2 The Girl Named Six

Several weeks or months earlier...

I was running for my very survival. I tried to stay away from the bright light of the hunter through the dark forest. I couldn't see his face, but I could hear his loud, noisy footsteps and coarse breathing behind me. I was trying to hide behind a rock to shake him off, but the bulky hunter was still close by. I'll never escape at this rate.

She looked for the closest thing she could use as a distraction, which was a small pebble. If I throw this far enough, the hunter might get distracted. The girl took her chances and threw the rock as far as she could towards a tree in the distance. The rock hit the tree with a smack, and the hunter, hearing as good as a fox, loaded his shotgun and shot in the direction of the tree. The loud bang hurt Six's ears as she tried to crawl away to escape the hunter's grasp. There was a small passage below the tree, where the girl was able to crawl through the exposed roots of it. Alright, he's distracted. Now to finally get away from that psycho.

Once she reached the other side, she continued running through the forest, hoping to get as far away as possible. That distraction won't fool him forever, so I'll have to hurry. The girl then caught notice of something moving above the treeline, blocking the moonlight above her. She saw that there was a boy in the trees, wearing a paper bag on his head, sitting on a tree branch. She was almost mesmerized by the sight of the boy, long enough for her to lose grip on reality. In an instant, the bulky hunter caught up to her and found her, holding his shotgun directly at her face. For some reason, though, he didn't shoot her on the spot. In fact, the hunter spoke to her. He had a very husky, raspy voice that sounded a tad bit British, and was breathing heavily.

"If you want to live to see another day, you will come with me. It's not safe for little girls like you to be running around here, especially at night. You never know what kind of dangerous creatures are lurking in the night, waiting to eat you whole."

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(Meanwhile, back in the present...)

"Please! Go away! Don't come any closer to me!", the girl cried out, shivering, backing away from Mono. She was hiding underneath a bench, curled up into a little ball. She must've been terrified when I was chopping down the door with the axe. I can't really blame her, now, can I? I sure would've had the exact same reaction if some guy came to my room and started chopping at it with an axe of all things! I really didn't think about any of that, did I? Definitely not one of my brighter moments, he thought with a sigh. He tried to slowly approach the girl, but decided to drop the axe first to make her trust him a little better.

The girl was wearing a gray, buttoned-up cardigan that reached to her knees, and messy, dark raven-like hair. Her long black bangs covered over her eyes. Yet, Mono still felt like she was staring right into his eyes. He felt like he was losing himself in thought. Now, the girl seemed to slowly start crawling out from under the bench. Mono started to slowly walk towards her. "Hey, are you okay? I'm not here to hurt you, I swear. I'm sorry about scaring you with the axe, I really am. I'm here to help you," Mono told her. The girl still didn't seem to trust him too much, but she was making an effort to try, at the very least. Mono let out his hand to reach her. The girl started walking closer to him, seemingly trusting his words. "You promise?", she asked. "Of course I do," Mono replied. She tried to let out her hand to gently reach Mono's.

The girl was almost at the point where she would've taken Mono's hand, but at the last moment, she faked him out, and made a run for it. She shoved him off to the side to get a head start away from him. She then ran out the door and made a beeline for the staircase. Mono fell back on his side. Yep, I'm guessing she still doesn't trust me, he thought. Not that I really blame her, though. She probably still thinks I'm a threat or something, doesn't she? Mono decided to take a look around her room, and he saw that the walls were covered in several strikes, probably drawn by her. It could've meant the days she was counting since she was trapped in here. She must've been trapped in here for weeks if that was the case. No wonder she didn't trust me. She must've been desperate to escape this room.

I should probably go back and catch up with her. Maybe I can explain everything to her and she won't see me as a threat. Mono decided to bring along the girl's music box as well, since she left it behind. Maybe this will show her I care. With that, he exited the room and walked up the staircase and out of the basement all over again. When he got upstairs again, he tried looking for where the girl went. He tried searching the hallway first. Let's see here, anything different here? On the ground, he could see a trail of tiny, dirty footprints, that didn't look too much bigger than his. Judging by the fact that he was wearing shoes and the prints he saw were tiny feet, he figured that maybe it was the girl. She really needs to get a pair of shoes, though.

He followed the trail down the hallway to an open door that Mono swore he thought was closed before. Maybe she opened it to find a way out? He gently went into the new room to check it out, but he immediately regretted that choice. Now he was getting much more worried about whose house this was and what they did for a living. In front of him was a family of three, two parents and their teenage son, sitting at a dinner table. Normally, this wouldn't have terrified Mono. That is, if the family didn't look like they had died several months prior. In fact, now that he thought about it, the family looked like stuffed animals you would see in a museum. Only here, someone was sick enough to stuff a human.

And it didn't look like whoever did it did a good job at it, either. Mono could clearly tell that they were stuffed because there was fluff sticking out of their skin. Even so, it practically made his blood crawl. Seeing rotting flesh was one thing, but finding stuffed humans was another. I need to find that girl and fast! Once that's done, I'm getting the hell out of this place! He looked around, and saw that there was an open vent near the side of the room.

The entrance to the vent had already been forcibly opened. Looks like that girl knows her way around. Good to know. With that, Mono tried to climb a cabinet in the room to reach the vent and climb inside. Once he got inside, however, he fell down into the next room, where the girl was already minding her own business. She was trying to pull down on some kind of lever attached to the ceiling, but she didn't seem to be heavy enough to weigh it down. After struggling for a few moments, she let go and fell on her backside. She grunted and cursed under her breath before she got up and noticed Mono was standing near her.

"Oh. It's you again," she said, kind of shocked at him appearing out of nowhere. "Yes, I'm trying to help you," Mono told her, "...and I'm really sorry about the whole axe thing, I'm serious. So can we please try to start over with introductions? Oh, by the way, I brought you your music box. I didn't know if you wanted it back or not, so I brought it along with me." She seemed to be somewhat amused by his consideration. "Alright then. Besides, if we're getting out of this death house, we'll have a better chance of it working together," she told him.

"Okay, then. I'll start. My name is Mono," he told her. "What about you?"

The girl was still a little shy. "You can just call me Six. Nice to meet you, Mono, I guess." Six then got a bit closer to Mono's face, almost like she'd seen something off. "What's with the paper bag over your head?", Six asked him. "I don't really like to talk about it," he replied, slightly anxious.

"You know, I could've sworn I saw a boy wearing a mask just like the one you're wearing a few weeks ago," Six told him. "I was trying to get through the forest to find a place to hide, when I saw a boy climbing through the tree tops. And he was wearing a paper bag on his head, just like you. But then I got kidnapped and found myself here-". Suddenly, something went off in Six's mind. "Wait, how did you get in the house in the first place? And without him noticing?"

"Who is 'him'?", he told her. Him? Who was she talking about? "The man who owns this house. The one who's been setting up bear traps and killing animals and people, and kidnapping children to bring here. I don't know his name, but I just call him The Hunter," Six said.

"Wait, so those dead people in the dining room, and that bag of rotting flesh - he's the guy behind all of that?", Mono asked.

"I'm afraid so. The big guy's been keeping me here in his basement for the past several weeks, maybe even months. I tried keeping track of the days since he took me, but I'm still not sure how long I was down there for," Six told him. "He gave me that music box to entertain myself, though. I'm not really quite sure why he did that. Out of all the kids he kidnapped, at least that I know of, I'm the only one he's been a little soft on."

"Other kids? There are other kids here?" How many other children did this psychopath keep in his house anyway, Mono thought. "Where are they?"

Six gave him a very grim expression. "There were very few of them that I actually got to meet face to face. There was this one kid I knew in particular. I think his name was Decem. I always thought Decem was a nice kid. But one day, the Hunter took him away. Said he was selling him to some buyers from...". At the end, she shivered, like the thought of an unpleasant memory came back into her mind. "...Some buyers from the Maw. That was two weeks ago. Then there was this other kid named Simon. The Hunter actually kept him in here before I got here. He was always a rebellious kid, trying to find a way to escape his basement. He even tried to get me to escape, too, but one day, the Hunter found out about Simon's escape attempt. He then said these exact words to me: 'If you ever try to escape from me again, you'll end up just like this boy right here'. He immediately took away the boy and put me in here. I never saw Simon ever again since that day. I suppose he must've died a while back ago."

Mono was confused by something she said, and the way that she said it. The Maw. What was that? He hadn't heard of a place like that before, so he didn't know anything about it. "What's the Maw?" , he asked her. Six just stared at him, completely dumbfounded. The blank expression of sheer shock on her face was enough to creep Mono out. "What's the Maw?! Have you been living under a rock or something?! How could you not know what the Maw is?! Do you seriously not know?!", she screamed at him.

"What?! I've never heard of it around these parts. I've mainly been trying to stay in the safe zones, and I haven't heard much talk of somewhere called the Maw from them," Mono replied. "It's one of the most dangerous places you could ever go to. Especially as a kid. People from around the globe come there once a year to celebrate one of the biggest and bloodiest feasts of the year. Every year, thousands of guests go into the Maw, but they never come back out. Rarely anyone ever does. I should know. I'm living proof," Six told him.

"You've been there?", Mono asked.

"I barely survived on that godforsaken place of death. Even harder was finding a way out of the Nest. Let me just say this, Mono: the Maw is nowhere you ever want to go. Let's just leave it at that. I don't really like to talk about it," Six said. She noticed that Mono seemed to be stronger than she first thought. If he dragged that heavy axe to free me, he certainly must have some strength. He could definitely be useful, she thought. I definitely need a little more muscle if I want to get into the ceiling, too. Perhaps becoming friends with this boy will be quite beneficial.

"There's something I need you to help with, though", Six told him.

To Be Continued In Chapter 3...