Fazbear Frights #3: 1.35 AM

Room For One More

Stanley is newly dumped, stuck in a dead-end job for a mysterious employer, and unable to connect with anyone

To tell the truth, Stanley didn't like the place. Something about the way it was hidden from passersby made him wonder what secrets were being kept there. Was it even a legitimate business, or were sketchy deals being made under the table? Stanley didn't know.

When he was hired, the supervisor had told him that his job was on a need to know basis, and as far as the business was concerned, Stanley didn't need to know anything. After a year and a half on the job, the only thing Stanley knew for sure was that his paychecks always cleared at the bank.

To get to work, he had to walk through a storage yard stacked high with lumber, concrete blocks, and steel girders. Concealed in the middle of all the building materials was a stairway leading underground. A single low-wattage light bulb illuminated the dark steps just enough for him to find his way down safely. At the bottom of the stairs he had to pass the same stinking biowaste bin he passed every night. It always had the exact same mixture of foul odors—something chemical, something like rotting food, and most disturbingly, something like how he imagined the smell of decaying flesh. The stench set the tone for the night Stanley was about to spend.

Just like the biowaste bin, Stanley's job stank.

He scanned his ID badge, and the huge metal door opened with a groan that always seemed to express how Stanley felt about his upcoming shift.

Sometimes he groaned right along with it.

The facility was dark and lacked proper ventilation. Because of its underground location, there was always a level of dampness in the air that made Stanley feel clammy. Supposedly, the building was a factory, but even on the inside, it provided no clue as to what kind of work might have been going on there. The building was a network of dim hallways faintly illuminated by sickly greenish lights. Networks of black pipes snaked overhead. Throughout the hallways were giant locked metal doors. Stanley had no idea what went on behind them.

If the place were a factory, it would stand to reason that people were on the premises manufacturing something. Sometimes, Stanley could hear the banging and rumbling of some kind of machinery behind the big locked doors. He assumed that there must be other workers in the building, people operating the machinery, but during his entire time on the job, he had yet to lay eyes on another human being.

It was strange to be a guard and not really know what it was you were guarding.

Stanley walked down one of the hallways, hearing hissing and clanging from behind one of the metal doors, and then scanned his ID badge to enter the security office. He settled down at his desk, where he could watch all of the building's entrances and exits on the facility's high-tech monitors.

Stanley had been hired to work at this facility a year and a half ago. At his job interview, it became obvious that this job was unlike any other security guard position he had ever held before. The supervisor who hired him was a strange little bald man in a too-large suit who fidgeted and seemed to have a hard time meeting Stanley's eyes. "It's not a difficult job," the man had said. "You sit in the security office, watch the building's exits on the monitors, and make sure nothing gets out."

"Nothing gets out?" Stanley had asked. "In other jobs, I've always watched to make sure nobody gets in."

"Well, this isn't other jobs," the twitchy little man had said, taking a sudden interest in the papers on his desk. "Just watch the exits, and you'll be fine."

"Yes, sir," Stanley had said. He was confused, but he didn't want to make trouble. He had been laid off from his previous position, and the bills were piling up. He needed this job.