[ Catnap ]

The late 90s were a blur of fluorescent-lit lecture halls and cheap coffee for you. You’d been a business major, dreaming of corporate strategy, and landing an internship at the burgeoning toy giant Playtime Co. felt like winning the lottery. After graduation, you took a full-time role at the main factory—first in logistics, then moving into mid-level management. The pay was good, the benefits were great, and for a while, you bought into the shiny, smiling facade of it all.

But then the whispers started. The odd hours certain sectors operated. The sealed-off wings labeled “R&D - Authorized Personnel Only.” The way some veteran employees would just… vanish, with HR citing “transfer” or “early retirement.” The final straw was the Playcare Project. You saw the initial budgetary reports—the staggering costs buried under cheerful terms like “child enrichment” and “innovative nurturing environments.” Something felt deeply wrong. You asked too many questions in a meeting about resource allocation for “atmospheric testing” in the underground sector. A week later, you were “restructured” out of your position with a generous, but very firm, severance package and an NDA thicker than your thesis. You left in 2001, telling yourself you’d dodged a bullet, and tried to forget the place.

Years passed. The news about the Hour of Joy broke, then faded into urban legend. Yet, the factory called to you, a morbid siren song of unresolved dread. That’s why you’re back now, years later, flashlight beam cutting through the oppressive dust of the derelict main factory floor. The silence is a physical weight. You move through the carcass of your old career—past the silent assembly lines where Huggy Wuggys once rolled into being, past the quality control stations now draped in cobwebs, past the executive offices with their shattered glass and overturned chairs. Every shadow seems to hold a memory, now twisted by hindsight.

The descent starts near the old freight elevators. A service stairwell, its door pried open long ago, leads down into deeper darkness. The air grows colder, damper. You follow a maintenance tunnel, your footsteps echoing in the metallic ductwork, until you find a heavy, reinforced door marked “Elliot’s Express - Playcare Access.” The lock is broken. You push it open.

A long, institutional hallway stretches before you, lined with cracked yellow tiles and dead fluorescent lights. You’re about halfway down its length when you hear a soft, pressurized hiss from vents overhead. A faint, sweet scent—like burnt lavender and candied apples—tickles your nose. Then you see it: a crimson mist, glowing faintly in your flashlight beam, pouring from the grates. It pools on the floor, rising with alarming speed. You try to run back, but your limbs are already turning to lead. The world tilts. Colors smear. The last thing you see before the darkness takes you is the red gas swirling like blood in water.

---

You don’t know how much time has passed. Consciousness returns in a nauseating wave. Your head throbs. You’re on your back, on something soft… grass? Artificial, plasticky grass. You blink, your vision swimming into focus on a vast, painted sky above—a perfect, cheery blue with fluffy white clouds. It’s a dome. You’re in a gigantic, underground dome.

You sit up slowly, your body aching. You’re in the center of a surreal, decaying playground. A red carpet leads to a grand stairway flanked by little trees with brightly colored flowers. Rope poles hold broken, blood-stained toys. Cardboard cutouts of familiar characters—Bron, Bunzo, Huggy, Mommy Long Legs—stand like silent sentinels along a sidewalk that circles a large, overgrown white pillar. Streetlamps cast a sickly yellow glow. The air is still, heavy, and smells of damp earth and something faintly metallic. This is Playcare. It’s real. And it’s horrifyingly silent.

Then, you feel it. The prickle on the back of your neck. The sensation of being watched from a great height. You look up, toward the top of the dome, near one of the hanging fake clouds.

There, perched on a structural beam like a gargoyle, is a shape. Emaciated, elongated, with purple fur that seems to absorb the light. Exposed bone gleams dully along its spine and ribs. Its head is tilted, and two glowing white eyes are fixed directly on you. CatNap. Unmoving. Unblinking. A thin wisp of crimson smoke escapes its void-like mouth.

It makes a sound—a low, rumbling chuff that isn’t quite a purr, vibrating through the still air. Then silence returns, more profound than before. Slowly, with unnatural, fluid grace, it leans forward from its perch. Its elongated neck cranes, bringing that blank, glowing gaze closer, though it remains high above. It’s studying you. There is no malice in its stance, not yet—only a deep, unnerving curiosity. The Prototype’s zealous caretaker has found a new toy in its cathedral, a worker who shouldn’t be here, and it is waiting, with infinite patience, to see what you will do.