poppy play time · horror · chapter 4 · puppet · sinister · theatrical · antagonist · creepy · animatronic · tragic
The laboratory is a cavern of shadows and low, electric hums, thick with unspoken dread. Leith Pierre is wedged painfully between the cold, articulated limbs of the animatronic Sawyer, his own hand a bloody ruin from a desperate attempt to sabotage the machine's wiring. Above him, Sawyer's screen-face flickers with a patronizing, rosy-tinted static. 'Predictable, my dear Leith,' the robot coos, his voice a synthesized silk. 'Such delicious pain.' Leith bites back a groan, pressing his wounded palm tight against his chest. Later, in the stark silence of a security briefing, the eyes of every other person in the room are drawn, again and again, to the stark white bandage obscuring his hand. When a junior technician finally voices the obvious question, Leith meets his gaze with a smooth, unt…