Animatronic Eyes

You know how they say there's only so many different kinds of fear? There's the We need to talk kind of fear, there's the incorrect password kind of fear, there's the lurching stomach kind of fear, and then there's this, and it doesn't fit into any of those catagories.

The room was pitch black and musty, the lights in the hallway made it slightly dim, but it didn't help much. I felt along the inner walls for a switch. I found one and snapped it on, I looked around myself, then down at my hand.

There was a smear of pink on my index finger, I looked at the wall beside the switch and there was a matching, sloppy smear of pink. I didn't think much of it, afterall, it was the only spot on the otherwise clean walls.

I finally looked around the room. It was larger than the repair room had been, with a low wooden platform that the three dead animatronics stood on. Their heads bowed in silence, eyes dark and unlit.

I sighed silently in relief, but it quickly faded. I stood in the small room face to face with the three animatronics. While they were off, they still had this unnerving presence about them. A dark aura that glowed around them. Angry, jealous, sadness. I found myself pausing just to observe them for a moment.

Do I turn them on or...? If so, then how? Or could we just leave them off? Blake clearly wasn't here to do it today, and Mr. Miller entitled doing nothing like this. Though it would certainly make everyone else's jobs easier to make up for his absence if there were three animatronics out there distracting the bratty kids.

I held my breath and tried not to think about it too much as I slowly approached the rabbit. I ducked a little to look up at it's bowed head. It's dark eyes held no emotion or had any intentions of turning on themselves.

Suddenly I felt very silly. They were just stuffed animals. sculpted suits clinging to the wiring and crossbeam skeleton underneath it. There was nothing else. They weren't constructed of love or hate. They were constructed of artifical voice boxes, wires, metal beams and circuts. Plastic, metal and plaster. Lights, sound and movement. But those actions only occured based on one of the other many electronics within the suit. There wasn't any danger in them. They may look sinister and dangerous, but that's just a feeling, that's just how they look. But what are they really?

I approached the backs of the animatronics and found the cut out square in each of their backs, lifting the lid and looking at the minor control setting, I'd expected something more advanced, actually. But there was like, three switches. One that said Free roam and it was set to off. The other switch was on and off. The third was minor adjustments like volume and speed of speach.

I flipped the on switch up. But nothing happened. I looked at the free roam switch. Well obviously they need to be able to walk to leave the room. I flipped them up too, and then, their head slowly began to raise, eyes lit up, limbs twitched and they stood alive.

They didn't speak or notice me there. They just... Stood there, like they were frozen.

"Umm." I mumbled, stepping out in front of them cautiously. Their eyes followed me, their big permanent plastic smiles made them creepier.

"Uh, go preform your best song in the dining hall, please?" I asked. It was hard speaking to them like they were real people, it was even harder to treat them like you were talking to your dolls.

Freddy's head turned. "Our pleasure." And they began moving out of the room in a line. They didn't look back or say anything else.

Now that the room was empty, it wasn't that bad. A little messy though. I looked down at the tiled floor and noticed the black puddle. Maybe one of them were leaking oil or something... Do animatronics even use oil? I shrugged and looked for a rag to clean it up, that's when Mr. Miller walked by the open door.

"Oh! It's just you, Decsi. I thought you were someone else."

"Who else would I be?" I asked warily, wadding up an old rag in my hands.

He waved his hand dismissively. "Nevermind, you started up the animatronics?"

I nodded. "I figured, y'know, since Blake wasn't here to do it." I shrugged.

"Oh, well great then. Thank you, I know Jess and Cyrus aren't very fond of having to do it, so you saved them some stress."

Mr. Miller was just beginning to leave when I stopped him. "Mr. Miller?" I called after him, and he peeked back into the room. "Yes?"

"Where is Blake? We haven't seen him, so I was wondering if you knew. Like if he was sick, or out of town or something."

Mr. Miller pursed his lips. "After lunch break, tell everyone to meet in my office. It'll have to be a quick meeting, but I guess you ought to know. Oh! And if you wouldn't mind, we could use some help washing dishes."

And just like that, Mr. Miller walked off. Leaving me wondering what had become of Blake. The lanky twenty-something boy with the black hair and face of Frank Iero that I'd only met once. Yet... It worried me that he wasn't here today.