My answer came in the form of silence. I hesitated to open my eyes, but I was also glad to not feel anything in my mouth. I blinked a couple of times and realized that I am in the ‘Parts and service’ section of the building. Sitting on the table where just a couple of hours ago I was talking with Freddy, pretending to be someone I knew a long time ago. The room was well lit and gone was the mess of animatronic parts and suits. The shelves were empty, showing me naked bricks. In front of me, just over the door was a mechanical clock.

— Why? — I heard my own voice, attacking me like an echo and yet not distorted. It was clear, just as if I said it myself. The clock’s hand moved forward for a minute.

— Why? — Echo repeated the question, moving the clock forward once more.

A couple of seconds later I entered the dining area. Time seemed to slow down when I was moving, but it rushed forward the moment I stopped, because during those couple of seconds I heard my own voice eight more times. But since I stood up, the voice was silent.

The dining area was drowning in darkness, obscuring the twisted mess crawling on the floor, decaying humans reaching out and pulling their bloated corpses, making a clearly hearable noise. On shaky legs I got closer to the stage.

The lights blinked.

I was sitting in a chair, looking at a closed curtain. Sudden noise to my right made me look that way. It was some woman in a red dress, with a dried flower in her thin hair staring at me. — Why? — She whispered as if through me and slowly looked back at the stage. — Why? — Repeated someone in the sea of corpses behind me.

I felt like I was about to vomit. The smell of decay and the knowledge that I was surrounded by hundreds of dead people leading me to the edge of my own sanity. I covered up my mouth. — It’s starting. — I heard dozens of voices, each somewhat unique failing to say it exactly at the same time. — Why is it starting?

The curtain started to stretch and melt, soon it tore up and disappeared into the air like an old corpse, crumbling in the hands of a discoverer, revealing the stage, which was upside down, and a little cat standing on it. It looked up at us, at the rows of chairs standing on the ceiling. — Why? — It asked me in my own voice, and soon it too crumbled, leaving nothing but a wet stain.

In its place came a tall woman, wearing a beautiful green and white suit with thick red hair flowing down her back. She looked at me. My mom. I wanted to scream, call out to her but all I could do was stare. And she stared back, with a look in her eyes that she used for when I’ve done something bad as a kid. Seeming slightly disappointed, but never angry. — Why? — She asked in a quiet voice. My voice.

Soon she lowered her head and waited. A couple of the viewers stood up and started clapping as if after a touching show in a theater. But soon they stopped, breaking away from the ceiling and plummeting up, towards the ground. Three silhouettes: Bonnie, Chica, Foxy. Slowly they stood up and marched towards the woman and from the darkness came out more and more creatures, joining the grim reapers in a morbid dance of twisted faces and limbs. They surrounded my mother, who disappeared into the crowd. Not looking at me. Disappointed.

I screamed when she was gone, with tears streaming up my face and higher till splattering on the floor above me. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the terrifying spectacle even though I really wanted to. But soon from the twisted forest of bodies a little girl appeared. She couldn’t have been older than eleven. In a blue dress, white as a wall, without any signs of decay, she looked like a porcelain doll, with her beautiful green eyes looking up at me.

— Why? — She simply asked, while my chair started to slowly get lower. She was repeating my words time and time again, while the bodies around her reacted to her soft voice by dancing a twisted dance, whirling and pulsing with undead life, just like some bloated single organism. Suddenly all the bodies stopped and fell to the ground, decaying, turning to bones and ash. — Only a quarter left.

I was hanging upside down with my face in front of her. — Remember? — She asked, getting down from the stage, and closer to me. — You remember. — She frowned, while I tried to recall where I could have seen her. Finally she stopped, about a meter away from me. — You don’t remember. — Her voice expressed disappointment.

— I’m… sorry. I have no idea who you are. — I answered truthfully and the girl took a step back.

— Don’t lie to yourself. You won’t remember her. — I heard a voice just behind me. I tried to turn around but the muscles wouldn’t let me, just as if I were only a guest in my body, which was currently trying to choke me to death. But I knew that voice well: “Freddy”. — Yes Y/N, me. — He chuckled, crawling out of the darkness in front of me, his coiling and stretched body looked like a snake with randomly placed limbs sprouting from it and wriggling in pain.

The beast showed me its ugly teeth in a smile while embracing the girl in a clumsy hug. — And yet she never forgot You. — He continued. — Why? — The clock ticked once more. — Come on Y/N. You know it!

— She is dead because of me. — I answered after a drawn out silence.

— Why? — She asked me, once again pushing forward the invisible hand of time.

I stood under an improvised roof of a bus stop, in the rain, right in front of Freddy's Pizzeria. I was around fourteen or fifteen. It was cold and just a couple of minutes ago my friend told me that he won’t be meeting me today. So I was alone and without enough money to get a bus home. I had already made peace with the thought of going back on foot but I preferred to wait out the terrible weather, or at least the heaviest part of it, so I tried to warm myself up by walking in place.

I didn’t know how much time had passed but the rain finally got a bit more manageable. I was muttering to myself under my breath, and unhappy I made my way towards the house, I didn’t look where I was going, I knew the way like the back of my hand, looking up only sometimes on the pedestrian crossings. But that day I changed my route.

— Yes, now you remember. You saw them that day.

Donny and Billy, they stayed in one class three times. And even though they were my age, they were in a completely different class. I saw them that day. They were walking in the rain while I was waiting in front of the pizzeria, they seemed odd, with their faces hidden under hoods. I instantly recognised them by the way they walked and their backpacks. Suddenly they stopped a couple of meters away from me, frozen in time, while Freddy crawled out from behind them like some kind of a shadow.

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— Why? — They whispered and fell down like sacks of potatoes, splattering mud and water around which quickly stopped mid air as if stopped by an invisible hand of master clocksmith.

Raindrops were viciously hitting against the glass, it was a storm of a magnitude the city hadn't seen in a while. And a younger version of me was sitting in the middle of the carpet, surrounded by notebooks. I felt bitter. But it wasn’t my real emotion, it came from the body that I was now locked inside, unable to interact, still just forced to witness everything that was happening around me. Not able to change anything.

She was in the kitchen, behind the closed door. I was angry at her, because she told me to do my homework and didn’t even care enough to help. She just sat there and was cooking something. Or smoking.

I knew it for a while - that my mum was addicted to drugs. Everyone knew, sometimes they even tried to help her, but she always had to turn back to the blunt. She wasn’t aggressive, didn’t smoke at work, never hit me or anyone else, she was a good mum. All we had to do was to not interrupt her while she was in the kitchen. Just pretend like nothing is happening.

— Why? — I had always wondered that. She had a loving family: three sisters, my father, a son. Everyone had always been with her, so what pushed her towards drugs? Was she selfish? I couldn’t understand that. Maybe she just wanted more, as if we weren’t enough. I always felt angry when she prioritized the smoke for a couple of hours rather than being with us, as a family.

It was the same way today. She didn’t want to help me, even though she knew I had trouble with math, because she preferred getting high, while my father was working very hard so she could continue doing it, and so we could live in peace.

A loud bang caused by something falling snapped me out of my thoughts. I stood in front of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. Donny and Billy were headed in my direction, they held some girl by her hands. She seemed similar enough to the taller one that someone could think that she was his sister or a cousin. She seemed excited and was talking to the bigger boys, who were answering her questions with short words.

They didn’t look my way while passing me, But she locked her big, green eyes right in my face, she seemed a little lost. I turned away, not wanting to have any troubles with the two boys, who despite being my age, were far stronger, and known to be brutal.

I have known them since I was little. Our parents were friends.

— Why? — I didn’t react. The voice faded in the air, distorting the world before my eyes.

I was at the bottom of a well, looking at a distant point of light, submerged in the shallow water. I knew I had no way of escaping my fate, I knew how this will end. I was just evidence, easy to be disposed of. But I was still alive, I felt my strength slowly leaving me. The fall was a death sentence. But he didn’t have to.

I looked down the well once more and closed the lid, taking a big breath of fresh air.

— You washed your bike thoroughly that day. — Said a disembodied voice. — Why? — Accusatory tones came from around me, pushing on my body with their ghastly presence. I knew — Why? — I had to get rid of the blood.

— It… It ran out in front of me! — I tried to defend myself, while falling to my knees, trembling. — I couldn’t steer in time. — The voice snorted, disappointed. The ground crumbled underneath me, I fell down into the clock counting down the last minutes of my life.

— Why? — The cogs moved under the influence of that word, grabbing for the material of my clothes, pulling me into it’s mechanical jaw, wanting nothing but my pain and blood. The springs were clicking and cracking. There was an alarm in the distance.

I sat on a chair in the living room. The lights of the ambulance throwing deep shadows on my face. Glistening in the tears flowing down my face. I felt alone, without anyone to cheer me up. Everyone as always was jumping around her, ignoring me. I tightened my hand into a fist. She was always the important one. Nobody cared that she was ruining this family, with her addictions, her fake illnesses.

And it finally catched up to her. She fell down, alone, in the kitchen.

— I always said that I wasn’t home when it happened. They believed me. — I said to myself, while looking at the raindrops flowing down the window, racing each other, forming bigger droplets, trying to be the first one down. — I didn’t kill her. — I refused to accept the accusations forming in the air around me. — She did it to herself.

Freddy’s was closed that day. Out of limits to guests, to kids and their laughter, empty. It reopened after a couple of years, when the investigation was closed due to the lack of evidence. There were no witnesses or DNA at the scene. They never locked up anyone, and it always remained a mystery. — Why? — Asked everyone in the area. For a while they all were talking just about the death of some girl. No one actually knew her name.

— Why? — I heard a voice behind me. I couldn’t turn around, I was unable to move. Completely immobilized by a steel made skeleton, locked up in something that reeked of pizza and sweat. All I could see through the little eye holes was the clock, with its hands getting closer and closer to six o clock. — Why? — The hand twitched and along with it the walls swayed, with silhouettes locked under the paint, waiting for a sign. Twisting in their agony, reaching with their hands and empty faces towards me.

— Why? — I heard someone’s touch on my shoulder. It was Freddy, he was sitting next to me on the table. His voice was calm, almost friendly. He was waiting for my answer, encouraging me with his strong grip.

— I… didn’t want this to end like that… I couldn’t have known that it would happen. — I answered, closing my eyes.

— Then why do you feel responsible? — He asked me. He waited for an honest answer, for testimony proving my guilt. I didn’t know what he wanted to achieve in this way, but I was completely within his grasp, he could control me like a marionette.

— I… — My eyes opened, we stood in front of the broom closet in the west corridor. He still held his hand on my shoulder, giving me some scraps of courage. — I feel that I could have stopped that… I feel that if I had done something differently, none of this would have happened.

— Why didn’t you do anything? — The door opened showing the inside of the room. It was filled with different cleaning supplies, buckets, trash, empty boxes and bottles but despite its name there wasn’t even a single broom inside.

— I didn’t know I could have done anything… I didn’t realize that any of this mattered. — I said quietly. Then I noticed it. Something that kept slipping from my sight. Something that sat in the closet since I first fell asleep. The reason I was scared of the closet. Myself, holding a clock with just a minute left until six am. — I’m telling the truth. — I looked at freddy.

The robot stood there, looking at me impassively. His silver eyes shined ghastly in the weak light of the lamp. He wouldn’t answer.

I once again looked at myself, sitting limp in the corner of the closet.

— Am I dead? — I asked him, not expecting any answer. My eyes teared up, just one minute until six am.

Hundreds of noises whispered together, the victims, the accusers, the perpetrators. Everyone who got through this place and was tied to Freddy’s. — Why?