From: LMNYC@aol.com Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 09:06:46 EDT Subject: Title by Author Source: direct Saint Elmo's Fire By LXcess Vignette- Caution, angst ahead! I graciously acknowledge all characters to be the property of 1013 Productions and Fox television...No profit is being made from this work of fiction. I'm not that talented. Permission to post everywhere. SUMMARY: A natural phenomenon triggers reflections. All credit to "St. Elmo's Fire" by Eno-I'm not worthy! @XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX@ My black car bounds the crest of a hill, rolling at an even seventy. The landscape is alive but quiet, crickets and opposums at the edge of the roadside, shining eyes wary but watching as our lone headlights blaze for a moment, trailing like meteors- then are gone. This is my favorite time to drive. No light, no company, just a hurtling black landscape, a film noir fantasy. I am Robert Mitchum in Thunder Road - A lone moonshiner, Revenuers on my tail. Actually, to be honest, I am the Revenuer. A lone G-Man. And to be honest, I'm not alone. We missed a connection in Philadelphia, and all available flights to Washington were fogged in. Scully rolled her eyes and sighed, but I didn't mind- A long midnight drive was just the ticket. She stomped off, bags in hand, to the rental car. Yeah, it was only a black Taurus, but I'd slept on the connecting flight, and with a cup of Starbucks in me, it was my moonshine-mobile. She looked tired. "You drive?" "Sure," I said, trying to sound casual. It was three hours to DC. I declined the highway, to Scully's dismay; choosing instead the dark backroads of the Jersey Pines. We had worked a case here a few years ago; the desolate sandy pines and hidden swamps, overrun with cranberries and wild azaleas had appealed to me. It was almost prehistoric, and protected by a wetlands treaty that guaranteed whatever mysteries it contained would be preserved-for now. She dozed in the backseat, her padded laptop case a makeshift pillow against the passenger's door. I can see her in the rearview mirror. I had a hot August night, the stars, a mysterious woman... Well, like they say, two out of three. Ever since I could drive I'd sneak out of the house to travel alone in my parent's car along the highway at midnight, the road and stars my only confessors. The romantic pursuit of a loner, I guess. When other couples were sneaking back home, straightening ties and smoothing wrinkled, semen-stained skirts, I'd just be leaving, driving in a fury, returning home just before dawn. I didn't feel alone. I was racing through a midnight world no one else knew. Police speeding who knows where, to someone else's tragedy...or a lone man, hitching at four in the morning. Blazing beneath my headlights, he was there and gone. Why was he out there? Did I really want to know? Every once in a while a car crossed our path, Scully's and mine, and I would watch in the mirror as their headlights threw a beam across her, flashing and urgent. Eyes closed, face pale and at rest in the dark, she was every forties movie heroine- strong, beautiful, features chised by the headlights. This is the woman I want. It's so easy to think it right now, to whisper it on the dark of the highway. I want you. But we live in the cold light of day. We had driven for an hour when I saw it. A distant glowing in the fog, on the driver's side, deep in the swamps. I pulled off onto the shoulder. My mistake. There wasn't any shoulder. "Wha-huh?" Scully snapped out of sleep as the smooth road turned to gravel beneath the wheels. "Ssh. It's okay." I reached back to touch her shoulder as we came to a stop. "Sorry I woke you...but look over there." The fog a hundred yards off the road was glowing green, then blue, then a brilliant white. Three tails of light whipped lazily in the fog, rising and falling in an primordeal rhythm. She rubbed her eyes. "It's called Saint Elmo's Fire. A naturally occurring phenomenon caused by a change in temperature and gases that- " "Ssh. Don't say anything. Just com'n." "Mulder, it's three in the morning..." I hear an exasperated sigh as I bound out of the car, tramping through the briars toward the lights. "At least take a flashlight with you," she called, and I heard a car door slam. In the distance the brightness rises and shifts in the thick fog. Branches brush my eyes and slow my path as the sand thickens to gritty swamp mud. Scully's flashlight beam dances just ahead of me, and I pause to let her catch up. She comes up behind me, breathless. Even dotted in mud, with pine needles in her uncombed hair and rumpled from sleep she is beautiful beyond my description- because she is here. Her eyes glow, catching the swamp fire in them. No complaints, no questions...she is just here. With me. We watch quietly for about ten minutes. When Scully breaks the silence her voice is slow, trancelike. The flames trail white just thirty yards away, light rippling across her face as she speaks. "I just- I remembered something about this place - I must have seen this phenomenon before, when I was a child." She shook her head as if to loosen a memory. "Mulder, it all seems so familiar." "Yeah, I felt that way earlier, while we were driving." Her small fingers curl like tendrils around mine. It is barely a whisper, but her voice continues. "Let's stay a little while longer." FIN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I know, I know... Mulder would NEVER pause to let Scully catch up! Feedback welcome at lmnyc@aol.com....where do you think the story should go from here?