Support This Blog on Ko-fiWell, it only took a year, but we’ve made it through the first two books in this series! This is the third and final story in Fazbear Frights #2: Fetch. As usual, you don’t need to be familiar with FNAF to follow along.
“Out of Stock”
As this story opens, our protagonist Oscar is internally bemoaning his constant bad luck. In the very first paragraph we learn that Oscar’s dad died in hospital after contracting an infection during a minor surgery, that his family was forced to move to the bad part of town most likely as a consequence of this, and that Oscar is constantly getting called upon to help out his mom at her job. On top of all of that, get this, they’re releasing a new Fazbear-brand toy today and it’s going to go on sale when Oscar is at school! Will injustices never cease? Yes, that’s really how the story opens and no, I don’t know if it’s meant to be a joke.
Anyway, Oscar’s walking to school with his friends Raj and Isaac, and he’s mad because the new Plushtrap Chaser toy is going to go on sale that morning. It’s apparently a highly anticipated toy release; Oscar’s worried that by the time school gets out, it’ll be sold out already. He tries to suggest to his friends that they skip school, but Raj says there’s no way his mom will let him get away with missing another school day and Isaac refuses as he has to walk his little brother home after school. Oscar doesn’t have it in him to ditch, anyway, as it would disappoint his mom. He begrudgingly agrees to wait until school is over.
Right before the school day ends, Oscar gets called up to the front office. It’s his mom, calling from the nursing home she works at. Apparently one of the patients, a Mr. Devereaux, is chronically paranoid and difficult to reason with, and the only orderly he’ll listen to is on vacation. Mr. Devereaux likes Oscar, though, and has been asking after him. Oscar reluctantly tells Raj and Isaac to wait for him until 3:30, and, if he’s not back by then, to go in search of a Plushtrap Chaser without him.
Before we go any further, I feel the need to clarify a couple things. First, regarding the Plushtrap Chaser toy, it’s a battery-powered plush rabbit that stands about toddler height and is capable of walking on its own. The gimmick of the toy is that it only moves when the lights are off, and freezes in place when the lights are turned on. It also has some sort of “chomping action,” which I think means that it gnashes its teeth when it walks, but this isn’t elaborated on. If you’re anything like me, this all raises many additional questions; we’ll save those for the Lore Implications section below. Second, regarding Oscar’s age. I assumed that, given the fixation on obtaining a specific toy and the way the blurb on the back cover describes him as having to be like a “miniature grown-up” for his mom’s sake (helping her at work, etc.), he’s most likely somewhere in the 10-12 age range. This is seemingly confirmed a bit later when the narration references Oscar as being twelve. However, we’re also told a bit before this that Oscar is a sophomore in high school, making him 15-16 unless he’s skipped a few grades. I’m guessing that the author (that’s Carly Anne West again, she wrote “Fetch”) initially envisioned Oscar as twelve and then decided to age him up to high school age but forgot to remove a reference to him being twelve, or else the reverse and she imagined him as a teenager but then decided to age him down for the sake of the story. For the most part I would say Oscar is written like a twelve-year-old, but there are parts of the story that make more sense if he’s a high schooler, so… in short, it’s a mess and there’s nothing I can really do to clear up the confusion here except acknowledge it and move on.
After taking the bus to his mom’s workplace, Oscar goes in to see Mr. Devereaux. The issue is that Mr. Devereaux has become paranoid that Marilyn, the elderly cat who sleeps in his room, is trying to steal his soul. Oscar’s eventually able to convince the old man that this isn’t the case, after which Mr. Devereaux invites Oscar to sit and chat with him. He can tell Oscar’s bummed out and preoccupied and assumes it’s over a crush. Oscar’s a bit embarrassed but admits to Mr. Devereaux that it’s actually about a toy he wants but can’t have. He tries downplaying how important the Plushtrap Chaser is to him, but it’s futile; Mr. Devereaux can tell that this is a big deal to Oscar and he seems to find Oscar’s defeatist attitude about the whole thing frustrating. He orders Oscar to seize the moment and go get that toy!
Oscar meets back up with Raj and Isaac at the mall, and I’m summarizing multiple pages worth of logistics here since Raj and Isaac have been looking all over town for a store that has Plushtrap Chasers in stock and they have to get ahold of Oscar via calling the nursing home (he doesn’t have a cell phone, his mom can’t afford one for him). The bottom line is that Plushtrap Chasers are being sold at a store called “the Emporium” (the article is never capitalized in the story, so maybe its name is just “Emporium”?), a toy store that carries very limited stock and is constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. Everywhere else is sold out, but once word got out that the Emporium was carrying Plushtrap Chaser toys, a huge crowd descended on the business. People are lined up out the door to buy a Plushtrap Chaser. Since stock is limited, Oscar and his friends decide to pool their money to buy one together.
I’m sure you can see where this is going, since there are god knows how many episodes of children’s television where this exact thing happens and also the title of the story is “Out of Stock,” but by the time Oscar, Raj, and Isaac reach the front of the line there are no more Plushtrap Chasers. A commotion breaks out as the hordes of customers realize they’re going to have to leave empty-handed. Oscar struggles to process the disappointment — it’s not really about losing out on the chance to buy the toy, it’s about being forced to give up on something that he wants for reasons outside of his control — but as he’s standing there, trying to tune out the angry crowd, he overhears a group of employees talking. The snippets of conversation Oscar catches are intriguing, so he moves closer. Three employees are huddled around an object Oscar can’t get a clear view of, discussing whether or not they should call the police — from what Oscar overhears of the conversation, the object is returned merchandise and the staff are concerned that something about it looks “too lifelike.” Finally Oscar is able to get a glimpse of what they’re huddled around. The packaging is badly damaged, but the toy inside is unmistakable. It’s another Plushtrap Chaser!
Oscar rejoins his friends at the front of the line and loudly confronts the assistant manager about the returned toy. I’m not sure what his plan here is, maybe hoping the public pressure will get the staff to cave and sell the toy to him? In any case, it doesn’t work. The assistant manager tells Oscar the toy he saw is defective and not for sale. She’s quickly distracted by the mob of other dissatisfied customers demanding Plushtrap Chasers and Oscar, without thinking it through, grabs the damaged box with the returned toy inside and takes off running. Raj and Isaac follow him and all three boys are pursued by mall security, but mall security is a bit slow on the uptake and, to make a long story short, they get away.
Once they’ve made it back to Oscar’s house, Oscar breaks the tension by joking that it technically wasn’t stealing since they left their money behind at the Emporium. Raj and Isaac aren’t thrilled about having been made accessories to Oscar’s crime, but they don’t seem particularly upset with him either and, besides, now they’ve got a Plushtrap Chaser. With some difficulty, the boys remove the toy from its damaged packaging. In-person, it doesn’t quite live up to the hype, and not just because the hype was completely disproportionate. Something about this Plushtrap doesn’t look right. The teeth are supposed to be pointed, but this one’s teeth are straight and humanoid and even have the off-white look of real enamel. The eyes, which are supposed to be bright green, are cloudy. Isaac touches one and finds to his disgust that it squishes slightly when pressed, like a real eyeball. Presumably this is why the employees at the Emporium were debating calling the police. Oscar explains what he overheard to Isaac and Raj, the latter of whom immediately speculates that the eyes and teeth are human. Saying it out loud makes it sound stupid and the boys try to dismiss the idea as ridiculous, but the Plushtrap toy still unnerves them a little.
Oscar suggests they try to get the toy working, but the instructions included with the Plushtrap Chaser are too damaged to be legible. He decides to wing it and first attempts to pry open Plushtrap’s mouth with a butter knife. The attempt fails as the tip of the knife becomes stuck between its teeth and breaks. The boys locate a battery compartment on the back of the rabbit, along with a speaker (which is odd, since the toy wasn’t advertised as talking or making noise), and a power switch on the bottom of its foot. The switch is already in the “on” position and flipping it off and on again does nothing. Raj suggests they change the battery and so Oscar pops in a new one. Still nothing. Suddenly the boys remember the whole premise of the toy was that it only moves in the dark, so they get to work turning off all the lights and closing all the blinds. Yet again, nothing. Isaac figures it’s not dark enough. Raj suggests that maybe it “needs to charge,” suggesting he has little understanding of how battery-operated toys work. Neither of Oscar’s friends want to take the toy home with them, so it stays with Oscar, who puts it next to his bed because he’s not very genre-savvy.
The next morning, Oscar goes downstairs for breakfast and greets his mom with a kiss on the cheek as he usually does, but his mom is preoccupied with the newspaper (they still get the paper delivered; she doesn’t own a smartphone) and doesn’t acknowledge him at first. When she finally does she tells him there’s a story in the paper about an incident yesterday at the Emporium. Apparently there was a big commotion over a toy and some kids made off with one during the pandemonium. Oscar’s mom knows Oscar went to the mall with his friends yesterday. She clearly suspects his involvement and is giving him an opportunity to confess. Oscar’s close to his mom and feels terrible about disappointing her, but he doesn’t want to throw Raj and Isaac under the bus by confessing, so he pretends to know nothing about it. His lie isn’t very convincing, but Oscar’s mom doesn’t press the subject further.
Oscar lays low the rest of the weekend and avoids Raj and Isaac out of guilt, but eventually his friends corner him at school and make it clear they’re not mad at him. Once the tension is broken Oscar says they need to return the Plushtrap toy, since his mom knows (at least suspects) he’s the thief. Raj and Isaac question this — they left their money at the store, the toy doesn’t work, there’s clearly something wrong with it, what happens if the cops are called and they’re questioned about the toy’s human-like teeth and eyes? Still, Oscar insists that’s not the point, returning the toy is the right thing to do and he’s going to do it with or without them.
Raj and Isaac acquiesce, and so they box the Plushtrap Chaser back up and return to the mall, but when they get there they run into a problem. The Emporium is gone. It’s been less than a week, but already there’s a new store (“Hal’s Halloween Hallway,” which from the description is just off-brand Spirit Halloween) up and running in the location. When Oscar tries to return the Plushtrap toy, the cashier — a bored twentysomething who, when asked what happened to the Emporium, replies with something along the lines of “no idea, I just filled out an application and here I am” — questions why they’d want to return the toy when they could instead resell it for a profit. Oscar protests that it’s not his and is told “It is now.”
Since trying to return the toy was a bust, and Halloween’s right around the corner, the boys switch gears and decide to start working on their plan for trick-or-treating this year. Oscar and his friends live, as previously mentioned, on the poorer side of town, which is separated from the wealthier side by train tracks. (Yes, Oscar and his friends literally live on “the wrong side of the tracks.” The story itself calls this out as being too on-the-nose for the characters to acknowledge out loud.) Allegedly, the candy’s better on the other side of the tracks, but the boys never end up making it there in time; they always get sidetracked hitting up the houses along the way. This year, the plan is to start on the other side of the tracks and work their way back home.
Back at Oscar’s house, Raj and Isaac play video games while Oscar resumes his attempts to get the Plushtrap Chaser working. A storm is rolling in; the electricity is beginning to flicker. Oscar’s friends notice Oscar continuing to fiddle with Plushtrap and tell him to let it be, the toy is clearly broken, but Oscar’s not ready to give up yet. He jokingly asks the toy to blink twice if it’s possessed, and, though Plushtrap doesn’t blink, Oscar hears it make a quiet chirping noise. A small hole on the side of its jaw suddenly catches Oscar’s attention — it’s a port, like the charging port on a cell phone.
Just then the landline rings. Oscar goes to answer; it’s his mom, calling from work. The connection’s lousy and Oscar can barely hear his mom at first, especially while he’s distracted trying to get a better look at Plushtrap’s charging port, but eventually he registers what his mom is saying. Apparently they’re going to be short-staffed at work tomorrow night, so Oscar’s mom needs his help — but tomorrow night is Halloween, Oscar doesn’t want to miss out on trick-or-treating with his friends! As Oscar starts to protest, his mom is apologetic but suggests that he might be getting to be a little old to go trick-or-treating anyway, and Oscar loses his cool. He’s upset that ever since his dad died he’s been expected to act like an adult; he doesn’t just get to be a kid anymore. In the heat of the moment Oscar blurts out that he’s the one who stole the Plushtrap toy from the Emporium. The power flickers again and the call drops before his mom can respond.
Feeling numb after the argument, Oscar rejoins his friends and asks to borrow a phone charger so he can try plugging it into Plushtrap’s port. Raj obliges and hands one over, and, sure enough, the charger fits the port perfectly. Oscar crosses the room to plug the adapter into the wall — and then, from his perspective, one moment he’s about to plug in the toy and the next moment he’s on the other side of the room, the power has gone out again, and his friends are frantically asking him if he’s okay. Apparently the power surged when he plugged the adapter in and the electric shock flung him backwards. Oscar feels dazed but is otherwise uninjured, so once Raj and Isaac calm down the three decide to head to the living room where their sleeping bags are. (If you feel like you missed the part where this was a sleepover, so did I! It’s not mentioned that it is one until now!)
As Oscar is closing the door to his bedroom, he hears a voice from inside his room saying “Lights out” and giggling. The narration makes it very clear that it’s the Plushtrap Chaser who spoke, but Oscar is confused since the voice sounds just like Raj. However, Raj is already at the other end of the hallway and can’t possibly have been speaking from inside Oscar’s bedroom. Oscar assumes he must have misheard.
The boys resume their Halloween planning until Oscar confesses to Isaac and Raj that he won’t be able to go with them, his mom need his help that night. Oscar’s friends clearly anticipated that this might happen and are quick to reassure him that it’s no big, trick-or-treating is probably gonna be lame anyhow and they’ll make sure to split their candy haul three ways so he can have some. Oscar knows his friends are covering up their disappointment and downplaying the event for his sake, but it works to comfort him. He starts to relax, and just then lightning flashes outside the window and the power goes out. “But I thought the power already went out,” I hear you say. I thought so too! But no, judging by the narration here, the power shorted out specifically in Oscar’s room earlier, leaving the rest of the house unaffected. I really don’t know why we were expected to just assume that. Regardless, the power in the entire house is now out.
Oscar goes to retrieve flashlights, but can only find two, leaving Raj to use the flashlight function on his phone instead. Suddenly the boys hear a thumping noise coming from somewhere else in the house. The three nervously look about for its source before realizing the sound is coming from the other side of Oscar’s closed bedroom door. The noise stops when they approach, then resumes as whoever or whatever is on the other side (oh, who am I kidding, you know it’s the damn Plushtrap toy) begins pounding at the door so vigorously that it shakes. Oscar and his friends watch in horror as the rabbit gnaws through the wood of the door, dislodging the doorknob and allowing the door to swing open. It charges in their direction and the boys flee to Oscar’s mom’s room, closing and locking the door behind them.
The next several pages are an extended sequence of the boys running from room to room as they try to flee the Plushtrap toy, and I want to be clear that this is by far the strongest part of this story. It’s tense and spooky and has some vivid imagery, and I can easily see how the target audience would find this a real page-turner. However, giving you a play-by-play would be a bit dull and so I’m going to try and speed through this part of the summary. Plushtrap chews right through Oscar’s mom’s bedroom door too, of course, but the boys remember at this point that the toy can’t move when the lights are on — this is of course why it’s relevant that they only have two flashlights. In order to try and maneuver around the toy, the boys have to keep the light on it, which becomes increasingly difficult when one of the flashlights goes dead. Raj attemps to call 911 on his cell phone but the call doesn’t go through; when they finally manage to freeze Plushtrap in place long enough to try the landline, that doesn’t work either. Eventually the batteries on the remaining flashlight start to die too, and before Raj can take over with his phone light the toy distracts them by imitating Oscar’s mom (it can throw its voice, as previously established during this sequence, so they think it’s her arriving home). As soon as Plushtrap is out of the light it charges them again and the boys run to the garage, but Raj drops his phone as they’re fleeing and it breaks.
Inside the garage, it’s pitch-black. They can hear Plushtrap gnawing at the door and fumble to get the outer door open in time. Once outside, Oscar shouts for the other two to follow him towards the train tracks; he doesn’t have time to explain and doesn’t have much of a plan anyway, but he’s hoping to lure Plushtrap into the path of an oncoming train. As they crest a hill approaching the train tracks, they’re able to see that the other side of town hasn’t lost power — if they can make it into the light, they’re safe! However, Plushtrap is hot on their trail and quickly closing the distance. They’re not going to be able to make it in time; their only hope is that a train will come. Luckily, they can hear one approaching as they draw near the tracks. Raj and Isaac cross, but Oscar deliberately pauses on the tracks until the last second to try and lure Plushtrap directly into the oncoming train. This works. Oscar leaps free of the tracks and to safety, and Plushtrap is run over. Among the twisted metal wreckage of the toy are bits of shattered teeth and bloody gum tissue. One of its eyes has been crushed, confirming those too to be real.
The story concludes the next night with Oscar helping his mom at the nursing home, delivering candy to the residents. He has a brief chat with Mr. Devereaux where the old man asks Oscar in a roundabout way if his mission to go get that toy was a success, and Oscar responds to the effect that it wasn’t but he’s glad he tried (why?). Oscar then goes to meet his mom in the break room and gives her some of her favorite candy, which he bought for her to help make up for their phone argument from the previous night. Evidently Oscar’s mom feels horrible about the fight and barely seemed to notice earlier that day when Oscar was apologizing for the Plushtrap-related property damage and vowing to somehow pay for a new garage door. When Oscar presents her with the candy she looks terribly sad, but then hugs him and apologizes for depending on him so much. Oscar says it’s okay and the story ends on them continuing to hug it out.
Bonus Round:
Oscar’s friends Raj and Isaac get virtually no description in this story; the only thing we’re told about what either of them looks like is that Isaac is short. Neither has a lot going on personality-wise, either. I’m not bringing this up because I think it’s an inherent issue — honestly, for a story like this I don’t really think it matters — but because this is another Carly Anne West story, and just like in “Fetch” our protagonist’s two best friends consist of an ambiguously brown kid and a short kid. Granted, both Hadi and Cyril got a little more in the way of description and characterization than Raj and Isaac do, and Raj and Hadi’s names don’t suggest they have the same ethnic background (I’m assuming Raj is Indian and Hadi is Middle Eastern), but I do wonder if the author was essentially picturing the same two guys across both stories.
Somewhat unusually for these stories, our protagonist has a surname. Oscar’s full name is Oscar Avila, so I think we can probably assume he’s Latino? I’m only mentioning this because so far all our protagonists have been either explicitly or implicitly white, and I have a feeling that there won’t be many other protagonists of color in this series.
Regarding the Emporium, we’re told that the reason it hasn’t already gone under despite nearly going bankrupt multiple times is that a mysterious benefactor has stepped in to rescue the business every previous time it’s nearly failed. This certainly feels like a significant detail — I mean, why even mention it otherwise? — and, combined with the Emporium going out of business mere days after what must have been an extraordinarily good business day for them (Oscar’s theft of returned merchandise notwithstanding), it really makes one wonder what happened. It seems like the store had a financial safety net and was doing unusually well right before it closed, so why’d the whole place suddenly shut down? There are no answers in this story, with the Emporium being totally forgotten about after Oscar’s failed attempt to return Plushtrap. It’s possible that it gets addressed later in one of the epilogues, but, if so, I haven’t gotten there yet, and you’ll have to forgive me for not having terribly high expectations.
I didn’t mention Oscar, Raj, and Isaac’s Halloween costumes in the summary because it ends up not mattering (Oscar doesn’t even get to go trick-or-treating), but, for the record, all three of them decide last-minute to go for a “murderous fairy vibe” and deck themselves out in hockey masks and pixie wings. I won’t lie, I think that’s delightful.
This one’s incredibly nitpicky, but the charging port on Plushtrap that turns out to be compatible with Raj’s cellphone charger is described as an “A-connecter” and I’ve got no idea what the hell that is. My suspicion is that the author just made something up, but why? We actually live in an age now where virtually all smartphones use one of three types of charging port, so it would have been perfecly fine to describe Plushtrap’s port as a micro-USB or USB-C port and I wouldn’t have batted an eye (on the other hand, had it been described as a Lightning port I’d be posting this under Lore Implications).
Lore Implications:
So… about the Plushtrap Chaser. I didn’t fully explain this one for those less familiar with FNAF, so let’s get that out of the way first. In FNAF 4, the player character is a child who keeps hallucinating that monstrous versions of the Fazbear animatronic characters are hiding in their bedroom waiting to attack them. Plushtrap is, as the name implies, a plush version of Springtrap, which the player character is hallucinating because they own a Spring Bonnie stuffed toy. There’s a minigame where the player has to listen for Plushtrap moving around in the dark and use a flashlight to freeze him in place within a time limit or else get jumpscared. The way the Plushtrap Chaser toy functions is obviously based on this minigame.
Out-of-universe, this makes sense. This story’s target audience is kids who have played the “Fun with Plushtrap” minigame, or at least watched their favorite YouTuber play it, and of course in the real world FNAF is a very popular horror franchise and if a toy like the Springtrap Chaser existed teenagers would probably be queueing up to buy it. The in-universe implications of a toy like this existing, however, are absolutely bizarre. Remember, “Springtrap” isn’t a character Fazbear Entertainment created, it’s the moniker given to the Spring Bonnie suit after William Afton’s corpse got stuck inside it. You know, their founder who was a serial child murderer in the eighties. So this is a horror-themed plush toy, created by an ostensibly family-friendly restaurant/arcade franchise, based on the mutilated undead corpse of their serial killer founder who murdered multiple children within living memory. And it’s Tickle Me Elmo levels of popular. How is this not, in-universe, considered to be in stupendously poor taste? How the fuck did this get greenlit? I know Fazbear Entertainment was already ethically dubious, and that’s putting it mildly, but why the fuck would they draw further attention to their disgraced founder by making such a toy? Why the fuck would people buy it? Fucking what?
I did seriously consider whether we’re meant to assume that this story takes place in the same universe as the others, or whether this takes place in our world where all the Fazbear stuff is fictional. The story makes no reference to FNAF the video game series, but it also doesn’t reference Fazbear Entertainment running a restaurant chain. All we’re told is that Plushtrap is Oscar’s favorite character “from the Freddy Fazbear world,” which could go either way. However, I’ve mentioned that these stories are tied together by a framing device, and said framing device (which we’ll get to, that’ll be its own post eventually) makes it absolutely unambiguous that this story takes place in the same universe as the others we’ve read so far.
All of this is distracting me from the question I know I’m supposed to be asking instead — why the Plushtrap toy had human eyes and teeth. Look, frankly, I don’t really care. It’ll get answered later on in the Stitchwraith Stingers, or maybe it won’t. It’s clearly in reference to Springtrap being part animatronic and part corpse, so, I don’t know, maybe those are somehow Afton’s teeth and eyes in there. Why not? Also, Plushtrap is described repeatedly as being dark green in this story, which confused me as Spring Bonnie is yellow hence Springtrap, and by extension Plushtrap, is also yellow (albeit dirty). You could argue that age and discoloration has made Springtrap greenish and hence Plushtrap is also greenish but I think “dark green” is a stretch. That’s all I have to say about the Plushtrap Chaser.
Closing Thoughts:
I may be grading on a curve here, but this truly isn’t so bad as far as these stories go. It’s not good, either, but it does have some strong points. I have trouble finding fault with the several pages of this story that are solely about three kids trying to evade a very bitey rabbit toy during a power outage on a dark and stormy night. There are a few particularly strong moments, like a sequence where Plushtrap begins to gnaw away the leg of a dresser one of the boys has climbed on top of in an attempt to get to safety, and an especially vivid description of Plushtrap frozen mid-lunge by the flashlight beam inches from Oscar’s face. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but, as horror fiction for children based off popular video games goes, it’s solid stuff!
I do also like that this is sort of a parallel with “Into the Pit” — that was a story about the kid protagonist’s relationship with his dad and also Springtrap is there, and this is a story about the kid protagonist’s relationship with his mom and also Plushtrap is there. Wait, no, I’m being too nice. This is supposed to be a story about Oscar and his mom, but that part of the story doesn’t really work, for multiple reasons. First, we don’t actually get to see the two of them interact very much, so it never feels like a meaningful character relationship except that we’re told that it is. I know this is supposed to be the central character relationship because the back-cover blurb basically says as much and because of the note the story chooses to end on, but we get way more time with Raj and Isaac than we do with Oscar’s mom. She isn’t even a named character. And, sure, you could argue that “Into the Pit” doesn’t flesh out the character of Oswald’s dad all that much either, but at least “Into the Pit” keeps the focus on the father/son relationship by integrating it into the horror part of the story. Oswald’s dad is absent from the story for a while, but that’s because he gets dragged into a ball pit by an evil rabbit animatronic who then assumes the role of Oswald’s dad. Oscar’s mom, on the other hand, has fuck-all to do with the Plushtrap part of this story except that she disapproves of Oscar having stolen the toy (and that Plushtrap imitates her voice a couple of times, but it also imitates the voices of Oscar’s friends, who feel much more important to the story). The two plotlines do not meaningfully connect to each other.
Second, and this is one of my biggest issues with this story, it’s very difficult to know how to read the stuff with Oscar and his mom when we don’t even know how old Oscar is. Their big phone argument the night before Halloween, for instance, reads very differently depending on if Oscar is sixteen or twelve — telling a high school sophomore they’re a bit old to trick-or-treat is fair albeit slightly insensitive (you could counter-argue that getting to trick-or-treat this year is more meaningful to Oscar if he’s beginning to be too old for it), but telling a twelve-year-old the same thing is fucking nuts. Similarly, the plot point about Oscar regularly helping his mom at work hits different depending on if Oscar is old enough to even legally have a job. Either way Oscar’s mom is relying on her son to help her with adult tasks more than she ought to, but if he’s a tenth grader some amount of this is normal and developmentally appropriate whereas if he’s twelve this is full-on parentification. The final scene in this story has Oscar’s mom apologizing to Oscar, so I think ultimately we can conclude that 1) she’s supposed to be in the wrong here and 2) we’re meant to sympathize with her, but right up until that point I was confused trying to figure out what level of shitty parenting we were dealing with here. I thought at first the scene was trying to tell me that she’s upset not because she feels bad relying on her son so much, but because she’s mad at him for having stolen the Plushtrap Chaser. At least she seems remarkably unbothered by Plushtrap chewing holes in all her doors?
I like this one more than the previous story (though that’s not much of a bar to clear when “Lonely Freddy” has been my least favorite of these so far), but its weak points undercut its strong points enough that in the end it’s just kind of mid. It’s a bit of a shame — a little editing here to flesh out some characters and clear up some inconsistencies could have probably gone a long way. Unfortunately, I suspect the only real editing this one saw was condensing it to fit into the requred page count. The way that on multiple occasions we’re given details that feel like they ought to have been established much earlier makes me feel nearly certain scenes were cut; for instance, we find out it’s almost Halloween at the exact point in the summary where I first mention it being almost Halloween and before that we don’t even know that it’s autumn. This was Carly Anne West’s second and final contribution to this anthology series. I hope she went on to write stories better than this one.
Closing Closing Thoughts:
If I was the sort of reviewer who rated things out of ten, the three stories in book one would achieve a higher combined score than the three stories in book two. That being said, I’m not that sort of reviewer, and I don’t think this book feels that much worse than the first one. Mostly it still feels like Goosebumps but with Freddy Fazbear, although the average protagonist age is trending older, with most of our protagonists so far being teenagers. Fear Street but with Freddy Fazbear, I guess.
When I did my closing thoughts on the first book I mentioned how all three stories in that book are essentially “be careful what you wish for” narratives, and I should be clear — that’s not just me identifying a common theme, that’s what the back-cover blurb focused on as the common element between all three stories in the book. This time the shared theme is about the protagonists seeking to take control of their lives, but since in all three stories the attempt at taking control goes badly this is still basically “be careful what you wish for.” Like the first book, only one of the stories in this book has a happy ending, although none of the protagonists die this time (small comfort to Alec, who suffers a fate worse than death, or Greg, who seems pretty narratively fucked even if his story ends with him physically unharmed).
The theme of financial insecurity is still very much present here, at least in the Carly Anne West stories. Oscar’s a poor kid from the literal wrong side of the tracks and the events of the plot happen because he snaps and steals something he wants after years of having to go without. Greg’s family is middle-class but living beyond their means (it’s not outright stated, but seems implied this is a result of Greg’s dad’s one-sided rivalry with Greg’s wealthy uncle Dare). “Lonely Freddy” is the odd one out — Alec and Hazel don’t have any financial hardship to contend with, and in fact it seems implied that their parents are fairly well-to-do (their house has a pool, Hazel’s birthday party includes all the add-ons, and it seems like the family has sunk plenty of money into trying to “fix” Alec’s behavior). I guess it’s nice of the Fazbear animatronics to take a break from preying on poor kids and go after some upper middle-class ones for once. Again, poverty is absolutely a theme in the FNAF games and I’m not especially surprised that it found its way into the books. I’m just continuing to make note of this because we are going to have to unpack it eventually. First, though, we’ve got ten more books to get through.