By: pusher
pusher@unforgettable.com

~~~
 

An Apartment in
Greenwich Village, New York
 

It was as if they had just stumbled into an Anthony Burgess novel.

Four female calves, clad in red stiletto heels tilt upwards precariously balancing the inch-thick glass of the coffee table.  A torso, resplendent in shiny plastic glory sits up on the counter surrounded by the faint stink of rotting milk and permanently set java rings.  Other limbs -- hands, feet, arms, thighs fill the room embracing cushions or prop a half-dozen dusty copies of Reader's Digests up against each other in elegant symmetry.

"Three guesses where the inspiration for this cheery scenario came from," The tall, lanky one drawls, as he moves through the room with the languid, liquid dexterity innate to predatorial creatures.  Perhaps that is why his parents have named him Fox, even though he hates that moniker with a vengeance.  He easily melds into the shadows of the bathroom doorway, disappearing into the darkness without so much as a scuffle of footsteps.

"A Clockwork Orange?"

His female companion murmers as stops in the main room to inspect the studio's decor.  She is not as graceful as he is, but has the gift of perception.  Pushing an errant lock of hair away from her face, Dana Scully kneels and prods at solid calf knowing instantly that every leg of the coffee table, every piece in the room is different.  They will find no casting molds for these sculptures.  Only flesh buried beneath layers of meticulously applied shellac.

"I'm impressed, Scully,"  the baritone voice rings from the hollows of the other room moments before its owner steps out to reclaim it, holstering his Glock 17.

She glances up at him, searching his guileless, handsome features, waiting for the punchline to tumble forth from his lips -- a joke, an allusion, or even innuendo, but he disappoints.

He merely smiles and randomly flips through copies of the mini paperbacks, memorizing pages of "Laughter the Best Medicine" and fuzzy pet tales.

Looking back down, she bites back a stinging retort.  He has, in fact, given her yet another polite and honest compliment, ordinarily not a problem, except that it is wholly uncharacteristic of Special Agent Fox Mulder.

Somewhere inside she wants to throw up, to scream, to drive the heel of her three-inch pumps straight down into the instep of her partner's Italian leather loafers.  She almost wishes for a nosebleed just so he can lose that phony, pleasant expression from his face in an unguarded moment of panic.

"Required reading, sophomore English,"  Dana offers, rapping her knuckles absently against the hardened shell.

Mulder nods and pauses as his thumb stops in the middle of the December '96 issue.  A compact disc buried snugly between "Quotable Quotes" and a weight-loss article captures his attention.  Turning it around, he sees that it is an album by Nine Inch Nails.  The killer has deliberately left this for him.  He slips the disc into the pocket of his coat and replaces the paperback before sauntering off into the kitchen.

Appraising the torso on the counter, he waits for inspiration or a revelation to whisper from the shiny, well-endowed plastic breasts hovering in front of his face, their glassy sheen reminding him not of sex, but of snow globes and glass-and-shit paperweights.

Nothing comes.

For the thirty-seventh time today, Mulder's eyes reflexively wander to Scully and watches her attempt to raise the heavy glass from its fleshy base.  Wordlessly, without thinking, he crosses the floor in two long strides and takes command of the tabletop.

A brief flicker of irritation runs across her face at the unsolicited display of chivalry, but she damps it down behind the veil of chin-length tresses.  Preoccupied with the dismembered leg, she sees neither the twitch in his eyebrow nor the fingers tighten on the glass as he steps away.

"Now why is it that if _I_ do that, I get slapped with a lawsuit?"  He  retreats into the sanctuary of gallows humor.
 
Ah, G-man has a pulse after all.

"Your innate ability to harass inanimate objects defy explanation, Mulder," she counters.

Despite her rotten mood, despite his stupid joke, her lips involuntarily twitch into a faint smile.  In that moment, she feels the tension ease its breathless grip ever so slightly.

Back to the consummate professional, she turns the limb on its side, and strikes it against the ground several times until the shellac coating cracks.  Flesh clinging to chunks of acrylic tear away from the underpinning grey muscles, as small, pale fingers remove the broken pieces away.

"So that confirms it."
 
"Should we be start asking people if they've seen someone wearing a bowler hat and long underwear with a jockstrap on the outside?"  The intonation of her voice emphasizes her raised eyebrow.

"In any other circumstance, Scully, I'd be inclined to say so," he gives her a lopsided grin, "But this is Greenwich Village."

******

An Autopsy Bay
St. Luke's Hospital -- Roosevelt Division
 

It hums like possessed pizza cutter in the unfaltering hands of Doctor Dana Scully.  Satisfaction comes in the sound of high powered steel meeting shellac as the power saw croons in metallic ecstasy against the dismembered torso.

Fox Mulder stands silently in the background, a half-empty cup of lukewarm coffee clutched in his left hand as he adjusts the headphones to a more comfortable position with the right.

He has been listening, nonstop, to the same cd from the previous evening, searching for any clues, any hints that might gain a sliver of insight into his adversary's mind.  He does not like Nine Inch Nails in particular, and  if he actually were in practice, would probably recommend a steady Lithium diet to the angst-ridden author.  Of course, he feels the same way about Rachmaninov.

Three cross-cuts on the X, Y, and Z axis.  The coat is removed from the body in an even, methodical way, the sucking sounds not unlike an orange being peeled, and Dana clicks on the tape recorder to begin her autopsy.

Although the volume is cranked high enough to make Mulder's eardrums bleed, her voice still cuts clearly through the distorted electronic riffs.

Intertwining paths, but diverging minds.

"Female torso, from external observation, approximate age is between 20 and 30..."

(A young man.  Charming, not necessarily handsome.  Confident in his ability to attract both sexes.)

"...clean, sharp margins in the cuts, lack of bruising at the edges, no deep bridging in the tissues..."

(He seeks perfection, preserving it in death.)

"...lack of hemothorax rules out any great vessel damage, likewise for hemopericardium..."

(They follow willingly, blindly.)

"...which leads me to believe the victim most likely was exsanguinated, but until the head is found, results are inconclusive..."

In a litany, he begins chanting.

"First one.  Arms severed at the shoulder, ball joint dislocated to make the cut neat."

Her head jerks up, but he is focused somewhere else.

"Next come the legs.  Severed at the knees and pelvis."

"Mulder..."

"Second one.  Legs and hands."

"Mulder..."

His breath comes in short pants lost in the dizzying rhythm of his clipped words and industrial noise.

"Third one."  He locks on the torso.  "Arms.  Legs.  Neck is last."

She pushes the headphones off him.

"Mulder!"

He closes his eyes for a moment, as the deafening silence rushes in, willing for his heart to stop jackhammering.  Opens to see her face inches from his.  He blinks, wondering how she has managed to teleport across the room.

"I'm all right, Scully."

He now knows why the music was left for him.  The killer wants to share.

"Care to tell me what happened?"

"Just pleasant jaunt through a madman's mind."

Silence.  Then,  "I'm going send out for a toxilogical report on the body, then I'll take you back to the motel."

He shakes his head.

"You won't find any poisons. He doesn't want to contaminate the flesh."

"You're saying they just sat there and let him hack away?"

"I'm saying exactly that."

"I don't..."

His impatience intrudes in on her.

"He seeks out his targets, not only for their parts, but also their susceptibility to hypnotism.  Mind control, Scully."

"Another case of the whammy?"

He smiles grimly.

She sighs.

"What's wrong?"

"Somehow, I expected you to come up with an outlandish theory detailing how aliens are now using abuctees as bad art sculptures in a conspiracy to siphon off NEA fundings toward their own secret projects.  Not only have you given me something totally prosaic, it's also completely plausible to boot."

"Don't be ridiculous, Scully.  It's a widely known fact Reticulans prefer watercolors."

*****

The corridors of the hospital echo with their footsteps.  Something gnaws at Mulder, as though somehow, something is missing in the picture.  Glancing askance at Scully, he notices she is oddly withdrawn and silent.  The silence jars him uncomfortably, being used to the way she usually chatters happily about the recent autopsy findings, excitedly describing the anomalies in fluid composition or viscera with enough graphic detail to make him squirm internally.

He looks at her questioningly, but her eyes are downcast.

Then it hits him.  The hospital.  The dead and dying.

Shit.

"Did you see...?"

Her eyes flicker dangerously to him, challenging him to finish his question.  When he hesitates, they turn back down to peruse the tile lining the floor.

"I'm fine, Mulder.  Just tired, that's all."

She will be the first to admit that she is a coward.  She does not want to see them.  This, like the random nosebleed, is another insistent reminder of her mortality, the whispers of death pulling her closer to her grave.

Her father's ghost, Nurse Owens could be dismissed as figments of her imagination, released by trauma and other games of mental tiddlywinks her abductors have played with her body and mind.  But this, the precognition of death, she can not explain with science or dismiss as simply delusion.  It is another stone ever so roughly yanked out from under her ever crumbling mortar of safe skepticism.

She has stopped flinching at every apparition that bares its presence, hiding behind the mask of apparent indifference and silence.  But Mulder, that irritatingly nosy, perceptive bastard, still knows what that tiny movement of her throat, her eyes widening ever so slightly, her withdrawal, means.

Somehow, Scully feels as if she should be slightly ashamed of herself for shoving him away again, but she is too tired to deal with the overprotective basket case that is Mulder, at this moment.  So she pushes him away again, again distancing herself from him.

And because it is his nature to be passive, he can only accept what she says with reluctant complacency, never questioning her constant avowals of "I'm fines," even if his eyes show he doesn't believe a word of it.

She wonders what she would do if her partner were to one day break out of his pattern, to not accept her own assurances of her health, which to even her own ears grow more ridiculous day after day, anymore, to demand to be let in...

But today, like all days, Mulder is true to form, saying nothing, making no issue out of it.  He merely nods and retreats into his familiar aloof shell and continues down the hallway, slowing down until he is nearly behind her, watching her retreating figure like an omnipresent guard dog.

They make the rest of the trip back to the motel in silence.
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
"You let me violate you/ You let me desecrate you.
 You let me penetrate you/ You let me complicate you.
 Help me, I broke apart my insides/ Help me, I've got no soul to sell.
 Help me, the only thing that works for me/ Help me get away from myself."
                       --Nine Inch Nails
 

It is her vision that has brought them here to this stinking armpit of North America called New York City.  Big Apple, his ass, it's the goddamn anus of the United States.  The subways stinking of hot piss in the sweltering heat, garbage, human and refuse littered through the streets, and the people,  crowds and crowds of perenially rude and angry bodies rushing everywhere, shoving, shouting, spitting, cursing, milling like an immense herd of stampeding cattle glutting the streets like huge pieces of fat clogging a whimpering artery.

Special Agent Fox Mulder was becoming cranky just by association.

In all retrospect, they should have just flown back to D.C., even if he had to cough up the extra fare, but she'd insisted on taking the scenic route back.

When was he going to say fuck it to all reason and argument and just listen to his gut?  He always did.  At least until Dana Scully came along.  She had a remarkable propensity for making him do things he didn't want to.

Like getting a cell phone.

Or giving her a spare key to his apartment.

Or signing that living will of hers, even though the thought of it at the time made his testicles shrivel.

In the end, he let her decide, because quite frankly, she could become very unpleasant in a remarkably short period of time, especially when it came to flying, and a big part of him didn't really want to be anywhere near her when she started to white-knuckle the armrests and bitch and moan the entire way back.

That and she gave him one of those blue wide-eyed, liquid lambent, vulnerable looks complete with knitted brows and that oh-so-slightly quivering lip, that he knew was totally bogus, but still nevertheless made his brain drop right out the back of his head.

Jesus.  And he thought _he_ knew how to manipulate people.

So he relented and rented a car instead.  Of course due to the evil cosmologic forces beyond their control feeling ultimately obligated to piss once more on their karma, it was not their fate to get through any sort distance without stumbling upon some sort of trouble.

Fox Mulder had never considered himself to be a particularly lucky guy, but Dana Scully wouldn't be buying lottery tickets anytime soon, either.  With their combined luck, it was little wonder that normal, healthy people (at least people who wanted to stay that way) avoided the Spookys with a vengeance.
 
 

She was leaning back in her seat, eyelids heavy and fluttering slowly into oblivion, despite the glaring lights and obnoxious horns of impatient drivers, when she suddenly leaned forward and grabbed the steering wheel from his hands, jerking it to the side and nearly sent the car spinning sideways into back of a tractor trailer.

He jammed on the brakes, sending the car screeching onto a bank, slipping and sliding on the gravel, staring wide-eyed at the traffic careening by, and heard the door open even before the car came to a complete halt.

"Jesus, Scully!"

She was outside before the second word even left his mouth, looking frantically around the hood, under the wheels, and then ran back down the bank, searching for something.

"Scully!"  he shouted, running after her.

"He was here, just here!"  She was shaking violently, adrenaline coursing through her veins, heedless of the oncoming vehicles.

"Who was?"

"That man.  The one you hit!"

"I didn't see anybody, Scully."

"He was right in front of you!"  She was shouting, unsuccessfully trying to quell her rising panic, as the rising wind whipped through her hair.

He stared at her.

She turned to run further down the bank, but he grabbed her shoulders, turning her back to him as she looked up at him, pupils dilated until only a thin ring of blue shone around them.

He opened his mouth hesitantly, then closed it.  Licked his lips nervously.

Then, not ungently,

"Are you sure, what you saw, was a person?"

His words, though soft, struck Scully as if he had physically slapped her.  He felt her shoulders droop under his hands at the implication, nearly causing him to stagger forward at the sudden shift in weight.  She brushed his hands from her, and quietly made her way back to the car.

They found the poor shmuck half a mile away, propped against the wall of a public toilet, dressed in fatigues, with a bullet in his head.

Count a perfect score for psychic Scully, bitter thoughts flew, as he watched her study the corpse of the recently  marine that might have very well have stepped out of a rice paddy in Vietnam.

Her face was impassive as she studied the scene, but her figure trembled ever so slightly, perhaps remembering the image that flashed in front of her, comparing notes, images, details, hoping against hope, that what she saw leaping before her on the street was merely a hallucination, an aberration of unconscious thought.  As his eyes continued to study her, she took a shuddering breath, he knew this one, like all the others, wasn't.

And he wondered what kind of a sick fuck deity she worshipped could so callously strip her of her strength, her beliefs, and give her such a horrific and unwanted gift of such sight.  He swallowed hard, wanting to rip that little gold chain off her neck and stomp it unmercifully into the ground, cursing it's undeserved faith she had placed decades of her life into.  No wonder he was an atheist.

He called Skinner, told him that they would be delayed for a week.  The AD seemed almost amused they had managed to embroil themselves in another situation in record time, but had granted them the extension after Mulder mentioned Scully's interest in the case.

Clues and several missing persons reports led them to the apartment of one of the victims two days later, where they found the charmingly ghoulish furnishings and Mulder had thanked whatever fate had granted Scully a respite from seeing the apparitions of this particular horror.

To the police, the two murders seemed unrelated, merely a couple of sheets to be filed away in the overflowing cabinets of hundreds of other unsolved homicides.  But somewhere, spinning 'round and 'round in the complex (if sometimes squeaky) gears of Fox Mulder's brain, he felt a link.  A hunch.

A very long stretch, but the only thing they had to go on.

Room 10
The Starlight Motel

Another fucking nosebleed.  One minute she's talking about the case, happily tossing her theory of obsessive-compulsive art students against his about homicidal English majors and the next thing he knows, blood is gushing out her nose.

In her usual pattern, Scully puts her hand to her face to staunch the flow,  tells Mulder she's fine, and then runs to the bathroom, leaving him feeling utterly helpless and stupid.

Staring at the blotches of red on the bed so recently vacated, he stands there, hovering between a compulsion to clean up the sheets and an even stronger urge to run.

Away.

As far and as fast as he can.

Each attack of hers is a punch to his gut, every drop of blood another part her spirit slowly sapping away.  He wonders how much of her has been captured in the seemingly endless supply of stained kleenexes.  He would have to be dead not to notice how much thinner she has grown these past few months, the angles in her face sharpening, until they are nearly painful.  She attempts to hide her wasting figure in shapeless, baggy coats, but they only make her look more diminutive, her shoulders seeming to barely be able to hold up the burden of her clothing.

Despite her fervent defenses of science, her need for uncontroverted proof, Dana is remarkably unrealistic about her fate.  She does not want to believe that all the activities she would have been able to easily perform in less than a year ago are tiring her out much quicker.  She does not want to believe that she will go the way of her other deceased companions.

She wants to believe she is fine.

("I'm fine, Mulder.")

He hates that phrase.  It pisses him off.  To him, it really means "Fuck off, Mulder," or "None of your damn business, Mulder," or...

He shakes his head and cranks up the volume on the television which, until now, has been serving as a background distraction, randomly flipping through the channels to distract himself from his thoughts.

News.  News.  Adult.  News.  Sports.  Music.  He pauses, watching an actor splash and sing his heart out behind the technicolor tube.

"Mulder, I had no idea you had a thing for musicals."

He looks up to see her standing there, arms crossed, with a piece of toilet paper wedged indelicately up her nose.  He would laugh if it weren't so fucking tragic.

"Do you want me to take you back to the hospital?"

"No, this one's different."

He feels his stomach tighten, but forces his voice to remain neutral.

"How so?"

"Normally, the bleeds are relatively small, usually following a small pressure headache behind the soft palate.  Since none of the symptoms were present, I can safely assume that this," she tilts her head back for a second and removes the plug of tissue, "Is a geniuine normal nosebleed.  Most likely caused by the sudden change in humidity."

He relaxes slowly, allowing himself to silently exhale.

She tosses the tissue into a wastebasket, washes her hands and turns to see his partner deep in thought.

He is concentrating on the TV with an intensity usually reserved for dissecting falsified UFO photographs or studying the centerfold of skin magazines for airbrush marks.  But he is watching, utterly absorbed with, of all things, Gene Kelly chirping happily away at a song blaring out through the crummy speakers.

'I'm singing in the rain....just singing in the rain...what a wonderful feeling...'

"There was a film made of A Clockwork Orange, wasn't there?"  he mutters.

"Malcolm McDowall.  Stanley Kubrick directed it, I think."

"And I thought you were only good for cartoon trivia."

He picks up his jacket.

"Where are you going?"

"To find a video store.  Pizza okay?"

"Mulder, it's eleven-thirty."

"Pepperoni it is, then."  He gives her a wave before shutting the door.
 
 

3:54 AM
 

The remains of an open pizza box and several cans of soda litter the floor of the motel room, as "Full Metal Jacket" warbles forth from the glowing TV casting a harsh light on Fox Mulder's features from three feet away.

He looks back to the bed as Scully gives a breathy sigh, shifts, and falls back to her regular breathing pattern.  Despite giving a good school effort, the lull of sleep was too strong for her, her eyes drooping ever-so slowly, and finally succumbing sometime during "Dr. Strangelove."

He turns back to the movie, opening his third can of Diet Pepsi.

His eyes narrow at the scene flashing before him.

Pausing the VCR, he plays the it over.  And over.  And over again.  Finally he freezes the picture, jumps up from the floor and crosses to his partner, gently shaking her on the shoulder.

"Hey, Scully."

"Hmm?"  A yawn.

"Scully, check this out."

She rubs her eyes and glances sleepily at the picture on the TV.  The scene comes into focus, and she awakens immediately, sitting up straight.

Snapping on the lamp at her nightstand, she reaches for the case folder and digs through the stack of reports, finally pulling out the photograph from the first crime scene.  A match.

"Put in the other tape, Mulder."

He nods, ejecting the tape, and drops in 'Clockwork,' as she searches for the second photo, though they both know what they will see.

"Guess he's not an English major."

As the tape shuts off, the television resets itself to its usual early-morning syndicated cheese.  An infomercial advertising "Psychics Now!" blares throughout the room, boasting accurate results and expert soap-opera actor testimonials.

She rolls her eyes and grabs the remote to snap off the offending images, resisting the urge to hurl yet another phone at the hapless trinitron.

"So, what's your theory, Mulder?"

"Television is bad for you?"

"If you're stumped, you could always ask Dionne," she purrs sweetly.

He gives her a withering look.

"Even I have standards, Scully.  Besides, I can find better ways to spend $2.99 a minute."

"I'm sure you can."

"What about you?  You ever "experiment?"

"With phone sex?"

"Smartass.  With other types of hypnotism.  Finding out what's buried in your unconscious."

"Unlike you, Mulder, I like my mind the way it is.  In one coherent piece."

He plows further, unfazed by the jibe.

"Is that why you aren't actively trying to recover those three missing months anymore?"

"The regression hypnosis didn't work, Mulder."

"So you just decided to stop trying."

She sighs.  Like every other time they discuss this, he is going to be impossible.  She isn't ready to go burrowing into the inner sanctum of her unconscious mind again.  She doubts she will ever be.  Perhaps it is fear of finding out, not wanting to go through that pain again.  Perhaps it is denial and false memories.  Or perhaps at this point in her life, where death hangs above her, looming like an omnipresent shadow, finding out the answers has become simply irrelevant.

"In my junior year at Maryland, I stayed at the dorm during spring break to study for the MCAT's.  My sister," a shadow flickers across her eyes, then passes,  "Dropped by and managed to convince me to waste a few hours with her.  She not only managed to drag me to a psychic fair, she pulled me into a show as well."

"Not the Stupendous Yappi, I hope."

He wiggles his eyebrows in a remarkably accurate imitation.

"No, not that bad.  His name was Stan, and I think he was "Magnificent" or "Mystical," or something like that.  Anyway, Melissa managed to get us with a group of people on stage while he performed his amazing feats of magnetism for the audience.

"And?" He leans towards her on the edge of the bed like some office gossip straining for the latest juicy tidbit.  "Did he manage to get you to reveal your deep dark secrets?  Do something embarassing?  Come, on, don't leave me hanging, Scully."

"Needless to say, his little act, while amusing, didn't work on me.  I wasn't surprised when the regression hypnosis didn't turn out well, either.  Whatever you call it, I'm just not susceptible."

Unwilling to discuss this any further, she carefully orchestrates a yawn, blinking sleepily at her partner.

Lousy liar.  But he decides to let it go.

"I'll let you get some rest.  I'm going running for a bit."

"In New York?"

"I'm armed."

"So is everyone else."

"Call it motivation.  Who knows, I might even set a few landspeed records."
 
 

He runs furiously, ignoring the burning in his lungs and calves, running to release the endorphins, to get rid of the dark thoughts and destructive impulses that assail his brain on a regular basis.  The dull throbbing that entered his head back when he first stepped into the freak mannequin set has settled, like all the other headaches, somewhere in the back of his head, to be categorized and then ignored.

As the wind shifts direction, Fox Mulder feels it, subtly, in his bloodstream.  A whisper in his mind tells him of changes to come soon, of renewal, of a promise made that would be ultimately fulfilled.

He shakes his head, damping out all thoughts as he makes his way back to the motel, listening only to his breathing and the regular beat of his shoes against the pavement.

Right now he wants nothing more than to solve this case and get the fuck out of dodge.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Parrot Gasman loves the movies.  All kinds of movies.  Comedy, action, sci-fi, drama, hell, even those sappy, stupid chick flicks that draw hordes of misty-eyed women & their reluctant boyfriends in by the gaggle.  He loves the dark expanse of theaters, the sixty-foot screens, the flicker of the frames slipping steadily through the projector in a brilliant combination of light and digital dolby sound before a hushed and breathless audience.
 
This was the reality, this was the experience.  Not that inferior RGB-tubed, videotaped before an audience with that stupid laugh-track or pseudo-dramatic cinema wanna-be vulgarite shit they call television.

The feeling of being immersed, of being there in the picture, now that was paradise, to be lost in the grand explosions and special effects, snappy dialogue and sizzling love scenes.

And Stanley Kubrick, the Stan-man, he was the biggest, baddest deity Parrot's little corner of Eden.

He has seen every one of his films at least thirty times, memorized lines from the scripts, written endless reviews, letters of praise, sent dozens of copies of his resume and offers to work with the man, none of which were ever answered, but that was only because Stan was such a busy guy.  But he knew who the Parrot man was, and where he could always find his best buddy and greatest fan in the whole-god-freakin' wide world and he would surely call him in to be his cinematographer for their next masterpiece together.

He had been afraid at first, never thought he could follow through with those urges.

Until now.

An impulse, a whisper in his head had explained to him just how easy it was, had explained how life and death was immaterial in the noble pursuit for true art.  It was a simple push, a nudge, really stumbling from the world of mediocrity and banality into the realm of true genius, and once he did it, he needed no further encouragement.

Art is purity, and the drive towards it the ultimate quest for nirvana.  He is the baptist, the first apostle.  He has the power and the word.  He is a god.  Like Kubrick.

He had done this all for Stan, the sets, the actors, the lighting.  Proof he could be as brilliant as the man, share his vision, his genius and intensity.

And he will be rewarded for his faith one day.
 
 

Room 10
Starlight Motel
 

"Scully, would it be in bad taste to say I'm looking forward to seeing the '2001' set?"

<Crack.>  Agent Mulder noses through the Village Voice, munching noisily on a sunflower seed, then spits another wet hull onto the gradually accumulating pile beneath his chair.

In some awkward, impossible contortion that would have made Dr. Blockhead proud, he watches his partner juggle a phone, scribble in that ubiquitous notebook of hers, search through a phone book, and take a sip from her cup of coffee at the same time.

"Bad taste has never stopped you before."

He turns to the arts section, searching the through the filmography section and pages of listings for theaters.

"I called up several video stores in the area to see if there were any multiple rentals on their logs.  Unfortunately, there are over three hundred video stores in Manhattan alone."

<Crack.  Spit.>

"I don't think he rents out videos.  I think his primary fixation is with the cinema, the theaters themselves.  There's a fundamental difference between the cinema experience and simply sitting at home watching the boob tube."

She hangs up the phone, scribbles another note, then sits back on the bed, rubbing her neck to ease out the kinks.

"Thanks for telling me after I called a dozen shops."

<Crack.  Spit.>

"Do you know why they call television a medium?"

"Because it's neither rare nor well done."

"Brains, brawn, and a working knowledge of Kovacs," he looks up to leer mildly at her before returning to his paper.  "You've met my mother right, Scully?"

She rolls her eyes at her partner, happily buried away in the paper, and munching away at his seeds with that frazzling "crack" echoing throughout the small room with the regularity of a freaking metronome.

Unconsciously her eyes are drawn down his form, from his face focused on the page to his shoulder, to run in a smooth motion down his torso and legs, until they finally rest, revolted, at the pile of shells clustered around his feet.

"Mulder, you do have your own room, right?"

<Crack.  Spit.>

"Right next door."

"Then why are you spitting shells onto _my_ carpet?"

"Because you actually tip housekeeping."  He pauses, scanning the page in one quick glance and locks onto one section.  "Take a look at this."

He hears her close the distance behind him, her face appearing next to his as she bends down to read the paper over his shoulder.  A few strands of Scully's hair brush his neck as he takes a long, silent breath, inhaling the curious combination of soap, shampoo and the light, yet inexorable presence of gun oil.

"Stanley Kubrick film festival at Tisch School of the Arts," she murmurs.

"Venture a guess at what played this past Monday and Wednesday?"

She straightens up, taking a step back and crossing her arms in that old, familiar pose.

"The next one's at 8:30 tonight."  She sighs, wryly. "I never did care much for 'The Shining.'"

He drops his head over the back of his chair faced screwed in mock horror, as he takes in her upside-down form.

"How could you not like such a classic?  And one with Jack to boot."

"I've always found it too long-winded and dull."

He says nothing, manfully attempting to contain the amused look threatening to burst out over grave features.

"Not a word, Mulder," she warns.  Then seriously, "You think he'll be there?"

"He wouldn't miss it for the world."
 
 

Art Auditorium
Tisch School of the Arts
 

He turns on the projector, feeling a familiar thrill in his groin at the warm hum of the motor and light rumbling through the monster in which his brilliance is delivered.  Checking the lens and carriage once more, Parrot makes sure everything is in place, gears oiled, capstans clean and running flawlessly for tonight's performance.

Tonight he will make a set worthy of an Oscar.  He has his acceptance speech memorized, a tux rented, and a case ready for his gold statuette.  He imagines himself and his idol among the throngs of cheering actors and actresses, knee deep in celluloid and Hollywood trash celebrating their victory in a cascade of vintage champagne and paparazzi glitz.

'For the Academy's consideration.'
 
 

Room 11
Starlight Motel
 

She stands in the doorway of his motel room, gazing in awe at the record time in which he has managed to accumulate so much garbage.  Magazines, napkins, newspapers, notes buried among mini-hills of sunflower seeds and candy wrappers strewn about with empty cans of iced tea and diet soda and take-out boxes with chopsticks sticking straight out of the now solidified rice.

Watching his deliberate, fluid movements as he checks his holster, Dana Scully bites the inside of her lip, and takes a deep breath, finally blurting out what has been on her mind the entire afternoon.

"Mulder, I don't think you should go."

He freezes in the motion of putting on his coat.

"Why not?"

"If our killer is looking for people susceptible to hypnotism, there's a good chance you might be targeted."

She remembers Modell.  He has never forgotten it.

"But I know what's in his mind.  I'll be able to recognize him."

"I don't want you running that risk, Mulder."

(She doesn't want you pulling your gun on her again.)

He fights that irrational thought, the tweak of anger suddenly flushing his face, and though it makes him feel suddenly light-headed and nauseous, he manages a weak grimace.

"Are you trying to ditch me, Scully?"

"Now you know how I feel.  Oh, don't give me that look."  She rolls her eyes at his soulful, downtrodden gaze usually reserved for hijacking her Powerbook to play Tetris on.  "You would have been on your own with this if he were a Russ Meyer fan."
 
 

Art Auditorium
Tisch School of the Arts
 

Victims.  All of them.

Fat, complacent, mindless drones staring in slack-jawed, vacant-eyed wonder at the screen, cramming endless handfuls of popcorn, hot dogs and sodapop into their perpetually open maws, giggly, stupid co-eds hiding their eyes behind fingers, and screaming innapropriately at scenes they've already seen before but think it's fashionable to do anyway, wanna-be geeksters who try to impress their phenomenally bored dates and friends with stupid irrelevant trivia about the film and it actors.

Yet not one worthy of his masterpiece.

He is displeased with the cattle call, the whole bloody bunch a colossal waste of precious time and carbon mass.

Then he sees her walk in.

Not much in height, but carries herself as if she were much, much taller. Her black coat swirls around her body as she moves, nearly blending into the shadows of the auditorium.  But those features, a lovely ivory complexion, fine cheekbones, a determined set to her jaw, those features contrast sharply against the swallowing darkness as incidental light from the aisle  plays off the highlights in her hair, flashing tantalizing tones of yellow, amber, and red.
 
She scans the room silently, surveying the audience like a hawk, her gaze dropping on every single person in the audience, contemplating, searching.

When she finally lifts her gaze up to the projection booth, squinting at the shadowy figure inside, Parrot guesses her eyes are blue.

He feels himself wanting to reach out to her, to touch her and communicate that bond of sculptor and stone, of Pygmalion and Galatea, he wants to mold her, to shape her into his magnificent creation.  She will make a stunning masterpiece.

But something is wrong.  Her mind is tightly closed to him.  Rather amusing, considering he has felt a tingle of something about her, something forcefully hidden, pressed suffocatingly into a grip like some psychological fist, but refusing to be smothered.  It seeps out of every pore, spilling out like sparks of sunlight inexorably bursting through cracks of a tightly closed door.

He wants to see more, but she breaks the contact, suddenly distracted, and turns away to answer her cellular phone.

Ah.  Now he recognizes the presence.

He decides to leave her be.  She already walks among the dead.
 
 

Room 11
Starlight Motel

Still dressed, with his shoulder holster on, he paces around the room, looking at his watch for the eighteenth time in forty-five minutes.  Five steps across the room, turn, five steps back.  Five steps across, turn, five steps back, five steps across...

Anxious, agitated.  Stir-crazy.  Fox Mulder wonders if this is what Dana Scully feels like when he ditches her, and vows never to do it again.  Well, maybe never.  Only when absolutely necessary.

Five steps across, turn, five steps back.

He turns to his cellular sitting on the table in forlorn, yet smug silence.  Focusing on it, he concentrates, willing it to ring and feeling rather foolish, like some fucking giddy teenager waiting for a date, but of all the times he's gone and left his partner high & dry, he's at least had the goddamn courtesy to call.

Five steps across, turn, five steps back.

He stops again glare at the Nokia.  Resisting.  For a nanosecond.  Then snatches it from table and hits the redial button.

An exasperated whisper answers him on the third ring.

"What now, Mulder?"

"Just checking in.  Did you find anything?"

"Not within the last...eight minutes, no."

He hears a scream in the background, an ear-piercing shriek that nearly congeals his spinal fluid.

"What's happening out there?"

"The movie, Mulder."

"I was just thinking, the guy is most likely someone who works there, perhaps an usher."

"This is an art auditorium, Mulder.  There are no ushers."

"Well then, the ticket taker, manager, anyone else."

Pacing once again, five steps across, five steps back, in double-time.

"I was planning to question the projectionist."

"What are you waiting for, then?"

"If you'd stop calling me, I'd get some work done."

"Maybe I'd better head down there."

"No, Mulder."

"Why not?"

Dana Scully brings her hand to her forehead, sighs, fruitlessly trying to fend off another partner-induced migraine.

"We discussed this matter and agreed on it, Mulder."

"No, you discussed it."

"If you're just calling me to argue about this, I _will_ shut off my phone."

"You would do that to me?"  Stricken.

A muffled laugh drowned out by the background music.

"I have to go, Mulder."

"Wait--"

"People are staring at me, Mulder."

"But-"

"Goodbye, Mulder."

The click cuts him off, and he stands there looking at the phone, resisting the sudden urge to pound it into the wall in frustration and to follow it with his forehead head until he reaches mindless oblivion.

Because, to top it all off, that goddamn headache has moved from the back of his head to settle with obstinate resolution onto his frontal lobe, now cheerfully throbbing hotly against his forehead like some sadistic construction crew hell-bent on drilling the shit out of his skull.

It's not that he doesn't trust her.  In fact, he'd choose her as his backup over anyone else, any day.  He knows that Scully is right, that his anxiety is mostly unfounded, knows that his partner is perfectly capable of handling herself.  Level-headed.  Professional.  Not at all hesitant to use deadly force.  He trusts her abilities far more than his own.

(So, you gonna chill and be reasonable and let her do her job, or what?)

Fuck no.

He grabs his coat and runs out the door.
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Art Auditorium
Tisch School of the Arts
 

"Excuse me."

Parrot turns to the woman who, only minutes ago, had disappeared from the auditorium magically appear in his projection booth.

"I'm with the FBI," she flips out her ID, looking at him warily.  "Mind if I ask you a few questions?"

He has guessed right about the color of her eyes.

"Of course."

Somewhat dorky looking, she thinks, eyes flickering over her subject, noting every detail.  Long brown hair covering a high forehead, brown eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, and a rather weak, receding chin.  Fairly short with a stocky build, but with no distinguishing features.  Not particularly stiking or noticeable in any way.  Answers every question with the erratic, personable tic of your typical, goofy starving artist manfully trying to make his voice sound deeper than its developmentally high timbre, but otherwise, harmless-seeming enough.

"...how long have you worked here again?"

"Too long.  I graduate this fall so after June I'm outta here."

With some fascination, he observed her eyes fix unflinchingly at him and even as the questions come fast and furious, picking at details in his carefully prepared alibi, she never drops her gaze down to her pen scribbling furiously on the notepad.

"So you've seen nothing odd here at all?"

"Just about all the people here are art students.  It'd be weird if they weren't weird."

Finishing with her questioning, Agent Scully puts her notebook back into her coat pocket.  She hadn't exacly been expecting the Amazing Kreskin or some other wild-gazed, eyebrow-calisthenic prophecy spewer, but somehow, Parrot Gasman doesn't quite strike her as the charming, seductive hypnotist her partner had profiled.

Back in the auditorium, she surveys the seated masses once more.  Would Mulder would have been able to pick the killer out of a crowd, be able to discern one who had crossed that line between impulse and action, able to see past the anonymous facade and find the monster behind the mask of normality?

With a guileless and pleasant smile, the young projectionist's face did not seem one of a potential murderer, but then the most successful and extraordinary killers have always sported unextraordinary facades.  A strange sensation runs through her, a feeling of unease that hasn't manifested since she first set eyes on the Addams Family Lurch clone, Donnie Pfaster.

Feeling a bit out of sorts, Scully looks down at her cell phone in vague curiosity about why her partner hasn't called in almost twenty minutes, wondering if he actually took her bluff seriously.

Mulder, only a phone call away, dropping everything in sight to come running to her like some slobbery, needy golden retriever, eager to help, to comfort  only to give her those mournful, shuttered looks when she invariably pushes him away, wanting to be alone, to do things on her own.  She is angry when he smothers her with concern, angrier when he draws back in studied indifference, angry at the cancer, angry at losing control of her life, angry at everything, because dammit, it still felt human to just be a little pissed-off, and somehow, in that odd illogical way, if she can just stay angry, she can almost forget about the fact that her number was going to come up soon.

And Mulder?  Well, Mulder was always the nearest, convenient punching bag.

A shock of white light bursts against the screen, startling her out of her thoughts, as the reel empties out with a noisy whirr and the whipping sound of the loose film end slapping repeatedly against the table.

Amidst the shouts and curses of the howling audience, Scully squints through the sudden illumination, turning back to the projection booth, at the take-up reel spinning in morose neglect, and sees that Parrot Gasman is gone.
 
 

Outside.

She definitely makes him nervous, uneasy.  So uneasy, he couldn't even enjoy the movie anymore.  Parrot doesn't like dealing with people he can't control.  Too many variables, too many inconsistencies, unreliable actors, the press, pressure from the producers, harsh critics, there were simply too many fucking problems already attached to this grossly overbudget movie and that nosy FBI only added to them.

So he had to ditch.  Better to shelve the production for a while, let the unappreciative masses simer down before shipping it back to make second rounds.  People forget so easily in this business, a different title, a bit of rewriting, and he had no doubt they would welcome back their flavor of the month with open arms, after all he had created several bona-fide hits.  He was gold, he had the magic touch, he knew how to make the masses watch.

As he slogs his way down Broadway towards East 8th, he sees another man approach from the opposite direction, eyes searching the various buildings as he listens to some sort of music or radio player hidden within the deep recesses of his coat pocket.  As the stranger lifts his eyes towards him, he stops.  Hands slip up to remove the phones from his head as he stares speculatively at Parrot.

Parrot smiles.  This one has an open mind.

He abruptly turns into the nearest alley.

"Hold it!" he hears in the background.

He weaves his way through the familiar corners and walkways, pausing just long enough for the man to catch up, making sure he is alone.  Then he stops, turning to face his pursuer.

"Keep your hands where I can see them!" the voice echoes against the walls.

The stranger has his gun drawn.

"You don't want to do that."

The man freezes, eyes flickering away, if listening for something.  His gun wavers for a second, indecisively, then lowers.

"Not yet, at least."

Parrot calmly shifts the glasses on his face, strolling up to the stranger and walking around him, studying his form, his features, his expression, ticking off individual details in a mental shopping list.  Long coat, ill-fitting shirt, rumpled jacket.  And the butt-ugliest tie he's ever seen this side of cat-puke.

"No, no, no," he mutters to himself, taking in features.  "Something not quite right."

"But you haven't even seen my Jack Nicholson imitation."

"So you know."

Parrot stops dead in his tracks.  The stranger is calm, too calm for someone who knows he is about to be hoisted up onto the butcher block.

"I have extraordinary abilities.  And your taste in music...sucks."

The man's eyes are dark, reflectionless, greedily sucking in all ambient light in like some bottomless vortex.  Something moves behind him, constantly shadowing him, an obession, a drive, but something much more powerful than the mundane drivel of simple human emotion.

For the first time in a long, long while, Parrot feels unsure about how this movie will turn out.

(Wait, wait, wait a fucking minute!)

This is Parrot, he is the creator, the cinematographer, the big guy for chrissakes.  He is in contol here.  He will not shelve the script, he will not go overbudget, not accede to a petulant actor's whims.  The film will shoot on schedule, the dailies will come back great and the movie will be a fucking-A blockbuster because he wills it to be, and he's gonna be fucked if he's gonna let someone else run his show.

So now, he has his actor.  And he has an idea of how to get this one to put out.

"She's dead you know."

"What are you talking about?"

He sees the man's eyes flicker, his jaw unconsciously twitch.

Parrot smiles.  Wasn't too hard to figure out the co-winkydink of two feddies showing up at almost the same time.  They always showed up in pairs, and even plainclothes look less conspicuous than this funky suit.

"About yea high.  Red hair.  Pretty blue eyes."

He draws his finger across his neck in a slow, cutting motion, teeth glistening wetly in a wide grin.

"You're lying."

"Didn't take much effort, really.  You could say I did her a favor."

"A favor."

"She was gonna to go real soon anyway.  I just helped along the process."

He sees a cold anger build up in the stranger, a black, bilinous cloud with the mottled diffusion of octopus ink, nearly suffocating in intensity.   Yes, yes, this is what he wants, he wants madness, he wants genuine fucking emotion, the passion and the hatred, and the director man keeps yanking on fed boy's chain, 'cause he's gonna bring out his best performance yet.

"Don't worry fibbie, you get to join her in a minute."  He extends his arm, reaching for the gun.

The man suddenly pulls back and trains his sights unerringly at his forehead.  Parrot sees the barrel of the gun, the humorlessly smiling man behind it, and backs away.

"It didn't work."

What.

The.

His head whirls, he feels his power, the control dissipating like mist into the night air.  He is no longer a god, he is no longer the creator, the maker, he is a nobody once again.   Impossible, im-fucking-possible!

"How-why...fuck!"  The deep, throaty rasp is forgotten as his voice unconsciously returns to its original nasal registre, his legs buckling under him, staring up into the barrel of the big, black gun.

"I was hoping for an Emmy."

The bullet roars out of the chamber, shattering the lens of his glasses in its screaming path towards his right eye.

Before Parrot Gasman dies, he sees the dour stranger standing over him, it strikes him how familiar that look is, even as thought of him laughing at his name trickles fleetingly through his rapidly fading thoughts.

Then darkness sucks him into cold nothingness.
 
 

On the street.

She hears the gunshot, notes it's particular crack and vibration, and extrapolates the source from that sound.  Drawing her 9mm, Agent Scully plunges down the maze of crisscrossing streets and back-end buildings.

Coming to a stop in the alley, she squints at the figures in the dim light.  Perhaps it is simply a trick of the flickering illumination, but she could have sworn to seeing two men together, their images nearly overlapping like shadowed images or a ghost of double vision.  She blinks, and then there is only her partner standing there alone, and a body rapidly staining the pavement.

"Mulder, what are you doing here?"

He turns at the sound of her voice, relief flooding his face at the sight of that approaching familiar face, and feeling oddly exuberant.  The headache plaguing him for the past week has dissipated, its absence almost intoxicating.

"What is it?"

She looks around, eyes searching the nooks and shadows of the dead end street.  Shaking her head, she puts away her gun and reminds herself to make an appointment with her optometrist as soon as possible.

"Nothing."

An illusion, a trick of the eyes, nothing more.

She brushes past him, to the corpse on the ground, snapping on the latex gloves from her ever-present supply in her coat pocket, and turns it over from its facedown position.

"He was the projectionist," she mutters, looking at the body of the young man, taking apart the scene with a clinical detachment

(Right eye, shattered lens with a dark red hollow behind it.  The shot, a tiny nine millimeter projectile into the socket.  With little resistance to stop the spinning round with three-hundred plus foot-pounds behind it, it would have torn through the large arteries in the brain like a hammer into jello.  The sudden cavern where the retinal orb was destroyed would be the outlet for the intense pressure from the arteries, shooting out their warm life force in a six-inch red jet.  The tumbling metal mass would spew mangled grey and pink matter down onto the ground as it exits the body via the foramen magnum.)

"I caught him trying to escape," he offers, by way of explanation.
 
(From the residual powder burns, the source was approximately a foot or two away.)

This is not the stunning, pressure aided pointsmanship with John Lee Roche.
 
There was no hostage, no weapon other than her partner's, no concrete evidence of this man's direct danger to the public.

This was, simply, an execution.

"He wasn't armed, Mulder."

"He tried to take my gun."

(The angle of the entry and exit wound suggests an inferior position of the subject in relation to the shooter.  The fact that the body pitched forward suggests a kneeling position.)

"From his knees."

"He tried to put psyche me out."

"And it didn't work."

"Apparently not."

"So you fired, point blank, into his face."

An image of Parrot Gasman on his knees, begging, seconds before Mulder puts a bullet in his eye, flashes through her head.

"Mulder, you know this was inappropriate use of deadly force."

"Look, Scully, if I didn't kill him...do you want to visit another crime scene, another fucking set, this time with some other poor shmuck shellaced to a goddamn typewriter with 'red rum' plastered on his bathroom mirror?  Do you want to wait around to maybe collect more evidence, maybe find more clues, maybe see another apparition, while he goes along happily cutting up people for 'Spartacus' or whatever the fuck is playing next week?  Do you?"

Scully's argument, in mid-formulation, cuts off as her mouth snaps shut.

"No."  Barely audible.

"Then there is no problem, is there?"

He realizes that he has been waving his gun, gesticulating with it throughout their entire exchange.  Holstering it with a look of annoyance, he turns away from his partner, irritated with her sanctimonious preaching, her holier-than-thou attitude and by-the-book bullshit that she now feels morally obligated to bring up and throw in his face.

As Scully watches him step away from her, it strikes her, that phrase that she remembers him mentioning years ago.

'Tells you something about the rule book, doesn't it?'

*******

Office of the Assistant Director
FBI Headquarters
 

An atmosphere so thick with tension, the Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner has to tug at the collar of his freshly starched shirt to relieve the strain of sharing his office space, even if only for an hour, with his two favorite paranormal magnets.

Four years.  Forty-seven closed cases.  A record, by all conventional standards, impressive even by those unconventional.  From their earliest folders he could usually tell by the first page which agent was on report duty for which particular case.

>From him, it usually involved convoluted leaps of logic, paragraphs of long exposition often including a detailed history of the paranormal event from the first sighting or experience, the first recorded piece of x-file evidence, and sometimes, the occasional moral and social allegory, threaded and woven in a complex and amazing tapestry.  Even if sometimes a bit shy of concrete evidence and vaguely flouting standard Bureau format, Mulder could always find an illustrious future in the writing field if the young man ever decided to quit his day job.

>From her, the report would simply consist of an incredibly detailed documentary of facts, evidence and scientific, littered with a mind-bending array of medical terms and explanations.  Meticulous and dry, her work more than often read like an article for the American Journal of Medicine in its determination to assign rational explanations to whatever phenomena they found, though Scully would mention her partner in passing, along with his, often incredible, explanation, at the very, very end.  And sometimes, there would even be a grudging admission of the possibility of his insights, when lack of contrary evidence otherwise proved elusive.

As the years progressed, he saw how the two Agents' writing styles gradually changed, shifting and adapting to each other, much like their formerly diametrically opposed views slowly converging, though still on equally opposite sides of center.  The increase of factual evidence, the need for incontrovertable proof now shows up in Mulder's files, as well as a subtle change in style more compatible to a good, but still entertaining, documentary.  On her side, Scully has become much more open-minded, lightening the assault of technical verbiage for the lure of good prose, sometimes even going so far as to adapt her worse half's eclectic writing style.

So when Skinner silenty reads number forty-eight for the second time, surreptitiously eyeing the two in front of him, he. wonders about what happened in New York that could have the duo coming up with such a haphazard mess of smattered, missing details and brief, fragmented sentences.  Even Mulder, on his worst day, is at least pretentious, taking a smug, almost insufferable pride in the convoluted logic of his work and wording, and Scully, well this is nothing like the usually anal-retentive Agent.

Sitting in the right chair, she is ramrod straight, almost at attention, her beige suit perfectly pressed and immaculate, if a little baggy, and the question fleetingly crosses his mind about how much weight she has lost in the past few months from her illness.

"A search on Parrot Gasman's apartment and the basement of the art auditorium turned up several weapons used in the commission of the murders and a dozen cans of shellac."

Fingers entwined and folded neutrally in her lap, Agent Scully's eyes are determinedly fixed on the "Thank you for not smoking" plaque on his desk, giving her report in a flat, fixed voice, as if almost embarrassed about something.  Which is rather odd, since she rarely apologizes for anything.  Special Agent Doctor Dana Scully.  Ethical beyond reproach.  Moral to a fault.  Except when it relates to her partner, in which case all the rules go flying out the window.

Speaking of which--

His eyes swivel over to Special Agent Fox Mulder, who, apparently wholly unconcerned with this abomination of a case report, is silent, slouched in his chair, right elbow languidly propping up his chin, and a blank, distant expression on his face.  Staring off into space, preoccupied with something else, his rumpled grey suit looks like it spent the previous evening in a pile on the floor, his appearance unwashed, and body language fairly screaming he'd rather be somewhere, anywhere, than here right now.

Skinner brings his focus back to the folder, frowning at the page in front of him.

"The autopsy report is incomplete, Agent Scully."

"There was a problem with the tape sir, some sort of static discharge rendered the latter part of the recording nearly incomprehensible."

He flips a ten pages forward.

"This says you discovered the evidence at eleven-thirty pm on the eleventh of May."

"Yes."

"But here," he moves back a few pages. "It says the suspect died at nine-forty five that same evening."

"Yes."

"You're telling me," a pause, reading.  "Agent Mulder took him down, and then the both of you discovered the evidence?"

She hesitates, glancing sideways at the man on her left, who for all the world, still looks like he doesn't give a damn.

With a rankled frown, the AD finds Mulder's ill-timed insouciance suddenly infuriating.  He has given these two nearly free reign, and although they have never abused their privileges, despite coming incredibly close on several occasions, the smell of trouble bubbling beneath the surface of his young, brilliant agents denote signs of something threatening to explode.  Mulder has always been the bastion of self-destructive behavior, tempered only by the woman beside him, but Skinner fears his penchant for self-immolation will eventually engulf Dana Scully as well.

"Is this true, Agent Mulder?"  The older man asks, a rougher strain than normal in his voice.

The agent's eyes flicker up.  Unfocused, almost vacuous, but strained.

"Agent Mulder...was defending himself, sir," she hastily interjects.

"And did you witness this, Agent Scully?"

She drops her eyes, then lifts them.

"I came onto the scene after the suspect had been taken down."

"Unacceptable."

He tosses the folder to the edge of his desk, letting it hang there in front of them.

"I expect all my agents to give me a full and complete report.  Not this...mess."

"Sir, if I may explain," Mulder speaks for the first time, absently rubbing his right temple with two fingers.
 
"There's nothing to explain, Agent Mulder," Skinner glowers behind his spectacles.  "This--" he points angrily at the pile of papers, "Is garbage.  If you two have forgotten how to write a report, you could always retake the course back at Quantico."

(You gonna take that, cowboy?)

A sudden surge of violent thoughts emanate in Fox Mulder's brain, the dam of aggression bursting the floodgates as a rush of adrenaline courses through his veins, the deafening pounding in his chest only slightly damping the low, guttural growl forming in his throat.  And somehow, despite the primitive swirl of hot blood and testosterone, Mulder valiantly tries to fight down the maddening impulse to leap across the desk and beat the ever-living shit out of his boss, though the effort makes him weak and dizzy.

Skinner watches the transformation of the younger man on the edge of his seat to something he has only seen a few times in his life, seeing him lean forward, muscles coiling tightly like an agitated rattler ready to spring, hands paling with effort as they clutch the armrests, jaw locked with tooth-crushing twitching tightness, then tension drawing down the jugular veins and carotid arteries nearly bursting with pressure as they weave through the knotted lines of his neck. The look on his face, while carefully neutral, contain that are eyes filled with a hate, a deep underlying resentment of some sort, and also, some sort of internal struggle.

Unconsciously the war veteran innocuously sets himself towards the edge of his chair, shifting into a better position to defend himself.  There will be no sucker punch, and this time, and no second chance.

"Do you have a problem with this, Agent Mulder?"  A tone that makes Scully look up at him in shock.

"No sir."  Calm.  Too calm, too sudden.

"I also want you to make an appoinment with Employee Assistance.  That's a direct order."

('You need a shrink, Agent Mulder, you've gone mental.') it translates to the Agent.

Like fluid slowly draining out of him, the tension in his body gradually dissipates, inch by inch, second by second, until he is back again to the laconic, old Fox Mulder everybody recognizes.

"Yes sir."
 

****
 

He takes the steps down two at a time, his long, furious strides closing on the Employee Assistance office only one more floor down, recalling the near episode with the A.D. in his head.  The other times Mulder could blame on being drugged, stress, or the nature of the case itself.  This time there, however has no explanation for his reaction, no excuse, nor any great reason, really.  And that disturbs him.

"What was that all about?"

Looking back at Scully's nearly breathless pace behind him, her shorter legs working double time to catch up, he slows down a fraction.

"What?"

"You looked like you were about to attack Skinner back there."

"Yeah well, I didn't do it, did I?"

Just some sort of urge for retribution.

Retribution for what?

He leaves the question hanging, shutting the beginnings of that particular conversation from his mind.  Despite being 'Spooky,' he was generally not inclined to talk to himself.  Or maybe he just hadn't noticed until now.

She watches him as he squints, creating several deep creases in his forehead.

"Headache again?"

He nods, lip curling in a frown.

"Mulder, you should really get it checked out.  It might be-"

"It's not a goddamn aneurysm, Scully."

Shit, shit, shit.

Silence.  A long silence.  They pause in the main lobby of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, two still figures standing out among the busy pedestrian traffic.  Then,

"Should I check your water filter again?"

A voice so chilling, it would ordinarily send Mulder scrambling to cover his vitals.

He scowls at her and walks away.  He knows he is being unreasonable, but for some reason he just doesn't give a fuck.  Then, an odd thought pops into his head, not really funny at all, but for some reason, a short bark of laughter escapes his throat.

"What's so funny, Mulder?"  Scully, standing in the landing, the ire in her voice landing with a solid 'thunk' somewhere in his neck.

"Just thinking about Parrot Gasman.  What a name.  Almost as good as Burst."

Office of Karen Kosseff
Employee Assistance Program
 

"Come on in Agent Mulder, and have a seat."

He has a neutral expression on his face, but his eyes reflect the utter and complete loathing toward being here.  Like a cornered animal, he scours the room, searching for all exits, relaxing only marginally once he completes the survey.

"You know me?"

"The Assistant Director notified me of your arrival.  I took the liberty of pulling your personnel file."

A nod as he floats through the room with soundless footsteps, examining the array of certificates adorning the walls.

B.A U. Penn, M.S.W, Georgetown U., Member, A.C.S.W..  Impressive, but no match for the Fox Mulder mental wall of defense.  Every single evasion and mind trick known to man has been learned and categorized in his eidetic memory, research, practice, and application sharpening the path into an impenetrable mechanism.
 

He sits down again, across from her, despite the size of the couch she accompanies.

"I see you have a background in psychology, Agent Mulder,"  The social worker known as Karen Kosseff, or so say the roughly half-dozen certificates and degrees plastered on her walls, leans forward to look him directly in the eye.  "And probably no stranger to mind games, but if you want this therapy to work, if you want me to help you, I do ask you to be honest with me."

He nods pleasantly.

"Of course."

She will be easy to bamboozle.

Every word, every expresion, every gesture the perfect mask.  He fed the social worker everything she expected to hear, watching her watch him, taking her mental notes, asking careful, leading questions, and then dismissing him with a sympathetic look and the suggestion that he take a few days rest, but should get back to work as he can after that to 'normalize' again.

And he only nodded in mute agony and sorrow.

All in all, a rather brilliant performance, if he did say so himself.

Scully had looked up from her laptop, eyeing him warily when he wandered back to the office and plopped himself behind the desk, but he said nothing, instead, choosing to occupy himself with a case folder, so she went back to typing out whatever it was she was working on.

Probably the report.

Despite the fact that she was still likely pissed at him.

And he sat there pretending to be interested in the contents of "Cattle Mutilations in the Ozarks," and occasionally, when he was sure she wasn't paying attention, chancing a glance to her downturned face, feeling somewhat comforted among the rhythmic tap-taps of her fingers striking the keys.

Even when she is obviously ignoring him, he finds her presence pleasant in a nice, non-sexual sort of way.

He blinks.  How did sex suddenly sneak into the picture?

Not that she was unattractive or anything.  Not at all.

Well, except maybe the first time, when she walked into his office in that fugly-assed gender-neutral tweed suit and severe hairdo, looking, of all things, like goddamn Clarissa Starling from 'The Silence of the Lambs,' all cold and professional, with a gigantic skeptical chip on her shoulder and a smart mouth to match.  She'd told him then and there, in no uncertain terms, exactly what she thought of the paranormal.

And from that moment, he knew, _he knew_ he would never be able to get rid of her.

Odd thing was, he found out she was as dedicated to the truth as much as he, albeit in a different capacity.  She became an integral part of him as much as he of her, her passion for knowledge, to find answers for unexplained, matching his.  She was a kindred spirit, a reminder of something he didn't want to admit, that his lonely soul, isolated in his journey for Samantha, for the truth, had found a companion to share his thoughts, his fears with.  And she didn't laugh, didn't destroy his work, though she did call him up on some of his wackier ideas, deriving, what he felt was, way too much pleasure out of shooting holes in his theories.
 
And her reward for her efforts?  Isolation.  He had always been alone, always on the outside, so he didn't particularly give a damn about what other people thought of him, didn't care that they laughed or made fun of his work or considered him a freak.  Hell, he didn't really give a shit about his stupid nickname, if truth be told.

But Scully...

He watched her slowly become ostracized within the Bureau, saw her friends from the academy slowly, but surely, drift out of her life and saw the 'Mrs. Spooky' moniker make the rounds of office gossip, finally latching itself onto Scully, a mark that never left even when they'd been split up, though to her credit, she seems supremely immune to the connotations of that particular nick, not that any of her previous ones (many of which, he guessed, no one would have the balls to mention in her presence) were all that flattering either.  And the credit for this little feat of complete unoriginality had to be given to Tom Colton.

He shifts in his chair at that revolting thought.  Now if there was any scientific proof of asexual terrestrial lifeforms spawning from the dungheap of bureaucratic bullshit, this particular kid embodied it.  He'd heard through channels that Colton had been bucking to get Scully transferred to VCS before he'd even asked her to assist in the Tooms case, and knew instantly that the little obsequious sonuvabitch simply wanted all the help he could get without sharing the glory, and targeting his spotlight-shy partner under the pretense of friendship, was the best bet.

Normally, he would've let the viccie flounder and gleefully watch as the twerp fell on his face, but parasites like him never went down alone, so despite his disdain towards such close proximity to the boys'-club assholes, he'd tagged along, looking out for Scully every step of the way.  At Tooms' questioning, which obviously was going to bottom out, and Mulder had seen too many professional liars walk from these tests before, he'd considered checking out Eugene's shoes for tacks, only to find the boys turning around to indirectly question Scully's credibility and profile.  Instantly realizing they were fishing for a scapegoat to hang this particular disaster on, he stepped in to shift the focus off her.

And knew the perfect way.

Sometimes having a rotten reputation is better than any black belt in martial arts.  Better him than her, he figured, and they'd been only too happy to oblige.  So they mocked, blamed, blustered and threatened, and he'd taken the brunt of their wrath, accomplishing his goal.

She never quite caught on, though, he concedes wryly, the 'territorial' thing was at least somewhat accurate.

An inward sigh.  Colton might have been a jackass, and probably still is, but he is a jackass that blazing up the VCS ladder, whereas 'Spooky' Mulder would be forever shut away, hidden in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover building like the deformed, retarded family member no one wants to talk about, a department with no chance of any recognition even if the temperature in hell dropped to absolute-zero tomorrow.

So despite what his deviant thoughts are telling him, he has no intention of screwing up her life even more or soiling the delicate ambience that lies between them...because there is something there that transcends the simple physical coil of mundane existence, more than just the bodies of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully sitting here in this room...a silent communication and understanding that goes beyond the ordinary, a spiritual (he imagines her rolling her eyes at that description) connection that flows much deeper, more intense than just a plain old tumble in the sack.

Even if that sex might be really really great, which of course he'll never know because it'll never happen.

Nope.

Not ever.

He sneaks another look over to her, now busy scribbling something on the opened report, head tilted even further down, deep in thought in what was most likely an attempt to conjure up some really big and impressively obscure multisyllabic word to send the Skinner scurrying for his Oxford-American dictionary.  Eyebrows knitted, lips pursed, she brings her favorite fountain pen up to her face tapping it against her cheek in a soft rhythmic pattern, then ever so slowly, unconsciously, drawing it lower, and Mulder watches, transfixed, as what has to be the most adorable overbite in his world delicately clamp down on the end.

Um.

He shakes his head, dropping his eyes down to the folder to instantly derail the approaching train of thought.

Cattle mutilations.  Bovine evisceration.  Steer gastroenterology.

Besides, she isn't interested, even if what he's seen in her choice of men puts him right up her alley.

(Yeah right, you idiot, like she'd want some shmuck with a twenty-four year adolescent obsession over his sister...a selfish, arrogant bastard only two steps shy of being committed to an asylum, with the perverse belief in everything paranormal, who always ditched her and made her do all the paperwork, whose crusade effectively flushed her career down the toilet, resulted in her abduction, who-knows-what-the-hell experiments on her, killed her sister, and now gave her an inoperable nasopharyngeal cancer, and that doesn't exactly add up to the most romantic feelings for anybody, so no thank you sir, and fuck you sir, but I think you've done enough damage as it is.)

There.  He'd worked it all out by himself.  He closes his eyes, feeling much more relieved.

Except his head is pounding again.

"Mulder?"

Her soft touch on his shoulder nearly sends him through ceiling with a startled yelp.  Christ!  How she manages to materialize from out of nowhere is something he's going to have to investigate one day.

Opening his eyes to see those stunning blues framed by the tiny little furrows of worry between her eyebrows hover a foot away from him, all signs of former irritation forgotten in the immediate concern for his health nearly takes his breath away, and he smiles despite the raquetball game gleefully whapping away inside his cranial mass.

"I'm okay.  You startled me, that's all."

Scully watches his face, reading every line from his forehead to his chin, then straightens up to lean back on the corner of the desk.

"I'm surprised the Social Worker let you come back to work so soon."

"She didn't.  I'm playing hooky."

"Mulder," That old, familiar sigh.  Comforting, somehow.  "Go home.  I'm pretty sure those dead cows won't be going anywhere."

"While you do what?"

The corner of her mouth twitches ruefully.  He is getting a little too adept at flinging her words back at her.

"Work.  Someone here has to."  She walks back around the desk, picking up the tape recorder.  "And I still have to make some sort of sense out of this mess."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Some sort of high pitched static buzz in the middle of the autopsy recording."

"Maybe it's your magnetic personality."

A groan.  Accomplishing his task, Mulder smirks, rising from his seat.

"Most likely a bad tape."

"Maybe if you play it backwards at half speed, you'll be able to catch 'Aqualung.'"

She shoves him out the door, closing it behind him.
 
 

Tower Records
Arlington, Virginia
 

So, Brady is in a bad mood, see.  He's always figured by the time he's twenty five, he'll like, have this record contract, doing gigs & tours with his garage band 'Phlox,' on the road, making millions of bucks, diving into unlimited pussy at every stop and being so fucking famous that everyone will knock each other over in a scramble to kiss his scrawny ass, 'cause they do real music and don't suck like 'Hootie and the Blowjobs.'

Fuck if nothing ever turns out right.

'Cause, he's gonna be twenty five next week, and he's still here in shithole, Virginia standing behind the counter with this stupid, orange name tag that reads "Hi! My name is Brady!" ringing up other people's music at Tower Records.  No concert, no gigs.  Even his girlfriend is acting kinda funny, just recently being a total bitch, and he's got a funny suspicion she might be boffing Timmy, but Timmy's a fag, and Brady's really not phobic or anything, but shit, the guy's such a...

"Excuse me."

Some tall, lanky old dude with a leather jacket and white tee is standing in front of him, looking like some sort of throwback from a Marlon Brando or Jimmy Dean flick, not that they're not cool or anything, but jeez, this guy is OLD, what thirty-seven, thirty-eight?

He can see it now, it's gotta be a mid-life crisis or something like that.  He sees it all the time at the University.  Old dude listens to "Pearl Jam" or some other shit to impress young, dumb 19 year chicks -- they love that sensitive, mature stuff since he has some decent middle-management job that pays for dinner and movies, plus he probably has a corvette or some other big dick-shaped car 'cause he's so fuckin-ayyy and all.

"What can I do ya for?"

He takes a disc out from his jacket pocket and hands it to the clerk.

"I was wondering, do you have any more by this group?"
 

"Nine Inch Nails?  Sure."

Fifteen minutes later, Brady rings up several new cds for the guy who doesn't even ask about the albums to see if they're good or crap or anything.  He would have never pegged the guy to be the industrial type.  Even if he were trying to be cool, this isn't really the big type band stuff that impresses girls.  Goth girls, maybe, but he doesn't seem to be into their kind of shit.

The guy opens his wallet and hands him his Visa.  Swiping it through the reader, he takes a look at the name on the Visa card.  Fox Mulder.  Mom and dad must've been hippies or beatniks or at least smoked a lotta dope at some time.

And he probably got picked on or beat up a lot in grade school.
 
"Cool name."

The older man scowls at him.

"Mulder's pretty common."

"No, dude, I was talking about...oh wait, I get it?"  Brady laughs.

The man is still scowling like he's got this killer bee up his ass.  Sensitive fucker.  Guess he still gets razzed on about his name.

Not saying anything more, he hands the guy the charge slip and a pen, and packs his cd's in a bag as the dude scrawls his name and returns it.

"Thanks for shopping.  Come again."

So, Jimmy Dean Middle-aged Mulder nods and saunters away with his new collection of tunes dangling from his fingers, and Brady watches him go.

Not bad looking for a guy, not that he was into him or anything, but he supposes some babes might dig this dude, even if he does look permanently pissed.

But then the guy, turns back, like he forgot something, then says,

"A word of advice, Brady.  If you think she's cheating on you, she probably is."

Freaky.

Fuckin' spooky.
 

END OF PART ONE

*****
 
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