Work Text:
Children are running! They’re screaming! The fabric of our very world has come undone!
Or this is a Chuck E. Cheese. And they’re playing. Never really got that, to be honest. Did I scream like that when I was little? These kids yelling, are they joyous? What do they feel to make them so loud? How do they make their feelings so big, anyhow?
I don’t feel like that. I feel in phases like the moon. I see the rise and wane forecasted to me, days, months, lifetimes in advance.
Where a kid can be a kid. That’s the slogan. Being a kid means crawling around in The Adventure Zone™ and trading coins for cheap trinkets before eating shitty pizza. In abstract, that sounds like a perfect day. In reality, I’m just fucking here, bro. I’m clocked in at the fursuit company working for pennies to the harmonious screams of youth.
I guess I’m going through it in a normal way. I hate this shit. I used to love it, actually, I used to be a real try-hard about it. My boss would say ‘hey, everybody, let’s give a big round of applause to Chuck E. (FUCKING) Cheeeeeeeese!’ and I would slam the door of our smelly, cramped locker room open and come out dancing, straight up Carlton dancing, straight up busting moves. The kids would run up and form a little demonic circle around me and jump and skip like witches worshipping and somehow that was the time of my fucking life. Now I drag my feet out here and they form their little huddle and I think of football. I think of kicking. I promise I won’t kick a child! I promise! But I think about it.
I don’t think the job changed. I think I changed. I mean, yeah, the job changed. The Nintendo DS came out and the recession hit and people stopped taking their kids places. We got bought out by private equity, whatever that means, I don’t know business things. Whenever the real adults talk about it, the ones who don’t smell like weed and look like ten year olds and drive tin cans I mean, they kinda frown. They use that ‘we’ thing. ‘We’ got bought out. Dude, am I part of the ‘we’? I just show up.
That’s how I changed. I stopped caring. I started just showing up. My soul leaked out through my shoes. I don’t even know how it happened. I just withered away, I just felt tired, weak one day and realized I felt weak all the time. And I got mad about it. I never used to get mad, now I’m pissed all the time, pissed around all these kids and thinking of punting them across the Chuck E. Fucking Cheese.
But in a normal way.
It’s always loud in here. Everyone stands too close to me. Sometimes the parents get really pushy because they want pictures of their lil dumbasses with the guy in the rat suit. And other really normal complaints, that’s the stuff I voice. I don’t tell people I feel like an animal, I have rabies and I’m about to start chomping. I don’t tell them how I ball my fists in my furry gray gloves. I don’t say shit about crying in the shower, I don’t stand too close when I don’t say all this shit because I don’t want everyone to smell the booze on my breath.
I don’t tell people I’m only happy when I jerk off, I don’t tell them about all the times I’d rather be shot, like genuinely be shot than come in, I don’t tell my manager he’s an asshole and I don’t tell my coworkers that I’m better than them, fuck all of them, I hate them, because why would I? And why do I? Because that’s weird. They’re just people trying to do their jobs, what’s wrong with me?
They’re not even that bad except for how much I fucking hate them. Kidding, kidding! But I feel how little they like me, I watch them swirl their distaste in their mouths. Weird guy in a mouse outfit. I’m expendable. On the good days, I’m expendable. On the normal days, I’m a loser. I’m a bad guy. Because I’m here and because I don’t want to be here. Like that isn’t normal. Isn’t something wrong with you if you want to be at Chuck E. Cheese at noon on a Tuesday as a grown ass man?
It’s like, I hate everyone. Except this one guy outside of work. He knows I bitch and moan, but I keep the worst to myself. I don’t want the Cheese to rub off on him. I like him too much for that.
I think I see their eyes on me sometimes. Shifting and squinting. Their mouths turned down, their faces hard. I see people scowling right at the edges of my vision, already narrowed behind the eyes of my mascot costume. They hate me, they want me dead, they think I’m a freak. Then I turn around and no one’s there. It’s just in the corner of my eye. I’ll see a figure, and my gut tells me it’s some asshole customer, and I watch that asshole snarl at me, and I bow my head because I’m fucking embarassed to work here and embarassed to be alive and uh! Were they real? Was that a real person? I don’t know sometimes.
I have to tell myself they’re not hallucinations because that’s for crazy people. I’m just seeing things in a chill and normal way. Believing them, too, even when I know I shouldn’t. That’s fine, right? Probably not something I need to get therapy for. Oh, wait, I can’t! I have shitty health insurance and no money. I’m broke as fuck and clinging to this job I don’t even like because how would I pay for props otherwise? It’s dumb. I shouldn’t be investing in this Youtube thing, anyway, because it’s not like you can make some kind of career out of it.
That’s what I need, a career. I need to go get a real job. I don’t know how I could get past an interview because i’m a lunatic and my personality’s a walking red flag, but that’s what I need. I’ll start applying any day now. I’m not scared shitless or anything.
I guess I can relate to these kids after all. Sometimes my feelings are big, too. Sometimes they’re so big they stretch outside my body, outside my costume. They slither across the floor and I watch them wind up to strike, helpless to stop it. Not in control. I’m scared of the day they’ll actually pounce. I hold them back by closing a kind of door in me, but it’s hard. It’s all of me that disappears back there, to the weird and smelly locker room in my mind. It used to be so easy to step back, but now it’s getting harder and harder to break myself out. The door just won’t budge. I come to work angry, I exist in silence, I go home miserable. And I’m dressed like a fucking mouse.
I don’t know who I am anymore. I look at myself through a long, dark tunnel, through Charles Entertainment Cheese’s beady little eyes. I’m a madman, I’m a nobody, I’m dangerous, I’m a loser. I’m the guy in the mouse outfit. I want to kick your child. In a normal way.
I don’t say any of this to my friend outside of work. It takes everything to keep myself composed. I guess he sees it anyway, because sometimes he looks at me too long in that way I don’t like. Sometimes he tilts his head like he’s learning things I don’t want him knowing. I want to pull the thoughts out of his brain with scrambling little paws because I know they’re probably bad. He’s probably figuring me out. He knows I’m certifiable.
“Youtube is offering ad revenue now,” He says one day with infinite softness. “I think we should go for it.”
“Shit, man, that sounds great,” I answer, hollow. “That could cover some expenses.”
“I think it could cover more than that. You should quit your job.” He’s looking down at the hoodie he’s folding, our brand new merchandise, so I don’t have to meet his eye. It’s on purpose, I know, an act of mercy. “Like, it’s time to open the door to bigger and better things.”
“Open the door,” I say, almost to myself.
“Yeah,” Anthony says, and looks to me, beaming. “When one door closes, another door opens. Close the door at Chuck E. Cheese. Open the door to Smosh.”
“Open the door,” I say again, and it sounds too easy. Open the door. Step through. There’s something better on the other side. There are no rats over there. Just us.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go all in on Smosh.”
It is that easy. I stop crying at night, curled up in bed. I stop seeing the tunnel. I stop seeing the eyes, the human eyes, the beady mouse eyes. I film funny shit with my friend and post it online. In a normal way.
I’m all better now. That’s what I tell myself when I see children in a group. That’s what I tell myself when someone jokes about my old job. That’s what I tell myself when I see the eyes slide off me in the corners of my mind. I’m better now.