Fazbear Frights #1 | Into the pit

Into The Pit

The dead possum's is still there.¨ Oswald was looking out the passenger window at the gray, furry corpse on the side of the road. Somehow itlooked even deader than it had yesterday. Last night's rain hadn'thelped.

"Nothing looks deader than a dead possum," Oswald's dad said."Except this town," Oswald mumbled, looking at the boarded-upstorefronts and the display windows, which were displaying nothing but dust

"What's that?" Dad said. He was already wearing the stupid red vestthey put him in when he worked the deli counter at the Snack Space.Oswald wished he'd wait to put it on until after he dropped him at school."This town," Oswald said, louder this time. "This town looks deaderthan a dead possum." 

His dad laughed. "Well, I don't guess I can argue with that."Three years ago, when Oswald was seven, there had actually been stuffto do here—a movie theater, a game and card store, and an ice-cream shopwith amazing waffle cones. But then the mill had closed. The mill hadbasically been the reason the town existed. Oswald's dad had lost his job,and so had hundreds of other kids' moms and dads. Lots of families hadmoved away, including Oswald's best friend, Ben, and his family.

Oswald's family had stayed because his mom's job at the hospital wassteady and they didn't want to move far away from Grandma. So Dadended up with a part-time job at the Snack Space, which paid five dollarsan hour less than he'd made at the mill, and Oswald watched the town die.One business after another shut down, like the organs in a dying body,because nobody had the money for movies or games or amazing wafflecones anymore.

"Are you excited it's the last day of school?" Dad asked. It was one ofthose questions adults always asked, like "How was your day?" and "Didyou brush your teeth?"

Oswald shrugged. "I guess. But there's nothing to do with Ben gone.School's boring, but home's boring, too."

"When I was ten, I wasn't home in the summer until I got called in forsupper," Dad said. "I rode my bike and played baseball and got into allkinds of trouble."

 "Are you saying I should get in trouble?" Oswald said.

"No, I'm saying you should have fun." Dad pulled into the drop-off linein front of Westbrook Elementary.

 Have fun. He made it sound so easy.

Oswald walked through the school's double doors and ran smack intoDylan Cooper, the last person he wanted to see. Oswald was apparently thefirst person Dylan wanted to see, though, because his mouth spread in awide grin. Dylan was the tallest kid in fifth grade and clearly enjoyedlooming over his victims.

 "Well, if it isn't Oswald the Ocelot!" he said, his grin spreadingimpossibly wider.

"That one never gets old, does it?" Oswald walked past Dylan and wasrelieved when his tormentor chose not to follow him.

 When Oswald and his fifth-grade classmates were preschoolers, therewas a cartoon on one of the little-kid channels about a big pink ocelotnamed Oswald. As a result, Dylan and his friends had started calling him"Oswald the Ocelot" on the first day of kindergarten and had neverstopped. Dylan was the kind of kid who'd pick on anything that made youdifferent. If it hadn't been Oswald's name, it would have been his frecklesor his cowlick.

The name-calling had gotten much worse this year in U.S. history whenthey'd learned that the man who shot John F. Kennedy was named LeeHarvey Oswald. Oswald would rather be an ocelot than an assassin.

Since it was the last day of school, there was no attempt at doing anykind of real work. Mrs. Meecham had announced the day before thatstudents were allowed to bring their electronics as long as they tookresponsibility for anything getting lost or broken. This announcementmeant that no effort would be made toward any educational activities ofany kind.