Disappearing Act (Part 2)
Mulder knocked on the door to Frohike’s basement room. It was more of a cave then a room, but it was the place that The Lone Gunmen called their home base anyway.
Frohike looked through the peephole. It was actually a hole drilled through the door with a piece of cardboard over one side, but it was close enough.
“What’s the password?”
“Open up, asshole.”
“Close enough.” He moved the chair resting against it so no one could come in through the outside, and then removed the original lock, and the four other locks Frohike had added for “safety.” Thank god his parents trusted him, or else they would have thought the added security was to hide some sort of drug operation.
But then again, it was Federal, and Frohike didn’t have the social skills to talk to a drug dealer.
“Mulder.” Frohike greeted him, wrapping his arms around his friend's’ waist. He was at least a foot shorter, but he made do. “You look like shit.”
It was the perfect amount of Frohike-isms and comfort for Mulder. He felt tears pool up in his eyes.
Langly and Byers were already there, sitting on Frohike’s thrift-store couch, complete with a bag of cheetos and a six pack of coke. Some special about America’s cryptids was playing on the decrepit old TV. A pizza box from the night before sat on Frohike’s bed, but the mess and the stink of teenage boy was consoling. It was the only place Mulder wanted to be.
Langly stood, walking over to embrace him. He was wearing a faded band t-shirt and had pulled his tangly hair back. “We were going to call.”
“Don’t worry about it guys, really. I just needed someplace to go.”
They all nodded, understanding Mulder’s pain and where he was coming from. All of them had seen it before-- their whole lives, but just not this close. Samantha had shouted at them for taking up too much space on the couch, for eating all the junk food, for ordering a pizza and not saving any for her. They knew her personally. It was too close to home.
“Want a beer?” Frohike asked. Hidden behind a thousand soda bottles and a fake wall, his mini-fridge held a stash of cheap beers somebody’s older sibling or friend had acquired.
Mulder thought about it for a moment and nodded. He wanted something more numbing, but his friends weren’t those kind of guys. He settled between Byers and Frohike on the beat up couch, all four of them absorbed in the TV.
“You missed the Jersey Devil part, but Bigfoot is coming up soon. Apparently it’ll have real voice recordings.”
Mulder felt a false sense of normalcy-- maybe it all wasn’t real, maybe Samantha was home on the swingset or swimming at the pool, maybe they’d find something to write about soon, maybe things would turn around. He fantasized that last night had gone different, that he’d fallen asleep on Frohike’s couch and woke up with a bedhead and cheeto dust on his shirt.
Life was changing, for everybody. Mulder wasn’t ready to accept it, but it was. He could pretend for a small moment as Langly commented that Bigfoot’s growling sounded like a bear, but he’d have to return home eventually.
At home, his parents hadn’t begun grieving. Neither of them were talking about what had happened the previous night. They were talking about the return of aliens to Federal, and how that would do for their business. For tourism.
Nothing about Samantha. They had shoved that as far into the back of their minds as they could get it. Maybe if they could deny it enough, maybe she’d come home with a scraped knee and say that she had a great sleepover at Lisa’s house. And then everything would be normal again.
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Melissa had driven her younger sister home shortly after 3 am, once Dana had cried herself out. It took a lot of tears for her to finally ask to go home, and she fell asleep in the passenger seat.
Everything hurt. The diner reminded her of Monica, the passenger seat of the Scully siblings’ car, her own bed. It felt like she was losing Monica piece by piece, as every day went on. She was disintegrating before her eyes.
God, and it hurt. It was agonizing to wait every minute knowing every minute was closer to D-Day, and then she’d have no one else to run to. The last three years of her life were all about Monica. Sure, she’d kept a circle of friends, stayed social, but Monica was the absolute center of the universe. Monica was her everything, her last word, her one and only.
Dana had even thought about marrying her. She’d thought about the dress, the cake, the dancing, the fuck you to the relatives who berated “fags” at Thanksgiving. It had been serious for her since day one. Monica was the end-all-be-all of Scully’s life.
And now she was being forced to move on. Everything inside of her didn’t want to. She’d told Melissa all of this, spilling out everything she’d thought and every emotion she’d felt since Monica told her she was going to Virginia.
It felt like halfway across the world, and it was unfathomable.
Scully woke up with a headache. She hadn’t been that drunk, but her hangovers were all too easy to attain and all too hard to get rid of. Her chest hurt and her stomach growled, and there was an emptiness in her heart, choking her up and making it hard to get out of bed.
It took incredible energy for her to even push the covers up. It was already burning in her room, and something was cooking downstairs. She had 3 missed calls and a million missed text messages. It seemed like Monica had been up for the rest of the night, trying to get a hold of her.
Now absolutely wasn’t the time to address that problem. Scully put her phone in her nightstand drawer and went downstairs.
Melissa was making crab cakes. Dana’s favourite. They were introduced to them by their father. He was a man of the sea and a chef of the sea as well, and he’d left a few recipes behind. Melissa was excellent at his crab cakes.
Dana took a seat at the table, crossing her legs underneath her. She ran her fingers through her messy hair, trying to smooth it down.
After her first bite all she could remember was her father on Sunday mornings, frying up fish and chips and crab cakes while singing along to “Beyond the Sea.” Maybe her life would’ve been different if he hadn’t died. Maybe she would have never moved to Federal, maybe then she never would’ve met Monica.
“Are you having friends over?” Scully asked sleepily. Her hair was in tangles, a ponytail holder holding the whole mess together.
Melissa smiled at her. “No. Just you.”
Dana grinned. Her soul was exhausted, but Melissa happened to be the best sister in the whole world.
Scully indulged herself in those fantasies, wishing the pain away as she chatted with Melissa. A sense of peace washed over her-- temporary, but it stilled a storm inside her.
The thought of her dad kept her calm as the past and the quickly coming future shook her.