Work Text:
It had been a year.
Macy wasn’t sure how she knew that. She wasn’t even sure how she was awake. She didn’t know where she was, or what she was, or why she was like this, or what had happened to make her like this, but she knew it had been a year.
Macy opened her eyes, sat up, and surveyed the room she was in. It was just the storage room, like usual. She’d managed to get herself up onto a high shelf, and had curled up inside a cardboard box half-filled with posters. Macy clambered out of the box and shimmied her way down the industrial shelving’s metal frame. She knew it must be freezing, the room was all metal and concrete, and she could see snow out of the small, bulletproof glass window right by the shelf where she’d found herself, but the cold didn’t bother her. It hadn’t bothered her for a year now.
She looked around the storage room again, and began searching in and around boxes. Her brother must be in here somewhere…
Right on cue, she heard a loud thump from behind her, followed by a series of whumps. Macy turned, and saw Tommy lying on the ground facedown. He’d been in one of the boxes in a slightly less stable stack, and had managed to knock it over when he’d tried to climb out.
“Tommy…?” Macy asked hesitantly. It was always a gamble trying to talk to one of her family members. At first it had been okay, but after so long, they’d all long-since lost some grip on reality. She was never sure whether she’d get her sweet, shy older brother, or a murderous creature desperate for revenge.
This time, though, it seemed like luck was in Macy’s favor.
“Hi Macy,” Tommy greeted, his distorted voice muffled by the ground. He pulled himself up onto his hands and knees, and looked up at her. His body’s plastic shell was filthy and beaten, and his eyes had turned oddly bloody and humanlike. He looked like the sort of thing that would have given Macy terrible nightmares a year earlier. She doubted she looked much better, though.
Macy offered Tommy a hand, helping him to his feet.
“It’s been a year,” Macy told him. She wasn’t sure of the significance of that, but it felt memorable. It felt like something all the others needed to be informed of too.
“How do you know?” Tommy asked. Macy shook her head.
“I’m not sure.”
They both stood there in silence for a moment. Macy wished she could hug him. She remembered hugging him when she was littler, whenever she had a nightmare while her parents were away. She remembered how warm and comforting he’d been. But hugging a plastic shell wasn’t comforting at all, and even if it were, she didn’t think she’d even be able to feel the embrace.
“Want me to get the others?” Tommy asked in a hushed voice. He must be able to tell how important this felt to Macy.
“Just Banzo. I can get Ava,” she replied. Tommy nodded. He pushed open the storage room door, and slipped out into the rest of the building. Macy followed.
Macy wandered down the long halls, trying to look for landmarks. It was hard not to get lost in this place. Everything looked the same, some hallways seemed to lead to nowhere, and she swore that she discovered a new part of the building every time she went on a walk. She wasn’t sure how the grown-ups were always able to navigate it so easily.
Eventually, she stumbled across a room with nothing in it but a large row of shelves. The shelves were lined with various scrapped pieces of merchandise. A creepy figurine here, a bunch of plushies there, an entire shelf of…wooden crosses, for some reason. But then she saw it. Resting on one of the highest shelves was an unfinished plastic babydoll with a mask over its face. The mask had a large chunk missing from the top, and a strange row of dark droplets were painted running down from it. The doll’s chest was also decorated with a long knife mark.
If Macy could’ve, she would’ve sighed. The babydoll was too high up for her to reach. She’d have to resort to other tactics instead.
With a mildly disgusting fleshy creaking noise, Macy’s jaw came apart, and she let something long and slimy with a grabber at the end slither out. Macy reached her prehensile tongue up to the tall shelf, grabbed the babydoll, and slowly brought it down into her arms. The doll squirmed, making a faint distorted cooing noise.
“Hello Ava,” Macy smiled down at it. Cradling her baby sister, she turned and began to make her way back to the storage room to find Tommy.
Tommy was already there when Macy returned. He was holding a blue, gray, and purple patchwork stuffed animal of hard-to-determine species. It had one long rabbit ear and one short floppy one like a dog, a black nose at the end of its short snout, and sharp, dangerous-looking fangs. The plushie twisted its head to look at Macy and Ava. It was…oddly cute, if Macy were honest. She casually patted the plushie’s head, and even though its expression couldn’t change, she could feel a faint sort of happiness radiating from it.
Macy looked at Tommy, and he nodded. They both knew where they’d have to go next. The group walked together, silent other than Ava’s occasional faint cooing. The maze-like halls did their best to get them lost, and several times they had to stop at forks to figure out which way they were meant to go, but eventually they came across a room labelled “Old Mascot Storage”. Tommy gently pushed open the door, and the children stepped into the room, looking around at the various items within. There were old posters, boxes full of merchandise, cardboard cutouts…and three animatronics.
Tommy and Macy ignored the first two (a brown bear, and a humanlike creature with checkered pants and a square head) and beelined for the third one: a giant ice cream cone with arms and legs, wearing a tie. It looked like it had also once had eyes and a mouth, but that whole area had been destroyed by a giant crack in the plastic.
They sat down on either side of the mascot, leaning against him.
Their uncle hadn’t moved in a long time.
Macy knew he was still there, though.
They all were, even after a year.
Macy wanted to tell him, so he too would know how long they’d all been trapped, but she couldn’t bring herself to break the silence. For the first time in forever, her family felt peaceful, and she didn’t want to ruin that.
Macy leaned in closer to the dilapidated mascot, imagining the warmth of a hug, and savored the moment.