High Turnover

'A Five Nights at Freddy's Fan Fiction'

C.G. Wicks

Part 1: Five Nights at Freddy's

1

"So, Mr. Schmidt, are you available for an immediate start?"

Shifting uncomfortably in his seat opposite the manager interviewing him, Mike Schmidt was struck by the not too subtle urgency of this question. The manager looked back at him fixedly, knowing that if Mike wasn't available, he had a list of other applicants he could call. The sudden vacancy of the night guard position had added more stress to his already busy workload, and though he usually had no problem finding applicants for this entry-level job, he wanted to be done with it as quickly as possible. The night guards never lasted more than six months, but they usually hung around for at least a few. Most of the time. The manager was in his forties, but years of stress had added prematurely earned lines and features to his face. The dull glow of the fluorescent light humming above them in the small office didn't help with his vaguely haggard appearance. Mike didn't expect such a quick start, but he didn't have many other options. And beggars can't be choosers. He had recently moved to Hurricane after having to drop out of college and had been looking for work for a few weeks now, and not having many marketable skills was working against him. He was getting desperate, and this was the first job that had accepted his application. It also had a minimal skill requirement. All it really needed was a willingness to work nights.

"Sure," Mike replied, slightly dismayed at the sudden loss of his normal life routine and sleep schedule. He wanted to work, but he knew that he would miss his free time. "I can start tonight."

"Great!" The manager forced a smile and leaned back into his chair. "One more thing. Many of the previous night guards have reportedly gotten spooked by our animatronics during their shifts. I just want to say that even during the night, this place is still just a family restaurant. Those characters up on the stage are just animatronics. You don't find them creepy, do you?"

"No, that won't be a problem for me," Mike replied. He had glimpsed the animatronic mascots on his way through the restaurant as he followed the manager to his office, though he hadn't paid them much attention. The restaurant had been busy with wait staff rushing around with their oversized pizzas, carrying them to tables crowded with young families celebrating a birthday. The place was abuzz with noise and awash with colours of the many balloons reaching in vain for the ceiling from the chairs they were tied to. Even now in the office at the end of this corridor, he could hear the joyful music muffled through the walls. Hopefully, for the staff's sake, the music didn't play all day.

"Excellent," replied the manager. "Well, I think we're done here. We'll need you here at 10:00pm tonight. Just use the front door and ask for Fritz. He'll be the one training you." The manager stood and gave a quick curtesy handshake before leading Mike back out of the office to the main restaurant.

The smell of pizza wafted through the air as he made his way through the restaurant to the front door. The volume of the party music and the yelling children running across the red and purple tiled floor was almost overwhelming. This time as he walked through, he paused to get a good look at the animatronics up on the stage.

There were three of them, all dancing stiffly and jaggedly to the music coming from the speakers above them in a poor synchronisation, repeatedly breaking the illusion that they were the ones playing the songs. Not that any of the wide-eyed, awe-struck children minded. All the animatronics were quite big, at least six feet tall and surprisingly imposing, even from across the room. The one on the left was a blue rabbit playing a red bass guitar that matched the big red bow tied around its neck. In the middle and standing closer to the front of the stage was a brown bear wearing a black top hat matching his own black bow tie. This one was singing into a microphone held in its hand. On the right in line with the rabbit was a yellow chicken wearing a bib with the words LET'S EAT written on it. This one held a serving tray with a prop cupcake on it. All three of them looked like they had been performing for many years, the colours of their matted fur faded to dull hues of what they used to be in their heyday. All of them wore an expression on their blank faces that was somewhere between a big, toothy smile and a vicious snarl. All the animatronics' eye sockets looked slightly too big for the eyes resting within them, giving their heads a skull-like quality. Their heads turned quickly back and forth, their eyes seeming to look out over the crowd of diners and staff. The chicken's eyes landed briefly on Mike and seemed to really see him for a moment before looking away at the crowd again.

Mike now appreciated what the manager had said to him. Much to his annoyance, he did find them creepy. They were creepy. Not that any of the children minded.

-xxx-

It was mid-afternoon when Mike arrived back at his apartment. He lived in a small, old, one-bedroom place that was barely furnished. On his current budget, the choice of rentals was the same as the choice of jobs. And on this budget, he would be taking the bus to and from work for a while. The front door opened into the lounge room which had an attached kitchen in the far right-hand corner, which was separated by a small counter. A door on the left led to the bedroom and a door directly opposite the front door led to the bathroom. Mike looked around grimly and considered his…hopefully…temporary living situation. Beggars can't be choosers. Finally, he would have a proper income to get him back on his feet and back on track. Hopefully, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza would be the solution. Though, he felt a pang of dread at the thought that he may not see a full day of sunlight again for quite some time, most likely at the gradual cost of his relationships.

The clock on the wall ticked loudly as it counted down until his first shift, and at only 4:10pm, all Mike could think to do was try to lay down and catch up on some sleep that he didn't need yet, but sleep that he would be losing in the next few days. But with nervousness at the new job creeping in, he knew that would be next to impossible. Figuring that his shifts in the small hours would be quite slow and uneventful, Mike decided to peruse his modest collection of books that were stacked up in a row along the wall next to his bed in search of one to bring with him. How busy could this job actually be? He might even be able to have a nap every now and then. After putting his chosen book into his backpack, he lied down onto his bed and set his alarm and waited, listening to the ticking clock and the occasional car driving down his street.

Mike had been sitting on the edge of his bed for some time already when the alarm sounded at 8:00pm. With a groan, he slowly stood up and raised his arms in a stretch. After eating a microwave dinner and having a quick shower, he grabbed his backpack and headed out the front door into the night towards the bus stop.

The red brick restaurant stood shadowed beyond the dimly lit parking lot, with only a few lights still on inside. There were no cars parked in the customer parking lot and Mike's steps echoed loudly across the bitumen as he walked. This scene was a stark contrast to the busy restaurant that had greeted him earlier in the day when he had made this same walk. It had been loud and jovial with bright lights and cheerful families. Now, the difference was eerie.

The front door stood to the left of the main wall under a flickering light, looming as Mike approached it. He knocked on the door and waited as he listened to a pair of footsteps moving closer towards him from the inside. The door opened and the pale face of a cleaning lady appeared from the shadows.

"Hello," Mike said. "I'm the new night guard. Is Fritz here?"

2

Mike stood at the front door of the restaurant waiting to be let in. The cold night air was beginning to get to him. The cleaning lady, a thin, middle-aged woman with grey hair looked him up and down for a moment surveying him. With no change in her expression, she kept her eyes on him as she turned her head slightly to call out behind her.

"Fritz!" Mike jumped as she barked the word with surprising volume. "The new guy's here." A second set of footsteps approached the front entrance as a man appeared behind the cleaning lady. Finally, she broke her gaze as she turned to return to her task. "Three weeks," she said to Fritz as she passed by him. Fritz stepped into the light of the doorway and gestured for Mike to come in. He was a tall, lean man with dark combed hair and large glasses. The greying hair on the sides of his face suggested that he was in his mid-thirties. "Welcome, I'm Fritz"

Mike stepped in out of the cold night air and took in his surroundings. Now that the place was empty, he could see all of the details more clearly. They were standing in the main dining room, a large square room with many doors and doorways leading from it. Rows of long tables covered with silvery white tablecloths filled the room and each table had a row of party hats lined along them, ready for the next birthday boys and girls to claim for the day. The walls were lined with pages and pages of scrawled drawings of anthropomorphised bears, bunnies and chickens all serving pizzas to the stick figure children. Along the wall on Mike's left was the door to the bathrooms and further down on the back wall, opposite the entrance, were the double swinging doors to the kitchen with their circular windows showing only darkness within. To the right of them were three dark doorways, the centre one being the widest. The two outer ones were corridors leading away to darkness. The right one, Mike remembered, led to the manager's office down the end on the right. The larger doorway in the middle, Mike could see from the faint metallic reflections of the arcade machines, was the entrance to the games room. In the next corner to the right of these was what looked like a small, circular stage at ground level with large, purple curtains drawn closed. A sign that read OUT OF ORDER stood in front of it. Further to the right was a door to the backstage area with EMPLOYEES ONLY written on it.

To their immediate right along the front wall, opposite the hallways, was the main stage. The three mascot characters were standing there, all frozen and inactive, staring straight ahead at the empty room in front of them. Mike couldn't decide if they were creepier this way or when they were moving. Fritz walked to the centre of the room and gestured towards the three mascots on the stage.

"Let me introduce you to the gang! The one on the left is Bonnie. Bonnie the bunny, get it? The chicken on the right is Chica…because she's a chicken. And the big happy fellow in the middle is Freddy Fazbear himself." Fritz turned towards the mascots. "Say hi, gang!" Mike watched the characters closely as he half expected them to actually move in response, but they appeared to be turned off, staring vacantly at the wall behind them.

"Right," continued Fritz. "Your shift starts at 10:00pm. That gives you two hours to do the bulk of the jobs that you need to do. Jen is usually finished with the cleaning by 10:30pm. She's the nice lady you met just before. Once she's out the door it's just you here and then you can start making sure all of the doors are locked. We don't want our favourite characters wandering down the street at night. You should do one round when you start and another no later than 11:30pm. You'll want to get yourself into the office before midnight, so make sure you don't need to go to the bathroom or anything like that. Also, you'll want to get yourself a watch and set it to the clock in the office." They began walking down the left-hand corridor past more paper lined walls, many of children's drawings, others of old newspaper clippings about the restaurant.

"They can't actually get out, can they? Out of the building, I mean," Mike asked.

"Oh, no. Their programming doesn't allow them to leave the restaurant. But uh, the animatronic characters here do get a bit…quirky at night. But do I blame them? No. If I were forced to sing the same stupid songs for twenty years and I never got a bath… yeah, I'd probably be a bit irritable at night, too." Fritz stopped walking and gave Mike a stern look. "So, just be aware. The characters do tend to wander a bit. They're left in some kind of free roaming mode at night. Something about their servos locking up if they get turned off for too long. They used to be allowed to walk around during the day, too. But then there was the Bite of '87. Yeah, it's amazing that the human body can live without the frontal lobe, you know?"

Mike was speechless as Fritz led him towards a door on the right at the end of the hallway and opened it. Inside was a small office with another door on the opposite side. Each door had a frosted wire mesh window in the top half. There was a desk on the right with a large monitor on it, a dark grey image flickering intermittently on the screen. Mike entered the room and Fritz closed the door behind them.

"Okay," Fritz started, "So, concerning your safety. The only real risk to you as a night watchman here is the fact that if these characters happen to see you after hours, they probably won't recognise you as a person. They'll most likely see you as a metal endoskeleton without its costume on. Now, since that's against the rules here at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, they'll probably try to…forcefully stuff you inside a Freddy Fazbear suit. So, to help prevent that, we have these locks." Fritz gestured to the doors, pointing out the large metal beams that stretched across the middle of the doors. "They're electronic and are operated with the switch on the desk. If you need to lock the left door, you press the left button and the right button for the right door. They work instantly and effectively. These characters used to get through the doors fairly easily when they wanted to, but rather than fix their programming, the guys in upper management figured it was cheaper to reinforce the doors. But hey, baby steps, right?"

Fritz walked to a metal locker that stood at the back of the office, opposite the desk. Next to it was a small bar fridge and a microwave sitting on a bench. Fritz opened the locker and pulled out a large brown Freddy head.

"When I used to work the night shift at the old location, I wore this when the characters got too close. It got me out of trouble more than a few times." Fritz set the head down on the desk next to the monitor. "Management don't know I have this here, so put it back in the locker at the end of each shift. Now, with the doors, you don't want to switch both of the locks on at the same time or else you'll blow the fuse. And the fuse box is back outside, down the other corridor opposite the storage closet. When that happens, I recommend wearing the head."

Fritz checked his watch and opened the door behind him to leave, then paused with his hand still on the doorknob. "Look, to be honest. You'll be fine. They don't really move around all that much. You just have to keep an eye on them with the cameras and if one of them starts wandering too close, just flick the switch to lock the door. And don't worry about having to do regular rounds every hour or anything like that. The night guard position here is really more of an insurance thing. Just don't leave this office after midnight and only come out once the characters are back in their proper places. Their night mode ends at 6:00am." Fritz stepped through the door and began to pull it shut behind him. "Oh yeah, and don't forget to keep an eye on Foxy. That one was always a bit twitchy."

Before Mike knew it, Fritz was gone, and he was left overwhelmed with questions. Mostly about this bite from ten years ago. The heavy locks on the doors were unsettling due to how large they were. They looked strong enough to keep out a battering ram. Mike looked around the office and accustomed himself with his surroundings. Now that Fritz had left, he noticed just how quiet the restaurant was, and he was acutely aware of the hum of the computer in front of him and of the fridge behind him. The small desk fan sitting just above the monitor would surely add its own hum once it was turned on, and all three would probably make it difficult to hear anything coming down the corridors. He sat down and pulled the chair up to the desk and looked closely at the monitor. The camera showed the main stage from the left-hand side, slowly panning left and right. All of the characters were still there, motionless. A dull bang rang out through the building as Jen left through the front door. Only the security lights remained on, giving the place a dull grey hue, masking the many bright colours seen during the day. Mike looked at the digital clock on the desk next to the monitor. It was only 10:30pm. He had a long night to go.