Kill Me Again

Chapter Eight

  Holding Six's hand I tug her towards the X-ray room. When she see the X-ray machine she stops and stares at it. "Wow." I smile. "Wanna see something cool?" She nods. I point to the lever. "Pull that and watch me behind the screen." I go behind the machine and watch her pull the lever. I wave at her and I see her giggle. It carries across the room and it delights me to hear. I come back from behind the machine and grab her hand. "Come on. I saw a picture on the wall with a teddy bear that had a key in it." I go into the room and grab the teddy bear that looks like a rabbit.
  "Maybe this one." Six climbs up onto the table and grabs the teddy bear on it. "Why not this one?" I smile even though she still can't see it. "Sure. Let's see who's right." I carry my rabbit over to the X-ray and sit it down. Six does the same and I go over and pull on the lever. The screen lights up and shows my rabbit has the key. I turn to Six and cross my arms. "I win." She yanks my paper bag off of my face and smiles. "I win." She puts it in her coat pocket as I grab for it. "No. My bag now." She crosses her arms challenging me to take my paper bag back. I shrug. "Fine keep it." I walk over and pick up my rabbit.
  Six picks up her bear and I just stare at her. "You want to burn that?" "Toys are for kids." I smile and that makes her smile. "You should smile more. It looks good on you." She says. I blush and turn away. "Yeah. Same for you." I mutter. We walk to the elevator in silence and I walk into it. "Mono. What are you doing?" "We need to get the key out somehow and I didn't see anything anywhere else." I say. Six shrugs and follows me. The elevator goes down and we find ourselves in the incinerator room.
  I go over and toss my rabbit into the incinerator getting soot on my feet. Six tosses her teddy bear in as well and I pull on the lever. The incinerator turns on and I turn to Six. She's drawing in the soot. I see her draw a smiley face and I laugh. She glares up at me. "I think I'll draw you." She draws a square in the soot and draws two circles inside of it. "There we go." I put my hands on my hips and try to raise my eyebrow but I end up raising both.
  "You look surprised." She starts to laugh and it makes me smile. "You sound nice when you laugh." She smiles at me and I hear the incinerator open. "Well. Time to get the key." I go to climb inside but Six grabs my hand. "No. You'll get burnt on the hot key. Wait for it to cool down." I turn to her. "Your right." She's never been concerned for my safety before. I've always burnt my hands on the key. I sit down and watch Six draw in the soot with her fingers.
  She gets them dirty in the process and she chases me around holding out her hands threatening to cover my face with soot. She tackles me to the ground and draws a smiley face on my cheek. "Nooooo. Not a smiley face. ANYTHING BUT A SMILEY FACE!" She starts laughing and I join her. After we laugh I crawl into the incinerator and grab the key. It's definitely not hot now. I hop out and Six smiles. "What?" "You still have the smiley face." I shrug and walk over to the elevator leaving a trail of footprints behind me.
  I happen to see the bottom of my coat is covered in soot. I pick it up and start wiping it off. Six walks into the elevator with me and watches me dust off my coat. When the elevator reaches the floor above us my coat is mostly clean. Six grabs my hand and drags me upstairs. We head over to the door with the lock and I look at her. "How did you-?" "I saw it just looking around after your trip in the tv." I nod.
  "Ok." I open the lock and remember about those stupid hands. "Shit." I mutter under my breath. "What did you say." Six asks. "Um. It's just dark in here." I turn on my flashlight and walk holding Six's hand in my hurt one. How am I supposed to fight that...THING with my hurt wrist. I sigh as we walk past a mannequin who's strapped to a table. "Mono what's wrong?" I just shrug. "Nothing." We start walking down the hallway with all the body parts in boxes.
  We come to a door where Six will need to boost me up. "Well. Looks like I'm going alone now." I say as I turn off my flashlight as I wait for Six to boost me up. "Nope. Not letting you go alone. Not with that wrist." She looks around and pulls a box over to the door. I smile as she drags it towards the door. When she turns to me she puts her hands on her hips. "What are you smiling about bag boy?" "No. You don't get to call me that. I don't have my bag anymore."
  She shrugs. "I like the nickname." She crawls onto the the box and holds out her hand. I take it with my uninjured hand and let her pull me up. "Thanks." "What are friends for?" She likes quoting me. She crawls through the window and I try to pull myself up with one hand. I eventually fall over the window sill and land on my back. "Ow." Six walks over to me and kicks my side. "OI MONO! DON'T DIE ON ME!" I sit up and smile at her. "Would you miss me that much?" Her face turns red and she pulls on her hood. "Shut up." She walks away and I stand up quickly.
  "Six. It was joke. Come on-" I get cut off by a sound to our left. We both turn and look to see the hand trying to get free from its body. Six's hands wrap around my arm and I push her towards the box we have to move to get away. "Come on pull." We pull the box away and crawl under the table. The hand gets free and scuttles away like a spider. Six instinctively reaches for my hand and I reassuringly squeeze it.
  We run and the hand crawls out from under the table in front of us. "JUMP!" We both jump at the same time and I let go of Six's hand and grab onto the table. My wrist hurts from the impact but I pull myself up anyways. Six turns to me and gives a small smile. "I'm sorry for walking away earlier. I would miss you." There's a slight blush on her cheeks as she says it. I reach out putting my hand on her cheek and rubbing my thumb across it. "I'd miss you too." I feel my face heat up as I say it but it's true.
  Six smiles and grabs my hand. "Let's get out of this place. Together." I smile softly and squeeze her hand. "Yeah. Together." We stand up and I have to let go of her hand. "Ok Six. The hand will probably chase us so run for the shelves. We will climb up and we'll crawl through the vent up there. Ok?" She nods. We run and jump down from the table and the hand scuttles up behind us. "JUMP AND CLIMB NOW!" I yell as I jump Six lands beside me on the shelves and climbs with me.
  I feel the shelves shake as the hand starts climbing too. We reach the top and I shove Six into the vent crawling in backwards behind her. When the hand crawls into the vent I kick it and it reels back. Six grabs my arm and drags me out the vent. We land on a disturbingly human shaped bag. Six turns to me. "Stop doing stupid things or I'll kill you myself." She threatens. I smile. "Ha! Yeah right!" She punches my shoulder and I grab it. "Ow. Yeah. You will. Jeez." She giggles and my smile widens. "That sounds beautiful."  She stops and looks at me. "T- thanks I guess." I stand up and pull her up with me. I put my hand on her cheek. "Everything about you is beautiful." Her face turns red and so does mine.
  "Same. Your really cute Mono." My face gets a shade redder and she lightly touches my cheek with the soot smiley face. "Somehow the face stayed." She murmurs. I smile. "Come on. Let's go. We can talk when we don't have a hand chasing us." She nods and we jump off the body shaped bag. We walk into a room and hear banging in the vents above us. "Run." We run forwards towards a table leading to some shelves halfway there the hand falls from the vents and scuttles away.
  We jump up onto the table and the shelves and crawl forward. We jump down and I see the hammer in the middle of the room. Six goes over to it and picks it up. "Let's get rid of that disgusting thing." I stand beside her and the hand crawls out from under the table with the power core on it. Six swings the hammer down and I hear the sickening crunch of bones. It crawls away and I turn to Six. "Nice." She nods looking around for the hand. It crawls up behind her and I point. She swings the hammer and hits it again with another crunch.

One more.

    I think waiting for it to scuttle out. It doesn't show a finger. Suddenly something tackles me from behind. "HIT IT SIX!" I scream as I struggle against the hand. She hesitates and I look her in the eyes. "KILL IT!" It starts squeezing my chest and I struggle to breathe. I try to take in a breath but it's hard to. Six swings the hammer and hits the hand as well as me. The hand goes limp and I go flying through the air and hit a wall. I groan and Six runs over. "MONO! TALK TO ME! I SWEAR IF YOU DIE ON ME NOW-!" "You'll bring me back to life to kill me?" I ask as I painfully turn over onto my aching back. She laughs as tears start to stream down her face. "Yes." She pulls me forward into a hug and I hug her back.
  She rubs my back and I wince. "Ow. My back hurts from that hammer. You got a good arm on you." She giggles. "Yeah. I wish I didn't hurt you though." I push away to look her in the eyes. I wipe her tears away with my thumbs. "Don't cry Six. I'm just happy to be with you." She smiles and stands up pulling me with her. "Go take care of the box and I'll get the glowy thing on the table."  I nod and go over to the box with the mannequin body parts in it. I pull it away as Six walks over with the "glowy thing" as she calls it.
  She tosses it through the glass window and breaks it. We crawl through and she picks it up again. As we walk past the other mannequin she looks up at it scared. "Don't worry it would've already come to life if it wanted to hurt us." I say. She nods and when we walk out of the room she sits the power core down and turns to me. "Mono. I have a question." She kicks at the floor as she talks. "I... Mono. How do you really feel about me?" I take a step back. "What?" "How. Do. You. Really. Feel. About. Me?" She makes sure I hear every word. I look her in the eyes as she lowers her hood. "I want to know. Because I really like you."