Absurdist Phone Guy Stuffed in a Suit

12 - Breakthrough

Fritz Smith

"AAH!" Fritz cried out, wriggling his body in a vain attempt to reduce the pain emanating from his chest. The progress from the previous day left him motivated to spend yet another night experimenting with his soul, but as the first cracks of daylight filtered through the garage window, all he felt was completely, utterly, drained. But this was too important – if what Bon-Bon had told him about blending in had even a hint of truth to it, and he knew it did, then these experiments might be the one thing between him and a normal life. At least, as normal of a life as he could hope for, animatronic parts notwithstanding.

Once the pain subsided to a dull throb, Fritz got back to work. The past night had mainly consisted of him colliding those strange particles inside his soul with one-another and hoping for the best. Unfortunately, hope alone simply wasn't enough, and although he'd managed to become more consistent with the sorts of hallucinations he could make himself (and hopefully others) experience, it still did him no good if they worked for less than a second and set him into a fit of blinding pain every single time. He thought he might get better with practice, but all he managed to improve was his own pain tolerance. Fritz chuckled – if nothing else, getting stuffed in that suit probably helped him on that avenue.

He could keep scrambling his soul day-after-day, but it was slow, painful, and even if he wasn't damaging his soul in the process (doubtful), he would still probably go insane doing it. There had to be another way. The problem was that Fritz was barely able to control his soul, much less understand the underlying mechanics of it. So, he was left to blind experimentation – preferably the kind that didn't smash his soul into bits.

In light of that fact, Fritz focused inwards, carefully observing the inner workings of his soul and trying to think up a useful experiment that wouldn't hurt badly. He'd of course repeated his initial experiment over-and-over again – slowing down one of the particles in his soul and waiting for another to smash into it. He'd also tried flinging the particles off of the grid his soul was attached to, which, unsurprisingly, hurt. In one bout of recklessness, he even tried slowing down multiple particles and mercifully blacked out instead of enduring the pain of his soul rupturing when they exploded. So it was to safe to say that any experiment involving explosions was off the table.

As he carefully scanned his soul, Fritz noticed something that caught his curiosity. It was ever-so-subtle, but the particles seemed to simply vanish as they reached one part of his soul. Normally when they hit a dead end, they would simply wrap around to the backside of the grid. It was hard to tell from a causal glance whether a particle simply went to the other side or if it actually disappeared, but after a few moments of careful focus, he was certain that was exactly what was happening. Curiously, he directed a few particles to go into this "void", and was astonished when they not only disappeared but did so completely painlessly.

After testing it out with a few more particles, he felt confident enough to try out an idea on the border between crazy and genius: exploding a particle inside the void. First, he slowly nudged one towards it, then sent another speeding towards the first, just fast enough that they would collide but only once they left his soul. Fritz braced himself, nervously watching as the second particle sped into the void, and felt... nothing. Once again, he sent a pair of particles in, this time configuring them to actually do something. As soon as the second particle crossed the threshold, Fritz felt a high-pitched squeak emanate from inside his head. It was no different from any of his previous experiments, save for one important detail: he felt no pain. This could work. Not only was he able to practice it, but he could actually make use of his newfound ability. Grinning, Fritz set to work, suddenly reinvigorated and ready to figure out how to do something useful with it.

......

Jeremy Fitzgerald

Jeremy woke up with the groan – his late night really took a toll on him, and the thought of what he'd have to do that day only cemented that feeling. Pleading Ben's case to his boss would suck, but was nothing compared to having to check the animatronics for corpses. He shuddered at the thought, then, putting his worries behind him, got out of his bed and started getting ready for the day.