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“Do you really want to go to the restaurant today?”
“Uh, yeah? Why wouldn’t I?”
It’s a Friday afternoon, and Charlie is walking home from school with his best friend so he can get a head start on his weekend homework. He’ll knock out math, maybe English, and then spend the evening getting dinner at the restaurant.
It’s preferable to sitting at home.
Home is where Mom is basically catatonic, and it’s just the two of them. Charlie doesn’t blame her or anything. She hasn’t made a single friend since Clarissa Auntie died, and now her husband is in jail for kidnapping five kids.
Well, they both know he didn’t do it, but that doesn’t really matter.
But Charlie can’t talk about Auntie or Dad because Auntie was Mike’s mom and Dad was definitely framed by Mike’s dad.
“I saw on the news. It’s gonna rain tonight,” Mike says. He doesn’t watch the news. “You should just stay inside.”
Charlie can’t use any of his real excuses for staying inside, so instead he says, “It’s awkward. Mom doesn’t know I’m a guy.”
“No one knows you’re a guy,” Mike points out.
Only Mike does, because Charlie told him that he was jealous that Mike got to be a guy and he didn’t, and Mike said Charlie could be a guy if he wanted.
They’d spent hours reading about transsexualism on the microfilm machine in the library. Most awkward and amazing experience of Charlie’s life.
“Yeah, but new people come to the restaurant all the time,” Charlie points out. “And then, for one evening, everyone sees me as a guy.”
Mike’s limbs tighten. He might be holding his breath.
Charlie wonders what his problem is. Maybe he wants Charlie to come over to his house? Charlie would, if something was wrong, but he doesn’t think there is. And if Mike and his siblings are okay, Charlie would rather go over to the house of a maybe-murderer-definite-kidnapper.
“Can’t we just go to the mall instead?” Mike asks flatly.
Charlie laughs. “Try sounding like you want to go to the mall first.”
Mike just looks more tired.
“Or we can get dinner. I’ll pay.”
That’s weird, right? Weird, and unlike him. Charlie’s skin crawls. He wants Mike to start acting normal. Has Mike been like this all day? They don’t have any classes together, and Charlie didn’t see him at lunch today. Which is also a bit strange. Mike doesn’t really have any other friends, either.
Charlie nudges him and says, “Stop being weird, dude.”
“Sorry,” Michael replies with an audibly feigned laugh. “Just promise you’ll do something else tonight. Not the restaurant.”
“Okay, seriously. I know you’ve never been a fan of the restaurant…” Charlie almost adds, after, but doesn’t. “But why don’t you want me to go today? What’s going on?”
“Can’t you just trust me?” Mike hisses.
“I do,” Charlie says, matching his frustration, “I just don’t get why you’re being like this today.”
“Just trust me,” Mike replies tersely. He clenches his fists. “You don’t want to go to the restaurant.”
“Just give me one reason. One. About why I shouldn’t go.”
Mike just stubbornly crosses his arms. “Like I told you, it’s gonna rain. And you can’t drive yet.”
“I live, like, right by Freddy’s.”
“You’ll catch a cold or something.”
“So? I’ll get to skip school.”
Mike scoffs. “God, Charlie, just give it a rest. I’ll literally pay you to stay home.”
He really is just going to push this, isn’t he? It’s irritating, but Charlie figures Mike isn’t going to stop pushing until Charlie agrees to do something else. But, hey, Charlie wouldn’t consider himself above lying. So he can just promise to stay home and then go to the restaurant anyway. He can tell Mike the truth and ask him what the deal is once he seems more like his usual self.
“Okay,” Charlie lies. “I’ll stay home with my mom tonight. I think being alone has been hard for her, anyway.”
He immediately regrets the excuse. But Mike barely reacts to the reminder that Charlie’s family is in shambles because Mike’s family is in shambles. He just nods.
“‘Kay. I trust you.”
The fact that Mike felt the need to add the final sentence makes Charlie believe he does, in fact, not trust him. Mike is right not to, but still.
But Mike falls into silence right after that. He shoves his hands in his pockets. As much as Charlie enjoys silence, something in the air feels heavy and wrong.
Charlie attempts to break the awkward air with a small joke. “So, are you still gonna pay me?”
Mike walks a bit faster so he’s a few paces ahead. “No.”
Charlie laughs. But something is still wrong.
Charlie’s house is closer to school than Mike’s, but Mike doesn’t usually walk him to the door. Do people really do that? They do that in the movies.
It doesn’t matter.
Mom is in the kitchen, chopping fruit. It’s what she does. She says it’s so Charlie can have a snack after school, but it’s not. It’s so that she can give herself a menial task that will get her out of bed.
Charlie greets her, and does his homework at the dining table while they share an underripe leash and a few oranges. Auntie used to put salt and pepper on orange slices, and it was surprisingly good. But Charlie doesn’t want to suggest that to Mom, because it might make her upset.
Homework never takes Charlie very long. Before the sun goes down, Charlie tells Mom that he’ll grab dinner at the restaurant. Her smile grows a bit more plastic, but she doesn’t bother to protest.
Mike was right—the clouds are heavy and gray. It’s not raining yet, though. Freddy’s is right by his house, just like Fredbear’s is right by Mike’s house. A good business model, Dad used to say as they walked to the restaurant together.
The building is flat and yellow. A wooden sign has a painting of Freddy Fazbear, just above the neon letters that spell out the restaurant’s name. Maybe Charlie is biased, but Freddy’s is kind of the only big thing in Hurricane. Every kid knows it.
They recently started using wristbands for security. Charlie always gets a green one. It’s how the Marionette—him favorite animatronic—can recognize him.
The person giving out the wristbands calls him Ms. Emily, but Charlie is used to it enough that he can mostly shrug it off.
The restaurant is a little less crowded than it is on weekends. Young children run around, screaming and laughing with that endless energy little kids always seem to have. If Charlie wasn’t the child of the man who owned the restaurant—before the arrest, at least, he’d probably have been deemed too old.
Which is total bullshit, because pizza and glitchy arcade games are for everyone. Maybe the animatronics are a bit less lifelike at his age, but they’re still impressive. Charlie knows their inner workings, and they’re so delightfully complex. It doesn’t matter that they’re not as fluid as the old suits.
Those old suits probably did more harm than good, anyway.
Charlie shakes his head and gets a slice of pizza. The cooks know him, so he gets it for free. The pizza at Freddy’s is admittedly very greasy and poor quality, but fancy pizza is so unnecessary when shitty pizza is literally heaven on Earth. Charlie scarfs down his two slices like he hadn’t eaten in days.
Napkins do little to curb the grease on Charlie’s fingers, so he goes to the bathroom to wash it off. He doesn’t like have messy hands. He squares his shoulders and reaches for the girl’s bathroom door, but changes his mind last minute. A tired Dad is also washing his hands, and he doesn’t bat an eye at Charlie’s presence. Baggy hoodie for the win!
Maybe it’s just a little victory, but it’s part of why Charlie visits Freddy’s. The staff know him, but the children here don’t understand gender, and the adults are too tired to notice Charlie in full.
Admittedly, people have mistaken him for a prepubescent boy a couple of times, but Charlie tries to focus on the boy part of that assumption as best he can.
The sun goes down and it starts to rain. The crowd thins out as the hours tick by. Charlie occupies himself with the beat up novel he keeps in the employee break room that is more of a glorified closet, and the occasional arcade game. He’s only willing to bleed through so many quarters.
It’s around nine or ten. Most of the children have left. Charlie sits at one of the party tables, one leg hooked over the other, as he gets to a particularly good chapter.
“Oh my god, Charlie?”
Charlie creases the page and puts down the book. You know those kinds of high schoolers that definitely hate you but then act like your friends? Charlie doesn’t really get it, but that’s probably the best way to describe Christine. She smiles with too-white teeth.
Whiter than Mike’s dad, even. Something Charlie previously thought impossible.
There’s a couple of other girls by Christine. Charlie recognizes them, but he doesn’t know their names.
“What are you doing here?” Christine asks. “Isn’t this place, like, for babies?”
“My dad made half the shit here,” Charlie reminds them. “What’s your excuse?”
The girls giggle amongst themselves at a secret joke Charlie is not privy to.
“My mom is dragging me to my cousin’s party,” one of the other girl explains. “Christine is just saving me from the boredom.”
“So, your dad made the robots, right?” another asks.
“Yep,” Charlie says flatly. He almost corrects them. They’re animatronics, not robots.
“Don’t talk about her dad,” Christine whispers unsubtly to her. “He, like, got arrested.”
“For what?”
“Those kids, remember?”
Charlie rolls his eyes. They could at least pretend they weren’t trying to annoy Charlie.
Unfortunately, it totally works.
“He didn’t do it,” Charlie says, standing so he’s at the girls’ level.
“Everyone seems pretty sure he did,” Christine says. “I’m not surprised, though. Your dad is a murderer, you’re friends with a murderer, you-“
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Really,” pipes up one the girls, “it’s only a matter of time until she becomes a murderer, too.”
“So we’d, like, totally be doing every kid here a favor if we kicked you out.”
Charlie snorts. “Like hell you will.”
It turns out, you shouldn’t really pick fights when you’re wildly outnumbered.
Five boney high schoolers is really all it takes to drag Charlie kicking and screaming across the restaurant. He imagines the scene as an outside observer, but it’s too uncomfortably familiar for him to think about. The girls take him by the arms and shove him out the back door.
The stupid back door locks automatically, so you either need a key, or to go through the front again. The Marionette is meant to stop people from using this door, but it’s no where in sight.
Charlie presses his fingers to the class. The Marionette’s box is covered with presents—people love to treat it like an extra table. The girls cackle, but they pay Charlie little mind. Little corkscrews of his hair cling to his face.
He’s soaked pretty fast. His head and clothes feel heavy as he pounds on the window for someone to let him in. Eventually, he relents with a sigh and moves to go to the front door.
If they were going to fuck with Charlie, they could’ve at least done so without giving him an easy way out.
Charlie hears a car pull up against the curb. The car door opens, and someone walks out. Charlie’s pace quickens, but he doesn’t turn around, until he notices that the car isn’t driving away. Someone pulled up against the curb, left their car, and didn’t park in the lot.
Charlie turns around.
Mr. Afton hobbles toward him. His face is redder than usual, and his gait is unsteady. Mike once said his dad had a drinking problem.
“Charlotte,” Mr. Afton drawls, drawing out Charlie’s detestable full name out.
Charlie takes a few steps back.
Well, an almost delirious thought begins in the back of his head, if you make it out of this, then maybe he didn’t kill those kids after all.
Mr. Afton takes staggering steps toward Charlie, muttering under his breath. His shirt is messily buttoned, so Charlie can see the springlock scars around his neck.
Something in his hand glints.
“Mis- Mister Afton?” Charlie calls out. He’s going to die.
Charlie sees his own reflection for half a second as Mr. Afton raises his knife above his head. Every alarm in Charlie’s head is ringing—he needs to run, he really, really needs to run—but he can’t move. He’s frozen.
Suddenly, Charlie hits the pavement. His knees burn, and he looks up, but water and hair cover his eyes.
Charlie crawls backward a foot or two, brushing the hair from his eyes.
Mike looks at him. His normally brown skin has gone slightly pale. There’s a knife lodged in his chest. Mr. Afton stares at him in a mixture of shock and regret.
“That’s never happened before,” Mike says.
Mr. Afton removes the knife with an ugly squelch, shuddering and muttering to himself. He slowly steps back. Charlie doesn’t care.
Mike lands on his knees. Charlie pulls him back so he can take stock of the injury. Mike’s black shirt is soaked, but Charlie can’t tell what is rain and what is blood.
“Mike!” He hugs him tight against himself. “Help!” Charlie shrieks. “Someone, help!”
“‘M not mad you lied to me,” Mike says for some reason.
“I- I do- don-“ The sobs come up in such quick succession that Charlie can’t form thoughts or words or anything that could possibly help.
He closes his eyes, arms tightly around Mike, and wails.
And, when he opens them, everything is pitch black.
Charlie’s arms are empty. His breath shakes. He can’t-
“Wow. This has really never happened before.”
Charlie looks up. Mike pats his own—completely dry—chest. Charlie begins to realize: his hair and clothes don’t feel as heavy as they had moments ago.
“Mike!” Charlie cries, wrapping his arms around Mike.
And then a million images hit his head all at once.
Before you are rage, you are alive.
You breathe air and you laugh and you cry.
You just wanted to spend a day as a guy at a place that reminds you of your father. Mr. Afton was never the man he said he was, but you somehow didn’t expect for his knife to slide between your ribs and his hands to come around your throat.
You wake up as rage. Your new body is spindly and striped and wrong. Your thoughts remind you that at least they think you are a boy now. You are too angry to decide if being a dead boy is better than being an alive girl.
You seethe and seethe and seethe and only get to wake up at night but at night you are king. You save the children and they all help you to stop the man who took everything from you. You trust no one but them.
You show the man you are not to be trifled with. His face begins to grow blurry, but you know he is purple and he is evil. He catches you one day. You don’t know his face but you know it’s him. He takes you to a place you’ve never been. You’re cold, but then you burn. No one can hear you scream.
You are rage, left without a body. You are just silver, and you simmer alone. Mr. Afton takes a sliver of you and plans. He plans and you recognize a name and you know you love him but you don’t remember who he is.
You enter his veins and suddenly you are back and it is the day you died.
So, you die.
Again.
And again.
And again.
He—Mike, how could you forget Mike—tells you that he’s been reliving your death over and over. You don’t believe him.
Again.
Mike tells you not to go the restaurant. You do anyway.
Again.
Mike goes to the restaurant with you. Mr. Afton shoves his head against the wall and you scream for him and then you die.
Again.
Mr. Afton takes you to the back room and shoves you in the suit and sets it off. Every part of you screams as you thrash around until it finally stops.
Again.
Mike tries to kill his father. He fails. You knew he wouldn’t be able to.
Again. Again. Again.
Sometimes he tries to tell you, but he usually gives up.
He’s gotten injured before. You think things changed when he died for the first time, and you didn’t.
“Did I die?” Charlie asks. His head pounds.
“I guess… I forgot,” Mike whispers. His hand comes to his left shoulder.
“F- Forgot?”
“I th- thought I was reliving today over and over. T- Till I saved you, or something. I dunno.” He grips Charlie’s forearms like a lifeline. “But you died months ago. None of this is real,” he whispers. “Dad injected with me with- with something, and then-“
“That was me,” Charlie realizes slowly, tearing his arms free from Mike’s to claw at his chest. Is his heart still beating? “I stayed behind. I had to. But then, he- he did… I don’t know…”
Mike swallows. “Okay,” he says. He wheezes, and runs his hands through his hair. “Okay, okay, okay, sure. Then I’ll just figure out how to get you out, and then help you move on, and then I’ll…”
“But I still need to stay.”
Mike looks up at Charlie. His eyes are wide. “What? Why?”
“The kids.”
“…The… kids…?” Mike buries his face in his hands. “Oh, god.”
“Mike, they-“
“I know. I know. I know.” Mike shudders. “I wanted to tell and I didn’t, and I’m sorry, I couldn’t, but I knew, I’ve known since you… Since what happened, and I just… I’ll fix it. I don’t know. I will. I’ll-“
Charlie hugs him. Mike feels alive, even as he stills in his arms. Mike is alive. But Charlie isn’t. Charlie shakes. His shoulders bounce with quiet sobs. If Mike is crying, too, he’s incredibly still as he does so.
“I guess I’m- I’m a part of you now,” Charlie whispers.
“I’ll fix it,” Mike repeats.
“Don’t. I want to stay here with you a little while longer.”
No matter what things look like when Mike wakes up.