From The Maw

Chapter Seven

  Me and Seven walk past towers of books and we both climb up onto a table blocking a door. We climb up a bookshelf and when we reach the top I see a piano hanging by ropes. I light a candle I spot before jumping onto the piano and causing a few of the keys to play as I land on them. I climb up onto the higher part and run across as it swings towards another bookshelf. I jump and grab onto a shelf and turn to see Seven looking at me from across the gap. He jumps onto the piano and when it swings back towards me he jumps onto the bookshelf next to me. We start climbing up together knocking books off as we climb. We near the top and I see that stupid Janitor come down from the ceiling onto the floor above us. He shuffles away and me and Seven continue our assent onto the same floor as the Janitor. We reach the top and I see a hole where a crank is supposed to go. "Psst, Seven look." I whisper. He looks at the crank hole and nods. We both know what we have to do, find that crank. And I have a sneaking suspicion that it's in the room the Janitor walked into. We sneak into the room and I see a climable stack of books.
  I climb up first with Seven following behind me. We reach the shelf above us and we sneak forward on the shelfs. We climb up onto a higher shelf and I see some toys on a wooden plank in front of us. I know we'll knock them off when we try to go across. I grab a block as the Janitor walks under the plank. I toss the block as far away from the plank as possible as watch as it grabs his attention as it hits the floor. Seven grabs another block and walks over to the first shelf we were on and throws the block in that direction. That gets the Janitor's attention as well and we walk across the plank weaving around toys as the Janitor searches for us on the other side of the room. We walk up to another plank and halfway across I stop dead in my tracks. My music box is sitting on the plank in front of me. I want to stop remembering, I don't want to. I fall to my knees on the plank gripping the sides of my hood.

Come on Six, you can do this, that music box doesn't control you anymore.

  Voice Mono is right. I shouldn't let the music box control me anymore. I stand up and pick up the music box. I then throw it as hard as I can in the other direction. It hits the floor and grabs the Janitor's attention. Me and Seven jump down from the shelfs onto the carpet floor and climb up some books into a room with a suitcase, crank handle, and a tv. A tv.

  I bang on the glass separating me and Mono. He runs over to me and pushes his arms through the tv. He grabs mine and starts pulling me out. Halfway out I feel a hand wrap around my waist and pull me back into the tv, screaming all the way.

  I grimace as I remember that. It was scary and painful. I walk over to the tv and put my hand against it. "I miss you Mono." I mumble. Seven comes up behind me and without saying anything envelops me in a hug. I let him hug me for a while, then I push against his chest lightly and he backs away. "Sorry Six. I just thought you needed that." I smile at him. "Yeah I kinda did." He brightens up and goes over picking up the crank handle. "Let's go." He says enthusiastically. I push the on button on the tv and run away from it as loud music fills the room. I see on a ledge above the tv is another copy of my music box. I just shake my head and watch as the Janitor enters the room. As the Janitor shuffles over to the tv trying to find the power button me and Seven sneak out of the room into the area with the shelfs. We walk forward and crawl under a shelf. We then walk past the boards connecting the three shelfs, around the shelf we climbed up to, and into the area with the hole for the crank.
  Seven puts the crank in the hole and starts moving the crank. It squeaks loudly and the Janitor growls from the other room. Seven comes to the end of the pully and I see he brought up the piano. We run and jump onto the piano together. I see Seven lose his balance on the edge of it. My instinct takes over and I grab his hand as he falls over the edge. This is too familiar. Seven looks up at me with the same look in his eyes as Mono. I couldn't drop him, could I? Finally I grab his arm with my other hand and pull him up. We sit next to each other. "You know, for a second I thought you weren't going to pull me up." Seven says. I stare at my hand. It's the same hand I dropped Mono with, it's the same hand I pulled up Seven with, what's different? I sigh and stand up. "Come on Seven, let's get out of here." He nods and we jump over to a platform with a vent. We crawl through and fall onto a cart full of clothes. Seven takes out his flashlight and turns it on. We jump down from the cart and walk along the tracks. We come across a pipe spitting out steam and a gap in the floor. I jump the gap ignoring the pipe and go over to a door with another eye on it.
  Seven boosts me up and I grab onto the handle opening the door. I look down and see a drop below me, I wait until I see floor and then I drop from the handle. Seven joins me and we walk along the floor and I look down to the see the Janitor below us. We continue forward and we crawl into a vent. This vent has a lot of pipes in it. We continue forward and I stop the light a lantern along the way. I reach out and take Seven's hand as we walk forward. I need comfort right now. Suddenly in front of us a rat scurries away and the Jantior's hand reaches into the vent looking for us. He grabs onto a pipe above our heads and we sneak under his hand quickly. We hurry forward and send another rat scurrying away. We jump through a the vent opening in front of us and fall down onto some dirty clothes. The door behind us bursts open and we run as the Janitor chases us. We slide under a door with a cage holding it up. Seven climbs some cages and I see that I could close the door if I pull on the bars of the cage.
  The Janitor looks around with his hands and I grab onto a bar pulling it free and making the door go down some. I quickly run away as the Janitor grabs onto the breaking cage. He starts looking around again and I go over to the cage pulling on the bars again. Suddenly Seven is beside me and he pulls on the bars too. The bars come free, letting the door drop and we cut off the Janitor's arms. He screams in pain on the other side of the door. I turn to Seven and give a small smile. "Good job friend." He smiles back. "It wasn't a big deal, we need to help each other out anyways don't we?" I nod and we turn to see the vent above us is open. We climb the cages in the corner and climb through into the vent.