From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: 22 Aug 2002 12:05:11 -0000 Subject: NEW: The Stranger by aka "Jake" by aka "Jake" Source: direct Reply To: nejake@tds.net Title: THE STRANGER (1/1) Author: aka "Jake" Rating: R (Language, Adult Subject Matter) Classification: V, S/O (sorta) Spoilers: Fill-In-The-Blank for "Milagro" Summary: What was Mulder thinking when he read Phillip Padgett's novel? Disclaimer: Do these characters really belong to Chris Carter, FOX and 1013 Productions? If so, no copyright infringement intended. Fun, yes. Profit, no. Author's notes: I should to be working on a RL writing project, as well as my WIP "The Mastodon Diaries," but rachg82 planted this seed in my head and now I can't think of anything else. My apologies, Mastoholics. We will return to our regularly scheduled program soon. rachg82, this one's for you (and all you other readers who enjoy a peek at Jealous!Mulder). THE STRANGER By aka "Jake" I'm alone, sitting undisturbed in an interrogation room not far from the jail cell that holds my suspect. The light is dim here, the air unmoving, stuffy. Sparse furnishings -- a single wooden chair and ancient desk -- have fallen victim to the scrawls of countless murderers. Names, dates, and obscenities have been etched into the grain, creating a lexicon of desperation. I retrace a deeply gouged epithet with my thumb. FUCKED UP. Does it refer to the author or the rest of the world? Late afternoon sun struggles to penetrate the single closed window to my left. Dust fogs the glass, blankets the sill. In front of me on the battered desk lies a hefty manuscript, confiscated from my suspect's apartment. He claims it's his novel, a piece of fiction. I believe it's more than that. I believe it's the diary of a killer. The author is Phillip Padgett, eccentric loner, who until this afternoon was my neighbor, living only a wall away in apartment 44. Now he waits behind bars while I peruse his "novel." Twenty minutes of reading gives me several reasons to despise Padgett, the least of which is his penchant for murder and florid prose. Apparently he also has a penchant for my partner, and I try not to lose my temper as his main character's interest in Scully intensifies. Chapters one and two contain vivid descriptions of a murderer and his victims. They also contain a prodigious number of passages about a man referred to as "the Stranger," who has become fixated on a beautiful, red-haired agent. There is no doubt the agent is Scully. She's named outright, without prevarication, on page thirty-two. //The overture in the church had urged the beautiful agent's partner into an act of Hegelian self-justification. Expeditiously violating the Fourth Amendment against mail theft, he prepared to impudently infract the First. But if she'd predictably aroused her sly partner's suspicions, Special Agent Dana Scully had herself become simply aroused.// Hm. I assume I'm the "sly partner," since I broke into Padgett's mailbox earlier this morning and stole his phone bill. How he knows this, I'm not sure. How he knows about the murders is less baffling. In his manuscript Padgett chronicles a killer named Ken Naciamento, a self-proclaimed Brazilian psychic surgeon who removes the hearts of his victims with a unique weapon -- his mind. Naciamento makes no obvious incisions, leaves no telltale marks of any kind. No prints, DNA, hair or fiber. Nothing on the bodies, nothing at the crime scenes. Concurrently, and for my money not coincidentally, three bodies matching Naciamento's MO crowd our local morgue. Each real-life victim has had his heart cut out by some mysterious means that left no incisions or telltale marks, no prints, DNA, hair or fiber. To quote myself, if coincidences were just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived? I believe the real-life crimes and those in Padgett's novel are strikingly similar because they are one in the same; he is writing an autobiography, not fiction. He is the Stranger in his narrative and the events he's recorded are descriptions of his own misdeeds, as well as those of his accomplice Naciamento. If I'm to accept Padgett's story as a true confession, however, then I must also suffer the cutting out of my own heart, because on page thirty-three the red-haired agent begins to return the Stranger's romantic interest. //All morning the Stranger's unsolicited compliments had played on the dampened strings of her instrument until the middle "C" of consciousness was struck square and resonant. She was flattered. His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners and the investigators and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances.// My initial reaction is to shrug off this fallacious depiction of Scully. Flattered? By Padgett's overbearing come-on? Only yesterday, Scully described Padgett as a lovelorn Romeo, audacious and frightening. She said he "cornered" her, and she didn't appear remotely flattered by his approach. And yet... What a difference a day makes. Earlier this afternoon, I broke down Padgett's front door, gun drawn, prepared for the worst, only to discover that Scully was inside the apartment with him, in his bedroom, sitting beside him on his bed. I couldn't make sense of it. She'd called me from her car only fifteen minutes prior, claiming to be finished with her autopsy and on her way to my place. So what made her stop off to see Padgett? And how the hell had he talked her into his bedroom? I figured he must've forced her into his apartment, onto his bed, intending...whatever. But Scully appeared unconcerned about her safety as she sat there with him in the half-dark. She also seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see her. What the fuck was going on? Still convinced she must be in danger I asked if she was all right. "Yes. Mulder...what are you doing?" She was clearly irritated with me, which made me realize she was there with Padgett because she wanted to be. It was then I noticed their coffee cups. Shit, I was intruding on a social visit. And Scully was less than grateful for the interruption. The sight of them together infuriated me...a lot. Not just because I believed Padgett was a murderer, but because Scully looked...flushed. Padgett blinked at me, all Mr. Innocence. His guiltless demeanor and tacit naivete, coupled with Scully's unease, made me want to beat the fucking crap out of him. As does the paragraph at the bottom of page thirty-six. //She felt an involuntary flush and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence. But the images came perforce and she let them play, let them flood in like savory, or more a sugary confection from her adolescence when her senses were new and ungoverned by fear and self-denial. 'Ache,' 'pang,' 'prick,' 'twinge' -- how ironic the Victorian vocabulary of behavioral pathology now so perfectly described the palpations of her own desire. The Stranger had looked her in the eye and knew her more completely than she knew herself. She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal. Had the Stranger unleashed in her what was already there, or only helped her discover a landscape she, by necessity, blinded herself to? What would her partner think of her?// Wanna know what I'd think? I'd think she was being goddamn irresponsible to put herself at such risk. Her paramour is a fucking killer. An image of Ed Jerse looms into my consciousness. I chide myself for the uncharitable suspicion this elicits. Scully does *not* have a thing for murderous men. She didn't go into law enforcement to increase her chances at making it with unsuitable lovers. I would say her involvement with two homicidal maniacs was simply coincidence if I didn't feel the way I do about coincidences. Trying to tamp down my escalating anger -- and my desire to skip ahead to the passages about Scully -- I make an effort to stay focused on the more murderous aspects of Padgett's story. But it's a lost battle. Any tenuous control I may have once had on my temper vanishes when, on page forty-four, the Stranger and the beautiful red- haired agent do the nasty. //Agent Scully discovered pleasure in the implicit danger of her forbidden liaison. She surrendered to the Stranger, just as she has relinquished herself to dangerous men in the past. Setting aside her unfinished cup of coffee, she allowed its pungent liquid to cool while her ardor burned. The Stranger abandoned his drink, too, preferring to slide fevered hands up the insides of her legs, pushing the fine fabric of her skirt to her hips. Supine, she watched him, arms quiescent on the pillow above her head, indolent eyes half closed as he commandeered her silken panties. She felt impatient, provoked, intoxicated by his audacity, and countered with equal daring by unbuttoning her blouse and exposing the creamy mounds of her breasts. He moaned at the sight of her, conquered by her boldness. Then she felled him by parting her thighs, revealing coppery curls and slick cherry lips. He smiled and bowed to kiss her there.// I crumple the sheet into a ball and hurtle it at the wastebasket below the gloomy window. It falls short, of course, increasing my irritation. Scully is not my lover, so to complain that I've been cuckolded is both inaccurate and arrogant. And yet I feel beaten to the punch even before stepping into the ring. I rise to retrieve the ruined page, knocking over the chair as I stand. The clatter ricochets against the empty room's bare walls. The harsh sound matches my mood so precisely I kick the chair. It spins away from me. Anger unappeased, I go after it, lift it shoulder-high and heave the damn thing across the room. It somersaults over the desk and crashes into the far wall. "God damn it!" The words rattle my lungs and my confidence. Did Padgett fuck Scully? Did he? Teeth grinding, fists clenched, I pace the room. There's no denying I can be a petty man, prone to selfish impulses and umbrage. I've never been good at sharing what's mine...or what I perceive to be mine. And let's face it, I've perceived Scully to be mine since the first day she entered my office. Is that unreasonable? Too fucking bad. What *is* unreasonable though is the arousal I'm feeling as I consider my partner's alleged sexual encounter. I can't believe I've grown hard picturing Scully beneath Panting Padgett. Shame heats my neck and face. I circle the room, trying to quell my erection without actually touching myself. I'm afraid that'll only make me harder. My body's traitorous reaction sickens me. A guard cracks the door, leans in. "You okay here?" His eyes wander to the destroyed chair. I wave him off. He lingers, so I shout, "I'm fine. Get out." An unconvinced frown paints his face, but he backs away, leaving me alone with my rage and my inappropriate lust. I cross to the desk and glare at Padgett's manuscript. I can no longer sit while I read -- the chair lost two legs when it struck the wall. So I stand. Turn a page. Spot Scully's name in the middle of a paragraph and can't stop myself from reading. //Agent Scully's concupiscence gorged on the act of love until the friction upon her flesh provoked an unstoppable tremor in her limbs. Her fingers curled, searched, grasped. A sigh sifted from her lungs as the Stranger's ambush released a glory of sensation inside her womb. She floated, unseeing and surfeited. Her heart opened. This, this, this was why she had come to him.// Fucking son of a bitch! Without thinking, I grab the desk and upend it. It thunders onto its side. Padgett's manuscript erupts. Pages seesaw to the floor. I call for the guard and demand to see Padgett. * * * When the guard leaves me alone with Padgett, I want to drop his bagged manuscript, toss the newspaper I also hold, and throttle the mother-fucking bastard. Instead, I show him the paper and ask if he recognizes it. "Yes, I've seen this paper," he says, studying an ad I've circled on the personals page. "It's how you found your victims -- in the personals. They all took out personal ads," I challenge. "They were lovers." "And you targeted them." "I only write about them." Liar. "No, you targeted--" Scully appears in the doorway, interrupting my accusations. With one glance she sums up the situation and tries to curb my assault. "Mulder. Not without his lawyer." I want to yell, "This man's a murderer, Scully. He claims to be your lover. In my mind that grants me special privileges." But before I can voice my opinion, Padgett calmly says, "I don't need a lawyer. I'm telling the truth." I toss his manuscript at him. "Then this is your confession?" "No, that's my novel." I shake my head. "It's all in there -- every detail, every murder, all laid out. How'd you do it, Mr. Padgett?" He seems unconcerned by my challenge. "If I sit long enough, it just comes to me," he claims. "The murders." "I only knew what was in my mind and wished to express it clearly." I bet. "How about 'the Stranger'? Is that you? How about Ken Naciamento?" He offers a smug smile. "The self-proclaimed Brazilian psychic surgeon?" "Is that your accomplice?" God, I want put this guy away -- for the murders, for the things he wrote about Scully. He shrugs. "I guess you could say that. He's a central character." "Did you direct him to do it?" "Jungians would say it's the characters who choose the writer, not the other way around. So I guess you could argue he directed me." Christ, he's still talking in literary, not literal, terms. I glance at Scully, try to interpret her silence while the meaning of Padgett's words sink in. When they do, I finally understand Padgett's implication. He's saying Scully chose the writer, directed him to sleep with her, not the other way around. "Which is the truth?" I ask, speaking to her as much as to him. "By their nature words are imprecise and layered with meaning," he answers, in his imprecise and layered way. "The signs of things, not the things themselves. It's difficult to say who's in charge." I'll show you who's in fucking charge. I step toward him, intending to ram his damn manuscript down his throat. I'm stopped when Scully places a hand on my arm. "Mulder," she murmurs my name, pinning me in place. Even when she releases her hold, I am frozen. "Why, Mr. Padgett?" I ask, hoping to glean something, *anything* from his doublespeak. "Maybe that's a question you can answer." His eyes look past me to Scully. He appears strangely disappointed. "That's the one question I can't." Then this interview is over. I grab the manuscript and head for the door. Scully can follow or stay as she pleases. Padgett can go to hell. "Agent Mulder, my book--" Padgett's voice halts me at the door. "Did you like it?" Fuck you. "Maybe if it were fiction." The words chafe my throat and my pride. I look back to glare at Scully. Fuck you both. I stalk into the hall, pissed at Padgett, hurt by Scully. Angry because if I'm to believe Padgett's words are his confession, I must believe every sin he outlines, including Scully's perfidy. It's too much for me. "Mulder, where are you going?" Scully trails me into the hall. I pause, wait, try to focus on the case. "To find his accomplice, the Brazilian psychic surgeon." "I did that." She holds up a folder. "That's what I've been doing. Dr. Ken Naciamento, Sao Paulo, Brazil, emigrated here in 1996." Finally, something solid to go on. "Where is he now?" "He's dead." That's impossible. Who is Padgett's accomplice if not Naciamento? No one else is named in the manuscript. "He can't be." "Two years dead, Mulder. I'm having them fax me a certificate of death." "Padgett couldn't have done this alone." "Well, maybe he didn't do it at all." Of course he did it. I'm holding the proof in my hands. I lift the manuscript to remind her. "Scully, it's all on the page. How else would he know it?" "Maybe he imagined it, like he said." She gives me a disheartened look. "Like Shakespeare or Freud or...or Jung. I mean, maybe, *maybe* he has some gift and he has a clear window into human nature." I can't believe she's defending him to me. "No one can predict human behavior," I argue. "No one can tell you what another person's going to do." "Well, isn't that what you do, Mulder, as a behavioral profiler? You...you imagine the killer's mind so well that you know what they're going to do next." No. No, no, no. That's not how it works. I square off with her. Every nerve in my body feels scoured raw. My muscles ache to throw a punch or plow down the hall and run from the building. I'm jealous. Crazy insane jealous. Homicidal jealous. I want Scully, want her for myself, as my lover. But Padgett's manuscript has browbeaten my trust in her, filled me with doubts...about her, about me. I hate the idea that he may have touched her. I hate it more that she might have asked him to. Grasping at straws, I posit, "If he imagines it, it's a priori...before the fact. I think that's pretty clear from what he wrote about you." Scully stares at me, eyes blazing. I can't tell if she has or hasn't read Padgett's novel, but it's damn obvious she knows what's in it. Padgett's written words, his lurid fixation on Scully, and her implacable defense of his behavior make me wonder again if his attraction is truly unrequited. I'm made queasy by the notion. "You know you're in here, don't you?" I practically spit the words. "I read a chapter," she admits, avoiding my eyes. "What does he say?" Does she really not know? Maybe she just wants to hear me say the words, make it all real. "Well, let's just say it ends with you doing the naked pretzel with 'the Stranger' on a bed in an unfurnished fourth floor apartment." I hope I'm misreading her, now and in Padgett's text, but she says nothing to support or deny my accusation. Nothing! Her silence goads me to ask, "I'm assuming that's a priori, too?" A humorless laugh chuffs from her lungs. She still won't meet my gaze. Her cheeks flame and she appears insulted. "I think you know me better than that, Mulder." Do I? Did I ever? "Hm." I thrust the manuscript into her hands. I've had enough. "Well, you might want to finish it." Restraint gone, I hurry down the hall, unable to breath, see, hear. All I can feel is anger and desperation. I aim for the door. Padgett's words whirl after me like malevolent shadows. //Even now, as she pushed an errant strand of titian hair behind her ear, she worried her partner would know instinctively what she could only guess. To be thought of as simply a beautiful woman was bridling, unthinkable. But she was beautiful -- fatally, stunningly prepossessing. Yet the compensatory respect she commanded only deepened the yearnings of her heart -- to let it open, to let someone in.// That Scully is prepossessing is obvious to anyone with two eyes. Yet she need never worry that her male counterparts can see into her heart. She is too guarded. Even with me. I can guess nothing about her motives, instinctively or otherwise. Certainly not for the actions in Padgett's document. Nor for her actions in his apartment or even here today. On the sidewalk I suck in a lungful of cold air. Who is the Stranger in all this? Padgett? Or is Scully the Stranger? I don't recognize her. Maybe I never knew her at all. Unlike Padgett, I have no clear window into her psyche. "Mulder?" Scully calls to me from the open door. I slow my steps, turn to face her. She's standing with Padgett's manuscript hugged to her chest. A gust of wind catches her hair, and she tucks it behind her ear, just the way Padgett described in his novel. She is beautiful. Fatally, stunningly. "Where will you be?" she asks. Concern glosses her eyes. Maybe it's me who's the Stranger, doubting Scully's motives, her loyalty. Somehow Padgett has unleashed in me a jealousy that must've been there all along. Blinded by it now, I no longer recognize myself. How can I hope to recognize her? We are all authors of our own suspicions, penning lines of self-doubt and confusion from the inkwells of our dark imaginations. The human mind conjures fear, envy, distrust; the heart makes them real. And love? Can it be pondered into existence, as well? Scully is waiting for my answer. "To search for the truth," I tell her, and then nod at the manuscript. "You might consider doing the same." THE END Author's notes: Feedback, good or bad, is welcome on this or any of my stories. Send comments to nejake@tds.net. Visit my other fanfic at my Web site at http://aka "Jake".xfilesfanfiction.com.