"Would you stop yelling like a cow caught in a damned tar pit and wake up,
already, Fox? You're frightening the children. It's past time for you to get
up and going, anyway. God knows you've managed to mess up every last thing
you've done for the past year, and God only knows how I'm expected to handle
half a dozen kids, this house, hold down a full time job and still take care
of you. It's worse than having a seventh child. At least a child would pay
attention and do what he's told. Get up, already!"
Mulder's eyes popped open. Who on Earth was calling him Fox? Nobody called
him Fox. Not even his parents. When they'd been alive. To his intense shock,
Scully stood at the side of the bed, fists balled at her hips, eyes squinted
nearly shut, a scowl on her face and her mouth wide open as she howled at
him like a villain in a bad Italian opera.
"Scully?" he asked faintly.
The howl notched up another fifty decibels. "Don't give me that! Why I ever
made the mistake of marrying you, I will never know. Useless, lazy,
irritating..." The insults continued as she stomped to the door and slammed
it shut behind her. The only sound to penetrate the wooden barrier was a
sort of high pitched hum, as if a mosquito the size of a Great Dane was
whining in his ear.
He stared at the door.
Married?
Fox?
What sort of an X File had he landed in?
The door flew open, banging against the wall and nearly sending him out of
his skin. Children boiled in the room.
Red-headed children. At least a score of them if not more. And a couple
brunettes.
They swarmed over him, chanting nonsensical syllables that all seemed to end
in some variant of "Daddy." Mulder attempted to burrow under the covers.
Three of them followed him. It was a good thing he was wearing pajamas.
Grey flannel pajamas with little long-horned cattle printed on them.
Sheer horror kept him still a fatal moment, and the intruders landed on him,
three directly in his face and more on top the covers, pinning him there.
Vertigo hit, and the world spun, growing dark from lack of oxygen and sheets
covering his nose and mouth. He whimpered.
A foghorn with a distinctly nasal whine ended the torment. "Kids! Leave your
father alone! Come get your lunches before you're late for school! If you
miss the bus you're going to walk! Fox! GET OUT OF BED NOW!"
Apparently the herd of children were as cowed by Scully—his wife ?!—as
he was, because all the little hellions flew off the bed and out the door as
quickly as they'd attacked. He curled into a fetal ball under the sheets,
panting and sweating.
The smack came from out of nowhere. He shot out from under the sheets,
rubbing his flank, staring wild-eyed at the blue-eyed, red-haired harpy
glaring at him and pointing at a suit hanging from a hook on the back of the
door.
"Worse than the kids. Get up, get dressed, and get out. Don't come home
until you've been to both interviews, the unemployment office, the dry
cleaners to pick up my work suits, don't forget to stop by the bank and
don't write any more checks without at the very least letting me know, since
all you're doing lately is taking it out and I'm not a money tree."
He was in awe. She hadn't even taken a breath. "NOW!" she shrieked.
He moved.
Fifteen minutes later he'd combed his hair, knotted his tie and fumbled his
way out of the bathroom. The bathroom had been a wasteland of hair care
products, makeup, hand-held electrical appliances the uses of which he
didn't dare guess, feminine hygiene products, bright pink hand towels and
soap in the shape of little ducks.
As he walked gingerly out into the hall, he heard a strange noise. It
sounded like sitar music, only flat, out of tune, and oddly distorted, as if
he were hearing it during a very bad acid trip. He tip-toed to the closed
door at the end of the hall and inched it open.
The sickly-sweet stench of weed nearly took his head off. There, in love
beads and tie-dyed denim, eyes blissfully closed as she tortured a
badly-strung sitar, was his sister.
"Samantha?" he whispered.
One eye opened. It looked like an olive floating in tomato soup, it was so
bloodshot. "Hey, Foxy, chill, dude. Job tomorrow. Peace today. Give love a
chance."
The eye drifted shut, and the plucking fingers picked up their torment of
the strings. Mulder gulped air, immediately regretted it as his head started
to buzz, and backed out of the room as quickly as he could without falling
over his own feet.
Where were his fish? Where was his couch? What happened to Scully? Sam? Was
this another case of strange clones or LSD in the water supply or
alien-induced hallucinations?
Sidling into the kitchen, he saw his, er, wife. She was standing on the back
porch, her back to the room, talking to someone. He snuck up a little
closer.
"Could you deliver the package in an hour or so, Alex? He'll be gone for the
rest of the day and we won't be disturbed."
"You bet, Dana. One hour. Long lunch hour. I'm yours, babe."
There was a wet sucking sound, the kind of sound he'd heard in cheap porn
videos but never actually connected with real people, much less real people
like his partner... if the pod person currently playing tonsil hockey with
the guy in the postal carrier's uniform was actually his partner. Dana?
Since when did anyone call her Dana?
He stepped back from the kitchen, then deliberately bumped into the hall
table before entering the room. Scully glanced over one tailored shoulder at
him, then smiled down at the man at the base of the steps. "Thanks," she
said sweetly.
"You're welcome, Mrs. Mulder, any time."
The honorific would have robbed Mulder of speech even if he hadn't seen the
mailman's face. Alex Krycek tipped his hat at the horrified Mulder, gave
Scully a truly lascivious wink, then headed down the walkway. He was wearing
shorts. Short shorts. Short, blue, tight shorts. Mulder felt his groin give
a leap of interest it hadn't even hinted at when Scully had broached him in
the bedroom, and faced an uncomfortable truth.
Here, wherever here was, he had the hots for Krycek. Who was a mailman.
The children swirled around him again, and he counted heads this time.
Stair-steps, from twelve to about five years old, the tallest four carrot
tops and the shorter two... dead ringers for Alex Krycek. Mulder gulped.
At least he wasn't the milkman. That would be one cliche too many.
Scully rounded on him, and he smiled sickly and ducked out the door, carried
along on a wave of kids. He found himself alongside the fence without the
slightest idea what to do next. The door shut behind him with a resounding
thwack. As he stood there, trying to figure out the next logical step in
this nightmare, the next door neighbor's back door opened, and Byers stepped
out.
Mulder smiled his appreciation. Some things didn't change, no matter how
whacked reality got. Byers was dressed in a neat brown suit with a neat
brown tie, his brown hair neatly combed and his brown beard neatly trimmed.
The Langley came out onto the step, grabbed hold of that neat brown head and
kissed Byers like he was the last man on Earth.
The world shuddered. Or perhaps it was just Mulder. He could feel his jaw
drop, but couldn't begin to summon the strength to close it, or to stop
staring. Langley finally came up for air, patting Byers' hair down flat
again, then glaring at Mulder. One fist went up in the air, and he yelped
something about pride, and Mulder turned so fast he nearly impaled himself
on the fence post heading for the front walk.
A man was waiting for him, leaning up against a dark sedan. Skinner looked
normal, too, but Mulder wasn't taking any chances. Not after witnessing the
love-in between two thirds of the Lone Gunmen.
"Sir?" he asked hesitantly. Skinner gave him a dirty look.
"Don't try to bullshit me, Fox," he growled.
Mulder blinked. Skinner called him Fox? What sort of rabbit hole had he
fallen down?
"This is just a friendly reminder. You got one week. You don't come up with
the money in one week, I pay you another little visit, and it ain't gonna be
friendly, or pretty. You wanna keep your knees in one piece, you get Mr.
Marlboro his money." Skinner glared at him with an effect that would make a
basilisk turn puce with envy. Mulder nodded, not having the faintest clue
what he was agreeing to, but willing to do just about anything to make
Skinner go away. It worked.
Skinner stalked around the front of the sedan and got in the driver's side.
As he was pulling away, the back window slid down silently, and Mulder
choked. Cancerman was sitting there, smiling at him, in a compellingly
threatening way.
He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Scully was the fishwife from hell —
his fishwife from hell. Who was cuckolding him with Krycek, the mailman. The
three of them, between them, had a passel of children who resembled a pack
of raptors. He glanced over his shoulder and shuddered again. Frohicke had
come out front of the house from which Byers had left. He was pruning roses.
He was also wearing plaid Bermuda shorts, a lime green polo shirt with a
perky little embroidered logo on the chest, and bright teal high-topped
sneakers. With yellow socks.
Mulder shuddered again. The Lone Gunmen as a menage a trois were poster
children for the Suburban Gay Rights Movement. His erstwhile alien-napped /
missing / dead /starlight-bound sister was a reject from the sixties, with
enough illegal drugs growing in his back bedroom to send them all to prison
for a nice long stretch. He looked down.
And he was wearing charcoal pinstripes. With a red power tie.
Movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see X staring at him from a
comfortable lean against a shady tree. Mulder's eyes narrowed and his mouth
tightened. He strode over to his previously dead informant and planted
himself in front of him, a determined look on his face.
"Okay, spill it. What the hell's going on? You're supposed to be dead.
Scully's supposed to be my partner. Sam's supposed to be missing. Krycek's
supposed to be... somewhere else. I lost track. The Gunmen are supposed to
be straight. And I'm supposed to be a special agent for the FBI." He glared
at the man.
X looked back at him as if he'd grown a second head. Then he slowly
straightened up and handed him a business card. Mulder glanced down at it.
"Linc's," he read aloud, "hot music and cold drinks." He glanced up. "Huh?"
he asked, giving every evidence of years of training as an FBI interrogator
and an Oxford-trained psychologist.
"Let me know if you still want that bar-tending job," X told him with a
straight face. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.
Mulder stared at the card in his hand, the cars lazily winding down the
street, Frohicke merrily snipping rose heads, Krycek boldly trekking up his
back walk to go schtup his wife. As he stood there, trying to find a way to
wake up, he heard a shrill beeping. Tucking the card in his jacket pocket,
he pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open.
"Mulder," he said, head spinning.
"Ah, Fox," a light voice sang in his ear. He didn't recognize it. It didn't
really matter—he was ready to kill the next person who used his first
name, anyway. "Heard about you getting laid off, man. Total bummer. Why
don't you come by the office and we'll take a meeting?"
He listened numbly to the man chatting him up, automatically following
instructions, noting directions. He climbed into a car he vaguely
recognized, somehow unsurprised to find the key on his key chain worked in
the ignition. As he drove downtown, along streets he knew but didn't
recognize, he could feel reality gelling around him.
This was worse than an X File. This was real life.
Pulling up to the curb outside a small stucco office building, he got out of
the car and stumbled up the walk. He didn't know when DC had morphed into
LA, but for some odd reason it didn't feel as wrong as it really should
have. He opened the door and walked through the foyer, ignoring the
receptionist who ignored him in return. Leaning against the doorjamb of the
inner office, he glared at the curly-headed blond man clicking away at the
computer keyboard.
"What the hell is going on?" he growled. It came out closer to a whimper.
"I haven't got a clue!" Surfer-boy looked up and beamed sunnily at him.
"Never have. Make it up as I go along. Figure they'll buy anything as long
as it's murky enough, the clothes look cool, the music's spooky and there's
lotsa blood and gore. Add another weirdo alien or knock Scully up for
sweeps. Let all the guest stars do a script so I can take the day off and go
surfing. Who needs continuity when you've got voice-overs? Who needs a plot
when you've got special effects? Welcome to the network, Fox. Ain't the
truth a bitch?"
If he'd had a gun, he'd've shot himself. As it was, he sat down, pulled a
pile of scripts over to start reading, and wondered if Krycek was free for
dinner.
(the end, with trepidation for the upcoming season)
The Truth
by Brenda Antrim
They had him! Mulder tossed and strained, fighting against his bonds. He
didn't know how they'd trapped him this time, and he couldn't feel chicken
wire against his face so he didn't think he'd been transported back to
Siberia, but it didn't feel like his couch under him. His lower body was
immobilized but his hands, his hands were free! He fought from the depths of
inky blackness worse than anything he'd felt since the oil aliens had set
upon him, gradually surfacing to the sound of a buzzing much stronger and
more frightening than any killer clone bees could ever hope to attain.
