Finding The Five || FNAF Movie

14 || A Trip Down Emotional Lane

(Unedited, Not Proofread, 5008 words)
Trigger Warnings: Serious mentions of suicide and self-harm ((PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! Do not read this chapter if these topics are triggering to you. I will include a summary at the start of the next chapter for anyone who doesn't read this one. Please don't feel like you have to read this to understand the plot, I will find a way to make sure you still understand what's going on without triggering you. Stay safe <3))

"How many rooms are you booking, ma'am?" the softspoken front desk worker asks, looking up at Makaylen as the eldest of us completes the purchase of rooms. We just got here five minutes ago, scrambled to collect what we needed overnight into our respective bags, and filed in with Kaylen refusing to take her eyes off of any of us until we were all inside the doors that rang when opened.

"How many beds are in each?" Kaylen returns, fishing her card out of her wallet. The card that has paid to get Jonah and I out of trouble so many times, both together and separately. I glance over at Jonah, and he gives me a nervous smile. He's either thinking the same thing, or he's thinking about how she's going to split us up into different rooms.

I'll most likely be stuck with her, since that's usually how these things go. It'll make it quite literally impossible to get any planning done with the others. But at the very least, I can use the time to convince her to let us go back, which is an obstacle I have been trying to find a way around since we left the pizzeria. Neither Jonah nor I can think of any good way to convince her. Not one that'll work, anyway.

And shit, even if we do convince her, we still have to get Mike on board with letting Abby help. We might as well have crashed our car on the way back and tried to free the spirits ourselves, Jonah and me.

"Would you like adjacent rooms?" the man questions, clicking a pen just out of my view. He's clicked it about twenty times thus far in the conversation, and nobody is more aware of it than Mike, who visibly cringes every time he does it.

"Yes, please," Kaylen replies, nodding as she passes the card to him. It's purple and yellow, the colors of LSU, Kaylen's college of choice that she never actually got into. Her past relationships have held her back in ways she'll likely never fully recover from, but this isn't one of them. She's alright with not having gone to LSU, and she's instead gotten an associate's degree and she's been doing good for herself. She works two jobs, but it's by choice. The pet store is her choice, she also works at a tattoo studio that shares a building with some old family diner that she brings us food from during long shifts.

The thin man clears his throat, sitting up straight as he sees the card. It's not the reaction I expected, and the nerves building in his chest tell me not to trust him. "We have a three-bed room with a queen and two twins, and then an adjacent room with one queen and a twin," he explains. Kaylen turns around and quietly points to each of us, counting in her head and Tetris-ing us into the beds in her mind. It would be easy to say four plus three is seven, which is more than us, but she's working out room assignments in her head.

"Yes," she decides after a moment, "that'll work." She turns back to him and adjusts the bag on her back, waiting for him as he writes things down on a notepad in front of him before transferring them to the computer.

"How many nights will you be staying?" he asks, looking up at her.

"One," Kaylen responds, her voice more pointed than the tip of a blade. Dread builds in my chest and I feel anxious energy coming from Jonah's direction. I glance over and he looks at me with a I don't think that'll work kind of expression on his face. I try to stay calm, not letting my face speak for me, but it's hard knowing we only have one shot at finding our spirits, freeing them, and fixing whatever the hell is going on there.