Chapter Text
The moment Angel got out of the car, they already knew they were putting themselves in a lot of trouble. Nothing they weren’t used to anyway.
But maybe we should backtrack a little bit, what do y’all think?
Angel was a 19 year old person (they were certain they would commit a murder if anyone else dared to call them a girl again) who generally loved breaking into places where they really didn’t belong. They called it ‘urban exploring’, their father called it ‘a possible future cause of lawsuits’.
So, that summer, they’d come home from college to visit their dad, the only member of their family that was still alive, after their mother’s disappearance more than a year prior.
During one of those many, normal mornings, they’d gone to collect the mail, only to find what looked like a thick package wrapped in brown paper. Before they could even pick it up, however, their father had swiped it from the floor. He’d said something about it being only a prank by some stupid kids, or about it not being any of their business, but Angel saw what was etched on a side of the package: the logo of the Playtime Co factory.
Going even farther back, let me tell you this: Angel had grown up in that place until the incident of ‘95, when they were only 9 years old. All employees had disappeared, except for… well, their dear old dad, who wasn’t at work that day. The memories they had about the factory were vague at best, but they still had a bunch of toys and merch in their room from when they were a kid. Heck, they still wore their DogDay hoodie sometimes (so what if it was a little tight now? They liked feeling like a kid).
They’d waited until that night to sneak into their father’s office, and finally they found what they were looking for: an old VHS tape and a letter. Huh.
Luckily, their father had kept a VHS tape player in his office, for… whatever reason. As they started it, they saw none other than what looked like the Poppy doll. More specifically, an old commercial of it from the 1950s or something.
Everything looked normal, until the screen started glitching, showing what looked like a huge flower painted on the wall.
“What the…” Angel muttered, before looking at the piece of paper.
The handwriting was messy and childish at best, with a few grammatical mistakes. But the message was clear:
everyone thinks that the staff dissappeared 10 years ago
WER’E STILL HERE.
FIND THE FLOWER
And, coincidentally enough, that very same flower in the VHS appeared on the bottom of the page.
~*~
And thus how Angel had considered it wise to sneak out of the house, get in the car (along with their exploring kit) and check out whatever that latter spoke about.
Sure, it could’ve been a prank, but it was still worth checking out? After all, they’d lost family in that accident… if someone was still there and alive, they needed to know.
But why would they still be there? Why not just leave the factory? What was keeping them there?
All those questions and more were running through their head as they reached the door to the factory. Luckily for them, they knew how to pick open a door (necessary skills when you do urban exploring).
The lobby was… weird. Empty, in a way. The paint on the walls had decayed, and the floor was muddy with footprints. Angel had never really spent a lot of time in the lobby as a kid (honestly they didn’t really remember where they’d spent their time), but they were more than certain that it wasn’t supposed to look like this. Then again it’d been ten years, and with no manufactory things tended to get… dirty.
What first caught their eye, however, was the green VHS tape on the desk. It was a little discoloured, but it looked like it was still in good condition.
”This is getting weirder by the minute” Angel muttered with a furrowed brow, but when they looked away they noticed a VHS tape player of the same shade of green, connected to an old TV, similar to the one their father had in his office.
Hesitantly, waiting to hear that it’d all really just been a prank, they inserted the VHS.
The first thing they saw was what looked like a toy’s hand, Huggy Wuggy’s, more specifically. They had little time to wonder about it, though, as the voice they heard next shook them to the core.
”Hi! My name is Leith Pierre, and I’m the head of innovation here at the Playtime Co toy factory”
Angel felt a chill run down their spine. They knew that voice. How could they not? They’d hear it every day of their life for 18 years, and again during their summer visits at their father’s house.
Yes, because another thing I forgot to mention about Angel, is that their father is Leith Pierre.
”If you’re seeing this, then you’re trespassing! Yeah, we play this little tape on loop whenever we close the factory for the day”
”Or for ten years…” Angel muttered. But alas, the recording continued.
”So, trespasser, just to make you aware, while we pride ourselves primarily on our high quality toys and excellent childcare, we also pride ourselves on our security. For example, this facility is filled with hidden motion triggers, which, once set off, will turn on the factory’s emergency alarms, and directly contact the authorities”
”Wh- oh, dude!” Angel complained, stomping their foot. “What the fuck, dad, why??”
They knew it was childish to get mad at a recording of their father that was likely more than a decade old, but they didn’t care.
”And… that’s one of the more tame aspects of our security system. No spoilers!”
”Please spoilers??” Angel murmured as they looked around anxiously. But likely, whatever was being mentioned in the tape, was actively not around anymore. It’d been ten years, there was no security guards or anything.
”So, you got my warning, it’s not too late to turn around. I just hope that you’re certain whatever you’re doing is worth it”
”No, actually, I’m really not… but whatever, I’m not backing out now” Angel said to themselves as they set the VHS back on the desk where they’d found it.
Yeah, that’s something that they did quite often when exploring, speak to themselves. They liked a bit of commentary every once in a while.
They headed towards the door behind the lobby’s desk, likely leading to the atrium and the rest of the factory, but much to their annoyance they found it closed.
”Yeah, no way I can lift this…” they muttered, studying what looked like a blue handprint on the top of the door.
”Ugh, whatever, I’m just gonna look around, and if I can’t find anything to open this I’m going back home.”
They first headed towards the security room, and… yeah, that was also locked by a colour coded password.
”Dude.” they sighed, rubbing their nose. “Okay, whatever, maybe someone left the password somewhere around here?”
They looked through the desk’s drawers, but nothing useful came out. Just an old flashlight, a few pens and papers, and other items that were really just useless and old.
As they were about to give up and call it a night, or look for a window to use to break in, their eyes caught on the room opposite of the security office: the gift shop.
”Oh well, might as well find some cool toy or merch to bring home- half of mine has chipped paint or broken limbs”
Thankfully, that room wasn’t locked, but the contents of the gift shop were a bit disappointing. Only a few boxes of toys like Boogie Bot, Candy Cat and Huggy Wuggy. The boxes were too big to fit in their backpack now, so they decided to instead come back later and put them in their car when they were ready to leave.
That’s when they noticed the annoying nose that had been in their ears the whole time: a little train running around a track on top of their head.
”Jeez, in all of these years this thing has never ran out of batteries? Almost like it’s important” Angel mused. Then, as they noticed the colours of the train’s carriages. “Hold up, don’t you tell me-“
They ran back to the security office’s door. Hadn’t it been for their rush, they would’ve noticed the bloodied Boogie Bot toy next to the register…
”Green… pink… yellow… red…” Angel muttered to themselves as they pressed the coloured keys.
The door opened.
Angel was astonished for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“ ‘Advanced security system’ my butt! This is so stupid, what if a kid tried the combination out of boredom?”
Inside the security room they found… another VHS tape. This time a blue one.
“Alright, what do you have for me?” Angel smiled as they inserted the tape.
The Playtime Co logo flashed on screen, but this time there was no voice, just an old, bad animation of a yellow stick man holding what the video called a ‘GrabPack’, some sort of tool that you put on like a backpack and used to move around the factory and do various tasks, equipped with a blue and a red hand, attached to long, elastic ropes. They grimaced at the picture of the stickman tugging a person’s head off.
”Wow, this is… advanced, for a toy factory”
As they said those words, the tape ended and a glass opened, revealing none other than a GrabPack. Which- was missing the red hand, but it was still something.
As they studied the blue hand, however, Angel got an idea. They ran back to door that led to the atrium and aimed to the blue handprint, shooting the hand cannon.
”Yes!” they exclaimed as the scanner beeped and the door slowly opened, revealing the looming figure of-
“Huggy Wuggy…” Angel muttered in astonishment. Proving once again that their memory was faulty, they didn’t remember that being in the atrium at all. But then again they didn’t even remember what the atrium looked like, so…
The statue was… creepy, like the rest of the place. The eyes almost looked like they were following Angel, and in the bad, unsettling way.
After taking a deep breath, Angel stepped into the factory.
Their steps were mechanical, almost following a pre-assigned path, like repeating an action they’d probably done many times as a child, before… well, before everything went down.
(If only they could remember it…)
In a sprite of boldness, they aimed the hand cannon towards Huggy’s raised hand and highfived him. That made them crack a smile, “not so scary now, huh, big guy?”
They looked around the circular room. There were several doorways named ‘theatre’, ‘cafeteria’, ‘testing’, and more. Own door, however, was similar to the one they’d just entered from, with only one difference: this one also held a red handprint scanner.
”Huh, guess I’m gonna need to find the red hand too if I want to explore the whole place- I don’t think it gets any bigger, honestly”
They turned towards the nearest room, the one title ‘power’. They tried to open the door and, predictably, it was locked.
The next door was closed by a blue handprint scanner, so they tried that, and- the cave blew out.
”Ugh, seriously-“ a jingle made them stop talking.
As they turned around they noticed movement in Huggy’s hand. A key, to be exact.
Angel blinked up at it. Now where had that come from? They were more than certain there had been none of that when they’d looked the first time!
But alas, they didn’t ask too many questions. Maybe it was just a fun feature programmed for those factory tours the Poppy VHS mentioned, a way to make the kids think the toys were real and interacting with the public. Yes, that must’ve been it.
They grabbed the key with the GrabPack and entered the Power room, looking for more clues and… well, a trace of any employee.
~*~
They didn’t find any employee. However, what they did find, was the blood tracks on the wall.
Well, that, and the poster that funnily enough told employees to stop hiding behind doors to scare Leith.
(Well, ‘Laith’, whoever had made that poster had spelled the name wrong)
All they knew was that when they went back to the atrium, the Huggy statue was missing.
Angel froze. That… must’ve been part of the prank that whoever had sent that VHS was playing on them, right? Luckily for those little idiots Angel liked urban exploring, so even if there were no employees left, they might as well explore and find some cool junk to bring home.
But how had they not noticed someone coming in and dragging away the statue? It surely would’ve made some noise.
With their nerves tense, Angel activated the door that had previously failed on them. This time, it opened, revealing a large hallway.
Then they saw the arm.
Huggy’s arm, peaking out from the door to the left, that slid away once they got too close.
Angel was shocked for a moment, before bursting in a small laugh. “Damn, these guys are amateurs. They really don’t know how to scare people”
But they tried the other door anyways. Only it was closed. So… creepy arm door it was.
~*~
After listening to another VHS tape about some unhappy employee named Rich, completing some sort of deranged puzzle and avoiding the gut wrenching sensation of being stalked (haha, very funny, fetish thieves), Angel finally managed to get themselves a red hand to attach to their GrabPack.
”Okay, now… how do I get out of here?” Angel muttered, looking at the now very much locked door. Then their eyes caught on the vents that required a blue and a red hand to open. “I- seriously? Ugh, fine, whatever, I’ve crawled through worse…”
To their huge surprise, those vents were actually big enough to fit them without any problem. They could easily stay on their feet while walking through them and letting the conveyor belt carry them.
(And sure, they might’ve almost peed themselves when the toy parts started falling around them, but they’d make those pranksters pay for all of that later, if they found them)
And now they were in the Make a Friend room. Only problem: there was no way out of there unless you made your own toy and placed it in the scanner.
After looking around a bit (and getting the heebie-jeebies by the recording of an interview to a woman named Stella Greyber- who… they actually kinda remembered?) they finally decided it was time to get out of there. They’d been in the factory for more than thirty minutes now, and nothing really interesting was coming out of it, except a good chunk of nightmare-inducing chills.
”Alright, my CatBee has long lost one of its antlers anyway” they said as they started the machine.
And boom, easier done than said, Angel had their own personal self-made CatBee toy. With a certain giddiness they placed it in the scanner, and the door opened.
”Oh- damn, I think I need to leave this here… fine, whatever, I’ll try to find one in the gift shop”
But as they stepped towards the door, a huge figure emerged instead.
No, not just a figure, a giant Huggy Wuggy toy. Maybe even the same they’d seen in the atrium.
But its mouth was… off. It was wide open, grinning, and showing a good amount of sharp teeth.
”WOAH- OKAY, this is a very elaborate prank, guys!” Angel screamed as they stepped back, backtracking faster than they’d ever had.
”It was fun- you can stop now!”
But Huggy didn’t stop. He stepped even more forward. His long arms wiggling like he was about to grab Angel and turn them into his meal.
”Shit shit shit-“ Angel muttered as they turned around to look for another exit, a place to hide- anything.
Their eyes fell on another vent. Considering the size of the Huggy toy, it was unlikely for it to be able to follow them through that vent.
”Okay, okay, run!” they yelled as they made a run for the vent, while Huggy studied them and kept approaching.
Once inside the thing, Angel expected Huggy to stop following them. Instead, much to their horror, after running for a bit, they saw the giant thing crawling after them at a speed that was way too high for their liking.
”OH CRAP, OH CRAP, OH CRAP!” Angel screamed as they ran through the vents, taking sharp turns and sometimes falling though holes, but never stopping to look back. They could hear the monster following them.
They also saw bright colours on the walls of the vents, and in another moment they would’ve loved to stop and read what the writings said, but now they didn’t have time for that.
After sliding down a shaft, finally, they found themselves out in the open, on a catwalk, suspended on what looked like a really big fall, so high they couldn’t see the bottom of it. They could also hear Huggy’s screams inside the vent as it tried to break the door down.
”Okay, think think think…” Angel muttered, looking around. Then they spotted a crate above them, with several handprints.
”Jesus, this is insane!” they groaned as the GrabPack hands started pulling down the box.
Huggy broke through the door, making Angel scream and scramble back, which also dragged down the box, making it fall on top of Huggy and, consequentially, breaking the catwalk.
Thanks to their reflexes, no doubt, Angel managed to land on the catwalk below without spraining their ankle or breaking a bone, just maybe scraping their knees a little bit. Huggy, however, wasn’t as lucky, as he fell right into the ditch, slamming against pipes and railings, leaving behind a trace of blood, and ultimately disappearing in the darkness.
Angel stood there for quite a while, catching their breath and shaking. Then they said what they considered to be the most reasonable, calm response they could master at the moment, given the situation.
“WHAT THE FUCK.”
~*~
It took them several minutes of breathing exercises, a good drink of water from their water bottle and just some general neural readjustment to fully realise what had happened and where they were now.
A part of them desperately wanted to believe that that had only been some kind of prank. A person wearing a costume, or a robot of some kind… but Huggy had been too tall, agile and realistic to have been a person in a costume, and had had too much meat and blood to have been a robot.
Whatever that thing was… that had been a real, biological being, and most definitely not a costume.
Now, at that point, Angel would’ve loved to take their leave, but from the catwalk they had landed on there was no way to any door. Well, to no door, except one…
There, on a wall in the distance, the flower they’d been looking for had been drawn so that no one could miss it. In the middle of if there was what looked like a door.
Curiosity once again won the best of Angel. If that… monster, had been real, then maybe the employees really were alive and being held prisoner behind that door! And it’s not like they could’ve gone anywhere else anyways.
They started their walk towards the flower, but once they got close enough, they found another VHS tape. This time it was a plain, black one, with no title on it. Nearby stood a VHS player.
”Might as well…” Angel muttered as they pressed play.
The voice that spoke was unfamiliar and practical.
”Final log, in relation: experiment 1-0-0-6, the Prototype”
Angel felt a shiver run down their spine. Not only was the background noise of the tape disturbing (were those people screaming and banging against doors??), but what the voice was saying meant that were had been experiments there. More than a thousand.
Was 1006 Huggy? Was it him the man was talking about?
Looking at the screen, Angel saw what looked like a robotic hand with thin, pointy fingers. That didn’t look like Huggy’s hands at all.
The man said something about events that had happened that day and that were likely related to the Prototype, but Angel was only half listening. Their heart bested loudly in their chest, the blood rushing to their brain and making it hard to hear.
The man’s voice slowly got louder and more frantic, until they were cut off. Angel snapped back to life, and decided to get it all done with. They were going towards the flower, whether they wanted it or not.
That determination was slowly dulled when they approached the flower and saw what was written in coloured crayons around it. ‘Stop’, ‘go back’, ‘run’, ‘danger’, ‘turn around’. Not to mention all the toys that were hanged above them.
The blood on them made Angel shiver violently. Were those toys experiments like Huggy? Was that why they were covered in blood? Who had put them there? Who had written the warnings? Were all of Playtime’s toys secretly experiments? Were the ones they had at home experiments too?
All those questions and more normally would’ve made a person turn back and look for another way out. Maybe attempt to climb a wall. Angel didn’t do that. They instead steeled themselves and pushed through the door, determined to look for answers.
They were greeted by what looked like the hallway of an old house from the 1950s, with wooden floors and wallpaper that reminded them of the one you could find at your grandma’s house. The whole thing really just looked like a house, with even a few pillows, a wardrobe and a doll house. The only unlockable door was to their right.
Without much of a second thought, ready to run away at first sight if danger, Angel pushed the door open. And inside… there was nothing.
Well, not nothing. There was something, but it was weird. A red light filled the room, a creepy music played in the background, and in the middle of it stood what looked like a case, containing a vintage looking doll.
With a startle, Angel realised it was the Poppy doll from the very first VHS tape they’d seen.
People don’t usually open cases that contain a creepy looking doll, but I think we’ve already established that Angel isn’t exactly normal, no?
As if being pulled by something magnetic, Angel grabbed the case’s handle and pulled.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the music stopped, the lights flickered shut, and the doll opened its eyes.
”You opened my case…” it murmured in a girl’s voice.
Angel stepped back, feeling dizzy. The smell that had invested their nostrils as soon as they’d opened the case was making them lose their consciousness. And eventually, they dropped to the ground, as the world went dark.