<![CDATA[Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 8/20
Look thou be true; do not give dalliance
Too much the rein. The strongest oaths are straw
To th' fire I' th' blood. Be more abstemious,
Or else good night your vow!
Wednesday passed with no more news of George. I even
dared return to the X Files office and sort the latest round of
referrals into stacks: You've Got To Be Kidding, Warrants
Further Investigation, and High Priority. Mulder would never
believe how few files actually made it into the first pile -- of
course the low percentage might have had something to do
with the fact that I never once considered the National
Enquirer an appropriate referral source. Only human
experimentation (government or alien, take your pick) made
it into the High Priority pile, so the Further Investigation files
were piling up. We did a few exsanguinations and
manifestations whenever we had a chance, but it was like
opening the drain on a bathtub while running the water full
force -- intake exceeded outflow. Nonetheless our solve rate
remained high and I might even get a merit pay increase at
the next six-month review.
I was headed back to Virginia, sitting at an intersection
waiting for the light to turn, when my cellphone trilled. I
unshipped it from my jacket and answered the call.
"Hello beautiful," a voice that was Mulder's and was not
purred in my ear.
My throat felt like a rasp had been shoved down my
esophagus.
"What do you want?"
"I want to fuck you and kill you, what do you think?" he
mocked and ended with a chillingly familiar dry chuckle.
The brushfire of anger started in my belly, probably in the
vicinity of my much-tortured ovaries. It seemed that I felt all
my anger in my reproductive organs these days.
"You can try. You didn't do a good job of it last time and you
couldn't keep a hard-on with a live woman you sick fuck."
Now with the raspy voice he'd been kind enough to give me I
actually sounded fairly fierce. I almost believed it.
He snorted with some strange George emotion into the
phone, sounding like a hyena sniffing for carrion.
"My life is so...strange these days," he whined, now exactly
in Mulder's voice. "I just need to figure some things out. I
need you, Scully."
I shuddered and pulled my jacket closer around me. Then I
pulled my gun from its holster and laid it in my lap. Other
drivers were going to think I was about to succumb to road
rage but I needed the reassurance.
"I don't know what you want from me," I stated. I think it
didn't sound feeble, but I was rapidly losing my earlier
bravado.
"You wanna let me show you?" he asked, his voice curling
like whipped cream over chocolate mousse. Holy shit, even
the innuendoes were Mulderish.
"You want me to meet you?"
"I'm at the park at the corner of Reno and 42nd. You'll know
me from the carnation in my lapel."
I got an earful of dial tone.
I dialed Zippy before the noise could begin to annoy me. He
picked up on the sixth ring; unlike my former partner, he was
capable of ignoring a ringing phone if he was busy in other
ways, like hitting on a pretty girl.
"'Lo?"
"It's me. George just called. He wants me to meet him at the
park on Reno and 42nd in the District. How fast can you--"
He cursed. "I'm out in Wheaton--twenty-five minutes. Shit!"
"Don't call Mulder," I warned and hung up.
Fifteen minutes and five near-accidents later, I pulled up to
the corner of the park. It was a nice neighborhood, large
houses set well back from the curb, an extra stripe on the
street to mark off the bike path. I parked in front of a fire
hydrant and got out of the car, gun held in front of me.
The park was small, barely deserving of the name. From the
sidewalk, the ground sloped upwards at a very sharp angle,
nearly forty-five degrees, so that the park was set off from
the surrounding territory by about five feet. A short flight of
concrete steps led upwards. I couldn't see much up there,
but the main grounds looked mostly flat with a few scattered
trees on the fringes. There was a basketball court, blocked
off by a high fence, off to the left.
I felt the first few raindrops on my scalp as I hit the first step
up.
The early evening light was as gray as newspaper. The rain
wasn't heavy enough to interfere with visibility yet, but the
thick clouds above my head warned that it would quickly get
worse. Fortunately, I didn't see any civilians when I looked
around; the threatening weather had kept them away.
I pointed my weapon down at the ground and followed the
concrete path towards the center of the park, scanning as I
went. Aside from clusters of dying daffodils and crocuses,
there wasn't much to see. There were a few stands of trees
at the far edge of the park, and I tried to see if there were
any human figures lurking, but I couldn't be sure.
"George," I called. My voice was softer than I expected and I
tried again, straining bruised muscles. "George...Here boy."
More steps, closer to the center, closer to the trees. "What's
this George, can't you deliver? I should have known better,
you loser. Hell, I'd make a better man than--"
Motion, off to the left in the trees. It could have been leaves
rustling in the growing wind. But I didn't think so.
I left the path and headed for where I'd seen the movement,
cursing my height and my vanity as my heels sank into the
ground. On the up side, the grass was getting slippery with
the rain and my heels helped prevent me from slipping.
I jogged over the few dozen feet to the trees, watching
carefully. It would be really useful if Zippy had been overly
pessimistic, I thought and slowed down.
There was a crack, a branch breaking over to my right and I
turned. He was standing, just watching, maybe ten yards
from me, framed between two dogwood trees. "We never
really talk, do we?" he asked, only that couldn't have been
stolen from Mulder because I'd never told him and I
shuddered as if the light rain were a monsoon.
"Why did you try to kill me?"
He shrugged. In Mulder's heavy trenchcoat, he looked like a
refugee from a fashion shoot, as if water were being sprayed
on him to emulate rain; it didn't bedraggle him the way rain
affected mere mortals. "It was a mistake, I didn't realize...he
gets so angry, everything that's happened to us in the past
year. I think confusion is inevitable. I know you don't mean
what you said just now. I understand what's happening to us.
Once I've tied up the loose ends you and I can be together."
"Loose ends?" I parroted dumbly.
He took a step forward. "He's abandoned the quest.
Betrayed it. All for that little worm. It's pathetic. Our work is
important, Scully, there's no time to *breed*--" And he was
coming towards me, nearly jogging on the thick green grass.
Lighting cracked, whiting out my vision as I fired. I'd seen
him just before the thunderbolt, and at that range if I missed I
should have been sent back to Quantico. But I didn't see
anything when my vision cleared, no body, not even a patch
of darkness on the ground where he'd been.
After a few seconds lights began to go on in the houses
across the street from the park. Wonderful, more
explanations due to the local police. The way my luck was
running the shot had probably gone across the street, into
someone's house, and mowed down a kid at dinner. I moved
forward to where I'd seen George.
Under the two trees the ground was torn, as if a zombie had
emerged. I dropped to my knees and began to scrabble in
the dirt, looking down one second and trying to keep watch
for my friendly neighborhood psychopath the next five.
I was looking around for George when I first touched the
dead woman's hand.
As I dialed Mulder I heard a faint whistle, bouncing around
so that I couldn't get a direction. It faded away just as I
recognized the tune. It was a tune I had been subjected to
on endless car rides back and forth across the US. Slow,
sad and haunting, a king on a bed in Vegas, putting a
television out of its misery with a handgun.
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
Zippy found me a few minutes later, waving my gun with one
hand while I gripped her cold dead dirty fingers with the
other.
****
We held a nonliteral postmortem that night because Scully
was too tired for a full autopsy, and also it's hard to get good
help for that sort of thing at night. Chinese food and crime
scene reports, another Wednesday night at Casa Mulder.
Warwick and Ingveld had gone clubbing with their hacker
friends. The Mooselet was cutting some heavy z's and the
baby snoring from the monitor underscored the whole
conversation.
"Definitely flayed," Scully mumbled into her drink. "Some of
the strokes were done just to damage, but I'm pretty sure
there's some large undamaged patches of skin that were
simply removed."
"Where?" I rolled another moo shi pancake, with a little less
plum sauce this time, and took a bite.
"Mainly the neck." She primly used her chopsticks to bring a
few sesame noodles to her lips.
"What's that mean, you think? Removing evidence of
strangulation?" Zippy asked as yet another dumpling fell
onto the table top. He gave up and simply speared it with his
chopstick.
"He never felt the need before. No, I think George has seen
Silence of the Lambs too many times. He wants to create a
new MO for himself but he can't think of one he likes so he's
just stealing from Buffalo Bill."
"You mean...?"
"Yeah. He's making himself a throat toupee."
Zippy's face moued in disgust and Scully choked back
something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. We knew
each other too well; we'd gone way beyond gallows humor
by now. What came after that? Gas chamber humor maybe.
"Kind of makes you wonder about the advisability about
letting prisoners watch cable," I added.
"At least George knows that we're gunning for his ass,"
Zippy remarked
and took another pull on his Corona.
"That Scully is gunning for his ass, at least," I offered, "I'm
just pissed off about my trench coat."
"You know what disturbs me the most about all this?" Scully
asked, her
fingers drawing patterns down the side of her bottle.
"The fact that he could have killed you? That he's stalking
us all?
That there's a serious whack-job running around out there
with Mulder's
IQ and picking up radio station WDANA?" Zippy asked.
She shook her head.
"What then?"
"His taste in music. Humming a Elvis tune to me."
"Which one?" Zippy asked.
I looked up, shocked. Was she actually making a joke?
"As far as I can see, he has exquisite taste in music," I said.
****
"What are you doing?"
Scully had the grace to look ashamed. The noise that
brought me to the bathroom had been a metal box of Band-
Aids falling into the sink as she stretched up -- with the sink
in the way she was just too short to reach the top shelf of the
medicine cabinet. It was the one storage area in her
apartment that I'd ever taken over, and that only because
she had no use for it herself.
She was wearing the sweatshirt again, and gray sweatpants
that fell all the way to the tops of her ankles. Her bare feet on
the cold tile floor seemed oddly vulnerable, a breach in her
armor. Miranda had her toes.
"I can't sleep," she enunciated in scalpel-like syllables. And
along with the Band-Aids I kept my prescriptions on the top
shelf, so that's what she had been up to.
I mentally reviewed the information on the little warning
handout I'd gotten from the doctor. I never used to read
those things but with Miranda in the house I felt it wise to
know the side effects of every potentially edible product.
"You can't take my Ambien," I informed her.
She stopped stretching and turned to face me fully. "There's
no adverse interaction with the Zoloft if that's what --"
"Jesus, Scully," I snapped, "does depressed respiratory
function mean anything to you? Bronchial swelling? Even if
you split my dose in half it's too dangerous. Go count
sheep." Or maybe she could count duplicate brothers, my
ever-helpful guilt complex volunteered. After all we were the
ones keeping her from happy dreams.
"Mulder, I chased your fuckhead brother tonight with no
problems. I do not think I'm in any imminent danger of
respiratory arrest," she returned fire with something close to
her old Zippo flare.
"Do you want the bed?" I finally offered, sounding as
ungracious as she did, "I could take the couch if you think it
would help."
"Your bed?" she drawled in her gravelly damaged voice and
raised an eyebrow at me.
I felt blood flow in entirely inappropriate patterns. Danger,
danger Will Robinson. Even in thick sweats, even with the
pallor and the bruises and the weight loss she still had the
power to turn me on. I remembered her tongue flicking in just
the right place in my ear, her fingers branding the hollow
above my hipbone, the sour sweat under her arms and how
the flavor differed subtly between her breasts. Our breathing
changed together in the hospital-toned bathroom, bouncing
harshly off the wall.
Good intentions were lying under the sword of Damocles.
There was an invisible fire in the room. That accounted for
my paralyzed terror and the sudden absence of oxygen.
Hypoxia, now there was an excellent explanation.
I bent down and she stretched up. Her mouth opened as I
forced her back against the wall tiles. They were as cold as
ice cream under my hands compared to her hot fudge heat.
She tasted like a mouthful of blood, growling as my hands
slipped around her head, my thumbs flicking her earlobes
and tracing the delicate cartilege of her ears.
I wanted to bend further to reach her neck but at the last
second realized that for once the pain would probably
overwhelm the pleasure for her. Instead I dropped down to
my knees -- her head followed me a little of the way down
because she wouldn't let my lips go -- and lifted her shirt up
so that I could lap at her pale flat stomach. She jerked
against the wall as I pushed my tongue into her navel and I
heard her hands slap and scrabble on the tiles.
She tasted exactly the way I remembered. She tasted like
manna from heaven; if the Israelites had eaten this they
never would have been tempted to follow other gods and
they would have refused to leave the desert. What I had
forgotten was the heat, melting over my tongue and seeping
throughout my body like a transfusion.
I pushed her sweatpants down to her knees, accompanied
by her soft bruised sounds of encouragement, and was
faced with a logistical dilemma. She's so damn short that I'd
have to get down on my hands and knees to really taste her,
which was not unthinkable but would be highly difficult with
the sink and toilet in the way.
After I reviewed the floor plan and sleeping arrangements,
there was only one feasible option.
"The study," I said and looked up, waiting for her reaction.
She nodded. Her eyes were like frayed denim that's been
washed too many times and I reminded myself that our
relationship had never been that healthy. She pulled herself
from the wall, tugging her sweatpants back up to her waist,
and I noticed that the hand she used to open the bathroom
door was shaking. I wanted to beam us to the first floor of
the house so that we wouldn't be able to reconsider, but
instead I trotted along after her like an empty-headed golden
retriever (but I repeat myself).
It seemed appropriate that my sex life would get restarted on
my old leather couch. I closed and locked the study door
behind me as she sat in the corner, arms across her chest,
looking down at her lap.
I felt a nameless anxiety. Okay, it probably had a long
German name that Scully would know, but I had no clue. On
my knees again, this time on the more forgiving study carpet,
I put one hand on each of her quadriceps and relaxed as she
opened her legs and her hands unfolded themselves to
touch my shoulders. A few graceless fumbles later, she was
naked from the waist down. When I bent to suck at her
clitoris, her sweatshirt billowed around my head, creating a
small humid world around me.
I love cunnilingus. The Latin name's a bit absurd, I wish that
there was a good Anglo-Saxon term like "fucking"
specifically dedicated to the practice of burying your face
between a woman's legs so that you can see, smell, and
breathe nothing but her exquisite cunt. It's a connection
undiluted by any distance, unmediated by rationalization or
even emotion. Scully moaned and the sound was like distant
thunder as I lost myself in her hot-oil folds.
Some amount of missing time later, she pulled my head up
and I heaved myself into her lap. Her mouth sucked and
pinched; she had no reason to avoid *my* neck and she
made me writhe like a bucking bronco on top of her.
I could feel my cock sticking out of the fly of my boxers,
which was sort of ludicrous but I suspected that Scully
wouldn't laugh. I pushed her over so that her head hit the
middle of the couch and her legs went over the side. I was
rubbing against her as she squirmed, trying to replace the
sweat coating her body with my saliva.
I wasn't even going to bother with removing my shorts.
Honestly I didn't even know if I could wait that long when I
felt her soaking-wet curls against the skin of my shaft.
Skin.
Shit.
"Scully?" I whimpered, fully utilizing all three of my working
brain cells.
She groaned. "Don't you have anything?"
"You forgot to send me an engraved invitation."
She pushed against me and I turned over, as clumsy as a
sack of wet sand. Now I was in the middle of the couch,
which gave her enough room to stretch out. I bit my tongue
hard enough to draw blood when she sucked the head of my
cock into her mouth. I saw her cheek distend as I bucked
against her and clenched my fists, one digging into the
leather and one tangling in her hair.
So long, it had been so long and I couldn't bear the thought
that I would just come instantly. Scully moved her head,
adjusting herself across my knees so that she could take me
further in. But the angle wasn't great and I could see her
wince as her attempts distressed her bruised throat.
At the very least I could try to spare her physical pain. I
tugged her head up with my palm against her sweaty head
and she looked up at me, lips pursed around me, her tongue
flicking like a metronome.
She let me slide out and watched me, her eyes now the
color that a summer sky would bleed if cut. I put my hands
on her shoulders and pulled her sweatshirt up; she raised
her arms and let me take it off. Then I rolled her carefully off
the couch, so that she was lying under me.
Then I stopped, cursing, and moved as far away as
minimally necessary to take off my boxers. She actually
giggled, though she looked contrite when she saw my face.
Then her face became a question mark. I wasn't sure what
she'd think about this, but I carefully lowered myself down on
her, resting my cock between her breasts.
If she'd raised an eyebrow I think I would have shriveled like
a peanut, but instead she cupped the sides of her breasts
and pushed them together. The friction was incredible; her
sweat and saliva made her slick and hot underneath me. I
raised my hands to cover hers, squeezing her a little harder.
I felt the thin bones of her fingers fragile underneath mine, a
striking contrast to the round swell of her breasts. Her skin
was like rice paper, so thin that I could barely understand
how the blood stayed inside. Her crinkled apricot nipples
complemented the cinnamon swirl of her hair against the
carpet. The purple head of my cock and the darker skin of
my hands bracketing her breasts --not to mention the livid
bruises on her neck -- combined to give the scene the look
of a Picasso painting to my blurry eyes.
All right, so men are visual creatures, so sue me. Watching
her--watching us--was erotic. I don't think I blinked, even as
my eyes dried out and the sight of her became painful.
She was watching me as I ground and pushed against her,
eyes locked on mine like laser targets. It's me, Scully, I
wanted to say, and maybe I did. It's me.
Her face was so serious, as if she were preparing to give her
annual review of our work. I felt her hands slide out from
under mine so that I was touching the flannel-soft skin of her
breasts. She reached up to caress my face, drawing me
down towards her so that I was doubled over, contorted like
a crushed beer can, and when I could feel her exhalations
against my lips she stopped pulling. "I missed you," she
whispered and closed her eyes.
I came, tumbling down onto her like a safe tossed from a
second-story window.
When her breathing evened out, I untangled myself and
staggered over to the desk to get a handful of tissues to
clean us off. She slumbered as I wiped off the largest puddle
of come, the edges now drying and tightening on her skin.
I managed to put my boxers on without falling over by
bracing one hand against the arm of the couch. There was
no way I was going to wake Scully up to put her clothes back
on, so instead I just piled them on her stomach and picked
her up.
She'd lost more weight than I'd thought; if she stepped on a
scale she'd have to jump up and down on it to make it
register a hundred pounds. Just like the stray in the back
yard, she needed to be fed more carefully.
I put her on the bed beside me, my hand resting on her arm,
and watched her sleep. Eventually, she began to sprawl out
in the way she always had. I pulled the covers up to her chin
and allowed my eyes to close.
Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 9/20
O, a cherubin
Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile,
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt ...
Mulder's mouth was all over me. I could feel the trails he'd
left glistening like an oil sheen on hot asphalt. Currently
though his head was between my legs as you'd expect, his
large hands covering my inner thighs. He ate me like he was
starving, like he wanted to drown. I moaned.
This was not a dream, I realized as the sunlight stabbed into
my eyes and I looked up at the white stucco ceiling. This
was Mulder's actual bedroom. Therefore, it was okay to be
turned on.
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked over against
the far wall. The crib was gone; we weren't introducing
Miranda to the primal scene just yet. Mulder lifted his face
and turned his head to see where I was looking.
"Warwick has her," he mumbled, gripping my thighs and
raising his head enough to push his nose and chin into my
belly, looking for a reaction like an enthusiastic puppy. I
panted and that seemed to be enough; he bent his head to
attend to more salient matters.
I groaned as his hands came up to cover my breasts. The
world contracted to Mulder and what he was doing to me.
The pulse of his fingers, the pulse of his tongue. Stubble
against my thighs, scraping off a layer of skin cells. I pulled
my knees up to give him greater access and tossed my head
against the pillow.
Hs tongue was wet and cool, like seals flowing through
ocean water. I threw my hands up behind my head, straining
to hold on to the headboard.
Climaxing while awake was still unfamiliar to me. My own
surprised yelp echoed in my ears as he pulled his glistening
face from between my legs and scooted up the bed. He
fumbled for the side table and I saw the familiar flash of
silver foil.
"Where -- ?" Dear God, please don't let him have asked
Zippy.
"I went for a jog before you got up, past the 7-11." Rip.
"Mulder! You could have been *arrested*! You know you're
not supposed to -- " He thrust into me, eyes closed, face
strained in what might have been agony. It had been so
long; I was instantly made aware of the difference between
ghost-fucking and the real thing. He held me down for a
second, then began to move pistonlike. I felt myself
liquefying around him, the initial discomfort fading.
"Sorry," he lied, pushing my face over to the side with his
stubbly chin so that he could cover my ear with sloppy wet
kisses. "Want me to take them back?" He paused and made
as if to pull out.
"Fuck you" didn't seem appropriate. I raised my legs and dug
my heels into the small of his back, right above his ass. I
could tell he was smiling into my hair until I picked up the
pace and he groaned and stopped trying to be a wiseass.
His hands slid from the sides of my breasts to my thighs
wrapped around his waist and then journeyed back again. I
whimpered and lurched against him. He took pity on me and
slid his fingertips down to my clitoris. My head was pounding
and buzzing as if I were in the middle of a fire alarm.
Now his teeth were on my shoulder, searching for that one
spot that always --
Oh
Yes
I convulsed against him, feeling his arm tighten around me,
trying not to get thrown off. I saw stars, confetti, a mist of
blood red and green and all the colors in between. Dimly I
felt him heave into me and come to rest, sweaty and
shuddering. Oh God, so good. Utterly good and perfect.
How could I even entertain the thought of being with anyone
else?
He peeled himself off me long enough to remove the
condom and throw it over the side of the bed. If I'd had the
energy I would have groaned in disgust.
In his arms, my head tucked under his chin, I felt like a turtle
inside its protective shell. The feeling of well-being was
almost agonizing, because I knew it would end suddenly.
I may have dozed again, but we were entwined in the same
position when I heard the door slam open, allowing a pissed-
off Warwick to enter.
"Mulder, she's been crying for you for ten minutes -- oh.
Look, come and get her when you've got your priorities
straight."
He was going to close the door but Mulder's voice, raised in
measured anger over my scrambling to cover myself with the
sheets, stopped him.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to recall just who
pays whom around here. And that I've never once
complained when you wanted me to watch Her Highness so
you and Ingveld could do the horizontal mambo, and you've
got fifteen years more stamina than I do. I'll be there soon."
Warwick frowned uncertainly and shut the door.
Mulder's hand circled my shoulder a few times and then he
swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Sorry 'bout that." I
was still so shocked that he'd defend me -- us -- in any way
that I hadn't even begun to feel guilty yet.
Mulder by contrast was made for multitasking of that sort.
"Why do I feel like my wife just caught me with my mistress?"
he mused as he struggled into boxers and sweatpants that
had been left in a pile beside the bed. He sniffed at the
underarms of a T-shirt and donned that too.
"Back in a few," he said. "Want coffee?"
"I'll get it myself," I replied, wondering where this nonchalant
attitude had come from. It was bizarrely attractive, like his
morning bedhead -- he didn't seem devastated by Warwick's
condemnation, but he wasn't so desperate that he couldn't
leave me to tend to the rest of his life.
After he left, I stared at the wall of postcards for a while. That
had been a cry for help, but Mulder hadn't been listening.
Maybe it was time to help myself.
Then it was out to the kitchen where to my great relief no
one else from this strange agglomeration of people was
present. I struggled with the yuppified coffee/expresso maker
and produced a substance that, while unpleasant, had the
desired effect.
I drank it standing up. It had been a long time.
I'd scheduled the autopsy for 10 am, and I had to speed just
a little to make it. In a way there was no reason to hurry. She
was still dead.
The blood samples I'd taken last night -- it seemed so far
away I could barely believe she hadn't rotted -- were still
down in the lab. She'd been moved to Quantico along with a
large amount of the earth in her shallow grave. The evidence
techs had even brought some crushed crocuses along.
As usual, he'd put her clothes back on when he was finished.
Given his little experiment in do-it-yourself tannery, this had
caused her once-white blouse to stick to her body in a
pathetic imitation of the missing and lacerated skin. I had to
cut it away with an Exacto knife, working slowly and carefully
to avoid destroying any evidence. Beneath the stiff cloth her
back was blue-gray between the purple-black welts of blood.
The blood had still been moist enough to attract dirt when he
buried her, but not so wet as to cause the dirt to mix and
seep through her shirt as mud. Given the extended drying
time of blood-saturated cotton fabric in damp spring weather,
I thought he wouldn't have needed to kill her nearby the
park. He could have done it almost anywhere within or just
outside of the District and carried her around in the trunk of a
car.
Hairs & Fibers might have some insights to that, if they could
distinguish trace she'd brought with her from the
overwhelming amount of debris she'd picked up during her
impromptu burial.
Her body evidenced the now-standard signs of manual
strangulation and postmortem sexual assault. The tissue
damage at the neck made evaluation more difficult, but I
judged that he'd strangled her before he cut the skin off her
throat: If he'd done it the other way around, it would have
been squishy and difficult for him and I also would have
expected more severe and concentrated trauma to the
underlying tissue. (It was the difference between squeezing
a banana within its peel and a peeled banana -- the covering
diffuses the pressure, causing less intense but more
extensive damage.)
At least we could tell her family that the mutilation and the
sexual abuse had been postmortem. The stripes on her
back, on the other hand, were probably inflicted while she
still lived. From the depth, placement, and variation in angles
of the cuts, I thought she'd still been able to writhe, maybe to
scream and beg if her voice hadn't given out.
George had kindly buried his victim's purse with her. She'd
been Maria Penalver, Northeast Georgetown ER nurse. Her
duty shift had ended at 5 pm two days before, and she'd
never made it home.
I'd been in the Northeast Georgetown ER a few days before,
courtesy of George. I didn't remember anything of that part
of my fantastic voyage, but a quick call confirmed that
Penalver had tended to me when I was first admitted -- had,
indeed, held my hand and reassured me as I gasped for air
like a landed fish. I was a dangerous person to know.
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
I finished the report and called my gynecologist. Fortunately
for all concerned, Dr. Shimada was willing to squeeze me in
over lunch. "Always time for the Eighth Gynecological
Wonder of the World," she said. I really didn't like having her
put it that way. But you don't want to piss off your doctor -- a
lesson I wish Mulder had learned -- and so I didn't say
anything.
My car was still back at my apartment and in any event I
could use the thrill of Zippy's Corvette. It was shiny black like
Batman's costume, like the vinyl-coated goddesses of
Mulder's porno mags, and frankly it made me wonder about
whether Zippy was trying to compensate for some more
personal inadequacy. Zippy would have insisted that he was
just advertising the real goods, and I certainly didn't want to
initiate a debate on penis substitutes, so I just smirked
whenever I saw the thing. Okay, I saw the attraction, but
then again I didn't have any worries about the size of *my*
gun.
Zippy insisted on driving me to the appointment, saying that
he had some errands in Georgetown, so I was able to gulp
down a croissant and a soda on my way over. He wanted
me to promise I'd wait in the hospital cafeteria, surrounded
by lots of people, until he returned. I refused, mainly
because I wanted him to return on time. If he was worried for
my fragile safety, he wouldn't delay by flirting with salesgirls.
Dr. Shimada didn't make me wait too long, only long enough
for me to shuffle through the magazines in her waiting room
and figure out that, if the magazines had been up to date, I'd
be back at a point at which my life had made sense. When
my only nightmares were about things I couldn't remember.
It was the shit that I could remember which was starring in
my monster vision these days.
Inside the exam room, she was as pleasant as ever, her face
as blank as the moon when I informed her that I'd recently
become sexually active again and would like to renew my
lapsed birth control prescription.
If only it were as easy to renew my lapsed faith.
Faith in what?
Oh, just about everything. God, the Universe, myself, the
possibility of finding great shoes on sale, and that science
would find a cure for shortness. Like I said, faith in
*everything*.
"Can you slide a little closer to the edge please?" Dr.
Shimada asked and I did so, looking up at the cartoons on
the ceiling of the office.
"You know what they say, you can never be too thin or too
close to the edge," I joked.
She looked at me, puzzled.
"You are too thin," she warned.
Whatever.
Finally the exam was over and she let me get dressed.
There were no obvious abnormalities, whatever that might
mean in my case; in my first bit of good fortune in three or
four years, my period had ended just a few days before, so I
could start on the Pill immediately. In two weeks I could
forget about latex when I wasn't doing autopsies, assuming
that the Pap smear didn't turn up anything horrible. The
thought of returning to anytime/anywhere status cheered me
more than it should have.
If I could put things right with Mulder...Then what, the
Happiness Fairy would come and fix my life?
Maybe not, but it would be a start.
And yet -- I was potentially making a mistake when I
presumed that a healthy sexual relationship was an
appropriate goal. In the past I'd used sex to keep Mulder
away from me. I didn't know if I could change that.
****
After Scully left for the autopsy, I puttered around the house
doing useless everyday things that would have fallen into
Warwick's job description if I'd gone to work the way I should
have. Being confined to the house was fraught with
disadvantages; I was getting in the way of Warwick and
Miranda's usual schedule and generally being a pain in the
ass. Warwick had gone so far as to order a treadmill so that I
could run inside the house, but it wasn't scheduled for
delivery until tomorrow. I couldn't wait; much longer and my
carefully maintained six-pack sized gut was going to
degenerate into a keg.
Warwick had been pretty snippy about the treadmill, too. He
was still sulking from being reminded of the fact that he
worked for me and not the other way around, and he'd
retreated to his lair to work on whatever Internet wizardry he
was performing for his latest client. I took the Mooselet into
the study and sat down with the budget spreadsheets that I
had to justify for the quarterly operations meeting. The only
problem was that I found myself staring at the sofa with an
insipid look on my face -- not the first time for that behavior
either.
Ralph Williams showed up at eleven with a briefcase full of
homework for me and a couple of Sumatra coffees from
Starbucks, which was the only reason that I let him in.
That and the fact that Ralph was one of the Mooselet's
favorite toys. Ralph's nickname around ISU was Worf and
the sight of the poker-faced ex-college football player sitting
on the sofa with an indulgent smile while Miranda sucked on
his tie made me bury my amused smirk in the files.
"What have you got for me today?"
"You're got six annual performance reports you've got to do,
and a shitload of other administrative bullshit that Diane says
all you gotta do is read 'em and sign."
The Mooselet applauded and began to make seagull noises.
Ralph rubbed her tummy and smiled down at her.
"So you gonna tell me what's goin' on with this evil twin
thing?" he asked.
I took off my glasses and piled the files on the floor next to
me.
"It's a long story."
"I've got all day."
When Ralph finally did leave, with the files from the week
before, I could see the same flicker of uncertainty in his eyes
that Scully wore from time to time. All of George's actions
made me suspect, I was tainted by my own gene pool.
I was really starting to hate George with a passion.
On the other hand, he had managed to breach the
communications gap Scully and I had fallen into. Manalive I
had missed her, and not just as far as sex was concerned
(although she had been starring in my masturbation
fantasies again and I had gotten fond of the one where she
was dressed like Marie Antoinette). What I had missed more
than almost anything else was her annoying habit of
deflating my more outrageous theories and challenging
everything with her usual precise brilliance. She never failed
to keep me honest and didn't give a shit about the damage
to my ego. No one in ISU did that. I was either avoided or,
even worse, treated with the deference due to my new
status.
So what were we going to do about the resurrection of
intimate relations? I didn't know, but if the night before had
been a one shot only deal, I was going to strangle her myself
and not let George have another round.
Miranda had grabbed one of the crime scene photos off the
pile on the floor and was jamming it into her mouth. Fearing
both psychological damage from the subject matter and the
health risk from the developing chemicals, I took it away
from her. She screwed her cherub-cheek face into a mask
of tiny feminine fury and let out a screech that could have
been heard in Baltimore.
The beanie baby bribe didn't work, the pacifier didn't work
and I had to get up and get her a cookie from the kitchen
before she quieted down and the red flush of anger drained
from her face. I didn't like having my toys taken away from
me either.
Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 10/20
...and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I wak'd
I cried to dream again.
After dinner I went online in the study to read the latest
round of jokes that Emerson had forwarded me. They were
hysterical. Half the guys writing code in his mountain
hideaway were wasting their natural talents for comedy and I
snickered over the soft sounds emanating from the baby
monitor. I got e-mail from both Emerson and Aileen an
average of twice a day, Aileen's mostly concerned with the
care and feeding of the heir apparent, Samuel, and bitching
about Emerson's personal idiosyncrasies. Apparently his
new kick was that shoes were bad for your feet and he had
issued an edict that everyone was to go barefoot in the
house. Aileen was having a fit over what it was doing to their
hardwood floors. Emerson's messages were lengthy
journal-like missives in which he would document the events
of the day and throw in a few anecdotes from the happier
periods in his childhood and colorful cyber-escapades from
his days at MIT.
I tried to send as good as I received, on the premise that this
was the best way to get to know my brother, but I didn't type
as quickly as speedy-fingers did and I suspected that most
of what I sent him sounded like self-indulgent whining. Also I
couldn't really give him a daily event report: two serial child
rapists, five roadside kidnappers, and a partridge in a pear
tree didn't make for good familial conversation even in my
family, setting aside confidentiality issues. That night I was
tempted to tell him about the recent developments regarding
George, but since there was no indication that our evil twin
was traveling in his direction, I decided not to worry him or
Aileen more than was needed. They had enough on their
minds with the impending legal action they were planning to
launch against Microsoft.
I had George and he had Bill.
I had just opened a message from Danny, suggesting that I
take a look at a Russian porn site that he had found. I
clicked on the highlighted link and the first round of naked
lady pictures zoomed through our T-1, when the door to the
study opened behind me.
"Research?" Scully asked in that deadly sexy rough voice
she now had.
"Uh -- you know Danny," I stuttered and hit the back button
as fast as I could.
"Right," she said in a tone that indicated she had grasped
the low level of truth in my statement.
"Feeling any better?" I asked, "your neck, I mean?"
"Better. Not great, but better."
With the luxury that having an entire house had afforded me,
I had set up the study so the laptop went on a table facing
the window with a view of the back yard. The spring sunset
was making the dark lines of the trenches Frohike and the
boys had dug turn black as tire tracks in the faded green of
what would be lawn.
"Looks like you have giant, mutant gophers."
"If I had started talking about giant mutant gophers a year
ago, you would have taken me for blood testing to see what
drugs I was on."
"I didn't say it was giant, mutant gophers, I said it looked like
giant mutant gophers," she said in a playful voice and even
though I had my back to her, I knew she was smiling.
"You were ascribing giant, mutant gopher-like characteristics
to the trenches?"
"That the trenches possibly could have been caused by
something like giant mutant gophers," her hands dropped
onto my shoulders and she began working on the muscles
that always tightened like fried clams when I hunched over
the keyboard too long, "If, in fact, giant mutant gophers
existed, which they do not."
Her fingers, strong and assured, loosened the knots better
than any Magic Fingers in any hotel could.
"Just because you have not heard of giant mutant gophers
you deny their existence. What of the Coelacanth? Thought
to be extinct until fishermen told a visiting paleontologist that
they always got caught in their nets? What about the giant
white catfish that has been spotted in the Amazon River?"
"What about the catfish?"
"It's a big fish, a big white fish. And there could be giant
mutant gophers hiding in South America as well."
"They have enormous frogs in the Amazon basin, the size of
a two year old child."
If it had been anyone else, I would have thought that she
was shitting me. But I was luxuriating in the painless banter,
the smell of her hair, and the relaxing way that her hands
moved over my back. I couldn't repress a little groan of
animal pleasure, like a puppy having its belly rubbed.
"I didn't tell you before, but this house, the entire
environment you created here for Miranda - it's good. It's a
home. An actual home," her fingers grazed my neck, "and
you're doing a far better job of being a parent than I would
have."
I wondered how much it had cost her to say those words.
"I just had the luxury of some ill-gained wealth, and Jason
didn't-"
I didn't bother to finish the sentence.
"So what are we going to do?" she asked.
"I don't know."
Scully's hands fell away and I briefly mourned their loss, until
she leaned over, her breasts pressing warm and heavy
against my back, logged me off the Internet, and shut down
the laptop. Her hair was in my face and I couldn't stop
myself from burying my snout in it and nuzzling her ear. She
gave a short snort of amusement and slapped the top of the
computer down.
I retaliated by pulling her into my lap. It was such a thrill to
see her splayed across my legs in her professional blue suit,
nipped waist and hard plastic buttons promising secrets
underneath, with just a hint of scoop-neck white silk blouse
poking out of the 'v' of the jacket's neck. So severe, so
competent; she'd hang my balls around my ears for
patronizing her if I ever voiced such thoughts and I had to
content myself with smiling moronically.
She brought her arms up to rest on my shoulders and began
to stroke my earlobes with her hot little fingers. "I want to do
this right," she said softly, staring at the pulse I could feel
throbbing in my throat. "I'm highly fucked-up right now,
though. I haven't had -- anything -- to anchor me all this time.
If you can't be patient tell me now and I won't...I won't look
for your help."
I could tell her that I'd be her anchor but even with a house
and a child I was more of a floating buoy. "Just let me know
what you need," I breathed into her brittle, aloe-scented hair,
and reflected as I did so that it was time to buy her her own
toiletries, or Warwick and I were going to be headed for a
serious misunderstanding.
Then she husked, "Make love to me, Mulder," and thoughts
of hygiene evaporated.
She didn't have to twist my arm.
****
Once bitten, twice shy.
This time, Mulder had the presence of mind to lock the door
behind us in the dark bedroom. I watched his shadow-shape
flit over to the dresser heard and saw the flare of a match
and a candle was ignited. It was a small blue votive candle
and the room was filled with the smell of the ocean.
"Ingveld," he said in a conversational tone, "is candle-happy.
I'm not sure if it's a girl thing or because she's afraid when
the lights go out. The electric lines on this street are
woefully under code."
"You're a regular homeowner now, aren't you?"
My voice shuddered with the candle flame.
"I have begun," he admitted as the light pulled the bones in
his face into sharper planes, "to worry about the lawn."
I would have given out a nervous laugh, but he had crossed
the room in a pair of quick strides and his hands were cool
on my nervously burning face. Fingers traced my nose, my
brows, my cheekbones, and over my lips, as though he was
learning my face like a blind man. A tingling wave rose from
my stomach and brushed like electric feathers underneath
my skin. I wanted to close my eyes but I was afraid that he'd
melt back into the darkness again and leave me alone.
"Things will be different," he said as his hands tangled in my
hair.
"Define different," I asked.
His lips were like cool wet leaves. I felt the nervous
tightness in my chest relax somewhat.
"Like giant mutant gopher different - bizarre, strange, with a
basis in the mundane," he whispered into the side of my
face.
God help me, I snickered.
"Just look at it this way - no more hotel rooms, no more
sneaking around, no more fear of reprimand - we're in
different sections now and no one gives a shit," he prodded,
angling down to kiss me again.
"Did anyone give a shit before?" I raised my arms so that he
could pull my shirt off. The cotton fluttered against my
abused throat, awakening brutalized nerves.
"I did," now his hands moved to the waistband of my pants,
slide snap and hiss of zipper as I undulated on the bed,
trouser socks and shoes hitting the floor. I laid back and
watched him undress, golden as an Oscar statuette in the
warm and flattering candlelight. He threw his socks into a
hamper at the side of the room, stopping for a moment to
appreciate his three-pointer, then stripped his shirt off, giving
me a delectable view of his broad solid chest and compactly
muscled arms. He almost fell when his feet tangled in the
pile of my discarded clothes, but he recovered nicely and
dropped trou with presidential efficiency.
"We could - " I whispered into his mouth as he descended
again, "be seen together in public."
"God forbid," he said with a chuckle, his fingers twining in
mine.
His mouth was as powerful as I'd remembered. I panted as
he explored the contour of my hairline and tasted the flesh at
the back of my ear, dipping down right to where the bruises
on my neck began. After so long with only shadow lovers, to
feel real wetness and pressure on my skin was a revelation.
"Behave?" he asked into my ear.
"Of course."
He hadn't tacked on an adverb, after all.
Abruptly he scuttled away, backing up on the bed, and pulled
the sheet over my body. He retreated further, underneath the
comforter, until he had entirely disappeared.
"What are you doing?" I sounded fretful, too needy. He'd lit
candles, this was going to be okay, truly.
"I'm a giant mutant gopher," he rumbled from his hiding
place. "I seek human maidens for mates."
I covered my face with my hands and shook with relieved
laughter. "No maidens here, only me," I said as soon as I'd
regained a semblance of calm.
His hands snaked out and grabbed my ankles, fingers
trailing familiarly up my calves and to my inner thighs. His
head was still obscured. "You'll do fine," I heard and then he
was pulling me towards his hidden lair of blankets.
I could not prevent the goofy smile that stretched my mouth
to an almost painful extreme. "You know, I think I saw this
movie on the Sci-Fi Channel."
Without further ado, his head settled between my legs and
he began giving me a tongue-lashing of the most pleasant
kind.
My head lolled back and I groaned appreciation. One-
handed, he pushed the blankets away so that he could look
up. "Sure it wasn't the Playboy Channel?" His other hand
was still drawing runes on my inner thigh as he pinned me to
the mattress.
"Back to work, gopher boy."
He snorted, which caused a really intriguing sensation, and
bent his head again. He was watching my face as he
plunged his tongue into me. I felt lighter than air, like I was
flying on a seagull's back. My heels traced lines up and
down his back as candlelight turned the ceiling into a waving
wheatfield. The air was warm with the fire and our own heat.
I curled upwards and managed to capture his head between
my hands, running through his pelt -- he was keeping it a
little shorter these days, I noted -- as his nose pressed into
my belly.
He surged up and latched on to my right breast, moving his
hand to take up where his mouth had left off. He should
really register that mouth -- hell, the whole package -- as a
lethal weapon, I thought as I sighed happily. His thumb
circled around my clitoris, teasing but not making full contact,
while he slid a long finger into me. Now I had better access
to his body, and I wrapped my arm around his shoulders,
pressing him closer to me.
I watched him suckle, eyes closed in concentration as he
stroked his finger in and out of me, simultaneously circling
my nipple with sable-heavy brushes of his tongue and the
occasional nip of teeth that made white stars flash in my
vision.
I needed more, needed to feel him entirely on top of me,
covering me and hiding me from the rest of the world like a
concrete slab in a bomb shelter. I grabbed the sides of his
shoulders, right at the center of those beautiful masculine
curves of muscle, and pulled hard.
He knew what I wanted and stopped only long enough to
reach onto the bedside table for a condom. I stared at him
hard, so that he'd know not to tear it; I was unable to wait for
a second try. He gave me a shaky smile and ripped the
packet open. I had to smile back at his obvious nervousness;
if he *did* screw it up I'd just have to bounce up and down on
his face like a yo-yo, and it's not as if that would be such a
terrible fate.
I hissed in agonized pleasure as he thrust into me. "You
giant mutant gophers have some advantages over normal
men," I husked as soon as I'd gotten my voice under control.
He licked my ear, sending me arching off the bed, grinding
into his pelvis. "You know we have expertise in --" I cut him
off by raising my legs so that my knees rested just below his
armpits, squeezing his chest as he slammed in and out of
me.
"If you use the word 'hole' right now I'm not going to answer
for the consequences," I panted.
His right hand circled my ankle, rubbing gently, his thumb
grazing the sensitive skin under my arch, as he insinuated
his left between our wildly hammering bodies and resumed
stroking where he'd left off moments ago. "I was just going to
say that we're used to working with our hands," he said with
deceptive mildness as the climax overtook me.
I pressed my cheek against his end-of-the-day stubble so
that he couldn't see the tears; he would have misunderstood.
My hands kneaded his shoulderblades, like furled angel's
wings, until he came.
Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 11/20
Mark his condition, and th' event, then tell me
If this might be a brother.
The gunmen checked in at noon on Friday and they weren't
happy. I listened to them banging around near the
speakerphone. The cup of coffee shook in my hand.
Miranda was sitting on the floor near my feet, happily
sucking on the spatula she had decided was the toy for the
day.
George had called the Gunmen. Using my cellphone.
"Tell me George couldn't really know these things, Mulder.
He knew our phone number, where the headquarters are
located. And our favorite places to meet. How is it that he
knows?"
"I can't tell you that -- you knew before you asked. With my
family anything's possible, it's even plausible that Jason
actually told George something about his plans. But he's not
planning on telling you anything about that or about any
other secret government projects, no matter what he
promises. This is just to fuck with our heads."
"Pretty good job he's doing."
"Guys, remember who's the federal investigator here. You
don't even carry guns...Do you?" The prospect was almost
as frightening as the thought that George was walking
around living my life.
The line went numb as my ear pressed into the phone. I
guess they didn't want me to know all their secrets in case I
did go over to the dark side.
I heard Frohike's breathing again as he took me off mute.
"Frohike, you're going to meet him, aren't you?"
"Sometimes you've just gotta take your chance, know what I
mean?"
"Let me put a trace on your phone."
"Not a chance."
"Frohike, this man is a killer!"
"Has he killed any guys that you know of? From what I hear
we're not exactly his flavor."
"He's branching out! Okay, okay, will you at least call and tell
us where the meet is so we can get him as he leaves?"
Actually I was planning to have the team swoop down and
catch George as soon as he showed up, but I could always
tell Frohike that my colleagues had ignored my instructions;
it would seem plausible because Frohike remembered my
old status when I was in the X Files. Hmm, maybe the little
guy was right to be paranoid.
While I was plotting, so was Frohike. He came back and
there was a note of relief in his voice. "Yeah, sure."
"Where did he say to meet you? I asked.
He told me.
****
Of all places.
In front of the fucking Hope Diamond.
I could have died of embarrassment. Really. But no, I was a
big girl wearing a gun and a body mike. I also knew that in
addition to half a dozen agents scattered in the gemstone
section of the Natural History Museum, there was a jerry-
rigged uplink on the body mike back to Mulder in Arlington. I
could imagine him hunched over the coffee table with
Miranda on his lap while the silent chorus of agents looked
down at the speaker with him.
I watched Frohike amble up and look at the glittering blue
gem in the case. He looked furtively around, examining
each tourist and undercover FBI Agent as if he was
memorizing their features for a quiz later. I sighed and
leaned against the pillar I was trying not to obviously hide
behind. Asking Frohike to look casual is like asking a tiger to
become a leopard. Only the bribe of allowing him to take the
body mike off me after this was over did he agree to play
nice with the Feds. Byers and Langly had refused and were
off sulking somewhere. Thanks to recent events, I wasn't
exactly in their good graces. I think they would have been
just as happy to let George hang my head on his trophy wall.
The light glittering from the facets of the Hope Diamond has
a certain hypnotic charm. I stood and watched the sparkle
on the surface of the so-called cursed gemstone, looked at
the depths of blue which seemed to go into a universe of
blue darkness and shine, until I started wondering what it
would be like to have the weight of the thing hanging around
my throat, the fire would burn like ice, the facets and prongs
of the setting would scratch my skin, digging in with the
weight of the journey from India to Washington, the deaths
dragging me into the dark blueness and -
"I love you," he whispered, his hands warm on my shoulders
through the fabric of my blouse and jacket.
I swallowed diamond dust, scratching my tortured throat.
Are you lonesome tonight,
do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
"You have a funny way of showing it," I said without turning
around.
God, it was worse this time. Whatever Mulder-confusion I'd
suffered in the office was nothing compared to this.
Whatever I had willingly suppressed to hand myself over to
his dark charms for the purpose of my own destruction was
nothing compared to this.
Even though the cancer had done terrible things to my sense
of smell, I know Mulder's. I could probably track him through
a department store. He smells of books, leather,
sandalwood after-shave, and something feral that belongs
only to him. The smell was enough to make me hold onto
the pillar for support. Somehow, George had managed to
capture the eau du Mulder. I looked down and saw the
familiar taupe trench coat tails sliding along my legs like a
caress. George had his entire body flattened up against
mine, his fingers gently kneading the rigid muscles over my
shoulders. A finger of heat raced along my nerves.
"He's not good to you, you know that?" he whispered into my
left ear.
The years in Canada had done something peculiar to his
vowels but other than that, it was the same charmless
monotone.
In Arlington, Mulder was probably having apoplexy.
"I'm so much better to you," he insisted.
He brought me dead bodies the way that a housecat brings
dead mice to an owner for praise.
Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?
"I have an incredible headache," I said, giving the agreed-
upon trouble signal, as if anyone didn't have a fucking clue.
"It's too crowded in here," George said with a twist of
amusement, "too many FBI Agents spoil the stake-out."
His breath was warm in my ear, his hands moved down my
arms, leaving hot trails through my clothes. My head was
humming like a fluorescent light as his fingers burned
through to my skin. The reaction had nothing to do with
intelligence or sense, my mouth was dry and I felt like I was
moving through warm honey. Hello? Dana! Wrong guy.
This is bad, very bad. Hand moving under my blouse,
across my stomach, pulling out the leads on the mike. Oh
God. It could have been and I - The fingers of his right hand
stroked the skin on my throat, making the bruises whimper
underneath his touch. The far corners of my vision wept a
red haze. I could hear my own hair hiss on the shoulder of
his trench coat as my head fell back.
I knew who it was. My brain knew but my nervous system
from the medulla oblongata was not paying any attention.
My thighs were trembling, and I was soaking wet.
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
My wrist vanished in his hand. As I had done so many times
before, I stumbled after him. Over at the Hope Diamond, I
caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye.
The "Employees Only" door shut behind us.
Back pressed up against the wall in the stairwell like a high
school student, the banister digging into my ass while his
fingers roved over my breasts and belly, his lips melting the
sore sad places he had wounded on my throat while his
hipbone ground hard into my pubic bone, making me
whimper with my head against the wall. His fingers pushing
away the body mike and sliding down the inside of my bra to
touch my nipples, which were already harder than the gems
in the other room. He groaned when I bit down on his
earlobe.
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
"God I've missed you," he moaned, sounding just like I had
two nights before. His fingers were busy at the waistband of
my pants, fumbling first with the outer button and then
snuffling with frustration as the pants didn't release their hold
on my waist. Bizarrely, this hitch was what helped me
reboot. Of course George wouldn't know that there was an
inner button, it made the pants hang more smoothly, but how
would he know about better women's clothes? He'd never
had a trust fund, never even graduated college or held a full-
time job.
I stiffened like bakelite, pushing my body into his growing
erection but no longer molding myself to him. "I don't
understand this," I said, wanting him to be off-guard when I
finally went for my gun and blew his impersonating, mind-
fucking head off.
"I didn't realize until recently how important you are to me,"
he whispered and ran his tongue over the contours of my
ear. Giving up on the pants for the moment, he covered my
breasts with his hands, thumbs rubbing against my nipples
as if he were channel-surfing and I was the remote control.
The realization that had chilled me began to seep away,
melting in the renewed heat. He may not have had Mulder's
advantages, but he'd figured out how to fake it.
"I just need to take care of a few things, then everything can
be the way it was. Just you and me, Scully, us against the
world. So good..." His tongue invaded me, rough and heavy,
and I brought my left leg up to wrap around his thigh,
pushing my mons against his hard-on. I'd have to let go of
his arm to get to the gun, I thought with one half of my brain
as the other half gurgled with need.
I released his left arm and slid my hand over the hot fabric
covering his side and waist. He was a solid slab of muscle,
more buff than Mulder at his manic peak. He hummed,
approving the caress, and moved his mouth to cover my
cheek with soft wet kisses. "Tell me you want me, Scully.
Say my name."
I craved him like chocolate, like ice cream, like coffee latte
from Starbuck's on a cold morning, I needed to have his
bitter sweetness fill my mouth and my stomach like warm
poison.
Are you lonesome tonight,
do you miss me tonight?
****
I heard her breathing change as he began speaking, and I
had to struggle not to get a sympathetic hard-on, which
would have gone down really well with the other agents
sitting on my couch watching me bounce my daughter on my
lap. It was torture when George ripped the leads from the
mike, but it might have saved my ass anyway.
"Isn't anyone else *there*?" I yelled into the phone, over
Miranda's wails, barely noticing when Warwick scooped her
up, into his less conflicted arms. "They didn't just
*disappear*, god damn it! What kind of reindeer games are
you playing?"
Burble, whimper of voices through the monitor, confused and
angry. She went with him willingly, yes of course you idiots
but *where* did she go? Flash of red/white exit light, bar on
the door for easy opening in case of emergency. A white
stairwell, more utilitarian than the parts of the building that
were open to the public.
"The stairs," I said. "Someone needs to check the stairs."
If George was going to play head games with me, I could hit
back just as hard.
Sometimes it's good to have a reputation. At least one of the
useless fucks in the Smithsonian acknowledged my demand
and reported that he was heading to the stairwell.
I was going to kill her, so help me. I'd make her look me in
the eyes and acknowledge who I was. Not just one of a
series, not some interchangeable Ken doll for her viewing
pleasure.
****
My fingers slipped free of the thick cotton and my hand
flopped back against the wall, the banister cool and hard
under my twitching fingers. His teeth nipped playfully at my
chin, pushing my head up and stretching the bruises. "Say
my name." Now his mouth was at my shoulder, setting his
teeth over the marks he'd made that morning.
My hand was drifting slowly behind my back. I couldn't
exactly remember why.
"Mulder..."
He jerked, his cock throbbing against me, and his hands
were at the sides of my face, his thumbs caressing my throat
and his palms pressing my head in a flesh-and-bone vise. A
pull in the right direction and my head would come off like a
dandelion popped from its stem. His eyes were mulch-brown
and burning with the heat generated by decomposition.
"*My* name," he insisted and my hand hit the butt of my gun.
I can't say I found it intentionally, but at that point chance
was good enough for me. I tugged and twisted, trying to hold
my torso still against him as I prepared to shove the gun into
his rock-wall stomach.
"George..."
I felt his erection wither and he groaned, anger replacing
arousal. I heard a noise on the stairwell below us, someone
finally having clued into the fact that George and I were
having a tete-a-tete up here. The gun cleared my torso just
as George looked down my side to see it.
"Bitch," he snarled and used his grip on my head to slam me
into the wall. I saw white, then black as I felt my legs fold like
a well-used map.
I shook my head and spit out sweeping compound. George
had taken off; his footsteps sounding like a stampede of
buffalo overhead. With rubber fingers, I grabbed my Sig up
off the floor and fought my way to my feet. Just behind me
the fire doors exploded and the gallery was flooded with
agents. Up the stairs we pounded, catching a glimpse of
trench coat tails fluttering through the railings. I fell into the
middle of the pack, with Zippy running shotgun next to me,
screaming into his headset.
"Roof. Upstairs! Move! Move! Move!"
Roof, right.
The roof was the obvious escape route, down the external
fire escape and -
Mulders are never obvious.
A half phrase of a child's song rattled through my head,
words changed.
The wonderful thing about Mulders
Is Mulders are wonderful things
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs
Primal force of chaos. Unpredictable.
But I spoke fluent Mulder.
I stopped in the middle of the stairwell and the Tokyo rush-
hour crush of dark suits flowed around me like a stream
around a stone. I went back down two flights. My fingers
burned on the cold metal of the doorknob.
"Dana, what the fuck?" Zippy asked at my elbow.
Dark gallery, little grating catwalks where the lights for the
displays hung down. I had a momentary flash of the
"breeding" facility in Texas and bit my lower lip to still it. A
flash of movement in the shadows. The only agent I can
beat at a sprint is Agent Amato, and he's shorter than I am, a
pack a day smoker and pushing sixty-five. Zippy nearly
knocked me over as he leapt out onto the catwalk. Fools
rush in. I clattered along behind him, watching the lights
flash up into Mulder/George's face as it registered surprise
then teeth-tightening fury. The catwalk jumped and
shuddered like a cheap carnival ride as Zippy's bowling-ball
mass smashed into George's pin body. They fell onto the
catwalk. Dazed with an incipient concussion and George
voodoo, I grabbed onto the handrail with fearsweat hands.
Zippy could have taken out Mulder with a punch to the jaw
but George was a slab of meat after years in stir so it wasn't
quite the same.
Punches flew. I raised the Sig and tried to get a clear bead
on the man that wore the face I'd awakened to that morning.
Somehow with Zippy involved it seemed easier. I needed a
witness. I needed a lot of things but a witness would do for
now.
Blowing the witness' brains out, however, was not a good
idea. And I couldn't get a clear shot. Brown hair, heads
bobbing, flashes from the lights from below and under it all
the humming voices of the tourists.
A woman, tour guide or teacher, spoke over the noise of the
grunting men on the catwalk. Her voice carried with eerie
clarity up the dozens of feet between us.
" Many people think that the Allosaurus is just a smaller
Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Allosaurus was actually the great-
grandfather to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Allosaurus lived
140 million years ago during the Jurassic Period."
George had Zippy's back pressed against the handrail of the
catwalk, hard enough and at enough of a severe angle that
vertebrae were in danger of breaking.
"Tyrannosaurus Rex lived only 100 Million years ago during
the Cretaceous Period. The differences can be seen in their
hands, an Allosaurus had three fingers and Tyrannosaurus
Rex only had two fingers."
Bones, bones, bones dry bones how much pressure before
the bones gave way and --
The bones didn't give way, the catwalk did, Zippy, with a
roar, slid backwards and into the air as the fragile aluminum
pole severed with a snap.
The entire catwalk jumped and swayed like a rope bridge in
a jungle adventure movie. George slid to the far end as
Zippy screamed on his way down to --
"The Allosaurus was a carnivore or a flesh-eating dinosaur.
He had very sharp serrated teeth that look very similar to the
cutting edge on a knife and---"
Bones breaking, crashing, crunching.
I looked over the edge of the platform to see my partner
crash through the skeletal embrace of the Allosaurus'
outstretched claws.
George had vanished.
Below, the flashbulbs from the cameras started popping like
tiny fireworks; Mr., Mrs. and Jr. America were documenting
the fact that they had just lived through the human segment
of the last ten minutes of Jurassic Park. With any luck
something terrible would happen overnight and the FBI
Agent Destroys Priceless Fossil wouldn't make the front
page of The Post.
My cellphone rang at my hip.
"Dana?" Zippy, not surprisingly, sounded shaky, "I think I
broke something."
"I'll be right down,"
I clicked off the phone and had to bite the back of my hand
to muffle the hysterical, inappropriate laughter that
threatened to shatter my skull like the Allosaurus'.
I rode with Zippy to the hospital, held his hand while they x-
rayed him and agreed that a fractured femur was not the
worse thing in the world that would have happened. The
Allosaurus was in far worse shape. Thank God the fake
terrain underneath the bones was high-tech cushioning
material, not exactly designed for this situation but still in
place in case any dino bones took a pratfall; the padding had
done an okay job on Zippy and he had far more soft tissue to
damage. I was tempted to palm a couple of his pre-op
muscle relaxants but promised that I would call his parents in
Brooklyn instead. I did call them and then I really wanted
morphine.
I wasn't looking forward to going back to the house and
facing Mulder, either.
Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 12/20
. . . like one
Who having into truth, by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his memory
To credit his own lie -- he did believe
He was indeed the Duke . . .
By the time the other agents stopped asking stupid
questions and took me back to Mulder, I needed weapons-
grade chocolate.
I settled for the few half-stale brownies lurking underneath a
coating of tin foil that I found hidden in the refrigerator. I'd
barely managed to dispose of the evidence when Mulder
stalked in. "Can we take this into the bedroom?" I asked
before he said anything. "I think the walls are better
insulated."
He nodded and led the way. I wanted him to comfort me, to
tell me that this confusion wasn't my fault. This was about as
likely to happen as Skinner becoming the new spokesman
for the Hair Club for Men. I considered dragging my feet but
judged that delay would only provoke Mulder further.
"Exactly what the fuck were you trying to prove?" he hissed
in a voice of dry ice.
I sat down on the bed, my legs betraying me.
"That's pretty cute, Scully, pretty fucking cute. Working your
way through the alphabet again? Only during waking hours?
You want I should have Christopher and Hal dug up? You
can put the moves on them," he crossed his arms over his
chest and leaned up against the closed door, "Of course
they might be a tad bit *ripe* by now, but you've never had a
problem with the smell of death before."
"You don't understand--"
"Damn right I don't understand. All I understand is less than
twenty-four hours after we're making a short blunt human
pyramid, you're practically going down on George in the
Smithsonian. Color me slightly annoyed."
"I don't have an adequate explanation for what happened."
"Well isn't that just fucking lovely. Okay then, fine, can't
imagine why I was upset. We'll just call it an X File and be
done with it."
"He smelled like you," I whispered. "I knew -- but I couldn't
stop, not when he -- you were touching me. How can he do
this?"
His eyes crystallized into frost.
"How can you do it?" he asked and smiled a dark and rich
smile, "but I forget, you're a whore just like the rest of them."
"Slut," I said, not even realizing I'd said it until I heard the
word bounce off my knees. "Whores, they get paid."
My mind was full of lint.
I had a familiar litany to fit this situation, one that required
only the slightest of modifications to account for new data: It
hadn't been George's strange tricks at all making me writhe
in the stairwell, had it? Just like I couldn't *not* have known
that it was Jason in the bathroom all those months ago.
What kind of fool, after all, lets her lover leave the lights out
when her lover's identical twin is wandering the halls of his
mansion, looking for pussy? Let's face it, part of me
*wanted* to know what he'd be like.
Occasionally I managed to disbelieve this voice. But not very
often and not now.
I was curled up on myself again, as if that ever helped. As
far as I could tell it just put me in the right shape to get
knocked out of the park by the great home-run hitter in the
sky.
At that moment, my near-concussion throbbing and my near-
strangulation choking me, still sore from my recent sexual
gymnastics with the man now denouncing me, I could have
put my gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger right then.
Actually I'm not sure that I could have avoided doing so, if it
had been on my person.
Mulder's sneer had faded but I was paying less attention as I
considered my options. With Zippy's toys the house was
better armed than the average gunsmith's. Or there was my
Xanax and Mulder's Ambien, that and a few of the remaining
Coronas would do me right, though there was the horrible
possibility of discovery, more humiliation as my stomach was
pumped, and then potential brain damage. Men kill
themselves more often than women because they're more
likely to get it right; they use guns. They don't bother with the
subtlety of pills or razors or freewheeling serial killers.
I'd be breaking my implicit promise to Zippy. But what had he
been thinking, asking me to wait until this was over? It was
abundantly clear that where the Mulder genome was
involved there was no such thing as "over," only periods of
greater and lesser action/adventure.
I could just take my own gun from the end table in the family
room downstairs, walk out into the twilight and do it. I no
longer feared Hell; the worst that God could do would be to
send me back right where I was.
Mulder was staring through me. I wondered if he could
sense the black cloud of my soul, or if he'd shut down the
connection between us in disgust.
I had almost made my legs uncurl to start the long march
downstairs when the phone rang. I watched, half-curious, as
Mulder warily picked it up.
He listened for a moment, breathing heavily. "It's for you," he
said and handed it to me. The red cord stretched through the
air like a length of intestine.
I pressed the receiver to my ear, hearing Mulder leave -- to
get to another extension, I presumed. Even without listening
to the call or interpreting the look on Mulder's face, I knew
who it had to be. It's not as if I got a lot of gentleman callers
these days.
"Yeah?"
"Don't do it, Dana. You just need some sleep, everything will
seem better in the morning."
"What do you care?" I was really curious. Just like my
Mulder, he seemed impervious to small betrayals, as if
confident I'd come through for him when it counted.
I could almost feel the moistness of his breath in my ear.
"We can't do it alone. It's too much for any one person. But I
know I can see clearly where you're confused and I believe, I
truly believe, you can do the same for me. Just hang on,
hang on for me. Because I'm coming."
He clicked off and I put my head between my knees and
moaned. Like an animal caught in a trap, I'd chew my limbs
off if I only knew where to start. The sobs that ripped through
me like grenade blasts were dry and unproductive.
Eventually, after the phone stopped making noise, Mulder
came and took it from my hand.
I could hear his knees creak as he knelt on the carpet in
front of me.
"What did he say to you?" he asked in the mildest tone
imaginable.
"Does it matter?"
Fingers bit into my throat, overlapping the bruises that
awakened from
their half-slumber. I looked up and watched the gold flecks
in his eyes
surface like koi in an algae-filed pond. I should have
screamed, I
should have fought. I couldn't do anything. He jerked me to
my feet and
my legs shook like a cheap chair's.
To be held in thrall is a terrible exhilaration.
George in the Smithsonian had been a snack, a morsel to
tempt my
Muldercraving into a fever pitch. I would have fucked Mulder
on the
stairwell at the Natural History museum, feet away from the
gemstones and other strange and beautiful things under
glass. I would have fucked him and loved every minute of it.
My hands were weeping sweat when I closed them over his
chest. Pectorals, warm and solid as bread under my hands,
his useless nipples standing hard as stones against my
palms. I raked my nails over the smooth cotton surface of
his T-shirt. You can't rape the willing, can you?
He slapped my hands away, making my fingerbones ache
with the harshness of the movement. I caught my breath
with surprise. This was a little rough even for him. With
eyes that were now more amber than jade, he looked down
at me as though he was examining an unpromising pork
chop between cellophane and Styrofoam in the grocery
store. Finally, a decision was made and his fingers made
for my throat again.
The world spun like the revolving light on a squad car. I let
go. I let consciousness leak away like water. I surrendered.
An unknown amount of time later I came back to myself.
The mattress was reassuringly solid underneath my spine,
the air chillingly cold on my
naked skin. The room was filled with the insect hum of an
air conditioner and my arms ached. The reason for my
aching arms was clear a
moment later. I was inverted on the bed; my head touching
the footboard rail and my wrists efficiently lashed to the
smooth rail with what felt
like neckties. It wasn't the first time that he'd bound me, but
it was the first time that it made me afraid. Usually, it
seemed amusing, but
this was not funny.
The air was so cold that I was carpeted in gooseflesh.
The door opened and I shut my eyes, willing to play possum
until I had a better idea of what was happening. While parts
of my mind were doing the dance of fear and the dance of
lust in counterpoint, the part that was still functioning in a
semi-reliable fashion did the waltz of logic.
George's sexual assaults had all been postmortem. He liked
his women
somewhere between passive and decayed. If, in fact,
Mulder had absorbed this much of George's pathological
behavior, I was lucky that the ties were around my wrists and
not around my neck. Even considering that I had been
willing to suck bullets out of my own gun an unknown
amount of time earlier, I found that idea of being strangled by
the person who knew me best in the entire world somewhat
less than appealing.
So, rather than create an actual corpse a la George, Mulder
was willing to create a faux cadaver by rendering me
unconscious and chilling my flesh with the air conditioner.
Morbid, but not lethal.
Donnie Pfaster. He'd chilled his women in an ice-cold bath.
And George, he liked anal sex. God, what if --?
I couldn't handle that again - I really couldn't.
I wonder if you're lonesome tonight
You know someone said that the world's a stage
And you must play a part.
Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart.
Elvis moaned in the background. If he hadn't already been
dead I would have wished him so.
The mattress creaked under his weight. I held my breath.
Fingertips, hardened from computer keys, smelling of baby
soap, smoothed over the
surface of my stomach, my breasts, circled the cold-stiffened
tips of my nipples. A stab of pleasure cut down between my
legs. I squeezed my eyes tightly closed. The fingers slid up
to my face, stroking the bruises on my neck, following the
line of my cheekbones, touching my
lips. An index finger slipped between my lips and it was all I
could do to keep from suckling on the dry hardness of his
finger.
Act one was when I met you, I loved you at first
glance
You read your line so cleverly and never missed a
cue
Then came act two, you seemed to change and you
acted
strange
And why I'll never know.
The finger withdrew and I could hear the telltale rustling of
Mulder shucking off his clothes. A moment later, he was
prying my jaws open
with insistent hands before pressing his cock into my mouth
with a shove. The tip of his cock nudged the back of my
throat and nearly made me gag.
Tied to the bedstead, I had no leverage or control of the
situation. I circled the baby silk skin of his cock with my
tongue, tasting the dark wildness of him, wishing that I could
dig my fingernails into the hard white curves of his ass, the
long muscles in his thighs. He groaned helplessly and
continued to stroke slowly in and out between my lips. I
sucked hard on his glans, tasting salt and candy, traced my
teeth along the shaking vein on the underside while he
undulated, his knees on either side of my ribcage, shaking.
A disappointing moment later he came, flooding my mouth
with semen. I tried to swallow but rivulets cascaded down
my cheeks and into my hair.
Honey, you're lying when you said you loved me
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies
Than go on living without you.
Silent and still, he lay with his head against my breasts and
his hand tucked between my legs, his breathing harsh as
though he'd come back from one of his runs.
Embarrassingly enough, I was aroused by it all and the
fingers twined in my pubic hair were wet with the proof of my
need. Once he'd caught a normal breathing pattern, Mulder
began suckling at my breasts, cupping one and then the
other in his free hand and biting at my painfully tight nipples
until I started to whimper and move underneath him. I pulled
at the ties, wanting to touch him, wanting to pull him closer
and inside me once again. His fingers moved, rubbing at the
swollen length of my clitoris, pressing up inside me until I
was grinding against his hand and moaning.
Filthy, dirty, guilty waves of pleasure rolled over me,
breaking over the carefully constructed sandbag walls I'd put
up around my mind. I
shuddered against him, seeing white spots and feeling the
undertow pull against the bottom of consciousness. At least
I think I hissed the right
name when I finally orgasamed underneath his touch.
Stuck together with various biological secretions, we lay
under the cold wind of the air conditioner for a long time.
Finally, Mulder roused himself from his stupor long enough
to stumble over to the window unit and switch the machine
off. The ties were loosened from my hands.
Stupid with lust, crazy with need for him greater than a need
for air chocolate, I pulled him down into the bed with me. He
clung like a barnacle while I ran my hands over every inch of
his body,
sucking at his neck and shoulders. I slid down his body,
teasing his nipples with my teeth and nails, scraping the
sensitive Bermuda Triangle
of nerves just at the base of his spine, where the buttocks
begin to cleave. The blind worm of his cock started to
awaken when I sucked at
his flat stomach, bringing the blood to the surface in a
raspberry love bite. I ran my hand between his legs,
massaging his balls within their protective sac while I
tongued my way down the narrow seam of fine hair running
from navel to cock. He groaned and grabbed my hair. I
resuscitated his cock with my mouth until it wobbled erect
once again.
A feral growl escaped him.
Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there
With emptiness all around
And if you won't come back to me
Then make them bring the curtain down.
End over end tumbling, skin on skin slick with sweat, saliva,
and come. I looked up into the strange mask of disinterest
on his face between the tops of my feet when he plunged
into me. Hot, hard and insistent once again, he filled me to
my spine, stretching my muscles to the tearing point, rubbing
against my nerves like steel on flint. Sweat dropped from his
forehead to my face and I caught it in my mouth, saltier than
the come
already clinging to my tongue. I shuddered as he pumped in
and out, grabbing my ass and pushing in deeper and harder
at each thrust. Torn,
broken and pleading, I pushed myself forward at him until we
were both grunting like rutting dogs, teeth bared in snarls of
lust. I caught fire in great circles that moved out from my
groin like electromagnetic rings.
I bit his forearm, blood filling my mouth, in a vain attempt to
muffle the shout that erupted from my chest when I climaxed
and my brain crashed. Mulder continued to drive into me,
sending aftershock waves along my limbs. Aftershocks hot
and delicious as the actual orgasm. His
teeth sliced into my breast right above my heart and he
jetted into me like champagne. The thrusting grew weaker
and weaker as he shuddered to a halt, finally going soft
inside me.
I gathered him to me, his hair in my face and his arms
around my waist. Sticky and shaking we lay like that as the
room gradually warmed around
us.
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
Just before I fell asleep I realized that we hadn't used a
condom, but visiting hours were over and the lights were
switched out in my mind.
Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 13/20
...sometime am I
All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.
It was seven a.m. when I woke up. Scully slumbered, her
face duplicitously innocent in sleep, the sharp lines of age
and stress carved into her flesh contrasting with the rest of
her smooth ivory skin.
I felt strange, as though I'd been asleep on an airplane and
awakened in another time zone. The overcast morning
muffled light and sound that barely made it through the
cotton surrounding my brain. I had a strobe light nightmare
memory of making love to Scully the night before but I didn't
want to take the time to stop and examine it just then. I filed
it for future rumination. Instead I showered, being careful
with the scratches and bites which made me look as though
I'd been gang-raped by Mongolian yak-herders. I slapped a
Band-Aid on the drying scab on my forearm and wondered if
the teeth marks would blossom and bud into yet another
Scullyscar.
I couldn't look at her before I went, not without facing the
memory of the Loch Ness Monster of her smooth skin still
and cold underneath me cutting through the deepness of my
pain.
I dressed to unimpress, using my most innocuous suit and a
nondescript rep tie that wouldn't look out of place in the DOE
or on a Metrobus driver. Hopefully this would be enough to
prevent Washington's sterling citizens from dropping a dime
on me.
Creeping like an intruder in my own house, I made my way
downstairs and towards the front door. I heard no Warwick-
like noises. He had no reason to be suspicious, none
whatsoever. I hadn't misbehaved at all since he'd known me;
this flight into the free world would come as a total shock.
Scully should have known better but, hey, give the girl a
break, she was mighty confused at the moment. If she'd
been fully functional she would have known that there was
no way I could sit at home like the caterpillar on his
mushroom, waiting for someone else to solve the George
problem. There was no way I could just allow myself to be
made a prisoner, locked up as tightly as George in his
Canadian cell. There was no way that I could let him seduce
her and, like as not, kill her. (To get a real sense of the freak
show that was my life, ask me which of those two prospects
bothered me more.) And he'd hinted that he was coming for
Miranda. I was not programmed to deal with this and I knew
the system was about three seconds short of crashing. I had
to get out, go after him on my own.
There was only one logical place to start. Profile. Do the
fucking profile, Spooky. I swung by the Starbuck's for my first
fix of the day and sat in my car, letting the relays click over.
George's behavior had been erratic, but he'd given us some
crucial clues yesterday. He thought he deserved to be me.
He wanted my life. But he wanted my old, glamorous life, the
one where I flew around the country in order to get beaten
up by an astonishing variety of people and things. The one
where I could afford band-collar Armani shirts and Hermes
ties, the one where Scully and I fucked with slightly less
trauma. He wanted, in short, to rewind my life about fourteen
months.
I might just have let him if it hadn't been for Miranda.
Miranda whose late-night feedings didn't fit into his schedule.
She couldn't be erased like a week-old episode of NYPD
Blue. But George didn't believe that; he was trying to
reconstruct my old existence.
Therefore, I headed into Alexandria, toward my old haunt at
Hegal Place. The super was, as usual, in his office. You
don't run an apartment complex among whose inhabitants
Fox Mulder is numbered without learning the value of hands-
on management.
He looked up as I came in. "What is it now?"
Obviously I had been there already, or at least George had.
"I have some questions about my apartment."
He sighed. "Were there any problems with the delivery? I
know you love that couch but it's not exactly easy to get up
the stairs."
"I'm afraid I need to clarify some things. It's official FBI
business," I flashed my snazzy replacement badge. "I need
to know what happened after you gave me my security
deposit back."
He scratched his head. "Why don't we just take a look, I
don't want any more trouble with the FBI." He swiveled his
padded chair around to peck at the keyboard. "Okay,
apartment 42. Security deposit returned on January tenth.
Apartment cleaned, various bullet holes and dents of
unknown source repaired, repainted, floors refinished.
Rented out again March fourteenth, fifty dollars more per
month reflecting improvements to the premises, deposit and
first three months paid by your lawyer."
Good to know that I still had that Spooky sense. "Did the
lawyer leave a card?"
He pulled open the right drawer on his desk and rummaged
around. "Sure enough," he said.
I love lawyers, they *want* people to know what they're
doing and obligingly leave a paper trail like a Roman road.
Jon Kyle, of Dallas's Lanson & Hogue, LLP. The business
card was the same color and used the same font as the
letterhead they'd used to inform me of how the evil that
Jason did had lived on after him. (As for good being interred
with his bones, that I couldn't vouch for. I think he still had
bones when we finished.)
"Hey," he asked as I turned to leave, "did that business with
your brother ever get settled?"
I shook my head. "Not really."
I let the door swing shut on his murmured condolences.
Now what? He wasn't home, I knew this the same way I'd
known where to go. He was somewhere, being me, while I
was being him. I could break into the apartment and trash
the place, that would give him some *real* Fox Mulder
verisimilitude.
Or maybe I'd just take a quick look around, see what was up
with the old digs.
The two had been nailed into place with some shiny brads
which jarred me a bit - but once I'd finessed the lock open
(never return lockpicks - a cardinal rule of law enforcement),
I stepped back in time. Damn. He even had old magazines
on the coffee table. I had taken that particular issue of GQ
with me to the house. I guess I thought I was still going to
be able to afford the suits even with the mortgage and the
car payment. For a second I had a brief flash of nostalgia for
the pre-Miranda days. Then I saw the dead fish floating in
the tank and thought again.
The red eye of the stereo glowed. There was a CD in. I
touched the play button, noting that he'd programmed in only
one song and set it to repeat ad infinitum.
Are you lonesome tonight,
do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Fuck.
My knees gave out with a crack and I fell to the floor, my
mind refusing to wrap around the words.
Are you lonesome tonight,
do you miss me tonight?
Oh God please no. Not last night. I couldn't have.
She was cold underneath me.
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Cold as death cold as-
It had to stop. I had to stop him before I hurt Scully or
Miranda.
I swallowed the bile eating my throat and stood up, shoving
whatever bloody human chunks were left of me into a safe
corner and went into the familiar architectural thoughts of
analysis and profile.
The bedroom was really interesting. He hadn't managed to
re-create it as well as the living room - the comforter was the
wrong shade of green and it was missing the twin peaks of
clean and dirty laundry on top. (Ever wonder why I slept on
the couch so much?) On the dresser were spread some
grainy printouts of photos of me - my ID, the photo on file in
the FBI database, and the same for Scully. Well, almost.
You see, he'd pretty much wallpapered the walls with a few
pictures of my divine little imp. Color photocopies,
snapshots taken at a distance in various states of blurry red
hair, and what looked like a yearbook picture. Holy shit. I
stepped closer to the picture photocopied to poster size. I
never would have known her, feathered hair, lips shining
with gloss, eyes ringed with then-fashionable black lines and
the telltale gleam of a retainer across her teeth. Scully at
eighteen. Who would have thought? She looked as sweet
and frothy as a strawberry daiquiri.
Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
But - was the me in the pictures the me me or the him me?
Newspaper photo, gritty newsprint lay on the dresser. An
old picture. Scully and I were walking out of a courthouse in
Anne Arundel County. I couldn't remember the case but
from my haircut it looked like about 1997 - Scully was thin
with cancer in those days. The photo made things
abundantly clear. He'd taken a thick black marker and
drawn the barbed wire necklace around my neck. That must
have been his way of replacing me with himself.
I wonder if you're lonesome tonight
You know someone said that the world's a stage
And you must play a part.
Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart.
Act one was when I met you, I loved you at first
glance
You read your line so cleverly and never missed a
cue
Then came act two, you seemed to change and you
acted
strange
And why I'll never know.
My reflection shimmered at me in the silvered glass. The
marker was still lying on the dresser top and I reached for it.
I wrote across the cold surface of the mirror in thick black
letters, not giving a shit about fingerprints - since ours were
the same anyway.
"What's eating you, George?"
Honey, you're lying when you said you loved me
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies
Than go on living without you.
Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there
I don't bother locking the fucking door behind me when I left.
The King's drug-slurred voice chased me down the hall.
With emptiness all around
And if you won't come back to me
Then make them bring the curtain down.
If I waited long enough, he'd show. I went back to my car
and sat in the driver's seat. Station wagons weren't too
common among the young unmarrieds who populated this
area of town, but by the same token no one was likely to
make me for a cop, driving this thing.
Two hours passed during which I stared at my ex-front door
and narrowed my attention to a pixel-width. Nothing
mattered but watching for George. I was my brother's
keeper. And like Cain, I had plans for my meat-eating
brother.
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
****
Dr. Shimada's office called at nine a.m., waking me from a
sound sleep. Mulder had already disappeared, no doubt off
playing with Miranda. In any event, the news I got pushed
him off my priority list. My Pap smear had been normal, but
when the nurse's assistant went to insert the results in my
rather large and noteworthy file, it was missing. Subsequent
investigation disclosed scratches on the locks on the office
doors and the cabinet where the files were kept.
"Let me speak with Dr. Shimada."
"She's not here yet. She must be running late..." I felt sorry
for the office manager; this wasn't really in her job
description.
"Listen, I am a Special Agent for the FBI and if my file is
gone Dr. Shimada may be in danger. I need you to put me in
contact with her."
Panic tinged the woman's voice. "I tried to reach her but
she's not answering her cellphone, or her beeper. She's not
picking up at home..."
"Give me the address."
I was perfectly calm as I called Ralph Williams and had him
pick me up in a Bucar.
When we arrived, we knocked, Then we broke down the
door -- we'd worry about justifying it to a judge later. The
break-in was unavailing; there was no sign that Dr. Shimada
had even made it home the night before. Her mail was still
scattered across the foyer floor where it had fallen through
the slot.
The morning sunshine was bright and clean; it didn't care
what horrors it illuminated. Ralph busied himself getting an
APB out on Dr. Shimada's Ford Explorer. I wallowed in guilt.
I should have known better -- any fool could have noticed
that female health care personnel, particularly the short
ones, had early expiration dates around me. Just like it had
been with Pendrell, I didn't even know her first name.
Shall I come back again --
"I have a thought," I said to the air. Ralph was nowhere to be
seen. Well, I tried to let him know, I thought and got back in
the car.
My apartment looked like a stranger's. Yellow spring light
seeped heavy and thick through the twisted blinds as I
opened the door. It was cleaner than I remembered, but then
that was Zippy's doing.
"Honey, I'm home," I called out.
Oh yeah, I forgot, I'm not married.
The air was dead. Even the dust motes didn't move much. I
hardly recognized the place. It didn't say anything about who
I was. Not that furniture would have an easy time explaining
me. The pictures might have come with the frames for all the
emotional response they evoked in me.
I edged across the room, keeping my gun pointed in front of
me, backing away from any corners that might hide George.
My breathing rasped like a nail file in the quiet.
Reaching the other side of the room, I flipped the hall light on
and continued down towards the bedroom. My back was
against the wall, protecting my blind side, as I inched
towards the closed door. Damn, I wished I knew what the
place looked like when Zippy left it.
One, two, three. I kicked the door open and trained my gun
on the figure waiting for me on the bed.
She couldn't have been dead very long, I thought dazedly as
I took in the scene. Dr. Shimada had been strangled, of
course, but the hat trick was how George had dressed her.
Instead of putting her back into her official doctor clothes,
he'd dug out the emerald green nightie I'd bought with
Mulder's money all those months ago in Arizona. I was
surprised he'd been able to find it, actually, I hadn't been
doing glamour at bedtime in a long time. The color of the
satin clashed with her blackened face, and she weighed
about twenty pounds more than I had so there were some
unattractive bulges.
Shock, I was feeling shock, I had to keep alert.
With my left hand I pulled my phone from my jacket and hit
redial.
"Williams."
"I need you at my apartment now. I found Dr. Shimada." I
hung up before he could ask any questions.
I heard the humming, my mind filling in the unuttered words
as I spun and faced the bedroom doorway.
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
Cold room. Such a cold, cold room.
"Why are you talking to him when you could be talking to
me?"
George was in the hallway, his shadow visible on the part of
the floor I could see.
"Come in here and we'll have a chat," I suggested.
"Just like old times? I remember what you said the first time I
had you -- well, all right, the first time, in the shower, mostly
you just screamed. But that night, what you said, it was so
beautiful -- 'Don't hurt me.' I really liked that."
"That wasn't you, you sick fuck," I said in a voice that shook
like San Francisco in an earthquake.
"Wasn't it?" He shimmied half a step forward. "I find it so
difficult to remember. You smelled different then -- like
flowers."
I should burst out of the doorway, he was close but he might
not be able to react in time, all it would take was one good
shot. But I couldn't shake the absolute conviction that he
knew what I was thinking. Mulder would know what I was
thinking. He'd be ready and he'd kill me. It would be slow
and careful, not like the hastily arranged scenario with Dr.
Shimada.
No. That was a copout. I wasn't afraid that he'd kill me -- I
was afraid that he wouldn't, that he'd complete my
conversion into Bonnie to his Clyde, Bride to his
Frankenstein's Monster. I didn't know if I had enough of
myself left to resist that and accept death instead.
I stood with the cooling body on my bed behind me, waiting
for him to come forward, but I couldn't cross the doorway
myself.
Instead I darted forward and kicked the door shut. If he was
going to come through I'd have warning. I might be able to
make myself shoot him, shoot the man who looked and
smelled and sounded like Mulder in the face and watch him
die. The mirror on the back of the door shimmied slightly,
vibrating from the force of the slam, and I saw my pale
crazed face waver in front of me. It looked like I was pointing
the gun straight at my own bruised throat.
"You can't put this off forever." The voice was slightly muffled
by the door, but years of practice allowed me to interpret it.
"You have to make up your mind, George, kiss or kill. I don't
like men who play games."
"Could have fooled me. You're the one who's making it
difficult. It's him, him and that mewling kid, they're distracting
you. God, Scully, look around you! You can't fight a global
conspiracy while you're wearing a Snugli." He was close, so
close, he had to be standing right in front of the door. His
hand might be on the glass knob even as he spoke.
"You want to fight the conspiracy? How'd you get out of the
Roush compound, George? How are you supporting your
current lifestyle choices?"
"Sometimes you need to make deals to get at a larger truth.
I'm not proud of everything I've done, but it was necessary."
If I hadn't known that "everything" included the systematic
murder and rape of numerous innocent women, I could
almost have found it plausible. In fact I had, when the real
Mulder said it to me. My finger trembled on the trigger; I
knew that I wanted him dead not because he was a killer,
not because he was stalking Mulder and Miranda, but
because he confused and upset me. If I killed him it would
be for the wrong reasons, not even with the tissue of
justification I'd used for the baby-things in Arizona.
Humming like the buzz of a fluorescent light.
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
Closing my eyes and raising my left arm to cover my face, I
fired. The mirror exploded and I felt a rain of fragments. One
dug into my cheek and I welcomed the start of the blood. As
soon as I dared I opened my eyes. The Sig wasn't intended
to shoot through doors but it was a good all-purpose
weapon. The mirror and a good portion of the door were
history. I couldn't see anything moving when I looked
through the hole.
Then I heard the front door close and almost sobbed in
disappointment. He'd escaped.
Classic ploy. If I'd been watching myself on the movie screen
I would have screamed "Don't go out there."
So I didn't. Fuck heroic, I was ninety percent certain that he
was still there and I was not going to let him kill me in a way
that made me *look* gullible.
My arm was spasming by the time Ralph arrived with the
cavalry.
Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 14/20
To have no screen between this part he play'd
And him he play'd it for . . .
I nearly split my skin in surprise when someone knocked on
my window. I turned my head and stared into the barrel of a
gun.
"Put your hands on the wheel," the police officer ordered.
I complied. "You're making a mistake," I said. "My name is
Fox Mulder, I'm with the FBI, my ID is in --"
"Shut up! Slowly, now, unlock the door. Keep your hands
visible."
I sighed and followed orders. I should have known better
than to try this without someone to give me my bona fides.
I've been on both sides of this routine often enough to skip
any detailed recollection of what comes next. The patdown,
legs spread and hands against the car; the cop was
competent enough to find my ankle holster. Give the man a
cigar. The handcuffs, cold and then blood-warm as they
chafed behind my back.
I didn't try again until the cop and his partner, who'd been
prudently standing back, ready to fall on me if I tried
anything, began to shove me over to their cruiser. "You
should call Julie Graff at the ISU, she can confirm my
identity."
"Your identity is that you're an identical twin. We know your
brother's safe at home, being watched by his FBI buddies."
He opened the door and prepared to push me in.
"George Naxos has a tattoo around his throat," I insisted.
"Just look on the description."
The cop looked at me curiously. "What's your point?"
After so long away from the X Files I'd forgotten what it was
like to deal with people who didn't give any credence to what
I was saying. I took a slow breath. "My neck. Look at my
neck."
He put his index finger in the collar of my shirt and pulled.
The tightness at the back of my neck was unpleasant, but I'd
bear it for a chance at getting out of this without having to
call Scully. "Geez," he commented, "that must have taken a
long time. Did it hurt?"
"What?"
"It goes all the way around, hunh? You had to get that done
before you went to prison, nobody in prison is that good." He
released me and tipped me into the back seat so that he
could slam the door of the squad car in my face.
I looked through the wire mesh protecting the cops from my
violent assault, tilting my head frantically to get a glimpse in
the rear view mirror, but the angle was too bad and there
was too much metal in the way to see my neck, to look at my
unmarked neck. It was unmarked, it had to be. Otherwise --
The drive to the station was long enough to let me consider.
George was taking over my life. Apparently he thought it was
only polite to give me his in return. I had to believe that
Scully would forgive me for the fact that George had
apparently succeeded in fucking her at my house better than
he had in the Smithsonian. I needed to believe that he hadn't
actually been along for the ride, so to speak. Nonetheless he
was obviously contaminating me.
How could they think I was tattooed? Ed Jerse claimed that
his tattoo moved and spoke to him, but it was always
present. There were a few X Files involving body markings
that only manifested in certain circumstances -- witchcraft-
induced marks indicating possession by the Devil, for
example. But I'd never seen anything about psychic
*transfer* of bodily alterations. And what was it about the
decorated Scully that attracted illustrated men?
I had invited him in, last night. I had invoked him, summoned
him, as sure as if I'd fucked Scully in the middle of a pentacle
marked out with her blood. Punishing her seemed less
important now than it had then, when I was high on anger
and lust.
I should have known that I couldn't just make him into a way
to hurt her and expect to be unaffected. Even as kids
George and I had a connection. And Texas brought us
closer together, the blood feast we shared weaving us
further into one another. Making us as one.
All right, so maybe tearing Jason apart hadn't been as good
an idea as it had seemed at the time.
Why not Emerson and Darien? Darien was a happy whore.
There were no reports of similar murders coming out of
California, though I'd set flags up on the NCIC database.
Emerson sounded fine in his incessant emails, and his
childhood trauma had never reached out and touched
George. The whole ugly mess branched out from me.
Something in my tattered psyche called out for George, and
George had answered.
I felt the thin ice separating me from my demon brother
crack; the dark water beyond swirled and I felt the warm pull
of madness.
I was jerked out of the squad car, fingerprinted,
photographed (as if that would matter), stripped and
subjected to a body cavity search. Contrary to popular belief,
most cops don't enjoy that kind of thing; it's just a routine you
get used to after a while. People can get used to just about
anything, it's what makes us so damn adaptable.
By the time I was fully processed Scully had arrived. I heard
her sharp tones in the hallway as she approached my cell. "-
-missing from his house for the last five hours. He most likely
decided to investigate on his own." She came into view and
looked me up and down. I was wearing the same kind of ill-
fitting orange jumpsuit that George had worn when we first
met him. This Trading Places deal was getting old fast.
"Mulder?"
"Who else would it be? You think George lets cops catch
him?"
Her eyes narrowed and she trained her scalpel-sharp gaze
on my neck. I almost felt real blood start to run, to cover
whatever else was there. "I thought you said he was
tattooed?"
The burly officer next to her blinked and came closer to the
bars. "He was. I swear to God."
"Show me your scar," she ordered. There were several,
actually, but she could only mean the bullet hole she'd put in
me, so I unzipped the coverall and pulled it aside. She
stared for a moment, then nodded.
"This is Fox Mulder. Let him out."
"I don't know, Agent Scully --"
"Let him out," she insisted. "I'll take full responsibility."
When I walked out, dressed in my real person's clothes
again, the cops glared at me. They weren't convinced. Hell,
neither was I.
Before we left, we stopped for my mug shot. The officer
who'd taken it insisted that he'd seen the tattoo. But the
photograph didn't show any marks on my neck at all. Scully
mumbled something about my maybe using magic markers -
- in my sleep, unconsciously, of course -- and I forebore from
pointing out that I hadn't washed up anytime recently.
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