Respite of a Distant Dream

Found The Past

...Sniff... sob... hic...

"...Eh...?"

Gregory, disoriented, cranes his neck towards the slivers of light peeking out through from the ballpit his body was cradled under, nestled in. The weight, unsurprisingly, wasn't crushing or suffocating- a result of his unique nature, perhaps, he assumed.

It was strange... one moment his Fazerblaster and Fazcam were entirely out of charge, and several of those stupid security S.T.A.F.F. bots were rolling right in his direction. He had already imagined the blaring glow of the flashlight in his face and the deafening shriek of the electronic synth within its voicebox- preferring not to have his life flash before his eyes, he ducked under the ballpit to hide until quite a bit of time passed and...

Somehow he ended up here.

The brunette pokes a hand out and is met with the bright, fluorescent lights from above that make him grunt and turn his head away, eyes locked in a squint as he steadily rises from the fetal position he lay in. The light scatters across his body, coupled with the golden rays of the sun filtering through the thick panes of framed glass that were the windows. He couldn't help but smile, as he found the warmth prickling across his skin comforting... the sensation a familiar one.

Wait. Familiar.

The smile instantly dissipates from his face as quickly as it came. Gregory's gaze finds itself darting around the room as he stumbles out of the ballpit only to fall face first into the carpeted linoleum floor below. "Uf-!"

Dark navy linoleum floors, patterned with specks of colour so bright it almost appeared black instead..

He grows more panicked and confused the more sights and sounds, smells and memories return to him, breaths sharp and shallow.

Painted grey drywalls striped with shades of translucent black and white.

Colored light projectors that illuminated the center stage, still somehow working. And the center stage... constructed of wood and metal so many other construction supplies.

Endless posters of anthromorphic mascots with black and violet accessories, purple bowties dotted with stars as golden as their matted fur.

Neat tables with white cloth draped over them, decorated with the same multicolored confetti that adorned the floor beneath him- party streamers and balloon bouquets that adorned said tables, shining underneath the white light at maximum hum-buzz above him.

More emotions once lingering in the back of his mind blared in Gregory's face like a foghorn.

Hysteria. Desperation.

A primal, bone-deep fear that drove him from the core within- as though even his atman from within were afraid and visceral and driven to panic before red met white and yellow- before machinery met skin.

Before the world-ending pain and the screams of horror and despair below him vaporized the oceans, quelling the thunder, stopping the flow of time itself as it tore heaven and earth asunder to nothing more than smithereens.

The boy shudders- he can still recall what came afterwards as he glances to the animatronics onstage- Fredbear and Springbonnie, strangely still there onstage and turned off, judging by their limp bodies. Their machinery, pristine and not rusted in the slightest, shimmering like the unsettling matrices of springlocks and metal that laid within.

...

He still remembered the sickening feeling of absolute weightlessness that would've made him vomit if he could- the infinite colours and specks of starlight and incomprehensible vastness encapsulating him as he hugged his plushies close to his chest. He remembered the soul from within tearing itself apart- the light and vacuum and the chaos as his body split- as he was broken apart into two before the twisted cycle of reincarnation that awaited him at the end.