something faithful and mad
by Pares

She wonders what it's like to be old and lonesome, older and more lonesome than she is now, and to die leaving your children nothing but debt and a few sticks of ugly furniture.

Here in an airless apartment perfumed with solitary death and the powdery scent of yellowing newspapers, she thinks she knows.

The ceiling is low, and the music is terrible. Syrupy ballads, synthesizers and leaden percussion. Would that she'd never hear another Captain and Tenille song.

Mrs. Lowe should have been too old for Peaches and Herb. Where were the Bing Crosby records? The Andrews Sisters?

All that's left is a dainty yellow dog, a parody of a lion, its bright, beady little eyes gleaming in the dim light of the sitting room.

No children, she amends.

She refolds Mr. Bruckman's note, tucking it in her jacket pocket.

Crouching down, she holds out her fingers, and the tiny animal sniffs them delicately, its pink tongue slipping once, nearly dry, against the pad of her thumb.

She scoops a hand underneath its small, wiry body and stands up. The animal struggles briefly before quieting. It doesn't yap, but trembles against her, the velvet ears as taut as bat wings.

Hitching it under her arm, she murmurs some soothing nonsense. It cranes its neck so far to see her that the top of its head brushes the milkboned knuckles of its spine. She touches the frill of fur carpeting the tangerine-sized skull with one finger.

It has a head like a pom-pom sewn on a sockpuppet. She can feel it breathing, the curious heave of it, expanding and contracting in her hand, as fragile and light as a party balloon. Hoisting it to eye-level, she studies it and it stares back at her.

Scully has always had an aversion to these ugly little toy dogs. Their black doll eyes and blank, manic expressions. The constant tremor, as if they were vibrating at high frequency. But here she is, a dead woman's overbred Pomeranian already shedding on her suit, tipping its head at her, probably hoping for food.

After a long moment, she sets it down, and it sits neatly on its chickenwing haunches, still peering up at her. Exasperated, she picks it up again, and this time it settles in her arms as calmly as a throw pillow. The dog smells faintly of floral shampoo.

Prying the brass clasp open with her fingernail, she unbuckles the red leather collar and places it on a nearby hutch, careful not to read the name engraved on the dangling, wafer-thin medallion.

Suddenly, morbidly, she wonders how long it will take the thing to start snacking on her own corpse, when she dies.

She doesn't doubt she will, despite Mr. Bruckman's promise. And she knows it will probably be the result of following Mulder, as relentless as a ticking clock, too far and too grudgingly beyond the beaten trail.

She sighs and the dog makes an interrogative sound.

"Let's go home," she tells it, and she carries it to the elevator, 6 floors down to meet Mulder in the lobby.

END

touching you i say(it being Spring
and night)"let us go a very little beyond
the last road-there's something to be found"

and smiling you answer"everything
turns into something else,and slips away....
(these leaves are Thingish with moondrool
and i'm ever so very little afraid")
i say
"along this particular road the moon if you'll
notice follows us like a big yellow dog. You

don't believe? look back.(Along the sand
behind us,a big yellow dog that's....now it's red
a big red dog that may be owned by who
knows)
only turn a little your. so. And

there's the moon,there is something faithful and mad"

- e. e. cummings