronica had been his only friend, his only true friend. There was no way he was just going to let her slip away from the life that she deserved that quickly. In the moment, there was no doubt in his mind that this was the right thing to do.

It had to be the right thing to do.

There was no other way.

Oh, how would he talk to his therapist about this now? Suppose it was just one more secret to add to the ever growing pile that he had. There were just so many things that he didn't know how to express.

James carried her carefully down the wooden steps into his basement, the wood creaking and groaning under the combined weight of both of them. As soon as his feet touched the pavement of the basement floor, he was hit with the odd scent of mildew and things left untouched for months now. Ever since Veronica had disappeared from his house that fateful morning, he rarely came down here unless it was to talk to the AI that she had left behind. In a lot of ways, he told that AI more things than he told his therapist. He huffed a quiet sigh, slowly sliding Veronica onto the dusty metal-framed cot that laid in the corner of the dark and cobweb-ridden basement. He had closed her eyes before bringing her into his car, not being able to bear looking into her lifeless gaze longer than he had to.

Not much had been left behind after Veronica left for the first time, with the few lingering signs that she had been there being an expensive-looking computer that laid on an old oak wood desk close to the cot, and a large bulky object covered by a tarp in the farthest corner of the room. It was almost as if Veronica wanted whatever that was as far away from her as possible without placing it somewhere in the areas of the house that James frequented. Almost immediately after Veronica had distanced herself from him, James had inspected what had been left in the basement for any clue as to where she may had gone--even going as far to take the tarp off of the oddly-shaped lump in the corner, although he had almost immediately returned the tarp to its original spot, not wanting to look at the ginormous monster that she had created.

He walked over to the covered object and grasped the tarp in one hand, gently dragging it off of the large surface--trying not to cause it to sway and fall over, for fear that he wouldn't be able to lift it off the ground if it did. The tarp landed on the ground with little noise.

James gazed up towards the deactivated animatronic--a large, red, canine was the form that it took. Two pointed ears stood towards the top of it's head, as it stood in a slumped over position; it's half-lidded yellow gaze staring blankly at the floor in front of it's large feet. Despite James standing at about 6 and a half feet tall, this artificial canine stood quite a bit taller than him; with its head nearly brushing the ceiling of the basement despite the fact that it rested just barely above it's shoulders. It's bottom jaw lay slack, open; as if though it had been deactivated mid performance. Out of all the animatronics, why had Veronica decided to make one that looked like Foxy?

She had always been afraid of that one during the time that they worked at Freddy's.. So why would she want to dig up something that had bothered her in the past?

James shook his head. Veronica did a lot of things that didn't make sense to him.

"Where were the buttons again..?" He mumbled to himself, looking over the animatronics form to see if any of the buttons were incredibly obvious as he tried to ignore the way he felt as though he were being watched. He leaned forwards and slid a hand over the animatronic's abdomen, trying to find the release button so he could open the chest cavity.

Eventually his fingers ran over a raised surface, and he pressed down against the button. The chest plate opened with a click, the hatch pressing against his chest. He quickly stepped back from the animatronic so he could open the abdomen fully, exposing the mess of wires and metal that lined the innards of the animatronic. He found the other buttons far more quickly than the first one, eventually exposing the full endoskeleton to him. Thick cables and wires made up most of the supports that were keeping the thing upright, lining the back of the outer furry layer of the animatronic. Towards the front, indents could be seen in the endoskeleton where a set of securing mechanisms lined what would have made up the outline of the actual skeletal supports of the animatronic, presumably to keep the skeletal system in place while the animatronic was moving.

The more he gazed at the animatronic, the more obvious it became that it was far more complex than any of the other animatronics that he had seen in the other locations. However, he preferred to avoid looking at the inner-workings of the machines that had terrorized him for so many years.

With little hesitation and no doubt in his mind, he walked back over to the cot and gently picked Veronica, carrying her gently in his arms once more. He carried her over to the animatronic before he gently propped her up against the cold metal of the cables inside the animatronic. He secured straps around her chest, abdomen, legs, and arms--keeping her corpse in place on the animatronic.

Only once she was secured inside the mess of metal wires did he realize just how small she really was. Her calves were in the compartment for the thigh joints, while her arms just barely met the elbow joints within the animatronic.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss any sort of remaining hesitation within his mind. As he approached the animatronic once more, he began to clamp the furry outer plates of the animatronic back in place--over Veronica, who was now trapped within it. He hoped what he was doing would work out correctly.. If not, well, he wasn't exactly sure what he would do--

Or what he could do.

As soon as the faceplate was secured back onto the head of the animatronic, all at once a mechanical whirring seemed to fill the previously silent basement. The large animatronic in front of him shuddered once, twice--and then fell still. A few moments of silence passed, before he heard the sounds of what could only be described as locks clicking into place and tightening around something solid. The pressure that the locks put on the body inside increased until James heard the sounds of bones cracking, and snapping beneath the weight of the mechanical pressure. Blood oozed out of the shoulder, elbow, thigh and knee joints--staining the vibrant red fur of the animatronic a dark scarlet. The animatronic's head rose off of it's shoulders, as if it were forming a neck--and a violent tearing sound could be heard as the mechanisms inside the animatronic forcefully removed Veronica's head from her body, elevating it within the hard mask of the robot. Tendrils of human muscle tissue ran from the head, all the way down until it disappeared into the torso--still oozing the red substance. Yet another series of wet, and violent tearing sounds could be heard as James saw blood flow from the cracks in the abdominal plates of the animatronic, presumably from the damage that the inner workings had done to Veronica's torso.

He didn't want to know what the inside of the giant red beast looked like now.

He took a couple steps back from the bloody animatronic as the floor beneath it began to look a similar shade of scarlet. He covered his mouth with a hand, horrified. Unsure of how to handle the gravity of what he had just done, or how to handle the fact that he actually felt.. Disappointed. He had expected that to work, so why didn't it? Shouldn't the animatronic have come to life as the others had in the past? Pale as a ghost, he turned his back to the animatronic and walked back up the basement stairs.

And unbeknownst to him, the robotic canine's yellow gaze followed him as he walked up the stairs and disappeared through the doorway to the basement.