Title: Haunt

Author: Justine Glass

E-mail Address: Feedback happily read and

answered at Julan777@aol.com

Rating:

Category: V/A

Spoilers: None

Keywords: M/K

Summary: Alex tells a story about a haunting.

Description: This story is a "what-if" based on

"Haunted" by DBKate. She wrote a story and I

wrote her back saying "what if this happened?" and

she was gracious enough to give me the go-ahead.

Disclaimer: No permission has been granted, no

money has been made, no infringement is intended.

Dedication: For the one who made it happen--

DBKate. This one's all yours, if you'll have it.

Haunt

by Justine Glass

Haunt--1)to visit often; to continually seek the

company of a person; to visit or inhabit as a ghost;

to stay around or persist. 2) a place habitually

frequented.

*****

Never go to your own funeral.

I should have learned that a long time ago, in one of

my past lives, but I've never quite gotten it through

my thick skull, no matter that I've "died" four times

now, counting this death, the death of "Alex

Krycek." I wonder what name I'll be given this time.

I wonder where my next funeral will be.

I keep coming back because of Mark Twain who I

read when I was in school back in Russia when I

was Sasha Milokovic, when I was ten. Tom Sawyer

went to his funeral, and somewhere in the pit of my

stomach I am convinced that one of these times

someone will show up and wail over my coffin, like

Tom's aunt wailed over his. But by the time Sasha

died and I became Andreas Bjerre, everyone who

really had given a damn about me was already

dead. That first funeral, like this most recent one,

was polluted with professional mourners,

conspirators using my death as an excuse to boost

their networks. I wonder how many of them know

that this death, like the others, is no more real than

a play done by a second-rate college cast.

I wonder how many of them would be caught dead

at a funeral as cheap and horrible as this one.

I wonder how many of them will be at their own

funerals in the coming weeks. That one makes me

smile.

Andreas Bjerre died quickly, but in relative style: he

had a diplomat's funeral at the Swedish embassy in

New York. I wasn't that choked up--the accent was

murder. I felt like the Swedish cook on The Muppet

Show. The funeral, though, was top notch: a

mahogany casket and a string quartet and

champagne afterwards. My wife, a lovely blond spy

who was really Swedish, played her part to

perfection, a thin stream of tears seeping from

under her black veil did not betray the fact that I

had only seen her twice before.

My "parents" at this joke of a funeral barely seem

to know each other, let alone summon up the

energy to fake some grief for me. In fact, I don't

seem to know any of the mourners grieved over the

loss of Alex Krycek, not that it matters. They're

doing a job, just like I had done mine. Like I would

do it tomorrow under another name in another

place.

So . . . there was no food, no eulogy, no frivolous

expenses, and definitely no wailing over the remains

of the guy who had been unlucky enough to

resemble me. All in all, it's a rotten time. Tom

Sawyer would have been depressed.

I am just about to turn from my hiding place behind

the draperies and sneak out the back when the

chapel door opens.

Mulder.

Mulder in a gorgeous black suit, his hair still bearing

the marks of a wet comb, his face strangely pale,

eyes glinting in the shabby light. Just seeing him,

looking as immaculate and impeccable as only he

could, I am almost embarrassed to be dead in such

a chintzy place.

He stops for a moment on his way to the front of

the room, giving his condolences to the two wooden

statues who pretend to be my parents, but he is

there at the coffin too soon, standing only a few

yards away, gazing down at "Alex's" ruined face. I

want to ask him what he thought, to stand next to

him and look down into the countenance of death

and chuckle about how trivial and horrific it all is.

Instead, I hold my breath.

One hand reaches out and touches the cheaply

finished pine, fingertips hardly brushing the wood.

He just stands there for a long moment, not

speaking, not praying, not bowing his head in

misery, but simply looking down at someone who

was supposed to be me, his aquiline profile lined by

the burgundy curtains in background. He looks like

an angel. For a moment I wish I was in that coffin,

so I could look up and see Mulder's face above mine,

grave and serene.

He does something strange then, something so

strange that it would dictate my actions later,

something entirely unexpected, and entirely

beautiful.

Mulder reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a

rose. A single rose, red like blood, red like love, red

like death is red when it lines a casket in satin. It

has been crushed inside his jacket, crushed against

his heart, and he tucks it into the coffin, inside

"Alex's" jacket, against a heart that should be mine.

And then he leans down, bracing himself against

the far side of the coffin with one slender hand.

And kisses me.

The thing that ought to be me.

I had felt those lips once, almost, months ago, when

I knocked him to the floor in his own apartment and

told him what he needed to know. I felt those lips so

near mine that I had wanted to cry out and haul

him close to me. I hadn't then.

He leaves without a word to anyone else in the

room, fleeing out into the miserable twilight, almost

running in his haste to be gone. I race after him,

catching up only when he blunders into traffic and

almost gets crushed by a car. He slows to a brisk

walk after that, and I follow.

I wait in my usual cubby hole across from the

apartment until I can see the flicker of the

television in the window. I shouldn't have waited at

all: I should have left when Mulder left, headed off

into the sunset toward a new life of shadowy

operations and dastardly deeds, but I have to see. I

have to know what Mulder is doing.

*How* Mulder is doing.

I creep up to his door, press my ear against it, and

slide the shiv into the lock. I needn't have bothered

with the caution: Mulder is three sheets to the wind

on vodka and frozen orange juice. The cylinder of

concentrate has tipped over and the sticky sweet

remains pool on the table, an alcoholic rorschach

test. Mulder has tipped over on the couch next to

the puddle, one arm extended toward the television,

remote clutched in sloppy fingers. I would have

thought he was passed out except that every so

often the channel changes.

I don't know what to do.

For once in my life I'm sure of what to say, or how

to behave. I have come here because I had to, and

now I am speechless, motionless in the face of

Mulder's nonverbal misery. He doesn't do this

everyday--I have watched him long enough to know

that his consumption of alcohol is startlingly low--

so why today?

I hope it isn't because of me, but I want to know it

is.

Suddenly, the remote falls to the carpet. I realize

that the channel hasn't changed for a minute or

two, and the program--a show on cheap jewelry on a

home shopping network--isn't one that would

usually hold Mulder's attention. I lean forward,

craning to see his face, but all I get is the top of his

head.

"Mulder," I whisper.

No response.

I step forward, avoiding the piles of papers in neat

stacks near the wall, the newspapers and

magazines with ragged holes where Mulder has torn

out some piece of evidence, some fact to support

one of his endless theories.

"Mulder," I whisper again, a little louder.

He does not move, so I edge forward around the end

of the coffee table, sliding in between it and the edge

of the couch, slipping to my knees soundlessly in

front of him.

Kneeling here, not a foot from him, I am washed by

a wave of deja vu. I have been here a hundred

times before, a thousand. I have dreamed of being

here so many times I cannot keep track of where

wishing ends and reality begins. In the silver

flickering light of the television I can see his gilt-

edged mouth. His profile, so angelic in the red

curtained funeral parlor, is now that of a greek god

carved in marble. He breathes slowly, almost

soundlessly. I can feel his soft air on my face.

I lean in, until I can feel the heat from his skin, until

I can almost taste the orange juice residue on his

lips.

"Mulder," I say, again, prolonging each syllable, and

when I lose my balance or throw it aside and inch

toward him I don't try to catch myself. I kiss him.

And when he stirs, when I feel his lips stir against

mine, when he starts to kiss me back and give me

what I have wanted, what I have come for, I jerk

back, staggering to my feet and run. I run for my

life.

*****

from the card attached to the single red rose

delivered to Mr. Fox Mulder, apt.42, 2630 Hegal

Place, Alexandria, VA by Al's Flowers.

Jamie Turner

Los Alamos, NM

*****end*****