I walk into the restaurant and clock in. I sigh. Another grueling day at Mr. Wiggly's. Yup, Mr. Wiggly's. It's a fast food place that sells burgers, fries, tacos, and whatever other unhealthy shit people like to eat. The pay was good for a fast food place. So I had to give it that. I sighed and pushed back my black hair, preparing by myself for rude customers and stale fried for lunch.

"Hey dude!" 

I turn to see my childhood best friend running towards me. His blond hair lit up under the lights. He smiled with his big green eyes. I smiled warmly at my adorable friend. He ran up to me and hugged me. 

"Nice to see ya!" He smiled brightly 

"Nice to see you too Calvin" I say

He clocks in before he usually, I like to sleep in. 

"I just got back from my girlfriends house," he brags "It's a shame you're single"

I roll my eyes

"Yeah, yeah,"

I liked being single, I've never met anyone who gave me that heart beating feelings or whatnot. Honestly, I think it's stupid. I'm fine with just being by myself and my idiot friend Calvin. 

"So what shift you working first Rick" Calvin asked me

"Drive thru, you?"

"Making fries" he smiles

"You love this job too much" 

"Nice pay, free food. Who wouldn't love it?" 

He says, walking away.

I smile and go to the drive through.

During our lunch break Calvin brings us both two tacos and some fries. He takes the sauces all for himself and I shrug. I prefer my fries dry. Not my tacos though. I take my taco sauce from him and he frowns. As we eat he scrolls through tiktok and I look around. I notice everyone crowding around and the manager smiles proudly. I tap Calvin and he takes a few minutes to notice but he looks.

We see the manager point to the door.

"Introducing our new mascot, Mr. Wiggly the elephant!." 

A large purple elephant, well a person in an elephant suit, walks through the door happily. I've never seen something so ugly. It was a purple elephant with a wiggly snout, they stupidly tried to fit the name, it had a black top hat too small for it's fat head. It wore no clothes. So I was forced to look at its obese looking body. It really was just a normal elephant but I hated it anyway. 

Calvin seemed excited. I rolled my eyes, I swore all of them were just robots. The ugly animal did a couple dances for the workers and a few customers and we had quite a bit of business that day. Everyone talked about how the elephant was adorable or about how he was so sweet handing out free burgers to kids. Like the manager didn't tell him to do that for attention to be drawn to the restaurant. Pathetic.

I really did hate this place. 

As I ate my burger I watched the elephant greet customers at the door, wobbling playfully. 

"Hey Calvin" I said without looking at him

He stops texting his girlfriend and looks up.

"Hm?"

"You ever wonder who's under that mask" 

He looks at the elephant, ponders, then shakes his head. 

"Nope, not once"

"You think we should find out?"

"How"

"Well we can go to the dressing room and spy"

"What if we see the dude naked or something"

"Oh please you've ween me naked"

He couldn't argue with that seeing as how he has. It was on accident of course, since he's obviously never heard of knocking.

"Yeah let's so it"  Calvin agrees 

I nod.

The wiggly's mascot leaves to freshen up in the dressing room. Me and Calvin were hiding in the closet. I didn't know why it even had an empty closet when everyone knows they keep the racks of clothes outside. I was disgusted by how they waste their money. I make sure I'm in a nice position to see, Calvin does the same and ends up too close to me.

His face is close to mine, and we make eye contact. I deep blush or embarrassment comes on his face. A rather light shade of blush comes on mine. This klutz was gonna get us caught. I rolled my eyes and kept my distance. We watched as the purple animal sat in front of the mirror. It looked at itself and reached for his head.

It removed the helmet part of the mascot. It seemed to struggle. We could hear grunts of discomfort from the person inside. Long purple sticky strings were inside of the helmet. The man inside had purple blots of the substance on his face and the veiny strings struggled to keep the helmet on him. However he proved to be stronger and ripped the helmet off and set it down. 

He breathed heavily, as if he hasn't breathed oxygen in a long time. He wiped the blots off his face. 

"Finally a break" the man said

He was a Caucasian male with green eyes and dirty blonde hair that was short. He had a bit of a beard, but it was barely there. The helmet glowed a deep purple and the man looked at it, despair and fear was written all over his face. 

"No, no!" He frantically protested "I just started my break"

The helmet glowed a deep purple again, the mascot suits arms lifted to put the helmet back on him. 

"Stop no!" The man kept protesting, but the arms continued to gently place the helmet back. 

After he left me and Calvin slowly left the closet. I was stunned by what I saw. I had so many questions. How did he get in there? Where was that suit made? Was I dreaming? Is this some kind of alien or something? 

"Bro what the fuck was that?!" Calvin exclaims

I forgot he was there so I was internally startled. 

"I don't know but I intend to find out" I respond 

This job was boring and plain. It dragged people in with a nice pay and so called long breaks. He actually found something worth investigating. He was also curious as to what was going on with that mascot.

"We should tell the manager" Calvin suggested

I nod. Maybe he knew something about the suit. Hopefully, there wasn't going to be one of those plot twists where he is a part of it. That would just kill my mood. We walk to the managers office and knock on his door. We hear rustling and a female worker comes out with her shoes in her hand. She fixes her tie, waves, and walks back to her station. I rolled my eyes in disgust.

"Oh, boys," the manager said, almost unhappy we were males. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Well, ya see" Calvin begins

I roll my eyes as he dramatically explains what happens.

"Rick was scared, but you know, as the brave and cool man I am, I was like 'Don't worry, Rick, I'm here!' and I held him because I knew he was scared shitless"

I let him lie because I didn't care. Because at the end of the day, I knew what had happened, so fighting over it didn't matter. The manager nodded and looked up at us, thinking. He was a short and chubby man.

"I tell ya what. Let's go see for ourselves" 

The manager opens the door and walks towards the mascot. I was taken aback at this. Was he just going to take off the mascot headset in front of everyone? The manager has the mascot bend down, pretending like he had something to tell him. He then quickly removed the headpiece. The man inside was smiling wide as he looked at his boss.

"Something wrong?" He asked

The manager looks at us then at the man.

"Well, apparently not," the manager says

He hands over the headpiece and walks over to us.

"Maybe you two should take an early break, no?"

He says, but his gaze was directly on me. As he walked away, Calvin wondered off to flirt with his girlfriend over text. 

I scoffed at how he always has to text her every five minutes. I wasn't jealous or anything. He was my best friend, and he wasn't like those guys who always ignored their friends over a girl. He was a good guy. I sighed and continued my miserable day.

As I walked home at night I felt more tired then usual. A day of dealing with people I hate can be exhausting. I got home and didn't bother eating dinner. I wasn't in the mood. I took a shower and tucked into bed. Finally closing my eyes to sleep.

I opened my eyes to see the mascot running. He ran and ran, looking over his shoulder at me. I chased him into Mr. Wiggly's. It was nighttime. Who knows how late it was from how dark the sky was. Nothing looked right. The streets were abandoned and heavily littered. The restaurant looked run down, like it was going to fall apart at any moment. I chased him inside, and he tripped over a broken wall piece.

I jumped on him, and we tussled. It felt...wrong. It felt like it was me who was the attacker. He put up a fight like a victim would and looked around as if looking for help. I felt disgusted with myself. I managed to pin him down, and I ripped off the helmet of the costume. I froze. Calvin was the one inside. Blood dripped down from his head. He looked injured as he looked up at me with fear. I got up and shook my head. 

No, no. I looked down to see my own hands covered in his blood. One hand holding a hammer. I look up to see him not in the suit. He was in his normal work uniform. He shielded his face with his arms, and all the co-workers looked at me. The fry cook. The manager. The managers mistress. Even the mascot. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. The mascot laughed at me in demonic laughter as everyone looked at me with disappointment.

I growled in anger. I blamed him for why this was happening. I ran towards Mr. Wiggly. As I swung and he put up his hands in defense. I woke up with a start. I felt guilt, despair, and anger inside all at once. I mainly felt guilt over Calvin. I was glad it was a nightmare. I could never hurt Calvin. He was more important to me than anything. I decided to grab my phone and text him.

I opened up our chat but put my phone down. I felt I didn't deserve to talk to him right now. I laid back down to go back to sleep.