by Jake
nejake@tds.net
 

Rating: PG-13 for disturbing themes
Classification: 590-Word alternate ending fic
Spoilers: "Unruhe"

Summary: Life imprisonment can take many forms.

Disclaimer: These characters belong to Chris Carter, FOX and
1013 Productions. No copyright infringement intended.

Authors Notes: This story was written in response to Haven's
Scully Torture Challenge. Be forewarned -- it's not happy.
 

GEFANGENER
By Jake

FBI data shows that ten of the twelve states without capital
punishment have homicide rates below the national average.

Opponents of the death penalty often cite that capital
punishment is not a deterrent to murder, those executed are
usually poor, and many innocent people have been wrongly
sentenced to death.

Tell it to someone who cares.

Gerald Thomas Schnauz -- house painter, drywaller, murderer --
got lucky. He killed Alice Brandt in Traverse City, Michigan,
and Michigan happens to be one of the twelve states without
the death penalty.

Special Agent Fox Mulder has not seen Gerry Schnauz since
testifying at his trial. He isn't sympathetic to the fact that
Schnauz is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, who, according
to his court-appointed lawyer, belongs in Melvoin Psychiatric
Hospital, not a maximum security prison.

Fox Mulder wishes Gerry Schnauz had committed his crimes in
one of the forty states that gas, electrocute or inject its
serial killers.

E. Michael McCann, a district attorney in Wisconsin -- another
compassionate state without the death penalty -- prosecuted
Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered and dismembered seventeen boys
and men, and ate the flesh of at least one of them. Despite
the heinous nature of the crime, McCann was not dissuaded from
his feelings about capital punishment. "To participate in the
killing of another human being, it diminishes the respect for
life. Period."

Being a doctor, Special Agent Dana Scully might have agreed
with him, if she hadn't undergone a transorbital lobotomy at
the hands of a madman in October of 1996. Gerry Schnauz
kidnapped her, duct-taped her to a dentist chair, inserted a
leucotome into her eye socket and proceeded to cut out her
brain while she begged for mercy.

Many aspects of Schnauz's crime haunt Agent Mulder. Scully was
his partner. He stayed behind at the Traverse City Drug Store,
while she went for the car, where she was abducted. He tried
to locate her, but didn't arrive in time to save her. The worst
part though, the thing that still gives him nightmares, is
knowing that she understood exactly what was happening to her
when Gerry Schnauz excised her mind.

Which thoughts went first, Mulder wonders. Worse yet, which
went last? The cases they were working on? The errands she was
planning to run later in the day? Memories of her mother? Her
brothers? Thoughts of him? Had she been hoping he would rescue
her? Was she thinking of him at all? Was she disillusioned
when he didn't burst through the door and stop Gerry Schnauz
before it was too late?

He straightens a dying flower in the vase beside her bed. She
is lying motionless on the pillows, a doll tucked in the crook
of her arm and a vacant look in her eyes.

Argue with me, he wishes. Prove me wrong. Tell me I'm crazy,
Scully, so I can start to breath again.

Physically she's right there in front of him, yet the Scully
he knew vanished in a motorhome at the edge of a Michigan
graveyard on an otherwise perfect autumn day.

The sun is balanced on the horizon outside her window. He
bends over her and softly kisses her cheek. "See you
tomorrow," he says, same as always. Sorrow sucker-punches him
when she doesn't answer, although she hasn't uttered a word in
nine years.

Dana Katherine Scully is a permanent patient in Baltimore's
Center for Long Term Care.

Today 2,572 inmates are serving sentences of life without
parole in the state of Michigan. One of them is Gerald Thomas
Schnauz.

- - - - - -

Author's notes: I live in a state without capital punishment
and I am not a proponent of the death penalty. Please do not
write to me about your views on capital punishment. This was a
piece of fiction, not an editorial comment.

"Gefangener" is German for "prisoner."

"Unruhe" has always been the scariest of all XFs to me. It
terrifies me to think about Scully being held against her
will in that chair, knowing what sort of brutality is coming,
yet being powerless to stop it. It speaks to some of my
earliest childhood fears.

Feedback, good or bad, is welcome on this or any of my
stories. Send comments to nejake@tds.net.