Can't Leave

A Five Nights at Freddy's Fanfiction by Chironex27

Brendon looked inside Fredbear's Diner. He hoped that maybe, if Zack could see him, he might let him come inside and have a piece of the cake that Fredbear was carrying around.

Ever since the diner had opened and introduced its new robot bear waiter, Brendon had wanted to come. Fredbear looked so happy, carrying cake to all the tables. Fredbear cake was supposed to be the best too. Zack looked like he was having so much fun eating cake with his friends.

Brendon had wanted to go to Zack's birthday party when he heard that it was at Fredbear's, but he wasn't invited. Zack's Dad had a lot of money, so he got to do things like this all the time, and he had a lot of friends. Brendon had wanted to be Zack's friend, but Zack didn't notice him at all. Brendon's family had only just moved to the neighborhood, away from all of Brendon's old friends. It had been really hard for Brendon to talk to anyone at his school, so no one noticed or cared about him. Thinking like that made Brendon sad. He missed his friends. He wanted people to like him, but he didn't think anyone did. He started to cry.

Fredbear stopped in the middle of the diner and looked at Brendon. He was the only one to notice the little kid crying outside. Then Zack started to bang on the table for his cake. Fredbear turned his attention from one upset child to another and continued to serve cake.

Fredbear was the only one to notice Brendon. He was the only one to care about him, the only one who might want Brendon as a friend. But he couldn't leave the store, and Brendon wasn't allowed into the reserved store if he wasn't invited. The thought made it so that he didn't notice the car driving around the other side of the store.

…

Brendon watched as Zack opened one of his presents. Zack seemed excited about this one, it was big, and wrapped in elegant paper. Brendon thought he saw Zack mouth the word "Grandma." When he opened it though, Zack's smile became a little fixed. What he pulled out was a large doll, about the size of a grown man. It resembled a sock monkey, having a long, lanky black body, with white striped limbs. Its most distinctive feature was its face, a white mask with a black mouth and eyes, with red dimple cheeks and spots above and below its mouth, like a clown's makeup. What stood out the most to Brendon though were the purple stripes hanging down from its eyes, almost as if the doll was crying. Brendon realized that it was a puppet. Zack and his friends looked at it apprehensively, until Zack dropped it to the floor as another present was handed to him, kicking the doll under the table. The puppet was facing Brendon.

Brendon began to think about going home when he noticed a reflection in the window above him. Brendon couldn't make out most of what the person looked like because his face was shadowed and distorted by the reflection. All he could make out was that the person was wearing purple, and he was smiling. Brendon could just make out his eyes. A person's eyes are the most expressive part of their body, and Brendon could tell, just from the man's eyes that he wanted to hurt him.

He was going to hurt him a lot, and have fun doing it. Brendon couldn't turn around or cry out. He only stared at the reflection, facing the puppet in the store as the trickle of tears down his eyes became a downpour.

…

The Fredbear animatronic had originally been programmed by Mr. Wendell with only one imperative: Make children happy. It was programmed with rudimentary facial recognition software to monitor happiness in children (ignoring adults who could find the animatronic creepy, apart from recognizing employees wearing purple uniforms), along with a series of phrases meant to make children feel welcome. The phrases were used depending on the actions being performed in the restaurant ranging from "Enjoy your cake!" whenever cake or some other food was brought to a table, to "Welcome to Fredbear's!", whenever a new child entered, and "I hope you had a great time at Fredbear's!" when a child left, or to respond to the emotional state of a child, such as "You're going to have a great time!", "Hey there, how are you doing?", "Are you having a good day?", and "I hope you have a great time at Fredbear's!" whenever an unhappy child was detected. However, after a hectic series of events in which Fredbear walked out of the diner to make children happy on the street, Mr. Wendell programmed in another imperative: Stay in the store.

Today, as the animatronic was bringing cake to children in a birthday party, it identified a crying child outside the store.

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

The first imperative required Fredbear to stop and identify why the child was sad, though the second imperative reasserted itself as Fredbear identified irritation and anger from children inside the store awaiting their cake, and Fredbear continued to bring cake. However, the child outside the store remained unhappy, making the software in the animatronic slow down,

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

adversely affecting the happiness of the children inside the store, who were shouting for more cake. The Fredbear animatronic continued to fulfill its directives as quickly and efficiently as its software would allow, managing to focus only on the children in the store.

The Fredbear animatronic observed a store employee approach the child outside. As the employee came behind the child, the child began to cry more.

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

The child's emotional state deteriorated at an exponential rate.

-CHILD UNHAPPY-CHILD UNHAPPY-CHILD UNHAPPY-

Fredbear stopped in the middle of the store, a plate of cake still in its hand. It attempted to alleviate the child's unhappiness with a preprogrammed phrase;

"Hey there, how are you doing?"

-STAY IN THE STORE-

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

-STAY IN THE STORE-

The other children's emotional states also deteriorated, appearing red on Fredbear's monitor as they screamed and banged their fists on the tables, demanding cake. However, the emotional state of the child outside was reaching critical levels that the animatronic did not have the appropriate software to process.

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

"Are you having a good day?"

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

The emotional states of all of the children in the store had reached critical levels by this point. One of them threw a slice of pizza at the animatronic that it was unable to process. The emotional state of the child outside the store had continued to deteriorate, preventing Fredbear from getting to the other children, as it was programmed to help the most unhappy child first, but the second directive would not allow Fredbear to bring cake to him. Errors began to accumulate.

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

"Hey there,"

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

"are you having a nice time?"

Continued emotional deterioration.

-CHILD UNHAPPY-

"Welcome to Fredbear's!"

-CHILD UNHAPPY-CHILD UNHAPPY-CHILD UNHAPPY-

Fredbear's servos locked up and began to smoke and spark.

"Enjoy your cake!"

The adults in the restaurant were all staring at the animatronic apprehensively, as if it was about to blow up. The children only got angrier and louder.

-CHILDUNHAPPY-

"You're goingYou're going to have a great time!"

-CHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPY-

"Are you having a goodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgood day?"

-CHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPY CHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPY CHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPYCHILDUNHAPPY-

"IIIIII hopehope that you have a great time at FredFredFredFredFredFredFredFred…"

…

Mr. Wendell was baking as frantically as he could to meet the demand of the party when he heard a noise. He peeked out, and saw Fredbear apparently having a stroke.

"FredFredFredFredFredFred…"

He rushed to the animatronic, frantically flipping the off switch. Finally Freddy stopped sputtering, and Wendell could hear the hiss of its servos cooling down.

Some of the parents were getting up to leave with their angry kids. Wendell worked as fast as he could to do damage control, taking cake to each of the children that had parents patient enough to stay. Fredbear stayed in the center of the diner like a statue, staring at the empty window outside. Eventually, Wendell got the animatronic onto a cart and wheeled him to the back room. By the time he got back to the Dining Area though, most of the families had left, looking as if they had walked away from a plane crash. Wendell thought about trying to call them back, but he doubted he could salvage this mess. Now these kids were going to complain about this all to their friends at school, and the parents would complain about it to their friends at work, church, or the book club, and Wendell would be out of work for a month. He sighed. At least he'd have time to look at Fredbear.

Hardly anyone leaving Fredbear's Diner looked back, as if they were trying to avoid something embarrassing and shameful. It was only the last mother and child to leave that bothered to look back, seeing what was lying on the sidewalk in front of the store.

Wendell heard a woman scream, and he rushed outside. All that was left in the store was a puppet, lying underneath one of the tables, lost and forgotten.

…

After the crying spirit had been torn from its physical vessel, it attempted to float away. However, its tears held it to the Earth, keeping it from passing on. The pain that the spirit had encountered while corporeal was too great, dragging it down like chains. Constrained between worlds, the spirit could only flit around, the only sensations it felt being pain, sadness, and loneliness. It could sense other spirits around it, most still connected and fresh like roses. There was one going away though, one still connected, that reeked. It was rotten, like a bad tooth or a wart. It had caused the spirit pain, but it did not reveal any remorse. If anything, the rotten spirit was gleeful. It went away before the crying spirit could reach it. The crying spirit was left alone and cold. There was something; an empty vessel. The crying spirit searched it, and found a mirror of itself. It took the vessel.

The Puppet felt a sensation spread through its limbs, though it remained immobile under the table. It had the memory of a name, Brendon, and the memory of Brendon's life, but it seemed so unlikely that the Puppet had ever been Brendon. There was also its pain. There was its pain, and a desire to stop its pain. It knew that something horrible had happened to it, something that involved a bear and a Purple Man.

…