Unraveling

Shattered Expectations

A pizza establishment.
A very brightly colored pizza establisment with big cartoon animals decorating the walls and the billboards on the highway it was adjacent to for a good 1200km. This is what you had been driving for days for.

This wasn't looking too good for your suspicion about your soulmate being just born, although who would take a one-week old to a bright technicolour pizza place marketed for probably ages 5+?

Just calm down, think about some other possibilities. maybe your soulmate was blind and never knew that they didn't have a string in the first place. maybe they happen to work here or maybe,, maybe they own the establishment and they're loaded.

you took a deep breath, picturing that scenario in your mind as you made your way into the building.

It was getting late and you couldn't help but feel a bit out of place as families stared at you as you entered while they were all leaving.
The air smelt of fresh pizza and you could already feel the thin layer of grease coating the floor.

You'd googled the closing time and you had like twenty minutes, which was fine. you'd just sneak a peek and leave, no trouble at all.

Even if you did run overtime, you'd worked in retail before, you wouldn't get locked in. The amount of times you'd get silently annoyed at last minute customers making you keep the store open past closing time because they refused to leave, you'd be way less of a nuisance if you calmly leave the store when requested to do so.

Amongst your brief research finding the closing time, you'd discovered this was actually a revamp of the nutorious Freddy Fazbear Pizza Franchise.

You'd heard stories from your grandparents about them taking your father there as a child. He loved watching the iconic animatronics on tv but when they went for his birthday he got up close with one of the animatronics for a photo and almost threw up from the smell.

So when all those horror stories about the franchise started circling around your family was very quick to believe them. to be honest, you might have developed a small phobia of robots from the stories being told to you near constantly as a child.

But standing here in the establisment now, spotting a few of the key characters like the bear and the chicken, you didn't feel too scared. They were expressive, they were holding conversations rather than repeating pre-recorded dialogue and you obviously couldn't see any child guts leaking from  their joints.

although, the other robots, the ones all over the place carrying mops and driving on hoverboard-type feet to clean up spills and stains did freak you out a little bit.

You're pretty sure you heard all those stories were fabricated by an indie game developer anyway so feel fairly safe.

looking ahead, the string suddely went from weaving across the ground to going straight up to the ceiling. how in the world did it even get up there? the ceiling was so high up in the foyer, accomodating for the second story balcony looking down at your location.

you spent way too long trying to squint up at the ceiling and guage which direction the string was going that you didn't notice the family in front of you as you walked right into the mother.

"hey! watch it!"

"O-oh! i'm so sorry I didn't see you there!" you appologised. the mother simply huffed, stomping away, her daughter mimicking her and stomping away too.
as they walked off you spotted the string hanging from the ceiling behind where she once stood, dangling right in the way of a large set of doors to some sort of daycare pick up spot the mother must've come from.

This also didn't look good.
remember the blind worker. Your soulmate must be staff here. Not a child.




Sun waved goodbye to the last kid to be picked up, a grumpy mother and her daughter that seemed to have adopted her mum's attitude.

Now that the children were gone, Sun was able to leave...

Glancing at the exit Sun felt a small sense of dread gnawing at his circuits.

Later! he had plenty of time! twenty whole minutes to clean up the daycare and get out the front doors before they closed. twenty minutes to get locked out before Moon could keep them inside.

But Sun knew twenty minutes wasn't enough. he wouldn't even finish cleaning before the lights went off.

Moon used to finish the cleaning but now since Moon didn't seem inclided to do anything productive while he was in charge, Sun just finishes it in the morning before customers arrive.

Sun solemnly picked up another toy left on the ground, looking more at his finger and the string rather than the toy itself.

"I knew you couldn't do it."

Sun ignored him. He can. And he will. Just maybe not today.

The string shifted a lot in a diferent direction. It had been doing that a lot today.

He was right by the door when he heard it. a small surprised intake of breath by the exit to the rest of the pizza plex.

Sun looked up. and there stood an unfamiliar face, shocked, covering their mouth with their hands. hands that had a red string carefully tied around their ring finger.

you were here! You had come to meet them! 

So why did you look so scared?

Sun's systems indicated that your heartrate was rapidly increasing and so was your adrenaline level.

You took a hesitant step backward.

No no no no no! Why were you leaving?

"Because we're not a real person." Moon mocked in an 'I told you so' way

"Wait!" Sun yelled, but it  was too late. you had turned around and begun running out of the daycare.

Sun began running too.
"Wait! Please! Wait for us!"

But he suddely stopped. Something was different.

glancing around, his surroundings looked off, there was no glass or netting between him and the party rooms.
He looked back at where he had come from. He was out. without even thinking, he had left the Daycare.

Sun watched in baited breathe as the lights slammed off one by one, the dark stepping closer and closer. And this time, standing at the threshold to the daycare, the darkness never reached him, instead, stopping right at his feet.

"I didn't think you had it in you."

Sun didn't either.

Their soulmate! Sun spun back around and raced out the door you had left through. 

He was safe for now, but the lights would be going off in the entire pizza plex ten minutes after close. He had to make sure you would come back. he had to make sure you made it out before the doors closed but not before he could try to talk to you, to explain what was going on.