Lonely Nightmare XII: Homing Angel
by Justin Glasser
Notes and dedication in section 0
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“I’ll be your homing angel, I’ll be in your head.”
***
He wasn’t entirely sure when it happened, but eventually Mulder realized that he was living the final hours of his life. His shoulders and ass had gone numb, his bladder ached from pressure, and he could feel his heart thudding in his chest, and suddenly he understood that this was it, that whatever he had been put on this earth to do was finished. It seemed a little anti-climactic.
For a while, it had seemed certain that he would die at the hands of the shadow government, blown up or shot or captured in pursuit of a higher truth, but that no longer seemed to be the case. No great and noble death for him. Instead he would die here, in Podunkville, Wisconsin, killed by a group of small-town rogue police and their pet demon because he couldn’t hold onto a bunch of files. He had a feeling his high school shop teacher would not be surprised. “You’re a bright boy, Fox,” Mr. Murphy used to say, “but you haven’t got the common sense God gave a rock.” If Mr. Murphy were here, he would look down at Mulder trussed like a hog, and shake his head, smiling. “Couldn’t just get the files and go, could you?” he would say.
Mulder looked up at him, smiling back. It seemed funny, now. Didn’t people always say that: you’ll look back on this and laugh? It was nice to know that even while “this” was still going on he could look back on it and laugh. It was nice to know he hadn’t lost his sense of humor.
He heard footsteps still, soft and padded, as if they were walking on dirt and not linoleum flooring, now. He suspected that was what the men were doing all this time, in the ages since there had been a sound from Lisa. Bringing in dirt and scattering it around. Ceremonial, he thought, idly marking that thought in his mind for the report he would never make. lSome dust had gotten on his mouth, and he licked it off before he thought about it, then wished he could spit. It was dry, but it had tasted oily, somehow.
When they went out for more, the other thing--the thing that Mulder had given up all pretense toward and just called the Beast now--always came back. It had stopped licking him for a while, when the dust was still in the air, it seemed, but that had resumed. Its breath was hot, still, and smelled stale as if it had been kept inside not just for the few seconds that it took to inhale and exhale, but for ages. Centuries.
Mulder found that it now longer bothered him, not now that he was dying. That was the beautiful thing about death, he thought, once it was actually happening, you could kind of go with the flow and ignore the big and scary thing leaning over you, even when, say, a drop of something that should have been saliva landed on your cheek and burned like acid. It was all over but the shouting, as his dad used to say, and Mulder wished that one of the men would go ahead and shout, or that they would at least have the common decency to leave the room long enough for the beast--who apparently had issues about killing with people in the room--to rip his throat out. He was starting to see what condemned men meant when they said that the death penalty wasn’t cruel and unusual punishment, but the wait was. He was getting a little impatient.
The men were out of the room now, getting some more dirt maybe, or ceremonial robes, or some other god damned thing--Mulder had never fully understood what a pain ritualistic killings were until now--and it was back, winding along table beside him. He thought it had four feet and a tail, probably, sometimes when it turned away from him, he felt something brush his cheek like a tail. And it had teeth, he figured, and it definitely had a tongue, and it liked to walk, back and forth, back and forth, and look at him, stare down, he imagined, breathing on him until he flinched away from its moist mouth. It was more like a cat than he had realized at first: it liked to toy with its prey. It was big, though. When it had stepped onto his stomach, pressing one what? claw, foot, paw, he didn’t know, into his belly, all of his air had rushed out in one whoosh, and Mulder had clenched his teeth to keep from wetting himself. It had paused there for a second, watching, Mulder figured, to see what he would do. He had done nothing--what could he do?--but gasp for breath and pray that it would not step lower.
Now it weaved back and forth over him, pacing, crossing over first one ankle then the other, then his waist, then his face, and that was still bad, death or not, when the thing crossed over his head and he had to hold his breath or face the stale dry musk of its sex. He always turned his face to the side: he couldn’t help it. He would have to tell Scully about what that was like, see if she could class--
Scully . . . he stopped himself. He wouldn’t be telling her anything, not now. Not about this, or Lisa, or even what he was going to say in the basement that day, when she had said that it was her life, and he had wanted to reach across the desk and tell her that it was his life, too, that she could not go and do things like that because then he would lose her and what would become of him then? That was what he had wanted to say that day, but by then it was too late. She had gone and marked herself, trying to be rid of him. The last thing she wanted was for him to declare his need. And now there wouldn’t be anything more to declare. Easy. No point in thinking about her, about what he should have said, about what he should have done, about mistakes he had made. It was over. He was dead. All over but the shouting.
And suddenly there was shouting, and the brief pop-pop of gunfire, and something slamming up against the door, and he thought *Scully* but it was too late because the beast was on his chest, heavy and hot, and the beast owned the police and the police owned him, and without even thinking about it Mulder lifted his chin to give it better access because this was it, he was dead, and there were teeth at his throat and the door flew open, and the beast was heavy and hot--
--and gone--
--and someone was screaming and then there was something heavy and hot on his chest again, and he thought *finally* but there was no biting only a mouth over his wet and demanding, and he screamed, pulling his head away, thinking there had to be better ways to die, and there was a voice in his ear, gasping, harsh--
“Mulder, it’s me.”
--and the mouth returned, and of course it was her, it was Scully, and it was over, and he wasn’t dead, and he knew that he had been lying the whole time, that all he had wanted was to be worth saving, and since he was saved that was close enough.
“Scu--“ he said, but his mouth wasn’t really working.
“Be quiet, Mulder,” she said. And he heard the clink of keys and his arms fell to the table, finally, *finally*, like so much dead wood, and he knew that they were going to hurt, but just for a second they felt so good, and free, and Scully was untying his ankles, and she pulled his blindfold off--
--and there she was.
Her hair was messed up, hanging in her eyes, and she had a scrape on one cheek, and her mouth was drawn together in that old lady expression of concern that she always got when he had done, or was about to do, something incredibly stupid.
He turned his head, trying to look past her.
“Lisa,” he whispered.
Scully shook her head. “She’s dead, Mulder. I can’t help her. I tried.”
He nodded and tried to swallow. “So did I.”
She smiled down at him, her fingers twining through his hair. “I know. I thought I told you to be careful?” she said. She brushed her knuckles over his cheek. “When are you going to start listening to me?”
Mulder felt his mouth twitch into a smile. “Scully,” he said. His voice sounded like it was rubbed over sandpaper. Screaming, he thought. That’s from when I was screaming.
“What, Mulder?” She was rubbing his shoulders now, trying to work the blood back into them. He was alive, so she was playing Doctor Scully, all business, rubbing their relationship back to normal as quickly as possible. Mulder wasn’t sure he wanted it back to normal so quickly. Mulder wasn’t sure he could handle normal right away.
“If you kiss me again, I promise not to shout.”
She stopped rubbing, looking down at him, her face smooth and blank. Then, abruptly, she leaned down and kissed him. He didn’t shout.
***end 12/13***
And you wanted to dance, so I asked you to dance: