Tar, Flowers. Agony, Hope. What's the difference?

Chap 1 -Magical necklaces and lost little hand puppets- |MILLIE|

Millie woke up in her bed the next morning, panting and in a cold sweat due to the fact that she hadn't been able to forget what happened, instead the events weighed heavily on her mind and she couldn't understand how she was 'alive' right now. She decided to take a shower, maybe it could help clear her head.

However when she went to remove her necklace -which for some reason she had worn while she slept- she felt dizzy and lightheaded, she ignored it and took the necklace off, only to start gasping as her airway closed off and blood started sheeting down her body.

She hurriedly put the necklace back on and glanced in the mirror, only to fall back with a yelp.

There was a jagged slice around her neck, that was healing, and it looked like it went down to the bone, and perhaps beyond.

Okay, so she apparently was dead and somehow still here, because that makes much more sense, and apparently her necklace was the only thing keeping her head on her neck.

She could live with having a necklace on twenty four seven if it kept her 'alive'.

She still took a shower, and hope and prayed the necklaces strange magical powers prevented it from rusting, because she wasn't sure what she'd do if the thing keeping her head attached to her body started deteriorating.

She hurried downstairs once she had gotten ready, barely stopping at the top of the stairs. She remembered her promise to herself if she got out of Funtime Freddy's stomach hatch, cell thing 'alive', of how she'd be nicer to her grandfather and try to mend her and Dylan's broken friendship.

Well, no better time to start on promises then the present, as Grandfather was cheerfully cooking breakfast in the kitchen, oblivious to the fact that his granddaughter should really be dead.

"Millie!" Her Grandfather called, smiling at her as he set two plates on the table. Millie smiled back and sat at the table, trying not to let the alarm from her discovery upstairs and lack of sleep due to the haunting memories of the events yesterday show.

"Grandfather, I heard there's this new antique store nearby, maybe we could visit it together?" She said, actually wanting to spend time with her Grandfather, not just because of her promise to be nicer to him but also because she didn't know how much time she had left, because for all she knew the necklace was a ticking time bomb and one day would just fail and kill her.

"Sure, I'd love to" Grandfather responded, smiling at her, she smiled back, trying to keep the worry about the necklaces time limit in her life show.

She actually did enjoy going to the antique store, they had some interesting stuff, including a book about legends about people living after death, which she did indeed buy, even if there were no answers at least she would be able to snort at some things that didn't quite line up with her very real reality of being a modern version of one of those legends.

She didn't expect what her Grandmother got though, as he was carefully holding a little blue rabbit animatronic, which was missing the whole entire lower half of itself.

"What is that Grandfather?" She asked nervously inching closer as if the rabbit animatronic could lunge at her and rip the necklace off or something.

"It's one of the missing parts I need for the bear! the Bonnie hand-puppet, I remember it seemed to be the bears best friend, although I'm pretty sure it's just a puppet" Grandfather said, brushing a little bit of dust off the Bonnie puppets eyelids.

Millie felt a bit uncomfortable calling the puppet an 'it', after all, no matter how much she didn't want to think about Funtime Freddy he'd seemed almost alive, acting like how she figured a insane person would act, like he hadn't always been the way he was.

"Are you sure?" She asked softly, staring at the Bonnie puppet, it's face looked a little bit to expressive for something that was meant to be just a puppet.

"Not entirely, but it does need to be repaired" Grandfather said, touching the rabbits arm, which seemed to limply dangle, like nothing was holding it up, although she thought she saw it twitch slightly.

Her fear about the puppets bigger companion didn't even waver but her fear toward the puppet itself began to fade when she realized it only had one working -and present- limb, she doubted it could even drag itself successfully, much less try to hurt her.

She almost... Felt sorry for it, stuck to a existence where it could never run, would never be able to stand and was stuck relying on a larger, more deadly animatronic to carry it to safety if necessary, plus he didn't even seem to have much in the realm of weaponry attached to his body.

She stiffened slightly when she realized she'd switched from referring to the puppet as an it to referring to him with he/him pronouns, which had happened almost subconsciously, without much conscious thought put into it.

They headed home, Millie's thoughts wandering to the rabbit puppet and how it didn't make sense to make a animatronic like that have a mind of it's own, as she was sure the Bonnie puppet was not just a puppet but his own animatronic.

Then there was Funtime Freddy.... She didn't want to stop her Grandfather from continuing with his project of repairing the bear but was worried that once Funtime Freddy could walk that he would came after her, and she didn't think her room door would stop a determined animatronic.

She felt a shiver down her spine and forced herself to calm down, even as some of her joints began to burn, because the feeling was something her mother warned her to never embrace, as it could kill her.

Sure she was already technically dead, but she didn't want to find out whether the necklace would keep her alive if she re-died.