If somebody told me going in that I’d be closing out my twenties as an aimless, single, perpetually broke college dropout stuck in a McDonald’s, I probably would have laughed in their face. I’m not sure where it all started to go wrong. Maybe when I switched majors halfway through because I got bored. Or maybe it was the nightly binge drinking that made those morning classes such an unbearable chore that I began to lose interest. All I know is that by the time my girlfriend left me and I was back living at home I was beyond disillusioned with any hopes for myself and the future I might have once had. Now, I’m here, trapped in this stinking shithole of a McDonald’s, and it feels as though I’ll never leave.
I had just clocked out, all too ready to put another ten hour shift working the counter behind me, when my boss caught me by the arm as I was making a break for the front door. He told me to wait up, and I knew in an instant that, whatever he wanted, my fate was sealed. Everything inside me wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, to shut him down and just walk out and never come back before he even had a chance to open his mouth and start barking orders, but I thought about the stack of bills on my coffee table in my unfurnished one bedroom apartment, and in particular the most recent addition to the pile bearing the words ‘FINAL NOTICE’ in big, red threatening letters. I pushed my anger aside, unwilling to risk losing another job. This being the third in almost as many years. After a few minutes the manager finally slid his phone back into the front pocket of his uniform shirt, dead-eyed face still as he went about telling me in few words that he needed me to clean out the adjoining playplace area before I could leave, and that he was “trusting me to be responsible enough to lock up properly when I’m done.”
This was already more than just a little devastating. It was past closing time and the view from the windows into the parking lot was reduced to nothing by the night. My bus, the last bus, would reach the stop in less than forty minutes with the walk to get there taking more than thirty. I tried to say as much, but the manager just snorted and told me to get a cab as if cabs are cheap and I was the fucking Monopoly Man getting pissy over a pittance. He began to drone at me, irritated, going on and on like he was explaining the ways of the world to a small, impossibly dim child. Eventually, looking at my shitty watch, I just nodded and got to it, all too aware that the taxis charged extra past midnight. Pulling off my jacket, I tossed it over the back of the nearest chair and went into the supply closet to seethe for a moment. By the time I came back out into the dining area the manager was gone and his keys lay on a table by the exit catching the far-off streetlight in the otherwise darkened space. Armed with a garbage bag, a rag and some disinfectant, I made my way over to the large single door on the other side of the building leading into the playplace.
It was one of the last remaining of its kind, and the reason why was clear. It was huge. More than double the size of the restaurant itself, at least. Kitchen included. It’d probably have cost more to shut it down than it did to go on running it, so long as the customers kept on coming. I was always glad it was there. Until that night I’d had next to no interaction with the playplace area. It wasn’t part of my job description and its presence meant that this particular McDonald’s didn’t even have a drive-thru, which lessened my workload substantially. Mostly I just took down orders and handed over change to absent minded mothers content to stare into their phones for an hour while their kids’ screams stayed firmly contained and far removed behind the soundproofing between them.
As the door swung shut behind me I stood staring at the looming structure. Something about the various tubes and walls of netting and multicolored supports standing vacant and amorphous in the darkness seemed so monstrous and out of place, the dead silence only amplifying my unease in the unfamiliar space. Turning back to the wall by the door, I fumbled at the switches with the sort of vague panic you get when you walk into an unlit room only to feel eyes on you that you know aren’t really there, and with a few faint flickers the fluorescent bulbs became white and static, their clinking turning to the steady, monotonous buzz I’d become so accustomed to.
The playplace, as I saw it, stood several floors high all the way to the ceiling intersected by plastic tunnels and slides and rope bridges which all seemed to lead back to the ball pit at the center. On the walls outside the large arch-like entrance the murals of Ronald and Grimace and the Hamburglar and the rest of the McDonald’s lore monsters looked down on me mockingly with their white-painted, unblinking eyes and I flipped the bird at them with a gloved hand as if I was doing anything at all but wasting time, the stench of plastic balls and the rotting food lost between them already enough to make me feel ill. After spraying down the tables by the door to the restaurant floor and giving them a quick once over wipe, I dropped the rag and the spray bottle down onto the gleaming wet surface of the one nearest and started begrudgingly through the archway and into the playplace itself. Straight away I was met by at least a whole order’s worth of half-gummed chicken nuggets littering the first tunnel tube, that stale smell wafting out as if to spite me as I labored about tossing them into the open trash bag clutched in my fist before moving along. To my right was the ball pit, a scattering of soggy looking fries crumpled among the top layer already visible at a first glance. Disgusted, I decided to leave that section until last and began to climb some triangular platform stairs upwards instead, stooping uncomfortably with each turn as my cheap paperthin uniform chafed at my skin.
The first floor opened up into two rope bridges, one shorter than the other, so I took that one, the thing shaking under my clunky work shoes as I went. After crossing it I stared into the green tunnel before me obscured by black felt around it as a wall as opposed to net or plastic, and sighed, turning and sinking my forehead into the netting of the outer wall and glaring through it at Ronald’s perfectly painted face defeatedly as he smiled into the ether with that vacuous, unknowing grin. Time was getting on fast, and I knew that I had to work just as quickly if I didn’t want to end up blowing through my wage on an overpriced cab home. This in mind and little else, I thrust myself down with a grunt and began crawling through the winding tunnel on my hands and knees, the hard plastic feeling strange and unnatural beneath the disposable gloves as I padded forward.
The tunnel continued snaking on and on and after around twenty feet it ceased to have small, porthole-like windows like the beginning did, shrouding the rest ahead in an eerie dark which felt uncanny. There aren’t supposed to be unlit areas in places like these. Why would there be? As I continued to maneuver on through the bends of the far-too-long tunnel, the walls becoming strangely constricted in their serpentine form to the point where it became difficult to properly angle my phone’s flashlight, I began to acknowledge the growing fear which had steadily replaced my anger, and how that anger had made it so that I didn’t really register the strangeness of it all until that moment. As I realized this, I saw the growing light up ahead penetrating the small turns and I moved into it and out of the tunnel onto a small padded platform with nowhere else to go which looked to be on the top floor all the way to the back wall. I could see the little strip of exposed concrete running along the length of the roof where neither the children or even the plastic could quite reach. Weird, I thought. It didn’t feel like I’d been going up.
Frustratingly, it became clear that keeping track of where I’d already cleaned would probably be a nightmare given that the place was like a maze and I was so tired I could have curled up and slept right there on the floor of that little square platform. Looking around at the layout, half obscured by the layers of nets and the tubes and the slides, I felt like I’d had enough and in a rage I threw the bag against the wall, removing the gloves and throwing them away too. I should have put my foot down when I had the chance and told my boss that I’d do it the next day. After all there really was no difference between hitting the place at midnight or the ass crack of dawn before opening time. So, I came to the sudden sensible decision far too late that I would catch the earliest bus in the morning and get it done in the light of day. There was still time to call a taxi, and maybe even catch up to the bus if the cab was fast enough and the bus was running late. With this justification I dropped back to my knees and began to crawl through the tunnel into the darkness, swearing under my breath as I went.
My heart began to sink as I pressed on through the green tunnel, maneuvering my body at contorted angles to fit through the tightest turns with my phone light beaming at the rounded floor through most of it, still not detecting an incline. The tunnel felt even more drawn out than before and the dread began to give way to panic as the light at the end stayed hidden. It turned out, as I plopped back onto the plastic platform, it was because the lights were no longer on. The buzzing fluorescent hum, gone. Everything was in darkness.
A flood of rationalizations ran through my mind. It was a power failure. The wiring was faulty and gave out. Maybe the manager never left and was playing some kind of dumb, very uncharacteristic prank on me. It didn’t matter, I told myself. I just needed to get out without breaking my ankle and then I could finally go home and get to bed. I shone the light out through the netting that made up the outer wall and directed it across the sheen of the tables and over the door, taking comfort in the familiarity of the surroundings I’d passed through despite the alienating blackness. Then I cast the torch over the wall, and I didn’t feel so comfortable anymore. The mural, with Ronald and the rest holding hands, was gone. Well, not gone, exactly. The detail that made them up had entirely disappeared, replaced by long, dark shadows. It took a while to break away from my stare, and by the time I managed to I realized that I was hyperventilating and tried to calm myself, but failed. I aimed the torch frantically in both directions and then back out at the mural which remained unchanged despite my desperate hopes that it might have reverted back to its previous mundane form. The transformation was undeniable, and so stark and terrifying that it almost brought me to tears.
I stepped tentatively onto the rope bridge, grappling with the impulse to run. Rationalizations continued to fight for resolution as I went foot-over-foot and I half-convinced myself that the darkness was maybe just distorting the view of the mural from where I was standing, or that I could have hit my head or something and didn’t know about it and now my concussed brain was playing tricks on me and other even less likely explanations which all stopped dead, clear to be false as I heard it, echoing from the mouth of the tunnel behind me. The laugh was shrill, more like a chuckle with how brief it was, but as obvious and real to me as the distorted, disappeared characters on the mural. I couldn’t move. Could hardly even bring myself to keep breathing. However, as I held myself there motionless and stunned, it was clear something on the platform definitely was. The rasping breaths became a hideous chain of laughter roaring after me as I ran, missing the way down in my terror as I made my way blindly over more rope bridges and a short windowless tube which turned and dead-ended in a rope ladder. Ramming my phone in my pocket, I climbed, moving frantically upwards as the lumbering footsteps thudding on the plastic closed in behind, almost reaching the turn.
At the top there was a space like a corridor long enough that the light didn’t begin to reach the end as I pulled it out and aimed it forward, putting it away just as quickly and hiding myself. The corridor had little spherical transparent chambers dotting it seemingly all the way along and as I sat there trembling in the third one on the left I just managed to unlock my phone and turn the light off before I heard it slap a wide-palmed hand over the edge from where I’d come. The desperate need to scream filled me, but I was paralyzed. Helpless as those footsteps paced slowly along the corridor, the creature invisible in the dark. It turned somewhere further in the tunnel with a growl, and hesitantly I swiped my phone open and re-equipped the flashlight. I shone the light through the plastic window of the small chamber and saw only darkness. Not even the outside of the playplace walls. Nothing at all. As much nothing as if the light wasn’t even on at all. There was no way to get my bearings like that, as if either the darkness was double as thick or worse, that the space was somehow so vast that the walls were just too far away to see.
Shakily moving back into the corridor I began to make my way towards the ladder, but stopped. Something was lurking at the bottom, snorting like a trained dog hunting prey. I began to back away, slowly, but the plastic squeaked under my shoe and the sniffing stopped, replaced by sudden hooting shrieks as what I could only guess were hands grabbed at the rungs hungrily. I turned and ran, not looking back. I went right, then right again, then left, the plastic-covered foam floor speeding by underneath illuminated by the flashlight and nothing else. The corridor stayed the same, not giving way to anything else but more netted hallways, long and short but otherwise unchanged. Just two net walls stretching upwards to a ceiling which may not have even been there at all as black as that glimpse through the window. Several more turns, and the hallway remained just the same. My breath began to give out, and the noises behind grew louder. Closer. Snarling and ravenous as they came looking for me.
I turned a corner and another one, choking in air with panicked breaths, and as I heard them panting towards me far more than two in number, I turned one more time and saw it. The opening of a big red slide stood ahead, the same slide I’d seen ending out at the ball pit, and I flung myself through it headfirst from a sprint, the monsters’ hoots and grunts and laughter following me as I slid so fast that one of the buttons of my shirt came off and fell away behind me, disappearing. After a while, several minutes or longer or maybe even much, much longer than that, I was thrown out of the slide into the ball pit and I groped around for the phone which had tumbled out of my hand as I’d fallen. Digging through the balls, screaming, I finally found the light shining through the layers and grabbed it and waded towards a doorway, forcing myself to stop screaming out when I realized that the laughter and thuds and howls were getting louder. They were coming down the slide after me. I pulled myself free from the balls, expecting the exit. Pleading with myself for the arch to be there, moving towards it in sluggish, injured steps. As I saw the little platform steps leading up to the first floor, I knew that I had made it out, but then just as quickly discovered that the arch was gone. The world beyond the wall of netting that made up the outside wall was just darkness so black it made the light useless.
That was days ago now. I don’t know how long. It doesn’t matter. I’ve given up looking for a way out. It’s too big. Too big to imagine. Too big to ever escape. The battery is almost dead and I am hungry. So hungry. I’m going to try and use the pin on my nametag to get away, before the light goes out. The monsters are getting closer. I want somebody to find this and give it to my parents. I’m sorry I didn’t call more. I’m sorry for a lot of things and I’m sorry for this. The worst part is that you won’t ever know that, but my last hope is that somehow, one day, you will.