THE CYCLE OF TORMENT

CHAPTER XVIII: RECOVERY

The light blinded Larson when he first opened his eyes. When his eyes finally adjusted to the light, he tried to sit up, but every muscle in his body hurt. He laid back down in defeat. He took in his surroundings and saw that he was in a hospital room. What was he-...

He remembered now. He got into an accident. He saw something in the road and he tried to dodge it, but crashed. What was that in the road? Before he could collect his thoughts any further, a nurse walked in the room. When she noticed that Larson was awake, she rushed to his side.

"You're awake. That's good. I'll tell the doctor that you're conscious." The nurse said, shining that annoying light in his eyes.

"What's happened? Where am I?" Larson asked, drowsily. "You're in the hospital, Mr. Larson. You were in a terrible car accident. You're lucky to be alive." The nurse stated.

So, I really was in a crash? Larson thought. Before he could ask anymore questions, the nurse was gone, leaving him alone with his thoughts. As he tried to lay back, he thought he saw someone looking at him through the window. As he turned to look, they were gone. This wasn't good. He was just starting to get some leads on the Stitchwraith case. The longer he stayed in this room, the longer that thing will be at large. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let this complicated puzzle go unsolved.

The doctor suddenly walked in.

"Good morning, Mr. Larson. How are you feeling today?" The doctor asked.
"Alright. So, just tell me what's wrong and I'll be on my way." Larson said impatiently.

"I'm afraid you have several broken ribs and your left forearm is fractured. Other than that, you should be alright." The doctor said.

Larson sighed. At least his legs were fine. Still, his mind keeps wandering to that night. That woman he saw in the junkyard, the one hiding the bodies... Larson didn't know how she fitted into all of this. Was she helping the Stitchwraith? Was she working on her own? What's her motive? Most importantly, what is she? Larson is too tired to be thinking about things like this.

"Mr. Larson, did you hear me?" The doctor said, interrupting Larson's train of thought. "What?" He asked.

"I said I'll need you to take it easy. You shouldn't be on duty for the next few weeks until your wound heals." The doctor advised. That definitely disappointed Larson. Instead of speaking his mind, he nodded.

After a few hours and some more checkups, they finally let him leave. Since his car wasn't exactly available at the moment, he decided to just call an Uber. On his way home, he started thinking about the case again. He knew he was getting somewhere... or was he? He genuinely didn't know anymore. This whole time, he was just blindly wandering through clues that barely connected. Did he even know what he was looking for to begin with? Who was he kidding? Of course he did. He's looking for the Stitchwraith. For so long, he had been finding nothing but dead ends and more people getting hurt or worse. He had to find it and fast.

Maybe, he just had to look further into the past. Maybe, that's where the answers lie. As he walked back into his apartment, he wasted no time in getting out the files. He thought back to when the Stitchwraith first started appearing. It was about a year or so ago. Still, he had to wonder why it showed up. Why does it even exist? It's a machine. It shouldn't be alive. Not unless...

He turned on his computer and began looking up rumors surrounding Freddy Fazbear's pizza. He saw all the stories he'd read about for years, but never paid attention to them. Before the Stitchwraith, he thought they were all just hoaxes. Now... now, he wasn't sure. For hours, he read every single one of them, he had nothing better to do. This time though, he had to pay attention to them. He couldn't just skim over them this time. He had to look carefully in each one. After hours of searching, he noticed something about all these cases. They all seemed to connect back to an incident at the Fazbear entertainment distribution center, the location where William Afton, the serial killer and co-founder of Fazbear entertainment, died. When he died, these incidents seemed to start popping up everywhere. What could've happened in that place that made all these horrible things happen?

This all seemed to connect back to that distribution center on that day. Larson needed to know, to understand what happened. What did Afton's death have to do with any of this? Why did he die after all that time of being critically wounded? Larson knew what he had to do; he needed to go to that distribution center and find out just what happened on the 15th of July: 1998.

END OF CHAPTER XVIII