The sound of the music box draws him out of bed. The shoes he slips on are not the bunny slippers Jenny got him last Christmas, but an old pair of red Converse High Tops. He can feel the holes in their soles with each step he takes, burned into the rubber not two days after Mom got them for him. The chain on his bike had snapped while going downhill.
He opens his bedroom door into the dark hallway of his apartment, streetlights pouring their orange glow across wallpapered walls. At its mouth, before the front door, stands a puppet as tall as the frame. Its tear-streaked mask moves from side to side, one long striped arm draping over the brass doorknob. The other reaches out to him.
He takes the hand that feels like overstuffed fabric between his fingers, and squeezes it as it guides him across the threshold and into the balmy night.
Another hand, just as small, shoves Ricky away and his hip smacks into a bumper. He winces, reaching under his shirt to rub at the site. "What'd you do that for?"
"Because you keep talking to me like I'm a baby," Jeremy says, struggling to get the chain through his bike's spokes. "Just because multiplication tables are kicking my butt doesn't mean I'm a little kid. Dustin said we're not even supposed to do that until next year! What's next? Long division?"
Ricky looks around, at the purple car he's leaning against, the family getting out of the van two parking spots down, and the group of boys his age all pushing past the doors in a rowdy mess of hoots and hollers.
He looks at Jeremy, who is still trying to get his bike secured. "Here," he says, "I'll hold the chain and you can snap the lock." That's not what you said, though.
"Ricky," Jeremy says, testing out the nickname, "why are Mom and Dad so mad at you? I get them not liking your haircut but that was super silly."
His chest grows tight. "Because…because they don't understand. People are mean when they don't understand. Like when you snap at Mrs. Carter when you don't understand a math problem." That's not how you explained it to him.
Jeremy makes a face. "Don't understand what?"
It's alright. It's fine if the things he says are different now, if he tries to frame it in a way that a seven-year-old can understand. I'm different, Jer, and they don't like that.
"I don't want to talk about it, Jer. Come on. I'm hungry."
Freddy Fazbear's is as loud and bright as it always is, and it smells like it always does. Pizza grease, latex balloons, sweaty kids, and freezer-burned ice cream. The place is an assault on the senses that gets quickly overwhelming, but on nights like this one, it's the kind of atmosphere the two of them need.
Veronica had spat a ball of chewed gum into Ricky's hair, and the tangle had been bad enough the school nurse had no option but to take a pair of scissors to it. His distraught hiccups had turned into an inquisitive hum when he looked himself in the mirror and realized he preferred this kind of short hairstyle. The sudden shift without their parents' permission, coupled with Jeremy's failed math test, had meant it was not a very good Friday night in the Kronbach household. Luckily, Freddy's was only a fifteen minute bike ride away.
"Can we get a whole pie?" Jeremy says as he crawls onto the booth across from him.
"No, but we can get a slice each." Turning his pockets inside out grants him access to the crumpled five dollar bills he's been collecting over the course of three weeks. "Maybe we could split a sundae."
A nice lady with curly hair stops by to take their order, and the two of them have been there enough times that nobody asks questions.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Please put your hands together for the one, the only, Freddy and the Fazbear Band!" Uproarious applause makes Ricky flinch. Jeremy kneels on the booth to look over the glass divider towards the stage with giddy excitement.
"Bonnie got a new guitar!" he says, looking back at Ricky with a grin. "It's so cool, look at it!"
"I can see it."
"You think there's still time for me to ask Santa for a guitar?"
Ricky shrugs. He'd asked for a guitar for five consecutive years before giving up. "Maybe Mom can send him a fax or something."
The animatronic band performs a set of three songs, the last one getting a raised eyebrow out of him. He knows kids don't really pay attention to lyrics when the beat is good but Pour Some Sugar on Me feels a bit risque for a family establishment. That doesn't stop his foot from tapping along. More than half of the people in the restaurant are singing out of tune, clapping, and cheering on the band as they greet the weekend.
On the opposite side of the dining hall, at the hallway that leads back towards the bathrooms and offices, stand two men. They stand close to each other, watching the show with a fraction of the enthusiasm as the rest of the crowd. One of them he recognizes.
Afton, dressed in pressed slacks, an ironed button down, a sequined waistcoat and matching purple bowtie, points at the stage, speaking directly into the other man's ear. The other man, shorter than Afton and slightly less put together, looks like he does not want to be there. His beard is borderline unkempt, and the bags under his eyes are easy to spot even at a distance.
Afton stops talking but does not look away from him. He reaches out to touch the man's elbow, and it feels like an exchange Ricky shouldn't be privy to. The man acknowledges Afton with a frown but Afton grins and winks, dramatically singing along and doing a little dance that makes the man crack a smile. Afton laughs, smacking the man's arm with the affection of an old friend.
The song ends and the cheering grows louder. The lady with the curly hair returns with their pizza.
"You should make me a mixtape," Jeremy says once he gets the string of cheese to separate from his slice. "You know these bands, right?"
The pizza tastes like ash, regardless of which component Ricky shoves in his mouth. He dips the crust in the ice cream, but that too tastes like a memory his brain cannot properly render. "If you write down the songs you like I can get them off the radio for you."
Then, he blinks, and the food is gone.
Leaning back, hands braced against the edge of the table, the checkerboard tile moves like a conveyor belt beneath his feet. The sound it makes as it's devoured by the old wall is that of a rusted meat grinder desperate to regain its ability to churn. Beneath it, the faint murmur of a little girl's voice.
"Can I play some games before we go?"
Ricky unsticks his eyelids with a stiff nod of his head. There's less money in his pockets and the table has been cleaned off. "This is all you're getting," he says, handing Jeremy three dollar bills. "Don't go outside without me. In fact, don't wander off. Lemme go with you."
Jeremy sticks out his tongue. "I'm not gonna get lost."
"I know you're not, it's just…" There's a thought there, half formed, but he can't quite reach it. "It's more fun to play co-op."
Jeremy's face lights up. "I'm gonna kick your butt at Dig Dug."
"Keep dreaming."
Ricky hops out of the booth and hits the bathroom sink.
He blinks, confused by the blood on the white porcelain. "What?" He whips around, heart sinking into the seat of his stomach. His palms begin to sweat. "No. No, no, nononono." He runs for the bathroom door and finds it barricaded. "Hello! I'm in here!"
There is nothing in the corner this time. No shadows, no monsters, no voices. Just music coming from the other side, idle chatter and distant laughter.
He pounds on the door until his fists bruise, until the screaming starts. And then it's his turn to scream for anyone to come get him out.
When the door does open, he slams face first into the man from earlier. He looks bewildered, alarmed to the point of blank shock as he lowers himself to Ricky's eye level. "Hey there, hey, it's okay," he's saying, and Ricky doubts the comfort is meant for him.
"I need—" Ricky starts, and this is different, this is exactly how it goes, and yet—"Jeremy. I need to get Jeremy. He's my brother, he's…he's…"
The man nods his head and then pauses, his features barely holding onto the neutral mask adults wear in the midst of peril. "The boy you were with earlier."
Someone takes a turn into the hallway and Ricky freezes on the spot, Afton standing there like a deer facing an eighteen-wheeler. "Henry," he says, breathless, "this is bad, man. This is, like, real bad."
"Bill, they might be siblings," Henry says, his hands shaking on Ricky's shoulders.
Afton looks down at the stricken teenager, but Ricky doubts he sees anything. Those silver eyes are gazing through him in a state of dazed horror. "Dammit. Dammit!"
"We apologize for the inconvenience, but Freddy Fazbear's has now closed. Join us again tomorrow for another day of whimsical fun and games. Have a great night!"
Henry keeps nodding his head. "Let's get you with everyone else."
Ricky makes a break for it.
He pushes away from the man and darts down the hallway. Afton tries to stop him, but he ducks under the arm and evades all further attempts on his behalf. "Wait!" He doesn't wait. He needs to get his brother, and he needs to get his brother before…before what?
There's a crowd around the stage and he fights his way through despite the dozens of hands that try to keep him back. His teeth sink into someone's forearm, his elbow meets someone's nose, but he doesn't care. The wailing that cuts across the cavernous room echoes in the chamber of his own chest and falls flat on the faces of the boys he saw earlier. They're crying and he's so scared he can't even stop to make fun of them.
His sneakers slip and some stranger catches him before he can fall, a murmured please be careful near his ear that sounds fake, as if spoken through a wooden voice box rather than human vocal cords.
The puppet watches from the rig above the stage, deflated. Life has fled its elongated body.
His sneakers are sticky now. Every step is more difficult than the last and looking down he realizes why.
He recoils in horror, hands flying to his mouth at the sight on the stage. He can only process the periphery of it at first. A deactivated Chica with her head pulled to the side. A Freddy whose eyes are off, microphone hanging limp by his side. Around their fuzzy feet is a pool of dark red goop with footprints in it, the human kind. Two grownups are standing on either side of Bonnie, their hands occupied with—with—
No.
Ricky takes another step, but a pair of arms wrap around him from behind, hauling him away from the explosion of gore. "No. Let me go. Let me go!" But the arms do not let him go. They tighten. "Please! Put it back. Put it back. Put it back into him and he'll be okay, yeah? You can do that, right?!"
Henry shushes him, but it isn't the calming gesture he thinks it is. "Don't look, little rabbit. Don't look."
There's nothing to look at. What the men on the stage hold up is hardly his brother, his tiny body spasming as it holds on to whatever it can with his head lodged between the purple rabbit's mechanical jaws. His head. There's nothing. Nothing but mush and red—so much red.
The little girl's whispers are no longer a whisper, and they no longer come from a little girl. The whispers are nothing but screams, agonized wails that come from nowhere other than his own chest.
He screams, and screams, and screams. He screams until sound becomes nonexistent and all that comes from him are violent tremors and the expulsion of that final meal all over the parking lot, some of it getting on Henry's clothes. Henry, who wraps him up in a blanket and holds him against his side until their parents arrive, until the world as Ricky knows it comes, well and truly, to an end.
The paramedics attempt to revive Jeremy, but they take too long to arrive. William tries to explain, but all he does is stammer his way through technical jargon that gets him slapped across the face by their mother. Henry tries to offer comfort, but all that garners is their father's wrath.
All he wanted was to make the night better for him and his brother. Now here he is, a brother short, and a nightmare delivered onto his hands.
• 
