Take this place, for example, feverishly hot during the day and achingly cold
at night. Dry as dust and men sometimes fight over water as they fight over
other things. The best ration of food, blankets, a choice sleeping space along
the walls. Each other. Even though a lot of them aren't supposed to want that
sort of thing, being devout Muslim and all, it still goes on as it goes on in
every other prison around the globe.
Tunguska, for example. Though, there, it was just cold. Teeth-chattering,
blue-lipped, mind-numbing, freezing, shivering, bitter cold.
Not the half of it coming from the man I'd been forced to share a cell with.
He's extreme, too. One moment cool and removed, voice and face flat-lined,
only the thin-honed edge of sarcasm to give him away, the next achingly, almost
feverishly furious. Out of control. Striking out with little disregard for
consequences. For anything other than assuaging his rage. Usually, in my
direction.
Not that I can blame the guy. Not exactly, anyway. But it's hard not to when
you wake up to find yourself barfing up black oil and half your lungs and stomach
all over some alien spacecraft. When you hand him hook, line and sinker to
arrest a bunch of Apocalypse wannabes and get a rifle in the gut for your pains.
When he leaves you for the not-so-tender mercies of a man who has his own
cause to hate you, to hang you out to freeze on his fucking balcony half the
night.
When he takes you on a joyride in the wilds of Siberia that only ended with
you losing your goddamn fucking arm...
So, I guess I do blame him. A little, anyways. Number two on the list after
his old bud and mine, "Cancerman." All right, maybe, number three, since let's
not forget charming Marita, the blond bitch who fucked me over while she was
fucking me over. If I hadn't nabbed a vial of a certain home-grown Russian-made
vaccine while I had the chance I would have been left behind in the Star of
Russia, made to suffer a return-trip across the North Atlantic with only the
hopes of a quick garroting or a bullet to the head once I'd reached the other
end. If I was lucky. Which, at least since I've met Fox Mulder, I'm generally
not.
I've dreamt about him sometimes, especially these past few long months.
Shivering under my thin blanket, the remains of my left arm tucked beneath me to
protect it, until I finally manage to fall asleep. Or for what passes for sleep
when you're surrounded by a dozen or more other men who may or may not decide to
stick a shiv in you or strangle you in the middle of the night. I can speak a
spattering of their language, but it's not enough. Like it wasn't enough to get
me off in the first place. Justice is swift around here. When they say twenty
years they mean twenty years and when they say death, then that great old sword
comes out and there goes your head neat as you please. Some places use a gun for
executions these days, but the guy who runs this place is rather more
old-fashioned.
Of course, he's supposedly devout as well, but the rumor is that he fancies a
drink or two now and then, a line of coke and jazz and a girl to go with it all.
Blond ones, at that, exotic foreign flesh. Makes me wonder if I could somehow
get him and Marita together, kill two birds with one stone. Though, she's
probably dead by now. Not many survive their tests and she'd been looking pretty
rough the last I'd seen her, hanging onto our earnest little Jeffrey Spender
Junior as if he might have the keys to the universe, let alone an idea where to
stick them.
I occasionally wonder if my current incarceration in the vacation spot of the
Middle East isn't Spender Senior's revenge for what I did with his boy. For
turning him into a lost cause, a threat. For making his old man eventually have
to haul off and shoot the poor ignorant bastard. 'Course, if you can't play with
big boys you have no business being in the game. A truth that I've long learned,
and Mulder, too. Both of us have lost things along the way. Given up much hope
of a normal life, if there's any such beast. I don't have any friends and he
has...well, a few, but I wouldn't give you a nickel for them on most days. A
trio of geeky Dungeon Master types whose paranoia makes his look like it's
standing still. Not to mention his partner, a woman whose blind faith in her own
brand of logic and science makes her stab him in the back as much as she supports
him. Who doesn't have much a life of her own, either, not that I can muster much
sympathy for her.
For much of anyone right now. Not even for Mulder, and I usually do feel a
bit sorry for him. Stupid and brain-damaged as that desire is. I'm one of the
ones who screwed him over and he, in turn, has helped time and again to make my
life a living misery, so why the fuck should I ever feel anything but anger or
resentment or hatred for the sucker? Why? And, yeah, that's the question, all
right. I only wish I had an answer. Or even a map to know where to dig. There's
a big fucking desert out there and sands been running through my fingers lately,
stealing my life away with it. Sucking it into the depths of this bleak and
stinking pit. This mini preview of hell.
Undoubtedly, he'd say I deserved it and then some.
Especially for what I've done. To him. And I don't just mean his partner and
her sister. His fucking father. No, it's even more personal than that. More
intimate.
He hates me because he trusted me once. Even liked me. Let me into his life
and into his bed. It was only three times, and that last was more for comfort
than anything else—fear makes fools of us all, fear and guilt, and he blamed
himself more for Scully's abduction than the man who'd actually taken her—but it
meant a lot to him, I know that now. Like I know it meant a lot to me. More
than I wanted it to. More than I was comfortable with.
More than I could live with even.
The wind is picking up outside. You can hear it howling even though these
thick walls, a dust storm, ravenous and chaotic. The more superstitious here
still think that supernatural beings live in those storms, that they ride at the
heart of them, wailing and screaming, using the winds and the scorching sand to
blind the unwary, to strike the flesh from their bones. But, then, who am I to
scoff? I've seen aliens. I've seen their ships. Fuck, I've even had one inside
me and sometimes that makes me shiver, too. Makes me huddle under my blanket as
if it could ever possibly protect me. From what happened and what's coming.
Mulder knows, but sometimes I think he doesn't want to believe. Despite the
poster in his office. Despite his all-consuming search for what's "out there."
Except, that it isn't out there. It's here. They're here. And if we don't win
this one there won't be any more games to play, not ever.
Not even the ones we play within ourselves.
They hurt me the other day. Got the drop on me and kicked my feet out from
under me and when I would have come up fighting and broke some of their faces for
them, one of them simply dug his fingers down into the remnants of my arm and
twisted, waking old scars and mangled nerves to screaming life. He must have
been a smart one, must have watched and waited for his chance, and I could almost
have respected that if I hadn't been the intended recipient of his attentions.
I knew enough Egyptian to know what he called me then. I didn't need to work
to translate the spit that landed on my face from the other man who held me. To
know what they intended.
I'd been locked up before; I knew the drill. Willing or unwillingly, you take
it. And, if you're lucky, you live through it and, if you're really lucky, you
make them regret it later bad enough that no one ever dares touch you again.
I lived through it, but I almost wished I hadn't. Because, as I laid there,
eating dust and listening to the harsh staccato breathing of the man on top of
me, I found myself wishing and imagining that it was someone else. Someone
else's weight on me, his cock reaming me out, making me bleed inside, making me
small and submissive, making me real and alive and aware again.
I think I'd wanted the son-of-a-bitch since I first saw him. Since he first
left me high and dry at the Hoover building "like a bad date." I'd take those
words back now, if I could; they were entirely too close to the truth and who the
fuck wants that? No one would ever think I did.
Especially not him.
And, no doubt, he would think this place was exactly what I deserved. That to
be fucked unwillingly up the ass was small shakes compared to what I'd done to
him and his. Even to be beaten up afterwards, until I couldn't even see through
the blood, couldn't hardly breathe anymore—didn't hardly want to and would give
it up readily if I could figure out how—and finally left behind in the dirt like
someone's discarded blanket. Like an offering to the unsympathetic spirits of
the desert. Here, take him—he'd half dead already, easy prey...
Oh, yeah, they hurt me, but I wasn't about to die from it. But part of me was
thinking of Mulder again when I finally found the strength to haul myself up by
one wall, one hand. How he would have fared in my place. If he would have
survived. Probably, though. He's a persistent bugger, no pun intended.
But that night, huddled in my usual spot, I found myself more than thinking
about Mulder, I found myself remembering Mulder. Our brief partnership. Our
briefer "affair." All the moments since, even more fleeting and brutal, except
for our little expedition to Siberia, of course. What a vacation that had been.
Chock full of Kodak moments I'd just as soon forget and some of which I'm sure I
have. Mercifully.
I still don't know how Mulder got out of that one, but he did like he always
seems to. More of that fool's luck, probably. Always tripping over his own feet
and thus avoiding the fatal bullet. Not that the man would know a moment of true
gracelessness if it came up and grabbed him by the ass. He'd quip handily at his
own funeral if given half a chance. At the proverbial end of the world, which
may not be as far off as some might think. Or maybe they would if they weren't
too damn busy scoffing at all those folks on the street corners with their
hand-printed signs and their tinfoil hats.
As they all scoff at Mulder.
Sometimes, I wish I was one of them. That I didn't know. That I didn't care.
About him or about any of them, the whole goddamn fucking planet. That I could
just let it all go. Let it and them go end up in the hell that some of them
think we all richly deserve. But then I remember what it felt like to lose
myself—to have the black oil, the black cancer, pouring down my throat and how
cold it had been and how it had choked me and smothered me and finally drove me
into a darkness even greater than itself, and how it had made even me scream
—and I just can't. I may not like people much, if at all some days, but no one
deserves that.
Certainly, I didn't. Not even on my most off days. No matter what Mulder may
think of me.
I may be a shit, but at least I'm human. Or as human as I could be after
having seen what I've seen, done what I've done, and knowing what I may yet have
to do. Sacrifice should be something Mulder would understand; he's been forced to
it often enough. But he never seems to see mine. What I've lost. What I've
been forced to give up. He never seems to care.
Sometimes it makes me think that to him I'm just a body to hit now, just a
face to smash. The mask of all his own pain and all his loss and frustration and
abject misery. That when I stand before him that's all he sees anymore. Nothing
of me, the real me, at all. And it makes me angry and sad all at once, and it
makes it so easy to taunt him because of it. To try and wrench his precious
little world apart—his work, Scully, that dusty and somewhat sad little
apartment, his sticky magazines and that big old lonely bed—and let me slip back
inside. Literally and figuratively.
But if I'm locked out of his life, then he's locked in. The key long ago
flushed down the toilet or washed down the drain, leaving him lurking in the
shadows. In the shadows of shadows. And I don't know who did it to him, or if
he simply did it to himself. Running away from the killers he'd invited into his
brain or dear sweet mommie and daddy—amazing profiler that he is, he should have
seen through them years ago, but it's always hardest with the closest—from his
washed-up career and his sister's ghost and his low fucking self-esteem and his
goddamned awful brilliance.
God, how bad it would suck to remember everything in every last little detail.
And then to be made to doubt great hunks of it.
I didn't have to bother with doubting or believing; I know and I don't have a
bug up my butt about forcing other people to that same knowledge. Fuck, he'd
give it all away for free if he could and damn the consequences. Damn how many
lives were lost in the meantime or as a result.
Ruthless in his own way as much as his old man. His real old man. I've
experienced hard times at the hands of both and, some days, find not much to
chose from between them. Scars...I can show you scars, and I don't just mean the
remains of my poor mangled and long-lost left arm.
I still hurt the next morning after the two men attacked me. If you could
call it morning when you've hardly slept and the sun had yet to make an
appearance. Another storm had come in during the night and, even in the depths of
the prison, a gritty haze hung in the air. Breakfast tasted of sand and it was
even harder to choke down than usual. I ate it anyway, despite how my jaw ached
and my cracked lips stung; I needed the strength. Some of the others were
already eyeing me, no doubt wondering if I'd broken. If I would roll over for
them, easy as you please.
They were all fools. There was only one man in all the world that I'd roll
for these days, a bigger fool than any of them. So, why did I still want him so
fucking much if that were true? After all the times he'd hammered and harassed
me, all the times he'd hurt me. Hurt me far worse than those two assholes
yesterday. The ones I was going to have to kill.
One bright spot in an increasingly dismal future.
They didn't let us outside today—which was never any great loss anyway—and
night fell early. The winds rising with the dark, railing and weeping around the
thick walls. Wailing at those imprisoned here.
I didn't sleep at all that night. Instead, I listened to it, imaging voices
hidden inside the howling. Listening to the sound of my own heart beating,
turning the slow tick of pain back upon itself until it was just a distant buzz.
Low key enough not to get in the way, yet still strong enough to hone me to my
purpose.
Near to dawn, I slid through the mounds of sleeping men and killed first one
and then the other. Fleetingly, I'd wished I could have lingered over their
deaths, that I could have made them pay in pain as well as with their lives, but
it was neither expedient nor safe. They weren't worth chancing getting my head
chopped off, not even to avenge my rather dubious honor.
I slept a little then, lightly, one ear bent to other potential rapists, to
premature discovery of my first two, and when I woke it was light and the storm
was gone, blown back out into the deeper desert. The two dead men were found
shortly thereafter, their bodies already cooling, not a mark on them. At least,
none that anyone around here would know to look for.
The rumor over today's breakfast was twofold. Half the men casting careful
sideways glances at me, this time with a trace of fear, of new-found respect, and
the other half whispering of storms and sand and spirits, of beings that seeped
into even the most protected rooms to suck the life right out of a man.
Superstition, but who knows? If such things didn't exist then there never would
have been a need for the X-files and Fox Mulder and I might never have met. Let
alone...been what we had been to each other. What we were.
Either way, they left me alone after that. Which was what I'd wanted in the
first place.
To be left by myself. To hate. To wish. To wonder. To plan. To regret.
To dream all those dreams I've long denied myself, knowing the futility of
having them at all, let alone acting on them. Let alone relying on them.
Relying on anyone or anything other than myself.
All my employers have fucked me over and Marita, who I should have known
better than to ever trust, let alone put my dick up her, and...Mulder. Of course
and always and inevitably, my Mulder. Only he's not mine anymore, if he ever
truly was. If he ever could be anybody's. In all the ways that count, anyway.
He had fucked me until it hurt, too, only I'd savored the soreness. At my
desk the next day, in the car, lying on the couch at home with a glass of vodka
in one hand and my dick in the other. Wishing it was his fingers yanking me off,
or his mouth going down on me, or, better still, his ass. Tight and slick and
the nearest thing to heaven that I'd ever likely see in this lifetime or in any
other.
But, one, two, three, and it's gone and I'm gone and a man who once licked and
sucked and fucked me near to unconsciousness—who sometimes smiled at me and
brought me a beer once and rubbed the cool can all over my erection as I squirmed
and moaned and fought half-heartedly to get away—now can't hardly stand to look
at me anymore, let alone put his hands on me. Except to hurt me, of course.
The same man that I'd respected and admired, back when I was pretending to be
young, pretending to be a student, overeager and overachieving and with a hard-on
for truth, justice and the American way of life FBI style. The same man who I'd
lied to and led on and spied on in the name of the exact opposite beliefs. Not
that I personally ever held to either doctrine. I couldn't afford it. No matter
that I sometimes envy those who do, as much as I find myself disdaining their
very fanaticism.
The only thing I can claim the same dedication to these days is my own life.
And, by extension, the lives of just about everybody else on this ignorant little
planet. Not that I wouldn't sacrifice a few of them to save my own skin. And a
whole lot of them for a chance at saving the rest. And if that makes me a shit
and a scum-sucker and Fox Mulder's personal demon...then so be it. At least,
I'll still be alive in the end. And so will he.
The storm had blown itself out well before dawn, but its effects lingered in
the air all day, making the sun look even more red and bloated and cruel than
usual. It didn't help that, as a punishment for the deaths, our water rations
were halved today. Or, maybe, it wasn't really a punishment at all, but just
done on a whim. Maybe our favorite warden got his Western skin magazines ripped
off or his VCR ate his last copy of "Debbie Does Dabir," and so just decided to
take his annoyance out on whoever stood to take it.
Or maybe he did it because it would look good and, God and Allah knows, how
much appearances matter. Even if what they cover up is a hollow, an emptiness, a
lack of either care or concern. Two more prisoners turn up dead? Fuck it, just
stick em in the ground and go on; there's more where they came from. There's
always more where they came from.
Sick as it is, it's more than a match to my mood of late. It's almost scary
how little I really care about anything anymore. The few obsessions that remain
I shuffle around over and over again, trying to put them into order, some
semblance of sense. Amusing myself at the same time with the futility of it all.
The finality.
I'm going to kill the man who put me in here, of course.
Save the world if I can.
Have Fox Mulder look at me, once, just once, like he used to. Before he
learned to despise me.
One for vengeance, one for altruism, and one for...well, one just for me.
If I actually get one, though, I'll be lucky. Two, and I could have claimed
to have sold my soul for them—if I hadn't already, so long ago that I doubt I
can even remember what it was like to once own one. Three...and I'll be glad to
believe. In miracles. In magic. In God. In any damn thing that presents
itself as the author of my redemption.
I might even believe in demons in the dark, those of sand and storm and death
and the traditional three wishes they are sometimes said to grant. At their own
whim, of course, but maybe they'll take an obscure pity on me and give them to me
free and clear, no tricks, no fuck-ups, since I also know what its like to live
on the outskirts. To whirl and howl and wail for the light and to be constantly
denied. To be torn apart limb from limb and body from soul.
To be left behind, one of the restless dead. The hungry.
Night eventually fell again, bringing with it the cold. I'm thirsty—even
more so than usual—and both it and the dark and the cold remind me of that other
place. I'm due vengeance for that one, too, but you can only kill a man once.
Like you only get one shot at trust. At betrayal.
At something so rare and precious that it's hard to imagine it even exists,
let alone that it was almost within your grasp. And that you just let it go
after all.
I...just let him go.
It was stupid. Inevitable. As stupid and inevitable as jerking off quietly
in the dark and thinking of him. Of how well we had fit together—him into me,
me into him—and how good it had been, good enough to make me scream. To muffle
the sound into the flesh of my own arm, the one I don't have anymore, as I
muffled the sounds tonight, small as they were, into a fold of foul-tasting
blanket. My own seed momentarily warming my fingers, driving back the dark and
the memory of the dark, at least long enough for me to finally fall asleep.
Only to dream of him. Of that special, sweet and oh so rare smile of his, of
his kisses, his own sounds of pleasure. The way he would tuck himself around me
afterwards, as if entirely unaware of just how precious a gift that was. At
least to me.
Precious enough to kill for. To die for.
But that's a lie, isn't it? I didn't murder or die to keep it. I just lied
and stole and broke the fragility of what we had between us, what we might have
had, in order to...in order to follow fucking orders. In order to save my own
miserable skin. Me or him, wasn't that how it was? Wasn't that what I was told
it was? Oh, not in words, but it was there anyway. There in the eyes of that
craggy old bastard who held my balls tightly in his nicotine-stained fingers and
told me that accidents could happen to anybody. Anybody at all.
Because, after my dream of Mulder, it was his turn to haunt me. To drive me
back to the prison with a nightmare that he wore the heart of. Never quite the
same nightmare, the details alter, but it's the same anyway. A nightmare of my
own betrayal. Of what I did for him and how he used me, and then left me behind
to die. Or tried to fucking kill me outright. Sometimes, Mulder's in those,
too, and that makes it all the worse. Sometimes it's Scully, or her sister, who
I never really knew, or even Skinner. Accusation and condemnation galore. As if
they didn't know he was pulling their strings as well, that he held their balls
in a vise.
That, at the core of things, we're not really all that different. I'm just a
little more honest about it, and who can hate me for that?
Yeah, like I don't already know.
The ground is hard and I shuffle around, trying to find a comfortable
position, even through I already know there isn't one. It's cold, too, and the
blanket might as well be tissue paper for all the good it does. Some men huddle
together for warmth, but I don't know anyone here that I would trust that far.
Besides, that harbors bad memories as well. Of a place far colder than here and
the heat of another man pressed up against me and the smell of him, several days
unbathed, but wonderful for all that. How hard it had been not to go further
than that. Not to reach out. To try to touch him.
To have him take the top of my head off for it.
I press my eyes tight shut, but the pain just shifts to my throat, making it
hard to breathe. Harder still to swallow, even one dry dust-wrenched swallow.
And, sweet Jesus, but I'm going to kill that fucker some day for putting me in
here and throwing away the key, for leaving me to die in that fucking silo in the
middle of nowhere, and—most of all—for assigning me to
Fox-too-smart-for-his-own-fucking-good-sweet-pain-in-the-ass-Mulder in the first
goddamn place. Three strikes and you're out. Isn't that how it goes these days?
Three strikes and you're left buried in the dark with a dozen other ruthless
and discarded men, your mouth filled up with sand and your eyes blinded by tears
you don't dare shed. Your own semen flaking away on your hand—your one
remaining hand—reminding you of just how fucking cold the universe can be if it
really wants to be.
Three strikes and he's walking away from you, borrowed car keys in hand, and
you get the phone call you never wanted to get, but always knew you had to, and
then you're looking down the barrel of a gun at the man's father—not his real
father, but he never knew that at the time, maybe doesn't know now—and you can't
feel anything or you'd never be able to do it. Could never walk away again, even
though it cost you your life not to.
But no matter how far you run, you can't seem to escape—not him, not
yourself. I don't know. Maybe he's the bad penny as much as me. Always turning
up when you least expect it, when you are least prepared to handle it. But,
either way, it sucks. Perpetually and continually.
Something skitters across my feet and I jerk them away, even though that's an
exercise in futility as well. Across the room, a man coughs and then subsides. I
close my eyes, then open them again, but nothing changes. Except that the room
seems to grow a little smaller, darker, more squalid.
My life, Mulder. Here it is and some days I'd just as soon offer it up to you
on a silver platter if I could, do with it what you will. Beat me around, curse
me, kill me, whatever. You're fooling yourself if you think I really give a fuck
anymore.
Except that, at the same time, I can't seem to let go. To let it happen.
Maybe, that makes me crazy. Even as crazy as you, though that seems unlikely.
But what do you call a sane man in an insane world, one that's spinning so far
and hard out of control that you can't call anything what it is anymore for fear
of it not being the very next day. When there's a war going on that most people
don't even have a clue about, despite the casualties mounting up on all
sides—alien, human, clone, what have you. When even the old men who think they
know, who thought that they had everything well in hand—like my balls for
instance—are brought down and made helpless, made to face their own shameful
fears and lack of commitment to the cause.
Will Mulder say "I told you so" when it all comes out in the end and he's
proved right? Will his partner apologize for her own lack of faith, in him, at
least? Will they forgive me, all those I've hurt and murdered along the way for
only the best of reasons. Will he?
I don't know if I ever could find the words to ask it. Or the courage to
stand in front of them like that, to be made bare like that. Maybe, he's right
about that, too, and I am a coward when you come right down to it. At least,
when and how it counts the most.
I'd rather face a bullet than those eyes of his. I'd rather die here in this
fucking hellhole than have him go on hating me forever.
Except that that's a lie, too. Survival is a habit that I haven't quite
broken myself of. Or let anyone else break for me, though they've tried often
enough.
I should try and sleep some more, though; dawn will come soon enough and, if
another storm doesn't blow in, they'll probably work us tomorrow. Make us pay
for the privilege of continuing life. For our will to endure.
I should sleep, even if I dream again, all of pleasantries and horrors
intermingled. After all, it's all I have anymore. All I have of him. Of me. Of
us.
The memories of hunger meeting hunger in the night. Of wailing and empty
betrayal. Need ripping everything apart, rending it back to constituant dust.
Devils in the dark, aren't we all?
Blind and doomed.
But unable to die.
She's beautiful, seemingly healthy again, dressed in impeccable clothes, but I
hardly notice it. Can't afford to notice it. The men howl, but I hold myself
back. Hold myself aloof.
Waiting for the moment.
For the key she's come to offer. No matter the price. No matter how fucking
high it is; I've paid before, and I can pay again. I've grown good at it.
Better than I ever expected.
Better than they ever expected.
And she's a bitch, like always, but she gets me out. Waiting until I'm
washing away the heat and stink of the prison, my punishment, before she moves to
the purpose at hand. Before she tells me that the snake at the bottom of all our
nightmares is dying at the last. Blue eyes cold as the desert at night,
unblinking, calculating. Watching my every move, gauging my reaction to the news
to the tiniest degree. To the smallest grain of sand.
Knowing I would hear in it the same thing she did. See the same grand
opportunities. For vengeance and victory all wrapped up in one big shining
present. For us to finally make the future what we want it to be. What we need
it to be.
So, surprise, surprise, I guess I'm lucky, after all. 'Cause, there's one
wish down and a damn good chance at two. And if you think I'm not going to go
for three, Fox William Mulder, well, then you don't know me at all, do you?
Anymore than anyone else ever did.
And you almost have to admire the extremes. And it's almost enough to make
you believe. Almost.
Except that almost only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades. And doesn't
count at all when you're trying to save the world.
Or something that almost was.
Djinn
by Garnet
You almost have to admire the extremes.
