Chapter 8: The Final Performance

Chapter 8: The Final Performance

Dooom.

The single, resonant bass note hung in the air like a funeral bell. It was a sound Leo knew well; it was the opening note to Fatz Geronimo’s signature bluesy ballad. But here, in the blood-soaked silence of the pizzeria, it was not music. It was a declaration. A challenge.

Leo stood frozen, the gash on his shoulder and the mangled ruin of his right hand throbbing in time with the deep, vibrating note. Fatz, the hulking gorilla animatronic, sat patiently by the ball pit, a monstrous shadow against the cheerful primary colors of the plastic balls. He wasn't charging. He wasn't lunging. He was waiting, his red-lit eyes fixed on Leo with an unnerving, intelligent stillness. This was different from Rolfe’s frantic rage. This was a calm, calculated predator, toying with its food.

Dooom.

The note sounded again, and Leo knew he couldn't stay here. The back exits were beyond the gorilla. A direct confrontation was suicide. Fatz was the powerhouse of the group, a solid mass of steel and hydraulics that could crush him without a second thought. But the arcade, the tomb where Maya had been butchered, was behind him. To retreat was to corner himself.

His mind, sharpened by pain and adrenaline, raced. He wasn't a fighter, he was a mechanic. He didn't have strength, but he understood leverage. He understood systems. And he understood distraction.

His eyes darted around, landing on a tall, metal prize token dispenser standing near the entrance to the laser tag arena. It was heavy, awkward, and full of clattering metal coins. It was perfect.

Ignoring the screaming protests from every nerve in his body, Leo stumbled toward it. He braced his good shoulder against the machine and pushed. The effort was Herculean. His vision swam with black spots, and the pain in his ruined hand was a physical presence, a hot coal he was forced to carry. The dispenser’s legs screeched against the tiled floor, a sound that made Fatz’s head tilt with curiosity.

Grind. Screech. Shove. He was moving it inch by agonizing inch toward the low wall of the ball pit. He could feel Fatz watching him, the animatronic’s silent judgment a palpable weight. It wasn't trying to stop him. It was curious. It was letting him play his little game. The thought was infuriating, terrifying. It was being entertained.

With a final, guttural roar of effort, Leo heaved the dispenser up and over the low wall. It crashed into the sea of plastic balls with a deafening cacophony—a huge splash of plastic followed by the thunderous clatter of a thousand metal tokens cascading through the hollow spheres. The noise was immense, a chaotic avalanche of sound that completely eclipsed the hum of the remaining arcade machines.

For the first time, Fatz’s attention broke from Leo. The animatronic’s head snapped toward the source of the overwhelming noise. Its programming, or the malevolent intelligence driving it, couldn't ignore such a massive disturbance in its domain. With a low pneumatic hiss, Fatz stood up. The gorilla lumbered forward and, with a ponderous, clumsy step, waded into the ball pit, the plastic spheres swallowing his thick legs. He was a leviathan in a plastic sea, searching for the source of the commotion.

That was Leo’s chance.

He didn’t wait to see what would happen next. He bolted. He ran back into the main dining hall, his lungs burning, his body a symphony of pain. He burst into the cavernous room, his eyes already seeking the front doors, his mind clinging to the insane hope that defeating Rolfe and distracting Fatz might have somehow broken the spell, tripped a circuit, and unlocked the doors to the outside world.

He stopped dead in the center of the room, his desperate hope shriveling into a black-pitted stone in his gut.

The hall was no longer dim. The stage was ablaze with light. Not the stark emergency lights, but the full, vibrant, multi-colored wash of the showtime spotlights. And the stage was no longer a scene of carnage. It was reset. It was ready for a grand finale.

In the center, Billy Bob stood behind his microphone stand, his banjo polished and gleaming. To his right, Mitzi Mozzarella was back on her platform, her blood-stained smile wiped clean, her pom-poms held in a cheerful, ready position.

And to the left, standing in his corner with Earl Schmerle perched on his hand, was Rolfe DeWolfe. A dark, ugly scorch mark marred the fur on his shoulder, a testament to their recent battle, but he was standing. He was functional. He was waiting.

Leo’s mind fractured. It was impossible. He had destroyed Rolfe, left him a smoking heap of fried circuits. It was impossible.

His eyes shot to Fatz’s keyboard. The gorilla was there, too. Sitting on his stool, his large hands resting on the keys, as if he had never moved, as if he wasn't at this very moment wading through a sea of plastic balls on the other side of the building. The rules of space and time did not apply to them. They were not machines bound by physics. They were something else entirely.

The full, crushing weight of his situation descended upon him. He hadn't been fighting them. He had only been playing his part.

A soft sound, a rustle of cloth, made him turn. The dining tables were no longer empty.

His breath caught in his throat, a ragged, hitching thing. Two figures were seated at the front-and-center “Birthday Star” table. They were propped up in their chairs, positioned to have a perfect view of the stage. One was a large figure in a janitor’s gray coveralls, his head lolling at a sickeningly broken angle. The other was smaller, slumped forward, her dark hair obscuring her face.

It was Dale. And it was Maya.

On each of their heads, perched at a jaunty, obscene angle, was a conical cardboard birthday hat, the elastic strap pulled tight under their chins. They were not just victims anymore. They had been repurposed. They were the audience. The silent, grotesque, forever audience.

Leo stared, his mind refusing to process the sheer, theatrical depravity of the scene. The craving for attention, the desperate need not to be forgotten—it was so absolute, so monstrously infantile, that they would create their own silent spectators from the bodies of those they had killed.

A single, high-pitched note from Billy Bob’s banjo cut through the silence.

Then another from Mitzi’s synthesizer.

Then Fatz’s low, rumbling bass.

The show was beginning.

A horrifying symphony erupted from the stage. It was a monstrous collage of their classic songs, the cheerful melodies warped and twisted into a discordant dirge. Woven into the music were other sounds—the sharp, wet crunch of Dale’s skull breaking, Maya’s scream cut brutally short, the shriek of tearing metal, the distorted, glitchy laughter that had echoed from Mitzi’s chest. The dot-matrix screen above the stage flashed in a furious, crimson strobe, cycling through words: SHOWTIME. APPLAUSE. WATCH US. FORGOTTEN. NEVER.

The animatronics began to move, their jerky, hydraulic motions perfectly synchronized to the hellish beat. They weren't looking at their dead audience. Their heads were turned, their glowing red eyes all fixed, with an undivided and ravenous intensity, on the only one left who could truly watch.

On him.

Leo stood alone in the center of the room, a maimed and bleeding survivor who had just realized the battle wasn't over. He was the sole, living member of the audience, and the final performance had just begun.