Chapter 10: The Warden

Chapter 10: The Warden

The front doors of Showbiz Pizza burst open, and Leo and Maya tumbled out into the night, collapsing onto the cool, cracked asphalt of the parking lot. The sudden silence was a physical blow, a deafening absence of the hellish symphony they had just escaped. The air, crisp and clean with the smell of dew-dampened pavement and distant pine trees, was a shocking contrast to the acrid smoke and the coppery tang of blood that had filled their lungs for what felt like an eternity.

For a moment, they just lay there, gasping, two broken figures under the indifferent hum of a single parking lot lamp. The fire they’d started was not yet visible from the front, but the building behind them felt like a living, breathing tomb.

Then, the sound started.

It wasn't the roar of flames or the groan of collapsing structure. It was a low, mournful wail that seeped through the thick glass of the doors. It was a chorus of electronic despair, a distorted, multi-layered cry that was both enraged and pathetic. Through the soundproofing, warped and muffled, came words—or the ghosts of them.

“...Watch us… come back… don’t leave…”

It was the sound of performers whose audience had walked out mid-show. The sound of a monstrous, singular hunger being denied its meal. It was the desperate, pleading cry of something that would rather be hated than ignored.

The sound galvanized Leo. Scrambling to his feet, ignoring the fire in his shoulder and the dead, throbbing weight of his right hand, he fumbled at his belt with his good hand. His fingers, slick with his own blood, closed around the heavy ring of master keys he’d taken from the office what felt like a lifetime ago. He found the one for the front door’s deadbolt.

“What are you doing?” Maya cried, her voice thin and ragged.

“Locking it,” he grunted, jamming the key into the lock. “Locking them in.”

The key turned with a heavy, final thunk. The sound seemed to echo in the night, a single note of punctuation at the end of a bloody chapter. The wailing from inside intensified for a moment, a shriek of ultimate abandonment, before being swallowed by the building’s brick and mortar.

They were outside. And the show was inside. The door was the only thing separating the two worlds.

The aftermath was a blur, a disorienting collage of flashing lights and unfamiliar faces. The sight of smoke finally beginning to curl from the roof vents had prompted a call from a passing car. Soon, the parking lot was a sea of red and blue. Firetrucks, police cruisers, an ambulance.

Leo remembered the feeling of a coarse wool blanket being draped over his shoulders. He remembered a paramedic’s grim expression as she cut away the sleeve of his shirt to look at his shoulder, her sharp intake of breath as she saw the mangled, bloody ruin that had once been his right hand. He tried to answer their questions, but the words wouldn't come. What could he say? The animatronics came alive. They murdered Dale and Maya. They wanted an audience. He saw the look in the police officer's eyes—pity, suspicion, the weary assumption that he was just another kid on drugs, caught in something that went horribly wrong.

The official story, the one that would appear in the town’s small local paper, was a tragic accident. A late-night maintenance session, a freak electrical fire, a gas leak that led to hallucinations before the blaze tragically claimed the lives of two employees. Leo Martinez, the sole, lucky survivor, was too traumatized to give a coherent statement. His horrific injuries were chalked up to the fire and the chaos of escape.

The world had a simple, logical explanation for the horrors of that night. But Leo knew the truth. He would carry it forever, etched into his memory and carved into his flesh. The mangled hand, even after surgeries, would never be the same. It would be a twisted, scarred claw, a permanent, physical reminder of Mitzi’s bite, of the price of the show.

A week later, he sat in a sterile, wood-paneled lawyer's office downtown. His right arm was in a heavy cast and sling, his shoulder stitched and bandaged. Across the polished mahogany desk sat Ms. Jackson, the owner of Showbiz Pizza. She looked ten years older. Her eyes, usually sharp and business-like, were hollow, haunted.

She didn't ask him what happened. He suspected she didn't want to know. Maybe she already knew, in that deep, primal part of the soul that believes in things that have no business being real. She had grown up in this town; she’d heard the old rumors, the whispers about the place that were there long before she bought it.

“The insurance will cover the damages,” she said, her voice a dry rustle of paper. “They’ll want to rebuild. Franchise rules, you know.” She pushed a thick sheaf of documents across the desk. “I can’t. I won’t.”

Leo looked at the documents. It was a deed. A transfer of ownership.

“I can’t afford this,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“The sale price is one dollar,” the lawyer interjected, his tone flat and professional. “Ms. Jackson is taking care of all outstanding liabilities. She just wants… to be done with it.”

“That place… it was my father’s dream,” Ms. Jackson whispered, staring at a spot on the wall just past Leo’s head. “But there’s a darkness in it now. A stain that won’t wash out. It was always there, I think, but it’s awake now. It needs… watching.” Her eyes finally met his, and in their depths, he saw a flicker of desperate understanding. She didn’t know the details, but she knew the nature of the beast. “You were there. You fought it. It belongs to you now, Leo. You’re the only one who knows how to keep the doors shut.”

With his left hand, his fingers clumsy and stiff, Leo took the pen. He signed his name, the looping letters shaky and unfamiliar. It felt less like a signature and more like a sentence. He was being bound to the place, shackled to its memory and its future.

That night, he drove his beat-up truck back to the pizzeria. The police tape was gone, but the building was now a boarded-up sarcophagus. Yellow wooden planks covered every door and window, plastered with stark ‘NO TRESPASSING’ signs. The cheerful, cartoonish sign of Billy Bob on the roof was now faded and peeling, soot-stained from the fire, making the bear look like a grinning demon presiding over a crypt.

He got out of his truck and stood before the entrance, the heavy ring of keys feeling cold and solid in his pocket. The nostalgic young man who had taken this job to reconnect with a piece of his childhood was dead. He had died somewhere in the flashing, screaming darkness of the arcade, alongside Maya. The person who stood here now was someone else, someone harder, colder.

His life was no longer his own. It had been irrevocably changed, his destiny thrust upon him by four forgotten performers and their ravenous hunger. He was not a mechanic anymore, not a simple working-class kid. He was a sentinel. He was a jailer.

He was the warden of Showbiz Pizza.

He reached out and tested the main lock on the boarded door. It was solid. He would check it every night. He would maintain the building’s shell, not to preserve it, but to reinforce it as a prison. He would watch over it, a silent guardian tasked with one single, lifelong duty: ensuring the stage remained dark, the performers remained silent, and the show never, ever played for a new audience again.