Fazbear Frights #8: Gumdrop Angel

What We Found

Hudson's young life is littered with tragedy and broken dreams, but a well-paying security job might just be all he needs to turn things around

Hudson leaned his gangly six feet, one inch against the cracked brick archway just inside the newly constructed Fazbear's Fright Horror Attraction. The archway was only two weeks old, but it was made to look like the crumbling entrance to a place thirty-plus years forgotten.

Hudson watched his buddies, Barry and Duane, carry in the latest batch of Fazbear memorabilia for display in the endless halls and rooms inside the building. The lobby was already piled high with opened and unopened cardboard boxes, each stuffed with vintage finds from various Freddy Fazbear's restaurants.

Hudson was doing his best to stay away from the boxes, or not the boxes, actually, but what was in the boxes. The management had dubbed them "vintage finds," but as of a couple days ago, Hudson was calling them something else.

The boxes, as far as Hudson now was concerned, were full of old creepy stuff. And it was old creepy stuff that gave Hudson the heebie-jeebies ...

because he didn't believe it was just stuff. No matter how he tried to rationalize, the memorabilia made the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up stiffer than the needles his granny stuck in voodoo dolls.

"Hudson, think you could give us a hand?" Barry asked.

Hudson's buddies were struggling to keep a stack of boxes upright, but Hudson didn't move.

"I'm not part of the construction and setup crew. I'm the guard."

Duane spit on the linoleum floor. The disgusting blob of saliva landed right in the middle of one of the black squares, which alternated with white squares to create a dizzying checkerboard pattern throughout the building.

The floor gave Hudson a headache.

The whole building was giving him a headache.

How did something that had started so right now feel so wrong?

"I'm the guard," Duane mimicked Hudson in a whiny singsong voice. "You hear that, Barry? He thinks he's entitled or something."

Hudson snorted. "Yeah, right. I'm entitled to working double shifts—

days and nights—and you guys get to work days."

"Whine, whine," Duane said. "This is the best job you've had in years.

You said yourself the pay is great."

Hudson nodded. That much was true, and he'd thought the job would have even more than great pay to offer. But ever since ... no, now it was just a job with crap hours, and he was tired all the time. "Sure, but sleep deprivation tends to make you stop caring about great pay. I have to have some perks for holding the short end of the stick. One of those perks is getting to stand here and watch you two sweat."

"Fine. Be like that," Duane said as he and Barry finally steadied all but the top box in their stack. When that box fell, Barry managed to catch it.

The box popped open when Barry grabbed it. A yellow furry arm flopped out. Hudson stiffened. Oh man, how he hated those character parts.

They were the worst of the creepy old stuff, for sure.

Barry set down the box. Duane pulled out the arm, then reached in and grabbed a second arm. "Check this one out," he said. He held up the second arm and looked at what it held.

"What the heck is that?" Barry asked.

"I think it's a cupcake," Duane said.

"Not a cupcake I'd want to eat," Barry said. "Look at those teeth."