HIDDEN IN THE FLAMES ; afton kids

chapter 5

The scream was deafening.

I watched as the noise faded and Elizabeth's screams of terror were replaced by her fainting.

Given the blood around her, I wouldn't be suprised if anyone thought she was the one that died, but I knew she wasn't.

Tears filled my eyes. I wanted to just drop to the floor and ball my eyes out while my sister lay thwre unconcious and what was left of my brother stay where it was.

But I knew I couldn't. For Lizzy, I thought to myself as I legged it down the corridor to find my father, hoping it wouldn't be long until this was all resolved.

When I found him, William Afton was talking to a bunch of reporters.

I knew the only way to get him to see the crime scene was for me to pestor him into getting fed up.

So I did exactly that.

"Dad! Dad! Dad!" I kept repeating, tugging on his arm. Every time he tried to move it I'd move with him until eventually he just had to acknowledge my existent.

"For fucks sale Evan, will you shut up? What could possibly be more important than this interview?" he asked, whispering so no one would hear other than me.

"Micheal.. Liz.. Circus Baby.."

I could barely make out my words. My heart was beating rapidly inside me, tears streaming from my face the more I stuttered out.

Despite all that, I think father caught on to what I was on about, because not even a minute later, he had politely excused himself from the interciwers and followed me to the location of my siblings.

When we reached the scene, he didn't look shocked about what had happened nor did he look remotely angry or upset. It was like he was expecting that to happen.

Looking back, I should've questioned him about this. His own son had died and he just didn't care. It seemed rather heartless of him.

"I'm going to go tell them to close this place," father said at last. "Go get your sister."

And with that, he left.

Whatever happened next was a blur. Me and Elizabeth had been taken home.

We were unsupervised at the time and were playing on Micheal's C64 like we usually did when there was no one else watching us.

Elizabeth had stopped crying by now and wasn't acknowledging what had happened. I think thatms why we were playing video games, because neither of us truely wanted to acknowledge the impact of what had happened earlier.

He was dead. I knew that, Liz knew that, Father knew that. Did anyone else know that?

A loud bang errupted from the entrance to our house, following by the phone going and screaming you could hear even from the back of the house.

This followed for about ten minutes before Elizabeth finally looked at me.

"What - what happened to Micheal?" She asked, her voice soft and quiet like she was asking for the hope I would reassure her that it was a bad dream and he was okay and he was just doing some chores.

I wanted to tell her that her that she didn't see what had happened correct and he had just scraped his arm on Circus Baby and now needed to go to hospital just like when he had told us he could climb the highest tree at the park but the last branch had snapped at his weight and he cut it when he fell down.

But we couldn't deny it.

I had saw it.

She had seen it.

We couldn't ever deny itS

"I-I don't know.." I confessed. "But I know he's not okay."

"oh."

She started crying.

I started crying.

We sat together, crying, for what felt like hours but was in reality only about ten minutes.

"Was it my fault?" Elizabeth asked, stuttering her way through the sentence as she stopped herself from screaming her heart out.

"No Lizzy! It wasn't," I responded.

"But I was the one who wanted to see Baby," Elizabeth continued. "If I didn't then he wouldn't be bleeding."

I hugged her.

I wanted to protect her from anything in that moment. The outside world didn't have the rights to hurt her. She needed to stay pure, painless and brave as she was.

Suddenly, father came into the room and we both dried our eyes.

"Circus Baby's Pizza World has been closed," he began. "It's both your fault for not following instructions."

It was clear in any other circumstance he would've punished us. Probably something along the lines of being grounded. But obviously, we couldn't be punished any more than the events we had just witnessed.

"Daddy," Elizabeth said right before father had a chance to leave the room. "Will we see Micheal again?"

I bit my nail.

Or at least what remained of it.

"No," father said immediately. It was a quick reaction, almost like he had been expecting one of us to ask it the first chance we got.

Elizabeth's tears started pouring out her eyes again. "Why?"

"It's quite simple really," father began to explain. "Your immaturity killed him."

It was clear to me that he was building up to a bigger rant. One thing, one mention of the boy trapped, most likely dead, in the robot, would most likely cause him to spirally into a rant likely to emotionally harm someone.

But that was the thing.

It was clear to me.

Not Elizaabeth.

"What - what do you mean. What's killed? What did I do?" she sobbed.

"Well you lured him to that robot and that robot crushed him. You caused him to die because you couldn't follow the simplest of intrestions to just ignore the animatronic for one fu- for one day."

I grabbed Elizabeth's hand as he continued.

"If you never went to see her, he would still be alive. Therefore, you killed him."

At this point, she was sobbing into my knees. I was holding back tears I knew were going to burst any second now.

Father went to exit the room. The door was half shut, revealing a light so dim that only a couple of posters and his bed could be made out. The conversation had been going on for long enough for the game to reach a point it thought we weren't playing anymore. It never helped that the light had been flicked off on accident when he started leaving the rolm.

"One more thing," father begun, opening the door just enough for us to make him out in the dark room. "This is our little secret, okay."

We both looked up confused. I could see Elizabeth's hand reach for her eyes so she could focus (and see) easier.

"It would be very bad if anyone found out your brother died because of my robots. For the safety of all three of us, it's best the world thinks my company had nothing to do with it."

He cleared his breath. "However, you both know, so it's best we just pretend this never happened. Otherwise, we won't have anything. We wouldn't want Micheal to have died just for us to go broke, right?"

He waited a second, smirked, and then left the room.

The door had been camly shut, leaving just me and Elizabeth in the darkness without any light.

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