Ya’ll are just going to have to forgive me, because I haven’t slept and I’ve been staring at this blank screen for a solid eleven minutes and cannot think of a damn thing to say. So…no wit tonight (Some might argue that’s never been a strong component of this blog), just the naked facts. Sexy, naked facts. The next chapter of my FNAF fanfiction is up on archiveofourown.org and fanfiction.net for the enjoyment of those who may be reading it. For those who are not, I’m sure you have other ways to enjoy yourself on a Friday night.

I know I do.

And if you’re undecided or if you just happen to be driving or at work or on a date or otherwise cannot or should not be reading…well, first off, you probably shouldn’t be reading this either, in that case, and secondly, here is a snippet to whet your appetite until you are in the appropriate reading environs. Enjoy! And goodnight.

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Jimmy Morehead might believe his demons to have been exorcised, but Ana knew better: They had merely been relocated. And what better home for them than her aunt’s house, with monsters in the basement and empty rooms full of ghosts?

She sometimes thought she would have slept better at Freddy’s. She’d had some bad dreams there too, but Freddy was always on watch. She’d felt safe there. She still did. Was that ironic or just stupid?

She could have gone back. She knew that. The padded stage in the party room was hers for the asking, for as many nights as she needed. She had only to knock and Freddy would bring her in and tell her she was home.

Whenever she was tempted, she just reminded herself that Freddy said a lot of things that weren’t entirely true. And then she drove past Edge of Nowhere and on up Coldslip Mountain to the only place she had left.

There was plenty of work to do, so she did it. She kept the shop radio on and the volume cranked up until she could hear it even through her earplugs and over the noise of her power tools. Until she could feel it vibrating through the soles of her boots and see it rattling the loose nails and screws that collected on every surface. Until it drowned out even the sound of her thoughts. Between music and work, she was usually able to keep herself in a comfortably mindless state most nights until she fell asleep. If not, well, she could always drink.

She drank a lot that week. Every morning, she told herself she had to lay off the stuff, that it wasn’t worth the headache and wasn’t solving anything, but every night, she managed to pour a little more into her. And it wasn’t worth it and it didn’t solve anything, but it did put her to sleep, which in that haunted house was the worst state of being.

When she slept, she did not rest. She put herself to bed every night on the air mattress on the floor of her old room and every morning, when her phone’s alarm woke her, she was someplace new. On Monday, she was curled up in the dry tub of Aunt Easter’s bathroom. On Tuesday, in David’s closet. Wednesday found her stretched out on the hearthstones before the fireplace in the grand parlor. On Thursday, she came around out in the front yard to the sensation of what was not, after all, the rotting hand of the mermaid closing around her wrist, but rather the dry scrape of scales as the snake that had passed a cool summer night sleeping against the warmth of her chest slithered over her arm and set off about its morning rounds. And on Friday, of course, she woke in the pirate ship-shaped bed down in the secret playroom, with Plushtrap snuggled up under her arm, his mouth pressed to hers, stealing her breath.