Lonely Nightmare II: Ice Age
by Justin Glasser
***
“Because you’ve made it through your ice age, let me in.”
***
He knew Wisconsin would be cold, but he only knew it intellectually, the way he knew you could stop a shark attack by hitting it hard on the nose, or that you couldn’t measure both the speed and location of a subatomic particle simultaneously. That Wisconsin in winter was cold was general knowledge, but Mulder didn’t have any actual experience with it. Until now.
Scully was at the luggage carousel collecting their suitcases and Mulder had left to get the cab. He had his coat on, of course, and his gloves in his pockets, and he was Special Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI, and he had been to places that had winter before, hell he’d been to the *Arctic* before, so he thought he could handle a little cab reconnaissance, even if the pilot on the plane had announced something ludicrously low as the local temperature. He went through the sliding glass doors, and the wind whipped his unbuttoned coat wide open and brought tears to his eyes, tears that seemed to be freezing even as they formed, and the blood in his hands seemed to be solidifying because he couldn’t find his pockets let alone his damn gloves, and he took a breath so sharp he thought his lungs would implode with the sheer simple *coldness* of it, and he turned and bolted back inside just before the doors slid closed.
“Fuck!” He clamped his hands down over his arms and rubbed. “Holy FUCK!”
“Mulder?” Scully was wheeling one of those carts that look like grocery carts on a crash diet, piled with their bags. “Are you okay?”
“It’s cold out,” he said, wondering how many of the people waiting for their luggage had heard him. Scully didn’t roll her eyes at him, but he thought she might have been, internally. “It’s *really* cold out,” he explained.
She nodded.
After a second, he let go of his arms and began to button his coat. “I’ll go get us a cab.”
“You do that,” she said.
He did it, cursing under his breath all the time, wondering why the cabbie didn’t fucking *help* with the luggage for Pete’s sake, until he realized that if he were making as much money as the cabbie was making, he wouldn’t be getting out of his nice warm car to help yahoos with their luggage either. He and Scully piled into the back seat in a bundle of long winter coats, and Scully leaned forward and told him the name of the hotel. She sat back, comfortably close. She tilted her head back against the back of the seat and closed her eyes.
“Tired?” he asked. He could see all of her neck, down into the collar of her coat. Her skin was very pale. She looked like the kind of woman who hickeyed easily. He wondered if Ed Jerse could validate that suspicion.
“You want to work?” She had not opened her eyes.
“Nah. Nothing to work on, really. Onowani doesn’t have any history of any usual occurrences, no folklore about mysterious disappearances, nothing. It’s just a town, like a thousand other small towns around here.”
“I thought you guys were staying at the Marriott,” the cabbie said.
“We are,” Mulder answered.
“Well, then, why would you go to Onowani?” the cabbie asked. Mulder caught his eye in the rear view mirror. “No place for a nice couple like you.”
Mulder noticed that Scully had opened her eyes and was watching the cabbie’s profile. “We have business there,” she said.
The cabbie laughed. “Business? That’s new. No one has business in Onowani, unless they’re a travel agent. Only thing going on in Onowani is leaving.”
“Why is that?” Mulder asked. The cabbie shrugged.
He sat back, hardly aware that he had leaned forward to talk to the man. “What do you think, Scully?” he murmured.
She shrugged, too. She had closed her eyes again, and was leaning against his side. She was indescribably warm.
When they were getting out under the canopy of the Marriott, bell boys hustling in ski jackets with the name of the hotel emblazoned on the back, Mulder leaned in the cabbie’s window.
“Why do people leave Onowani?” he asked, handing the cabbie the fare money.
The cabbie shrugged again. “No reason, man. Small town. You know.”
“I don’t know,” Mulder said, drawing a fifty out of his wallet. “Why don’t you tell me?”
The cabbie took the money and smiled. “All I’m saying, man, is that if you got business in Onowani, you want to get it done while the sun shines. Place like that is not a place you want to be when it gets dark.” He started to roll up his window.
“Wait!” Mulder held his gloved hand over the edge of the window; it kept going up. “Why not?” he yelled. The cabbie, safe behind the glass of his closed window, smiled and shrugged.
***
They had the cheapest rooms at the Marriott, which was was a little like saying they had ordered the cheapest caviar at the Ritz, Mulder thought, sprawling on the soft mattress. Rooms like this were not covered in the expense account, but he had some extra room on the credit card, and the room stipend would cover some of it, so he had figured what the hell. After his bleak introduction to Wisconsin winter, he was glad he had added the expense.
Scully knocked on the connecting door.
“It’s open.”
She had already changed too, but her men’s cut pajamas and white socks seemed so much more adult than his sweatpants and raggedy gray t-shirt combination. Scully was put together even when she went to bed. It was a quality he alternately loved and hated about her.
“What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked, tapping the empty end of the bed with his foot in invitation.
“Funny, I was just going to ask you the same thing.” She didn’t sit down. He changed a channel on the t.v. aiming the remote from above his head.
“Is this the part where you challenge my judgment about the nature of the cases we should be taking and tell me that this isn’t an X-file?”
She smiled, but leaned in the doorway instead of sitting down. “I was just wondering, Mulder.”
He smiled. Changed the channel. “I got a letter, it seemed interesting, the holidays are over, and we got nothing but time. I figured we might as well see the sights, Scully.”
She nodded. “I figured. For the record, this isn’t an X-file.”
“Duly noted, Agent,” he said. She turned to go back into her room. He wished she’d have sat down. He watched the channels change on the t.v.
“Hey Mulder,” she said, and even though he knew it would be nothing, he felt his heart stutter in his chest.
“Yeah?”
“Next time you want to see the sights, can’t there be an X-file in Hawaii?”
“Good night, Scully,” he said, and he knew that he was smiling.
***
He came awake abruptly to the sounds of a man shouting, and Scully tearing at his blankets.
“Hey!” he yelled, not sure if he was yelling at her, or for her, if he was helping or hindering. It was a weary and familiar feeling. Scully pushed at him, tugging at the sheets, shoving her hands under his body. Mulder felt his back arch upward.
“Hey!” he yelled again, this time definitely at her. The man was shouting something about TEMPERATURES STAYING LOW FOR MOST OF THE WEE--
--and then there was silence.
And Scully dropped back down on the edge of the bed, and dropped the hard and rather heavy remote control onto his chest.
“You fell asleep on it,” she said.
“Oh.”
She sat there for a moment and he could see her face in the glow of the light from the t.v. that said MUTE in big red letters at the bottom of the screen, and he could see that she wanted to say a thousand things to him, that she was tired, and he had woken her by falling asleep on the remote, and that she had come running in here scared out of her mind, and he knew that she wouldn’t say any of this. He didn’t really want to say anything to her especially not--
“Sorry,” he said--
because he didn’t mean it. What he meant was “stay,” but he couldn’t say that, that was impossible, so he was just forced to lie here and listen to her sigh and say--
“It’s okay.”--
but it wasn’t okay, not really, and it hadn’t been since she had gotten snowed in in Philadelphia because he had been a jerk. She sat there for a second, watching the flash of the images change on the silent t.v.
“Put that on the table,” she said. Then she leaned over and picked her gun up off the floor and he knew she really had been scared.
“I will,” he said.
“Good night, Mulder,” she said. He didn’t say anything, because he only wanted to say “stay” but that was impossible. So he kept quiet, and when she had gone he noticed how cold it was in his own room and got up to turn up the heat.
***end 2/13***
People tell me I haven’t changed at all, but I don’t feel the same.