Five Nights at Freddy's Fazbear Frights Collection, page 120
Before she faced the mirror again, Angel took a deep breath. “Please,” she begged. “Please be better.”
Closing her eyes, she moved over to the mirror. She faced it … and she opened her eyes. She immediately started breathing hard, almost hyperventilating. Her heart pounded out a panic rhythm of what felt like three hundred beats per minute.
Angel’s legs went out from under her, and she sank down onto the fluffy white bathmat. She started to cry as her mind replayed the hideousness she’d just seen in the mirror.
The rash was on both cheeks now, and it was moving upward. It had reached the bottom of her cheekbones already. The rash was moving down, too. It covered most of her chest, and it had spread to her shoulders.
It must have gotten so fully into her system that washing did no good. What could she do now?
Angel started to put her head in her hands, but she stopped herself. What if it got on her hands, too?
Angel looked wildly around the room as if some solution to her problem was going to present itself. None did.
“What do I do?” she asked. She didn’t know whom she was asking, but for some reason, she got an answer.
Angel snapped her fingers and crawled over to the vanity cabinet under the sink. She threw the doors open and began pawing through the first aid and other supplies stored there. She thought … yes, there it was. A few months ago, Ophelia got poison ivy, and Angel’s mom bought calamine lotion. Maybe that would help.
Angel flung aside bottles and boxes in the cabinet until she could reach the bottle of pinkish liquid. She grabbed it, opened it, and began slathering herself with calamine.
When she was done, she sat on the floor and tried to calm her breathing. In through the nose—one, two, three. Out through the mouth—one, two, three. She did this ten times and told herself everything was okay.
The itching wasn’t as bad, she didn’t think. That was good, right?
Angel sat and breathed some more. She could feel her heart rate slowing. It’s going to be okay, she told herself. Everything is fine. You just have a little rash from the stuff in that bottle … not that different, really, from getting a poison ivy rash. Ophelia had survived that just fine. Angel would be fine, too.
Angel realized she was getting cold. She reached into the cabinet for a third towel.
That’s when she saw that the rash could now be seen on her upper arms, well below the edge of the now-crusty calamine lotion.
“No!” Angel gasped.
She jumped up, her heart hammering again.
She looked in the mirror. Her mouth dropped open. Not only was the rash spreading well beyond where she’d put the calamine lotion, but the rash looked different now, too. Was the calamine making it worse?
Angel got back in the shower and rinsed off all the lotion. Getting out again and wrapping herself in a new towel, she forced herself to return to the mirror.
A shriek of terror caught in her throat. She started to shiver uncontrollably.
She was turning into a lizard: a slimy, squishy-looking lizard. From beneath her eyes, down her entire face and neck and chest, and now moving lower on her arms, gelatinous-looking scales were forming on her skin. The scales were red and gray and pink, and they looked moist and spongy even though she’d just dried herself off.
Angel was horrified but also unable to look away from the horror unfolding in her mirror. What was it?
She examined her arm, and she carefully touched one of the gooey scales. It felt springy, like a rubbery pillow, kind of viscous to the touch.
It felt kind of like a wet gumdrop.
Angel sucked in air.
Could this have something to do with that stupid gumdrop nose?
She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together. This was all Ophelia’s fault. If she hadn’t had her stupid party and gotten that stupid nose …
Angel could have had an allergic reaction to the nose. What was in it?
Wait. Allergic reaction. Whether it was the gumdrop nose or not that caused it, Angel could have been having an allergic reaction. That was easy enough to fix, right?
Angel turned and crossed the bathroom to the wall cabinet next to the door. This was where her mother kept over-the-counter medicines that she didn’t want Ophelia getting into. Surely, they had some antihistamines.
Angel opened the cabinet door and sorted frantically through the boxes, bottles, and vials. Yes! Angel spotted a box of antihistamines, and she didn’t even bother to read the dosage instructions. She took three of them. Then she sat on the toilet seat and waited.
She didn’t know how long to wait. How long did it take for these things to start working?
She sang softly while she waited. She sang three full songs. Her eyelids started to feel heavy. Didn’t antihistamines make you feel drowsy? If so, that meant the pills were working.
Excited, Angel stood to look in the mirror again.
She again had to cover her mouth so she wouldn’t scream.
Her eyelids weren’t heavy because she was drowsy. Her eyelids were heavy because they were now covered with the sticky scales. So was most of her forehead and the rest of her arms.
Making sure her towel was securely tucked around her, Angel grabbed her discarded clothes, slapped off the bathroom light, threw open the bathroom door, and ran down the hall toward her room as quietly as she could. She couldn’t handle this on her own. She needed to get to a hospital.
She had to get dressed, and she didn’t want to put on the clothes she just took off. They could be infected. She probably shouldn’t even have been carrying them. But it was too late now.
As she passed her mom and Myron’s room, she hesitated. She wondered if she should wake them.
No! No way. What was wrong with her? Were the gloopy scales spreading to her brain, too?
If she’d had normal parents, loving parents, of course, she’d go to them for help. But she had her useless mother, and she had Myron. She had the two people most responsible for everything wrong in her life. They were the jerks who wouldn’t help her with college because they were too busy spoiling her brat of a stepsister. No way was she going to ask them for help.
In effect, she had no family. She was alone.
Angel slipped into her room and leaned back against the door. Should she call one of her friends? She didn’t have what she’d call a BFF, but she hung out with a lot of kids in the drama department. One of them might help her.
As soon as she had the idea, she dismissed it. She didn’t want those people to see her like this. They might help, but they’d also see her situation as an opportunity. Looking like this, she wasn’t going to be able to perform the final spring performances. No, her “friends” would be more likely to gloat over her predicament than help her with it.
And what about her teachers? No. Same thing. They were supportive, but their support had a lot to do with her looks. She couldn’t let them see her like this.
She saw herself in the ER all by herself … all by herself, but surrounded by dozens of strangers. ERs were busy places. Did she really want to be seen like this in a crowded place? Absolutely not! No, the ER wasn’t the place for her.
She shouldn’t go to the hospital. If something from Freddy’s was causing this, there was only one thing to do. Dropping her pile of clothes, Angel carefully poked in the pockets until she found Dominic’s card.
Here she’d thought he was a great guy. She should have known better. Why did she think someone who worked at that nasty pizzeria could be a good guy?
Dominic wasn’t good. He worked for the awful place that made her sick!
Well, now he was going to have to help her. She’d make him help her. And he was going to get a piece of her mind, too. What kind of crud was in Freddy’s anyway? Were the food and the candy poisoned? Was the water full of toxins? Germs? Did she pick up a virus there?
Angel ran to the hallway side table and grabbed the phone. “Please be there,” she breathed as she dialed Freddy’s number. He did say he could always call her … but she also wasn’t sure what time the arcade closed. It was really late.
Dominic answered on the third ring.
“Freddy Fazbear’s Piz—” he began.
“What did you do to me?” Angel snapped before he could finish.
“Angel? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. Or at least it is for now, but I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be me.”
“I’m sorry? Can you slow down? I think I might be missing something. You’re not making sense.”
“What do you have in that horrible place?” She wanted to shout, but she didn’t want anyone to wake up. So, she asked her question in quiet, clipped tones.
“Can we back up? I feel like I got on a train in the middle of its run. I don’t know where it started, and I don’t know where it’s going.”
“Stop trying to be clever.”
“I’m not being clever. In fact, I think I’m being pretty dense. I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you please start at the beginning?”
“I should have known you weren’t any different than other guys. Sure, you seemed different, but you were just playing games, weren’t you? What did you do to me?”
Dominic sighed. “Angel, please tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m turning into a slimy, squishy, disgusting lizard is what’s going on. I have these putrid scales spreading all over me!”
Angel thought she heard Dominic groan, but she didn’t stop talking. “That’s what’s going on. And it has to have something to do with being at Freddy’s today. It could have been whatever you had in that plastic bottle maybe. Or something in the food or candy. Or … you tell me! Something at Freddy’s did this!”
Dominic was silent.
He was still on the line. Angel could hear him breathing.
“Dominic?”
Dominic still didn’t speak.
“Are you there?” Angel asked.
Another few seconds passed. “I’m so sorry, Angel,” he finally said.
“So you know what’s wrong with me?”
“You need to come to Freddy’s,” he said.
“You didn’t answer me.”
“Come to Freddy’s, and I’ll explain.” His voice, already so smooth and deep, dropped even lower. It soothed her. She could feel her heart rate slow just a little.
“And I’ll help you, Angel. Just get to Freddy’s.”
Angel’s fury at Dominic and the stupid pizzeria abated enough for her to feel a spark of hope. “You’ll help me?” Her voice sounded small, but she didn’t care.
“Yes, I’ll help you. Just come here to Freddy’s.”
“Okay.”
“And, Angel?”
“Yeah?”
“Hurry.”
“Okay.”
“Bye.”
Angel hesitated for just an instant, then said, “Bye.”
Angel sat on the floor for several seconds clutching the phone and listening to the dead air of the ended call. Dominic would help her. And maybe he hadn’t betrayed her after all.
Maybe everything would be okay.
Angel suddenly realized how much time she was wasting. She dropped the phone, jumped up, and ran back to her room.
Angel yanked open bureau drawers and pulled out fresh underwear, a bra, jeans, and a T-shirt. She threw on her clothes as fast as she could, and she thrust her feet into her sandals.
Okay, that was the easy part. Now she had to get to Freddy’s.
She couldn’t walk. It was too far. Not to mention, she didn’t want to be seen.
She looked at the digital clock on her nightstand. It was 11:35 p.m.—dark, but it wasn’t late enough for the streets to be totally deserted.
She thought about biking, but even that would take her a long time. No. The dreadful jelly-scales were spreading too fast. She needed to drive. She’d take her mother’s sports car. She’d driven the car plenty of times. Sometimes, when Myron wasn’t around, her mom would tell Angel she wanted to go on a drive and she felt like being chauffeured. Angel loved driving the zippy car. She wished it were hers.
So driving the car wasn’t an issue, but getting it away from the house might be. Could she deactivate the alarm, get into the garage, open the garage door, start the car, and leave without anyone waking up?
She had to. She had to get this handled or her life was going to be totally ruined.
Angel grabbed one of her scarves and wrapped it around her head so it would obscure her face as much as possible. She tucked her hair behind her ears.
Suddenly, Angel thought of the way Dominic had tucked her hair behind her ear. Her eyes filled with tears. It figured. Story of her life. I meet an amazing guy and I start turning into a clammy reptile, she thought.
Would Dominic still like her when he saw the way she looked now? Was he as one-dimensional as all the other guys she’d met—the ones whose interest only went skin-deep? If he was, that was the end of it. Even if he wasn’t, how could they go out with her looking like this? How long would it take for this to go away? Would it be gone by graduation? By the time she left for the summer workshop?
Why couldn’t things go Angel’s way for a change? It really wasn’t fair.
* * *
By the time Angel got into her mother’s bright yellow sports car, the squidgy reptile skin had completely covered Angel’s arms. She assumed it was heading down her legs, too, because they felt funny. Her stomach felt strange as well, kind of heavy. She noticed that when she sat down in the driver’s seat of the car; she was shorter in the seat than she ever had been before. She had to adjust the rearview mirror downward, and she usually had to adjust it upward because she was a little taller than her mom.
When she noticed this, she lifted her shirt to see what was happening. She let out a little scream. Her stomach had gotten so elastic that it was kind of collapsing in on itself when she sat down.
Was she going to be able to get to Freddy’s before she was too pliable to do anything at all?
Angel backed down her driveway and pressed the button to close the garage door. Her neighborhood was an expanse of darkness broken up by outdoor porch lights. In the distance, a dog barked, but otherwise, the only sound was the car’s engine. None of the houses near hers had lights in the windows. It didn’t look like anyone was staying up late to see Angel taking her mother’s car out for a spin. Good.
Angel pointed the car in the direction of Freddy’s, and she resisted the urge to stomp on the accelerator. Speeding through town wasn’t the thing to do right now. So she drove, well, like an angel—careful to obey every traffic law so as not to draw any attention to herself. Being in the highly visible expensive car made being unobtrusive a little challenging even under normal circumstances, and these weren’t normal circumstances.
Most of the trip was quiet and uneventful, but a block from Freddy’s she had a scare. Waiting at a red light, she heard the grumble of some kind of muscle car come up next to the sports car. She didn’t look over, but the driver of the car whistled and called out, “Want to have some fun, honey?”
Angel clutched the steering wheel harder. Or she tried to. When she couldn’t get the grip she wanted, she looked down to see why.
Oh no!
Her fingers were turning into segmented chunks of mucous-like material that turned her stomach. They didn’t even look human anymore.
The driver in the car next to hers called out again, and she glanced at the driver’s door to be sure the locks were engaged. She also lowered her hands to the bottom of the steering wheel so the driver couldn’t see them in the relentless intrusion of the streetlights.
The guy in the muscle car kept up a rude, suggestive patter while the light stayed red. What was taking so long for it to change?
Eventually, it turned green. The muscle car sped off. Angel let out her pent-up breath. She drove the rest of the way to Freddy’s without encountering another vehicle.
When Angel finally pulled her mom’s little sports car into the parking spot closest to the front door of Freddy’s, she looked around at the brightly lit lot. Thankfully, no other cars were in it. She was alone.
Now, scanning the area again, she opened the driver’s door and headed toward Freddy’s entrance. Before she got there, Dominic opened the door and looked out at her.
Angel’s steps faltered. Even though she needed Dominic’s help, she still didn’t want him to see her this way. She looked down and let her hair fall forward over her face.
“Angel?” Dominic called out. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about how you look. I don’t care about that. I just need you to hurry so I can help you.”
Angel glanced at Dominic through the veil of her hair. His expression was somber. His lips were pressed together, and his eyes looked red. Had he been crying?
He really seemed to care. This made Angel trust him even more. She walked forward and put her malformed hand in his strong, perfect one.
Without any comment about her hand or any of the rest of her, he led her into Freddy’s. “Come on. I’ll take you to the back.”
Angel let Dominic pull her down the hall. She looked up. The place looked much different now than it had a few hours ago. Not just because it was empty and quiet but because … because why?
Angel frowned. Was it the lighting?
During the party, every light in the restaurant had been on. Now, most of them were out, and the ones that were on were turned down to a dim setting. Every bright color in the place was muted. Shadows stretched down the hall ahead of her and created pockets of darkness along the walls and the ceiling. The effect was sobering, maybe even a little scary.
Taking a few tentative steps down the hall with Dominic, Angel could still see the pictures of the characters on the walls, but they looked less friendly now. Why was that? Was it the shadows? Or something else?
Angel took a few more steps until she heard a weird clinking sound. Suddenly scared for no good reason, she stopped.
“It’s okay,” Dominic said. “It’s just one of the animatronics doing daily maintenance.”
