School let out, and Kelly hurried toward home, hoping bullies would not stop her again. She took the long route to avoid the kids playing dodgeball on Fourth Street. Too distracted to look both ways, she rushed across James Avenue. A car honked and stopped with a screech. "Sorry!" she yelled and dashed off.
Nearly home, she ducked around the corner onto her own street... and walked straight into Dustin Brown and his sidekicks. "Look, guys!" he shouted. "It's the freak girl from study hall."
One of Dustin's friends came to her and said "Whoa, it's the freak girl!" He waved his fingers mockingly in her face.
She walked past the jerks and growled "I'm no freak," She felt not at all sure she wasn't.
Kelly heard Dustin laugh. He said to his friends, "She's a freak alright. In class sometimes she gets these blank looks and stares off into space like she's some retard. They say her parents have to keep moving her to different schools because freaky things keep happening to people around her." Footsteps rushed up behind Kelly, and someone shoved her to the ground. She looked up to see Dustin grumble "Stupid chick." He grabbed her book bag and tossed it to his closest cohort. "Want your books?" he teased. "Come get 'em!"
It's not important, Kelly told herself. There's no reason for me to get mad. Too late. Dustin cried out and fell to his knees. Blood gushed from his nose. Kelly ran to her house. She was not sure what was happening, but somehow she had known something would. And somehow she knew Dustin would soon be dead.
The next day, Kelly's mother answered a knock to find an unfamiliar man and woman standing at the door with their wallets held open to their ID's. "Hello, Ms. Stewart?" said the man. "I'm Agent Fox Mulder with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and this is Agent Scully. We're here to investigate reports of some unusual recent deaths in this area."
--Argus Skyhawk
"Deaths? What makes you think I'm involved? I haven't enough nerve to kill a fly."
Agent Dana Scully glanced at her partner, took a crumpled picture from her coat pocket of a young girl. "Mrs. Stewart, are you the mother of Kelly Stewart? Is this an accurate picture?"
Mrs. Stewart took the picture, looked at in longingly. "Yes." There was a long pause as if she wasn't too sure wether these two really were from the FBI. "Would you like to come in? It is a bit chilly outside." The two agent followed her into the house, down a cluttered, dark hallway into a similarly dark living room. Hanging on the walls, Scully noticed millions of pictures of Kelly. "My daughter has been missing for two weeks."
"Your daughter was not in school last Monday?" inquired Agent Fox Mulder, know to his peers as Spooky Mulder, the man who believes anything with a weird explanation. Perhaps that's why he was assigned to the X-files, unsolved cases with paranormal happenings. His partner, Agent Scully, who some have labeled Mrs. Spooky, was reluctant to begin this case. It just sounded too normal. A psychotic girl who happens to kill for fun. Not too abnormal sounding. Yet, Mulder had somehow found away to include aliens into the formula. Spooky.
"I haven't seen my daughter in two weeks! If she was in school, that's news to me."
"Has Kelly ever ran away before?" Scully glared at the drained face of the woman before her. She looked as if she could use a good month's sleep. The house was in as sad a shape as the owner, needing a good cleaning all around. The dust was almost too much. Mrs. Stewart must not be doing anything but worring for her daughter's safety. Scully knew that feeling oh, too well.
"Why would Kelly run away? I'm a loving mother!"
"I'm sure you are Mrs. Stewart, " intervened Mulder. "We would just like to know why she would leave."
"Does Kelly have any brothers and sisters?" asked Scully, still hooked to the cluttered walls. So many pictures of one child!
"No. Kelly was a miracle on her own. Russ and I weren't supposed to even have any children. Kelly was sorta a mistake. Russ left right after she was born. He's only seen her twice since then. He won't have anything to do with her."
"Could Russ have kidnapped her?" inquired Scully, never leaving out any possibilities. Agent Mulder was staring off into space, a normal occurance when he has just thought of something "paranormal" that is connecting to the current case. Scully learned to ignore him and discover information on her own until he bored her with the details. Some of his ideas were out there. Way out there. Yet, Scully felt she wouldn't want him to be any other way. It attracted her weirdly towards him. Very irrational.
"Russ lives in Oregon."
--Elizabeth Deese
Suddenly, a bright orange light flooded the darkness. Scully managed to see it was shining from the outside, arriving through the windows that were in scantily placed throughout each room. Mulder dashed for the living room, as did Ms. Stewart. Scully quickly followed. She looked out and saw a body on the ground, covered in an unusual goo, dripping onto the grass and killing it. Suddenly, white search lights shown onto the agents and the worried mother. The goo, as if by command, drained totally off of the adolescent. She was not breathing.
Mulder started to perform C.P.R. on the girl and Scully took over. The lights disappeared and the motion detector light flooded the yard.
"Mulder, get us an ambulance, right away," said his partner.
As the operator was asking for their location, Mulder stopped talking into his cellphone. He saw: a human head, hanging by itself on a branch.
"Lord, no," said Kelly's mother. "That's Dustin Kumberlox, a
student who goes to school with Kelly."
--Lee Jamilkowski
Scully frantically continued CPR on the fragile body, her hope for the body to be filled once again with the breath of life now fading. She paused for only a second, looking up at Mulder, who was now walking towards the head hanging on the tree's limb, its final expression frozen on the blue skin. The ambulance was now on its way, and Scully was out of breath.
Mrs. Stewart stood at the front steps, trembling with fear. "Wha...what's going on here? Th...this is just too much. This can't be happening. No. Not again." Turning around and running inside the house, she slammed the door shut, just as Mulder turned around and tried to grab her arm.
"Mrs. Stewart....Mrs. Stewart, what did you mean by......?"
Locked. She locked both locks, the second one that she had put in after the first time it happened. It had come close to scaring her to death, and had scared many people to death before her eyes. Her family, her friends, her husband... the only lover she ever had. The only one who understood, he had joined her other loved ones in leaving her. This was like being dead, yet still being able to breathe, to be able to move. No one spoke to her anymore. She knew no love anymore. To her, it ~was~ death.
Mulder tried to look through the windows, turning around for a brief second to call out to his silently submitting partner. She had so much power in just her eyes alone that she made her partner look like a naive, pathetic man.
Why were these people after her? Were they, too, part of this plan that seemed predestined for only her, and no one else on this earth? She was going to end this now.
Walking towards the closet, taking out a brown paper bag, she
took out the only thing that could save her from this hell. A gun.
--Michelle Hameid
A single shot was fired.
The sound went through Scully's body. Another life lost... She looked at the little girl and wondered how her science would explain this one. People don't just fall from the sky everyday, she mumbled to herself, covered in goo that disappears.
Scully sighed as she finally saw the ambulance turn the corner and come her way. She had given up. For now.
Mulder desperately rattled a window. He had to find a way in side. He went from window to window until one on the south side of the house, was open. The sound of an ambulence's sirens was closer, but he knew Scully would take care of them.
Inside, it was damp and stuffy, more so than the front part of the house. Dust was a fine layer on everything. Mulder stumbled around the room, which he supposed was Mrs. Stewart's bedroom since a bed stood directly in his path. Just left of the bed was a mirror, cracked and shattered. The pieces crumbled beneathe his feet. Then his foot hit it. The gun.
Yet, there was no sign of a body. No puddle or spurt of blood in the room.
Mulder stooped to pick up the gun and wrapped it in a nearby paper bag.
He proceeded down the hallway. He looked in every room, covered every inch of
the house, finding no body of Mrs. Stewart anywhere.
--Elizabeth Deese
Mulder unlocked the front door from the inside, and walked down the front steps. Paramedics were working frantically on the little girl. "Mrs. Stewart has disappeared, no sign of *her*. I found a gun on the floor in her bedroom, and a smashed mirror. How's the little girl?" A paramedic shouted clear, and the electric zap of the shock paddle caused Mulder to flinch.
"I just couldn't get her to breathe, Mulder. Maybe they'll have some success." Scully looked over her shoulder at the life and death - *NO, more likely death struggle* - happening behind her.
"You saw it, Scully. People covered in disappering goo don't just fall from the sky everyday." He looked at her, raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Scully blinked. *I'm starting to think like him*. "Mulder, there *must* be some...nevermind." They both turned to see sheriff's cruisers driving up, lights blinking, but no siren. A paramedic ran up to them.
"Dr. Scully, we've got a heartbeat and respiration, we're transporting to County Memorial. Can you come by and give us and the attending doc a report on what happened?"
"Of course. We'll be there in a few minutes." Sheriff's deputies were approaching. Mulder met them. "Mulder, FBI. We're working on a possible kidnapping. The child has reappeared. Can your men help me search this house again? While we were outside with the little girl, the mother of the missing child ran inside, locked the doors, and a shot was fired. Now we can't find her." The deputy nodded his okay, and led the other officers into the house. "Scully, take a look at this gun."
Scully took the bag, and carefully unwrapped it. The chain of evidence was not to be broken in a criminal investigation. She laid it on the porch, and pulled on latex gloves. She sniffed it. Her eyebrows went up. She depressed the cylinder release latch, and the cylinder holding the cartridges swung out. She looked up. "Mulder, this gun has *not* been fired!" As the huge ambulance revved it's engine and finally pulled from the yard, they looked up at the tree where the head of the little boy had been hanging. It wasn't there! Two spines tingled as they looked at each other in confusion.
"Agent Mulder!" The deputy came down the steps. "We've secured the scene, but you need to see something in the bedroom." They retraced his steps into the house, leading into the bedroom. The deputy pointed at the shattered mirror glass on the bedroom floor. Mulder squatted, his knees popping. A small microchip, smaller than a Pentium II. He'd missed it in his initial search, and thankfully had not stepped on it. He had seen this before. *Alien technology*.
"Deputy Miller!" Another deputy sheriff entered the room on the
run, speaking out of breath. "Got a call over the cell. The ambulance
transporting the little girl has crashed, not much else, but they're
saying it's a bloody mess!"
--Howard Jeffrey Parker
Mulder held his head in confusion at what to do next. He turned toward the man.
"Excuse me! Deputy? Is the girl...?"
"Dead?" he asked, walking over to Mulder and Scully. "Well, see, that's the thing. The only part of the girl that's left is her blood. It's all over the place. But the girl's gone. It's like...she just disappeared..."
"Nothing disappears without a *trace*, Mulder." Scully said under her breath.
"You're right Scully. Nothing disappears without a *trace*. These people are disappearing alright...leaving *traces* behind."
"Please contact us when you have some leads we could look into." said the deputy, walking over to the other deputy. Mulder led Scully to the corner of the room.
"Scully, this is like someone ~wants~ us to get on their tail! I mean, they left the boy's head hanging on the tree and took his body, they took Mrs. Stewart and left that alien implant thing, and now they leave the girl's blood all over the ambulance crash scene and take ~her~ body!"
"You're right, Mulder. Whoever--- WHATever this THING is, it's playing hard-to-get."
"But the head. Scully, it was there, hanging from the tree just a minute ago, but now---"
"Mulder, look harder. They put it in a bag." said Scully, looking out the window at a man carefully putting the dead head into a bag.
"They're probably going to expect *me* to do an autopsy on it."
"Oh. Yeah. I knew that. Just look for anything on or ~in~ the head that would count as another clue." said Mulder, embarrassed.
"Like an implant?"
"EXACTLY. I'm going to go and find out if this accident was deliberately caused or if it just ~happened~ to the luck of whatever THING this is."
"Right. I'll take the chip to the lab and have them study it. They'll probably want me to study the head, too. Oh, and be sure to have them test some of the blood from the scene of the accident."
"Right."
Scully stripped off her latex gloves as Mulder took out his cell
phone and turned it on. They went their separate ways.
--Michelle Hameid
Mulder and Scully ran from the bedroom to their rental car, and began to follow the sheriff's patrol car to the scene of the accident. Mulder showed Scully the microchip.
"Recognize this?" he asked her.
Taking it from him, she looked at it closely. "It's almost identical to the one that was replaced in my neck, but the color coding is different."
Mulder, turning to respond to Scully's analysis, looked in the rear view mirror and saw Mrs. Stewart in the back seat, blood running from a massive wound to the head. Mulder jerked the wheel, causing the car to swerve erratically. "Mulder," Scully screamed, trying to hold on.
He finally resumed control, and pulled to the side of the road. Immediately,
he jumped out of the drivers door, and open the door to the back, but the back
seat was empty. No body, no blood. Just like the bedroom.
--WolfieMann@aol.com
"Mulder, what the hell.." Scully said looking at him over the roof of the car.
"Scully, she was here. She was in the back seat with a massive head wound and bleeding."
"Who?"
"Mrs. Stewart"
"Mulder she not there now and I didn't even see her. Maybe your looking for things that aren't there."
"But Scu..." He was interrupted by the crashing of the sheriff's patrol car. The two agents got in the car and drove over to the accident. When the got to the car to see if everyone was ok, no one was there. The car was empty. They looked at eachother both confused and terrified.
"Mulder what we need now is to find that girls father."
"Exactly what I was thinking. Its like we have one mind." he gave her a
playful smile in light of the situation. "I believe Russ Stewart lives in
Oregon."
--Dani Miller
"Mulder, I just got of the phone with the field office in Portland. They ran a check of residences in the state. No one by the name of Russ Stewart that is of age to be Kelly's father is currently residing or has ever resided anywhere in Oregon...."
"What the hell are we supposed to do now. No matter what direction I choose to pursue in this case, I wind up at a dead end!" Mulder states in an irritated tone.
"Mulder, If you would let me finish, I could tell you the good news." Scully replied.
Mulder looked up at her with embarrassed eyes, searching Scully's face to see if she was angry. Scully smiled slightly at him to let him now she was being sarcastic.
"I had the FBI run a check on residents of Oregon that go by the of Stewart Russ. They came up with 5 matches of men that are of the age to be Kelly's father that go by that name. One of those men recently bought plane ticket to Chicago."
"We're in Chicago right now, so Stewart Russ must have had some business of his own with Kelly." Mulder said.
"mmmm-hmm. Also, the same Stewart Russ gave blood before he left for Chicago. I'm planning on having sample blood shipped here from Portland. I'm going to run a DNA test between the blood from the ambulance and this blood to see if there is a paternal match."
"Scully, that's sounds like a great plan of action to me. In the mean time, I'm going to check the local airline records for any leads. I'll catch up to you later. Call if you find something."
"Mulder..." Mulder ran out of the room before Scully could even finish speaking.
--Sheila Heatherly
".....be careful," she whispered, hoping the wind would carry her message to him. But she knew that wasn't likely.
That moment she heard name as if it were being carried by the wind but in the voice of a young girl. Her immediate question, was it Kelly?
She slid her hand inside her coat to a holster on her hip that held perhaps her only protection against the strange girl. She turned in a circle searching all around as she called aloud,
"Kelly? Kelly is that you? If it is, come out. Come to me and I promise everything will be okay." No sooner had her promise rolled off her tongue did she feel something sweep across her face just under the nose. Her reaction was to wipe it away.
But, it didn't seem to be that easy. Blood. Dripping from her nose. "Oh great. This is the last thing I need tonight" she thought aloud .
--Rhonda Alston
Kelly was stumbling over a plowed field in the growing darkness, staggering toward a stand of trees forming faint black traceries against the deep violet of the twilight sky. She clutched herself as a chill wind ruffled her clothes. Where was she, and what was she doing? A pang of fear lurched in her chest as she realised she remembered nothing at all from the last few hours. School -- the bullies -- the fallen boy with the nosebleed -- all remembered with crystal clarity. But now, obviously many hours later, a deserted field in the middle of nowhere, with only a line of trees on the horizon to give her any perspective. And a difficult walk on uneven terrain. She stopped and looked all around her. The field was vast; a featureless tract in all directions, save for that line of trees that seemed to be calling to her. She looked upward, the familiar stars glinting coldly into her watering eyes.
The stark outline of an ancient church revealed itself as she approached the
trees. A gothic structure, with bulky buttresses crouched against those thick
stone walls. A soaring spire, limned in dark relief against the faint light
remaining in the western sky. And music. A wash of sound, swelling and fading
as she drew nearer. Chanting. A chorus of deep male voices, chanting in
medieval plainsong, pulsing in somber tunelessness. And a sudden fear --
greater, more stupendous than any feeling she had imagined possible --
gripped her and held her motionless. She could not move. The thudding of her
heart sounded tremendous, the blood coursing ringingly in her ears. The
beginnings of a yellow crack of light spreading out from the church as the
massive oak doors slowly swung open. Her croaking gasp, then her strident
screams as her gaze fell upon the figure that began to lope with sinister
purpose toward her from the dank-smelling earth of that awful crypt.
--Allison Cranley
Scully, standing in the autopsy room in scrubs and the like, stared at her as yet ungloved hand. The blood which had dripped from her nose had stained her white skin. Years of training had taught her to be as thouroughly clean as possible, but even after hours of scrubbing, the red tinge could still be seen. 'If I spend any more time at the sink, my whole hand will be bleeding' she thought wearily. It was 9:00 at night, and no word from Mulder since they had left each other earlier in the day. No different from any other time, to be honest....Scully took a deep breath, pulled on the latex gloves and went to the cool storage room to perform her "autopsy." The young boy's head had been placed inside a plastic bag. Scully reached into the refrigerated cubicle and hoisted the thing out. Because she was a doctor, that was all the head was: a thing. Although admittedly, she felt a small twinge of sadness when she thought 'this was someone's son...and when I cross-reference the dental records, most likely I'll be the one to inform them that they don't have a son anymore..." Scully stiffened her spine and dispelled the thoughts. No use in getting sentimental. I have to do work.
As she carried the bag over to the clean and shining metal autopsy table, she wondered where Mulder was. What was he doing that was so important that he couldn't get back to her? As her thoughts wandered to this topic, and she turned her back to get the scalpel, she didn't see the fresh bright blood that poured out of the head's gaping mouth, filling the bag.
What happens next? You decide. Write a sentence, write a paragraph then send it to me and I will add it to the story.
