Nine Lives at Freddy's

Carl didn’t enter the pizzeria so much as he tumbled into it. After a fair amount of swearing and a struggle with a window that definitely won his respect, he landed on the kitchen floor with a dull thud and the sound of his pride cracking.

He sat there for a second, surrounded by the charcoal-dark shadows of Freddy Fazbear’s, and let out a long, annoyed sigh. He reached up to adjust his dark, tangled curls, which were currently matted with cobwebs. Carl was a guy who looked like he’d just rolled out of bed and into a bad idea—wearing a navy hoodie that had seen too many late nights and a pair of eyes that were always looking for the easiest way out of a hard day’s work.

“Easy money,” he muttered to the empty room, his voice echoing off the grimy tiles.

He stood up, brushing off his jeans with a swagger he hadn’t earned. Carl wasn’t just here to look around; he was here to cause a little high-quality property damage. He flicked on his flashlight, the beam bouncing off the rusted industrial sinks and the stacks of “Fazbear Entertainment” pizza pans that hadn’t seen a sponge since the nineties.

He moved through the kitchen with a loose, careless gait, his sneakers squeaking rhythmically. Carl was the kind of person who treated a crime scene like his own living room. He spotted a leftover box of crackers on a prep table—god knows how old they were—and without a second thought, he popped one into his mouth.

Crunch.

“Needs salt,” he whispered, tossing the rest of the box back onto the table.

As he turned to head toward the main dining room, his legendary lack of coordination decided to pay a visit. He went to lean against the counter to look cool, but his elbow slipped on a patch of old, congealed grease.

Clatter-bang!

His arm sent a stack of metal mixing bowls spiraling across the floor. They tumbled like a series of loud, metallic bells, ringing out into the hollow silence of the restaurant.

Carl winced, pulling his shoulders up to his ears. “Smooth, Carl. Real smooth.”

He stood perfectly still, waiting to see if the noise had alerted anyone—or anything. But the building remained silent. The only thing moving was the dust motes dancing in his flashlight beam.

He turned the light toward the upper cabinets, looking for something worth stealing. That’s when the light hit it.

A Cupcake.

It was sitting on a high shelf, its pink plastic “frosting” gleaming under the light. It looked ridiculous. It looked harmless. It looked like something Carl could probably get twenty bucks for on a collectors’ forum.

“Hey there, little guy,” Carl grinned, stepping closer. He didn’t notice that his back was to the dark, open doorway of the freezer. He didn’t notice that the air around him had suddenly dropped five degrees.

He just saw a prize. And as he reached up, his foot caught the edge of a heavy floor mat, sending him into a slow-motion stumble toward the very thing that was currently deciding how he would taste.

Carl’s hands slapped hard against the cold, greasy stainless steel of the counter, jarring his shoulders and stopping his fall just inches from the floor. He hung there for a second, his heart doing a frantic double-time beat against his ribs. He let out a sharp, breathy laugh that sounded pathetic even to his own ears.

“Gravity check,” he muttered, pushing himself back up and wiping his palms on his jeans. “Still working.”

He shined the flashlight back up at the shelf. The Cupcake sat perfectly still. But as the beam washed over its glossy pink frosting, Carl couldn’t shake the sudden, irrational feeling that its wide, plastic eyes were pointing just a fraction of an inch lower than they had been a moment ago. Staring right at his face.

Carl stared back. He tilted his head. The logical part of his brain told him it was just the angle of the light, the curved plastic playing tricks in the dark.

“Creepy little piece of plastic,” he whispered. He decided it wasn’t worth the effort of climbing the counter. Besides, there was better loot to be found out front.

He turned his back on the kitchen and pushed through the heavy double doors leading to the main dining room. The hinges whined in protest, a long, drawn-out squeal that made the hairs on Carl’s arms stand up.

If the kitchen felt like a tomb, the dining area was the graveyard itself. The air here was dead and heavy, smelling strongly of ozone, mildew, and ancient floor wax. Carl’s flashlight beam swept across a sea of long tables covered in party hats that had long since rotted into sad, faded cones. In the far distance, shrouded in impenetrable black shadows, the main stage loomed. Carl purposely kept his light pointed away from the velvet curtains. He didn’t want to look at whatever was behind them. He wasn’t scared—he just didn’t like them. They were ugly.

He strutted toward a row of arcade cabinets lining the far wall, his sneakers squeaking with every step. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

He stopped in front of a token machine. It was a bulky, metal behemoth with a faded decal of a cartoon bear holding a handful of gold coins.

“Jackpot,” Carl grinned.

He pulled a flathead screwdriver from the front pocket of his hoodie, wedged it into the seam of the coin door, and leaned his weight into it. The metal groaned, loudly scraping and echoing off the walls. Carl grunted, biting his lip as he twisted the tool.

Crunch-squeal.

The noise he was making was deafening. It completely masked the slow, heavy thud of a footstep in the kitchen he had just left.

“Come on, you piece of junk,” Carl hissed, jiggling the screwdriver. The lock wasn’t giving. Frustrated, he gave the machine a hard kick with the toe of his sneaker.

The vibration traveled up his leg, and the sudden jolt caused the screwdriver to slip. It popped out of the seam, bounced off the toe of his shoe, and rolled away across the checkered floor, disappearing beneath a long party table draped in a thick, dusty tablecloth.

Carl sighed, letting his head fall back in exasperation. “Of course. Perfect.”

He crouched down, shining his flashlight under the table. The space beneath was a narrow, claustrophobic tunnel of chair legs and discarded napkin wads. The silver handle of his screwdriver caught the light about halfway down the aisle.

Grumbling under his breath about how he didn’t get paid enough for this, Carl got down on his hands and knees. He crawled under the table, the dirty fabric of the tablecloth brushing against his shoulders and completely cutting him off from the rest of the room. The smell of dust and old gum was suffocating down here.

He stretched his arm out, his fingers brushing the handle of the tool.

That was when the heavy double doors to the kitchen slowly, quietly, swung open.

Carl’s fingers finally closed around the hard plastic handle of the screwdriver. He let out a huff of triumph that instantly stirred up a miniature sandstorm of decades-old floor dust. He scrunched his face, holding his breath to fight off a sudden, aggressive tickle in his nose.

Above him, the atmosphere in the dining room seemed to shift. The heavy, stagnant air suddenly felt cold, carrying with it a new scent that cut through the dust—something like burnt hair and hot motor oil.

Swaaash. Click.

Carl paused. He lay flat on his stomach, cheek pressed against the grimy tiles. His flashlight, sitting near his hand, cast long, distorted shadows of the chair legs that looked like prison bars.

He listened. The noise had been soft, like the heavy kitchen doors swinging shut on their pneumatic hinges.

“Wind,” Carl whispered to himself. “Drafty old dump.” He sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. He wasn’t about to let an old building spook him. He had a coin box to bust open.

He began to shimmy backward, pushing off with his knees. He made it exactly four inches before a sharp, tearing sound echoed under the table.

Riiip.

Carl groaned, dropping his head to the floor. The loose fabric of his navy hoodie had caught hard on a splintered, exposed nail sticking out of a chair leg. He gave it a hard yank, but the heavy cotton held fast, anchoring him in place.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he muttered, twisting his torso to reach around and unhook himself. He fumbled in the cramped, dark space, his knuckles scraping against the underside of the table.

As he struggled with the snag, a vibration traveled through the floorboards, transferring directly into his chest.

Thump. Carl stopped pulling.

It wasn’t a footstep. Not a human one, anyway. It lacked the soft yield of a shoe. It was a heavy, dead, metallic impact.

Thump… whirrr.

Carl’s heart, previously beating at a steady, annoyed rhythm, suddenly spiked. He slowly lowered his head back down to the floor. His flashlight was pointed toward the edge of the table, illuminating the tiny, inch-high gap between the bottom of the dusty tablecloth and the checkered tiles.

From out in the aisle, the sound changed. The heavy thudding stopped, replaced by something much worse.

Skitter-clack. Skitter-clack. It sounded like a mechanical crab scurrying over the linoleum. Fast. Erratic. And it was moving directly toward his table.

Carl held his breath. His chest burned, and his wide eyes were locked on that sliver of light beneath the fabric. He didn’t dare move to unhook his hoodie. If he jerked the table, whatever was out there would know exactly where he was.

The skittering stopped right outside the tablecloth, just inches from his face.

Through the tiny gap, Carl saw it. Two small, metal-jointed feet. They were painted a chipped, dirty orange, ending in blunt claws. They twitched, scraping lightly against the tiles as if adjusting their weight.

Then, the fabric of the tablecloth right in front of Carl’s nose began to slowly, ever so slightly, bow inward. Something was pressing against it from the outside. Trying to peek under.

Carl’s lungs were screaming. Every instinct in his body told him to bolt, to thrash, to scream, but he remained paralyzed, his cheek glued to the filth of the floor. Through the gap, the orange, mechanical feet didn’t move. They just… waited.

The bowing in the tablecloth increased. Whatever was on the other side was leaning its weight against the fabric, pressing closer and closer to Carl’s face. He could see the faint, circular indentation of a plastic snout. He could almost hear the low, electric hum of a motor vibrating through the cloth.

The snag on his hoodie felt like a noose. If that fabric lifted another inch, he was cornered like a rat in a trap.

Then, from the far side of the kitchen—the place Carl had just spent ten minutes trashing—came a sudden, violent CRASH.

It sounded like a heavy metal tray had been swiped off a counter, followed by the high-pitched, rhythmic clatter-clatter-clatter of it spinning to a rest on the floor.

The pressure on the tablecloth vanished instantly.

The orange feet outside the table twitched, pivoting toward the sound. With a frantic, metallic click-clack-clack, whatever it was scurried away, its tiny claws sounding like hailstones on the linoleum as it raced back toward the kitchen to investigate the new noise.

Carl didn’t wait. He didn’t even breathe. He reached back with a strength born of pure, unadulterated terror and ripped his hoodie off the nail. The fabric tore with a loud shree, but he didn’t care. He scrambled backward, his limbs tangling together like a bag of coat hangers, until he tumbled out from under the opposite side of the table.

He scrambled to his feet, his flashlight beam dancing wildly across the room. The dining hall was empty again, but the silence now felt like a predator holding its breath.

“Okay,” he panted, his voice a pathetic, high-pitched wreck. “Okay, okay, okay.”

He didn’t head for the kitchen. He wasn’t that stupid. He turned and sprinted toward the main entrance, his sneakers thudding heavily against the floor. He didn’t care about being smooth anymore. He just wanted out.

He reached the heavy glass front doors and shoved.

They didn’t budge.

He threw his shoulder into them, the glass rattling in the frames, but the heavy chains he had ignored on his way in were now a shimmering, steel barrier. He was locked in.

Carl spun around, his back to the door, his flashlight cutting a desperate arc through the darkness. The “distraction” in the kitchen had gone quiet. The building was settling back into that heavy, expectant stillness.

He needed a place to hide. His eyes darted to the left—to a narrow hallway leading toward the employee-only sections and the security office. It was a dark, charcoal-colored mouth waiting to swallow him whole.

Behind him, from the direction of the kitchen, he heard it again. A soft, rhythmic creeeak of a door hinge.

Something was coming back out. And it wasn’t curious anymore. It was hunting.

Carl’s sneakers felt like lead as he backed away from the entrance, his eyes locked on the double doors of the kitchen. He could see one of them still vibrating slightly, a slow, rhythmic sway that suggested something had just pushed through it.

He couldn’t stay here. The lobby was too open, a vast stage where he was the only thing under the spotlight.

He ducked into the side hallway, his flashlight beam cutting through the thick, charcoal-colored air. This part of the building felt different—narrower, colder, and smelling of ozone and wet cardboard. He moved with a frantic, uncoordinated speed, his shoulders brushing against the peeling wallpaper.

“Office,” he wheezed. “Security office. It’s got a door. A thick door.”

In his head, he was a survivor. In reality, he was a walking disaster. As he rounded a corner, his flashlight beam caught the dull, metallic glint of a janitor’s bucket left in the middle of the hall.

He saw it. He knew it was there. But as he tried to pivot his weight to sidestep it, his sneakers—still slick from the kitchen grease—betrayed him.

His right foot slid out from under him. His left foot tangled in the handle of the bucket.

With a muffled shout, Carl went down. Hard.

He didn’t just fall; he cascaded. He slammed into a heavy supply shelf lining the wall. The impact was deafening in the narrow corridor. A box of industrial lightbulbs slid off the top shelf and shattered across the floor like a thousand tiny glass grenades.

“Dammit!” Carl hissed, clutching his bruised elbow. He tried to scramble up, but his hand landed directly on a shard of glass. He hissed in pain, pulling back, and in the process, he kicked the janitor’s bucket.

The bucket skidded down the hallway, its wheels screaming against the tile like a dying bird, until it slammed into the far wall with a hollow clunk.

Carl froze, huddling on the floor amidst the glass. The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating.

Then, he heard it.

It wasn’t the skittering of the little thing from earlier. It was a slow, heavy grinding sound. It was coming from the wall directly beside him—behind a set of heavy, purple velvet curtains he hadn’t noticed in his panic.

Whirr… clack… whirr.

The sound of massive, rusted gears turning.

Carl looked up. He was sitting directly beneath a secondary stage alcove. The curtains weren’t just hanging there; they were bulging outward. A massive, shadow-drenched shape was leaning against the fabric from the other side, slowly pushing its way through the gap.

A large, three-fingered hand, covered in matted, dirty brown fur, reached out and gripped the edge of the curtain. The mechanical joints groaned with the effort, the sound of metal screaming against metal.

Carl’s breath hitched. He tried to move, but his legs felt like they’d been turned to stone. He watched, mesmerized by terror, as a massive, robotic head began to emerge from the darkness of the stage.

It was a bear. But not the friendly, singing mascot from the posters. This thing was a hulking, hollowed-out nightmare. Its jaw hung at an unnatural angle, revealing rows of sharp, silver endoskeleton teeth. One of its eyes was missing, replaced by a flickering red diode that cast a rhythmic, bloody light over Carl’s terrified face.

The bear leaned down, its heavy servos whining as it locked its single, glowing eye onto him.

Carl realized, with a sickening jolt of clarity, that he had fallen right into its lap. He was backed against the supply shelf, boxed in by broken glass, and the thing was less than three feet away.

It opened its mouth, a low, distorted mechanical growl vibrating in its chest.

“Nice bear,” Carl whispered, his voice trembling so hard it was barely audible. “Good… good bear.”

The bear lunged.

The bear’s massive paw swiped through the air, the wind of the movement whistling past Carl’s ear. It was a kill-shot, or it would have been, if Carl hadn’t tried to scramble backward and failed in the most spectacular way possible.

His hand, searching for leverage, landed on a stray, round lightbulb that hadn’t shattered yet. It rolled. Carl’s arm shot out from under him, and his entire body weight collapsed to the side just as the bear’s metal fingers slammed into the supply shelf where Carl’s head had been a millisecond before.

The sound of the shelf denting was like a car crash.

“Not today!” Carl squeaked, his voice hitting a register only dogs could hear. He didn’t stand up; he practically crab-walked over the broken glass, ignoring the stings in his palms, and propelled himself down the hall with a frantic, desperate energy.

He didn’t look back. He just ran, his sneakers skidding on the floor as he turned a blind corner and slammed through a set of swinging doors, hoping for an exit.

Instead, he found the party room.

The smell hit him first—cloyingly sweet, like rotting cake and pink sugar. Then, the light. His flashlight beam swept across a towering, yellow shape standing near a long table.

It was a chicken?

She was huge, her plastic bib reading LET’S EAT!!! in a font that now felt like a personal threat. Her eyes were wide, unblinking circles of purple, and her beak was locked open in a permanent, jagged grin. But she wasn’t alone.

Sitting in her hand, like a loyal, murderous pet, was the Cupcake.

Carl skidded to a halt, his heels smoking on the linoleum. He was trapped between the bear behind him and the bird in front of him. “Look, I’m not even that tasty,” Carl panted, holding his hands up. “I’m like, eighty percent anxiety and cheap crackers. You’ll get indigestion.”

The chicken didn’t care about his diet. Her head snapped to the side with a series of sharp, mechanical clicks. Slowly, she raised her arm, aiming the Cupcake at Carl like a pitcher lining up a fastball. The Cupcake’s eyes glowed a faint, malevolent red, its tiny teeth gnashing in anticipation.

The chicken’s arm blurred. She hurled the pink monster with terrifying force.

Carl squeezed his eyes shut and threw his hands over his face, waiting for the impact, waiting for the teeth to sink into his throat.

THWACK.

The sound of metal hitting flesh didn’t happen. Instead, there was a sharp, whistling sound, followed by the dull thud of the Cupcake being swiped out of the air.

“Duck, you idiot!” a raspy, female voice hissed.

Carl didn’t even have time to process the voice before a hand grabbed the back of his navy hoodie and yanked him violently to the left. He hit the floor hard, sliding under the safety of a heavy wooden table.

A figure moved past him—fast, fluid, and silent. She didn’t move like a person who was scared; she moved like a person who had turned the pizzeria into her own private war zone. She wore a tattered, oil-stained vest over a grimy shirt, her hair tied back in a messy knot, and her eyes were sharp, cold, and focused.

It was the girl from the news. The girl who had been gone for years.

In her hand, she held a heavy, makeshift club wrapped in barbed wire. She stepped between Carl and the towering yellow animatronic, her stance low and lethal.

“Stay down,” Odessa Flint commanded, her voice like cold steel. “Unless you want to see if you actually have nine lives.”