Animatronic Eyes

I was a wimp, before all of this.

If I had the choice between a horror movie or a horrible gushy romance, I'd choose the romance. If I had to sleep without my nightlight, I'd stay up all night with my head under my covers. If I had to go into our dark, musty cellar by myself, forget it.
While these probably soun like minor fears and things normal people face everyday, you are being misled. See? It goes much deeper than that. I'm going to tell you the story of my eighth birthday party...

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Ten years ago...

My mom, should have been a party planner, just saying...

Previously, my mom had always planned mine, and my sister's birthday parties. So, of course, our whole school came, there was a huge cake, presents, and decorations that were so unique and true to the theme, that soon my classmates were asking my mom to do their birthday parties, too.

In the past, I'd had a princess theme, jungle theme, faries and a Barbie theme, among many others. Every year, mom never failed me. So this year, after much contemplation, I decided, that I'd let mom do the whole thing. Which meant choosing theme, location, guests and food. I wouldn't mind, because I knew she had a good vision of parties.

While meanwhile, I was dropping hints about an awesome Cinderella party, but I let her do her thing.

When the day came, twenty-seventh of Febuarary, I was already a little grouchy when I woke up, to snow coming down outside my window and a veil of cold fog clung to the glass. I groaned and got up, going to get my clothes, a pretty yellow, polka dot dress my mom had helped me pick out for the party. She said it'd match the theme, so I had no worries.

That's when my mom came in...

"Sweetie, I know it looks cold, but the party is still on." She assured me, and I nodded absently, more focused on sorting out the dress. "and... You might not want to wear a dress, it might be too chilly."

Finally, I looked at her, a little confused. "I can still wear it. It can't be too cold." I responded stubbornly.

She sighed, looking around the small room quickly, then nodding. "Ok, then. Be downstairs in fifteen. We have to go a little earlier."

After she closed the door behind her, I looked down at the polka dot dress with second thoughts... Well... Maybe a dress isn't the most preferable thing to wear... But then again, I'm sure she planned it to be indoors...

With that, I pulled the pink night dress over my head and tossed it into the hamper, and started to replace it with the soft yellow dress with rainbow polka dots.

Mom wouldn't let me wear my black converse with it, though. She said it didn't match. I sighed internally, as she rummaged through my closet and pulled out an unopened shoe box and placed it into my arms.

"What are these?" I asked curiously, lifting the lid a little.
"The Mary-Jans we bought you last spring. I know they'll still fit you." She smiled, and as I opened them, the preppy white Mary-Jans looked back at you, and as I strapped them on, she beamed, while I was a little more on the disappointed side.

"Ooh, you're so pretty!" She smiled excitedly, and began to do my hair, two seperate blond pigtails, on either side of my head, I looked at my reflection in hidden disbelief I look like a toddler...
"Honey!" My mom shouted down the hallway, "get in here, look at her! Oh, you're so beautiful." My mom gushed, while I... I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

My dad walked into the room, mom gestured towards me like a blinking neon runway for a landing plane.

Dad grinned, and patted my shoulder "You look nice, pumpkin."
At least dad gave me the watered down version of 'beautiful.' While mom on the other hand, was describing me like I was the finest sapphire ever uncovered.

"Ok, I'll meet you guys there... About... Eleven-ish? Yeah, somewhere in there." Dad pecked my my mom'd cheek and smiled at me "Happy birthday, Decsi."

Descsi... Weird name right? Well to clear up any confusion, it's pronounced dec-see. But that's my dad's nickname for me, his abbreviation. Mom named me... Clearly. So he was just making it easier to remember what it was. December Clare Anna Hunter.

Also, the reason my dad was coming late, was because he was cheif of police in town, someone had to lead them all and keep the department in order, so I understood. Three hours from now dad would get his half day and he'd come to the mystery location and we'd hang out all day.

Dad left shortly after, and mom got me to eat a quick breakfast of frozen waffles and orange juice before we left.

Mom blindfolded me, and I sat in the backseat, oblivious to what was coming. My older sister Dawn sat in the front seat snickering.
"Do you seriously think she'll like it?" She whispered to mom. But like they always say, when one of your senses (in my case, my sight) is cut off, your other senses are hightened. Meaning I heard her fine... Which didn't make the sudden rush of worry fade any quicker.

Then we stopped, my mom got out, laughing to herself excitedly. She helped me from the car and guided me blindly around a parking lot while the cold wind send goosebumps bristling all over my exposed skin. Someone held open the door, because we never paused to open one. And suddenly I was noticibly warmer, and I smelled pizza.

Pizza? I went through all the possible pizza places in town, and there were very few. There was a Pizza Hut on Main Street, Carpender Family Pizza Co. On Broadway, and then this roadside pizza place that smelled like an uncleaned grease vat, and if you ate there... Well, you left sick.

But none of those places were really party quality.
Then I racked my brain for the last one I could think of, but couldn't recall the name of.

Then the blind was dropped, and I jumped a foot when the first thing I saw was a huge metal bear face. Big blue plastic eyes fixed unmoving on my face and an eery huge smile with teeth exposed. The only thing that told me it was alive, was it's flicking ears.

I took a broad step back, so I could see it better, I hugged my mom's waist and just stared at him. He had small brown rivets around his muzzle and down the seams of his head.

"Hi little girl!" It exclaimed excitedly and I flinched away, not only because he startled me and scared me, but because he reeked...
I held my breath a little when I looked at him.

He wore a big red bowtie that was fraying around the edges a little bit, then a black top hat on his head. In his right hand, was a permanent mircophone, about as permanent as his smile, which was still huge, and unwavering. And he looked nowhere near apologizing for scaring me.

"Table for?..." Asked a waitress that came up beside the crouching bear. I might have imagined it, but I saw his eyebrows tilt inwards and his eyes move up to look at the waitress for a second.

"Oh we have reservations for... Pirate Cove." Mom handled smoothly with a warm smile, while I could hardly look away from the freaky bear until we walked off.

In my head, I felt a little angry Really? A party at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria? Oh man... Maybe I've had too many childish themes that mom thought it was perfect... Either that, or it's as Dawn had joked: It was all a prank.

"Here you go," The waitress said, leading me and my family around a corner into a big room with a ball pit, an adjacent arcade room, and a small wooden stage with two purple curtains pulled back, revealing another one of those weird robot things that had greeted me as the door. I watched him warily as we were seated with my group of friends, when suddenly it struck me that my popular friends were here at my usually awesome parties...

When instead, this time we were at some childish pizza parlor with creepy, stinky animatronics running the place.

I was probably too young to realize that I was young enough to like that kind of stuff and so were my friends.

"Foxy is doing a skit today, which you can watch, there's the arcade, ball pit and bathrooms are that way, just past the sur- uh, the office. Is this anything else I can get you?" The waitress offered, I looked away before mom had answered.

I looked around the room with mild interest. Corny let's celebrate banners hung around the room with decorations and balloons with the animatronic's faces on them. I noticed two others besides the bear and fox, a bird and a purple bunny. They still creeped me out.

The day moved forward, and bad things just... happened to me. We had cake, and shakes, then this clumsy boy named Connor spilled it on me and laughed, until I started getting angry and tried to hit his arm. Then mom pulled me aside and scolded me.

I felt pretty low after that, and to make things worse, dad couldn't come. He came... But then his radio beeped, and there was an accident, and he had to go. Mom told me not to plead with dad, his work was very important for the well being of the town. I nodded and sulked silently.

Then Dawn embarrassed me... She got the attention of the bear, the chick and the bunny and asked them to sing me a song. I wanted to hide my head.

The sung Happy Birthday, and towards the last verse, the chick glitched and it repeated the line twice, and it's head jerked backwards and snapped back into place with a metallic ping.

I couldn't wait to go home. The day was... Awful. But it wasn't just the bad things that happened to me that made it that way. I watched those robots as closely as they watched me. And they were very... Sinister.

Grins that never disappeared, programmed speach and an always happy presence: What's not to like? That's the wrong question to ask me, see, I was horrified. For the solid three weeks following my birthday, I woke with nightmares, and 25% of those nights I'd go find mom and dad to sleep with them.

It was dreadful.

After a while, I was just permanently scared of robots, bears, foxes, chicks and bunnies. And mom would console me every night that it was just in my head. I'd look out their bedroom window while the breeze fluttered the curtains and look up at the moon.

No, I was sure. It was real, I just didn't want to prove it, because I really didn't have any proof of it. So I'd agree with her every night and go back to bed. But it wasn't better...

That Christmas, my Grandma bought me a giant brown teddy bear that was as big as me. I freaked when I saw it. It wore a red bow tie and had big black eyes, and when the light hit them just right, I saw their centers glint white dimly.

Mom scolded me for not saying thank you or at least pretending I liked the gift. I freaked... So mom kept the giant teddy bear in my closet, for me to confront every morning and night when I had to get my clothes for the day.

This caused me to start making bad habits like not putting my clothes away, keeping out a few days worth of clean clothes, and my room was usually dirty because of this.

To make it worse, Dawn teased me about it.

"Freddy's gonna get you," then she'd sneak up behind you while I sa on the couch watching TV and pinch the back of my neck.
"Dawn, leave me alone..." I mumbled as I walked away. Feeling reall gullible after falling for her story.

"I'm telling ya!" Dawn called after me. "Freddy loves children, he kills them, and makes them work for him forever."

I didn't sleep again, because every night, I sat wide awake in bed with a baseball bat and a flashlight, until after the fourth night of no sleep, I passed out a woke up late in the morning.

"Are you feeling alright?" Mom asked curiously as she stepped over the clothes on the floor and removed the flashlight and baseball bat from my clenched white knuckles.

I nodded numbly. "Fine."

"Care to explain?" Mom gestured to the bat and flashlight.
I sighed heavily. "Dawn was making fun of me again... She told me a stor three nights ago, and it scared me. Now I can't sleep."
I said in embarrassment.

Mom closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose "Was the story about Freddy?" She wondered, but she already knew.
I didn't answer her directly. "But mom-"

"Sweetie, being scared is ok. It comes with being alive. But this... Phobia that you've acquired, it needs to stop."

"If I could, trust me, I would've done it by now."

She opened her eyes and looked at me. "Do we need to do something? A psychiatrist? Something?"

"No!" I exclaimed, and lowered my voice "no, I don't want that."

"But honey..."

"I can't." I said firmly.

"Why not?"

"Because... It's never going to go away. I see them during the day time, their shadows. I see them at night when I sleep. They're always there."

She seemed a little taken back, but she recovered. "Then why haven't you gotten used to... Them?"

"Would you ever get used to robotic puppets stalking you?" I demanded, but she didn't respond.

"Lunch is almost ready." She changed the subject and stood up, exiting the room. Leaving me alone with the feeling of someone hiding under my bed and in the canopy of curtains hanging around my bed, all eyes on me, laughs, distant and quiet, left me in a always jumpy mood and just slightly paranoid.

I didn't like it... But I took my mom's advice.

I stopped talking about Freddy and the others. I stopped waking my parents up in the middle of the night. I stopped giving Dawn leverage, and soon it was just all in my head.

But not quite.

I would be studying, and swear I heard a snicker behind me, I'd look over my shoulder, expecting to see Dawn, but there would be nothing there. I'd be eating breakfast in the morning while dad read the paper and ate his toast, mom made bacon, and Dawn picked at her eggs, and I'd feel something dripping on my foot, hot and sticky, I'd look and nothing would be there.
I'd be walking with my friends to class, and I'd hear someone with a high pitched childs voice call out my name.

Decsi...

I'd pause and look back, my friends would exchange worried looks and tug on my sleeve. I'd mutter something about my imagination and move on. It was the same thing every day, which made it harder, no matter my efforts, to convince myself that it was just that, my imagination.

Birthdays came and went, not one single thing with teddy bears, bunnies, chickens or foxes were permitted.

When I turned fourteen, my cousins came to my house for the party, they are twin sisters, and they both were wearing white t-shirts with a faded logo from Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. It made me flinch, but I said nothing as I studied the logo.

The four slightly evil looking stuffed figures smiling, with the company name, then below it in neon sign style pink cursive Let's eat!

Given that the bear, rabbit, chicken and fox were among some of the most popular animals, it made it hard to avoid them.

They were almost everywhere, and on top of that, there was the occaisional ad in the newspaper or on the local news channel for the pizzeria. That's when I'd turn the channel or flip the page.
The trio from the pizzeria were inevitable.

And I should have grown out of the phobia that rendered me defensless, but I just... Didn't.

I turned sixteen, then seventeen, then eighteen. This is the current year, and I was forced into some uncomfortable positions.