Warnings: Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Workplace Negligence, Violence, Blood, Emotional Manipulation, Toxic Mindsets.
Word Count: 5540.
Landing in the ball pit and creating a brief ruckus was akin to shattering glass in a library, prompting you to flinch and duck into the spheres for a sense of camouflage. You had every right to be in the daycare, yet with each plastic ball that you disturbed, the fear of someone hurling ridicule and demanding that you leave only grew. As you scanned the immediate environment for angry faces, a buoyant voice groaned a sympathetic “aw” from just ahead.
The owner was a red and yellow animatronic whose face looked like the result of handing a toddler a marker and telling them to draw the sun. He was leaning forward to better meet your gaze, his arms open as if to offer a hug. “You don't look like you're having a good day.” Before you could agree, Sun lifted you so high off the ground that the floor was no longer visible and spun in a circle. “I promise I'll change that, new friend!” He began to skip into the belly of the daycare with only the occasional click signifying his motion.
Despite the speed with which he glided across the cushions to a ring of purple tables and chairs, Sun was attentive to the process of setting you in one of the low seats and was careful not to drop you. The expectation that he would leave you alone with your thoughts – maybe give a piece of unhelpful advice if you were lucky – was dashed again and again, yet it returned every time he looked elsewhere or took a step back. From seemingly nowhere, Sun dumped a hill of scrap paper, bottles of glitter glue, and tall cups of Fizzy Faz onto the table.
“Draw something that makes you happy!” he proclaimed. At first, the animatronic hovered by your side and impeded your focus with periodic questions about needing more supplies. Once he noticed your reluctance to concentrate while his large eyes were fixed on the art, Sun occupied himself with the vagaries of the other children.
The Daycare Attendant resembled a jester from the waist down with the bottom of his striped culottes pinned down by a red band, and the smell of sweets ranging from a clump of cotton candy to a stick of licorice followed his every step. His wide smile remained immovable no matter how many words he said, which was a feat not devoid of value considering his fondness for detailing the myriad forms of arts and crafts and all the supplies he could bring you.
It was not until the animatronic was requested by the other children that you enjoyed your first moment of privacy, or at the very least, the greatest sense of solitude you could achieve in a land dominated by screaming kids.
A triad of children sprinted to Sun from behind and proceeded to chant, “Sunny! Sunny!” As the Daycare Attendant faced them with an inquisitive tilt of his head, they shook their fists up and down. “Count to ten, and come find us!” He turned to the wall of a play structure and covered his eyes while each child hid in a different area.
Raising his head from his palms, Sun looked in your direction and spotted a toddler approaching you with a set of building blocks and a hopeful attitude. The animatronic skipped across the daycare to stand in front of the toddler, and he distracted her by squatting and wiggling his finger. “They're working on a very important project.” He started to turn the child around and scanned the current games before nudging her towards the main group. “Oh, but Little Suzy looks happy to play!” Once the toddler accepted the alternative with minimal hesitancy, Sun bounded to your table.
“How's it coming?” He pressed his hands against the surface of the purple table and curled his right leg into the air. “Do you have enough paint? Glitter glue?” Without waiting for an answer to any of these questions, the Daycare Attendant extended his hand. “Are you tired? Have a Sunnydrop!” A small piece of orange candy rested on his palm, and you added it to the pile on the corner of the table. You had eaten the first piece he offered, the bitter and sour taste transforming you into a jittery mess and later spiralling into a crash that was akin to a hangover.
“I need some more time,” you mumbled, your attention almost solely devoted to the blob of glitter glue sinking into the paper and the various paints on your fingers. The reds and yellows coated your knuckles and a handful of splotches on your face, but you dragged your index finger through the glue to create a humanoid shape without a single complaint.
The animatronic gave a mock salute and walked to the edge of the ball pit backwards. “Loud and clear!” He dove into the sea of colourful plastic head-first, and a rumble, like bowling pins tumbling, echoed in the daycare as several globes were knocked into the air. Sun alternated between wading in the depths and lying on his back while flapping his arms and legs as if making a snow angel.
You watched his frolicking to confirm that the details of your picture were authentic, using googly eyes on his face and the darker flecks of glitter for his buttons. After a couple of minutes spent evaluating the finished product, you began to search for the Daycare Attendant from the comfort of your chair.
Sun leapt out of the ball pit no more than a few seconds after your initial glance, and with him came the scents of peppermint and ginger. “Done already, new friend?” He swayed his arms up and down and bobbed his knees as if suspended in water to stay moving while he leaned over you to peek at your creation. “So fast!”
Adjusting the angle of one of the googly eyes a bit, you presented a sloppy graphic comprised of red and yellow paint streaks and uneven strings of glitter glue.
The animatronic tilted his head and accepted the image with one hand, only to draw his other hand to it as his scanners identified the subject. “Oh!” The noise was abrupt and marked by a twitch of Sun's upper body. “New friend,” he cried, his sappy tone portraying tears that his mechanical innards could not produce. “No one's ever made anything for me!”
You nodded in contentment and moved to start a new drawing, but the Daycare Attendant scooped you off the ground into a tight hug that left your feet dangling. “You can have all the glitter glue and googly eyes you want!” The force of the embrace knocked the chair onto its side. Hugging his stiff, wiry figure was like hugging a streetlight, a sensation that refused to be comfortable no matter how much you shifted.
When he showed no desire to end the interaction, you surveyed the nearby play structures for a reasonable excuse. “I want to go on the slides.”
Sun released you as soon as you finished the sentence. “Of course!” A sprinkle of dismay leaked into his cheerful tone as he waved goodbye. “Have fun, new friend!” Despite your shape having disappeared into the labyrinth of the slides, he continued to wave and raised his voice to ensure that he was heard. “We can drink Fizzy Faz when you get back!”
* * *
With the sound of wheels growing louder, the chatter lulled to find a S.T.A.F.F. robot riding to the edge of the group. “We here at Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex wish you a happy birthday!” The machine extended its left arm with an audible whirr and a jolt of its shoulders, grasping a tall cup with a bendy straw protruding from the top and a splash of vivid reds and blues covering its exterior. “Have a complimentary Pizza Flavored Monty Mystery Mix Slushy Syrup to celebrate!”
The robot lurched forward – nearly toppling onto the floor – as the boy snatched the drink out of its hand and took a noisy gulp before spinning to face the main stage. Legs bobbing and teeth stained with all the colours of the rainbow, he shouted in a fit of sugar-induced excitement, “This is from Monty?”
From his position on the elevated structure, Montgomery Gator raised a claw to his star-shaped sunglasses and pushed them towards the end of his round snout to wink at the boy. “My dime, kid.” His deep voice was reminiscent of the thugs in old gangster movies, and he knocked his eyewear back into its rightful place with an upward jerk of his head. As the mechanical alligator embraced a guitar solo, Glamrock Chica allowed her background riff to fall out of sync with the soaring melody.
The movement of her fingers slowed, and her strums gradually lost their sense of harmony until the music emitting from her guitar was little more than a jumble of infrequent, erratic notes. She followed the spicy and meaty aroma with her eyes like a hungry dog, her high-pitched voice escaping as a curious mumble. “Pizza flavoured?” The slurping of the boy filled the clear straw with the viscous texture of the slushy. The taste of it seemed to linger on the animatronic’s tongue, inspiring a craving that flooded her system with anticipation like a crumb of food after days of starvation.
Shaking her head with a look of concern and disappointment, the boy’s mother swiped the drink from him and leaned forward to be at eye level with her son. “You can’t empty it all right now! You’ll get a brain freeze.” The boy crossed his arms and turned away at her stern tone, only for bewilderment and uncertainty to cross his face at the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. It was as if large chunks of metal were hitting the ground every other second, and his standoffish posture began to unravel – accepting a limited degree of joy in hopes of a special prize for his birthday – when he noticed Glamrock Chica marching in his direction.
Her guitar had been abandoned on the floor of the stage. She took rapid strides that flirted with the idea of running, each step clinking like two chalices upon slapping the black tiles. The chicken outstretched her arms and bumped multiple customers and S.T.A.F.F. robots without offering the slightest glance or apology. Glamrock Chica stood taller than anyone else in the crowd, and her unblinking stare remained fixed on the boy’s mother.
When the woman turned to observe the commotion, a yelp shattered the serenity of the audience and caused several patrons to drop their purchases and flee. Multicoloured streaks splattered her face as she was tackled by the robotic equivalent of a horse and forced to release the cup under the pressure of a mechanical hand smashing her knuckles. The boy, wide-eyed and mouth agape, succumbed to fearful tears and whimpers. His distress melded with the shrieks of his mother, Chica adding the occasional hum and chuckle of delight.
Droplets of the slushy oozed into the crevices between each tile, and the chicken nipped various parts of the woman’s face in an uncontrolled attempt to devour every sliver of the drink. The atrium was plunged into dim light with the birth of a distinct alarm. It whooped and caused the available S.T.A.F.F. robots to pause in front of the nearest group and raise their palm as if to halt traffic. “Do not panic,” they all instructed in the same cheerful voice. “Our friendly staff will arrive momentarily to resolve the issue.”
The message was looping with no change in inflection as the machines formed a wide circle around Glamrock Chica. Blood was now leaking from the woman’s cheeks and forehead, and her agony had quieted to exhausted groans. She dragged her fingernails along the animatronic’s head and shoulders, her kicks and shoves weakening. Her lungs were struggling to draw air due to the massive weight crushing her chest and stomach. All she mustered was a periodic gasp, her eyes flitting to the sight of a large silhouette pulling her son away.
Over the din of panicked screams and blaring alarms, Glamrock Chica shook with bursts of euphoric laughter as she plunged handfuls of slushy mix into her beak.
* * *
The bright slides of the daycare twisted and winded like mazes in colouring books and newspapers in a doctor’s waiting room. Navigating them was scarcely more probable than tossing a coin into the fountain and wishing for another in your pocket, yet you were preparing to dive through a red tube that led to the ball pit. Just as your head neared the entrance, a spindly shadow unfolded from the top of the structure.
“Peek-a-boo!” Sun was hanging upside down above you, his legs hooked around one of the rails. The animatronic swung himself to the floor and landed on his elf shoes with a metallic thud. “Guess what, new friend? I found some more glitter glue!” Before you could enjoy the twisty goodness of the slide, he lifted you into the air and hopped to the ground level.
A buzz echoed in the daycare, and darkness swallowed the area within seconds. You paused to examine your surroundings through squinted eyes and the veil of confusion. The googly eye in your hand was no longer visible, prompting you to bring it closer for fear of it being stolen or lost. The object fell onto the cushy floor despite your effort when a pair of thin but sturdy arms pulled you against a metallic chest.
“New friend?” The shaky voice of Sun came from behind you, carrying a wave of dread that prompted it to crack. “The – The lights! They went out!” His timid pronunciation of each word, like a child afraid of the dark, snowballed into a wave of tension and frustration. “That wasn’t supposed to happen!” A grunt of discomfort escaped you as his limbs further restricted the space you had to breathe. “It isn’t naptime yet!”
To expel the dizziness creeping into your being, you squirmed until your body slipped out from under his grip. A shout of surprise escaped the animatronic, and he scrambled to crouch to your level. “No, no!” He advanced in a spider-like fashion and dropped onto his stomach, moving on all fours with uncanny speed to reach where you had crawled. “Stay with me, new friend!”
A smooth and cylindrical surface met your palms. A spatial awareness of the walls encircling you indicated that you had found the bottom end of a slide, and you struggled to climb higher after pulling away from the hand that grazed your foot. Following an agonized screech that emitted from just outside the slide, a loud thump echoed in the daycare.
The cries of the other children began to fill the void. It started with a lone whimper and evolved into a chorus of sobs, with the concerned murmurs and calls of parents descending from the pickup area. Stampeding children wandered the daycare and shouted a weepy “moon” until their adult embraced them.
Debating whether to leave the slide or not, you scooted closer to the exit and winced at the immediate squeak. A pair of red eyes appeared in the opening. “Friend?” The guttural voice was vaguely similar to that of Sun but lacked his warmth, sounding like a distorted recreation from the heart of a nightmare.
Your heartbeat jumped to rapid bangs and sent you scrambling to reach the top of the slide. Gripping the dividers between each portion of the structure was akin to being pinched, but any discomfort was outmatched by the sound of heavy claws smacking the plastic. A fearful glance over your shoulder yielded the sight of a blue and grey animatronic ascending the slide behind you, his body swallowing every bit of space and pushing his red eyes closer.
The steady breaths you were striving to maintain devolved into frantic pants. Beads of sweat began to dampen your face as you spilled onto the main floor of the play structure. A tall shadow emerged within the next second and attached himself to the railing above, the jingle bell on the tip of his nightcap dangling in front of his wide smile.
Instead of attacking, Moon outstretched his arm and opened his hand to reveal a small piece of blue candy. “New friend, it's time for bed.” He crawled onto the ground by your feet when you did not accept the Moondrop. “When it's too scary to be awake, sleep.”
The aromas of lavender and vanilla seeped into your nostrils, and the hint of weariness in the back of your mind expanded to overwhelming fatigue. You slumped towards the floor with a disoriented recognition of the event but never bounced your head off the cushion. Moon was supporting your neck with one hand and wrapping the other around your torso like a seatbelt, lowering you with the extreme care of someone handling a priceless artifact.
* * *
The ambulance flashed its howling lights of red into the entrance to the Pizzaplex, the glass doors slicing the revolving glow into dark streaks that painted the faces of customers in an ominous tint. A crowd had gathered at the sight of paramedics hauling the battered mother onto a gurney. Frantic whispers spread through the dozens of eyes watching as blood seeped into her hair and hoarse coughs busted out of her mouth, and some of the voices rose to shouts when the wheels of the transport unfolded with a squeak.
The birthday boy, another woman, and the manager of the establishment hurried to accompany the mother. The boy was weeping like the child he was, while the woman was pointing a finger at the manager and berating him for allowing her wife to be injured. Even at a distance where her words were unintelligible, the malice and fury pouring out of her yells were distinct.
The S.T.A.F.F. robots had been reciting the same message without a single missed cue for half an hour. Chica was deactivated by the swift hand of the daytime guard, Dave, and lugged to the maintenance room by Freddy Fazbear and Montgomery Gator, with Roxanne Wolf remaining on the main stage and performing a solo piece. One of the janitorial robots who was assigned to clean the blood and slushy mix off the floor began to malfunction, and its twitches and erratic swinging of the mop sparked a mass fear of a second attack.
Screams erupted in the atrium as if each panicked footstep were a puff of fire swelling into an inferno, one blending into the next and encouraging more people to feed the mob. Parents swept their kids into their arms after shouting names into the chaos and raced to their cars. The security doors began to lower, and Dave called for the day to end prematurely.
At the exit, the manager plucked his wallet from his pocket and attempted to give the woman a chunk of money with promises of more to come if she let the incident die with the night. The woman smacked the object out of his hand and marched out the door, clutching the boy's hand and pulling him along with her. The manager scurried to retrieve his wallet before the herd of fleeing patrons trampled him and staggered to the side right as the doors were flung open.
No one bothered to count heads for the birthday entourage as the woman sped to the hospital in the mother's vehicle, and the boy was too busy sobbing to mention the absent child.
Once the hubbub had ceased, the manager approached Dave and beckoned to the security guard with repetitive jerks of his wrist. The man stiffened when his boss gripped his shoulder and muttered, “This doesn't leave the building. Those fat cat execs don't know a thing, got it?”
The entirety of the customer service department was unplugged that night, the offices resigning to a shell of dial tones and furious voicemails. It was minutes before the manager was set to flop his head onto a pillow when he received a call from Dave.
“Uh, hey.” The security guard was struggling with each word, deciding which facts to omit while he was talking. “Someone left me a message saying their kid never made it home.” The warmth drained from the manager's body, and he nearly dropped the telephone. “Apparently, they were carpooling?” Dave sought to lead his boss into an exhaustive discussion about the legal implications, but his words were perceived as little more than a distant hum.
Mustering his courage with a series of deep breaths, the manager pressed the phone to his lips. “Call Vanessa. Have her come in now.” He rubbed his forehead and suppressed a groan of exhaustion. “I can't deal with this tonight. Get me resolution by opening tomorrow, or it's your job.” Dave sighed and hung up.
* * *
As Vanessa cast the flashlight over the circular tables in the pickup area for the daycare, the manager droned in her ear. “Dave and I will be there at five.” Groggy impatience was entrenched in his voice and conjured the image of a bleary-eyed man clinging to the telephone with bedsheets covering most of his body. “But it would save us a lot of trouble if you found this kid before we open.”
He lost a bit of his volume as he attempted to yawn without the phone catching it. “We're in the red zone as is, and corporate's got all our jobs in a chokehold if the mother even jokes about suing.”
Vanessa lifted a half-eaten batch of nachos to her nose and tossed it onto the table with a curl of her lips, offering a bored “yeah” and shining the flashlight on the slide that children commonly used to enter the daycare. “There were hundreds of families barreling out the door today.” The night guard placed a dissatisfied emphasis on the word “hundreds” and rerouted to the alternate entrance.
Tapping the wooden doors with her knuckles, she stepped back and judged the impressive height of the barrier. “I'm sure this brat went with one of them.” The manager gave no reply for a while, and Vanessa worried that he was going to lecture her for her unsanitary choice of words. “Just call me back in ten or fifteen minutes, and I'm sure I'll have something.”
She had her finger poised to hang up when the manager repeated her name. After blinking in surprise, she raised the device to her ear once again. “We can't afford another disappearance.”
Vanessa was silent for a breath. “I understand, sir.” Ending the call with a beep and slipping the phone into her pocket, the night guard continued her trek into the daycare. The large doors that resembled those of a medieval castle opened to a land of colourful slides, equally vivid cushions instead of a hard floor, and an expansive ball pit in the back.
Under the veil of darkness, there lingered a strange taste of isolation from the world. The playground equipment seemed lifeless without the laughter of children to fill it, but the thought of the noise caused Vanessa to squint in disgust. “I hate this place,” she murmured, dreading each second that she was forced to spend inside the area.
The night guard walked across each cushion as if touching any part of it would infect her with a horrible disease. Her mouth was drawn into a permanent frown, and she refused to search the play structures beyond a cursory wave of her flashlight. Just as she was ready to call the daycare empty and move to the snack bars, a rough fit of cackling echoed through the stillness.
It was a harsh sound that pulled her attention to the stage that protruded from the top of the rear wall. Vanessa spun on her heels to point the flashlight at the faraway structure, the beam lacking strength at such a distance and providing only a faint look at the cramped space. “Kid, you better not be hiding from me!” Her yell faded into the quietude blanketing the daycare.
Huffing at the apparent rebellion, Vanessa stomped her way into the backrooms of the establishment, up a few flights of stairs, and stopped at the metal door that led to the stage. Dust floated in the air like snowflakes, and the corridor featured bare wires and tiny lightbulbs instead of wallpaper. The night guard had begun to raise her security pass to the door when a logical gap in her conclusion flew to the front of her mind like a slap in the face.
“Wait, how did you get up here?” Clenching her flashlight, her eagerness to unlock the door waned. Rather than throwing it open, she nudged it forward in cautious increments and held her flashlight next to her head.
At the centre of the stage, you were lying on the floor in a deep sleep. “Hey, kid!” whispered the night guard. A sweep of the flashlight across your body revealed no visible wounds or bruises, and the unconscious rise and fall of your chest seemed genuine.
Vanessa traversed the small stage with tentative steps, pressing her toes against a creaky board and retracting them as soon as the shrill squeak threatened to break the silence. She leaned her weight into the floorboard that cradled the pressure of her right leg, but the squeal rising from the decrepit hinges was silenced by the ring of her cell phone. The clamorous bars of a rhythmic tune vibrated in her pocket and emitted a silvery glow that was visible in the fabric of her black jeans.
Failing to catch the gasp spurting past her lips, the night guard cursed her readiness to be startled by the sound and brought the device to her ear. “Vanessa, do you have an update?” The blunt voice of the manager flowed from the speaker, his intolerance for complications not disguised by the thin layer of static muffling his words. Narrowing her eyes and swaying the flashlight across the stage once more, Vanessa listened to her boss's question and contemplated the accuracy of her findings.
A hand as frigid as a corpse plummeted from the ceiling and snatched the phone before she could open her mouth. The device vanished into the darkness above, five claws attached to a gangly arm piercing the metallic casing and retreating with a spring. A pair of red eyes were illuminated by the outskirts of the beam provided by the flashlight, and a gravelly voice – deeper and more shrill than any human – shushed the night guard.
“It's rude to wake someone when they're sleeping.”
A series of questions trickled from the cell phone, the irritation and perplexity in the manager's tone growing with each sentence. Moon turned the bright screen to his lopsided face and examined it for a curious instant before squeezing the device. The impact of his long claws spawned a multitude of cracks in the glass, and the audio signal became distorted by flares of static and unstable volume as the shape of the metal was warped.
With a burst of sparks, the phone was smashed into a jagged wad of scrap. Vanessa glanced between his fist and his eternal smile, the heels of her shoes squeaking against the floorboards in an impulsive attempt to withdraw. The red eyes began to dip towards the ground like cake batter spilling out of a bowl, which prompted the night guard to swing her flashlight in the direction of the animatronic.
The light exposed a set of four limbs unfolding and twirling in a supernatural display of agility. A whirr and subsequent pair of clanks denoted Moon's jump to the floor, and even with his bent knees and forward-leaning neck, he was almost twice as tall as Vanessa. His head bobbed from side to side as he took a slow step forward, arms raised to his chest and fingers wiggling.
“I'm a security guard!” Vanessa spat the fact through clenched teeth, and she winced at the inkling of fear invading her words. The statement was yelled with irate determination as though allowing it to be heard would inspire the desired change and absolve her of all wrongdoing. “You dumb robot.” The mutter drifted out of her in a moment of haste, her gaze dropping to where she was fiddling with her nametag to accentuate it.
The animatronic recoiled slightly. “Security?” In his croaky voice, the title earned a look of discomfort from the night guard. “Shoo, shoo!” Moon flapped his arms at her as if dismissing a stray animal, gazing over his shoulder to check for signs of consciousness. “Your racket is disturbing my friend's rest.”
Vanessa peered at your recumbent form in a mixture of bafflement and suspicion. Drawing her lips together and tightening her grip on the flashlight, she restrained the urge to interrogate the Daycare Attendant. “Yeah, well.” There was no guilt or sense of concern in her disgruntled retort, yet Moon watched your every shift like an overprotective guardian. “Your friend needs to be returned to their parents.”
This admission, coupled with her skeptical pronunciation of the word “friend,” captured his attention, a success which Vanessa came to regret when red eyes whirled around to direct an unnerving intensity at her. “No,” hissed Moon as he retreated to the centre of the stage and lowered himself onto all fours. The animatronic positioned his body above yours and obscured the woman's view, his long arms and legs hunched on either side of you. “New friend stays.”
She was thankful for the distance, but his hostile posture stirred tremendous unease in Vanessa's stomach. The night guard refrained from moving for as long as it took her to exhale, allowing some of the instinctive panic creeping up her spine to fade. The impulse to do something irrational, such as threatening to decommission him or rushing to grab your limp arm, tickled the back of her mind like an itch in an untouchable spot.
Promising ideas were beginning to fuse with the absurd when Vanessa recalled a bit from her orientation video. “Okay,” she replied with a hint of uncertainty stretching the word, her eyes widening and veering to the array of powerless lights covering the ceiling of the daycare. “I'm sorry for disturbing you.” The apology was quiet and delivered by audible force, but Moon merely tilted his head.
A brief squeal interrupted the serenity of the dark as the night guard exited the stage with hurried thumps of her shoes. She pressed her back against the door and was surprised by the vigorous breaths heaving her chest, expecting the Daycare Attendant to ram it or emerge from one of the many vents that poured into the corridor. The pounding of her heart was like a creature attempting to burst out of her ribcage, and the tingle of adrenaline inspired a slight shaking of her hands.
Bumping the metal structure with her head, Vanessa reflected the frustration coursing through her like liquid fire with an eye roll and a scowl. She peered down both ends of the corridor to satisfy the intrusive notion that she had an audience before marching in the direction of the security office. The tight confines and checkerboard pattern of the floor were a welcome sight, an observation that caused the night guard to bedamn the entire day.
The room was cramped because of the stacks of boxes and file cabinets occupying a third of the space, and the desk was busy with computer monitors and empty cups. The central and biggest screen displayed the security camera that was currently selected, which Vanessa darted to change to the daycare. After scrutinizing the inky darkness for a moment, she pulled a black chair towards herself and plopped the flashlight on the desk with a thud.
A white telephone sat beside one of the smaller computers. Vanessa spared a thought about the effectiveness of the landline and snatched it in a flurry of button-pushing and silent recitations of each number. “Hey, we have a problem.” Giving the edge of the desk a quick push, the night guard rolled to the main screen and inspected the shadows for any movement. “One of the animatronics went haywire, and I need backup.”
The insistence with which she spoke allowed no time for a response, but now that she was awaiting one, Vanessa noticed a persistent buzz reverberating through the office. What she had dismissed as the hum of a generator was a dial tone. A swear forced itself past her gritted teeth – arriving as little more than a hiss – as she closed her eyes and clenched her fist.
“Call me when you get this.” The telephone landed on the cradle with a bang.