Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 ❲Bonus Inside❳

You looked at the front doors. Locked. Of course they were.

The air in the Playtime Co. lobby tasted like old paper and powdered sugar. That was the first thing that hit you—not the dust, not the rust, but a faint, phantom sweetness, as if the walls had spent years sweating candy. You’d been gone a decade. Now, the “Welcome” banner sagged like a tired smile, and the only light came from a dying emergency strip along the floor.

Lights flickered to life in agonizing pulses. Machinery groaned, stretched, remembered how to breathe. And then—movement. Not from the machines. From the shadows below. A long, thin shape uncurled from the darkness. Blue. Eight feet tall. Arms that dragged the floor. A face that smiled with too many teeth.

Not a machine. Not a settling pipe. A slow, deliberate drag of something heavy and soft against drywall. You spun. The hallway behind you was empty. But the poster—Huggy’s poster—was gone. In its place was a dark archway leading to the warehouse. Poppy Playtime Chapter 1

The real shift had just begun.

Your flashlight clicked on, a nervous heartbeat of white in the dark. The front desk was a graveyard of forgotten things: a coffee mug with a cartoon cat’s face, a name tag reading “Janice,” and a single, deflated balloon that whispered across the tile as you passed. The orientation booklet they’d given you—back then, when you were just another hopeful employee—lay in a puddle of water. You didn’t pick it up. You already knew the rules.

You crawled until your knees bled. Until the sounds of tearing metal faded to a whisper. You fell out into the lobby, gasping, alone. You looked at the front doors

The first hand slipped into the claw machine easily. The second grabbed a loose wire from the ceiling. You swung across the conveyor belt, landing in a heap of shredded fabric and stuffing. That’s when you heard it.

It hung in the hallway leading to the Make-a-Friend workshop: Huggy Wuggy, your forever friend. His blue fur was still impossibly vibrant, his smile still stretched ear to ear. But the eyes. You could have sworn they were following you. A trick of the light, you told yourself. Just the flashlight’s beam.

You pressed it.

You ran. The GrabPack hands misfired once, twice. A vent. You saw a vent. Too small for him. You dove inside, the metal screaming as Huggy’s fingers punched through the grate behind you, missing your ankle by an inch.

The orientation was over.

It sat on a charging station that hadn't worked in years, its orange hands dangling like dead limbs. You strapped it on anyway. The harness felt wrong—too snug, too familiar. Two coils of blue and orange wire snaked up your arms. When you fired it for the first time, the mechanical hands twitched, then curled into a wave. Not yours. The pack’s. Like it remembered. The air in the Playtime Co