Once he saw the stalls selling cheap carnival toys and games, he was in his element. He could at least safely say that he was a master of carnival games. Soon he was in the lead, pulling Lexa along going from stall to stall, winning menial prizes and cotton candy, truly great feats. Lexa was soon just as into it as he was, playing and eating everything in sight. It was all so cheap here that it was a crime not to partake, and he’d gotten all the food in those boxes for free, so he could spend a little bit of money on something like this.

About thirty minutes before the fireworks started, Lexa led him to a small eastern style shrine. It had a small bell behind a donation box which had pieces of paper that were supposed to tell you your luck amount. Bogus obviously, but still integral to a fireworks showing. Lexa took a paper, so he did the same.

Small luck for him.

Well, he’d probably already spent that on the food but, at least it wasn’t bad. He looked up for Lexa’s great luck, only to find that she looked horrified.

“Haven’t seen bad luck for a long time heh.”

“Hey Mr. Small Luck, you’ll probably use all that up finding a penny on the street!”

“Of course, but at least I’ll have the penny!”

He waved the paper in her face and walked away. She laughed and jumped on his back, almost causing his shut-in knees to tumble to the ground.

“Hey!”

“Logic says that I just need to wait the bad luck out. If I’m on your back then nothing bad can happen to me right?”

“I’m not sure that it works like that…”

“Regardless, you’ll have to carry me to the fireworks. Unless you’d rather do it princess style?”

Obviously she was trying to tease him, but the emotionally dull Luke turned that on it’s head.

“That would be easier for me yes.”

“Hey I was kidding!”

He tried to shift her around, but ended up losing his balance, and tumbled down a grassy hill. Amazingly, Lexa was still holding onto him, and wasn’t hurt.

Once she’d realized that they had stopped falling, she started to pull away, but was too close to the side of the hill to pull away without hitting it. He suddenly wondered what her purpose really was for living with him. Was it really just because the old bot had told her to? He stared forward intensely for some sort of clue as to why, but found nothing there. Though he wasn’t… really seeing anything...

Meanwhile, Lexa was totally freaking out as Luke drew closer. She couldn’t say she was totally opposed to this outcome, but she didn’t expect it to come so fast… She put her arms around him and got ready, it was pretty romantic already, right? It was kind of like a book, kissing under the fireworks at night? She was nervous, but she closed her eyes and went for it.... And hit his head. She opened her eyes and looked at him, face down on her lap. Her hands went to the back of his head, which found a lump the size of a fist.

She visibly sighed, and heard a large boom. The first of the fireworks were going off as she hauled him onto her back and started the trek back to his apartment. As she was trudging towards it, a paper dropped out of Luke’s hand. The luck papers. Looked like her’s was right after all.

He couldn’t really remember what had happened last night but… he’d went to the fireworks? Well, as long as he didn’t spend too much. He sat up in bed, or he would have, if he wasn’t tied down! He looked around for an answer, but all he saw was Lexa’s cleanly made bed. Not only the rope around his chest and legs, but his head hurt too. Just then, she walked in, apron around her waist.

“What did you do to me!”

He made sure to yell at her as soon as she walked in, as this was most obviously her doing.

“Preventing you from doing any more damage to yourself numbskull.”

“What?”

“That bump on your head, it’s pretty big, you should probably lay there for a while or you might hurt yourself.”

“So you tie me up.”

“Yep, seems you understand already. Have no fear, I’m going to do everything for you! Clean, cook, hate myself.”

“Hey.”

“All you need to do is lay there and look pretty. Trust me! After all, you got hurt protecting me from that fall. It’s the least I can do.”

That was when he remembered them falling down the hill together. It was her fault for jumping on his weak back anyways… But if she would untie him, maybe it wouldn’t be awful to be waited on for a while.

“Fine, if you untie me.”

“But-”

“No buts, I’ll let you take care of me only if you untie me.”

“Well… just don’t run off then.”

She walked over to him and started to untie the strangely very well tied knots, her hands moving quickly and expertly. The thought of her being into some sort of bondage lover crossed his mind, but he quickly dispelled it. After being untied, he bunched up his sheets near him, and rolled over.

“Just have lunch ready soon.”

“No problem… master.”

She chuckled and bounced into the next room before he could get another word in. Master? She was insane after all… master…

He dozed off for another hour or two before he was awoken again. He was pretty hungry though, and he was sure that Lexa had finished lunch by now.

“Hey, is lunch done yet?”

There was no response. Maybe she’d went out? Oh well, it wouldn’t hurt if he just went into the kitchen for some food. As long as she didn’t know anyways.

He walked into the kitchen, where it was pretty dark. Then he heard a noise. Alert, he took a wooden spatula in hand and moved over to the light switch. He switched it on and immediately saw black, again. Waking up a few minutes later, he found himself in a similar position. Tied up, again. Though not as comfortable as Lexa’s was. As he shook his head to clear his head, he saw something get up from the chair near his bed. It was a robot. An android? It was relatively tall, an antenna sticking out of its head, which was humanlike, but had a visor instead of eyes. There were “eyes” in the visor, but it stuck out from his head a little. He had no mouth to speak of, and the head stuck to a humanlike body with rounded feet at the end, and it was holding a gun. Of course, he would get mugged. In his own house…

“I been waiting for you to wake up for hours! Where the hell is your money!”

“My money?”

“Yeah! M-o-n-e-y, money!”

“If you wanted that why would you rob the poorest apartments in town…”

“Poorest?”

“Look around!”

The robot’s visor moved around, scanning the area, and sat back down.

“Not even a family heirloom…”

“Yep, I’ve got just about nothing.”

“Just about?”

“Well I have a little bit of food at least.”

“Food?! I can’t use that!”

“Nope.”

The robot frantically searched around for anything to take that might be worth a few dollars, but came up empty handed.

“You really got nothing don’t you?”

“If I did I probably would be a bit more scared about a robber in the room. Why did you rob me anyways?”

“Haven’t you ever felt the allure of money and power friend? Well that’s why!”

“So basically you just wanted to rob me.”

“Yeah pretty much.”

Luke sighed and envisioned himself putting his chin to his fist. This was going to require some effort.

“Well what is your name then.”

“My name?”

“Yeah, or production number or whatever you go by.”

“Oh my production code! It’s [email protected]”

“So… Crash then.”

“What’s crash?”

“I’m not going to call you [email protected] one five… whatever. That name’s too long.”

“Oh… well. You don’t need to call me anything you filthy hobo!”

With that the robot waved his fist in the air and ran out of the apartment.

“WAIT YOU DIDN’T untie me….”

The door was probably too large for the doorframe… and if he scratched the walls he would get a healthy earful from Pat. Looks like he was about to depend on Lexa… Which definitely meant he would be there for a while. He looked at the walls. It wasn’t like there was anything on them anyways.

Hours passed.

Still more.

He heard a light beep from his bedside. His shitty alarm clock did that twice a day. Eight A.M. and Eight P.M. so either he had fallen asleep or he had been sitting there in the lonely room for about four hours.

He looked at the walls again.

Had they gotten closer?

No.. that had to have just been his imagination.

He looked again.

His bed had disappeared.

The walls were definitely getting closer.

He stood up, chair still attached to him, and ran to the door. But it was already gone as well. All that remained was one small corner, and he ran to it as the walls molded around his body and fit him into the corner like a cardboard box. Thoughts raced through his mind. Had the robot done this? Why? He- he was trying to- to kill him!? But he had nothing!

He couldn’t even hear ambient noise as the walls rushed towards him, his mind was too loud to even hear splintering wood.

Lexa walked along the road, a couple bags in her hand. She had wanted to buy a few things for the apartment, it looked like shit to be honest. Not that she expected a lot from him, but some decor would have been nice. She wasn’t one to complain however, and could fix the problem just by buying a couple little things here and there. She was even having a couple actual chairs delivered later in the afternoon, the rotting wooden chairs were much more than uncomfortable. While she was walking along the road, someone bumped into her and caused her to drop a bag.

“Hey!”

It was a robot, and he just kept running. But he did yell something back.

“I’d demand an apology but I’m inna hurry!”

With that he turned a corner and was gone. Folks in this neighborhood were real pieces of work…

She sighed as she turned the corner to Luka’s home and from the road she could see that the door to his place was open. Was he airing it out? No… he didn’t care enough to air it out. As she got closer she saw that the door was hanging at a strange angle and started to piece together what she was seeing.

Someone had broken in.

She ran to the splintered door, dropped her bags and kicked what was left of it in.

“Luka? Luke are you here?”

She frantically looked around and dashed into the bedroom. He was there, in the corner, crying. His hands and legs were tied to one of the two chairs in the house, which was now broken. He looked like a tub of play-doh that had smashed itself into the shape of a cube, as close to the wall as he could get. Lexa knelt down in shock and untied his hands and legs. After he realized he was free he whimpered and moved the chair so he could kneel down facing the wall again.

She’d known of his problems but… did the robber do all this? Or was this from… No, she never wanted to believe he’d broken.

She just knelt down with him, and put her arms around his torso. He was shivering. Cold. She wrapped herself as closely as she could around him, and he slowly came back to reality. A few moments later he finally came back to reality to find Lexa as close to him as she could get.

“Wh-what? When did you get back Lexa?”

“Don’t you dare think you can get around talking about what just happened.”

“No, of course not. I’m just… If I’m alone like this and something just happened like the robber droid I… I go into a weird trance. It feels like the walls are closing in, I try to smash myself into the nearest corner. Heh, it’s been awhile since that happened, and-”

WHAP!

Lexa slapped him, looking angry.

“Hey why-”

“You’ve been here alone all this time when this shit happens to you?! How do you think that makes me feel? You sit here suffering, smashing yourself into a corner for who knows how long, and you just laugh at yourself for it?”

“If I can’t find things to laugh at I might as well just off that overlook again.”

“How can you say that?”

“You find that there’s less to laugh at when you’re alone. When this sort of thing happens.”

“You aren’t alone. You’ll never be alone again.”

Luke looked deep into her eyes, searching for the lie that wasn’t there. Suzy had told him so many times that she would never leave him. That was, of course, before he lost his job. That was when he learned what she truly thought. Lexa was so different, he’d only known her a few days but she felt so intense. When she wasn’t messing around with him at least. When she got serious it was… honestly kind of hot. Maybe he’d go crazy more often. That was about when he realized how close she was to him, and he shrugged her off, also noticing the chair he’d broken.

“It’s alright, we can glue the leg back on. We can salvage it.”

“Thanks.”

Supper was quiet that night, and they fixed the door in silence together silently as well. He even helped her pick everything up that had been thrown on the floor as the weird bot went through the house. Thankfully he really didn’t take the food. After that he helped Lexa finish the bedframe up, and they were a pretty good team together. It didn’t take that long either. Having someone else around that actually wanted to get things done wasn’t so bad. Once they’d finished, Lexa looked over at him with a smile.

“So how about that drink with Pat?”

“Pat? Oh… yeah sure.”

He walked down the creaky stairs and instantly her head was sticking out of her window.

“Hey! Pat, you want to come show me how to use those mold things?”

“Well yeah sure, if you’ve got a beer that is.”

“You know I do.”

“Haha, I’ll be right up Luke.”

Back in his apartment his heart was beating quickly. It had been a long time since he had someone else in his house. Wait how did he see Lexa then? No that didn’t matter right now… A moment later he heard a knock on the door and instantly let his landlord in. She was quite surprised to see someone else in his house, and let him know it.

“Did you really find another girlfriend? Luke I’m surprised! She really things you’re good looking?”

“Of course I do! We fell in love at a soup shop!”

“W-what?! No she’s just… I…”

He couldn’t well tell his landlord that he had been saved from killing himself by Lexa, nor that she’d given him these weird bracelets.

“Yeah. She’s my… my girlfriend.”

“That’s really too bad about Suzy, I’d always thought she was a decent catch for someone like you. Turns out she was nothing but a mooch! Lucky you got rid of her in my opinion. I’m just glad you found someone cute like this!”

“Oh you don’t need to be so nice!”

Pat unfolded the chair she had brought up with her. Most of the residents only had one chair, so if she’d been asked over she always brought one. It helped to avoid the awkward sitting conversation as well.

“Anyways, about the mold, let me show you how to apply them.”

She took a few of the sheets and went to the back closet.

“She’s livin’ here with you huh?”

Seeing his horrified face hers softened.

“Relax, I’m here as your friend, not your landlord.”

She squashed the sheets on the small part of wall that was covered in a green moss, and took off a peelable tape off the sides. She then applied it and the sheet stuck.

“There, leave that a few days and we should be rid of the mold! Now if I can get all of you to do it we might get rid of all of it… Now about that beer!”

“Of course Ms. Landlord. Here is thy beverage.”

“I told you, I’m not here as your landlord. So, what’s your girlfriend’s name?”

“Lexa Thickton, nice to meet you!”

“Pat Tano, you as well. You said you met in a soup shop?”

As Lexa fabricated some not entirely false lie, Luke thought about what she’d just said. He didn’t even know her last name up till now. Thickton… he felt like that was a name he knew. Or had known at least. A long time ago.

“Luke? You there?”

“Hmm?”

Pat was nudging his shoulder after he had ignored her question.

“I said, why’d you decide you wanted to go out with her?”

He looked at Lexa, and she winked at him.

“I… well she saved my life.”

“Really? How so?”

“The soup shop got robbed and she saved me from a droids bullet. That was when I decided.”

“Really, how romantic! Maybe you’re better than I thought Luke!”

She laughed, joined in by Lexa and a shaky Luke. Fabricating half lies was one of his strong suits, but it doesn’t mean he felt great about it.