Shadows on the Wall

Alex Krycek is somewhere in the city. I got a couple of pictures of him being carried into an apartment building rear entrance. The plastic packet was inserted in the Sunday Washington Post like another weekend sales ad. Looked like he was unconscious, and he was wrapped in a blanket. One of the goons was carrying a couple of suitcases and the leather jacket.

I’ll take the pictures to the Gunmen in a while. Maybe they can place the apartment building.

The overcast morning adds to the gloom in my apartment. The light through the glass above my door shines a triangle pattern across the floor. My clothes were dusty after our last encounter. I have yet to sweep the floor.

Krycek, the truth and me in an inextricable tangle of light, shadow and time.

I want to find him. I want to put a gun to his head and make him, make him, MAKE him tell me why. I just don’t know which ‘why’ anymore.

And then I want to pull the trigger. I want whatever he is in my life to be gone, over and done.

I get on my knees and reach under the couch, find the gap in the frame and get the small pistol out. It is a lightweight special, a ‘lady’s gun’, made to fit in an evening bag for the new breed of female bodyguards. I ‘liberated’ it a long time ago from yet to be catalogued sweep of a back street dealer’s stash. All the agents took their pick that night. It’s not something I’m proud of, and I’ve only fired it once, to check ballistics and make sure it had never been used in a crime. I keep it clean and loaded. It has survived every intrusion, seizure, and search of my space.

It’s handmade from the bits and pieces of the all the best equipment. Sleek, smooth, it is a deceptive killing machine. I look at it and rub the gloss back into the barrel with my shirt. Apropos, it has no manufacturer imprint, no serial number, and a dark green handle grip

My left ‘arm’ hurts like a motherfucker.

It ‘is’ a left arm again. I know. I can see it, and I sure as hell can feel it. Haven’t touched it yet, or flexed, or reached, or wiggled the fingers. Haven’t held anything in its hand.

Thought the first thing I’d do was something complicated, dexterous, celebratory? Imagined I’d find a piano and play a boogie-woogie bass line, braid a series of fisherman’s knots, have a threesome and jerk off two guys at once and let them lick their come off me, slowly.

Wrap it around Mulder’s throat and make him, make him, fucking MAKE him pay attention.

It looks like my arm, sort of. The length and breadth of it is the same. The musculature, the prominent veins and even the brown blot birthmark inside the elbow. The skin though, is different. Smooth, pale, pinkish. baby skin, and very fine, blondish-white peach fuzz; was I blonde as an infant? I don’t remember, and there are no pictures.

The Brit showed his ancient predator’s teeth and sneered when he saw it, “Alex Krycek, ten percent as innocent as a new born lamb. Keep wiping your ass with the other hand and you might keep this one clean for a day or two.”

He left me then, in my new apartment, with his final threat, “I gave it to you and I can take it back, just the way you lost it that last time. Think about it.”

Fucker. Fuck him and all of them. I don’t owe any of you shit.

I wonder what it would feel like to have the first touch on it be a lover’s kiss, right there on the birthmark, a warm wet tongue, or an exhalation of breath, to rekindle the virgin nerve endings.

Would that bless the arm with better luck this time around? Would I be blessed?

I still haven’t touched it or let it touch. I’m hungry, and I need to piss. Got to get off the bed and do something about it soon. It’s getting dark in here, but the lamp is on the left side of the bed, and all the illumination comes from the shifting patterns of the clouds across the full moon through the window blinds.

Ten percent clean. When was the last time I was clean, any part of me? I don’t remember, I don’t want to remember.

Remembering hurts like a motherfucker.

I get in silently. I can when I have to. The apartment is almost bare, and after the lighted hallway, dark. I let my eyes adjust and keep my breathing slow, shallow and quiet. No lamps on, only dim light from the night fills the room, but I see a darker shadow of a doorway at the far right. Must be the bedroom.

The bedroom is dark too. The blind-covered windows making the density of the night thicker here.

The bed is covered in white sheets, and a dark puddle of blanket huddles, half on and half off the end.

The striped pattern of dim light highlights a nude body, splayed across the center of the bed, left arm flung wide. I cannot discern in the shifting shadows if the body breathes.

I click the safety off, the tiny sound is almost silent, but the body on the bed stiffens minutely, and I know he is alive.

I aim the gun at the body and approach the end of the bed. He doesn’t move much, just stretches his left arm further, the palm is open and gleams white on white against the sheet.

I see the glitter of his eyes, the shadow of his armpits and the broader, darker shadow of his groin. The sheet only covers the lower half of his legs, and I stoop suddenly to fling it the rest of the way off.

He bends his leg, as if to hide his vulnerable crotch. I know the movement is automatic, but I tsk-tsk in warning, and he stops, holds still returning to place his leg flat against the sheet.

I walk to the left side of the bed, and his eyes follow me.

I have always wanted this. Always. Alex Krycek unprotected, unadorned and at my mercy.

I look carefully at his body and focus on his left arm. I was sure there had been something wrong with it that night in my apartment. I’d wondered if he had encountered the knife-wielding peasants.

I switch on the light, and he cringes.

I have always wanted this too.

I can see all of him now. He is light and shadow, and the force of my confusion bewilders me, “Krycek?” It comes out of my mouth a half strangled question.

His tone of voice takes me by surprise. He is in command, one of those small nasty guns in his hand that tear your guts to shreds. He’s got me cold, weaponless and unprotected. I notice though, for all his voice is unsure, the gun is unwavering. “Mulder,” I answer; this is not the time for anything snide, and that’s his style anyway.

I see him considering, and he moistens his lips with his tongue. Be careful Krycek, one hint of your usual attitude, and I will blow you away. But he only says my name quietly in reply.

Shit, he’s looking at my arm. I find myself praying. Leave the arm alone; leave the arm alone; kill me already but leave the arm alone.

I study his arm. I can see the muscles twitch under my gaze, and his hand begins to tremble. I know! I know! In a blinding clarity of understanding, for the first time I ‘know’ Alex Krycek. I know everything, every vanity, every failure and every fear. I know them like I know my own.

I take a deep breath and slowly lower the muzzle of the gun to the strange pale flesh/pink flesh demarcation on the upper part of the bicep of his left arm. I see sweat sweep across his body, and he pales white, whiter than the sheet, whiter than death. I draw the muzzle of the gun across his bicep as lightly as a lover’s gentlest caress, and he screams.

I scream.

I scream the same scream that tore my throat in the silo. The same scream which only stopped when I passed out under the hot knife but still remained when I awoke and lived.

I scream the scream of the dammed. He has somehow divined how he can kill me without making my body dead along with what is left of my soul.

I listen to him scream, and I know it would have been more merciful to shoot him dead.

I have had my pound of flesh. I have passed judgment. I have won. I have lost. My nemesis, the rat is dead, and the man who lies there is no conundrum of shadow and light, or secrets and shadows to me now.

I see the light flicker on the wall, and I am part of the shadow. I hear the rustle of cloth as Mulder puts away the gun, and I am the dust motes that are scattered by the flap of his coat in the still room. I am the silence. I feel the sweat cool, but I am not chilled, I am already ice-cold.

What a moment to realize I still had faith enough to believe in mercy, when I was taught vengeance all my life. What a moment to find I still believed in redemption, when there was never any such thing.

I am a child again, running to catch the ball hit by the best batter on the other team's side. I am running through the coarse grass of the playground, and I am running in the hot bright golden afternoon sunlight, and I ‘know’ if I run fast enough I will catch the ball. I run until I trip and fall into the deep-gouged mud left behind by yesterday’s rain and the weight of the school bus tires, and everything is dark and viscous, and I can hear, HEAR the fucking ball land, just out of reach. When I get to my feet, everyone laughs. That day, I felt the hate in my heart cake like the mud on my face, and I knew then, THEN, there was no use in believing in anything. I know it again now.

Mulder, Mulder, with everything that stood between us, in spite of everything that stood between us, I believed you and you alone had the quality of mercy.

I watch the man on the bed. He seems to start disappearing before my eyes. He doesn’t grow smaller exactly, just less. My knees won’t hold me up, and I gingerly sit on the edge of the bed. I look at the out flung arm. My mind takes stock of that arm. The pinker, smoother skin, and the sparse, short, golden hairs glow in the lamplight. I reach out and turn off the light. He doesn’t flinch; he’s way beyond even that automatic reaction.

Part of my brain processes alien regeneration of limbs, but it is not important.

The arm mocks me with its youth and innocence, and I realize this arm, this piece, and this part of Alex Krycek, never did anyone any harm.

Part of my brain processes old psychological case studies about disassociation from trauma, but that’s not important either.

Oh god! Oh god, Mulder please don’t, please, please don’t! My heat seizes as I feel the rough pad of his thumb trace the same path as the gun. I will die now; I must die now; I cannot take anymore. I stop breathing altogether; when I feel his lips kiss the birthmark, and his tongue replace his thumb.

Is ten percent innocent enough of a person’s soul to believe in? Yes.

I find my way there and know this, THIS, is what I have really always wanted. I lower my head and place my mouth on his past, and his now, and, if there is a god, our future.

I cup Mulder’s head with my left hand. The softness of his hair and the warmth of his skull are the first things my hand feels.