Fazbear Frights #6: Blackbird

The Real Jake

Growing weaker by the day, nine-year-old Jake looks back on the time before he was sick, imagining life as if he were well again

The child's bedroom was crowded, even though it held only two people. It was crowded because it held so many hopes and so many regrets. It was crowded because it held the potential for so much more than what was.

"Let's get you comfy." Margie cradled Jake's shoulders while she reached behind him and repositioned his pillows. The window fan blew a lock of her shoulder-length light brown hair across her upper lip so it looked like she had a mustache. She pursed her full lips and puffed the hair back in its place.

Jake tried to remember the last time he'd been comfy. Maybe three years ago, when he was six?

No matter what Margie did with the pillows, Jake wouldn't be comfy, but he let Margie think she was doing something helpful. She tried really hard, and he didn't want her to know she couldn't make it better, like she wanted to.

Over the whirr of the fan, Jake could hear kids playing in the neighbor's yard. Squeals of glee alternated with laughter and the occasional shout. He tilted his head so the elm tree outside his window wasn't in the way, and he saw the trailing end of a sprinkler spraying a stream of water across the neighbor's lawn. Actually, he saw two, but he knew one was just an echo of the first. Although the fan drowned it out, the sprinkler made its pft, pft, pft sound in his mind. He loved that sound. It was the sound of fun. He used to be one of the kids who played in that sprinkler and squealed in glee. When it got over ninety degrees, Mrs. Henderson always let the kids turn her front yard into a water park.

"Jake?"

Jake shifted his attention from the window to Margie. Margie had an echo, too. Both Margies frowned at him. Jake concentrated on ignoring the second Margie, as he had to ignore the second one of everything he saw.

His Pine Nut made him see double. It was annoying, but he was used to it.

Margie rubbed Jake's bald head. Her palm was warm and rough, so different than his mom's palms had been. He wasn't sure he had it right because it had been four years since his mom had died, but he remembered his mom's hands as soft. Still, he liked it when Margie rubbed his head. It got him a tiny bit closer to finding comfy's hiding place.

"Earth to Jake."

Obviously, she'd been talking and he hadn't heard her. He did that more and more these days. He was happier when he was not where he was, so it was hard to make himself pay attention to what she was saying.

"I asked if you feel up to some vegetable soup." Margie blew her hair off her face again as she fussed over Jake's sheets. Her full cheeks were flushed from the heat, and her mascara was smudged.

Jake thought it was funny that Margie always wore makeup. It wasn't like many people saw her. Mostly, it was just Jake.

"I think you're pretty without makeup," he once told her. "You have such big eyes. You look like a cartoon princess."

Margie had obviously liked that, but she still wore makeup. "It's a girl thing," she told him. He figured she wore makeup in case some handsome guy came to the door. When he said that, though, she'd laughed and said,

"I'm not in the market for a handsome guy. I'm only twenty-seven. I'm still young. You're all the handsome guy I need."

Jake didn't think twenty-seven sounded young. That was three times older than he was now, and Margie was three years older now because she'd been taking care of him ever since comfy became part of his past.

Jake didn't want to be trouble, but it was too hot for soup and he wasn't sure he could keep it down. "Crackers?" he asked.

Margie sat down on the edge of the bed. She always sat there, even though a green-and-blue-plaid plush chair was right next to the other side of the bed. The smiley face on her T-shirt twisted so it looked like it was winking at Jake. Sometimes, Jake winked back, but he didn't feel like it today. He was doing that thing that Margie said he should never do.