Chapter Text
The computer screen’s light flickered across your tired eyes. Your room was basked in complete darkness, and the crickets outside your window were singing a tone-deaf lullaby. Your blanket draped over your head and quietly rustled like the leaves on a branch.
You flinched as a loud mechanical hiss blasted through your speakers. Game Over, it read. Great.
Stupid rabbit. . . you thought, using cheap jumpscares against me. They weren’t even any good. By far the weakest of the franchise, before all of them eventually reached a continuous state of mediocrity.
Static gave way to a run-down office. It was past midnight, and you had to wake up early for work, but so help me God, you would get past the final night even if it’d be the death of you.
You rubbed circles on your eyelids. When you opened them back up, you blinked once and rubbed again.
Was that a blur in your vision?
A white square, around two centimeters in length and width, had appeared on the lower corner of the screen. Your game had glitched, evidently. Let this be a lesson : never download anything on a sketchy website to get past the paywall. It must have been a virus, but it wasn’t a pop-up, it was part of the pixels, like somebody had modded it in. A glitch, definitely, or . . . you could never truly know without interacting with it.
The curious side of your brain won—barely a competition with the logical one. An impulse propelled you to move your mouse and take the risk.
You shielded your eyes as the white square expanded and took over the entire screen, an eerie tune replacing the beeping of the ventilation system reboot. You frowned, lost, confused. Most of all, scared that you might have to call a computer repair technician.
But then the image scrolled down, revealing another, like a post-credits scene reserved for those who had stayed after the movie. An illustration modeled in the same style of those secret mini-games. A singular object, rectangular and grey, standing tall amidst the void.
A locker?
As if it knew it had been acknowledged, the locker’s door inched open bit by bit. The darkness inside contrasted with the surrounding light. It drew you in, like feeling the warmth of a fire, entranced by the motion of the flames.
Wasn’t this a bit too surreal? Actually, this was exactly the type of ambiguous Easter egg Scott Cawthon would put into one of his games. But this—you had never seen this, not in a single theory video or discussion online.
“Holy. . .” you whispered in disbelief. That had to be it. You were the first ever player to discover a new secret.
You pressed the Print Screen button on your keyboard just to preserve a piece of evidence. Matpat’s going to want to hear about this. You could post about it on Twitter later.
Then, black text faded into existence. In a font you couldn’t recognize, it asked a simple question.
Will you go in?
Before you could theorize about what this could mean in the grand scheme of things, two options presented themselves to you. Yes, or No.
Between going further in or backing down, the choice seemed obvious. You clicked on the first option and waited for something great to happen—knowledge that would shatter the mind of the average FNAF enthusiast.
The image zoomed in on the locker. You watched with bated breath and leaned forward, afraid you might miss the tiniest detail. Your neck stretched until it hurt. Wait—were you really the one doing that? Could you pull back at all even if you wanted to?
Now black had all but replaced the previous white, and it seemed to stretch out infinitely. Moonlight had quit shining through the blinds of your window.
And you were lurched forward like Dorothy swept into a tornado, away from Kansas and into another world, but without none of the fantastical whimsy. It was dark, cramped, and uncomfortable. Nothing like a yellow brick road.
Your forehead hit something cold and hard. You winced and clutched the afflicted wound, and when you tried to find your footing, your back hit the same surface. You palmed your surroundings. You were no longer sitting but standing, and trapped from every side. This had to be a nightmare. One minute you were in your room, and the other you were somewhere completely unfamiliar.
A few horizontal cracks let light seep through. An opening. You flattened your hands and pushed with all your might. With a rusty creak, your enclosure opened to a new area and fresh air hit your nostrils. You stumbled, your legs nearly giving out, until you found a table to lean on.
A table? A room? What? Huh?
Your head was reeling. You felt as nauseous as if you’d been on a roller coaster ride for an hour straight without pause. You turned back to look at what had been holding you prisoner.
A locker. You had popped out of a locker. Through the door, you could see it had no back. Where there should have been a metallic wall, was nothing at all.
It must not have been real, it couldn’t be. But everything felt real, like you were right there, like your skin was yours, and you could smell, hear, and see everything so clearly.
A few things differed from your previous environment. It had been night, and now it was day. The floor underneath your boots was not carpeted but checkered. Wait—your boots? You looked down and patted your body, expecting that familiar feeling of cotton fabric. You weren’t in your pajamas anymore, but wearing clothes that weren’t yours. More unexplainable phenomena to add to the pile.
You let go of the table and intently scanned the room. It was medium-sized, a workbench laden with tools and robotic parts strewn around. There were shelves lined up on the wall with what seemed to be merchandise of brightly colored animals. A plushie of a brown bear with a top hat, a mask of a yellow chicken. . .
It hit you like a bolt from the blue.
The walls, the floor, the four mascots breathing life into every corner of the room, and let’s not even mention the fact that the weirdness began when you were playing a game of that very franchise—when you chose of your own volition to get into that locker. Everything seemed to point to one conclusive answer. It wouldn’t make any more sense, but there were no logical explanations to an illogical situation.
The idea didn’t even have time to properly settle in your mind before a noise made you jump out of your skin. The door to this room opened from the other side. You stared like a deer in headlights, having no plans of doing anything else.
A tall man stood in the doorway, and he seemed as surprised to see you as you were to see him. For a split second, his wide eyes narrowed into slits.
“Who the hell are you? You shouldn’t be here.” He spoke with an accent.
He strode to where you stood and quickly closed the gap. You took a step back as he took another. He promptly grabbed your upper arm to stop you from getting away.
“Were you snooping around parts and services?” The sigh he let out seemed to stretch into an infinite diminuendo. “I don’t have time for this. I’m handing you over to security.”
Your eyebrows shot up so high they almost disappeared into your hairline. Every movement he made held you in a trance. You had forgotten how to speak or breathe—or to be a human being at all. It just wasn’t possible, but there he was. His face, his clothes, his hair, his eyes, and the way he presented himself. . . The man, the legend before you with nerve endings at the tip of his fingers and a beating heart.
“It’s you!”
He wavered for a moment, perplexed by this declaration you’d uttered with such earnestness.
A smile crept up your face, and it seemed so out of place, as if you were somehow overjoyed by this turn of events when he’d caught you doing something you shouldn’t have.
“You—you—” You pointed to him. “You’re William Afton!”
He frowned. Either you were making fun of him, or you were a complete lunatic. And in either case, he had no patience to deal with you.
“Yes, I am well aware,” he said. “It’s your name that I want to know, so that I can write you down as blacklisted in our security system.”
He pulled you by the arm as a silent directive to start moving and not make this any more complicated than it needed to be. Your heels firmly dug into the ground to make yourself heavier. Your smile widened as if it were all a game—or maybe, you were happy that he was touching you at all.
“You don’t understand—” you whimpered, and spoke the next sentence with the sincerity of a prayer.
“I’m your biggest fan!”
William let go. His touch lingered on your skin like the flip of a switch igniting an electric circuit, and you barely managed to hide your disappointment. You almost held your arm back out as if to tell him, ‘come on, grab it again, please! Twist it until the bone snaps in half!’
He crossed his arms to appear annoyed, but you had gotten him, and he was intrigued if only a little. You were looking at him with such adoration, and he couldn’t help but wonder.
“What could you possibly mean by that?” he said.
Well, what did you mean by that? You absolutely couldn’t tell him the truth, so you needed to come up with an alternative. Keeping your emotions at bay wasn’t easy considering the circumstances. But regardless of ultra-dimensional shenanigans, you were still in a world where rules and etiquette applied, and you wouldn’t want to look like a clown in front of William Afton.
“I, um, I’m a big fan of what you’ve done, with the restaurant and the, uh, animatronics. And . . . everything else.” You spoke at a slow pace, testing each word coming out of your mouth. It sounded like you were being forced to narrate a script at gunpoint. “I—I’ve been meaning to meet you for a while.” You punctuated the sentence with a nervous titter that made you want to rip a second hole into the space continuum and crawl into it.
William eyed you as if he were piecing together a puzzle and was finally seeing the grand picture. “Did you sneak in here to catch me alone?”
You flailed around defensively. “No—no! I was just—I happened to be here, and then you walked in. It was a coincidence! But a happy one!”
Never had a truth sounded so much like a lie. You’d be leaving this place in handcuffs.
“Well, I’ll be, I have a stalker.” William chuckled at the irony. “I’m impressed. I’ve never seen you around before. You’d think I would have noticed, but—” he shrugged, “—I guess you do have a forgettable face. You’d blend well in shadows.”
Some part of you wanted to call him an asshole for that unnecessary comment, and another, a tad more unreasonable, wanted him to keep piling up insults.
“You’re just like I imagined,” you said in a dreamlike daze, then immediately shook your head to dispel the thought. “I mean—goddamnit—I’m not a stalker!”
William made a face. You doubled down on the hole you had dug for yourself. “I was looking for the bathroom and got lost, that’s all.” You gulped. “Listen, I’m just a regular ol’ fan, I swear. Not an obsessive freak or anything.”
William’s mood had all but shifted by now. He had every intention of beating this dead horse. “I didn’t know I had enough influence to garner that kind of attention,” he scoffed.
“You’re, like, a local celebrity, yeah? It isn’t so unbelievable,” you said, more to convince yourself than to convince him.
“So is the Chinese buffet’s owner down the street. That doesn’t mean he’s got a bunch of groupies lining up at his door.”
You extended your arms horizontally, presenting him like a masterpiece you had painted. “But you’re—you’re you!”
You expected William to probe you like he’d been doing so far, but he became quiet for a moment. Deep in thought, with a faraway look on his face.
“I guess it isn’t completely unbelievable,” he said with a slow nod of acknowledgment.
Oh my God. This guy’s vanity would put the Evil Queen to shame. You wanted to laugh, but knowing him he’d take offense, and who knew what he might do if you upset him.
William relaxed his shoulders, defeated. “You know what? You’ve won me over,” he said. “What is it that you want? I’ll indulge you. I’ll even forgive your little intrusion of privacy if you promise to leave.”
It seemed you’d fed his ego with just the right amount of praise. He’d managed to uphold his customer service persona. Words truly are the strongest weapon of all. It’d probably be more inconvenient for him to wipe the floor with your blood than to peacefully resolve this, anyway.
“What I want?” you parroted.
“Whatever it is that you people collect from celebrities. A picture, an autograph. . .”
A squeal of excitement came up your throat and William immediately regretted the offer. You’d settle for a piece of chewed gum or a half-eaten apple, but the world was your oyster and if you had one chance to get anything from him, you’d take advantage of it.
You looked up at him sheepishly like a child about to ask their parent for fast food money. “Actually, I want something a bit more . . . personal.”
What you wanted was something irreplaceable—something that had existed since the dawn of time and that a physical memento could never replace.
Your cheeks flushed. You brought your hands together pleadingly. William’s mouth thinned, urging you to spit it out already.
“Could I get a hug?” you asked.
His response was instantaneous. “No.”
An overwhelming feeling of despair almost brought you down to your knees. “But, you said anything!” you sobbed.
It was either that or have him burn a cigarette on your tongue, but you doubted he’d choose this alternative if something as benign as an embrace was already crossing his boundaries.
“I never said that. And I’d rather not be touched by a stalker,” he said coldly.
“I’m not a stalker!”
William looked serious then, and you were just a bit apprehensive. But instead of slamming you against the wall—how you’d wish—he opened his mouth to lecture you.
“The door was locked from the outside. I came in to grab something 30 minutes ago, and locked it on my way out. And that locker—” he pointed to the ultra-dimensional portal, “—was closed.”
“You think I can’t put two-and-two together? I don’t know how you managed to sneak past me, but you were hiding in there for at least half an hour. I don’t believe that’s something a well-adjusted individual does.”
The redness spread to your ears, and it only made you look more culpable. “Okay, well, maybe I happened to be in that locker but, like, it wasn’t—I mean—”
You stuttered out a few unintelligible excuses and caught a glimpse of the locker you’d been accused of squatting in. Mid-sentence, a look of dawning horror crossed your face.
With everything going on, you hadn’t given much thought to it, and now, through the open door, you could see that the back had shrunk. It was reverting back to a metallic wall. There was enough space for you to fit through, for the moment being—but how long would that last? You couldn’t quite see it with the naked eye, but with every second that passed, whichever magic had brought you here was dispersing.
From the spot where he stood, William couldn’t see what you were seeing, and that was all for the better. It would only complicate things if he did.
“I need to go,” you blurted out. “Soon.” As if that somehow cleared things up.
“Excuse me?” William said, baffled by the sharp transition. You’d been so enthusiastic and gleeful up until a moment ago, now your eyebrows had twisted into a whirlwind of nerves.
“We have to do this now.” You spread your arms, inviting him in. “So, come on. Hug me.”
William would have rolled his eyes if he were two decades younger. “Drop the act. This isn’t going to work on me.”
This was your one chance, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but he was ruining the moment. He had no idea how much this meant to you—or to the universe as a whole.
That’s what you got for obsessing over a character whose only character traits are a personality disorder diagnosis. Never meet your heroes, they say. Especially if they aren’t heroes at all.
It wasn’t worth the headache, not when you were on a time limit. So, instead, you’d take it upon yourself to fulfill your wish. With or without his consent.
“I was hoping you’d agree to it, but—”
You didn’t feel the need to finish that sentence or to explain your actions before you jumped forward. William was faster, and he shoved you away before you had the chance to reach him. He held you at arm’s length while you struggled like a raccoon infected with rabies.
“Do you have a death wish?” he barked.
He wouldn’t bite. You were positive he wouldn’t kill you in broad daylight when the restaurant was booming with customers and your screams could be heard by a passerby, even if he wanted nothing more than to twist your spinal cord into a knot.
You anxiously glanced at the locker while he pushed against your shoulders. “You have to, we might never see each other again!”
Your incessant whines fell on deaf ears. William was much more interested in what kept grabbing your attention. “You keep looking at the locker. Is there something in it?”
Something about the look on your face when he mentioned it must have ticked him off. The roles were reversed before you had the chance to take a breather. You were trying to keep William at a distance and doing a terrible job; it was a game of push-and-pull, and you were losing no matter which side you picked.
“I-it’s a spider! There’s a spider in the locker and it—it scared me!” you cried in vain.
William yanked the door open while you latched onto his arm and desperately tried to get him away from the cosmic horrors. You heard yourself scream out a ‘no!’ but it was already too late. He stood where you stood before, at an angle where he could see what you’d been so engrossed with.
You dreaded his reaction. The feedback was much tamer than you anticipated. Instead of a full-blown freak-out, William’s features softened into bewilderment.
“What the fuck is this?” he breathed out.
You spoke in a flurry. “What I said just now, that was bullshit. All of it.”
William blinked. “What?”
His perception of you literally couldn’t get any worse. You might as well lay out the truth for him.
“I’m just as confused as you are! I was sitting in front of my computer, and then, boom, I got teleported in that locker, just like that! I needed to make up an excuse!”
William switched his attention from the locker to you. “So, you . . . came from here?”
“Yes! I don’t know how, but I did! And now I’m here,” you whined. Perhaps a weight had been lifted off your shoulders, after all. No need to pretend to be someone else when the fog had cleared. “And as if that wasn’t weird enough, you’re here! You shouldn’t even exist—none of this should!”
“I shouldn’t exist?” he asked, trying to make sense of all of this.
“Exactly! You—you’re fiction! So is this restaurant and these animatronics!”
William wanted to squeeze the words out from you, but he approached the situation tactfully.
“Explain everything. Take a deep breath and start from the beginning,” he said with a calm voice that immediately took your agitation down a notch.
You did exactly as he said. When you opened your mouth again, your sentences were much more articulated. You told him everything in the most concise way possible. You didn’t dwell on the story, or his future at the hands of his creations, only that this universe mirrored a popular video game franchise in yours. You told him about his role as the main antagonist, without going into details, and he easily accepted the title.
William asked the occasional question at first, but he grew quieter as you went on. When it was done, and you’d exhaled all the air from your lungs, he simply shook his head. “This is the most outrageous thing I’ve heard in my life,” he said.
“You’ve got to believe it, because it’s the truth!”
“Considering the unexplained disruption in spacetime, I’ve no reason not to believe you. But you have to admit that it’s, well . . .” William gesticulated, trying to find the appropriate adjective.
“Insane? I know!” you cried. “I’m, like, a spacetime traveler. It’s kind of like . . . have you watched Back to the Future? Actually, what year are we in exactly?”
“A—what?”
“Doesn’t matter. You see, my only way back home is shrinking by the minute, so if we could just . . . wrap this up.”
William stepped in front of the locker. “Hold on. If I’m a widely known villain in your universe, then care to explain your reaction when you first saw me? That was unmistakably happiness. It’s a bit odd, isn’t it?”
“No—not odd at all! You’re, like, an icon of horror. It’s only natural that I would be excited to meet one of my favorite characters,” you said.
“I’m one of your favorite characters?”
“Yes! You’ve got tons of fans, and I’m one of them,” you proudly declared.
“Hm.” William narrowed his eyes. “So what exactly did I—”
“Oh, whoa! Would you look at the time? I think I’ll need to crouch to go back. If I wait even a minute longer, I’ll need to crawl on my stomach to fit through,” you laughed, sweating profusely.
He didn’t move out of the way. His features morphed into a frigid scowl, unyielding as stone. It felt like you were seeing the real William Afton for the first time ; an apathetic William, without pity for the weak. “I’ve got more questions that need answering.”
You held his stare. “If you don’t let me through, I’m going to yell as loud as I can and tell everyone that you inappropriately touched me.”
He huffed contemptuously. “You won’t.”
You inhaled deeply, and then, “HheEL—”
His hand smacked over your mouth, and your voice transformed into a muffled wail.
“Are you crazy? You know what I’ll do to you if you don’t shut your mouth, right? Cut it out!”
Your heart thundered like a stampede in your chest. The garbled sounds gradually subsided into a continuous hum. You deflated like a balloon. Your arms wrapped around his waist, and you leaned against him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The same hand that had been covering your mouth slashed through the air. When it came in contact with your skin, it echoed.
You held your reddened cheek, grinning as if you were impervious to pain. “I got my hu-u-ug,” you sang languidly. And a slap. This might just be the best day of your life.
William backed away, disgusted. “You’re a nutcase,” he spat.
“Okay, listen.” Out of nowhere, your mood shifted to one of gravity. By now, William was too accustomed to your behavior to be surprised. “I don’t want to fight with you. Because I’d lose, assuredly.”
“I’ll be back, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know. So, don’t keep me here against my will, because I won’t collaborate.”
After a few excruciating seconds where you thought he might pummel you, William stepped out of the way. He even opened the locker wider for you.
“Go,” he ordered.
You hesitated before moving. He sighed exasperatedly. “Someone like you wouldn’t be satisfied with a single encounter,” he explained.
You smiled like you would to a friend. “I’ll be back,” you repeated. “I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, and it somehow sounded ominous.
You stood still in the locker, unsure of how to conclude the conversation. You couldn’t leave without saying anything, right? Turning around, you quickly waved good-bye. William didn’t return it, but his eyes watched your every movement intensely. Whichever final statement you’d practiced in your mind got caught in your throat, and you ended up not saying anything before taking the leap.
And then, you were gone, into the void where everything ended and everything began.
His final words looped right before the leather fabric of your seat materialized under your legs. It was a promise in itself. A threat.
I’ll hold you to that. He would, even if you dared not return.
He’d rip a hole into the universe and find you himself.