"Strange Days 5: Shirley's MulderTorture"
Author: Fox's Gal
Rating: PG for language
Summary:  Hey, this is a series...if you've read the others then you
know what to expect.  If not...well, I'm certainly not going to tell
you! 
Disclaimer:  Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are the creations of
Chris Carter. They belong to him (and 1013 Productions and 20th
Century FOX...) and submit themselves to his warped ideas.  I'm just
borrowing them (Scully only in spirit) to submit them to my weird
ideas.  I'll give them right back, so don't sue me. Please.  Shirley
is the MTA Webmistress (duh!) and I'm borrowing her for this little
twisted work.  I gave her back as soon as I was done, I promise.

Archive: Sure! Just tell me so I can visit.
Feedback: This idea sort of snowballed...I'd love to hear what you
think of it. I know, I know, this idea has been done to death...I just
like to think I approached it slightly differently: foxs_gal@hotmail.c
om

Strange Days 5: Shirley's Mulder Torture
By Fox's Gal

She walked in the door, shrugging off the heavy wool jacket and
pulling off her gloves with her teeth.  It was only November and it
was freezing already.  The house was warm and welcoming.  Strange as
it seemed, it was beginning to smell like Christmas.  Shirley smiled
happily and readjusted the crinkling plastic bags in her arms. 
Christmas presents...she hoped there were no prying eyes about.

"Hello?  Anyone home?"  

Nope.

Again she smiled, this time secretly.  Gotta stash them before anyone
*does* decide to show up.  Her daughter and grandson were due in about
an hour.  There were multitudes of brightly wrapped gifts stowed in
her closet...most of them for a certain little one who'd remain
nameless.  Babies were so much fun to buy for.  And this would be his
first Christmas...and the first opportunity for his Grandma to spoil
him rotten.  It was her job, wasn't it?  Her lot in life?  Of course
it was.

Shirley sighed, the gifts safely hidden in the far reaches of her
closet.  She'd picked some things up for the baby, of course...and the
kids...only a few more people left on her list.

"She's makin' a list, checkin' it twice, gonna find out who's naughty
or nice..." she sang softly.

Since no one was at home, the perfect opportunity to work on tallying
up the Purple Heart Award votes was a little too tempting to resist. 
There were probably also some stories in her mailbox.  A little
recreational reading was good for the soul, was it not?  She fixed
herself a steaming cup of Earl Grey and grabbed a couple  of holiday
cookies, then settled herself in front of the computer.  She nibbled
thoughtfully on the tip of a Christmas tree as the computer booted up.
 She didn't know what she wanted to do first, work on tallying up the
votes or read the stories she'd been sent for posting.

"Mmm, that's a tough one.  Go blind and cross eyed counting or go
blind and cross eyed reading," she muttered good-naturedly.  She
figured she'd do a little of both, unless her inbox was positively
overflowing with stories.  She preferred reading fanfiction to
counting votes any day.

She waited patiently as the modem connected to the Internet.  Her
fiction inbox was, as she had suspected, full.  Very full.  She
scanned the names and was glad to see some familiar faces.  XScout had
sent her a few things, Susan Proto had sent her one story that she'd
have to cut up into three parts...Vickie Moseley, Daydreamer, Ophelia
and a few other not so familiar names had submitted to the MTA site. 
She chuckled.  It was amazing, so many people with one common trait: a
sadistic streak the size of the Charles River.  She downloaded the
stories and saved them on a floppy disk for perusal.  This was enough
for one update alone!  There were nearly 10 stories there.  This was
unprecedented.  She'd never gotten this many at once before.  Must be
the holidays...everyone's home and has a little extra free time on
their hands.  She nearly laughed outright.  Free time?  Who was she
kidding?

Shirley was still chuckling as the last story saved to her floppy
disk.  She closed her browser and opened Word.  She'd start with the
vignettes XScout had sent her, then move on to the heavier reading. 
She made sure there were tissues handy...some of these women (or she
suspected they were women) had a knack for manipulating emotions. 
XScout was one of those people.

She opened the "A" drive and accessed the stories.  She clicked on the
first one and waited.  The computer was making dark, whirring sounds
as it processed the information.  Just then, the machine fell silent. 
The screen was still blank.  

"That's odd..." She looked at the document properties and while she
was relieved to see that there were, indeed, 8K of information in this
document, the screen was empty.  She tried accessing it again, with
the same result.  She frowned and ground her teeth.  There must have
been something wrong with it when XScout sent it to her.  Maybe a
virus of some sort.  Yeah, that must have been it.  A virus.  She'd
drop XScout a line and ask her to resubmit it.  No problem.  

She moved on to the next document.  It was Susan Proto's novel length
piece.  Again, the machine made horrible, grinding noises and again,
the screen came up empty.  Once, well that was strange enough. Not
twice.  Something was wrong.  Maybe it was her system.  

"Dammit."  If something was wrong with her system...  She swore again,
silently.  Just then, a string of letters appeared on the screen.

Do not attempt to adjust your set.

"What the...?"

You and I need to have a talk.

"Oh we do, do we?"  She would have laughed if the situation weren't so
strange.  Her tongue did a complete revolution in her cheek as she put
down her mug and began to type...

So, who exactly are "you" and what, exactly do we need to talk about?

She waited.  There was nothing for a few moments.  Then...

I think you might have a faint idea.  Maybe.  Possibly.

"Strange...very strange."

Okay Phantom, give me a hint?

"What do you need a hint for?"

The silence had been so thick and she'd been concentrating so hard on
the words on her screen, Shirley very nearly jumped out of her skin at
the sound of the soft voice.  She turned sharply in her chair and then
found herself narrowing her eyes in disbelief.  It was him.  It was
him in all his G-Man, trenchcoat glory.  

I've been working too hard.  That's all there is to it.  Working too
damned hard.

He smiled wryly.  "Let me guess, you don't believe it's really me."

"Well...to be honest...um, no.  No I don't.  I think you're probably a
figment of my imagination and a product of working too hard and..."

He laughed, interrupting her.  "No, you're really seeing me.  I'm
really here.  Go on, touch me."

"Excuse me?"

He held his hand out, palm outstretched.  "Go ahead.  Touch me.  If
tactile contact is the only way you'll believe..."

She shrugged.  Couldn't hurt.  Hesitantly, she touched his hand and
drew back in a shock when she felt her hand come in contact with warm
flesh.  She looked up at him again, this time puzzled.  "What are
you..."

"Doing here?  Quite simple, actually.  Do you mind if I sit?"

"Uh, no...sure...um, go ahead.  I'm sorry..." She gestured at an
overstuffed chair.  

He shrugged off the trenchcoat and sat down.  She noticed that his
shirtsleeves were rolled up and his tie was loosened.  He
looked...well, he looked very Mulderish, actually.

"So, um...what are you doing here?"  She had the overwhelming desire
to laugh out loud...hard.

He nodded.  "I was gettin' to it."  He leaned back and crossed his
legs, resting his ankle on his knee.  "I'm here to find out why you do
it."

"Do...what?"

He gestured wildly.  "The page.  That whole sordid, sadistic, sick
mess!  Why?  What the hell have I ever done to you?  To any of you, to
warrant such intense, physical, emotional, psychological and," he
paled and his voice lowered a notch, "sexual abuse."  

"Oh, that."  The smile was still threatening to break through.  She
thought, under the circumstances, it was better to keep up a solemn
façade. 

"Yes, that.  Why?" He looked so...upset over the whole thing.  It was
almost funny.

"Why?" Her eyebrow quirked in a very Scullyesque fashion.

He rose his voice again in frustration.  "Is there an echo in here? 
Yes, why?"

Shirley pursed her lips in an attempt to quell the laughter.  "I'm
sorry...um..." She was quiet for a second.  "I do it...I do it
because...well, frankly there's a call for it."

"That's what I hear," he muttered to himself.

"What?"

"I've been to see a few of your authors and--"

"What?" She had to chuckle.  Even if this was a hallucination or
something of the like, it was a humorous one.  "Who?"

"Umm...XScout, Fox's Gal and Alice."

"Alice?"

"Yeah, she uh...she wrote 'Nawlins' with Fox's Gal."  

"Oh!  Oh...her...okay.  I liked that one...very intense."

For some reason, he was blushing furiously.  She wondered how those
other "meetings" had gone.  Not too well if XScout was still
submitting stories.  Fox's Gal had been quiet lately though...

"Intense?  I got pinned to a goddamn wall with a ceremonial knife!  It
went through my shoulder!  Do you have any idea how much that HURT?!"

"But, hey, you lived, didn't you?  I mean plenty of people kill you
off."

"I've noticed that.  Disturbing.  Very disturbing.  I've been killed
off more times than Freddy Krueger."  He rubbed at his face tiredly. 

She leaned back in her chair and regarded her visitor.  "So, what do
you propose I do about this?"

He smiled sweetly.  "I propose you stop condoning it.  The whole
thing.  Encourage people to write stuff where I triumph over the bad
guys and don't visit a hospital in the process.  Or hell, why not have
a little ScullyTorture?  Why the hell not?  What makes her so special
so as not to get the crap knocked out of her?"

"But don't you see?  We like you!  That's why I have the page.  That's
why they write the stories!  And, face it, you do some pretty stupid
stuff.  You really do.  You do ditch her and go off on your own
way...I mean, you just can't deny that.  And we don't send you to the
hospital any more than a certain silver haired surfer we both know."

He cringed.  "I know, I know."

"So you have to ask yourself--"

"But he never killed me!"

"Of course he hasn't yet.  He's come pretty damned close.  And
besides, he's almost killed Scully a few times, if you remember
correctly.  And-hey you're not supposed to wish ill on her!"

"Shirley, she can handle it.  Trust me.  She's a tough cookie."  He
laughed to himself.  "It cracks me up when your writers make me marvel
at the smallness of her.  How she's so tiny and delicate..."

"Those are the erotica writers."

"Regardless...she's small, yes.  Keep in mind though, she could kick
my ass.  If memory serves me, she HAS kicked my ass.  She's shot me at
least..."  He stopped and leaned forward.  "Listen, can we at least
come to a compromise?  You don't post as many stories where I end up
looking like something the cat dragged in?  Y'know, let me get a good
night's sleep for once?" 

She looked at him.  He was staring at her so earnestly, so plaintively
so...

"No dice, Fox.  People want MulderTorture.  It's a service.  I only
provide a service.  If you can convince the masses to abandon their
love of putting you through the wringer, then my work will be done."

"I...I don't think I can do that."

"Of course you can't.  You can't convince people to give up what they
enjoy.  That'd be like asking you to give up your pornography."

He stood up abruptly.  "Why does it always come back to the
pornography?  For God's sake, it's a hobby!"

"As is this."

"So, there's no way to get you to stop?"

"No."

"And this Purple Heart thing is going to go on, regardless of my
heartfelt pleas?"

"Well, I haven't heard any heartfelt pleas yet.  But even if I
did...yes, it is still going on."

He sighed.  "And there's no way I'm going to convince you?"

She laughed again.  "No.  There's no way."

He got up to leave.  "Well...I tried.  At least I tried."

"Yes, you tried valiantly at that."  She was smiling widely now.

"Oh and could we just not mention what I said earlier?"

"About what?"

He shifted uncomfortably.  "About the Scully Torture..."

She laughed out loud.  Just then, the front door opened and a familiar
voice rang through the house.

"Mom?  Mom, where are you?" 

"I'm back in the computer room, sweetie!"

She turned and was only half surprised to see the overstuffed chair
vacated.  She furrowed her brow for a moment and looked back at the
computer screen.  XScout's vignette was there and ready to be
perused.

"Strange.  Very, very strange..."