Buttons for Eyes

By Cofax
cofax@mindspring.com


January 2005
For Jesemie's Evil Twin

~~~
Buttons for Eyes


There was a package on her chair.

Scully approached it carefully, looking around the office for clues to its origin. But there was nothing, just the dreary light of late December through the high windows, and a single strand of garland Mulder had suspend vertically from one of the overhead lamps. It wafted in the breeze from the open door, more unsettling in its solitude than an undecorated office would have been.

Mulder was nowhere to be seen.

The package was a small parcel in brown paper, about five inches by twelve. Scully put her briefcase on the floor next to her desk, hung up her coat and scarf, and tapped the "on" key on her computer with one toe, all the while keeping her eyes on the package.

It didn't move. Scully leaned over and cocked her ear towards it. It didn't tick, either. Or smell.

She picked up a pencil and prodded the package with the eraser end. The stiff paper didn't give as she poked at it; instead the entire thing slid sideways on the slick vinyl of her chair.

This was ridiculous. Just because they'd recently had some narrow escapes, and they were certain the office was bugged, didn't mean the Consortium would set a bomb in her office. It would be far easier to attack her outside the confines of the Bureau, after all.

Shrugging once, Scully picked up the package. It was light, a little squishy. The tape at one end wasn't all the way affixed, and she worked that loose with one nail. Inside was more paper, this time brightly-colored, with -- she snorted despite herself -- Scooby Doo and Shaggy dancing around a Christmas tree.

Not even the Smoking Man would use Scooby Doo wrapping paper. Intrigued, she tore the paper carefully. A small card slipped out, and she caught it before it fell to the floor.

Scully, I know we're too busy for pets, but I thought you might like some company. No signature, but then she knew that hand as well as she knew her own.

Scully pressed her lips together, suppressing a smile, and looked at the door. No Mulder, still. Where was he?

Inside the silly paper was... a stuffed animal. A very odd, somewhat flat, stuffed animal. It was a cat, maybe, or possibly a rodent of some kind, stitched together out of scraps of different cloth--some velvet, some plaid--with large mismatched buttons on its lopsided face. It was ugly in the way that was sometimes cute, clearly handmade, and on the middle of its chest was a large red heart, just a little askew.

The velvet was very soft. She petted it, running a finger softly around the border of the heart. The stitches on the heart were sloppier than the rest, tied off in an awkward knot near the bottom, as if the sewer hadn't done this before.

Scully swallowed. She wasn't going to cry. But it was close. She scrabbled for a tissue, and blew her nose hard, the honking echoing in the empty office.

The cat--she was going to assume it was a cat--went on top of her desk, propped against the lamp. She tucked the card into her wallet. When Mulder came in an hour later, breathless with excitement from a meeting with the Gunmen, she didn't say anything about the gift, or the card. Instead she pulled out his report on their latest case and asked what Tlingit ritual gift-giving practices could possibly have had to do with the mysterious appearance of green mossy stones in the kitchens of two Phoenix housewives.

The cat went home with her, safe inside her briefcase. Until the end of her time in Washington, it sat on the chair next to her bed, and they never once spoke of it.

END




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