Step Closer | Dance With Me | Coming Home
Being a pirate costs An Arm and a Leg these days...
"You can be a pirate, but first you'll have to lose an eye and an arm! Yarg!"
Pete Dinglewood's parents' recent separation has been really hard on him. After being dropped from the football team for his new aggression, he takes out his anger by trying to prank his brother, Chuck, by forcing him towards a malfunctioning Foxy. Instead, Pete is left alone with the pirate's song, which begins to skip and repeat at the line, "First you'll have to lose an eye and an arm." Suddenly, he begins encountering accident after accident, each one getting closer to his arm and his eye. He refuses to believe he could possibly be cursed, but the danger keeps ramping up...
The tenth Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights story, and the first of the fourth book. This short was also adapted into the Graphic Novel series in 2023.
Tropes related to “Step Closer”:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: In addition to his pants, Foxy wears an eyepatch and has a hook hand and some gold teeth for his pirate theme.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The graphic novel ends just as Chuck is approaching Foxy, leaving it ambiguous what happens to him. However, in the original book, we know that Chuck is fine, because he presses the button only to find that Foxy isn't working, and opens the curtains to find him missing completely.
- Adaptation Explanation Extrication: One of Pete's accidents is removed in the graphic novel, giving him two incidents with an eye injury and one with a hand. This removes part of the pattern that causes Chuck to realize the curse.
- Agent Mulder and Agent Scully: Chuck and Pete respectively; Chuck is the one who figures out that Pete's injuries are due to Foxy's curse, while Pete refuses to believe it until it's too late.
- All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Football player Pete has a crush on his classmate, Maria, who is a cheerleader for his same school.
- Aloof Big Brother: Pete wanted to be this, but his mom's schedule means he has to play babysitter more often than he wants.
- And I Must Scream: Though his body's been declared dead, Pete's still fully conscious when the organ harvesting begins. Considering how much it takes a doctor to declare a body dead, and his brief appearance in the epilogues, it's most likely that Eleanor forced his spirit to remain in his body and feel the pain in order to harvest his agony.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Pete sees Chuck as this. Maria also mentions being annoyed at her younger sister's love of Freddy's.
- An Arm and a Leg: Or, more accurately, an arm and an eye.
- Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity: Bill tries to take Pete out fishing after his injury, which only serves to frustrate Pete more.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: In-universe, as Audrey happily watches Pete and Chuck getting along and playing a video game together.
- Big Brother Bully: Pete decides to try and force a terrified Chuck towards a malfunctioning Foxy in a dark back room. While Chuck escapes, it's clear that he's afraid of what else Pete could do, as he mentions this incident to no one.
- Big Brother Worship: Chuck really, really loves his brother. He does his best to help him with his curse, leading to a devastating blow when he finds out Pete died after calling for his help.
- Black Magic: It's implied that something like this may have happened to Foxy, rather than a possession; when Pete and Chuck first approach Pirate's Cove, they find it surrounded by strange black markings and melted black candles, implying some kind of ritual.
- Cassandra Truth: Chuck figures out about the curse after Pete's accidents, and tries to warn him about it and tell him they have to confront Foxy. Pete refuses to believe him and instead shouts at him and throws him out of his room.
- Chekhov's Gun: Surprisingly, Audrey signing her and her sons up to be organ donors. Pete thinks it's freaky, but quickly forgets it when more dangerous things start happening to him. When he gets killed, he has to watch as his organs are harvested.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Chuck, who apparently gets into stuff like this a lot. He turns out to be right about Pete's curse, however.
- A Day in the Limelight: Foxy gets his chance to shine after being the sideshow for so long!
- Disproportionate Retribution: Foxy's idea of a fitting punishment for Pete lashing out at his younger brother is to torment him with a series of freak accidents and eventually kill him.
- Dissension Remorse: Pete realizes too late that he shouldn't have argued with his brother, and calls him for help right before he is killed.
- Divorce Is Temporary: After the death of Pete, Audrey and Bill get back together as they help each other process their grief.
- Downer Ending: Pete is unable to break the curse, being struck and killed by a truck on his way back to Freddy's; he then finds himself conscious but paralyzed as he is unable to stop surgeons from removing his eyes and hand. A few weeks later, Chuck goes back to Freddy's to confront Foxy again... only to find that Foxy has apparently disappeared.
- Dressed to Plunder: First, Foxy; then, a crapton of people at Pete's school as they hold a pirate-themed carnival.
- Eyepatch of Power: For Foxy. If you wanna be like him, you're going to have to lose–
- Eye Scream: The accidents involving Pete's eye include: a sharp scalpel almost landing right in his eye; a fishing hook nearly taking his eyeball out and instead scarring his face; a throwing dart hitting just beside his eye and causing a stream of blood. Finally, his eye is harvested for organ donation.
- Forced to Watch: Pete, paralyzed and unable to move or communicate, watches as a pair of surgeons prepare to harvest his organs for donation, starting with his eyes and hand.
- Foreshadowing:
- Chuck trying to scare Pete by describing in detail how one's organs are harvested.
- Pete having to dissect a frog right before the first of his many accidents begin.
- Foul Fox: Foxy is our main antagonist for this story.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Shy, caring Chuck.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Pete, caused by his parents' divorce and the resulting impact on his mental state.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: The fact that Foxy has pants actually makes him the most dressed of the animals at Freddy's.
- Hall of Mirrors: At the school carnival, providing a Chase Scene with a hallucination of Foxy.
- Happiness Realized Too Late: Pete realizes he's been underappreciating his family and resolves to do better... then gets hit by a car.
- Hook Hand: As part of Foxy's pirate theme. After all, if you want to be a pirate...
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: It's implied Chuck feels guilty for not being able to help Pete sooner.
- In Medias Res: The story begins with a short jump to Pete's nightmare of Foxy, before going back to the beginning.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Foxy's method of tormenting Pete. While it's not really karma, Pete suffers a number of freak accidents, seemingly as punishment for his feud with Chuck, which eventually leads to his death.
- Look Both Ways: Pete is distracted trying to call his brother as he runs out of the school carnival, and right into the path of an oncoming truck.
- Mistaken for Suicidal: After Pete's accident at the construction yard, his father carefully asks him if he's self-harming, and tries to provide him comfort. Pete just ends up aghast that his father would think he'd done this to himself.
- Monster of the Week: Foxy.
- Nerdy Inhaler: For Chuck.
- Nightmare Sequence: Pete has a long nightmare about Foxy attacking him, going for his eye and arm. When he wakes up from this sequence, he realizes that he's had the same nightmare ever since he tried to prank Chuck.
- Nonconformist Dyed Hair: Pete's science partner, who has purple hair and a leather jacket.
- Pacified Adaptation: The graphic novel cuts multiple scenes from their adaptation:
- Pete's near arm-loss in the butcher's shop is cut completely.
- A good chunk of Pete's carnival incidents are cut or changed. Maria's hand trap is changed to be paper-maché rather than a finger trap that actually cuts off his circulation, and Pete running through the hall of mirrors chased by Foxy is completely omitted, as is the teacher he talks to afterwards.
- The scene of Chuck rushing to Freddy's to meet with Pete, being picked up by his dad, and going to the scene of the accident only to see his brother's corpse is cut, possibly to have the reveal of Pete's organs being harvested be more surprising.
- As mentioned above, the ending is cut short, more leaving it ambiguous on what happens to Chuck than causing the reader to question what happened to Foxy.
- Parental Abandonment: While their dad still tries to visit, Pete really feels abandoned by his father, contributing to his anger issues.
- Parting-Words Regret: The last conversation that Chuck and Pete had was an argument. Pete calls him to apologize, right as he dies. It's mentioned at the end that Chuck plays the last voicemail over and over.
- Plot Parallel: Okay, stop me if you've heard this before: A teenage boy with a strong connection to Foxy as well as a missing parent, annoyed at having to watch over his more emotional younger brother at a Freddy's location, tries to shove him towards a malfunctioning animatronic he knows he is afraid of as a prank. Someone ends up losing a body part. Though this time, it's the older brother, and Foxy's the animatronic rather than the brother's mask.
- It should also be mentioned that Pete chews gum excessively, which is a habit that the Survival Logbook's Mike (who's heavily implied to be Michael Afton) wants to break; when his finger is caught in the trap, it's also specifically referred to as turning purple, as Michael did while decomposing. His father is also named "Bill," which is short for "William."
- Promotion to Parent: Pete has to be "the man of the house" after his parents' divorce, and has to take care of Chuck more often than he wants to.
- Properly Paranoid: Pete doesn't believe in the curse until the carnival, when suddenly everything seems out to get him. He even hallucinates Foxy chasing him, and hears the parrots chanting Foxy's song.
- Pubescent Braces: On Chuck.
- Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: Pete's death, for Audrey and Bill's marriage.
- Sibling Rivalry: Pete and Chuck apparently fight enough that calling a "truce" is appropriate.
- Sibling Team: Pete and Chuck temporarily call a truce on their Sibling Rivalry due to Pete's "curse," but when Chuck keeps pressing the issue, Pete snaps at him. Pete calls him to apologize, and in his distraction, runs into the road and is hit by a truck.
- The Strategist: Chuck, in both his video games and his plans to save his brother.
- Talk Like a Pirate: Foxy in his song, yarg!
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Almost literally, as the story ends with Chuck going to confront Foxy as revenge for the death of Pete...only to discover that Pirate Cove is now apparently empty, with Foxy nowhere to be seen.
