It started with silence.
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Scooby-Doo had always been noisy—his bark, his laugh, his nonsensical words, his trembling whimpers when a ghoul was near. But when the gang split, life grew quiet. Velma took a job at the Smithsonian. Daphne pursued television journalism. Fred went solo with paranormal documentaries. And Shaggy—William—just faded into the background.
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The dog stayed.
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He was old by then, limping from years of chases, his brown fur grayed and his ears drooping lower each day. William didn’t notice the aging. Or refused to. In that crumbling apartment, surrounded by take-out boxes and old Mystery Inc. memorabilia, the dog was the last piece of something that used to be real.
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When Scooby stopped eating, William panicked.
When Scooby stopped walking, William cried.
When Scooby closed his eyes and didn’t open them again, William screamed.
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Then, William stopped being William.
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They said it was grief. That’s what Daphne whispered when she got the call from the shelter saying he’d tried to adopt six Great Danes and insisted on naming them all Scooby. That’s what Velma muttered when she reviewed his strange Reddit posts about “making souls stay forever.” Fred, when he visited and found the apartment walls covered in wires, gears, and diagrams of animatronics, simply said: “He’s not our Shaggy anymore.”
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And they were right.
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Because Shaggy was never real. Shaggy was a persona, a mask. William Afton was the man underneath, and that man was unraveling. Scooby’s death didn’t just break William—it peeled him open.
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And something darker was inside.
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It began with an invitation.
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A letter in Daphne’s mailbox—unmarked, hand-written, smelling faintly of oil and rust. It was an invitation to a grand re-opening of a “family-themed mystery pizzeria.” The name wasn’t printed. Just a scrawled note:
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“Let’s solve one more mystery… for old time’s sake. —W.A.”
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Daphne rolled her eyes and tossed it aside. But something about it tugged at her. Maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe guilt. Maybe curiosity.
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She went.
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The pizzeria was tucked in a forgotten corner of town. No cars in the lot. No lights on. Just a flickering neon sign in red:
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Mystery Bytes
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She stepped inside.
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It smelled like rot and metal. The walls were lined with retro posters of animatronic animals dressed like Mystery Inc. characters—there was a robotic Fred with glowing blue eyes, a Velma with twitching glasses, a Daphne animatronic whose smile didn’t reach her dead, mechanical eyes.
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The worst was the Shaggy bot. It was hunched over, twitching sporadically, oil leaking from its mouth like drool. And beside it, at the center of the stage, sat a hulking animatronic Great Dane, covered in patchy fur and blinking eyes that seemed almost alive.
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“Ruh-roh,” the thing croaked.
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Daphne turned to run—but the doors had vanished.
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Velma arrived next.
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She received a voice message from a blocked number. The voice was warped, synthetic—distorted to sound like Scooby-Doo. It begged her to come help. “Reah, help us, Relma… danger…”
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Despite herself, she traced the number to an abandoned pizzeria. She didn’t expect to find Daphne there—trapped inside a glass tube, unconscious, wires feeding into her skull.
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William greeted her in his purple security uniform, his beard overgrown, his smile wrong.
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“Welcome to the mystery, Velma. Want to find out what happens when the ones who chase monsters become them?”
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She tried to run.
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He let her.
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For sport.
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Fred was the last.
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He never got a message. He just woke up one day to find his RV missing and tire tracks leading to a warehouse outside town. He followed, heart pounding. When he arrived, he found a wall of televisions—all showing footage of his friends, screaming.
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He stormed inside.
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The reunion was not joyous.
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Daphne’s consciousness had been fragmented, uploaded piece by piece into a dancing animatronic that repeated her news reports in an endless loop. Velma was forced to answer unsolvable riddles, each failure resulting in electric shocks to her system as a twisted game of “Jeopardy: Genius Edition” played in the background. Fred faced a mirrored room where animatronic versions of himself reenacted their old adventures—but this time, he always died at the end.
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William stood above it all.
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“No more unmasking monsters,” he whispered into the microphone. “No more pulling off rubber masks and laughing in the van. You wanted answers? Well, guess what. The real monster was never under a costume.”
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He pressed a button. On the main stage, the animatronic Scooby came to life—its eyes glowing red.
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“I brought him back. You left him. I didn’t. He’s perfect now. He’ll never die again.”
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But the creature lunged.
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Not at them.
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At William.
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It didn’t speak. It didn’t need to. Its paws wrapped around him with mechanical strength and pulled him into the animatronic’s chest cavity. Screams echoed.
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Then silence.
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The power surged. Systems crashed. One by one, the animatronics slumped.
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When the police finally found the building—weeks later—they found no trace of William Afton. Just shattered machines, damaged recording tapes, and a journal soaked in oil and tears.
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On the last page, in jagged handwriting:
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“They said I was the coward. But I stayed. I stayed with him. I kept the mystery alive. I gave him a body so he’d never have to leave again. He was my only friend. My only family. And now he’s perfect. Now they’ll see.”
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Signed:
W.A. (Shaggy)
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But even after that…
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Some say they still hear a laugh in the darkness.
A whimper.
A mechanical bark.
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And somewhere, far below the ruins of Mystery Bytes, red eyes blink to life.
Waiting.
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The mystery… never ends.
