Chapter Text
The air was heavy, like a blanket of decay and death, yet it also reeked of pizza and discount soda. Luz didn't know what to think when she awoke, surrounded by mist and woods for miles. Her eyes were heavy, and her body felt stiff. Her breathing was raspy, her lungs feeling as if they were on fire. The mist obscured her vision, but she could still see.
A groan escaped her lips as she tried to tilt her neck straight. It took a herculean effort to do so, but it worked, but that didn't change the fact that it felt like it had been weighed down by a five-hundred pound brick.
"Ugh… What…?" Luz murmured, blinking slowly. Trees loomed overhead with scarlet red leaves. The grass was green, but it appeared stained with some kind of red liquid. It stretched on and on for miles, like a never-ending sea of green and red.
Her body ached as she tried to stand up, seemingly unable to. With each movement, it felt as if her body was being torn open and stabbed. Hissing in pain, she endured.
Why?
Why did she feel this way?
Where was she?
The last thing that she remembered was….
Was…
She blinked again, her eyes re-focusing on what was in front of her. The mist had parted, and—
"Hi!" A voice called out, startling Luz, causing her to reflexively leap back, her head smacking against the tree that she had been propped up against.
"Ah! Ouch…" Luz groaned, rubbing the back of her hand as she looked around, trying to find the source of the voice, until eventually, her eyes lingered down. There, in front of her, was a little girl. Pale skin—ghostly pale—with sharp reddish grey eyes. Her hair was black, done up into two twin pigtails kept in place by golden beaded hair braids. She was dressed in a yellow shirt with blue coveralls, with and golden sneakers.
"A… little kid?" Luz thought, tilting her head as she raised an eyebrow. Questions came to mind, like why a child this young was alone in a forest like this; or why she was also here. She didn't remember much… She was still having trouble recalling the last few hours prior to… whatever this place was.
But that didn't matter at the moment. Curiosity and mild frustration aside, the child in front of her was looking at her as if she wasn't supposed to be here. Like Luz, she too was confused, but for seemingly different reasons. It didn't settle the worry in Luz's chest. Not even a little. "Um… Hello?" Luz said, her voice still raspy—she didn't know why. It hurt to talk. It hurt to do anything. Even standing hurt.
After a few seconds of silence, and after the little girl's expression changed from confused skepticism to a mask of joy—she knew to spot a mask when she saw one, what with being familiar with faux joy due to her bullying problems—the little girl spoke. "Hiya! Welcome to Faz-Woods! The others are waiting for you, ya know. You've kept them waiting for a long time. That's not very nice of you," the little girl said as Luz blinked.
"Others…?" She said slowly. Something burned in the back of the throat. It felt like a scratchy, itching feeling. Like something was clawing behind her neck. She ignored it, like she had ignored the other sensations. Even if they were flaring up even more as time went on.
"Yeah! The others, c'mon, get with the program," the girl said, flipping one hand through her hair, her left pigtail twirling in the air before flopping back down. "Don't you know anything about Freddy's?"
Before Luz could answer, the girl walked away—skipping, was more like it. "W-Wait!" Luz called, stumbling after the little girl. Her knees were wobbly, and as she walked, it got progressively harder and harder to move. Her body continued to feel rigid. Trapped in her own skin.
She hated every second of it.
The further she went, the worse it got. But she powered through it, of course. She wasn't going to lose track of the kid—the last thing she wanted was to get lost, after all. She had no idea where she was, so getting lost here probably wouldn't help matters.
Luz could hear the girl cheer her on, telling her to keep moving, to not stop "or else", whatever that meant. With each passing stride, stumble, and limp, the rigid feeling in her bones got worse. She had to pause to cough, too.
When did she get sick?
Why did everything hurt.
And where the hell was she?!
After a little while of walking, she could see that, in the distance, there was a park bench in the distance within a clearing in the forest. The park bench had pizza, soda cups filled with a dubious brown liquid, and in the center was a cake of sorts that looked untouched. Toys surrounded the bench and there was a tent somewhere off in the distance. There wasn't else much note worthy of the bench itself, aside from who sat there.
At the bench sat four other small children, each of them looking to be around the ages of six at the youngest to ten at the oldest. The first one she spotted was a dark skinned boy with black eyes. He wore a blue sweater with purple stripes and matching blue jeans and shoes. After him was a pale skinned girl with blonde hair styled in curls. She wore a similar outfit to the other girl she met, although she wore a pink dress overtop her yellow shirt with yellow and white stripped leggings, with brown Mary Janes.
Beside her, there was a ginger-haired kid. He wore an eyepatch over his left eye. Freckles dotted his cheeks, alongside a smirk. He wore a similar shirt to the dark skinned boy, except it was red and orange with black jeans and sneakers. Next to the dark-skinned boy, there was another kid, also dark skinned but lighter than the other one. Light brown, rather than dark brown. His eyes were light blue, and he had a bowtie around his neck, with a brown cardigan and black shorts held up by suspenders, with white knee-length socks and brown tie-up boots.
Luz slowly approached, her every move sluggish and pained. One of the kids noticed her, eyes wide—the light brown one. "Oh! It's the new girl!"
"New girl?" The blond girl asked, tilting her head, before looking over at Luz, her expression somber. "Oh… It's the girl who came in a few months ago."
"Months?" Luz thought, confusion taking up every inch of her face. What happened? What was going on? Months? Who were these people? What happened months ago?
More importantly…. Why couldn't she remember?
"Do you… not remember?" The dark skinned boy wearing the purple shirt asked as Luz blinked slowly.
"No…? Where am I? Is Faz-Woods in Connecticut? I need to go home. My mama, is gonna be worried about me. Especially if I've been gone for months now," Luz said as the boy wearing the suspenders glanced at the others, upset in his eyes—as if he wasn't expecting what she had said—before looking over to the black-haired girl.
"Cassidy. Could you…"
"Why does it have to be me?" The black-haired girl, Cassidy, huffed.
"Because you found her. She's your responsibility."
"Bah!" Cassidy grumbled, crossing her arms as Luz, now feeling a tiny amount of dread build up in her chest, looked to Cassidy, who sighed. "Alright, but since I'm saying it, I'm just gonna rip the Band-Aid off. You're dead."
Silence.
Absolute, total, silence.
Luz stared at Cassidy like a deer in headlights. A few seconds passed, before finally, Luz chuckled, which then turned into a full on laugh. Cassidy tilted her head, her eyebrow raised. "What's so funny?"
"Because, that's an awesome joke. Really, great one, funniest thing I heard all day," Luz said through barely contained laughter. Laughter that slowly died when she realized that no one else was laughing, and that each of the children were looking at her with increasing levels of concern.
That was when it dawned on her that… Cassidy wasn't lying. Upon a closer look at each of the kids, she had noticed that there were… disturbing details about each of them. Cassidy had a bloodless gash going across her jugular. The blond girl's neck looked disfigured, as if it had been spun 360 degrees. The dark brown boy stab wound in his chest, the fabric of his shirt torn open.
The ginger had an eyepatch, which… probably didn't bode well for what happened to him. Then, there was the boy in the suspenders. His eyes were… completely hollowed out, only leaving behind empty pits with white pinpricks, black markings trailing down his cheeks. A massive gash was cross his throat, and one of his ears was bleeding.
They were all wounded to some horrific degree.
Looking down at herself… she saw nothing. There were no wounds. So why….?
"I-If I'm dead, w-why aren't, ya know, all cut up and stuff like you guys?" Luz said, desperation leaking into her tone as the boy wearing the suspenders stood up, walked over to her, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Because… If you had manifested with all the damage that had been done to you… You wouldn't be recognizable."
And that's when it all came crashing back like a tidal wave.
The backroom…
The Otter animatronic costume…
The note…
Putting on the suit…
Dying…
Every inch of her body felt like it was on fire as she collapsed to her knees. Breathing became basically impossible, and with each breath she tried to take, blood spewed out of her mouth. Her eyes stung, and her stomach felt like it was being actively ripped apart.
"New kid!" The boy in the suspenders called out, rushing down to her as he met her gaze. Blood had been trailing down her cheeks like tears, trying to scream, but to no avail. "You have to stop thinking about it, otherwise you're going to feel it. Look at me, look me in the eyes, and start counting, okay?"
Luz nodded rapidly, which prompted the boy to start it.
"One."
The agony slowly started to go away…
"Two."
The bleeding stopped…
'Three."
The bloodied tears evaporated…
"Four."
The gut wrenching pain ended.
"Five."
And then… it all stopped. Luz felt… normal—or as normal as she could've felt after finding out that she had died.
She was dead.
Her life, over.
And this place… "Is this… the afterlife?"
"I wish," Cassidy snarked, huffing. "It's more like a prison. A place where we're trapped until we get closure, and the only way for that to happen…"
"Is if Freddy Fazbears Pizza meets its end," The Blonde girl said bitterly, disdain filling her eyes. "We've been here for thirty years. Thirty! And it sucks—it's awful! I hate it here! I hate this stupid forest, and I hate that stupid chicken even more!"
The Blonde girl began to cry as the ginger gently patted her on the back. "It's okay, Susie… It's okay…"
The Blonde, Susie, sniffled. "T-Thanks, Fritz…"
"I suppose I should introduce myself," The boy in the suspenders said, smiling as he helped Luz stand up. "My name is Gabriel. Susie, as you know, is the blonde girl. Jeremy is the blue one, Fritz is the red one, and you've already met Cassidy."
"Hiya!" Cassidy exclaimed, waving.
"And we already know you," Gabriel said, taking a step back. "Welcome to your new home, Luz. I wish I could say you're going to like it here, but… I know for a fact that you won't."
[To Be Continued]