From: Debbie Goldstein <dkg@teleport.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 08:07:59 -0800
Subject: Shine (1/1) by Ainon
Source: xff


I did not write this. I'm posting it for Ainon. Do NOT hit reply: use
the address she gives.


Title: Shine
Author: Ainon
E-mail Address: mulangst@hotmail.com
Distribution: Anywhere, but please tell me.
Spoiler Warning: None
Rating: R for violence.
Content Warning: None
Classification: S, H
Disclaimer: The Sawyers are mine. Mulder and Scully are not. The 
latter two belong to Fox Network and 1013 Productions. But since I am 
from a foreign country, I think I can plead ignorance of copyright laws.
Acknowledgements: To Debbie, for reading this first and telling me to 
post it. To Ten, for reading this and approving it. Thank you, miladies.
Hope this cheers you up, Nikki.
Feedback: I would be eternally indebted to everyone who would.
Summary: Mulder and Scully come to investigate multiple deaths in one 
family.




SHINE
by Ainon (mulangst@hotmail.com)
	


The doorbell rings while I'm in the kitchen, standing at the sink and 
thinking hard about all those ways my dear late Helen used to use to 
clean up stubborn stains, wistfully wondering why it's only now that 
I'm interested in what she had to babble about.

For a moment I stand still, head cocked, and the doorbell rings 
again. It's the morning after Halloween - surely even the most 
determined child would have hung her ghost sheet up to dry?

So it can't be kids. This can't be good.

I rinse the soapsuds off my hands, take my time drying out every last 
drop of water off my skin, and amble my way up to the front door, 
thinking that perhaps my delay would chase these prospective visitors 
away. I reach the door and am disappointed; through the peephole I 
see two people out there, certainly patient and very determined to 
meet the occupants of this neat stonewall house. I sigh and open the door.

The man looks me in the eye as he flashes his badge.

"I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, and this is Special Agent Scully." The 
woman flashes her badge too. The wrist motion impresses me. Ah, the 
vigor of limbs pre-arthritis. "We're with the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation. Is Mr. Llyod Sawyer in, sir?"

Agent Mulder is a respectful government agent indeed. It is nice to 
hear a polite tone, trained though it may be. There's this neighbor's 
boy, well-read for this day and age, who calls out, 'Hey Mr. Sawyer! 
Where's Tom?' each time he sees me. His fondness for Twain is 
delightfully charming for his generation of witless delinquents, but 
his idea of what constitutes an inside joke needs refining.

"I am he," I tell these two, putting my glasses on, then scrutinizing 
their name cards and their faces carefully.

"I'm sorry, sir. We meant Mr. Lloyd Sawyer Jr."

"Ah," I say, thinking this over. I'd made a pact with myself when I 
woke up this morning that there'd be no lies, no tall tales. Truth 
alone to get me through this day. "Well, I am his father. What might 
this be about?"

"We'd rather speak directly with him," says Special Agent Scully. "Is 
he home?"

No lies, I'd promised myself. So none shall be told. "I'm afraid he's 
not available for you to speak with," I say sympathetically, and most 
importantly, truthfully. "Really, what is this all about?" I ask, 
injecting that fatherly tone of concern into my voice. The FBI don't 
come knocking on your door, asking to speak to your son, every day, 
now, do they?

Agent Mulder hesitates and exchanges a quick look with his partner. 
He looks back towards the driveway where the station wagon is parked.

"Will he be out long?" he asks me. The message is clear - he sees the 
car, he does the maths, he knows Llyod Jr. isn't anywhere too far 
away. What do I say?

"I honestly can't say," is what I settle for. "Perhaps you wish to 
wait ..."

"If you don't mind," he interrupts, still very polite.

I've backed myself into a tight little corner here. I'd meant to say 
that he and his partner could wait outside, in their parked FBI car I 
see out there, but that message can't be delivered now. So I bob my 
head with congenial approval, and open the door wide for them to come 
in. They smile their thanks at me and enter, and I can just feel my 
blood squeezing extra pressure against the atherosclerosed veins of 
my heart. The grease of my life, ready to kill me.

By the time I close the door and come beaming back to them, they've 
done a little grand tour of the living room and peeked at all the 
family heirlooms and gazed at all the framed photos. I gesture 
towards the sofa, and they smile at me again as they sit and make 
themselves comfortable.

"Now please," I say to my mistakenly invited guests. "What is this about?"

"We just need to talk to your son," Agent Scully explains. "Once we 
do that, we should be able to sort everything out. It's probably nothing."

"I see." I nod and keep on nodding, and start looking around, 
belatedly seeking any telltale clues. I spot the candy jar and almost 
literally pounce on it - quite a feat, I might add, for someone my age.

"Help yourself to some candy?" I offer. "There's so much leftover 
this year. I hardly know what to do with them."

Few kids came last night. It's not surprising - kids don't want to 
hang around a place that's had Death visit it a wee bit too 
frequently. My grandkids were their friends, and this is the toughest 
thing when you're a kid - losing someone close to your own age. It's 
like suddenly having lessons of mortality flung in your face when all 
you really wanted to know is how to get your folks off your back 
about the crap noise you call music that you keep playing at high 
volume. Pity that the neighborhood kids couldn't comprehend that the 
best gift to give to a dead friend is to drop by and let your 
friend's surviving family member know that you yourself are still 
alive, hale and healthy and greedy and grubby as always for the candy 
in the jar. At least let the old man feel justified for rushing out 
to the 7-11 and snatching bags of Hershey's off the shelf.

The two agents are flustered, and I know that they know. I keep my 
grin in place, give nothing away, and Agent Mulder is the one to make 
the first move. He chooses a Hershey's kiss; Agent Scully picks an 
almond something or other. They nod their thanks; Mulder pops his 
candy into his mouth, Scully holds hers. I wait for either Mulder to 
swallow his chocolate or Scully to succeed in her fishing for the 
right words.

"We are very sorry about your family's losses," Agent Scully begins. 
"How are you and your son?"

"Oh, we're coping, thank you," I say, managing to keep the sarcasm 
out of my voice. I am quite sore that this is the best she could come 
up with. Polite people asking polite questions, treading around, 
being silly. For goodness sakes, how would someone be expected to be 
after all those losses, as she succinctly put it? Don't expect us to 
be frolicking about, planning trips to Disney World, now do you?

"Do you and your son have a close relationship?" she asks, treading 
very gently indeed. "I mean, does he confide in you?"

Why, they're trying to get some background information on my son, 
from his very own father. Subtle as a herd of foraging elephants.

"Well, we're both grown men," I say slowly, and I spot the shadow of 
an understanding smile tugging at the corners of Mulder's lips. "He's 
not in trouble is he?" I ask, very much distressed.

"No, sir," Mulder says. "We don't think so."

"You're not sure?" I exclaim.

"Mr. Sawyer, this is really about the deaths of your daughter-in-law 
and grandchildren."

"Yes," I say, prompting him to continue.

"Three months before your daughter-in-law died, your son called the 
hospital and told them to hurry here, that she'd taken a bad fall and 
she was dying. The paramedics arrived but everything was fine; you 
and your daughter-in-law and her sons were all asleep."

I remember that. Wail of ambulance siren jolting you out of bed at 4 
in the morning - making you wonder if you'd had a heart attack and 
missed it in your sleep somehow - have that happen to you and you'll 
see how hard it is to forget.

"There was nothing wrong with your daughter-in-law at all, apart from 
her existing condition," he says this word very carefully. "Which was 
why she was brought to the hospital anyway, just in case. She was 
allowed home a couple of hours later. But your son had been very 
certain that something was wrong, had been adamant that paramedics be 
rushed here to this house. He'd called from New York. He called the 
hospital straight away. He never called here first to check."

I'm expecting a 'Now, why is that?' to come after the end of the 
sentence, instead Mulder tells me that,

"The date was exactly three months to the day your daughter-in-law 
fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Your son wasn't home then 
either, yet he again called the hospital from where he was, and 
demanded that an emergency team be dispatched immediately. This 
second time around he was even more insistent, almost abusive in his 
demands, despite the fact that he could not have known about his 
wife's accident."

"He had a premonition," I whisper, surprised, and just a little bit 
proud. Why, my boy had the shine in him after all. "He never told me."

Mulder seems to think that this was understandable. "Do you need some 
time?" he asks, and I'm tempted to ask him: 'Time for what? Poker?'

I shake my head and smile, and tell them, "It's a shock to know that 
he must have been worrying so about his wife. I thought they were 
dealing with it as best they could."

"Your daughter-in-law's cancer?" Scully queries gently.

I sigh a reluctant "Yes."

"She disappeared for a few months about four years ago, didn't she?" 
Mulder asks. Now why is he moving on to that subject, suddenly?

"She disappeared for three months. The family was living out in 
Montana at the time - green valleys of their dreams, she called it. 
She took the trash out at 8 p.m. and she never came back in."

Another time to remember. The boys had to come live with us - Helen 
and I, she was still of this living world then - while Llyod Jr. 
searched hill and dale for his Karen. Karen popped up one night in 
some Montana hospital, all disheveled and a mighty bit hysterical, as 
one can imagine after whatever it was that'd happened to her. My poor 
son maintained that a cult must have kidnapped her. Personally I 
always suspected that she thought she could run off with whatever 
handsome devil of a lawyer hanging around her firm, only to get 
shortchanged in the bargain. A cruel thing to think of your 
daughter-in-law, but I will be the first to say that my son was not 
the handsomest devil this side of the Rockies. He probably wouldn't 
have even made it as the devil's dashing apprentice.

"She never remembered what happened to her?" Mulder wonders kindly, 
clearly encouraging me to spill more. I'm sure he's worked out all 
the answers already. Just can't figure out why he would.

"No," I admit. It always bothered me that she said she couldn't 
remember. Too convenient. "They didn't want to stay in Montana 
anymore after that, so they came up here. Lived in an apartment a few 
blocks down from here. They moved in with me after Karen found out 
she had ... well, you know."

I can see the deep concern and empathy in their faces, which tells me 
that they do know. I swear there's genuine sorrow there in their 
eyes. We could probably all sit here and join hands and mourn 
supportively together. They're not done, though.

"But she was quite well at the time of her death?" Mulder asks, 
insistent. "As far as things go - she was still going to work, and ..."

"Oh yes, yes, she was okay. We were expecting the worst, but she was 
a fighter. Really, agents, what is this all about? You wanted to talk 
to my son? What has my son done?"

There was a pause, then Mulder elected himself as speaker. "A week 
after Karen's death, your son wrote a letter to the FBI, seeking aid 
and, if possible, protection. He claimed that her death was not 
accidental, and that his sons' lives were at stake. Specifically, he 
said that his oldest son would drown, and that his two younger sons 
would be killed in a car accident."

I'm sure I'm turning pale. Kevin did drown one month after his dear 
mother departed, Brian and David did die when the car flipped over 
one month after Kevin gulped his last.

"Sir, are you all right?" Mulder asks, reaching out to place his hand 
on my forearm. Scully is at the edge of her seat, studying me with 
utmost concern.

I take a shaky breath and say, "So what are you saying?"

Mulder twists his lips grimly and he admits, "We aren't jumping to 
any conclusions here, Mr. Sawyer. Your son claimed that he could 
foretell these things, and that he was desperately in need of help. 
He was worried that there were certain ... parties ... attempting to 
eliminate his family. Before and after his sons' deaths, he sent the 
FBI ten letters; but we, Scully and I, only found out about those 
letters recently, after we received the eleventh. We can't be sure 
that he didn't write more. Our ... predecessor ... didn't keep things 
very tidy."

I'm barely paying attention. Goodness. Llyod Jr. had the shine, and 
he had power behind the shine. He saw all that, he knew! He never 
told me. For Chrissakes he never told. I would have been so proud to 
know that he had it. "What did his last - most recent - letter say?"

"That he fears for his life," Mulder says simply. "We think there's 
more here than just simple coincidence, that's why we're looking into 
this. A simple chat with your son might help clear things up or guide 
us to some starting point, and if there's anything you think you 
could tell us ..."

He trails off and waits expectantly. What am I to do here? Jump in 
with a soliloquy about heartstrings and fathers and sons?

"I don't know what to say," I murmur, and out of the corner of my 
eye, I see the cat stepping daintily out of the kitchen.

Oh damn. She pads past the dining area, pricks her ears up and turns 
her head, spots company and veers towards us. Now she's jumping up 
onto the sofa, brushing right past Agent Mulder, landing precisely on 
the patch of carpet in between the two federal agents and me. There's 
a moment of silence as the agents look at the cat and then look at 
me. I wait out that silence, but when neither agent proves to be the 
splendid example of a Samaritan, I grab the cat and start to coo.

"Pumpsie! What happened? You were hurt? You got in a fight?" 
Strangely enough, the one coherent thought running through the panic 
of my mind is the damnation I'm going to subject Helen to when we 
meet again in Heaven ... or Hell ... or Purgatory.... She had to name 
the cat Pumpsie?

"Mr. Sawyer, I don't think it's your cat that's injured." Agent 
Scully is the one offering me this wise analysis in a very confident 
tone of voice, and I am more annoyed than ever. I did not ask for a 
diagnosis. What I would ask for, if I could, was for time now to 
clean Pumpsie's four paws that have tracked blood, and the fluffy 
tail that has swished blood patterns, all this over Helen's most 
prized piece of household accessory: the beige carpet from Turkey. 
Not quite beige anymore after Kevin, Brian and David, but still a 
perfect canvas for dark, dead red.

But I concede the point. Cleaning paws and tail won't help anything 
at this point. Agent Mulder is already getting up, right hand 
straying to his right hip, head turned towards the kitchen, for 
that's where blood-red paw tracks come from.

"I'm sorry," I say, and the two of them ignore me. They'll both be 
heading into the kitchen now. "Agents, please, look, what are you 
suspecting? That my son is going to blow up some building?"

There's actually a moment where they do respective double takes, and 
then another brief hopeless moment while they're staring at me and 
not at the tracks that'll end it all.

"Is he blaming people for what happened to him, all these deaths and 
he's blaming the government, something like that?" I ask hurriedly, 
words spilling out of my mouth. "Surely the FBI wouldn't be here if 
he missed a few IRS statements?" I've released my grip on Pumpsie and 
she's skittering back into the kitchen. The sadistic cat.

My words have, however shocked the agents enough that it takes 
another second for Mulder to make a placating reply,

"Mr. Sawyer, we are not suspecting your son of any domestic terrorist 
activity." He sounds slightly miffed. And he's impatient to get back 
to the mystery of the bloody paw prints. Agent Scully is already 
stepping around the sofa. Her right hand is at her right hip too.

Oh for heaven's sake ... didn't I swear to tell the truth, the whole 
truth and only the truth?

"If this is about Karen," I say mournfully. "It was me."

Now I have their undivided attention.

"What do you mean?" Scully asks very carefully, frown on her face.

"It was a bad night, actually. She was taking things very well before 
that but on that night ... I suppose I was feeling quite bad about 
things too, about how things would get worse and all, and how sick 
she was, and so ... I pushed. I was so sorry for her."

"You pushed Karen down the stairs," Scully accuses me. Can see it 
didn't take much trouble for her to get to the point of my 
confession. Brains behind the partnership, no doubt. She glances up 
at her partner, who's staring at me with his mouth hanging open, and 
seeing no back-up from him, adds another point to her deduction. "You 
killed her."

"People call it euthanasia," I correct her, feeling rather haughty 
about it too.

"No, it's called murder!" Agent Scully exclaims. She's taking this 
pretty badly. She's agitated, her face is flushed, her eyes are fiery 
with righteous indignation or whatever it is that's fueling her fire 
there. "She was fine! I read her charts, her autopsy report. She 
could have lived a few more months, meaningful months."

I can see that Agent Scully truly believes this. I'll admit that it 
is a bit sad now, come to think of it. But, "Chemotherapy bills are a 
burden you cannot begin to comprehend, Agent."

She gives me a look that could skewer a dozen piranhas. Fortunately, 
I'm not one. Oh, my humor will be the death of me, one of these days.

I tell her, "Medical insurance wasn't going to cover the costs. They 
were planning to mortgage the house. This house! They just up and 
told me about it one fine morning, thinking that I, the loving 
father-in-law and grandfather to her children, would clap his hands 
and exclaim, 'Sweet charity, why yes, yes, do please take this house 
that your great-grandfather built with his own two hands!'. Come now. 
What's the saying - get real."

I lean back, a refreshing burst of youth coursing through me. It's 
all in the talk - that's what makes a man feel young.

"You killed her because you didn't want them to mortgage the house?" 
Agent Mulder inquires quietly. He's a true professional, not allowing 
emotions to cloud the issues at hand here. Unlike that female partner 
of his. Women in the FBI ... that's what it's come to now. No wonder 
they couldn't stop that Branch Davidian thing. Lose the manpower and 
what's left?

However, there is a barely suppressed undercurrent of ... something 
... in him. He's curious and suspicious, certainly, but best to keep 
at arms length from him. Violence and law enforcement officers make 
good companions; I'm not interested in seeing the show.

"It's more than that," I sigh. I am a little bit disappointed that 
the man refuses to understand me any better than my own son did. Fox 
Mulder must have been a terrible son to his father too. "You expect 
some things when you grow old. You expect your children to leave the 
roost, and stay out of the roost except during those yearly holiday 
vacations. You expect some peace and quiet, and the tranquil comfort 
of your own home. And the security of knowing that it is still your 
own home. You reach my age and you have no idea when senility when 
strike you off your couch and set you in some Home where everyone 
greets everyone else with a, 'Mornin' Bob. You're still with us, I 
see. Oh wait, I'm talkin' to the cactus am I?'. It's a full circle. 
You're young - you want to get the hell out of your home. You're old 
- you want that home to call your own."

"Sir, are you confessing to the murder of your daughter-in-law, Karen 
Whittaker Sawyer?" Agent Mulder asks. He's still polite, but it's no 
longer the 'respect your elders' politeness at work here. It's now 
the 'careful how you talk to a nutcase' polite. "You're aware that 
you've just informed us of a crime you committed against your son's wife?"

This is not a good day. Shouldn't have answered the door.

"I am admitting that it's one of the things I've done in the past few 
months," I say. Game's afoot, and cops and robbers, and good guys 
will come out ahead. Never mind which colorful euphemism I pick. I've 
been foiled by a cat, a cat that's not even a black cat for goodness 
sakes, and there was that pledge for a day of truth. Without a doubt, 
this is one clear example of getting up from the wrong side of bed. 
Thinking that there's something honorable to making plans and 
pledging truths, instead of just stumbling over to the toilet bowl 
for my regular morning trickle.

Would it have been hard to perhaps say, 'My son is out jogging. Take 
a left turn at the corner there, and you're bound to see him. Go get 
him, agents!'

"What are you saying, sir?" Agent Scully seems to have collected 
herself, though she's looking awfully horrified; wild imaginings 
flooding her mind, I'll bet.

"After my Helen died, I got used to being alone. Got very 
comfortable, really, with being all alone."

"Your grandchildren." Agent Mulder states. Well, well, well. There's 
a working mind for you. Elementary, all elementary.

"Three teenagers born to wreak destruction and mayhem, that's what I 
call them. They had three boys in three years. One delivery a year! 
For heaven's sakes, I sent Llyod Jr. to Princeton, and my 
daughter-in-law went to the best law school in the country. You'd 
think an educated couple would comprehend the notion of family 
planning. And we're not Catholic. There's no hell to pay in the 
afterlife if you use a condom or two; instead we had hell in life. 
Teenage boys dashing around the house. You have no idea what that was 
doing to my blood pressure."

Besides, who knew what they would have grown up to be? Some of the 
boys they were hanging out with were absolutely unsavory. I could 
just see myself hauling my very shamed soul in to the police station 
to bail Kevin out of trouble. Indeed, I had seen myself doing just 
that, in one of my shines. Knocked the socks right off me, that 
shine. But I would have known anyway. Would have. Even here, in this 
nice, peaceful suburb of Salem, Oregon. Show me a neighborhood where 
not a single kid grows up to do drugs, and I'll show you a Senator 
who smiles like he means it.

Mulder wants to know. "Is your son home, Mr. Sawyer?"

Pledges can be broken, but really, what's the point now? "Yes. Yes, 
he is home."

"Is he in the kitchen?"

A game of twenty questions? Is this all that's left of that great 
federal agency that wiped out the mob? Oh wait. My mistake. The mob's 
still around, and now they have the Asian gangs and the Latino 
dealers, and the typical crackpots and sex-crazed politicians. 
There's federal crime prevention for you. Well, I do not feel like 
playing the game, don't feel like chatting much anymore. The agents 
aren't waiting for my answer anyway. They're taking quick strides to 
the kitchen, but once there at the doorway, they don't step in. They 
can see. No need to get intimate with the man who's slumped at the 
kitchen table, wrists gaping wide and blood dripping off the table, 
pooling some under the table but thankfully not spreading all over. 
At least my son had some consideration before his moment of suicide, 
to leave his bleeding wrists up on the table. He must have still 
remembered how upset his mother used to get whenever he tracked mud 
all over her tiles. Pity her grandsons never remembered.

I stand up slowly. What was my son thinking, I wonder, as he slashed 
his wrists? If he'd wanted to do things well, he could have used the 
gun. It's ready and loaded in that drawer there, in the heavy oak 
bureau by the fireplace. But it's just as well he hadn't. Maybe he 
was leaving his dad a true, final gift.

Now let's see if an old man like me can still use his shine when he 
needs to on short notice. It'd be beyond embarrassing if I got a 
stroke because of this.

The drawer jerks open, rough - but this is no time for aesthetic 
effects. The gun comes to me with the ease that I once had - ah, this 
must be my swan song. So be it.

My grandsons used to love it when I performed the 'Darth Vader grabs 
blaster' trick - I wasn't too huffy then, but even then I could only 
do it once a week. Well, now's time to carry that trick straight 
through. I aim for Agent Scully; there's some satisfaction I must 
say, in shutting up a nagging woman. Can't say for sure if she's one, 
but there's no time for selectivity either. Trigger is a bit hard, 
but the gun fires and my hand hurts like hell. Who'd expect a mere 
gun to have such kickback?

The bullet slams right into Mulder.

It's not my fault - shooting darts every other Thursday for thirty 
years at Kenny's builds confidence and perfects aim better than a 
million shines. Scully probably never heard the drawer, never knew 
what was coming, so fascinated was she by Llyod Jr. and totally 
neglecting Llyod Sr.

Mulder was standing to the side and slightly behind her. Mulder heard 
the drawer. Mulder turned, saw, and pushed her out of my aim. Now 
he's got this stricken look on his face, like maybe he's just 
starting to realize that stepping into the path of a speeding bullet 
is not even double the kind of hurt you get when a ball whacks you in 
the groin. >From the speed with which color is leaving his face, I'd 
guess that hurt is somewhere around two hundred times. The blood 
spreads out on his white shirt, up in his chest. The momentum of the 
bullet had slammed him against the side of the display cabinet by the 
kitchen doorway, and for the barest moment, he's propped there. I 
hear the sound of an expelled breath, then, still with his back 
against the cabinet, he slides down. Very neat slide, his knees don't 
buckle, his body doesn't topple once he's down on the floor. He's 
sitting there, looking for all the world like an oversized Raggedy 
Ann doll with long limbs all askew; but I'll grant you that the doll 
won't have short dark hair, or glazed brown eyes, or hack up blood 
the way Mulder is doing now.

Suddenly I'm worried about the family heirloom in the display case. 
Nothing fancy, nothing expensive, but there was some silverware that 
I bought for Helen when I went to Britain back in the 80s and there's 
some fine China too, plus little figurines which Helen just loved. 
I'll admit, I didn't mind spoiling her with those. Little flowery 
vases, little glass kittens playing, little ruby-red parrots perched 
on jade branches. I didn't hear anything shatter ... but I see the 
streak of blood against the paneling of the cabinet and that's the 
proof right there. The bullet went right through Mulder; maybe I can 
still have some luck on my side today - bullet's embedded in the wood 
somewhere and never scratched a single piece of pottery.

I'm quite disgusted with myself, not just because of the risk I took. 
I've never physically touched the tools of death to do the deed of 
death. The gun's trigger feels repulsive now beneath my forefinger, 
and I'm appalled by the lack of finesse with which this has happened. 
A moment of panic allowed me to shine in desperation, instead of 
saving the shine for better things.

Scully has her gun out, trained on me. She's standing off to the 
side, having picked herself up after her partner pushed her down to 
the floor. Her eyes are wide as they track between me and her 
partner, whose eyes are beginning to lose their clarity of life and 
whose breaths are now coming in ragged, tortured gurgles. Blood is 
dripping off his chin, staining his dark blue jacket too. Beneath him 
a large pool of red is collecting and spreading; his pants are doing 
nothing to absorb the blood he's sitting in. More stains on another 
floor - good God.

It's been less than half a minute. Didn't know you could spill that 
much blood so fast. I should correct my estimate of when my son sat 
down to do his personal deed.

"Drop your weapon," Scully says, hard and unforgiving.

I'm not holding the gun in a position that would be lethal to her. 
Well, perhaps lethal to only her well-heeled feet. But I really don't 
feel like slipping my finger onto the trigger again. And I haven't 
enough shine to pull the trigger that way. I haven't enough shine to 
do anything.

She's sidling closer to her partner and now she's down on one knee 
beside him. Right hand still pointing the gun at me, she gropes for 
his wrist with her left hand. She is, I realize, trying to feel for a 
pulse. Then she either gives up on that, or feels that groping for 
her own cell phone is the better thing to do. Beside her, her partner 
is turning the same terrifying shade of white that I found my son to 
be when I came down for this morning's coffee. Except that Mulder is 
starting to shiver. My son was just plain cold stiff.

Ah, a pun still, at this particular time.

"I said drop you weapon!" she shouts at me.

I am an old man knee deep in trouble here, but she does not have to 
shout. I'll surrender, win some time to think, see if I can build my 
shine, live through this after all.

Scully has her gun on me and her phone up at her ear and I'm annoyed 
enough to wisecrack,

"Lady, you will not need to shoot that gun of yours. A woman and her 
phone combine to form a force stronger than anything I can ever fight 
against."

I wave my gun vaguely in her direction, indicating her cell phone.

And she fires her gun.

Damn.


-End-




Note: 'Shine' is used in the context of Stephen King's novel "The 
Shining", which chronicled the story of the Torrance family and their 
clairvoyant son Danny. 'Shine' refers to Danny's clairvoyant and 
sometimes telepathic abilities. However, I included telekinetic 
abilities for Mr. Sawyer's shine. I mean no copyright infringement of 
Stephen King's work. I could have used "The Simpsons"' version, 
called "The Shinning", but then the Fox Network will have more things 
to come after me for, never mind which country I'm from.



~ Ainon ~ mulangst@hotmail.com


Debbie Goldstein
dkg@teleport.com