009: Help Urself

            Isaac and Adam told us all to meet them at a McDonald's before work. Like, all of us. Minus Chris and Jason. I guessed they didn't want to come. I wasn't a fan of McDonald's. I could eat the fries, but anything else would make me feel sick. I'd noticed over the past few days that the two of them were getting extremely close. They'd been spamming the group chat left and right.

            When I got to the McDonalds, they waved me over to a table. The restaurant wasn't too full, and I saw they didn't order any food. That was weird. Isaac was always eating. All the time. He actually looked unusually quiet. So did Adam. There were no seats left, but Jayden offered me his.

            "Hey guys." The air at the table was stiff. Quiet. Nervous. I wasn't a fan of it. "What's up?"

            Adam's voice was serious. I'd never heard that before. "We found some shit last night."

            I blinked. I didn't know they hung out. "What?"

            Amanda said, "Just listen."

            I looked at everyone. They must've told them about it before me. Adam seemed to have the story hanging on the tip of his tongue. "Um..."

            Isaac interjected, "Sam isn't Sam."

            I kind of just looked at him. "What?"

            "Sam isn't Sam." Adam was desperately trying to make me believe it. "He's James Mitchell."

            It was probably the most random thing I'd ever heard in my life. "You're fucking with me."

            "Are we?"

            Michael slid me Adam's phone, and on it was a picture of Sam, except it wasn't Sam. Except it was. It was Sam, but with brown hair and brown eyes. Not blond hair and blue eyes. In the picture, his hair was long and curly. The Sam I knew had short, slicked back, blond hair. However, the face shape was the exact same. It was Sam.

            There was a much larger issue about the photo, though.

            I squinted at the phone and said, "Is this a fucking mugshot?"

            "Yup."

            I was holding onto the phone with two hands, looking at it. James Mitchell from Hillsborough County, Florida. He was the son of an extremely rich family, who both died tragically early from heart attacks. All of their funds went to him. There was a long list of charges against him, from a DUI to aggravated assault. He also had a domestic violence charge against him as well. However, he served absolutely no time in jail somehow.

            Adam snatched his phone. "This isn't the only thing."

            "We looked him up." I didn't have much to say. "You won't believe this."

            They pulled up something and gave the phone to me again. Everyone was expecting me to read it. It was an article. It was about a restaurant that looked similar to Chuck E. Cheese, except it was a private business. Employees basically walked around in costumes, and it had an arcade and such. The main costume looked pretty damn close to Freddy Fazbear, so either it was his first expedition into recreating Five Nights at Freddy's, or it was just a weird coincidence. However, James Mitchell was the manager of the place before it was closed. The Facebook posts, Twitter posts, and images of old reviews were enough to make me vomit.

            One read, "Do not go to Grizzly Bear's Pizza & Arcade! The food is good and the games are fun for kids, but the manager is a CREEP! My husband and I caught him staring at me from across the store multiple times. I also caught him staring at a female employee. He was standing WAY too close to her! He was obviously making her uncomfortable. He should be fired!"

            Another read, "Whoever is wearing the Grizzly Bear suit is a complete creep. Stared at me the entire time I was there and ruined my experience."

            Another was a Twitter thread reiterating all of the strange things that had occurred at the restaurant, but went completely unnoticed. A girl had been followed to the bathroom by the person in the Grizzly Bear costume. Many women reported being stared at by the manager, and another even reported that he pretty much harassed her for her phone number when she was leaving the restaurant. There was a testimonial from a former employee that he called her phone at three in the morning to talk to her, and she quit on the spot.

            There was also one more thing.

            I put down Adam's phone. "Two teenage girls went missing."

            Everyone was quiet for a moment. I couldn't read what exact emotion they had, but it wasn't good.

            I didn't like it one bit. "They went missing and nobody found them?"

            Michael finally broke the silence. "We can't prove that it was Sam, but... if the shoe fits, he should wear it."

            "How the hell would he have gotten away with something like that, though?"

            Jayden just said, "It's Florida. You can do whatever you want there."

            My blood was boiling. At least, that's what I thought it was. Deep down, I felt like running as far away from Fazbear's Fright as I could. "I'm being serious. How could he have done that and gotten away with it?"

            Michael shrugged. "How did William Afton do it?"

            "That was the eighties, bro." Adam laughed at that. Isaac had a way of making bad shit funny. "He stuffed them in the suits and it was Utah. Nobody gives a fuck about Utah."

            Adam added, "Yeah, and it's fucking fake. Nobody would get away with five child murders in the same place. Those suits probably smelled so bad, too."

            That at least made me laugh. Jayden added, "Yeah bro, and plus, so much shit happens down there. Like, it could've been something crazy that had nothing to do with that restaurant."

            It still wasn't enough to convince me. I couldn't deny what I saw. I just said, "Then who's the person in the bunny costume? At our job?"

            The four guys shrugged. I just unlocked my phone, found the picture of the Glitchtrap suit, and basically slammed my phone down on the table.

            "Yo," Jayden seemed more fascinated than worried. "That's that guy from fucking... what was it, Help Wanted, right?"

            Michael responded, "Glitchtrap."

            Adam and Isaac basically grabbed my phone. Adam said, "Where'd you take this picture at?"

            "The safe room. At work."

            They basically froze. It was like what I was implying hit them like a ton of bricks.

            Adam's voice was very quiet. "But – that's Sam's room."

            "Yeah."

            "He doesn't like us going in there."

            "Yeah."

            "You went in there?"

            "Yes."

            "And you found this creepy shit?"

            "Yes."

            Michael took another look at the phone. "So, you think this is the costume the girl in the reviews was talking about?"

            "It has to be." Amanda just seemed quiet about the whole thing. I knew she knew what I knew. She probably had the same suspicions I did. "And who else was the one walking around, being creepy in a bear costume? Being creepy in general? It was Sam. I mean, James. I mean, whoever the hell he is."

            Before any of the guys said anything else, Amanda said, "Please listen to her."

            Isaac asked, "What, you think he's stuffing people in suits or something?"

            "No, I just think he's a creep." I slid Adam his phone back. "It's no coincidence that the costume was with his stuff, in his room, where only he's allowed to go. I never see him on the cameras during open hours, either. It adds up."

            Jayden said, "Are you good?"

            "No." It came out sharper than I intended. "I know what creeps are capable of. Plus, I saw that costume. I saw it right outside of my fucking apartment."

            The guys just blinked at me. Wide-eyed, like there was nothing going on in their heads. Jayden just said, "Wait, what?"

            Adam seemed a little angry, too. "You never said anything about that."

            "Because I didn't know how to tell anyone!" I felt like crying, but I couldn't. If there was one thing I learned never to do, it was to let a man get to me. "The only person who has my address and has access to that costume is fucking Sam."

            Yes, Sam was the one stalking me. Not Sam, actually. James Mitchell, from Hillsborough County, Florida. I knew it from day one, but I didn't know this. I didn't know that he wasn't who he said he was. Men with money can be extremely dangerous. Are they intelligent? Most of the time, yes. Will they use that intelligence to act maliciously and successfully cover it up? Yes. Will they use that money to bribe anyone who knows about it? Yes.

            Adam and Isaac looked at each other. "Bro, what the fuck are we gonna do?"

            "Well, we can't all just quit." Michael was right. That would make everything worse, and it wasn't necessarily a bad job. We outnumbered Sam by a longshot. "We're almost done, anyways. No point in stopping now. Plus, with all the publicity, I'd doubt that he would do anything."

            "But what about us?" I was surprised Amanda even spoke up. "He doesn't kill guys. He harasses women. He would harass me and Emma, not you."

            "Then, we protect you. Duh."

            I looked back at Jayden. That green-haired boy was slowly becoming my favorite. The other guys tended to agree, but I wasn't sure. Serial offenders and killers were smart, and they also couldn't hold off impulses for too long. Anyone who watched crime shows knew enough to know that. They find their sole satisfaction in causing harm to others. Something about Sam, and the slow cracking of his smile, made me feel as though death was right around the corner.

            "Plus, Emma," Adam said, on the verge of laughing, "don't you have your own personal bodyguard? Your best friend?"

            I narrowed my eyes a little. I was smirking, just by a small margin. I'd almost forgotten. The only concern was his programming – I assumed that Sam knew it and programmed it to be unable to harm him. However, that animatronic seemed almost too human to be controlled.

            Adam added, "He does fucking hate Sam, right?"

            "He does."

            Isaac laughed. "How much?"

            I just looked at him. "You noticed the hole in the sheetrock in the office hall yet?"

            "Yeah. Sam was mad about it. I said I didn't know where it came from."

            "It came from Springtrap."

            "He punched it?"

            "Yes."

            Michael jumped in. "Wait. It has the capacity to be angry?"

            I shrugged. "Yeah. I guess so."

            "That's weird. I was talking to Sam about his programming, and he said he programmed it to be completely unable to be physically aggressive."

            Everybody looked at him. I asked, "To everything or just people?"

            "Everything, I'm pretty sure. To prevent any damages."

            That was the thing that made all of us look at one another. The whole time, I thought that it was just supposed to be unable to harm people. Sam made it that way. That meant;

            "Sam programmed him incorrectly?"

            Michael just nodded. Dumb and dumber were looking at one another, and I turned to see Jayden biting his nails. Amanda was staring at the floor, tapping her leg repeatedly. Sam – James – fucked up. He fucked up and we all knew it. Everything about him was fucked up. Plus, it was ironic. How fucking ironic for the owner of the recreation of Fazbear's Fright to be a horrible person? How fucking ironic was it for him to both build animatronics and get away with murder?

            At this rate, he wasn't Sam.

            He wasn't James Mitchell.

            He was William Afton in the flesh.