It's Me

There were five of us. I don’t know why it only happened to us five, but it did. I remember we were all sitting around the table, a huge smile plastered on each of our faces. We hadn’t known each other a long while, but it was long enough to get to know the important things. We were all kids, and we all had heartaches, but here at this table in this diner, we forgot about all that hurt. And it was stupid to forget, because really all of our troubles were beyond forgetting. But there was something in this building, at this table, that just lifted our spirits in an almost magical way. And looking around at those other kids, those other innocent faces like mine, I just remember thinking I didn’t want this moment to end. I didn’t want to go back and face my life as it really was, none of us did. And I guess in a way, in a really morbid sense of justice, we all got our wish. We all died.

It was almost dark when a man in a bear suit, the mascot of the diner, came up to all five of us, and asked us if we wanted to see the secret play area in the back of the diner. We were all kids, and this man was dressed as a bear, we didn’t see the harm in it. All of us would have done anything to delay going back to our real lives for just a little longer. But now, if we knew what was to come, we all would have run with open arms back to our lives.
Or would we?

The twins died first. Freddie and Gavin were identical twins, and filled two of the chairs at our table that day. They were both really nice guys, two brown-haired blue-eyed boys, the kind of kids who wouldn’t hurt a fly. They were a little younger than me, I would guess around eight years old, and they had a teddy bear sitting between the two of them at the table. I asked why they had it, and Gavin answered. He told me that they got it on the day they were born. Their mother had bought it for them, and he told me that they carried it everywhere between the two of them, as it was the only thing they really had from their mother. Freddie then explained she died shortly after giving birth, and their father took care of them now. But they said he was mean and drunk and hit them often; even at the table, I could see what looked like a handprint shaped bruise over Freddie’s eye. They told all of us how much they didn’t want to go back home, and when I think about it, I wonder if they would have taken that statement back if they knew what was to come.

Once he got us in the back, we all quickly realized there was no secret play area. He had led us into a dark room with only a few lights above, and boxes all around, most likely a storage room. We looked around, confused, and started to ask questions when suddenly he grabbed the closest child to him, which happened to be Gavin. He was still holding the teddy bear when he was taken. At the second he realized what was going on, tears welled up in his eyes almost on spot, and a wailing cry started to come out of his mouth. He slapped his mouth to stop the noise, and reached into the pocket of the bear costume. He pulled out a fork, and before the other four of us had any time to react, or even process what was happening, he plunged the fork directly into Gavin’s eye socket, and then into the other. All four of us stood, staring, speechless and frozen in fear. Blood began to pour out where the tears were just moments ago. Finally, it hit the other four of us, and we all burst into screams. All of us but Freddie ran for the door, but it was locked. I looked back, and I saw that Freddie had lunged towards the man and tried to pull on Gavin’s hand to tear him out of the man’s hold, but he only managed to grab the teddy bear instead. Paying no mind to Freddie, the man raised his arm and dug the fork right into Gavin’s chest, confirming the impact with the audible slicing of Gavin’s skin, and the exasperated exhale, presumably the last one, from Gavin’s lips. All of us but Freddie were backed against the door, trying not to watch and not being able to pull our eyes away all at the same time. We were all screaming and slamming on the door, but no one could hear us. A heavy thud was heard, and I saw that the man had dropped Gavin’s body onto the ground. Freddie’s eyes were locked on Gavin’s now dead body, and his face was so wet that it appeared to be shining in the dim light. He was mumbling things, but it wasn’t audible. Absentmindedly, and seemingly forgetting that the killer was in the very same room as him, Freddie stumbled closer to Gavin, the teddy bear still in hand. He continued mumbling things to himself, or rather to Gavin through sobs, when reality literally hit Freddie in the head. The man in the suit, he had grabbed an extra microphone from one of the storage boxes and striked Freddie so hard he fell over. “Why don’t you speak up?” the man yelled at Freddie, and continued to beat on him with the microphone.

I wanted to help, I wanted to bash the man’s skull in with my own microphone, but I was frozen, and it was evident that the other two kids were as well since they didn’t move either. One of them was crying profusely, and the other was covering his eyes trying not to cry. I couldn’t cry. I was just frozen.

Freddie was now bloody, but I could see him still trying to put up a fight, if not for himself then for Gavin. But the second Freddie started to push himself back up off the ground, the man grabbed the teddy bear out of his hands, and slapped him across the face, leaving a trail of blood from where his hand met. He took the arm of the teddy bear, and shoved it down Freddie’s throat. He started to gag, and he clawed at the cement floor, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. His gagging worsened, and there was a mixture of crying behind it. I could see the life leaving his eyes, and at that, I had to look away. After a few more seconds, Freddie stopped making sounds.

Bobby was the next to die. He was a little closer to my age, probably about ten years old. He was the quietest out of the five of us, and often hid behind the bangs that covered his face. Gavin had asked him why he didn’t just get his bangs cut, and Bobby said he didn’t have anyone to take him. He told us that he never knew his parents, and has lived in a group home his entire life. I asked him if he had a lot of friends, since he’s always around other kids, but he said he didn’t. He told us he only had one friend, and that was his pet rabbit Bonnie. He had found her hurt outside of the home a few years ago, and he said that he helped her get better and that he really connected with her, since she was alone too. I remember really having to listen when he spoke, he spoke so lightly, as if he didn’t want to attract too much attention to himself. I speculated purely because he wouldn’t know what to do if people actually paid attention to him. He told us sometimes he wants to leave with Bonnie in the middle of the night and never come back. I cringe when I think about this discussion. It wasn’t with Bonnie, but Bobby never went back.

The man in the bear suit turned to look at the three of us backed up against the door. The fingers of the bear costume were covered in blood, and there were a few splatters on the face as well. I don’t know why he picked Bobby next; maybe it was because he was the only one covering his eyes and refusing to watch what was going on. He tugged on Bobby’s arm, and pulled a hand away from his eyes, and as I would have imagined, they were filled with tears. “What’s wrong? Don’t want to look at me? Let me help with that.” He swung Bobby by the arm and threw him out into the open of the room. He ran to him and pushed him down onto the ground. He climbed on top of Bobby, almost straddling him, and grabbed the fork that was on the floor next to Gavin’s body. He plunged it into Bobby’s forehead, and then dragged it all the way down to his chin. He repeated the process across his entire face, the whole time Bobby screams at the stop of his lungs. His eyes and eyelids are cut, his mouth is scraped up, his entire face looks like it was ran over with a lawnmower. There’s so much blood, I can’t even see his eyes, nose or mouth any longer. He’s gone still, but still makes soft little groans here and there, and every once in a while a sob. “There you go. Can’t look at me if you don’t have a face.” The man does one final stab on Bobby’s forehead, leaving the fork in there. His sobs stop.

Chloe was next. She was the youngest out of all five of us, probably about six years old. She was a cute and tiny blonde haired girl, and had the appetite of a full grown man. I saw her inhale at least three pieces of pizza by the time I was just getting to my second. When I asked her how should could have such a monstrous appetite, she smiled shyly unaware of how she was eating. She then told us all that her and her parents were very poor. They lived on a chicken farm and didn’t have much in the way of money or food. She explained to us that normally at least three days out of the week she wouldn’t get dinner, and when she did it often wasn’t that much. She told us that recently a lot of their chickens had gotten sick and began to die, and so their income had been dwindling ever since. But I think the saddest part of that, was that I never would have known had I not asked. Chloe was such a happy little girl, I wouldn’t have for one second suspected she was starving. I remember her saying that she was dreading leaving, and having to go back to the farm and wait another few days to eat. But she then looked around, presumably for staff, and then looked at the rest of us and smiled, and told us that maybe she could find a way to smuggle some food out for her parents. Suffice to say, she never got food for her parents.

Chloe was screaming and crying all together in one gross mixture. She was hanging onto me, trying to use me as her last means of safety. I wished I could keep her safe, but as soon as the man turned back around and faced the last two of us, I knew without a shadow of a doubt there was nothing I could do to save either one of us. I held her pressed against me, trying to delay the inevitable as long as I could. I felt my shirt get wet were her eyes were, and I wanted to cry myself. The man in the suit started to approach us, and she screamed louder. Why he grabbed her instead of me, I’ll never know. He yanked on her arm, and pulled her partly away from me, but I kept a good hold on her. She was looking right at me, as she was being pulled, and everything inside of me just wanted to save her. She reminded me of my little sister, Maggie. Maggie died a few years ago, she was around the same age as Chloe when she met her death. I was put in charge of watching her that day, but at the time, I didn’t feel like being a big brother, I didn’t like having to look after her all the time. She ran out into the street, trying to make a scene to get me to pay attention and go play with her, but I wasn’t having it. It wasn’t really until I heard her intestines hit the pavement that I realized what had happened. I turned around to look at her, and all I saw was a smear of red all over the road where Maggie had been standing just moments before. I screamed, and I screamed so loudly I hurt my voice. I ran over to her remains, and saw that she had been mangled apart by the underside of a truck. I couldn’t protect her, and that was my only job. I saw Maggie’s eyes pleading with me when I stared at Chloe in front of me now.

The man in the suit was swearing at me, yelling for me to let go but I wouldn’t. Chloe was crying so loudly I could barely hear myself think, even though there wasn’t much going through my mind other than saving her. But it wasn’t until I heard the very defined pop of Chloe’s arm socket that I realized I was helping to hurt her. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t want to let her go but I didn't want to be apart of the pain. Within a few seconds, I didn’t have much of a choice. The man picked up his foot and kicked me in the gut, and the impact made me lose my grip and let her go. I screamed for her, and the man pushed her into the ground. I heard more cracks coming from inside of her. I lunged at his back, unaware of how much pain I was in from the kick to the gut. Without much of a thought, he sent his elbow back towards me and it ended up jabbing me right in the eye. I got disoriented momentarily, and the right side of my vision went blurry and red. I heard Chloe screaming, but I couldn’t see clearly as to what he was doing. I heard the fresh slice of her skin, and the smell of blood in the air was so strong I wanted to vomit. But then suddenly there was another stench in the air, something much more putrid, and it wasn’t until my left eye refocused that I saw Chloe’s stomach had been sliced open, and her stomach acid and all the contents within were everywhere. The man had grabbed some piece of extra metal from storage and had repeatedly impaled it into her stomach. She was still and silent. I saw the bits of pepperoni and sausage from her pizza.

I was the last to die. The man looked towards me, and I wanted to imagine there was malice in his eyes but I didn’t know since I couldn’t see them past the stupid bear costume, which was now almost completely red rather than brown. At that moment, I realized I didn’t even care anymore about life. There was no point, not for me anyways. If this man didn’t kill me now, I would be dead soon anyways. I had bone cancer, and from my weekly doctor’s visits, my odds of beating it were dwindling every day. My life now was probably more pathetic than death. I was in the hospital for at least the better half of a week, each week, and my parents were only there when they weren’t too busy with work, or really anything else more important than their child, which was normally everything. I remember getting very acquainted with the nurses there and they always called me by my last name, which was Fox, because they knew I prefered that. They often apologized to me because they didn’t have much in the way of entertainment to keep myself entertained all those hours in the hospital bed. But it never mattered much to me. There was one book that I would always read, over and over again, partly because it was one of the only books they had, and because I loved it so much. It was the story of a pirate who overcomes all of his fears and ends up defeating the bad guy in the end. I always imagined myself as that pirate, and that one day I would beat this cancer in the end. And now when I think about it, I guess I did beat it, it didn’t kill me. It wasn’t fast enough. But sometimes I wish it had, then my soul wouldn’t be in the tortured condition it is right now.

The man grabbed at me, and I only half-heartedly tried to get away. He pinned me against the back of the door, and my head slammed into the steel of the door hard enough that I was seeing double of everything. “You know,” the man started to say, “you should really get an eye patch for that shiner of yours. You’d look like a pirate! Oh, and here, why don’t you add a hook while you’re at it?” Before I could fully process his words, a piercing and burning pain shot through my right hand that was now literally pinned to the door. He had taken some other piece of metal, one that was slightly curved, and shoved it through the palm of my hand. My entire body was shaking and I couldn’t breathe, my heart felt like a drum set in my chest, and I wondered if this is what it felt like to go into shock. He backed away from me for a moment and headed over to another storage box and looked around inside of it for a few moments. I wanted to take this moment to try and pull the metal out of my hand, but my body wouldn’t listen to me. The man turned back around and approached me again with a tiny metallic object in his hands. Once it impacted my skin, I realized it was a potato peeler, and he was very literally slicing my skin off. The pain was so intense, and the smell of blood was so nauseating. Only a few slices into my skin, I began to realize that I couldn’t feel my arms and my heart was beating so quickly I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. I remember gasping for air, and knowing these were my last breaths. I glanced at the other kids over the man’s shoulder, and even in my last minutes I wanted to cry for them, not for myself. I knew I wasn’t going to live much longer, but all of them, they could have all had such promising lives, they all could have amounted to something. It was with my last and final breaths, I breathed out as hard as I could two simple words. “You’ll pay.” The man laughed, and as a finishing blow stabbed the entire peeler into my stomach. He threw me to the ground, surrounded by the other four dead children, and left me for their same fate.

But before all life left me, he turned away from us, and began to take off the bear suit. He took off the head, then unzipped the body portion and threw it on top of some of the storage boxes. He headed for the door, and the last thing I remember seeing before I died was that he was wearing a purple shirt, and in huge letters on the back, one word was written: security.


I don’t remember when I woke up again. I imagine it must have been some time, as my soul felt aged. I was inside of a costume, or no, I was a costume. Everything felt stiff, and it took effort to move my arms and legs. My eyes felt fastened, and I was definitely taller. A curtain then opened, and there were about twenty children standing in front of me, all cheering. I began to move without thinking about it, and my movements felt robotic and stiff. I looked around and saw that across from me there was a small stage where a robotic rabbit, chicken, and bear were singing and dancing. They seemed to be going through the same organized and calculated motions I was, and we all felt connected somehow. Their spirits felt familiar to me. I looked around the room then, and realized it was a very similar set up to the diner we were killed in, but much bigger, and many more children. There were tables filled with kids all eating and playing games and seemingly having a great time. I tried to look down at myself, and I could see that I was made of metal, and had a orange paint all over me. I had a hook for my right hand, and my face felt long. I looked towards a window beyond the children cheering for me below, and my appearance was just as I had been suspecting. I was a robotic fox. I looked at the other animals again, and this time, the bear looked at me too. And as soon as he did, I felt Freddie, and I knew it was him. I looked at the other two, the rabbit was Bobby, and the chicken was Chloe. I didn’t know where Gavin was, but with any luck he had passed on, and been spared this new life as a toy.

I looked above where the others were playing their electronic songs, and a banner hung that read “Welcome to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria! Come enjoy Freddy Fazbear himself, along with Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy the pirate!”

Was this our eternal fate? To be toys, puppets? Is that our justice for what happened to us? Freddie and I both gave each other the same desperate stare, and both silently asked the same question. Why?

It wasn’t until later that night, after the children had left and the building became dark, that I felt the bolts in my joints loosen, and I felt like I could move as my old self again. I looked towards the others as well, and they seemed to experience the same thing. We were about to move towards each other when a sound and a light interrupted our mind reading. A man walked through the party room with a flashlight, and I knew the moment I saw him, the moment I saw the purple shirt, I knew it was him, there was no question about it. The others looked at me seemingly confused, as they hadn’t had the chance to see the murderer under the bear costume, but I had. The man began to walk back away, and I didn’t even think about what I was going to do, it felt like pure instinct somehow. I began to walk towards him, following him, stalking him, and making sure he didn’t suspect a thing, just like we didn’t. He walked back into his office, and from where I stood just slightly around the corner, I saw that he was checking the various cameras in the building. He was so involved in the screen in front of him that I slowly creeped up until I was standing right in front of him. He seemed to stiffen a bit, and supposedly sensing my presence, he pulled the screen down, and let out a startled yell before he backed away and into the wall behind him. I took a few steps closer to him, and I could feel his heartbeat, I could feel it pounding.

“Who...who are you?” If a robot could smile, I would have.

“It’s me.”