As I knocked on the motel room door I imagined the look on Fox's face when
he saw little-old-unexpected me. I loved to make him happy, and a happy Fox
Mulder was an appreciative Fox Mulder.
When he opened the door, his expression gave me everything I expected and
hoped for. His green-gold eyes glowed, and a blinding smile parted his lush
lips. "Alex!" But I noticed at least five prominent bruises on his face and
a long gash along his neck. He looked like he hadn't shaved for at least a
day, and I could see his exhaustion.
Someone had done this to him, and when I found out who that "someone" was,
there would be hell to pay.
Suddenly all the expression drained from his face and his eyes went dark. It
took me two minutes to interpret the look he gave me and recognize it as
horror.
"Alex, get away from me. Please."
"Fox, what happened? What's wrong?"
He backed away and started to close the door. "You don't want to get near
me. I can't let you."
A thousand surmises, each one more horrifying than the last, flashed through
my brain. I kept the door propped open. "Tell me what's wrong. You don't
have to be afraid of me," I said in as calm and comforting a tone as I could
manage.
"You should be afraid of me. Hell, I'm afraid for you. Please, Alex, it's
not safe for you to be near me." He looked like he barely held back tears.
As I reached for his arm I somehow tripped and headbutted him. When we fell
to the carpet, he bashed his head hard against the floor and got the wind
knocked out of him from my full weight hitting his chest.
"Fox?"
He moaned. "I can't take this anymore."
"Tell me what's going on." When I stroked the side of his face I almost
poked him in the eye.
"It's this damned case. Everyone who gets near this one man contracts
terminally bad luck. He put the whammy on me and Scully." It broke my heart
to hear him trying to be light and flippant for my sake when his eyes looked
so haunted. "Since I met him the other day I nearly slit my throat shaving,
brained myself on the shower head, drowned in the bath, and strangled myself
with the bed."
"How the hell do you strangle yourself with a bed?"
"I got my neck caught between the bed and the wall. I barely got myself free
before I would have passed out from lack of oxygen. Scully didn't believe me
at first. Now that she's had to crawl out of a car accident, nearly choked
to death on a muffin, and broke her nose walking into a wall, she's changed
her mind a bit. Right now she's at a dentist's office getting a cracked
tooth repaired. At least we're not contagious. From what I can figure, you
have to be near the bastard to get affected, so you won't catch my bad luck,
though I'm really dangerous to be around right now."
Fox had, at last, become a literal bad luck magnet. In concept, it sounded
funny. I could see the reality devastating him. "There must be a way to end
it."
"I don't know! I haven't even figured out how it works!" As he put his hands
over his face he poked himself in the eye. When his arms moved, the
sleeves slid away to reveal masses of bruises. "I can't go anywhere; I can't
do anything. I can't sleep without dropping to the floor, hitting my head,
or almost killing myself. I think I'll stay down here. Saves time. Since
none of the local authorities believe me about him, I can't even get him
quarantined for the public safety."
"You'll figure it out. You always do." When I kissed him, he almost choked.
"I'm sorry, Fox, I'm so sorry!"
He actually started to cry. As I held him carefully, very carefully, I knew
what I had to do.
Fox wouldn't reveal the bastard's identity or address but my own snooping
around uncovered what I needed to know. I followed Jason Carlucci for a few
hours and watched as the son of a bitch went through his day with a song in
his heart and a smirk on his lips, completely indifferent to the chaos he
left in his wake. I actually saw the "whammy," as Fox called it, hit the
people around Carlucci like a fist of bad luck. He couldn't be entirely
oblivious.
Like a rabid dog, he needed to be put down for the public good. For Fox's
good.
Knowing what I did of the situation, I realized that I would have to take
him out from a distance. But it had to be something nasty too, something
suitable for a man who casually condemned everyone around him to the kind of
hell I saw Fox stuck in.
I abandoned Carlucci and went to his house to set my trap. Actually, it
wasn't that simple. I had locked myself out of my car. My keys hung in the
ignition, taunting me. I never forgot my keys. Then I had to waste five
minutes in a desperate search for my spares. In my profession, it paid to
have a backup in all things. Of course, the whole point of a spare set was
in having them somewhere you could find them. No luck. I had to pick the
lock on my own car door.
Fox hadn't thought I could catch the whammy from him. He might have been
wrong. Still, I was in better shape than he was. Maybe you could contract a
nuisance whammy from the infected people but needed to be near Carlucci to
get the full deal.
This could be a problem.
When I finally reached Carlucci's house I really wanted him dead, and in
as painful and messy a way as possible. I let myself into the bastard's
home, waited for the sound of his car pulling into the driveway, and rigged
his gas stove to explode. It would look like an accident. A very messy one,
yes, but no one would suspect homicide. I got out through the back door
before he entered the front.
I gave myself some distance and waited for the fireworks. It would take a
little while, but it would be spectacular once they arrived.
Minutes later I saw his car pull back out of the driveway. Then the house
blew up.
I felt a headache coming on.
He got out of the car and did that little dance people do when they realize
that [1] they just barely escaped with their lives, and [2] they just lost
an expensive bit of their property. I decided that I wouldn't be able to do
anything once the fire engines arrived, so I went back to see Fox.
Fox sat outside with his back propped against the door. His new black eye
made him look paler. Everything about him spoke of despair.
"Scully had a bad reaction to the novocaine. She's in the hospital right
now. I would go to see her, but I don't know how I could get there without
killing myself or others. She has no allergies. She must be terrified..."
I didn't care if I got infected, not with Fox like this. I sat down next to
him and put my arm lightly around him, careful of his bruises. He winced
only slightly, then rested his head against my shoulder. Of course, he
misjudged and hit my shoulder hard, eliciting grunts of pain from the both
of us.
"How did you get the black eye, Fox?"
"I don't even know. I drifted off to sleep for a few minutes before hitting
something woke me up. I had it when I looked in the mirror." He sighed.
"Scully's better off without me. Our luck might get worse if we're
together." His eyes widened as he looked at me. "Alex, I'm really scared for
you."
"You need me, Fox."
"I need you alive."
We argued back and forth for ten minutes until he threw a fit. You've never
seen a real fit until you've watched an exhausted and cranky Fox Mulder
throw one. Annoying and entertaining at the same time. I wanted to fling him
against a wall and fuck him into a better state of mind, which usually
worked, but with the both of us under a bad luck spell I was too afraid of
what we would do to one another. So I left with a promise to return later.
Besides, I still had to track Carlucci down and kill the son of a bitch.
He stayed in a nice hotel five blocks from his burnt-out home. Two members
of the staff had already been injured in freak accidents. I wanted the
fucker dead.
Fortunately for me, he had ordered room service. Considering his good luck
combined with everyone else's bad, I waited until the bellhop had the cart
at his door before I intercepted it. I made idle chitchat, distracted the
kid, and made my own culinary addition to Carlucci's steak.
I always carry a number of poisons with me. You never know when you'll need
something. That's me, Alex Krycek, boy scout. I sprinkled the one I chose
onto his steak, where it looked the same as the salt. This poison was
tasteless, fast-acting, and almost impossible to detect in an autopsy,
especially if the M.E. didn't get to the body immediately after its demise.
Even fairly young, healthy people occasionally died from unexpected heart
attacks.
The kid never noticed. I left him before he knocked on the door. I almost
fell down the stairs on my way out.
I settled into my surveillance spot to wait, imagining his death agonies,
greedy for his suffering. I smiled at the thought of his eyes bulging and
muscles spasming. The choking sounds he would make would be music. Finally,
he would clutch his throat and collapse.
He sat down, picked up his fork— Then the phone rang. He spoke to someone
for 45 minutes. He completely ignored all my attempts to develop psychic
powers and make him eat. It went something like this: You know you're
hungry. You haven't eaten in hours. Doesn't that steak look delicious? You
can eat and listen at the same time...
None of it worked. When he hung up the phone, he looked at the cold steak
and tossed it in the trash untouched.
I started to wonder if the bastard absorbed all the good luck from the
people around him, and that was the nature of the whammy. Nobody was
this lucky, and this son of a bitch certainly didn't rate a guardian angel.
Fox had moved back into the motel room. He sat in a corner devoid of all
furniture and cords. The new bruises and cuts I saw had probably been earned
while creating that empty space.
He had moved from mere exhaustion into a whole new state of consciousness.
His eyes tracked everything with a jittery hyper- awareness. He looked
terrified.
Few people realized that fatigue made Fox hallucinate. It also made him even
more paranoid.
"Alex, the lamps are watching me, and I don't know why, but someone came in
and repainted the room..."
It sounded ridiculous, but it was all very real to him. I reached into my
backpack and brought out a cloth and a bottle of liquid. I wet the cloth and
tried not squirm under Fox's glittering stare.
"I'm going to do a magic trick for you," I said. It was hard to slither with
only one arm, but I did, hoping that a slow approach along the floor would
reduce the opportunities for mishaps.
When I finally reached him, I put the cloth over his nose and mouth briefly.
With our luck, anything longer had a real possibility of killing him.
Fortunately, it didn't take much to put him out.
I put a pillow under his head and used his suits, shirts, and underwear to
pad all the things in the room he could knock himself against. It probably
wouldn't be enough, but it made me feel a little less helpless. I kissed
him, then left to take care of unfinished business.
The brakes failed on my car, but I kept a cool head and missed the row of
parked cars and the woman with the baby carriage. I got out and carried my
case the rest of the way. Once I settled back into my surveillance spot, I
put my rifle together. Fuck subtlety.
My first shot only nicked the bastard. Same for the second. I could feel the
gun starting to jam but kept it clear and shot him right through the head.
Blood and brain matter flew like confetti. I then walked into the hotel,
picked the lock on his door, and shot him six more times from the doorway
with a handgun. I closed the door behind me and started the walk back to the
motel.
I only hoped this broke Fox free.
I knocked on the motel room door but got no answer. Fearing the worst, I
picked the lock and kicked the door open. Fox was still lying on the floor
with a pillow under his head, just as I'd left him hours ago. He looked so
still... I knelt beside him and relaxed as I saw him breathe slowly and
deeply. Peacefully asleep. That and the fact I hadn't kicked, stepped, or
fallen on him on my way over suggested that I'd succeeded.
His eyelids fluttered. "Hi, Alex," he mumbled sleepily. Even with the
bruises he looked so cute. "Help me get to bed?"
This would be the real test. I helped my sleepwalking lover up and put him
on the bed without tripping or hurting either one of us. Mission
accomplished.
I took off the prosthetic and settled in beside him. Fox sighed happily and
burrowed into my chest, making soft sounds of contentment as I stroked his
hair. Who said killing never solved anything?
The next day Fox got up same as always, as normal as he ever was, and went
to meet Scully. I slept in, enjoying the rest of the just.
When he returned hours later, I asked, "How are you doing, Fox?"
"I'm only as clumsy as I usually am. Thanks." He gave me a significant look
and said, "There wasn't much left of Carlucci when they found him. No one
can figure out a motive for his death. Nothing was stolen, and there's no
message or clue that would tell us why his killer made such mincemeat of his
body. It looks like a professional job."
"And?"
Fox got the most intriguing smile on his face. Evil. I loved it. "Y'know, I
think this will be one of my cases where all the evidence disappears.
Scully's afraid of the same thing. We won't find an explanation, and the
whole incident will be swept under the rug. It's a shame really." He leapt
onto the bed next to me and kissed me until I lost my breath.
"What was that for?"
"Nothing I can explain." He started to unzip my jeans. "Feeling lucky?"
THE END
By the Hand of Providence
by Viridian5
"providence—1a often cap.: divine guidance or care...
providential: syn. for lucky
...PROVIDENTIAL more definitely implies the intervention of a
higher power"
—Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, 1971
