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Mono opened the door. Again. Magenta light poured into his vision, the same light behind every door he ran into, bringing him to someplace new yet maddeningly similar. The tower was a maze of madness he forced himself to plunge through, room after room. Door after door. Trusting that he'd find her eventually. Find the key to filling the gap inside him. This room was different. He cautiously walked in, the strange gravity of the tower enabling familiar toys to drift in the air. Dolls littered the corners of the room, warped photos were hung on the wall, strange figures crossed out. A familiar music box playing a recognizable tune sat in the center. Then Mono's eyes stopped to her.
She was wrong. It was impossibly unsettling, to have a key element of your life that could only be described as right be so so wrong. The wrongness of the sight seeped into Mono’s bones, a fiery devastation that froze him.
This awful place had corrupted his Six, leaving a monstrous shell. She was larger than any of the common horrors they've faced together. Her arms were impossibly bent and twisted. She hunched over, her hair creating a curtain that fell from her triangular hood. Her yellow raincoat glowed in the magenta hues.
Mono stood still as her arm creeped out, grabbing the music box and holding it close, a prize to protect.
A quiet pause, excluding Six’s noises and the lulling tune of the music box. Mono did the only thing he knew to do, an action so comfortably familiar to him.
“Oi!” She perked up, moving forward.
“Hey!” Another step.
He called her and she came. Mono watched as Six took out the music box, gently settling it beside him, as if to share. A touching gesture considering she didn't seem capable of speaking or full reason.
Mono enjoyed the tune with her for a moment. It was a beautiful, sorrowful thing. The lever automatically moving round and round, leaving you in an irresistible trance. He remembered when he first met Six, she was crept over the same music box, just smaller. Turning the lever round and round as it was now. A cold beam of light illuminated that whole scene, a fragile one broken by his interference.
Broken by his interference.
That was it.
That was how to get her back.
Without the lull of her music box, why would Six stay here?
Mono observed the room once more. There. In a suitcase at the far back, a wooden hammer lay. It was perfect. He slowly made his way around Six, who didn't take notice, and hauled up the hammer. Dragged it by the music box. Time to make a blow.
He hesitated. This could go wrong in so many ways. This six was unpredictable, would she go hostile? He couldn't count on her understanding, at least for some time. He didn't want to take the lonely way. But he had to risk it, for her. He saw no other way out. He gazed at her, who gazed lovingly at the music box. It hurt him to think he'd be destroying something she loved so dearly. A blow to the music box would surely be a blow to her, and that was precisely why it was the object chosen to bind her to the tower.
Nothing was just ever easy, wasn't it? More uneventful moments passed, and Mono dropped the hammer with a huff, sat against the music box and sighed.
What other options were there? He racked his brain, and thus emerged nothing.
Feeling down, he made no effort to think or do more and hummed the tune himself. He understood it's appeal.
He heard Six made a noise, and he looked up to see her turned towards him. For a few moments, it was as if the music box didn't exist. They were two of a kind.
Mono smiled, ending the humming, afraid if he subjected himself to the tune as much he'd be in the same position as her. He once again ceased to exist, and the music box was her spotlight.
It felt nice, having that spotlight for a moment. Being her light in the darkness, rather than her chains.
Oh.
Yes.
Yes.
That was it. The way out.
In that moment there was an exit. They just had to run to it.
Mono stepped up, walked to the door, began humming, and ran.
Ran through twisting hallways, through doorways of magenta light. Six kept a steady pace behind him the whole way, slowly shrinking. Desperately clinging onto his notes. It was working. He'd have her back.
A crack in the floor, then it broke through. A mass of flesh and a large eyeball blinked at him. Startled, Mono tripped over it and shrieked.
On the floor he looked back past the flesh to see Six pause, the distant sounds of the music box still playing.
She turned around.
No. No, Six. Don't go.
He stood up, tense as he continued humming and she finally turned his way, the relief nearly punching the breath out of him, and they trudged on. Mono stayed wary for cracks, of which many appeared, more of that flesh threatening to swallow them up.
The tower crumbled around them as they ran, revealing an ocean of flesh and eyes. The workers in the walls. Gaining up on them.
Six refused to turn away from his humming, and in response the music box got louder, and he sensed her slowing down.
That was how it was going to be? Fine. He'd hum louder, stronger.
The endless run became a battle for Six's attention. Mono refused to lose breath, this place wouldn't have her.
Finally, Six was almost her normal size. Soon they'd truly be running together. Just a bit longer. Oh, the flesh and eyes were so close, Mono made eye contact with one of them, the pupil boring into his.
A shriek. Mono stopped and turned, Six morphing back to her original self. Realizing she needed a moment to stop with the predator just feet away, he ran to her without hesitation and grabbed her hand as the flesh closed in around her, still enduringly humming the tune.
No, no. This wouldn't happen. He held on. He saw a doorway behind him, and beyond that the exit. The white static. They were so close.
Mono suddenly kicked the mass, causing it to draw back for a split second, which was all he needed to pull Six out.
She fell forward, and Mono wished to let her rest and process but the flesh was already regaining itself, so he pulled her along, and she was able to run.
They met eyes as rubble and flesh surrounded all sides. It didn't matter. They were going to make it. Mono smiled. Six smiled back. And so, as they made way to the exit they hummed the tune in sync, it was glorious and blissful. Mono didn't know one could feel so light and happy when the world literally fell around them.
Mono began humming out of sync, the notes off key and late. Who could blame him? He'd been exhausting his voice for a small eternity. He was tired and out of breath, but that's okay. He’d stop for just a split second to catch it, to get that last burst of energy needed to escape. A split second was also just all the tower needed to break the pathway underneath his feet.
Six immediately took notice at the exit, sprinting back to catch him. It was unfortunately too late, and she watched her fall. A familiar scene. She watched as Mono vanished into a void of darkness and flesh, and finally did the tower calm down. All was well once again.
Six hunched over and mournfully hummed the tune at that ledge, the exit outlining her with white. She hummed and hummed to that void until there was nothing left in her, no more to offer. Then she left. It didn't matter if it was under different circumstances. It didn't matter if she was remorseful. She always left.
Mono was drowning. He was falling, and he had plunged into an ocean of flesh and eyes and darkness and sorrow. Even if there was no water, the feeling forced its way down his throat, filling his lungs until he couldn't breathe.
In the dark surrounded by the flesh, he stood face to face with realization and understanding. Realization and understanding looked like a chair atop a fleshy hill. He was in a deluge of the inevitable.
Flesh. So much flesh. The word was beginning to lose its meaning.
It was that darn chair again, looking so smug. Could chairs be smug? The eyes probably were.
Perhaps he would have cried. Screamed in terror or rage. Laughed like a maniac.
Instead, as he once again made the slow and dreadful climb to his seat, he hummed. That same tune that imprisoned his friend, saved her, and cast him back to his fate.
He sat on the chair, still humming. Didn't bother to register the fleshy mass closing in on him. Didn't bother to look at the dark void he was transferred in. There was nothing left to live for or comprehend, except the song.
As the years passed by and the walls closed in, Mono didn't stop humming. As he grew into a man, he didn't stop humming.
As Mono and Six once again made their way to the Pale City, he didn't stop humming.
The children heard the mournful tune hummed by residents, through the ever-corrupting television. The tune’s presence stamped in the world of Nowhere, in its history, forever radiating through the city.
The duo would hum along as they traveled through the city, and once again through the tower. It never stopped.