1987 (First Draft)

Chapter 1.3

Saturday
11,07,1987
10:48 pm


I shined the flashlight through the little slit I opened in the curtains.
Almost like fleshy skin, the rubber masks of the animatronic stared into the void, with eyes hidden behind the skinny animal's face the poor latex production tried to represent.
The bright pink pig's snout of Porky, with orange and green pieces of food drawn around his flabby mouth. Harry's twisted face, smiling like a soul trapped inside the rubber, reminding me of this Krueger from this Nightmare on... some street movie that just came out a couple years back...
And lastly, there are the two main attractions. Philly, with his orange bear face smiling widely, like he is trying to comfort you of the nightmare he is, and Frosty... The white mask couldn't hide the metal teeth fletching under the rubber gums...
"Why does a robot need so many teeth anyway?" I shuddered, as I let the curtain fall back behind me.

I pointed the beam of light away from the animatronics, at the backwall of the backstage. A room cluttered with stage props. Microphones, guitars. Wooden trees, clouds etc. All to create a scenario that the children can enjoy... And quite honestly, I like the cartoony aesthetic, it fits, but then the animatronics? I hate seeming the, at daylight, but at nighttime, up close?
I know that the engineers worked hard on them, and that technology like that is expensive and hard to make, but... Why did they have to make them so... Life-like, especially because they are based on cartoons?

I walked past the wooden cutouts, and props lying around, all the while... I felt something... In my back...
I turned around. The animatronics were still facing the void in front of them... Why do I feel so watched?

A creak sounded from the right, and I immediately jumped.
Instinctively I looked right, and... The sliding metal door to the birthday room slowly moved shut...
There should be no-one there... That room is reserved for birthdays, and the favorite animatronic from the main stage gets moved there...
But there is no-one. No employees, no children, no animatronics...

"M-must've been the wind," I shook the fear off, chuckling nervously, as I move to the end of the backstage, to the folding door separating it from the Parts and Service... I took the handle; I pushed it open.
Behind it was Parts and Service. A small room, with walls lined with metal shelving units, and multiple desks standing in the middle... And there she sat, in one corner opposite of me...

It wasn't with what the metal skeleton stared at me, but rather with what it didn't; Eyes.
The hollow eye sockets of her locking into my soul, staring at me with nothing to stare with. Only the wiry, cold metal robot skull sat there, with its upper jaw ripped off, showing the full extent of the sharp metal spikes on her lower jaw. Her teeth.
"H-hey Mommy Bear..."
I didn't know why I was doing this. Maybe a coping mechanism, while I moved through the electronic pieces scattered on the ground, tables thrown around the place, like a storm raged through it.

I hated Mommy. Even more now that she's sitting here, all broken down and taken apart. But even when she was active. That comforting, mother-like demeanor of her... It may be appealing to little preschoolers, but not to me. She kind of reminded me of my mom...
And now she's been sitting here, for a few months or weeks now, with the technicians trying to fix her desperately.
You could see that the technicians were desperate, as they dismantled nearly everything. Her rubber face, normally similar to Philly's one, was ripped off, with some few pieces of the mask still sticking to the side of her fuzzy, bear-shaped head.
Her body, round and comfortably fluffy, now having a gaping hole torn into its middle, revealing her inner workings. The torn-out compartment for the battery, the plate-sized computer chips, and so much wiring... All smelling weirdly like coffee...
The technicians were really frustrated with her. During breaks they would nearly scream on how they don't fucking know what's wrong with her, before taking another sip and continuing their rant about how they tried everything in their might, but still. Her movement chip remained broken, even after replacing everything in her. She still continued to stare at everyone, children and adults, either moving way to erratically, tearing its fur cloth, or she didn't move at all... Just like she did when her errors first appeared.
They also noted the strange wanting for coffee in its presence, even imagining the smell of it near it... But they weren't imagining it...
I just hope that it wasn't me who caused this, with...