Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998
From: lisby@earthlink.net

Category: Angst, Mulder torture
Rating: PG 13
Summary: A lonely man writes home.
Disclaimer: This story is based on the X-Files, property of Fox Television
and 1013 Productions. I am not profiting by it in any way.

Distribution: Send it anywhere as long as the author's name remains attached.

Note: "Clutching at Shells" is one of a series of interconnected vignettes.
It is probably best to read the first two before reading this one, although
not absolutely necessary. The first, "Post Extremis," and the second,
"Stretched Between Gray," can be found (artistically enhanced) at IOHO
(home.earthlink.net/~iwonder), or at the Gossamer Archives or Mulder
Torture Anonymous.

Clutching at Shells
by Lisby with iwonder
8/98

For Liliana. Besos.

August 2001(?)

Walt,

Yes, it's me. Really. Call this a postcard from the edge. Okay, it's a
letter, you literal bastard. And it's not really an edge; it's more like an
abyss with a springboard straight into Satan's washtub.

How long has it been now? Just a little less than a month, I think. Or
maybe it's been longer, and I've grown older but no wiser in the tra la la
of artificial nonrecall. I mean, when they told me I'd be gone for a week,
I knew they were liars. Once day seven came and went, it did soothe my gall
to know you started lobbying for my return--giving them shit. I hope you've
piled the shit up so high that a methane glow lights my way home.

Have you been keeping the Tiny Terrible One out of trouble? I'm trusting
you to do that. I'll need her when I get back. Tell her no heroics. No
dainty Derringer to Swiss cheese some big rat's nuts. I will need her and I
won't let anyone else touch me in a medical way. Fuck, I miss her and I
love her. How can I tell you that so easily when only an internal Pickett's
Charge wafts those words toward her defenses? I guess I can tell you
because you love her, too. You're a brother in captivity. Now, you're
waiting, aren't you? Well, at least I'm consistent. It's far easier for me
to tell _her_ how much I care for you.

On the days when I have been strong enough, they let me walk the beach.
When I do, I pretend--step by step--that no body-armored thugs watch me
through crosshairs. There's so many of them, and the loud, fast boats
pacing the shoreline, looking for action. My action. All that firepower and
attention focused on a naked man staggering along a stretch of sand.

My father is here. Today, when I walked, he stood on the path that leads
into the boo-spooky secret bunker buried in dune. A bureaucrat's camouflage
can't hide him here where water meets land. He just stood and smoked. I
couldn't--can't--look at him for more than a moment. I have to turn my face
away--turn it toward the honest ocean, go narrow-eyed in the wind. At a
distance, past the gnat-like speedboats, there's always a battleship
anchored, and it's certainly one of theirs. I marvel at what they can reel
in. Myself included. And today I had just a few more minutes before the
hook caught--before my father stubbed out his cigarette and flicked his
gaze toward Edwards, my personal handler. Edwards is one of their hybrid
lemming-weasels, but he does help, and I've stopped hating myself for
accepting his whispers and touch. It's so fucking hard to lie down on those
tables, even the warmed, padded ones they've switched to in reward for my
good behavior.

I struggled on, determined to make the most of mock freedom. Teetered away
like a toddler hell-bent on escape from Daddy. Wet, cool sand and blue sky.
Somewhere up there, where azure turned midnight, bigger Daddies looked down
upon Earth.

I understand Them better now, Walter. At least, I understand their
provincial cousins. I've played spider to their fly. No, that's not right.
I've played web for the spider who ate the fly. It was a real horror show,
Walt: a tight strap-down and the technicians adjusting warming lamps and
shooting syringes into my IV ports while I shook and spasmed and clung to
Edwards's soothing babble. And then Frau Doctor, head to toe in
high-fashion biocontainment white, holding that beaker of sludge right
above my nose....Funny, the oil feels wiggly when it slips in, like when
your leg brushes up against a fish in the ocean. Electric. They let it grow
inside me for two days before they woke up my Little Buddy. Then the pain
slowly ended as everything carbonized black.

Yes, a biodevice is curled around my spine again, living off the impulses
of my cerebral cortex. I had to be awake when they connected its feeders.
The drill rattled my teeth and I made noises like when a kid sings and
pounds his chest and Edwards kept saying it would be fine, that they
wouldn't make me feel it....

When the first Little Buddy was killing me, Scully went to such lengths to
remove it; she's going to be really pissed that they've introduced another.
But this one didn't bring me close to death, Walt--it saved my life.
Besides, she's going to love one of the New Improved Little Buddy's neat
special effects. I first noticed it today on the beach. I was determined
that I would find a shell for Scully before I was dragged back into the
Love Shack. I know it's ridiculous, but the hunt keeps me sane. There are
some pretty shells here strewn up by the tide and when I come home, I swear
I'll be clutching a bag of them. Anyway, recess was almost over and I
started looking around, getting panicked, breathing heavier.

The sideways dance of a sandcrab led me right to it: a sand dollar, perfect
in every way. I picked it up and held it tight, could feel my hearts
beating in my fingertips. Yes, I said hearts. One is mine, one is Its. The
beat follows mine with a fractional delay. Scully will think this is cooler
than shit, 'though she'll deny it.

When I was netted and dragged past my father, I told him that my double
heartbeat would make all the other kids jealous. He was still sucking his
Morley. Our eyes connected and my balls shriveled up tight. I hate him so
much and he scares me so bad. I had to turn away fast, but I felt his gaze
bore the back of my skull like that drill. Yet as much as Cancerman scares
me, I feel like I have some little power over him now. Over all of those
charcoal suits who watch the experiments from above while their assistants
dart around and slaves serve them aperitifs.

I'm saving their wide asses.

I always wondered why they let me live. Then I realized after the
retrovirus and everything else I've been through that it will take hell of
a lot to make me die. And when I finally punched through the mindwipe and
remembered all those experiments they'd run on me as a child, while I was
in England, then at Quantico and with the VCU...even in the years I worked
for you....

Now I think I finally understand the point of it all. Frau Doctor calls me
a prototype. I was afraid that meant I was the first in a series of
clones--and maybe it still does--but now I believe I'm the first
uber-guinea pig, bred to survive their relentless attempts to outlive
Armageddon. With me, they have a baseline and a history and don't have to
begin again with a new subject each time. The spider inside me ate the fly
and I lived to stumble down the beach. How easy for them. How streamlined.

Years ago, I interviewed a former FBI agent who knew that my Dad--this
would be William Mulder--was involved in xenotransplantation experiments on
World War II vets. They put mutant spiders inside these men to live in
their lungs. The spiders squirmed out of their hosts and down the throats
of anyone who got too close. They ate their victims from the inside,
leaving only a sack of skin behind. At the time, I couldn't make sense of
it, but now I can see the connections, the progression of the idea down
forty years, the wonderful devilish Karma.

Jesus Christ. Should I laugh or cry? Recently, exhaustion and ennui prevent
me from either.

You'll never get this letter, Walt. They never promised me you would, but
when I saw the paper and pen in my cell, I thought, well, maybe that's what
it's here for and what the hell. I'm bored and they won't let me play with
Scully's shells anymore. Edwards takes them away as soon as I come inside,
just by the door of the decontamination spray-down stall. He says he'll
keep them for me, that I can't be trusted not slice my wrists again with a
broken clam. It doesn't matter that I did it to see whether I still bled
red.

I hope they let me come home to you and Her Nibs soon. Hell, _at all_ would
be okay. My inner battle line is surging forward to deliver the words "I
love you." Little Buddy does too. Light the methane lantern in the window
for us.

Fox Mulder

End

Feedback is the food of the gods. lisby@earthlink.net

--lisby@earthlink.net
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"Do you want fries with that?"

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