The Crouching Thing

By Sarah Ellen Parsons
se_parsons@yahoo.com


Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000
DISTRIBUTION: Wherever you want, just tell me.
SPOILER WARNING: Very mild spoilers for: Everything
including Requiem
RATING: PG-13
CLASSIFICATION: Story, horror
KEYWORDS: Scully, Scully-angst, Skinner
THANK YOUS:  To M. Sebasky and Perelandra for
uber-beta and, Sab, Ropobop, Livia, Alicia and the YV
gang for comments and nit-picks.
SUMMARY:  Sometimes we see things we don't want to
see.


It was there again.  She could see it out of the
corner of her eye as she moved about the bright,
yellow kitchen making breakfast.  It hung about on the
edge of the treeline, a shadow on shadowy leaves, only
occasionally alerting her to its existence by some
deliberate movement out of line of nature.

She wasn't entirely certain when it had first
appeared.  She was inclined to dismiss such things,
even after all her years of exposure to them.  She had
never been a believer.  She had never wanted to see
the things that other people imagined only in
nightmare.

But she'd been drawn in, all those years ago, drawn
into believing in things unseen by the quiet voice of
a man in a darkened motel room as he told her a story
of childhood horror and loss.  The story had drawn her
in because it had been true.  She had known it then,
even if there had been no more proof than a boy's
half-forgotten terror and a man's determination to
find the reasons behind it.

They had uncovered those truths together, and in so
doing had changed her perceptions of the universe for
all time.

Now, she saw things.  Things like what squatted at the
corner of her vision by the bed of hostas Walter had
planted the spring before.  It was a dark, dirty
shadow among the delicate, white blossoms on their
fragile stalks.  It broke one maliciously as she
watched it out of the corner of her eye.  It trampled
another under its filthy feet.  She knew that it had
nothing against the flowers, that destruction was
merely its nature.  It was one of those kinds of
things - destructive without even trying.

She turned her attention from it when she heard the
sound of bare feet on the tile floor of her kitchen.
She smiled as the tall young man stretched, joints
popping to provide him the relief only a good stretch
can.  He was still dressed in jogging shorts and
t-shirt from his run, but the shoes had been discarded
at the door.  Perhaps he had encountered some mud on
his journey.  Or perhaps he simply liked the feel of
cool tile on his feet on a summer's morning.  She had
never thought to ask him the reason for such things
and she didn't ask them now.  She just noted them in
passing, as she did nearly everything, gathering
evidence in case it might become important later.

"Makin' breakfast?"  he asked redundantly, his deep
voice an echo of his father's as were the strong, long
lines of his body.  No stunted Scully genes evident
there, thank God.

"Working on it,"  Scully said.  "Do you think the
others will be ready in time?"

Her son moved past her to the cupboards and began
taking down the dishes.  There would be breakfast for
seven that morning, a fine way to drive away the thing
crouching in the yard, with love and laughter.

"I saw that Kat and Dylan were up and getting ready
when I got back from my run.  And you know the kids
have been glued to the TV watching the parade since
some ungodly hour this morning,"  he said.

"Virtue of sleeping in the family room,"  Scully
commented.

"They made a fort out of the couch cushions, like Will
and I used to.  I saw Simon's head poking out of it
while he watched the float with whatever that Japanese
superhero thing is that all the kids like,"  he told
her.

"Well, if you would just find some nice girl and
settle down instead of breaking hearts all over the
Eastern Seaboard, you'd know what all the kids were
into, too,"  Scully said, rummaging under the counter
for the waffle iron.
    
"Excuse me?"  her son laughed.  "Who are you, and what
have you done with my mother?"

"Oh, I've just decided I had to get in one mom-like
thing per day.  I was starting early this morning, and
you happened to be here,"  Scully said, nearly
dropping the waffle iron when she glanced out the
window and saw its wizened form digging in her rose
bed like a dog.  She must have made some exclamation,
because her son was at her side, a concerned look on
his face.  He turned his brown eyes toward the yard,
but she could tell from their blank stare that he was
unable to see it there, white toothed and grinning,
ripping at the roots of her prize roses.

"What's the matter, Mom?" he asked.

"Just jumping at nothing," she said.  "Too many years
of having to watch my back.  A shadow is enough to set
me off these days."

Better to lie, she thought.  Better to be mysterious,
to not tell too much.  Her family was practical.  They
would see her ability to see the thing not as an
ability, but as she would have viewed it when she was
younger - as a sign of mental disturbance.  Or
perhaps, a sign of age, though no one in her family
had ever suffered the loss of faculties that crippled
so many.

She wished her children to ignore her white hair and
wrinkling skin, to ignore it as the badge of impending
loss it was.  She wanted them to believe that life was
long and actually improved us, that people were wiser,
better, more knowledgeable later than early.  She
upheld the myth concocted to keep the young from
learning what their elders really were - people no
better than themselves - and despising and murdering
them.  Or putting them in the Home because of their
failing mental faculties.  She, like the others her
age, wished to keep her children sweet-breathed,
unequipped, suggesting to them that there was
something more than regret and decrepitude up ahead.

It was important that they believed the lie of her
invincibility, of her superiority, in case what she
was seeing had to be revealed.  Because Scully was not
suffering from frailty or lack of vision, but from an
excess of it.  In all her years of searching for
hidden truth, for things lost, her gaze had pierced
the veil between the worlds.  And it had brought back
with it a shadow that now haunted her and blighted
what should have been a time of comfort and quiet
winding down.

She was not in need of psychiatric care, but more in
need of a remedy.  A method to close the door that the
thing was using to access her plane of existence, to
access her yard and her life.  Perhaps she could
contact the Calusari, though this thing was not really
in their realm.  Perhaps there might be a priest
somewhere who still believed in such things, and who
could perform an exorcism.

She didn't want to look at it any more, to watch its
pathetic antics.  She wanted it gone.

"You know, I've read through all those case files,"
her son said.

"What?"  she said absently as she watched it pissing
on her prize John F. Kennedy.

"Yeah, I thought they might give me something really
unique for my dissertation,"  he told her.

"And?"

"And I was right.  I've never seen anything like it.
But are you sure he wasn't crazy?"  her son asked
tentatively.  "I know you and Dad both say he wasn't.
But the stuff he wrote.... There are ten or twenty
dissertations worth of paranoia there alone.  Not to
mention the textbook narcissism, megalomania and
depression."

"That's no way to talk about him, Michael,"  Scully
said, not really able to be irritated.  She knew
that's what Mulder's reports must have read like.

"I guess I still just don't understand what he was to
you both,"  he said.  "That you kept looking for him
all those years.  That he had such a hold on you.  It
was more than clear that he admired you, Mom, even
though what he had to say about Dad was less than
complimentary sometimes."

"Your father was in a difficult position, then,"
Scully said, putting batter mix in a bowl.  "He had to
do a number of things he didn't want to do.  He
thought he was protecting us, but that's not the way
it seemed to Mulder.  You have to remember, he didn't
know everything your father knew, just like your
father didn't know everything Mulder knew.  And I
don't know why you want to go digging through all that
stuff anyway.  We've put it away for a reason.
There's just no use dredging it all up now."
    
"Like I said,"  Michael told her, getting eggs out of
the refrigerator, "he's an interesting personality.
Like Sherlock Holmes or something.  Larger than life.
And considering how much he affected our lives, even
though he was gone...  I thought he might make a good
subject, but there's a lot of stuff that wasn't in the
record. "
    
"Of course there is,"  Scully told him.  "You don't
have any of his personal things.  You just have the
reports he showed to other people."

"You mean there's more?  I mean, I saw you had his
power of attorney.  If you've got his private papers...
Mom, you've got to let me have them!"  Michael said,
going back for the milk.

"I don't have to do any such thing."

Scully carefully cracked eggs into her bowl of mix
while it leaped in agitated fashion right in the
center of the lawn, on the edge of the shade thrown by
the trees.  It was angry.  Its feet tore at the grass
and kicked it up like a bull getting ready to charge.

"Why not?"  Michael asked.  "Don't you want me to be
fair to him?  How can I truly represent him with just
the public documents?  If you know where his personal
stuff is, isn't it only right that I see that as well?
 Maybe he won't come off like such a crackpot then."
    
"He'd come off as even more of a crackpot, then,"
Scully said.

It had thrown itself upon the grass and was rolling
and clawing and foaming at the mouth.  She added milk
and got out the mixer.

"It was all over a long time ago, Michael,"  Scully
told him.  "I know you've always been interested in
him, in our work.  More than you should have been, I
think.  I don't know why it was you who had that
fascination any more than I can understand how you
ended up as a psychologist and historian, considering
your father's and my background.  But it has to stop
somewhere.  And writing your book on a footnote of FBI
history and a mysterious disappearance isn't going to
do anything but dredge up a lot of trouble that's
better off buried.  It can only hurt the few people
left alive who still remember it."

"Like you?"

"I'd be one of them, yes,"  Scully said.  "Your
father'd be another.  And then there's always Mulder's
sister, and her family."

"The ones in Arizona?"

"Yes,"  Scully said.  "They don't need to be reminded
of all that mess.  They don't need you dredging up
information on The Project, or the clones, or the
smallpox bees or any of it.  That woman has suffered
worse torture than any ten people can be expected to
survive in a lifetime.  She doesn't need some boy
writing a book making her brother look like a madman.
 Especially because he wasn't.  He was right.  It
doesn't matter what he was like, only that he figured
it out.  That he figured it out in time so we were
able to stop it."

"But you can have no real understanding of how he
figured it out - how he did it, if you have no feel
for him as a human being,"  Michael argued.  "I mean,
you knew him, Mom.  And you and Dad almost never
mention his name.  Even when we were kids.  Even when
you were still looking for him, when you were still
carrying on his work.  We never heard any Mulder
stories.  We never heard about things he said, or
things he did, or much of anything at all.  I've seen
pictures of him.  I've watched that tape of him at the
UFO hearing where he says he doesn't believe in them
about a million times.  I've watched the episode of
"Cops" where he makes fun of you and treats you like
crap and runs around like a total lunatic.  I still
have an incredibly unclear understanding of him as a
human being.  What was he like?"

Scully watched it out the window.  It had scurried
over to the fence beside the driveway.  It had Simon's
basketball in its clutches and was pounding it down
over and over onto the pointed top of the picket
fence.  If she didn't stop it, her grandson's toy
would be destroyed.  It was always doing things like
that.  Trying to get her attention.  Ever since it had
first appeared.

She thought back.  When exactly had she first seen it?
 It seemed to her that it had been hanging around
forever, but it hadn't been.  But remembering its
advent was very nearly the same thing as trying to
remember what Mulder had been like.  Something you
knew very well, but was just out of reach of your
conscious mind.  Something just barely beyond you.

"What does it matter, anyway, Michael?"  Scully asked
as she ignored its antics with the basketball and
poured batter into the waffle iron.  "He's a tiny
footnote of history.  He wasn't here to do any of the
work.  He just pointed the way."

"You mean like Galileo or Newton,"  Michael told her
obstinately, with the mulish expression on his face
that so reminded her of his father when he was in no
mood to be argued with.

It had been with them, with her, since she had retired
to this big house in the country.  The house with the
big yard and the good driveway for grandchildren to
play in safely, so different from the one they'd lived
in in the city, when she and Walter had still been
working.  Had she seen it before?  She thought not.
It seemed to be a phantom of her leisure time.
Something to blight what should have been her golden
years of reminiscence and basking in the glory of her
happy family.

She didn't remember when she'd first noticed it.  But
it had been out of the corner of her eye.  And since
then, she'd seen it often.  Usually in the yard, but
sometimes in the basement when she took down the
laundry, or in the corner of the upstairs stairwell,
waiting to clutch at her as she walked by.  It seemed
to always be somewhere, though sometimes it would
vanish outside, and she would not see it for days,
only to spy it later, in the yard, dirty and matted,
chomping on a vole or eating old snow.

"These are not things you want to know,"  Scully said,
shutting the iron to begin breakfast.  She turned on
the oven, so she could place the waffles inside to
keep them warm until the rest of the family assembled.

"Why?  Was he an asshole? Some of the greatest men in
the world have been total assholes, Mom, it doesn't
change what they did,"  Michael said.  "What could you
possibly tell me about him that could shock me or
anyone?"
    
She looked up and jumped.  It was peering in the
window, leaving smeary, dirty traces on the panes from
its dripping nostrils.  It attached its dry lips to
the window in an obscene parody of a kiss and then
slipped down out of sight again.

"What's the matter with you this morning, Mom?"
Michael asked.  "Asking about him can't possibly be
upsetting you this much, can it?"

"I touched the waffle iron,"  Scully lied.  "It was
hot."

(cont. in part 2)

The Crouching Thing
Part 2
Disclaimer and notes in Part 1



"Are you ok?"  Michael was concerned.  He was a good
person.  All her children were.  She was very lucky.

"Yes, I got my arm off in time.  I wasn't burned,"
she said.  "And asking about Mulder doesn't upset me.
I am just amazed that you're so interested after all
this time.  No one's been interested in him before."

"That's not true.  We were always interested.  I've
talked about it with Kat and Will.  In fact, we talked
about it a lot back when we were kids and you and Dad
were so obsessed with finding him that you were hardly
ever home.  Turns out we were all sort of afraid to
ask you back then.  We knew you were working on
finding him and that you never did.  Then, when we
grew up, we figured, why stir up the past?  We didn't
want to make you feel bad,"  Michael said.  "But
things are different now.  You and Dad have both been
retired for years.  What can it possibly hurt?  And
don't you want the story to be told while you're still
here to make sure it gets done right?  I mean, how
wrong can you go when it's me that's doing the
telling?"

"There are things about the story that are nobody's
business,"  Scully said.  "Things that have nothing to
do with Mulder's work or what happened to him."

"But things that do shed light on his personality,
right?"  Michael asked.

"Yes,"  she replied, taking out the first golden brown
waffle.  She sprayed the iron again and added more
batter to cook.  The completed treat went into the
oven to warm.

"And you don't trust me to have any discretion?"
Michael asked.  "You think I'll violate him in some
way?"

"I don't think it's something that anyone needs to
know to understand what he accomplished,"  Scully
said.  "People deserve some privacy."

It was skulking now near the garage, and she could see
why.  Walter was coming home from the store and an
orange juice run, pulling his car inside.  The sight
of Walter always seemed to drive it mad, and it was
slavering and clawing on the siding, bloodying itself
in its impotent rage.  That was mostly what it was,
helpless rage, trapped somehow nearby her in a
horrifying, twisted shape.  She could sense its rage
whenever she drew near.  She liked to keep it out of
the house and tried to do so by ignoring it, no matter
what it did, and lighting candles.  She didn't know if
the candles helped, but they helped her to feel
better, anyway.

Her husband came in the door, and she could see it
there in the darkness of the garage, crawling in his
shadow.  He slammed the door in its face, unaware of
its presence, of its existence.  He placed the grocery
bags on the counter and smiled at their son as he
began to unpack.

"Good run this morning?"  he asked, deep voice an
older version of the young man's before him.

"Not nearly as good as the one Mom's been giving me
since then,"  Michael said.  "Or would that be
run-around?"

"About what?"  Walter asked, folding up the bag and
putting it away before beginning on the next one.

"Mulder,"  Scully said, putting the next waffle in the
oven and pouring more batter in the pan.

It was crawling up the drainpipe now, and she was glad
that everyone was awake if it was going to get inside
the house.  She didn't like it when it came inside in
the dark.  She would lie awake and feel its eyes on
her, watching.  Sometimes she could feel its foul
breath on her hair or its chilling touch on her cheek.
Unlike most people, when things went bump in the
night, she always knew what they were.  Better that it
came in the daytime, when she could keep an eye on it
and not have to wait for it to touch her.

"The dissertation again,"  Walter said, voice
carefully neutral, but it was obvious he was
displeased.  She'd seen that look on his face a
thousand times as Mulder had explained why again they
had no evidence or why again they were over budget.

"I know you don't like the idea of it, Dad,"  Michael
said stubbornly.  "But who better to get the truth
down on paper than someone who knows the people who
worked on it?  And who knew Mulder better than you
two?  His own sister didn't, and doesn't, because I've
talked to her."

"You've what?"  her husband was very angry now.
They'd long ago decided Samantha's privacy was
inviolable.

"I mailed her and got permission to call.  She gave me
a very clear idea of what he was like as a boy.  What
she remembered.  I didn't pry about what she suffered.
 I didn't make her relive her abduction.  That's all
documented.  She was actually very nice.  She liked
the idea that someone would try to understand him as a
person.  But she told me that I should ask you.  That
you knew him best,"  Michael explained.  "How could I
tell her that the two of you never talk about him?
She's under the impression that you're his friends."

Scully slammed the lid down on the waffle iron as she
put more batter inside.  

She couldn't see it, so she listened for sounds coming
from upstairs.  Sounds not made by her daughter and
son-in-law as they got ready to come down for
breakfast.

"We spent the better part of our lives finishing what
he started.  Trying to find out what happened to him,"
 Walter said coldly.  "I think that makes us his
friends."

"But did you like him?  Was he nice?  Did he have any
human feelings at all, or was he just some
alien-hunting, obsessed, paranoid lunatic?  Because
that's how he comes off on the public record,"
Michael stuck by his guns.  "You know that Chief
Inspector Green wrote about him in her memoirs.  You
know the way she smeared him, the kinds of things she
said about him.  I mean, she insulted the poor man
about every way it's possible to insult someone, right
down to calling him a lousy lay.  If you are his
friends, don't you want to do something about that?
Don't you think it's fair to him to let people know
what he was really like?"

"Walter, could you take over, please?"  Scully asked,
turning to her husband and nodding at the waffle iron.
 "I'll tell the kids to come to the kitchen.  We're
almost ready."

"Sure,"  he said, and stepped forward to do as she
asked.

"So is this how it's going to be?"  Michael demanded.
"You're just going to pretend like he doesn't even
exist.  Like he never existed.  Just like you've been
doing all these years.  And you're going to let people
smear him and lie about him and call him a crackpot
even though you're in the position to do something
about it.  Some friends!"

"It's no one's business, Michael,"  Scully said
calmly, shaking her head at her husband, who looked
about ready to intervene.  "But if this is going to be
such an issue in our relationship with one another,
then I'll get his things down from the attic.  That's
where they've been all these years.  You can read them
and ask us questions if you think it will help.  But I
don't think you'll find anything useful in them.  I'll
unlock the trunk after I send Kat and Dylan
downstairs.  You can go and look through them after
breakfast."

"And I'll find what that's upset you this much?"
Michael said.  "You always get incredibly calm
whenever you're really upset, like when Grandma died."

"I'm fine, Michael,"  Scully told him heading for the
stairs, but he followed her and took her arm.

She could see it on the landing, a dark blot against
her wainscoting.  It was grinning at her and her son.
She was glad Michael couldn't see it.  That he didn't
know where to look.  That he didn't know how.

"Tell me what it is.  What you don't want me to find
out,"  Michael said.  "It will be better if you tell
me than if you just let me read it.  It will be better
for you and me both."

"If you think so, you're the psychologist,"  Scully
answered her son, but she was looking at the thing.
It was quiet now, waiting for her to approach.  It
knew she noticed and acknowledged it, and that was the
only thing that seemed to make it content.  It waited.

"Tell me,"  Michael pressed, his hand on her arm more
a support now than a restraint.

"Mulder is your sister's father,"  Scully said simply
looking into her son's warm brown eyes.  "We never hid
the fact that there's a gap between when Kat was born
and when your father and I were married."

"Right, she was four before you got married,"  Michael
said, shaking his head trying to assimilate the
information.  "We kids figured it was just one of
those independence things. You're both pretty strong
people, and we know Dad was married before.  We
figured it just took you both a while to decide if
that was what you wanted.  None of us ever thought
that... I mean, it never occurred to us."

"I didn't know I was pregnant when they took him,"
Scully said, still watching the thing.  "Mulder never
knew about her.  And we never found him to tell him.
We didn't want you children feeling strange about each
other.  You were a family.  You were ours.  You were
too young to know there was ever anything else.  There
was no reason to tell you, or to drag you into it.
That's it.  That's the only thing."

"Were you in love with him?"  Michael asked gently.

"I can't explain what we were to each other,"  Scully
said.  "You can never really know something like that
unless you're a part of it.  But "in love" was never
what we were.  "In love" is something so pale and
trite that it could never scratch the surface.  If it
hadn't been for Kat, and for Walter, I would have died
without him and we would never have known each other.
Go back to the kitchen now, and I'll unlock the trunk.
 You can start after breakfast."

"I'm sorry, Mom,"  Michael said soberly.  "I had no
idea."

"I know that,"  Scully said, patting his hand where it
lay on her arm.  "I'm the one who gave you no idea,
remember?"

She stood at the foot of the stairs looking up at the
thing as her son returned slowly to the yellow
kitchen.  Then she began to climb. It scurried on
ahead like an over-anxious puppy on a walk, keeping
just out of reach but near enough to trip her if it
stopped too long.

On the second floor she stopped at the door to the
guest room.

"Kat?  Breakfast is almost ready.  Get the kids to the
table, will you?"  she called, amazed at how normal
her voice sounded.

"No problem, Mom."  It wasn't her daughter, but her
son-in-law who replied.  Kat was still in the
bathroom, having inherited her mother's propensity for
soaking in a hot tub.

Scully walked the length of the hall and opened the
door to the attic. It was pitch black above her, and
cold, though it was summer.  It smelled dark and
dusty, and she knew the thing awaited her there,
clutching toward her in the darkness.

But it never paid to be frightened, and Scully stepped
forward into the darkened space, feeling the wall for
the light switch and the floor for the first of the
stairs upward.

It was then that it attacked.

She could feel it around her, cold and dry and lightly
touching.  It brushed her ankles, it touched the back
of her neck, it grazed the top of her head.  Scully
flailed, arms windmilling to fend it off, make it back
away.  She stepped backward toward the safety of the
light.  It stayed back when there was light.

It touched her again on the cheek, a light touch but
horrible and more fleshly than she ever recalled it.
She flailed her arms again, and this time her hand
made impact with something truly of flesh.  She heard
it strike the ground with a thud and a crack, as if
something was horribly broken.

She sank down on the steps, pulled her robe tighter.
She felt for the light switch and flicked it on. The
bat, she could now see, was small and light colored,
its wings folded in like a packing tent, a mouse with
backpacking equipment. It had a sweet face, like a
deer, though blood drizzled from its head. It reminded
her of a cat she'd once seen as a child, shot with a
BB in the eye.

In the light of the dim bulbs hanging from bare cords
in the cavernous space above her, she could see it
once again.  It awaited her at the top of the stairs.
Its grin was back.

She calmed herself and rose.  She walked toward it.
But this time it refused to give her any ground,
hovering there, near the trunk packed full of Mulder's
belongings.  As if it secretly coveted them, though
they were as useless to it as they were to him now.

She reached up and took the key from the nail where
she'd hung it when they'd moved to this new place.  It
crouched beside the trunk as if eager to see the
things inside.  A small collection, really, to be the
sum of a man's life.  It ran its fingers over the
surface of the metal knowing it was the center of her
attention again and basking in it.

"Are you happy now?"  she asked the thing.  "Are you
glad because I'm going to let him see?  That there
will be more people to suffer now?  I used to think
that wasn't what you wanted."

It looked at her and its eyes seemed green in the
darkness as they sometimes used to.

"I only wanted you,"  it said in its gravel-choked
voice.  "But you forgot me."

"I didn't forget,"  Scully said.  "I never forgot.  I
only stopped suffering."

"You forgot,"  it accused.  "I never forgot.  Even
lost.  Found you.  Won't leave you, Scully."

Scully just looked at it crouching there, twisted and
ugly like the bodies he'd described stacked like
cordwood in a buried boxcar.  But she knew what it
was, this shadow.  And she knew it couldn't be driven
away as long as she was alive.

"What purpose will it serve for him to go through
these things?  For him to know and to write it all
down?  It won't change anything,"  she told it.

"You remember better then," it said.  "He'll remind
you."

"What good does it do, Mulder?"  she cried,
despairing.  "What good does it do for him to know
that I cried when he was born because he wasn't yours?
 What good is it that I could never love his father
like he deserved because he wasn't you?  How can it
possibly matter to anyone but you and me now?"

"I only care it matters to you," he rose from his
crouch beside the box.  He was no longer tall as she
remembered, but stooped and blackened and burned
beyond recognition except for the gold glint of her
cross at his throat and the wetness of the living eyes
behind the crumbling face.  "You're all I have.  All
that mattered.  You never came.  I waited long. You
forgot.  So I had to come for you."

"I'll let him look at those things,"  she said.  "But
I'll never tell him about this.  This isn't for him."

"Right about that, Scully,"  Mulder said, pushing up
her chin with a finger that was half blackened bone,
voice croaking out of lungs that no longer breathed.
"Between you and me.  Better get used to me here, not
leaving without you this time.  Stupid to separate.
Only good when we're together."

"Have I gone mad finally?"  she asked.  "I waited for
you to come home for so long."

"Ask your son,"  Mulder said. "He's the PhD."

Scully bent down and unlocked the trunk.

"I have to go down and serve breakfast,"  she said as
she rose.  He had melted back into the shadows again.

"Go,"  he said.  "I'll follow you."

-30-

Wen's original quotes:

This taboo regarding age is to make us believe that
life is long and actually improves us, that we are
wiser, better, more knowledgeable later than early. It
is a myth concocted to keep the young from learning
what we really are and despising and murdering us. We
keep them sweet-breathed, unequipped, suggesting to
them that there is something more than regret and
decrepitude up ahead.
 
'Beautiful Grade'

She was accustomed to much nesting and appreciation
and drips from the faucet, though sometimes she would
vanish outside, and they would not see her for days,
only to spy her later, in the yard, dirty and matted,
chomping on a vole or eating old snow.

Agnes of Iowa

She sank down on the steps, pulled her robe tighter.
She felt for the light switch and flicked it on. The
bat, she could now see, was small and light colored,
its wings folded in like a packing tent, a mouse with
backpacking equipment. It had a sweet face, like a
deer, though blood drizzled from its head. It reminded
her of a cat she'd once seen as a child, shot with a
BB in the eye.

Community Life

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore