Five Nights

TRAPPED

    Michael stood, paused, in the doorway to the basement, fear gripping his cold heart.
    His father had always worked on his projects down here. Just like Uncle Henry’s old workshop, it always smelled like oil and metal and heat. Michael hated it down there, the lack of ventilation made it hard to breathe and he’d always been claustrophobic. He still was, though less so, and his hatred for the cellar had not waned over the years.
    Distantly, Michael recalled the sounds that would always come up from the underground rooms- saws, the sound of robotic parts moving, metal and plastic being melted and molded together and given the ability to move. William had always wanted his animatronics to be as life-like as possible, though Uncle Henry had disagreed- Henry had always made the animatronics with a limited range of motion, especially after the incidents at Fredbear’s. He didn’t want to risk the possibility of children getting hurt. Of course, his attempts were futile.
    Michael’s hands tightened into fists as he slowly pushed his way through the door and down the old, creaking wooden stairs. The air of the basement was different from the rest of the house; cleaner somehow.
    The light was on- Michael heard the rumble of a generator from one of the other rooms. His father’s old worktable had remained largely unchanged; papers and blueprints strewn about the right half, and a lamp looming over some metal bits and pieces. Above the table, several unique tools hung, each placed meticulously and perfectly beside the others. There was no dust to speak of here; unlike the other areas of the house, everything was clean.
    “Is this where you’ve been hiding, all this time?” Michael asked nobody in particular, looking around at the empty room. Other than the worktable, there were only two doors- one across from the stairs and one hidden beside them. If William had decided to use his old home as a hiding place, then he wasn’t here right now. Despite that, Michael grabbed an old hammer from the array of tools, gripping it tightly as if he were about to swing it like a lumberjack would their axe.
    Michael stalked past the worktable and into the next room, where the old washer and dryer were. Apparently, this was where the generator also was, rumbling away in the corner with several wires protruding from its surfaces. This room was slightly bigger than the other and had cardboard boxes stacked up against every wall. There was only a small path for Michael to head toward the next room, an old closet where William kept fabric and fur for the animatronic suits as well as old clothes.
    The closet was dark, hot, and stuffy. Michael looked through each withering, old costume with the carefulness his father had taught him, sighing in relief when there was nothing there but mothballs and a couple of spiderwebs. He turned and headed back to the first room, the one with the worktable, and approached a second door, hidden away in the corner parallel with the old staircase.
    A cool chill pricked his spine and neck as Michael remembered the first time ever he’d been in the room behind the door. He’d been young- Evan hadn’t been born yet, Elizabeth was still in diapers. Michael could still remember his mother’s worried face when William had told her that he was gonna “show Em something magical” with a wink, the reluctant and shy way she smiled at his father and the child that he used to be as they descended into the basement.
Em. Emilia. It’d been forever ago, so of course he still went by that name.
    Then, Michael had still loved his father wholeheartedly, blinded by his short-lived childhood happiness. Fredbear’s had only been open for a month, and was struggling to compete with the adjacent corporate chain Chucky Cheese. He could still remember his father’s exact words as they’d walked into the basement: “That rat bastard won’t see this coming, oh no. You’ll love this, Em, and so will everybody else, just you see.”
   
    Michael had grinned up at his father, happy to finally have his attention- William had spent every day and night working at either Fredbear’s or in the basement, hardly coming out even to eat. Even then, Mike hadn’t liked the animatronics, but it didn’t matter so long as his father was giving him that proud, loving and so obviously hollow look he’d fallen for.
    “Wait here,” William had told him as he retreated into the room, closing the door behind him. Michael had sat in his father’s chair, swiveled to face the door, waiting eagerly for what was to come. William had called for him a few moments later, and Michael remembered walking in to see a giant, golden bunny looming over him. Its eyes were dark and had a human glint to them, and its mouth was open to show a black cloth- at the time, Michael had thought it to be a speaker. His father was nowhere to be seen, and Michael had tilted his head in confusion, approaching the stiff bunny animatronic.
    He remembered the way he’d looked up at it in awe and confusion, wondering what his father had wanted to show him, before touching its soft, fresh golden fur- it was warm. He recoiled slightly in surprise, but then-
    “BOO!” Michael had screamed in surprise, scooped up in a stiff yet humanly fluid movement by his disguised father, who spun him around. William, then, had had a warm laugh, not hollow enough for anybody to realize the fakeness of it all. Michael had cried and laughed and looked at the animatronic confusedly all at once, unsure how to react, before Will had set him down and carefully removed the animatronic costume head. “Don’t worry, it’s just me! What d’ya think?”
    Michael had stared at William for a moment, then grinned and burst out laughing with childish glee. He’d been young, only 6 or so, so of course he’d loved the bunny. William  had grinned back, then picked up the head again and kneeled beside Michael. “I know it doesn’t seem very special from the outside, but, well… You could say your old man worked some mechanical magic.” Will had grinned, showing Michael the inside of the head.
    Several mechanical works of art were plastered to the sides of the head, held in place by small, circular locks- Michael would later learn these were springlocks. Two eyeballs were pulled back and above their sockets, glassy green staring down at Michael, and the main circuitry of the endoskeleton head was located in the back and top of the bunny’s head, almost like a brain.
    Mike remembered looking over at his father confusedly, who sighed and removed the rest of the suit. “Figured you wouldn’t get it. Here, watch this.”
    William left the suit in a sitting position, clicking the head into place- Michael now saw the two larger springlocks sticking out from the neck to hold the head together with the rest of the suit. Michael had watched as William picked up a purple hand crank, not unlike the ones that rolled the windows up and down in their car at the time, and plucked the rabbit’s purple bowtie off, inserting the crank. Michael’d watched in awe as William struggled to turn the thing, the metal inside the suit creaking and clicking satisfyingly into place, the suit twitching in unison with each sound until, finally, its glassy eyes popped into place and it stopped moving.
    “It can be both a costume and an animatronic. Isn’t that just brilliant, Em? We can go and dance with the crowd if we want now, and leave the animatronics to do the on-stage shows.” William had grinned at Michael then, who hadn’t understood a single word that had just spewed out of his father’s mouth.
    The memory was one of the few ignorantly sweet ones that Michael had of his father, before their family fell apart. Then, Michael had been welcoming and eager to enter room, he’d wanted to return there every afternoon after school just to see his father show him the mechanics behind his new suits again. Of course, William had turned him away quickly every time. Now, Michael was hesitant to even turn the doorknob, and was even more reluctant to actually enter the room.
    Before everything had changed, the room had been welcoming, but now it was cold and cruel. There was scarcely anything now- a lone glass eye sat in the corner, mysteriously surrounded by dark red stains that Michael didn’t want to ponder. A small box sat beside the door, closed with some small bits of circuitry sitting on its top. Finally, to the right, was-
    Michael froze.
    That old, rabbit-like suit sat in the corner, seemingly empty. Its glass eyes were cracked and dirty, and its jaw had been broken somehow and now gaped openly in a wide grin. The black cloth screen that had hidden the face behind the suit was missing, and now showed the mechanics of the endoskeleton inside. Its fur was molding and bloodied, streaked with grime and withering with age.
    The rabbit stared dejectedly at the floor as Michael slowly approached it, crouching in front of it. He scarcely breathed as he stared at it, though it refused to lift its head or acknowledge him. Another memory surfaced as he watched it in its stillness.
    It had been only a few weeks after Evan was born, and his mother had consequentially died. Michael had snuck down into the basement, into the room with the springbonnie prototype that his father had shown him. Like now, the bunny sat in the corner as if in exile.
    Michael had approached the animatronic, whimpering and angry in a way only a child could be. Its springlocks had been retracted, but Michael hadn’t noticed as he approached the robotic costume. He was shaking with anger- at Evan, at his father, at the unfairness of it all. He didn’t know why or how it would make anything better, but Michael then punched the thing as if it had personally offended him, his puny fist hitting its metal jaw with surprising force.
As the blow had landed upon the animatronic’s face, Michael’s hand slipped, getting caught just above the springlock that served as its neck. Michael had frozen, crying out in surprise, then jerked his hand away.
The spring lock had snapped harshly, and in Michael’s hurry to get away, he had mostly avoided losing his hand. A wide cut had stretched across his hand, revealing his knuckles, and Michael had run to his father’s office crying that a dog had attacked him. But William had known the truth. He always had.
William had been furious, locking Michael in his room for the rest of the night.  Back then, Michael hadn't been used to such treatment and had cried at the door until 6 a.m.. He'd later learn to get used to this kind of treatment and deal with it.
    Michael shook his head, glaring at the animatronic before him. Father would’ve said it was pathetic to fear something that could not move, especially when he had better things to do than reminisce on the past. He was angry, but there was nothing he could do about that now besides move on and focus on the present. His anger had always done more harm than good.
    He stood up swiftly, leaving the basement and the house altogether- though he kept the hammer, tossing it in the back seat of his old truck. Michael didn’t have much of a need for sleep or even food, but he still felt the urge to return to his quote on quote “home” for the day and relax. He could investigate more tomorrow, for now, he needed to rest.
    There wasn’t much of an option when it came to non-permanent housing in Hurricane. Michael had found an apartment on the edge of town, and it was nice- liveable, at least, although ‘living’ wasn’t the best word for what Michael did. He let himself relax and enjoy a hot shower, cleaning copious amounts of foundation from his face and neck and finally getting to change into a more comfortable set of clothes.
    Michael took a second to look over himself in the mirror. He didn’t feel much in the way of pain ever since the incident at Freddy’s sister location, nothing really compared to getting your insides scooped out like a carton of ice cream and then having a giant, mechanical monster shoved inside of you for a week, and then finally throwing it up on the sidewalk and literally dying.
    His skin had long since lost its natural, pale tone and now was bruised and patchy, with an unnatural purple hue that had shown up after his revival. After discovering his new tolerance for pain, especially on his torso, he’d performed a messy top surgery on himself, and two semi-circle scars remained, a reminder and testament to his gender identity. He, personally, liked them.
    Beneath the self-inflicted scars on his chest was a strange, twisting scar that looked almost like a spider with three legs- one reached out toward the left, sprawling onto his side a little, while another reached out half the distance to the right. Finally, a pale line sliced upwards, stopping just below his surgery scars. The flesh was held together by thick, dark stitching, and Michael thought for a moment that he looked like the handmade doll his mother had made for Elizabeth when she was young.
    Michael sighed as he looked over his injured body for one more moment, then pulled a black shirt over the scars. The week was bound to be a long one for him, but for now he could nap and relax- further investigation could wait till the afternoon.
_____________________________________________
yo hey uh sorry this took so long to post, I had to do some things with the story but now I'll hopefully be able to post more often, xoxo - mike