Chapter Text
Iris dreams. She is rarely fully aware that she is dreaming in the middle of one, but that’s OK because she never needed to be before. The night that changes, however, is fairly easy to tell. She’s in a large field of flowers extending as far as she can see in all directions. Hundreds of flowers, thousands of them, many different kinds – tall, tiny, bell shaped or flat circular, toothed edges, tongues of dripping nectar…it’s a florist’s paradise. The air is warm and heavy, full of morning dew, and the sky is soft with morning light and a handful of small clouds. And she is, after all, a florist – well, she works at a florist. It’s not that hard to tell this must be a dream. It’s all just a little too perfect to be real.
Not that Iris cares, particularly. It’s a wonderful dream. She wishes she could visit a place like this in person. She stoops to look for her namesake flower, and after a few minutes of searching with the florist’s shears she always has in her back pocket has collected a bouquet of ten different kinds, in light blue, rich blue, royal purple, lavender, crinkled white, pale yellow, pink, salmon, and more. They smell wonderful.
She straightens after cutting another, her nose twitching. There is so much heady perfume here, but she also detects something bad – stale sweat, the faintest touch of mold, and something worse, like rotting roadkill…And with it…is that – pizza? The food combined with the rot makes her almost want to vomit as she becomes more aware of it. She plunges her nose back into the irises to cleanse it.
Iris begins to look around, searching for the source of the out of place odor, but nothing looks different. Except – she can hear something now. Thumping, regular and reverberating. Faint as yet, but steadily approaching. Footsteps.
The sky begins to cloud over, and it starts to get cold. Soon it begins to drizzle. She can see flowers being shaken around as whatever it is with its loud thumping approaches. The smell is beginning to drive out the smell of all the myriad flowers around her now.
Now that she knows which direction it’s coming from, Iris plunges into the jungle of flowers, desperate to get away from it. But it’s so thick and congested – surely the lack of light would prevent any meadow from ever getting this thick in real life, right? – that she gets turned around and soon finds herself running toward the thumping sound. She tries again, but it sounds like it’s all around her now.
She stops and listens carefully, trying not to retch. Which way? Iris spins slowly, waiting for any sign. She doesn’t see him until he’s breaking through the flowers two yards away. A massive bear towers several feet above her head, a small black top hat perched squarely on the center of his head. He obviously isn’t like a real bear, more like a gigantic teddy bear – he stands like a human, with large but very human like hands and fingers. He radiates power and strength, and he seems to smile at her, pleased to have found her.
“There you are,” he says, his voice deep and husky. He speaks slowly and carefully, as if afraid to toss words around, lest they explode.
Iris’s bouquet spontaneously begins to turn black and wither, until she is forced to throw it away in disgust.
“I love this part…” he says reflectively. “The look on your face…”
Iris, frozen in shock, begins to slowly back up. She isn’t sure, but she thinks she recognizes him, and if she’s right, she’s in serious trouble.
“Oh, no you don’t. Get back here,” he tells her. A moment later her foot catches on stems fallen sideways and Iris trips backwards, ending up looking up at him on her back.
“W-what is this?” Iris asks, finding her voice at last, though her throat feels dry. “How are you – you know you’re trespassing on a private dream, right?”
“Very good!” the bear replies. “That’s what I like to hear! I knew I was right about you. And I have a feeling this will be your last first time - you looked like a memory was on the tip of your tongue, like you’d almost call this déjà vu. Am I right? I need to pay extra attention to savoring it this time…you know me, don’t you?”
Iris nods, unable to speak.
“Say it, then. I dare you. It should be fun to watch.”
Iris can’t summon enough moisture in her mouth to speak, and she struggles for a few moments to produce any sound at all. Finally, she gives up and mouths the words. “Freddy – Freddy Fazbear.”
“Good enough. We’ll work on it, and maybe next time I’ll actually hear it, hmm? I’ve decided. I’ll take you. I like you.”
“Wait,” Iris says desperately, beginning to shimmy backwards again on her elbows. “I don’t understand…am I making you up right now? If so, why, and why can’t I make you go away?”
Freddy carefully steps forward so his foot traps one loose pant leg, jerking her to a stop. “Oh, I’m quite real. I’ll prove it to you eventually. It’s true dream is not exactly my most natural environment, but the extra effort is worth it. You’re worth it. I’ve been watching you for a while and I think you have a very good chance of not going completely insane…right away. Case in point, questioning my presence. Usually, dreamers just accept anything that happens as if they’re hypnotized. Now, let’s get to the important part of this visit. Lie down.”
Unable to squirm away, Iris has propped herself on her hands and started to sit up. “E-excuse me, what?”
Her voice shakes.
“Oh, that’s right, we shouldn’t do this in the mud like this.” Freddy snaps his fingers and suddenly things are a little different. Iris is on an exam table like you’d find at a doctor’s office, five feet off the ground. Her hands leave muddy imprints on the paper covering. Freddy is suddenly wearing a white doctor’s robe. He sets the black bag he is holding on the metal tray table next to the exam table and removes first a scalpel, then a strange device with a screw like bottom and several arms that look like they were designed to pull away from the center, with a small metallic closed container about an inch long held in the center of the machinery. These go on the table next to the bag.
From her new zenith, Iris notices that they are now in a small clearing in the meadow – all her beautiful flowers are slowly wilting into black mush in an ever-increasing wave around them. No…around Freddy.
“Lie down,” he tells her again. “And take your shirt off.”
Unsure how to escape or resist without making this worse, Iris obeys. But she keeps her eyes trained on the side table with its instruments. She doesn’t want to be surprised by them. But the focus is also helping her ignore his smell, which has only grown to become all-pervasive.
“That thing looks big enough on its own…why do you need the scalpel?”
“It really would make messy, imperfect work on its own. Head down. Hold still.”
He puts one cold hand-paw on her left breast and pulls it down and flat. Then the other cuts a vertical line into the flesh with the scalpel. She gives a short cry and her hands come up, pushing at him. He only smiles and puts more pressure on her chest so she can’t get up. Silent tears leak from her eyes. He goes over the line several times, deepening it with each stroke. Next the large instrument. He jams it into the open wound and the pain increases as the small object is embedded there. The pain, combined with the horrible smell, overpowering now that he’s right over her, makes her vomit, right into Freddy’s face. He moves back and she is shaking and panting – but he’s covered in dripping green digestive juice.
He shakes himself, and the vomit disappears, leaving him dry. “Oh, you’re going to be fun, I can tell. That was a tracking chip that will help me find you in Dream much easier in the future. I’ve marked you, and you’re mine now.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I thought you’d never ask. To make you one of us, of course. We want to leave and for that we need new bodies. But there’ll be time for that later. For now, just be afraid.” He grins even wider than any time before, teeth glinting at her pointedly.
“But I thought-“
“That’s the nice thing about dreams. No long-term consequences. Sleep well. See you tomorrow night.”
He lunges for her head and at the same moment all the remaining flowers explode into a pale grey goo that leaves the landscape stark and barren, and she screams and wakes before she can feel the pain. She waits until her heartbeat returns to normal and then closes her eyes again and returns to an uneasy sleep.
In the morning she can remember having a bad dream, even a scary dream, but no details. She has been having a lot of them recently…