TITLE: Elements
AUTHOR: Wendy Michelsen (Xanadu),
pokybloom@usa.net
SUMMARY: Scully's mind is hunted by a man who
either believes himself to be or is possessed by (take
your pick) Satan.
RATING: R (strong language and frightening situations)
DISCLAIMER: Mulder, Scully, and The X-files belong
to Chris Carter and Company.  I actually made up a
few new characters in this one :-) Mrs. Jensen and the
Psychopath are mine.
CATEGORY: Horror/X-file
SPOILERS: ‘Pusher' is mentioned once.

Author's note: This is my first take on an X-file based
story (In other words, it's not really sappy or anything.
It's actually quite nasty.  Be warned.)

Elements

     I'm shivering on the floor, the dark, dank floor
of a musky room.  A room that has seen everything.
Murder, sex, senseless violence.  An empty room that
I'm to wait inside.  I can smell the age and ugliness of it.
I imagine it to be the Devil's room, where he sits and
enjoys himself.  Lust, pleasure, greed.  They all belong
to Him here.  My head spins, keeping me off balance
and without a sense of direction.  The wood floor is
rotting beneath my face as my cheek is pressed to it's
dampness.  I don't know if the pool I'm lying in is my
own blood or simply musk.  Harsh and cruel, I can see
well enough but still not at all.  Ropes bind my hands
behind my back, chafing and cutting.  I wonder if my
wrists are bleeding.  Yellow light illuminates the flies
that buzz about my body.  My hair, I can see it as a
strange black color, stringy and stiff.  Maybe from
blood, maybe from His piss.  Maybe it's all the same.  I
shiver again and wait.  Sometimes, there's nothing to
do but wait.  Wait for heroes, wait for fate, wait for
time.  Time.  I feel that's what I'm waiting for here.
Lost time, bad time, helpless time.  It's all the same
here, in this waiting room.  The air weights heavy on my
lungs, coating them in black tar that make every breath
more difficult.  I can see no doors around the naked,
barren walls that have lost pieces of their plaster, with
only their wooden skeletons exposed.  I wish time
could find me here, I think maybe he is the only one
that can save me.  Catch me if you can, please, I beg
you.  Let me live or let me die, just get me out of this
room filled with urine and sweat and lust.  Rotten flesh
that laces the air, and charred remains of the dead coat
my insides.  Please take me away.  Cold, the cold bites
my blood and stings my eyes.  It freezes the air almost
instantly, leaving the lewd smell suspended.  The cold
blisters my skin.  But still I live, though the flies have
dropped dead around me, and probably on me, I live in
the cold.  A door appears, I don't know where from,
and opens.  I look up, any sight welcome.  Any site but
Him.  He advances on me with a cool stare, colder than
my room.  He's found me and I know what he will do
next...

"Scully?"

She tossed and turned, forehead sweaty and her face
pale.  Mulder shook her again, harder this time.  She
wouldn't respond.  His fear escalated and he shook her
with such force, it would have almost hurt her.  "Oh
God, Mulder.  Oh my God."

     She sits up and rubs her face.  Her hair is dark
and stringy, wet from her furious sweating and struggle.
She leans over toward me and puts her arms around
my neck, burying her nose in my shirt.  I touch her
neck, her hair, her face, stoking, telling her it's all okay,
she's awake now and it was only a dream.  She's
convulsing and gets up suddenly, running into the next
room.  The door slams and I hear choking sounds.

     I fall back against the wall and slide down, lying
on my side on the cold linoleum floor.  The brightly lit
bathroom is strangely reassuring, with it's bright lights
and white tile that reflect light up and around to the
white walls.  God, how I want to just curl up and die
sometimes.  But all I can do is breathe.  That's all we
can do sometimes.

     I want her.  Badly.  I ache so much that I can
only have her when she dreams sometimes.  She is one
that He has escaped.  He cannot find her, for I almost
had her two times in her life.  That is simply not enough,
I want her soul.  In death, I want her.


     Scully stepped into the shower and felt the
warm water cool her body.  Mulder sat, perched on
the edge of her bed, wondering and worrying.  She had
said nothing, only gone into the bathroom and given up
her dinner from the night before.  Their third night in this
muddy motel and the third nightmare she had, waking
him up from the next room and being forced to awaken
her.  Supposedly, they were investigating strange
disappearances.  His first assumption had been aliens,
but she claimed never to have had dreams like this
before.

     I want nothing more than to say ‘fuck the FBI's
budget, we're going home.'  I can't though, not as long
as she insists nothing is the matter.  This is the first
dream she has had, though that terrified her so much
that she threw up.  I have every right to be worried.
Where will the line be drawn?  In a rage of fear, will
she pull out a gun and point it at her head?  Where do
the demons stop?

     I want him to know, more than anything, what I
have been going through, seeing, sensing, fearing.  I
want to tell him about the dream that woke him from his
sleep before it woke me from mine, forced him to come
here and rouse me.  I want him to know.  But I can't
tell him.  I can't tell him about the empty, dank room
that haunts my dreams every night.  I can't tell him how
it ends with my knowing what will happen and the fear
of it actually surpassing anything the actual event, Him
taking my soul, might be.  Strangely, He has shown me
nothing but kindness in my dreams, but my fear
obliterates my perception of that kindness.

     I don't want her soul for any amount of beauty
it may contain.  I want to possess it, to keep it, to save.
Any other soul could give me as much pleasure but it's
the hunt that is also satisfying.  Watching their fear build
up inside their eyes as they know what I will do but can
find no escape from their minds or from those of others.
Vulnerability is one thing I treasure most in this world.

"You sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine, Mulder."

"Okay then."  He knocked on the wooden door, a
sound that echoed through the rather large house.  A
woman answered the door, probably about thirty but
seeming almost fifty.  Stress lined her face and greyed
her hair, which was still partially black.  "Mrs. Jensen?"

"Yes."

"Agents Mulder and Scully with the FBI.  Would you
mind taking a few moments to speak to us?"

"Is this about Leslie?"

"Yes."

"Come in, please."


"I don't know how long it's been.  I lose track.  I know
it's been about a year and two months.  After a certain
point, I stopped counting.  It won't bring her back."

"Anything you can tell us, especially about the last few
months before her death, would be helpful."

"We've never been religious people, Agent Mulder.
But a few months before...  She joined a church and
became wholeheartedly involved in God and expelling
Satan, keeping him as far away as possible.  I thought it
was just a phase, not a cry for help..."

Mulder nodded, "Did your daughter keep a journal of
any kind?"

"No, she was an artist.  She had her paintings."

"May we see them, please?"

She nodded and led them upstairs.  She pointed at the
door then turned away.  "This was her studio,
everything is there, as she left it."  She began walking
back down the stairs, away from painful memories.

     Mulder opened the door first and walked
inside, brushing cobwebs from the doorframe.  Scully
followed him and looked at the artwork, which had no
effect on Mulder.

"My God."  I see it all now, just as I remember.  The
room, the dark, musky room.  It's here.  She has
painted every corner, with the bare backing boards and
the flies and the light.  It's here.  She was there too, I
know it.  I can't say anything to Mulder.  I won't.
Even if I had the words, I couldn't.  She has drawn a
face, grotesquely twisted and bony.  It's not Him.  It's
the feeling.  How I know I feel, lying there in terror.
How she felt.  Some of the paintings are of the Virgin
Mary and Christ and the crucifix.  Some are of a dark
room with no shadows and no door.

"Scully?"

"What?"

"This is it, isn't it? This is where you've been."

I can only look away from him, something I can neither
accept nor deny.  Angrily, he picks up a painting of the
cold, dark room and takes it downstairs.  I can't move,
I'm stuck in the memories, staring at the picture of the
yellow light hanging from nothing but a chain.  No
power outlet, nothing.  Only the flies keeping it alive
and visible.  The flies, that every time, fall dead in my
hair when the cold comes.  When the decayed, rancid
air freezes.  I close my eyes and I'm there again, rope
cutting my wrists and my legs immobile.  Nothing to do
but wait.  God, how I hate it there.  Only this time, I
turn and slam the door.

"Scully!"

I walk down the stairs, almost dutifully, following the
sound of his voice.  "What?"

"She knows where it is.  It's a real place.  Do you
know what that means?"

"No."  I don't much care anymore, anyway.

"It's a person taking you there, invading your mind.  It
isn't Satan."  How he says it, so simple.  I never
thought of Him as ‘Satan', nor any other proper name.
He is simply Himself.  No amount of justification can
change that, Ever.

     I wait, I know they're coming.  I know they
don't believe that I am he, one and the same.  They
don't know that I give Him, sometimes only an idea,
life.  They don't believe.  Maybe if I take their souls,
then they'll believe.  I want to smile to myself, but there
is much work to be done.

     Mulder cracked the door open to the
abandoned warehouse.  Nobody was there, but he
could smell something.  Scully walked in behind him,
peeking around cautiously, almost like a cat.  Ready to
spring and leave at the slightest provocation.  Mulder
turned his face to the smell and began walking.  Despite
her immediate instinct to follow Mulder, Scully turned
on an impulse and began walking the opposite
direction.

     I can't explain the feeling of being pulled,
almost as though many people can not divert their gaze
from a dying human.  I can't turn away from where I
know must be my final destination.

     As she neared the door, he grabbed her hands
and roughly tied them behind her back.  The rope was
rough and cutting, he knew, but her wrists must bleed.
She opens her mouth to scream and I quickly cuff her
across the face, knowing her eye will be swollen in the
matter of a few minutes.  Efficiency saves energy and
useless waiting.  This way, I can enjoy while I wait.  I
push her into the room and turn on the light, then shut
the door.

     Scully came to with her cheek against a damp
floor, air that reeked of dead flesh and yellow light that
filtered into her eye.  One was swollen shut, something
she was thankful for.  Never before had her eye been
swollen.  Still, her speech and thoughts were
incoherent.

     I cry, I cry for Mulder.  I cry because I'm
helpless.  But I don't cry loudly, I don't want Him to
know that he has aroused any emotions from me.  I
know that He is watching somewhere, but I just don't
know where.  This is his pleasure, the kill is his
satisfaction.  I smell something else, besides the flesh
that burns.  I know that I have smelt it before, and I
know that I will die.

     Mulder kept his gun poised up, kicking every
door in and looking for her.  He saw a long wall with
no door, and he knew.  That was it.  He also knew that
His illusions were powerful enough that your eyes can't
be trusted.  He also knew that his gun was useless.
Unless he was correct in his first assumption, that it was
simply a man who believed he was something else.
Maybe a man who had the ability to control minds
through either telepathy or suggestion.  Perhaps a bit
like Modell, but given his powers for no self-serving
reason.  So, he shot at the corner.  A dark corner that
would be almost possible to hide in without tricks.  Six
times.  And blood ran down the wall, pooling into the
corner.  And Mulder could see.  Though that didn't
matter, because Mulder assumed that He could take
whatever form necessary.  When the cloud of blindness
ebbed, Mulder opened the door on the wall.  He
opened it and coughed.

     God, please let me wake up again.  I know
what he wants.  He wants my soul and he's come to
claim it as rightfully his.  I won't give it though, I will to
die first.

     Seeing her lying there, her swollen face to the
wall, brown twine that tears her skin from her wrists
and empties blood to the floor.  I go to her, as I have
before, and want to continue to do forever.  Because,
the honest truth is, I'd rather die than see her suffer.
She can't see me because of her eye.  But I pick her up
and cradle her head in my lap.

     I feel him so close to me, knowing that he killed
Him.  Knowing my soul is safe and I should no longer
fear Death.  I feel his hands stroking my cheek, so
gently.  So softly.  I am thankful.  I am at peace on the
tilting horizon, and I feel welcome clean air fill my lungs.
"Mulder..."

"God Scully, please don't talk."  I see the pleading in
his eyes, begging me to not slip away.

"I want to tell you..."  I have to tell him.  No matter
what happens today or tomorrow or tonight or even
this moment, he needs to know just one simple truth
that is so hidden that even I rarely think of it.  "I have
no regrets."

     I see a portion of his fear subside, knowing he
was afraid that some confession of undying love would
come from me.  We've always had that unspoken, and
even now, I don't feel it needs to be said.  He laughs a
little and cradles my head closer to his chest.  I know
he aches to tell me he regrets nothing, but it would be a
lie.  He blames himself for so much.  I see my blood on
his shirt and he takes my hand to his face and kisses my
palm so gently.  Blood that has spilled from my wrist
stains his cheek but he doesn't care.  He brushes my
hair away from my face and kisses my sweaty
forehead, so gently.

"Scully, I--"

"I want you to know..."  He rubs my upper arm, as if
his sheer willpower can keep me with him.  "That if I
have to die today..."  A little of the light in his
eyes goes dead as he looks at me.  "I'm glad It's beside
you..." I feel I am bidding my friend good-bye, and I
feel, in that silent, sweaty room, that Time has caught
up with me.