TITLE: Syntax and Measure 
AUTHOR: MustangSally
EMAIL ADDRESS: RWBowman@erols.com
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: ATX. Whatever
SPOILER WARNING:  4th Season. 
CONTENT WARNING: Rated R for: very bad language (Excessive use of the f- 
word so don't show your parents!), gore, drugs, heterosexual sex, and 
bad  puns.
CLASSIFICATION: XRH
R=Scully/Other
The Disclaimer Limerick:
Some characters herein are not mine
I borrow them some of the time
I just hope they won't sue,
Because if they do
I'll go on Hard Copy and whine.
Welcome to the MustangSally X-Files universe. "Where all the women are 
strong, the men 
are good-looking, and the villains are far from average." Now that I  
have your attention . . . 
Comments actively sought by MustangSally at: RWBOWMAN@erols.com 
Syntax and Measure
Thanks to Miki for nudging me on occasion/Is there anyone else out 
there?/Replies are dropping off and I feel like Public Television on a 
fund-raiser!

10/26
By MustangSally

Who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank 
docks  waiting for a door in the East River to open a room full of 
steamheat and opium,
Who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the 
Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads will 
be crowned with laurel in oblivion.
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl" 1956
There were times when Dana forgot that she was living in a different 
world.  To her, driving through the front gate at Quantico was like 
driving into the parking lot of the grocery store, it was part of her 
everyday life, it was just one of the places she went.  She slowed and 
flashed her ID at the Marine at the guard booth, Mucheski started as he 
noticed that the man who waved them past had a machine gun slung across 
his body.
"I've never been here." he said.
"Not even for a seminar, or a training session?" she asked.
"My department doesn't have it in the budget anymore." he said, "We 
barely have the money for coffee."
"If you want I can recommend you for the VICAP seminars that 
Dana guided her car up through the drive to the boring beige building 
sitting among what would have been lush Virginia lawn at another time of 
year, but had take on tundra like characteristics since the snows had 
fallen. Even in this weather, Dana could hear the faint snapping of 
gunfire.  It seemed decades ago that she had driven up to that building 
with her fingers and toes tingling because she was starting the FBI 
Academy.  What a wasteland of macho and testosterone,  had she ever 
thought that they would treat her as an equal?  Yes she had.  Then it 
had started, the sideways looks, the passes, the lesbian jokes, the 
instructors who told her about non-penetrative impotent serial killers 
while staring at her breasts.  Not to mention the nude photos of women 
that appeared in her class notebooks, and the cracks about her height.
Then there was Jack.  
Poor Jack.
God, she had been so young and so naive.  What had she expected? It 
certainly wasn't four years of standing in rain-soaked woods clutching a 
flashlight, looking for her errant partner, or having a service record 
with more black marks on it than a Dalmatian's coat, nor was it having 
cancer eating away at her brain.  
Sometimes she wished that she had taken that residency in pediatrics.  
Life would have been so much different, so much simpler.   She would 
have an office full of sick and screaming kids, a house full of sick and 
screaming kids, a husband who watched sports all weekend, a mortgage, 
car payments, gray hair, and a big, hairy dog to eat all the furniture. 
 On second thought, cancer and postmortems were much quieter. 
Mucheski followed her into the building and to the security checkpoint 
wearing a mildly bemused expression. There was something about the tilt 
of his head that made Dana nervous. Something dangerously mischievous. 
The guard at the desk checked their ID's against the register and 
requested that Mucheski turn over his handgun.  Mucheski pulled his 
service sidearm out of the holster, removed the clip, and handed both 
over to the guard.
The metal detector went off anyway.
"Detective." the guard said with a reproachful shade to her Virginia 
smoked voice.
"Right." Mucheski said and began an elaborate pantomime of patting 
himself down for weapons and removed a small automatic, a smaller 
derringer, a switchblade, a Swiss Army knife, and a pair of brass 
knuckles from various places around his suited person.
"Want  my dick too?" Mucheski asked.
Dana cringed.
"Not unless it's considered a concealed weapon, buddy.  Next time hand 
over all your weapons before you go through the metal detector."
Dana refused to speak to him as they walked down the featureless Federal 
hallways.  The pulse of her heart was making her eardrums throb with 
humiliation.   As far as she was concerned, Steve Mucheski was going to 
have to walk back to Washington.
They waited at the elevator doors in a spiky silence.  Mucheski jammed 
his hands in his pockets and tried to look contrite while Dana watched 
the indicator light blink on its trip to the ground floor.
"Sorry." Mucheski muttered.
"I would appreciate it if you would take a more professional attitude 
here." 
"Right. En boca cerrada no entran moscas.  A wise head keeps a closed 
mouth."
"Keep that in mind, Moo."

"This is some nasty shit." Dani remarked, pushing her long dark hair 
back from her face. "We are talking about some very elegant biochemical 
reaction designed to cause a thermonuclear meltdown in your higher 
centers."
"More complicated than an Alabama Slammer?" Mucheski said, leaning over 
her shoulder and looking at the computer screen.
"Much more complicated.  What we have here is essentially a perfume. . 
." Dani began.
"Thank God for the FBI." Mucheski muttered.
"Do you know how perfume works?" Dana asked, her arms folded over her 
chest.
"It comes in a small bottle, it's expensive, and it smells like grape 
Kool-Aid."
"Perfume has an essential oil base, the scent comes from the oil, 
alcohol in the perfume evaporates and leaves the oil on the skin. This 
liquid is a perfume, and the oil looks as though it came from a plant.  
See the chloroplasts?" Dani highlighted the area on the computer screen.
"And? They're walking around with Tea Rose perfume that makes them go 
wacko?"
"Tea Rose perfume doesn't get you fucked up like this. I think it's 
something like peyote, a hallucinogen.  You want me to do a cellular 
breakdown on the chlorophyll and find out what plant it came from?" 
"Please." Dana said.
"Regardless if this is a known or controlled substance, I think you 
should call in the DEA to consult."
"We get one more law enforcement agency in here and we're going to need 
a lubricant." Mucheski muttered.
"Call me when you get the information on the plant oil." Dana patted 
Dani on the shoulder.
"Get some sleep." Dani said.
Mucheski ambled out the door of the lab, Dani caught Dana's eye and made 
a face.
"He's cute." Dani mouthed at her.
"Thank you." Dana lipped back and rolled her eyes.

Lunchtime had brought agents out of their offices and there was a knot 
of suited men and women at the elevator.  Dana waited quietly and 
watched Mucheski fidget.
"So we're back to the drug thing." he said.
"Looks like it." she agreed.
"You were right and I was wrong."
"Gee, I never thought men had that phrase in their vocabulary."
"Scully?"
Turning around, Dana saw a familiar and unwelcome face.
"Colton." she said with something other than enthusiasm.
"So how are you doing?" pudgy agent asked.
I have cancer and I'm going to die? Dana thought.  A real 
conversation-stopper.
"Great.  How's North Dakota?"
"Cold and the people all talk funny.  Where's Spooky? Catch ET yet?"
"He's away."
Colton was unsuccessfully trying not to stare at Mucheski. Recognition 
flared.
"I know you." Colton said.
"Been arrested in DC lately?"
"No, you played for the Rangers.  Something Polish."
"Mucheski."
"Right. What happened to you?"
"Got hurt, quit, became a cop." Mucheski gave him a predatory smile. 
"Had to find another job where you get paid for beating people up."
"Good thing, you were about two seasons away from skating the part of 
Snoopy in the Ice Capades."
Dana didn't actually see Mucheski hit Colton, she saw Colton fall to the 
linoleum floor the moment the elevator doors opened. Agents stepped over 
the writhing Colton.
"Son of a bitch." Colton moaned.
"I get paid well to beat people up." Mucheski took Dana's hand and 
helped her step over Colton.
"Sorry." he said in the elevator.
"Are you kidding?" she felt her face form the wide, goofy smile she 
hated, "I've been wanting to do than for years."
 
Dana dropped Mucheski off at the Police Station and drove home playing 
her Janis Joplin tape at full blast.  The apartment was quiet and she 
left a trail of clothes to the bedroom, where she put on her grubbiest 
sweatpants and the DCPD T-shirt, crawled into her cold bed and slept.
She had no dreams.

Syntax and Measure
Who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the 
tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
Who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations 
which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
Who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borscht & tortillas 
dreaming of pure vegetable kingdom,
Who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg.
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl" 1956
11/26
By MustangSally

"You wanted to see me, sir?"
"Close the door, Agent Scully."
Oh shit, now I'm going to get it, she thought and obediently shut the 
door.  The door shut with a decisive bang, and she almost apologized, 
then thought 'what the hell' to herself and faced Skinner with a 
slightly rebellious expression, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her 
navy jacket.  The gunshot of the door made Skinner's head snap up from 
the papers he was reading.
"What the hell happened to your face?" 
"Subduing a suspect, sir." she said in a voice that echoed the Dana at 
twelve lying to her father.
"You gave as good as you got, I heard."
"I was only doing my job, sir." this time her voice came out mulishly 
obstinate.
Skinner looked at her as though she had decided to set her hair on fire 
and dance around his office in the nude; he blinked and tilted his head 
to the side.
"Is something bothering you, Agent Scully?"
"I'm fine, sir."
For some inexplicable, enigmatic Skinner reason, the AD got up from 
behind his desk and crossed the room until they were virtually pump to 
wingtip. Dana could smell the coolness of his after shave, and 
underneath something darker and more primal. The brute force of his 
physical presence washed over her like a warm breeze over marshland, 
heavy, clean, life, decay, earthy. She grit her aching teeth. What the 
hell was going on with her anyway?  What was this sudden 
hyper-sensitivity to every man's sexuality?  It was getting hard to 
think through all the pheromones.   She was going to have to start 
taking saltpeter or something. On the other hand, maybe this was the way 
that men felt all the time.
In the back of her mind, a little spark of alarm flared and was 
extinguished.  
"I received a very commendable report from Captain Kulujian about your 
effectiveness in the hostage situation."
"I only wish that I had been able to prevent Officer Chu's death."
"These things happen, we go on from there. Have you been able to 
retrieve any useful information from the suspect?"
"He's just regained consciousness.  I'm due to meet Detective Mucheski 
and begin the initial interrogation this morning."
"Detective Mucheski," Skinner moved away and looked out the window, the 
bulk of his shoulders blocking out most of the building opposite "I want 
to speak to you about Detective Mucheski."
"Sir?" 
Dana swallowed air that turned to ice in her stomach. Somehow he knew 
about her and Mucheski, he knew and he was going to castigate her for 
getting involved with a local policeman.  He was going to call her a 
whore and---
"I have a complaint here from Agent Tom Colton that Detective Mucheski 
assaulted him in front of the elevator bank at Quantico.  As well as a 
very colorful report from the Security Desk. What do you have to say 
about that?"
"Well, he's no Agent Mulder." she said, her voice a little shaky.
"How much do you know about Ice Hockey, Agent Scully?"
"I'm not a big sports fan, sir."
"It's a fast, brutal game, violent in the extreme.  It's more fight than 
finesse half the time and passions run high.  I saw Mucheski play when 
he was with the Rangers.  I watched him slam men twice his size up 
against the boards and then laugh while he was in the penalty box.  The 
injury that forced him out of the game was a deliberate hit from two 
Canadians he'd spiked earlier in the game."
The carpet absorbed the silence.
"I hadn't been aware he had played before Colton brought it up."
"Keep a leash on him, a tight leash.  Do not let this situation get out 
of control."
Oh God, he knew,  he could smell it on her like a dog.
Shaking, Dana shut the door behind her.

Fortuitously, Rivera was being held in the secure wing of the hospital 
where Dana's oncologist maintained an office. Since she was early for 
her meeting with Mucheski, she hurried up a few floors to see if her 
doctor was in.  There was no receptionist in the deserted waiting area 
of the oncology section so she forged ahead past the treatment rooms to 
the back where the offices were. Rounding a corner, she found  Dr. Roth 
with a doughnut sticking out of his mouth and a cup of coffee in each 
hand. Roth was a nice-looking man in his mid-forties with gray-sprinkled 
dark hair and a permanent smile in his dark eyes.  He made a strangled 
squeak when he saw her and handed Dana a cup of coffee so he could spit 
out the doughnut.
"Dana, how are you doin'? Still putting the bad guys in jail?"
"A few."
"Did I blow off an appointment? Karen and the kids have the 'flu and it 
has totally fucked up my schedule.  Take the coffee, I was going to 
drink two-fisted."
Dana sipped the coffee and almost gagged on the sugar.
"No appointment. I was in the building and I thought I'd drop by."
"Social visit?"
"Questions.  I have questions."
"Step into my coffin."
Roth shared a tiny office with another doctor, he moved a stack of 
reports off a chair onto the floor and indicated the chair.  Dana sat, 
crossed her legs, and drank coffee. The events of the past few days were 
still making her edgy and hyper.  It seemed the height of indulgence to 
take the precious few minutes away from the case to speak with her 
doctor.  It seemed that she could hear her watch ticking through her 
entire body.  It took Roth a few moments to find a clear spot to put 
down his coffee, then he slouched in his chair and looked at her with 
his happy eyes.
"Whazzup?" he asked.
"This is hard to talk about."
"So tell me like you're going on rounds."
"Right. Female patient, non-operable tumor, you know the case history, 
patient involved in a high-stress job, and has begun noticing behavioral 
abnormalities."
"Nature of the abnormalities?"
"Extreme interest in sex." she said without pause.
"That's abnormal?" there was merriment in his voice.
"It is for this patient." her voice came out as a defensive squawk.
"You're asking me for my opinion as a doctor if this behavioral 
abnormality is a symptom of the disease."
"Yes."
"Not necessarily.  It can be that it's a psychological reaction to 
feeling very mortal, a celebration of life that is left, or a brain 
chemical dysfunction."
"It can be a chemical imbalance."
"Do you want it to be?"
"Yes."
"What if you just found someone who lights your pilot light? I remember 
when I met Karen, all I thought about was sex for about three years.  
Every woman I met I wondered what she was like in bed. There's nothing 
wrong with it.  You'd be surprised how many people go through life in an 
erotic fog."
"Not me."
"Why not?"
"I'm not like that."
Roth leaned back in his chair and gave her a brilliant smile.
"Maybe it's time for you to be.  This may have happened even if you 
didn't have the tumor.  Women hit their sexual peak in their 
mid-thirties." he grinned again "If he's a decent guy, go for it. I give 
you my permission.  But I warn you to be conscious of not getting 
pregnant.  We're still anticipating a course of chemotherapy and 
radiation here and the fetus could be compromised."
"That was the farthest thing from my mind."
"This wouldn't be that guy that comes in with you - what's his name - 
Ferret?"
"Fox. God no, not him." she actually laughed, for the first time in 
weeks.
"So what's the lucky guy's name?"
"Moo."
Roth blinked.
"Have you tried dating humans?"

"You're late." Mucheski said as he followed her down the hospital 
hallway.
"I got reamed out for your little stunts at Quantico yesterday.  My AD 
is not amused." she heard her heels rattling on the floor as Mucheski 
sneaker-footed next to her.
"Your AD can kiss my ass."
"You can kiss mine."
"Are you making a pass at me?"
Dana opened the door to the hospital room, her stomach reflexively 
clenching at the familiar sights and sounds.  The beige walls, the 
beeping of the heart monitor, the sticky tape holding the IV in place.  
Her inner elbow itched in sympathy.  Rivera was lying in the bed with 
his hands restrained to the rails.  All her aches and pains flared again 
at the sight of this man.  Steeling herself, she walked to the end of 
the bed and picked up his chart.  Three broken ribs, fracture of the 
ulna, concussion, and various contusions and scrapes.  So she had won.  
At least she was standing and this cop-murdering son of a bitch was 
chained to his bed. She arranged a pleasant smile on her face and looked 
down at him with contempt.
"Diego? My name's Dana, can I talk to you for a minute?"
Dark eyes in pools of bruises opened, and barely focused on her. Needing 
a shave, with blood still matted in his hair and patches of yellow 
betadine around his wounds, Diego Rivera was not the frightening monster 
that she had faced up on the roof.  She noted that he had the red, scaly 
skin around his nose and mouth of the long-term inhalant abuser.  He was 
utterly repulsive. He was also the only man in the past few days that  
hadn't elicited any kind of carnal response from her. That in and of 
itself,  made her feel a little warmer towards him.
"I know you?"
"Not really.  I want to ask you about Maureen Spencer."
"Who?"
"The woman who was killed.  Did you see anyone in the apartment with 
her?"
"If he says Kaiser Soze, I 'm going to fucking strangle him with his own 
IV. " Mucheski muttered.
"The woman who killed her."
"Do you know her name?"
"No. She came in, all on fire, touched the girl, then she killed her." 
Rivera's eyes sagged shut, the drugs pulling what remained of his brain 
back into the dark cocoon of sleep.
"This cryptic shit is really getting on my nerves." Mucheski said as 
they walked out of the room, the two police guards snapping back into an 
attitude of alertness.
"I still don't think he's our killer."
"There's only one way to be sure."
Neither spoke as they headed for the exit. The only way to know if 
Rivera hadn't been killing the others was if there was another murder 
while he was in custody.  It was a long, quiet walk to the parking 
garage.



Syntax and Measure
12/26

Who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity
outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the
next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up
and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried,
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl" 1956

The coffee bar was crowded, crowded with Capitol Hill types trying to
look grungy, teenagers trying to look cool, and Mr. and Mrs. Joe Q
Public trying not to look bewildered.  There was also a pair of female
FBI agents trying to look like civilians.  No one was having much
success.  The noise of the neo-folk singers doing a poor impersonation
of Peter Paul and Mary was enough to give Dana the beginning of a
headache.  At the same time, she was aware that she really should have
been going over case files, looking at the autopsy reports or harassing
Dani to get the breakdown on the DNA in the plant choloroplasts done. =

She should not have been indulging herself in a cup of cappuccino with
Halley on a Friday night.
"Well?"  Halley asked.
"Well what?"
"Well Dani called me and told me that your young man from the DCPD was
to die for gorgeous.  As in get me a towel and a Diet Coke gorgeous."
"What is this, high school?" =

"If we were men we would talk about sports.  Now tell me what is going
on with this guy?"  Halley ran a hand through her hair and wrinkled her
nose at Dana.  "I pay my babysitter by the hour so don't be long about
it."
Dana sipped her cappuccino and thought for a moment, before feeling a
small smile tug at her mouth.
"Detective Mucheski is very intelligent, a good officer, and has a very
high level of enthusiasm." she said in careful tones.
"Modified rapture."
"I'm not really looking to get involved with anyone right now."
"So you didn't sleep with him."
The man at the next table looked over at Dana as if he was as anxious
for the answer as Halley was.  Dana flashed him what her partner
referred to as "the look of death" and he went back to his coffee.
"I don't have to answer that."  Dana protested.
"Do you want to?"
"Halley---" Dana groaned "this is so juvenile."
"Come on my life is so boring!  I'm living vicariously through you!  Did
you at least kiss him?"
"Yes!  Are you happy now?" Dana drank some more cappuccino and hoped
that she hadn't started blushing.  "This is so embarrassing." =

"I am so jealous," Halley sighed "I ought to get out of the lab more
often." =

"You should."
"Is he a good kisser?"
Then the screaming started.
A woman dressed in the blue apron of a coffee-server cam running out of
the back room behind the counter, her face contorted like an
Expressionist painting, and her hands covered with blood.  The dull
rumble of the conversational tide went out, leaving nothing but silence
and the hanging chord of an acoustic guitar in the coffee-scented air.
"What the fuck?" one of the other servers stuttered.
"Ohmigoditspeteandhesdeadandtheresbloodalloverthemochajava!"
Dana's cup tipped over and the dark liquid spread over the scarred
tabletop.
The cappuccino machine hissed.
A flash of badges gave Dana and Halley access to the storeroom.  Ad
huddled body lay slumped between the boxes of coffee, a pool of blood
spreading out on the floor with the scattered coffegrounds.  Carefully
avoiding touching the body for fear of disturbing evidence, Dana stepped
around to where she could see the face of the dead man.
Blue eyes, dry in death, stared back at her.
Peter Gilroy.
"Damn," she said and reached for her cellphone.
"You know him?"  Halley asked, looking decidedly queasy.
"He's a witness in my case."  Dana pulled the phone out of the pocket of
her bomber jacket and dialed Mucheski's home number.
The phone rang three times.
"Yeah?" came the ungracious croak from the other side of the line.
"Peter Gilroy is dead.  I'm looking at his body right now.  He's been
killed in the storeroom of the Last Drop."
"Awwwww man," Mucheski groaned "I was really enjoying this movie. =

Bastard.  Okay, you control the scene and I'll get the Three Stooges and
The Mystery Machine over there ASAP.  Just have a caf=E9 latte ready and
waiting."
Dana clicked off her phone and looked over to Halley who had turned pale
seafoam and was looking at the body as though it might bite.
"This is your first live crime scene since the Academy, right?  Do you
remember what to do?" Dana asked the other agent.
"First I puke."  Halley said and bolted from the room.
"Stay in the lab."  Dana muttered to herself.
Alone with the body, Dana crouched down and stared at the dead face.
"You had to go and ruin a perfectly good night, didn't you?"
For once, Gilroy had nothing to say.

Crime Scene tape enveloped the small storeroom.  Dana watched the men
from the Coroner's van zip Peter Gilroy into a black vinyl bag. =

Mucheski, looking like an Old Spice commercial in a tired white
fisherman's sweater watched over her shoulder, a latte in his hand. =

Halley, leaning against the doorjamb watched both of them with a vaguely
envious expression.  Forcing herself to keep her attention on the body,
on the matter at hand, Dana felt the pull of Mucheski's presence at the
molecular level.  Strange attractors, she thought.
"What do you think?" he asked.
With the uncomfortable feeling that she was wearing her every thought in
a stream of words under her face like subtitles in a Bergman movie, Dana
looked up at him.
"His eyes weren't punctured and the cause of death seems to be a wound
to the chest, I'll hazard a guess that it goes straight through to the
heart.  Someone deliberately silenced him."
"I bet there were a lot of people who wanted to shut him up.  Sorry.  De
mortis nil nisi bonum.  About the dead nothing should be said but good."
"There's a very small ventilation duct over in the corner, but from the
cobwebs clogging it, I doubt if the killer came in through there." =

Halley offered.
Mucheski barely seemed to notice her presence, his rain-washed eyes not
straying from Dana's face.
"What should we do?" he asked.
"Treat it as a related crime, but not include it as the work of our
UNSUB."
Please stop looking at me like that, she thought.
Doctor's orders.
Doctor's orders to grab this man and run for the nearest room with a
lock on the door.
Oh God please don't reduce me to that.
There isn't much time left.
Nosebleed this morning.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

What was that from?

"At the rate this is going we're going to have more bodies than at the
end of Hamlet."  Mucheski growled.
"I have to go home.  I'm late as it is, and I have to get the babysitter
home.  Can you get a ride back to the Hoover Building to get your car?" =

Halley piped up from the doorway.
"I'll take her."  Mucheski said without turning around.
"See you tomorrow."  Dana said over her shoulder to Halley.
Halley rolled her eyes and made a quick exit.
"I was going to call you anyway." Mucheski said.
"You were?"
"Yeah," he smiled "apparently our slime of the month Diego Rivera has
come around and noticed that turning state's evidence is better than
getting nailed as a cop killer."
"He wants to talk."
"Apparently he's singing like Mario Lanza."
"Let's go hear the concert."
As they went through the door of the storeroom, Mucheski's elbow bumped
hers, igniting neurons deep in her brain, connections were made, and the
chemicals began a merry dance.  She remembered the feel of his skin
against hers and ducked her head to let her hair fall across the blush
staining her face.

Coming out of the bathroom stall, Dana was ambushed by her reflection. =

Mirrors, in her experience were strange things.  The image thrown back
at her from the silvered glass rarely seemed to match up with her own
image of self.  The mirrors, on occasion, showed her a successful,
composed woman in a tasteful suit with subtle make-up and shining hair. =

Other times she saw an adolescent urchin with a dirty nose and tousled
hair.  On darker occasions she was confronted with a pale, frightened
woman with blood running over her lips and chin.  This woman in the
mirror had dilated eyes, flushed cheeks and a treacherously soft mouth.
She washed her hands in freezing cold water, letting the water run over
the veins inside her wrists, letting the shock jar her back into
reality.  Feeling a little more composed; she strode back into Rivera's
room.  The guards on duty shuffled to attention.
Rivera was now propped upright in the bed, looking partially revived,
and Mucheski was slouched in the visitor's chair, looking more worn and
haggard than the prisoner.  Dana moved to the window and waited,
watching the proceedings.  Standing there in a sweater and stirrup pants
she felt woefully unprepared and underdressed for the occasion.
"Tell me about the ghost, Diego."  Mucheski prodded.
"It comes in a spray can.  Like one of those sample things.  I sell them
for seventy-five bucks a pop, I make ten each and kick the rest back."
"To who?"
"Some little fat dude, Jack I think.  He calls me like he's a regular
fare, I pick him up and he gives me the shit."
"You know where he gets the stuff?"
"What the fuck do you think I am?  I'm the fucking bag man, I don't know
shit."  Rivera protested.
"You better know shit because you killed two cops, fuck-face and you
better remember or the DA is not going to think your info is worth
anything but the bullshit behind it."
Obviously, he had switched to Dirty Harry mode again.
"I ain't sayin' anymore until you put out.  Nobody rides for free."
Mucheski leaned in closer, his entire body taking on a tense, predatory
air.
"Listen you pathetic low life asshole, I can't think of one good reason
I shouldn't stuff a pillow over your face until you go to the hell that
you deserve."
"Yeah?  I heard the cops outside talkin'.  They said you fucked the
chink cop the same way you're fucking that one over there."  Rivera
glared over at Dana.
"You hold that image while you're slow-dancing with the big boys in
stir.  You're a cute guy, Diego, your dance card and your asshole should
both be pretty full."
"Where do you pick this Jack up?  Is it in the same area every time?" =

Dana interrupted.
"Down at the clubs, Iet him off there, too."
"Same place?"
"It's not that big, sometimes the same place, sometimes not."
"We'll need a list," she said.
"Blow me first, baby."
"You lying sack of shit."  Mucheski stood up and towered over the
bedridden dealer.
"Can I talk to you for a minute?"  Dana asked, "Outside?"
Dragging is feet like a teenager, Mucheski followed Dana into the hall
and down to the nurse's station where a lone pastel woman made notes on
charts and moved back and forth on squeaking rubber shoes.
"Can we keep the testosterone down to a manageable level, please."
"Sorry." he mumbled and shoved his hands in his pockets.
"I can appreciate that you're upset, but you're gaining no ground here."
"You're going to report me to the captain, aren't you?"
"Just keep a lid on it, okay?"
"I need coffee.  You want some."
The thought of hospital vending machine coffee made Dana feel downright
queasy.
"No thanks."
"Be back in a flash." he headed for the elevators.
"Mucheski." she called after him.
"Yeah."
"What movie were you watching?"
He grinned, a sudden flash of light in the dismal evening.
"Howard's End." he said and stepped into the elevator.
Smiling to herself, Dana looked at her watch.
Quarter to nine.
Fifteen minutes before nine o'clock.
Forty-five minutes after eight.

"At eight-forty-five tonight, a trio of armed gunmen broke into the
secure ward of the George Washington University Hospital.  Details are
sketchy at this hour, but apparently there many wounded and several
fatalities.  Patients, staff members, police, and an FBI agent are
included in the list of the victims.  Names have not yet been released
pending the families being notified.  Stay tuned to this FOX station for
further updates as information becomes available."



Syntax and Measure
13/26

HALFWAY THERE GANG!!

Thank you for flying MustangSally airlines.
The cabin boys will be coming around with the drink cart to celebrate
the halfway point of our journey together.  The captain would like to
thank all of those who encouraged and bullied me, including the
Mysterious Rain for her illustrations, and   for her warp 9 typing
without whom all of this would be much slower in coming!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison!  Moloch the crossbones soulless
jailhouse and Congress of sorrows!  Moloch whose buildings are
judgement!  Moloch the vast stone or war!  Moloch the stunned
governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!  Moloch whose blood is running
money!  Moloch whose fingers are ten armies!  Moloch whose breast is a
cannibal dynamo!  Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl" 1956

"Move bitch, and I'll blow your head the fuck off."
The gun barrel stroked Dana's skull in precisely the wrong place to blow
her head off, but would, instead, make an equally lethal hole.
"Can I help you?" the nurse behind the counter asked the young man who
held the gun to Dana's head.
The woman's eyes were white, rimmed with shock, but she had decided in
some part of her mind, to behave as though nothing really out of the
ordinary was happening.  Dana herself was amazingly calm but profoundly
annoyed that their case was really getting out of control.
"Diego Rivera....which room?"
"North Wing." she gestured.  "303"
The silencer on the gun reduced the report to sharp hissing sound.  The
red blood flowered on the nurse's throat and began to run into the
collar of her shirt before she crumpled to the floor behind the station.
This put things in a slightly different perspective.
The thug grabbed Dana's arm and hauled her away from the desk.  His
terror
and excitement was telegraphed down his arm into her body.  She found
herself staring at his sweaty, dirty face, realizing that he was jacked
up on some kind of upper, which would make him virtually unpredictable. 
He smelled of unwashed body, cigarettes, and alcohol.  She stumbled
after him, her brain repeatedly stalling as she tried to come up with
some kind of plan.
Where the hell was Mucheski?
It wasn't so much that she wanted him to rescue her, per say.  She
wanted him
to call for backup, then
rescue her.  Rescue everyone on the ward.
At the elevator bank there were two more men carrying handguns with
silencers.  To her amazement, one was the young man who had harassed her
in the police station days earlier.  Recognition lit his beady little
eyes.
"Fuck!  It's her!"
"What?"
"She's a fuckin' cop, man.  Or something.  She's a Fibbie, whatever the
fuck
that is."
"Fuck!  We've had it!  She's a fucking FBI agent." the other man,
standing near Dana's harasser, was a tall Aryan-looking man with a
shaved head and a pierced chin.
"Kill her!"  Dana's captor ordered, tightening his grip to a level where
she knew she would have bruises.
"You talkin' to Diego?" the Aryan asked, holding his gun level with her
face.
Dana tightened her lips as the man who had taken her hostage removed her
phone, gun, and badge from her belt.  He passed the badge to the Aryan
and the phone to her friend from the police station.  Sticking her
sidearm in his waistband, the Aryan flipped open her ID case.
"Special Agent Dana Scully.  Nice picture, babe.  You're not going to
have a face when we're done with you."
There was no way in hell that she was going to give any kind of reaction
whatsoever.
"Bitch!" the Aryan slammed her in the face with his gun.
The floor was cold on her face and hands when she hit, the linoleum
giving a
cement of reality to an otherwise nightmarish scene.  Her face was numb,
but she saw the blood pooling on the floor underneath her.  If she
feigned unconsciousness, they would probably shoot her as she lay on the
floor.  Hands grabbed her hair and pulled.  An involuntary squawk of
pain came out of her mouth.  As she scrambled up, her head was ringing
like cathedral bells and she could barely see from the pain and blood.
"Come on, you bitch!" her captor hissed in her ear.
"Oh, man, not now.  We don't have time!" the Aryan complained.
"You go waste Rivera.  I wanna find out if Special Agent Dana Scully is
really a redhead or not."  He gave
her a brutal shove.  "Move it, bitch!"
Grabbing her arm, she pulled, trying to flip him over her shoulder, but
her attacker was nimble and retaliated by slamming her onto a nearby
wall.  The force of the breath shocked from her lungs made Dana gasp and
she fought the feeling of nausea that swept over her.
He dragged her into the nearest room, a supply closet full of sheets,
scrubs, soap and smelling like bleach. 
He flicked on the single light overhead, relieving the gloom to a small
extent and shut the door behind him. 
Pushing Dana against the far wall, he took off his jacket and threw it
on the floor.  Looking around, Dana saw nothing that could even remotely
be used as a weapon.  It was a wasteland of softness, fabric and jugs of
liquid.
"You're gonna wish you got down on your hands and knees and sucked my
cock, when we first met." he said with a smile full of bad teeth.
Actually, Dana wished she'd put her gun to his head and splattered his
brains all over the DCPD bullpen.
Where the hell was Mucheski?  He'd been gone for what seemed like
hours.  he could have walked to Columbia and grown the coffee beans by
now.
The man closed the distance between them and put the gun muzzle to her
left cheek, his other hand sliding down her thin cashmere cardigan to
squeeze her right breast.  His breath was rank.
"Not so pretty are you now Special Agent Dana Scully?"
His tongue left a sticky, greasy trail along the side of her face as he
lapped the blood away, his fingers tightening to pinch her nipple with
painful pressure.  She choked back a whimper.  He smacked her with the
heel of his hand, almost knocking her to the ground again.  It hailed
buttons when he tore her sweater open and fumbled open the front-closure
of her bra.  Shifting the gun under her chin, the man yanked down the
elastic waistband of her stirrup pants and panties down to her knees. 
He looked down at her body and laughed.
Humiliated, dazed, and furious, Dana pressed her back against the wall
and plotted this man's death.  The gun was pressing on her carotid
artery and all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears like
the bass line in a club mix.  Working his hand between their bodies, her
attacker unbuckled his pants and freed his penis from the confines of
his jeans and underwear.  Even fully erect, the man had nothing to brag
about.
"You want it baby, you know you do," he chanted, eyes glazed.  "Suck me
off!
You want to bitch."  He
forced her to her knees.
Not if you were the last, psychotic, amphetamine abusing, needle-dick,
bug-fucker, loser on earth, honey, Dana thought.  She reached for him,
her fingers closing around the orbs of his testes, floating loosely in
his scrotum.  She pulled down and twisted.
The gun went off next to her head, the bullet punching a hole in a
bottle of disinfectant.  Dana's attacker hit a note that would have done
an opera diva proud and keeled over sideways, clutching his crotch. 
Dana stood up and kicked him in the back.
She pulled up her underwear and pants and kicked him again.
She grabbed the gun out of his stiff fingers and kicked him a third
time.
"I hope you enjoy getting ass-fucked in prison," she hissed.
The man's eyes were dull and he looked like he was going into shock.
She honestly didn't give a damn and it took every ounce of self control
she
had not to put a neat little gunshot wound in the middle of his
forehead.  She wiped her bleeding face off on a towel.
Hitching her bra up over her breasts, Dana set out, locking the storage
room door behind her.
When Dana finally found Mucheski, he was standing with his gun out,
coffee spilled on his white sweater, and a pile of dead hospital workers
at his feet.  For a fleeting moment, Dana was afraid he had shot them,
but rejected the thought almost immediately.
"Where the fuck have you been?" he demanded.
"I ran into an old friend.  What's the situation?" she panted.
"There's two of them.  They killed Rivera and anyone they found.  I
called
the SWAT team and they should be here any minute.  They also killed
Rivera's guards."
"Thank god no one on this floor is on oxygen."
"What happened to your shirt?"
"Long story."
"I'm starting to think you bring me bad Karma, Red."
Muffled cursing and shouting could be heard down the hallway.  Dana
raised
her purloined pistol and
crept along behind Mucheski.
They rounded the corner in time to see the two remaining thugs pounding
at the elevator buttons.  The elevator lights weren't even lit.  Through
the window, at the far end of the hall, Dana saw the flashing lights in
red and blue outside.
"Freeze, Asshole!"  Mucheski shouted.
"Federal Agents!"
Technically it was Federal Agent, but who was counting.
The gunmen wavered, no doubt the buzz of whatever they had been using
had
worn off.  The shorter one
with the dark hair raised his gun.
Dana drew a nice clear bead on him and shot him square in the chest.  A
part of her mind registered that Mucheski was also firing and the air
stank of cordite.
When the adrenaline haze lifted, she was clicking on the empty chamber
of the gun.  She had emptied the entire magazine of the automatic into
him.
"Hey, hey, Red.  Take it easy, they're not going anywhere."
A haze of faces swam in front of her.
Donnie Pfaster
Eugene Tooms
Alex Krychek
The man with the cigarette.
The man who shot Melissa.
All the faces of men she had shot or had wanted to shoot paraded by in a
QuickTime clip of murderous hatred.
"Red."
The man in the closet who had almost raped her.
"Red?"
She pulled herself up to her full height and shook her head.
"I'm fine, Mucheski.  I'm fine."



***This exciting installment brought to you by THE QUEEN OF THE MICE
PEOPLE, without whose Warp 9 fingers, this would been a hell of a longer
in the posting.  Thanks, kiddo***
Syntax and Measure
14/26

Who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's
hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
Who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find if I had a vision or you
had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
Who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver &
waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and
finally went away to find out the Time & now Denver is lonesome for her
heroes,
Allen Ginsburg
"Howl", 1956


Fortunately Dana was spared the additional degradation of an internal
examination, but the rape kit was used, evidence was taken, and Polaroid
photographs were taken of her battered face to build the case against
Dave Silnontz, her attempted rapist.
Dave Silnontz.
Giving him a name didn't humanize him.
Silnontz was in ICU, hemorrhaging, in shock and babbling deliriously.  A
feral part of her heart hoped he would die.  A civilized part felt guilt
for the thought.
Cleaned, sutured, and wearing a set of scrubs that had to be rolled at
the hem, Dana lay on a bed in the ER waiting for Mucheski to finish the
paperwork.  The ceiling tiles were a woven pattern, stained dark around
the air conditioning vent.  How many people had looked up at that duct
only for it to be the last thing they ever saw in their life?
At least she wasn't one of them.
Not this time anyway.
The image of Dave Silnontz's genitals flashed through her mind and a
horrible wave of nausea engulfed her.
She made it to the tiny sink before she vomited.
Bile, coffee, and blood washed down the drain.
She touched her upper lip and saw blood on her fingers.
Sweet Jesus, not now.
Splashing cold water over the lower half of her face, Dana then wiped
her
nose with a tissue and shuffled
back to the bed like a hundred year-old woman.
Trading one form of death for another.
Her eyes burned for a moment and the room swam in a stinging wash of
controlled tears.  She pinched her
nose and sighed.
Two nosebleeds in one day.  That was not good.  Not good by a longshot.
"Hey."  A soft voice came from the doorway.
Mucheski stood in the doorway, his body a question.
"Hey, yourself."
"How are you doing?" he asked, advancing a couple of steps into the room
and
sticking his hands in his
jeans pockets.
"I've been better," she said and sat up.
The room danced for moment before returning to a reasonable facsimile of
solidness.  She had rejected offers of sedation, preferring to let her
body's natural opiates earn their minimum wage and now felt heavy and
lethargic.
Swollen, like her face and her eyes.
In the doorway, leading to the hustle and bustle of the shell-shocked
hospital, in that very same doorway,
stood Mucheski, clear and bright as crystal.
Pity.
She saw it in his rainy eyes.
"I want to see Rivera."

The elevators, having been turned back on, were empty and the two stood
alone in the rising metal box. 
Dana held a plastic bag containing her badge, phone, keys, and wallet.  
"But at my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot drawing near."
"What?" he asked.
Not realizing that she had spoken aloud, Dana looked down at the
surgical
slippers on her feet.
"I can't remember the poem," she said.  "It's driving me crazy."
"Ah." he said.
The body of Diego Rivera lay in a swaddling of blood-stained sheets, the
heart monitor showing a flat line, and the IV dripping onto the floor. 
The assassins had done a good job; obliterating most of his head with
several well placed shots, echoing the thorough job he had done on
officers Chu and Williams.
"There's our last witness."  Mucheski took off his glasses and polished
them on the hem of his sweater. 
"Brains blown to shit.  Not that he had all that much to begin with."
"Maybe we'll get something useful out of Silnontz."  Dana's tongue
almost refused to pronounce the name.
The scene of the crime technicians tended to the room like housemaids. 
it must have been another SOC team, as Dana didn't recognize a single
face.  All strangers.  A feeling set over her, a strange underwater
feeling where the air had resistance and texture and all the noises took
on a distant bass vibrato.
"I'm thinking that we're stepping on a shitload of toes here.  Gilroy
was killed to shut him up, and now Rivera."
"Rivera was just the messenger.  He wasn't close to the source."
"He was a lying piece of shit.  Unfortunately we'll only get answers
from
him through a Ouija board
now."
An image of Mucheski trying to communicate with the dead with a toy made
by Parker Brothers appeared full-blown in Dana's head and she almost
laughed aloud.  Mulder?  In a heartbeat.  Mucheski? No way.
"The only problem with drug rings is that---"
"----they're like the Hydra.  Cut off one head and two more appear."
The voice made Dana spin, and her brain followed a millisecond later.
Walter Skinner stood in the doorway, incongruous in a turtleneck and
jeans.
The flashes from the
photographer glinted off of his glasses.
"Are you all right, Agent Scully?" he asked.
"I'm fine, sir."
"The general idea," he said, stepping into the room, "in a murder
investigation, is to decrease the number
bodies, not increase."
He walked over to the bed and looked down at the mangled mess of
Rivera's head.  Stray bits of white bone shone through the blood and
brain matter that had splattered over the pillow and headboard.  Such a
thorough job had been done one Rivera that a dental identification was
going to be difficult.  Difficult but not impossible.
"It seems to me that you have stepped on the proverbial tail of the
snake.
I'm going to have the case
turned over to Organized Crime and the DEA."
Dana began feeling nauseous again.
"Wait a minute, buddy---" Mucheski's voice came out in a primal growl. 
"I'm
the fucking primary here. 
You can't just fucking waltz in here and Bogart my case."
"He can."  Dana muttered.
"What?!" Mucheski squawked.
"He can.  He's an Assistant Director of the FBI."  Dana said in a low
voice.
"I don't care if he's fucking J. Edgar Hoover returned from the dead in
a
strapless ballgown.  My case, my
collar."  Mucheski raged.
"I'd appreciate a little respect, Detective."  Skinner said in a level
tone, backed up by rank and muscle.
"You've bumbled into a case that is beyond your ability to control." 
Skinner said, taking a few steps toward the younger man.  "You've lost
six patients, four police officers and two nurses in the space of
thirty-six hours.  Your ego has overpowered your ability to handle this
case in an effective manner.  Leave it to law officers who can handle
the case before anyone else gets killed."
"I have everything under control."  Mucheski said from between his
teeth.
"Did you have it under control when Agent Scully was nearly raped in the
storage closet?"
Mulder, Dana realized, would have backed down at that point.  He would
have made an obstinate reply and returned to his basement lair to fume
and lick his wounds.  Mucheski either had no concept of Skinner's
authority, or simply didn't care.  She suspected the latter.
They were like two dogs bristling and snarling over the carcass of Diego
Rivera, Diego River who had been reduced to the most basic level - meat.
"Agent Scully handled the situation and I wouldn't demean her ability or
her intelligence by imagining that she couldn't defend herself, buddy." 
Mucheski advanced a few steps towards Skinner.
Standing his ground, Skinner fixed Mucheski with a dark, impassive
stare.
"You will address me as Assistant Director Skinner or Sir, Detective
Mucheski!"
"Then you're a fucking asshole, Assistant Director Skinner, Sir!"
Obviously determined to have the last word, Mucheski stalked out of the
room.
Chest loosening somewhat, Dana took a deep breath.  Skinner focused on
her.
"He's a loose cannon," he said.
"If I remember correctly, sir, you were of the opinion that I could
handle
him."  Dana spoke in the mildest
tone she could manage.
Blinking, Skinner looked away, a muscle in his cheek clenching and
unclenching.  Dana watched the thoughts slide through his mind like fish
deep beneath the water's surface.  Vague shapes, undulating outlines,
glimmers of brightness of an eye or a scale catching the light.
"I've made mistakes before," he said.
It came back then, the same murky feeling she'd had in his office.  The
realization of the form that he occupied in space, the breath of his
shoulders and the subtle magic chemical mix from the human male.  She
found herself wanting to reach out and touch him, to complete the
equation, for comfort, for----
God, she thought, you would think that I couldn't stand the thought of
touching a man tonight.
There's something terribly wrong with me.
"Take tomorrow off.  That's an order, Agent Scully.  Once this case is
completed, we'll discuss the investigation of your use of lethal force
against the assassins."
"Sir."
"Clear this up, quickly.  It's against my better judgment, but I want
you to
complete this case.  Quickly." he looked up at her.  "That is all."
"Thank you, sir."
"Son of a bitch!"
Mucheski made another snowball and threw it at the aluminum stop sign.
Another direct hit.  The O was nearly obliterated with clinging snow. 
Dana jogged up to him, clutching her jacket shirt with one hand.  The
unplowed grassy area chilled her feet through the thing leather of her
boots.
Another pair of shoes ruined in the
cause of justice.
"Steve." she said.
Pausing, he held a handful of snow in one hand, the light from the
Emergency
room entrance staining his hair crimson.  Whatever reaction Skinner
caused in her baser nature, it was geometrically increased with this
volatile creature.
"Is he always such a dickhead?"
"It's more complicated than that."
"Yeah, and I'm just a stupid fucking cop!"
The snowball made a satisfying clanging noise against the symbol of the
sign.
"Well, whoop-dee fucking doo."
"Listen to me!" she grabbed the swinging label of his jacket with her
free
hand.  "We're not off the case."
Freezing, he looked down at her.  Not so far down, she realized.  Her
hand was icy cold from the snow when he cradled her bruised cheek.
"I am so sorry." he whispered.
"It's okay."
She held her breath as he touched his lips to the bruises on her face.
Kiss it and make it better, she thought.
His eyes were like the dark ice rimming the streetlights and a gust of
cold
air washed through the thin cotton and polyester of the scrubs she
wore.  She stepped closer into the heat of his body, the thick sweater
rubbing into her skin.  He cradled her head in his hands, weaving
strands of her hair through his long, thin fingers.  A finger contacted
a bruise and pain flashed down to her feet in a cold steel spike.
Lips, chilled by the air, were cold on hers, but his tongue, delicately
running over her swollen mouth, was hot and tasted of coffee.  She also
tasted the lingering meat and iron tang of her own blood in her mouth.
A low noise, not entirely unlike a moan, trembled in her throat.
A dark sedan, passing along the drive paused for a moment.  The driver
no
doubt registering the activity of the young man and the young woman on
the sidewalk.
The revving engine made Dana break the kiss, her mind only registering
twilight as the car swam by like a leviathan.
"Take me home." she said.
"Not to Annapolis?"
"Not to Annapolis."


Syntax and Measure
14a/26
With mother finally fucked, and the last fantastic book flung out of the
tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 am and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to
the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted in a
wire hangar in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a
hopeful little bit of hallucination---
Allen Ginsberg, "Howl," 1956

They drove through the night city, the yellow lights of humans
glittering gold, red, green, and blue outside the car.  How many times
had she sat in a passenger seat, speeding through the night with her
heart beating in her ears in a conflagration of terror and excitement.
This was different.
God, how this was different.
Mucheski didn't take his eyes from the road, from the people coming and
going in the not-so nice section of town, his hand was on her leg,
continuing the contact that had ignited days earlier.  His hand was warm
in the cold car, fingertips gently stroking her flesh through the ugly
peach fabric.  The glowing digits on the dashboard told her that it was
still before midnight.  The radio was on, so low that she only picked up
the shadows of the music,
They stopped at a light,
It was funny; he did drive like a cop, slouched low in the seat, the
heel of his hand controlling the steering wheel.  He glanced in the
rearview mirror, and frowned.
"There is someone following us." he said, "wrong car for the area.  Big
dark sedan."
the car in the parking lost of the hospital, was it the chase car for
the killers?  The eyeball killer following them?  Serial killers had
been known to be police wannabes who followed their own cases with
warped passion.
"I'll lose him." Mucheski said in a smug tone.
"Him. Sexist.  What if it's a woman." she complained in a mild tone.
"When we get the right pronoun, I'll use it.  Until then it's a he."
He ran the light tires grabbing, grabbing, grabbing the cold asphalt in
a grind of black rubber.  Made a stunningly illegal left turn, just in
front of a Domino delivery car.  The afterimage of a shocked teenaged
face burning into Dana's retinas.  Driving into a dark alley, Mucheski
skimmed the trashcans on either side, killing the lights and the engine,
the dark car blending into the dirty walls.  The unmarked car glided
into a niche behind a dumpster.  They sat in the dark car, listening to
the engine click as it cooled, looking through the back window.  Dana
surfed a silent wave of adrenaline.
"I think you lost him."
"Give it a minute."
Dana knelt on the seat, holding onto the headrest, peering around the
edge of the dumpster, looking for headlights or movement, and seeing
none.  All she heard was the distant hiss of traffic and Mucheski
breathing next to her.  She smelled him, felt the heat of his breath on
her hair and felt herself start to ignite.
And he touched her.  
His hand skimmed up the back of her leg, hot through the borrowed
scrubs, tracing the line of muscle up her thigh to her ass.  He placed
his palm at he apex of her curve and pressed his hand full against her. 
The other hand joined the other curve and her pelvis was pressed into
the back of the seat.

She put her hot, aching face down on the headrest.
"There was no car," she said in a heavy voice.
"Quid est veritas?  What is truth?"
His hands moved in languid circles, covering every inch of her backside
with lazy grace.
"You're not wearing any panties, 'he breathed into her ear, "the demure
Agent Red has gone cave woman."
"They took them for evidence."
His hands found the trough of her spine, and slide under the horrible
peach fabric straining against her back.  Flat-palmed, he trailed up her
bare back, lingering where a bra strap should have been in a mocking
gesture.  He spanned her shoulders, kneading the tense muscles for a
moment before moving to the dry satin of her ribcage.
"Tell me to stop." he said.
She looked over her shoulder, mute, and bit her lower lip.  Shadowy
silver, he leaned closer and kissed her again, sucking on her mouth as
it opened under his.  Continuing on their placid journey, his fingers
slid over and around her breasts, smoothing what had been so abused
earlier.  
"Turn around." he ordered.
Squirming in the seat, she sat back into the passenger's side in a
normal fashion Mu was keeling on the small console between the seats,
his pupils dilated in the low light.  He kissed her again, his hand
moving somewhere between the seat and the door.
The seat popped back with a sudden thump that made Dana squawk with
surprise as she fell backwards.
"That's not fair, " she said in a shaky voice.
"It's better this way. You'll see."
"You've done this before." she accused.
He smiled and took off his glasses, putting them on the dirty dashboard.
"I went to high school."
"Submarine races?"
His beard tickled the side of her neck as he nuzzled at her earlobe and
she squirmed with childlike pleasure.  Chuckling, he slipped of his
jacket and threw it in the back seat.  
"Better far to live and die under the brave black flag I fly/Than to
play a sanctimonious part with a pirate head and a pirate heart . . . "
he sang in a half-whisper.
He held her earlobe between his teeth and gave it a gentle nibble, as if
testing it for taste.
"You like that?" he breathed "you know you do."
Twining her fingers in the heavy mass of his hair, she pulled his mouth
back onto hers.  Reaching up under the hem of her shirt, he stroked her
belly and then began to work on her breasts again, more insistently this
time.  She arched up against him as the chemical magic of his touch
started working its way down her body, between her legs.  Impatiently,
he pulled the shirt up under her arms, exposing her torso for anyone
brave enough to try to look through the now-steamed windows.  He kissed
the night-dark flesh on each of her curves, running his tongue around in
an insistent rhythm.  
"What if someone--" she said in a shaky voice.
"I'll shoot the stupid motherfucker." he told her left breast.
He worked his way down to her stomach.
Jesus, Dana thought as his tongue lapped at her navel, I feel so fat . .
.
Finding the edge of the elastic of the pants, he began sliding them down
the white length of her body.  Gripping the sides of the seat, Dana
watched in horrified fascination as more of her skin was exposed to the
public view.  She didn't protest when he pulled one foot free from the
bunched pant leg and slid his mouth up the full length of her inner leg
to the juncture where she steamed.
Right Dana, she thought, you're lying in an unmarked car with a cop.
having just almost been raped and/or killed, and you're basically naked
and he's going to--
Open her like an orange, his fingers slipping in her juices.
"Just a little excited, are we?" he muttered into her thigh.
"Just a little," she said, killingly embarrassed.
"Can't let it go to waste."
Dipping his head down, he put his mouth on her, and she gasped with the
sensation of it.  The boy certainly knew what he was doing.  Between his
devilishly talented fingers and tongue, it was a scant few moments
before her legs began to shake with the pre-tremors of ecstasy. 
Gripping the seat with both hands and trying to ignore the fact that she
was being eaten alive virtually in a public place, Dana felt herself
starting to rise into the crystalline heights.  Hips rising as he found
the very right spot and the very right rhythm, she realized sweat was
starting to bead on her chest and underneath her bare breasts.  It was a
shock when something knobby and hard slid into her.
What the hell?
Oh right.
Fingers, three fingers knotted and twined together began stroking in and
out of her.  She almost laughed aloud when the synapses connected again
and she realized that Mucheski was left-handed.  Funny she had never
noticed before.  He reached for her throat while his mouth stroked and
sucked at what seemed like the heart of her entire being.  
Normally, Dana had to fight for her pleasure, jump-starting herself with
fantasy and deliberately tricking her mind into listening to her body
for a change.  All she was did was hold onto the car seat and let it
happen.
It happened.
With all the subtly of several tons of high-powered explosives opening
up the side of a mountain, she climaxed.  She dug her fingers into the
car seat as her entire being arched upwards as tight as a guitar string
during a heavy metal solo.  Her brain stuttered, her body writhed and
she bit down on her lower lip so hard that she tasted blood, biting back
the triumphant shout that built in her chest.  
Mucheski withdrew his fingers after her internal spasms had passed, and
proceeded to lick her as a cat cleans kittens.  Finally, he slid up her
body and covered her cold, naked skin with his own body.  She kissed
him, reveling in the taste of herself, the blood, and him on his lips. 
Relaxing into a languor that threatened to turn to drowsiness, she let
Mucheski dress her like a doll.
"I better get you home." he said and put his glasses back on.
Dana pulled her jacket around her heated body, letting her face rest
against the cold glass as he started the car and they glided out of the
alleyway.
The clock on the dash read ten after midnight.
The night wasn't over yet.


Syntax and Measure
14b/26

Breakthroughs!  Over the River!  Flips and crucifixions!  Gone down the
flood!  Highs!  Epiphanies!  Despairs!  Ten year's animal screams and
suicides!  Minds!  New loves!  Mad generation!  Down on the rocks of
Time!
Real Holy laughter in the river!  They saw it all!  The Wild Eyes!  The
Holy yells!  They bade farewell!  They jumped off the roof!  To
solitude!  Waving!  Carrying flowers!  Down to the river!  Into the
street!
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

Hands fumbling with the keys, Mucheski unlocked the five locks drilled
into his front door.  Dana pulled her hands into her coat sleeves and
shivered.  After the humid atmosphere of the unmarked car, the night air
was brutal on her skin.  Besides, the cotton and polyester of the scrubs
clung damply between her legs and her socks were soaking wet from snow
oozing into her boot-tops.
The door finally open, she brushed past him into the narrow entranceway,
shucking her coat and handing it on an overburdened coat rack.  She
began up the stairs.
"Uh . . . "he said in an uncertain voice " where are you going?"
"Shower."
Shutting the Door all but an inch or two, Dana ripped the borrowed
scrubs off her battered body as though they burned her skin.  She did
not turn on the light.  She set the shower on full hot, full throttle
and stepped into the scalding torrent.  The pounding water stung all her
injuries, and her erotically sensitized skin, making her gasp and
flatten against the tiles for support.  She pushers her face into the
stream, feeling the strength of the water tear at her eyelashes, and at
the bristling stitches in her forehead, burning the dried scrapes on her
knees.  She flashed back to Mucheski kneeling between her legs, patting
the blood from the scrapes and felt heat rise again from her groin.
I want to be clean
I want--
Only bad girls let boys touch them
I want the blood gone and off and
He knew you were a whore, that's why he
--I want him
Hands slick with soap, she caressed her own breasts and belly.
Girls like you just get into trouble
God yes
Bad girls like you
Please
A hand that which was not her own touched the pigmented skin in her back
circled the glittering scales of the serpent.
Mucheski's body pressed into hers, flattening her up against the cold
tiles, the length of his erection resting along the valley of her
spine.  His hands covered hers on the tiles, the water glimmering on the
metal of his ring like quicksilver.  His lips caressed the back of her
neck, making her nipples harder than the tiles that flattened them.  She
leaned back into him.
"For days.  For days I have been dreaming about this." he murmured.
He trailed his hands down her arms, fingers reaching deeply into her
body, not caressing her skin but her muscles and bones, loosening the
taut layer over the curve of her skull, pressing through the thin
tissues to the shell of bone itself.  Her hair rumpled up over his
fingers like wet velvet.  He moved his hot mouth to the base of her
skull where the hairdresser cut her hair to short and bristly spikes. 
Teeth sank into the muscle there, not hard, just holding her in place. 
His hands slipped down over her sides to almost encircle the small span
of her waist.
The tile was growing hot under her cheek.
She wriggled around, blinking water from her eyes.  He stepped back into
the tub, away from the water.  Standing there with his wet lank hair
dripping, water clinging to his skin and sparking on his eyelashes, he
seemed like some strange mer-creature from an old story.  
Dream-like in the gray blue darkened bathroom.  
Was any of this really happening?
Good God!  He had a marvelous body; well muscled and compact without a
spare ounce of fat anywhere, an athlete.  Smooth as a dolphin, with only
a thin line drawn down his flat abdomen from his navel to the soft fur
around his genitals.  His erect penis was perfectly proportioned to the
rest of his body.  There was a tribal sun tattooed on his left pectoral
muscle and thin silver hoops shining at his left nipple and navel.
Reaching out, she touched the sun.
Water from his beard dripped into her hand.  Fingertips traced the rays,
circled the center.  Leaning down, she pressed her lips to the black
circle, running her tongue over the lines, her hand flat on his chest,
tasting water and skin.  She slid over to the pierced nipple, taking the
ring into her moth and running her tongue through the hoop, touching
were flesh met metal.
Mucheski trembled.
Sliding further down, she trailed her mouth down to his navel, plunging
the tip of her tongue into the place where he had once been connected to
his mother, tasting salt.  She took the ring between her canine teeth
and gave an experimental tug.  He made a strangled noise but did not
move.  She spread her hands over his hipbones, digging into the sinews,
sucking at the muscular rim of his navel.  Following the interstate of
soft hair, she continued down the hard length of his abdomen until she
reached the base and inhaled the dark, feral smell of him.
You know you want it, bitch
Oh shut up.
Bracing her hands on the hard muscles of his thighs she dipped her head
and pulled the length of him into her mouth.  He shuddered as she
circled him with her tongue.
He pushed her away.
Hurt, she retreated under the water.  
Oh God, what had she done wrong? Was he having second thoughts?  It was
her body.  Now that he saw her nude he was repulsed.
Apparently not.
He flattened her up against the wall again, kissing her greedily on the
mouth, exploring the inside of her mouth with his sharp tongue, while
his hands worked her breasts.  She clawed at his back and ground her
hips into his.  Hands under her arms, he slid her up the slick plane of
the wall until her feet dangled above the drain, she opened her legs,
wrapping them around his hips, and opened herself.  Slowly, millimeter
by millimeter, he eased into her, filling her from end to end and side
to side.  The hard metal of his rings dug into her waist, breast, and
belly.  Letting go of his shoulders, she flattened her arms against the
wall like a woman crucified, thrusting back at him, shifting her weight
somewhat, she transferred the pressure to her clitoris and a point deep
within her.  Groaning at the sheer heaven of the body against hers,
inside hers, the water pounding down between their bodies, she arched
her neck and closed her eyes.
He caught her chin in a cruel grip.
"Look at me." he hissed.
She obeyed, his eyes burning her like boiling water. 
Slowly and deliberately, he stroked in and out of her, pulling himself
almost entirely out of her body, until she thrust her hips back at him,
hungry for contact.  Somewhere between the tenth and twelfth thrust,
Dana was ambushed by a shattering orgasm that threatened their
precarious position in the shower.  While she writhed around him,
Mucheski gripped her tightly around the hips, crushing her up against
the wall as she tightened around him.  The blur of sensation washed over
her and she sank her teeth into his shoulder.  Dimly, she realized that
he was staying perfectly still inside her, grinding his teeth with the
effort of self-control.  While she was riding the riptides, he began
moving again.
So tightly he had her pressed up against the wall, the each thrust drove
the air out of her lungs in shallow panting and her vision was tinged
with red.  As his timing became more urgent and the tendons stood out on
either side of his throat, she bore down hard with the innermost muscles
and dragged him over the edge.  Mucheski went suddenly rigid and poured
himself into her, tripping her nerves one more time into a mad, crashing
spiral.
They clung together even as the apex diminished into a bone-softening
languor.
The water turned cold.
Slowly, as if using his body for the first time, Mucheski slipped out of
her and turned off the water.  Legs turning to gelatin, she sagged
against him.  He sagged against the wall, dripping and looking stunned.
"Whoa." he said in a brainless voice.
It was terrible, she couldn't help it, and it was the worst thing she
could do under the circumstances.
Dana started to laugh. 
Mucheski looked at her as if she'd finally popped her last remaining
brain cell, and then started snickering himself.  Wrapping her arms
around his neck, she giggled helplessly into his shoulder.
"Come on you," he growled good-naturedly "that's enough excitement for
one night."
To her chagrin, it didn't take much effort for him to hoist her over his
shoulder, still giggling, and carry her into the bedroom.  Still wet and
laughing, he plopped her into bed before flopping down next to her
"What?" he demanded.
She buried her nose in his chest and shook with laughter.
"Silly." he said and stroked her wet hair.

Syntax and Measure
15/26

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up
their brains and imagination?
Moloch!  Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars!
Children screaming under the stairways!  Boys sobbing in armies!  Old
men weeping in parks!
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

Women in Black

"What?"  Dana choked the word out of a frozen throat.
Monday morning, Skinner's office with the AD sitting behind his desk of
power and giving bad news.  Dana standing on the carpet in her good
black suit and new shoes, mad enough to kill.
"David Silnontz posted bail this morning.  An uptown lawyer paid in
cash.  There were even noises made about suing you for undue force."
Undue force my ass, Dana thought, I should have castrated the bastard.
"Did anyone get a statement from him?  At least a statement?"
"He refused to talk.  Started asking to call his lawyer the minute he
got away from the hospital.  He could only be charged with assault and
attempted rape, not for killing the others."
"But he was an accessory to murder."
"The DA reduced the charges in the hope of getting him to turn state's
evidence."
He looked up at her.
"I'm sorry."
As usual, the dark eyes behind the glasses gave little indication of
what Skinner actually thought.  His hands, however, did.  Thick fingers
curled around the black phallus of a Mont Blanc pen, as if strangling
the ink from it.  Fascinated, she stared at his hands a moment longer
than she should have, wondering . . .
Startled, she pulled herself back into the moment.
"Me too." she admitted.
Did he know?  Could he tell?  Was he seeing Mucheski's handprints all
over her body, illuminated blue as a corpse under the sickening glare of
a luma-light?  Did he smell Mucheski on her?  Would he scrape under her
fingernails for skin, sperm, sweat, or blood?  This was worse than
facing her parents.  Parents didn't automatically suspect people the way
FBI agents were taught to.  She felt sweaty under the tight cocoon of
her pantyhose.
God, did he know that she was wearing her *good* panties for a change?  
"Could I see his rap sheet, sir?" she asked.
"You'll need it for your report."
Taking the poor photocopy from the AD's hand, Dana skimmer the
contents.  A complete listing of Silnontz's offenses to date; theft,
robbery, breaking and entering, distribution of drugs, and a number of
other crimes found on any small-time hood's resume.
"Thank you, sir." she said and made for the door.
"Agent Scully?"
She paused, her coat over her arm, the other hand on the doorknob.
"You might want to give Detective Mucheski a briefing about the proper
address of superiors."
"Sir."
Still holding the rap sheet in her hand, Dana strode through the
hallways, boiling inside.  How dare that bastard get out without even
making a statement?! If Mucheski had been the one who interrogated him,
she'd rip his goatee out hair by hair.
Mucheski.
She still hurt in half a dozen places from Silnontz's assault and half a
dozen other places from Mucheski.
Dana smiled to herself.
All in all it hadn't been a bad weekend.
She was unlocking her car in the parking garage when a female voice
called out her first name.  Halley Donner jogged up to her car.
"God I'm glad I caught you.  I just got back from Quantico and Dani
wanted me to give you the analysis that you requested."
"Great."  Dana took the sheaf of papers from the other woman, "What were
you doing down there at this hour?"
"Six-month sidearm refresher.  I'm proud to admit that I can hit the
broad side of a barn."
"Do you have your piece with you?"
"Piece?  Dana, you sound like Al Capone.  Yes I do."
"Want to go for a ride."
"Is this going to involve cement overshoes?"  Halley asked with a
mischievous grin.
"It might."

"Have a good weekend?"  Halley asked as they eased into traffic.
"Pretty good."
"After the thing at the hospital?  I would be in therapy for weeks."
"A hot bath and a carton of Ben and Jerry's works wonders."
"  Sometimes I really envy you.  You get to go to all the exciting
places-"
"Like Billings, Montana?  That's not exciting, it's dull."
"And do all the exciting things with Spooky.  I get locked in a lab with
'I just cracked the next level of Doom' Pendrell."
"Don't envy me."
"Let us not forget the total babe Detective Mucheski.  He's crazy about
you.  He didn't look at anyone else, Jesus, he hardly looked at the
corpse."
"What was that street number again?"
Halley looked down at the rap sheet.
"Uh . . . 479.  Hey isn't this---"
"Yes."
"You weren't kidding about the cement shoes, were you?"
"I never kid about shoes."
 David Silnontz's street looked like a demilitarized zone abandoned
cars, the empty eyes of vacant buildings that might have been nice in
the fifties.  Wary-eyed men stood at street corners, wearing the
expensive down jackets that were haute couture among the drug
distribution sector of street commerce. 
"Don't make eye contact with anyone in the street and put your extra
ammo clip in your coat pocket."  Dana warned the other woman.
"Great.  Remind me not to bitch about car-pooling to Little League."
Heads held high with efficient professionalism, the two women got out of
the car and stepped across a minefield of broken glass and dog shit. 
They were Federal Agents, trained, armed, and way out of their natural
environment.  The building Silnontz lived it had been nice at one time
but now the hallways stank of human urine and the flowered wallpaper was
covered with grime.  Loud televisions blared at every landing as the
women made their way up to the fourth floor.  Apartment 38D had a
scratched brown door and a peephole covered with the last coat of paint
that must have been put there during the Carter Administration.   
Dana rapped on the door.
"Pizza.  You there?" she called.
Halley raised an eyebrow.  Dana shrugged.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Fuck you.  I didn't order any fucking pizza." a man
growled from the interior.
The door opened and David Silnontz poked his head out.  Bloodshot eyes
registered that this was not a pizza delivery, and then he recognized
Dana.
"Fuck." he spluttered and started to shut the door, but Dana pushed her
shoulder into it and gave it a brutal shove.
Silnontz stumbled back into the room, as Dana and Halley entered.  It
was a typical dive, garbage heap furniture and an expensive
entertainment center.  The place smelled to high heaven of incense. 
Dana figured that he must have spent the day doing ghost.
Lowlife piece of shit.
"David," she said in a sweet voice, "We have to talk."
Handcuffed to the kitchen table, Silnontz was reduced to a jelly-like
substance with few human characteristics.  He pulled at the cuff like a
dog on a leash, his rashy face curdled in self-pity.  Dana sat on the
chair at the side of the table with her arms crossed calmly in front of
her like a schoolteacher.  Halley hovered nearby.
"Now David, I want you to tell me where you get the ghost."
"I get it from Jamie.  I sell it, and give him a kickback."
"What's Jamie's last name?"
"We didn't exchange business cards." he snarled.
Under the table, Dana put the heel of her Liz Claiborne pump on the top
of Silnontz's bare foot and applied pressure.  Silnontz squirmed.
"Let's try that again.  What is Jamie's last name?"
"I don't know." he whimpered.
"Where do you meet Jamie?"
"In the clubs.  Sometimes Parrot's, sometimes the Inner Eye.  He calls
me and I meet him there."
"Do you know where he gets the ghost?"
"It's something with one of the clubs.  I think they make it there.  He
said something once about being short because a shipment of raw ghost
hadn't come in."
"You've been very helpful."
She stood up and looked down at him.
"Not such a tough guy are you now, Dave."
The scabby dealer looked away.
"They'll kill me if they know I talked to you."
Dana smiled.  It wasn't a nice smile.
"Well, it's like the coffee cup says: Life's a bitch and so am I."

"You're not going to leave him there, are you?"  Halley asked as Dana
pulled the car away from the curb.
"The keys are on the other side of the table, if' he's limber or
creative enough, he'll get himself unlocked."
"What are you going to do for an encore?  Break someone's kneecaps?"
Halley said, irritated.
"This isn't playing Nancy Drew.  People get hurt and people get killed. 
I don't intend to be either."
"This disturbs me on several levels."
"Want to go to Rigiovanni's for lunch?  They have a great chicken Caesar
salad."
Between bites of the salad, Dana leafed through the report that Halley
had brought with her.  The raw data was interesting, but the conclusions
that Dani had extrapolated were nothing short of amazing.
"Did you read this?" she asked Halley.
"Just the synopsis.  Dani seems to think that the choloroplasts came
from lichen found in the highlands of China.  It's known as t'ien ti or
Heaven and Earth distilled for sacred ceremonies as peyote is in Native
American rituals."  Dana summarized.
"She also said she heard about it at a Dead show."  Halley said in an
arid voice "it's a wonder that girl passes her drug screens." 
"Chinese lichen?  This sounds like something that Mulder would come up
with." 
"You slept with him."
Dana looked up from the file, stunned.
"Who?  Mulder?"
"  No, Mucheski."
Great, was she wearing a sign or something?
"Well . . ."Dana muttered.
"Again, I envy you."

An oncologist's office is not a happy place.  Dana sat and let the tech
take two vials of blood from her arm, adding to her collection of
bruises.  At the rate things were going, she was going to be black and
blue by the time Mulder got back.  She was rolling her sleeve over the
bandage as Dr. Roth came in, holding her chart and grinning as usual.
"And were we a good girl today?  You didn't cry when Nurse Ratched took
blood?"
Dana shook her head.
>From the pocket of his white coat, Roth produced a red lollypop and
handed it to Dana.  He hitched his hip up onto the examination table
next to her.
"I hear you were part of the excitement here Friday night," he said.
"Yes. One of the reasons I made this appointment was because I had two
nosebleeds that day."
The door shut behind the technician.
"Increasing frequency?"
This was the thing that she liked about Roth, he never forgot that she
also was a physician, and allowed her to take an active role in dealing
with the disease, never patronizing her, and letting her make guided
conclusions about her treatment.  It was soothing, so familiar.  She was
doing rounds on herself.  It helped her to keep a logical distance from
the black fear that surrounded the mutant cells in her head.
"Yes, and intensity.  The last one was fairly spectacular."
"You know this means that the tumor is invading the surrounding
tissues.  What should we do?"
"More films?"
"Any more x-rays and you're going to glow in the dark.  No, I think
we'll have to start a more aggressive drug therapy."
"Chemo?" her fingers whitened around the white paper stick of the
lollypop.
"Not yet.  I have a couple of options that I want to explore with you
before we go that route," he took his prescription pad out of his pocket
"I'm going to give you a new course of meds.  If we don't see any
improvement in six weeks we'll sit down and re-evaluate.  Is that okay
with you?"
"It's fine."
"  How's that new boyfriend of yours?"
"Tell me, am I wearing a sign or something?"
"No, you just look incandescent. And you wear it well."
He passed her a few sheets of prescriptions; she didn't immediately
recognize the drug names and planned to look them up in her Physician's
Desk Reference when she got home.  Roth gently patted her on the
shoulder.
"Keep fighting little camper.  It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings."
She gave him her bravest smile.
"Fighting. Sure, fine, whatever."
Sitting in her car, alone, with the white bags from the hospital
pharmacy on her lap, Dana put her head down on the steering wheel and
felt the tears melt her mascara.
How was it that she was finally feeling alive even as she was dying?

Syntax and Measure
16/26

Who ate the lamb stew of imagination or digested the crab at the muddy
bottom of the rivers of Bowery
Who wept at the romance of the street with their pushcarts full of
onions and bad music,
Who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up
to build harpsichords in their lofts
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

The words on the page were doing flamenco so Dana took off her glasses
and rubbed her eyes.  It was her second day doing hard research at the
private library at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History.  Unlike
Mulder's erratic Holmesian habit of pulling arcane knowledge out of his
boxer shorts, Dana had to do her research the old-fashioned way - work
for it.  Actually, she was having one hell of a hard time
concentrating.  Instead she was flashing back on 
Mucheski smiling. 
Mucheski in the shower. 
Mucheski giving Skinner hell.
Mucheski's hands on the steering wheel.
Mucheski's hands on her breasts.
Mucheski looking broken and tired after Officer Chu's death.
That much she could feel good about.
On the other hand, what the hell had she been thinking to go after Dave
Silnontz like some reject from NYPD Blue? There were better ways of
convincing a suspect to talk than trying to break his metatarsals, and
she could have damaged her shoes in the process.  What the hell had
frozen her intellect like a lost puppy on a major interstate, looking up
at the tractor-trailer barreling down on him?
Professionalism.
Ethics?
Code of Honor?
Manners?
Hello?  Hello Dana, what happened to all that?
When she had seen Silnontz's address on his rap sheet, the plan had
formed in her mind like ice. 
She wanted to make him feel violated.
She had actually enjoyed the look of terror in Silnontz's eyes when she
had pushed the door in.  Remembering it brought the pleasurable tickling
across the backs of her arms like a lover's caress.
You really had to stop thinking about sex all the time, the Special
Agent part of her nagged
A tiny smile curved her lips.
Ah, shut up, Red answered.
A wave of nausea wiped away the vestigial pleasure in a pea-green tide. 
The new medication from Roth had made her feel decidedly ill.  On the
first day, it had taken all her will not to vomit the red capsules into
the nearest toilet.  Now, on the fourth day, the digestive distress had
settled into a nagging queasiness that she could work with, but not
without being constantly reminded of the treatment and the reason for
it.
God, if this thing with Mucheski outlasted the case she was going to
have to tell him.
What was she going to say?
"Look, you're a really nice guy and I like you a lot, especially your
physical prowess and your sense of humor . . . Did you ever see that old
Bette Davis movie, Dark Victory?"
I have cancer and it's probably going to kill me.
The entire room swam for a moment.
Deep breaths, Dana Katherine, deep breaths.
Smothered in her coat pocket, her phone trilled like an electronic
insect.  Looking around the library to see if she were annoying anyone,
Dana pulled out the phone.
"Scully."
"You Scully me Mucheski.  How do you feel about a late dinner?"
"Dinner is good.  I need to talk to you about a few things that I've
found out about the drug."
"I was hoping that this dinner could have some date-like
characteristics."
"I just want there to be food."
"Picky, picky."
The restaurant was small, dark, and Indian; smelling of spices and food
which made Dana's mouth water the moment they walked in.  The sari-clad
hostess greeted Mucheski with the kind of warm familiarity that
restaurants usually reserved for regulars.  She also gave Dana a
slightly suspicious look when she seated them at a cozy, round booth in
the corner.  Mucheski slid into the seat next to Dana, his thigh
brushing hers through the wool of her skirt, making her innards
tighten.  He ordered for them both in fluent Hindi, which Dana only
allowed since she knew nothing about Indian food.  When the waitress
walked away, Dana pounced.
"Where did you learn all those languages?" she asked, "it's very
impressive."
"I was a Peace Corps brat and I spent my formative years in Asia.  I was
actually born on a pilgrim bus outside Madras.  My mom is a pediatrician
and my father is a linguist, so I was speaking Hindi, English, and
French all at the same time.  We used to speak Latin when we wanted to
have private conversations."
"Amazing."
"Yeah, well imagine how I was treated when I got back to the States when
I was thirteen!  My mom calls me Mowgli after the boy in the Jungle
Books because I was so wild and uncivilized."
"A feral cow?"
"What about you?"
"Navy brat.  All over the country, big Catholic family, nothing exotic."
"It's exotic to me, "he said and smiled.
Under the table, Dana could feel his warm fingers skimming up the top of
her thigh, burrowing under her skirt.
"Maybe we should talk about the case?" she prodded.
"Maybe you should start wearing stockings instead of pantyhose."
"When I get dressed in the morning your convenience is not my primary
concern." she snapped.
"Oooooh-Kay." he said and the fingers slowly withdrew.
"Thank you."
As they ate, Dana filled him in about the analysis of the sample and
Danielle's theory about the lichen.  Mucheski ate without speaking other
than to ask her to clarify a point or ask a question.
"The Dark Zen acolytes used a distilled form of the lichen known as
t'ien ti or Heaven and Earth to achieve visions that aided in their
quest for enlightenment.  So what we have here is a hallucinogenic,
psychotropic, and additive drug that comes from fungi that grows in
barren, rocky soil at a certain altitude and in a narrow climate range. 
Not something that you could grow in your back yard."
"So who's killing the junkies?  A bunch of pissed off Ninja Dark Zen
Buddhist monks?  That sounds like Doctor Who!  If you knew the monks
down at the Dharma center, you'd see how absurd that is."
"I don't think its Buddhist monks.  I think its drug dealers."
They were drinking hot, sweet tea after the meal when Mucheski's
cellphone demanded attention.
"Yeah?" he said into the scratched and dented phone, "Oh shit.  Yeah. 
Fuck you too.  I'll be right there."
The flesh goose-stepped across Dana's arms as she watched the cold front
move into his eyes.
What he said was almost unnecessary.
"We've got another one."


"So, like my mom is going to pick us up at ten, okay?"  Mucheski said as
he hurried alongside Dana.
The Mall was completely deserted at eleven at night, and her heels
clattered on the tile floor, echoing from Nordstrom's to Bloomingdales.
"Talk to me," she asked Curly as the black SOC officer escorted them
through the empty Mall.
"Taco Palace.  The cleaning crew for the Mall found the night shift in
the walk-in refrigerator."
"How many?" she muttered.
"Oh look, a sale at the Gap."  Mucheski pulled his head away from the
prices in the store window.
"How many?" she repeated.
"Five."
"Same as before?" she stepped around the uniforms clustered in front of
the Taco Palace.
Yellow police line tape draped around the tables and chairs of the food
court.  The SOC team fanned out around the area, going through their
crime scene procedures.
"Not quite the same as before."  Curly admitted.  "Our friend has gotten
more creative."
Dana walked behind the SOC team leader to the narrow access hallway
running behind the booths of the food court.  The kitchen of the Taco
Palace was crowded with police officers of every description.  The
glaring flashes of light from the flashbulbs glinted off the stainless
steel of the stove cooktop, the sink backsplash, and the racks of
cooking utensils, flashing like mirror balls.
"Define creative."  Dana asked.
Mucheski parted the other police with a wave of his hand, clearing a
path to the stainless steel refrigerator
doors.
"Be careful.  The floor's slippery."  Curly suggested.
"Oh my God." she muttered as she stepped over the doorway into the
refrigerator.
Accustomed as she was to the many forms of death could inflict on a
human body, Dana took a half a step backwards.  Blood dripped from the
ceiling.  The victims weren't so much dismembered as torn apart.  Limbs
were strewn all over the confined space, a rib here, a rib there, an arm
hanging from the microwave, and the shredded remains of polyester Taco
Palace uniforms showed a cheerful aqua in the gore.  There was a hand
lying on top of a carton marked "Cheddar Cheese Food."  A glimmer of
gold on the finger winked in the light.
A class ring.
"Mucheski," she said in a voice that sounded both thin and high-pitched.
"Yeah, babe?"
"Where are the heads?"
Larry opened a compartment door.  The heads sat interspersed with the
heads of lettuce.  The heads stared back at Dana; their eyes dry in
death.  Three black heads, two white, two boys, three girls, all in
their late teens, all heads sliced neatly off at the base of the skull
and standing ever so neatly in gelled puddles of blood.  All of the
eyeballs had been punctured so those ten bloody-shredded sockets stared
back at her.  The draft of cold air from the recycling fan smelled like
onions.  She started to sweat.
"Sick fucker, huh?"  Mucheski asked.
"Get some good snapshots and bag and tag this stuff ASAP."  She stepped
out of the refrigerator, making her way through the SOC teams.
"We're going to get the press all over our asses on this one."  Mucheski
complained.  "You don't kill five kids at a suburban shopping mall and
not get some press action on it.  We're on the morning news for sure. 
Smile everybody."
"Anyone ID the victims yet?" she asked, cutting through to the restrooms
of the Food Court.
"We woke up the manager to come down and take a look."
Dana pulled open the Ladies Room door.
"Be back in a minute."
Dana shut the door to the stall behind her and neatly threw up her
Indian dinner into the toilet.  She wiped her mouth with a folded square
of toilet paper and waited for the next wave of nausea to subside.  She
took a deep breath and waited.  The only good thing about her cancer
drug regimen was that it had taught her how to stealth-vomit.  She wiped
her mouth and brushed her teeth with the tiny travel toothbrush and
toothpaste she stowed in her overcoat pocket.  Her reflection was pale,
so she put a little more lipstick on.
Mucheski was waiting at the door with a cup of dark liquid.
"Flat Coke." he announced. "Standard scene of the crime supply.  You
okay?"
"I'm fine, Mucheski," she muttered.
"I didn't make it to the bathroom.  I hurled into a planter in front of
the Piercing Pagoda."  Curly offered, patting her on the shoulder.
Rubbing at the spot between her eyebrows and the bridge of her nose,
right where the mutating cells lived, it centered her.  Work damn you,
she told her brain cells.
"I can't believe that he's changed his MO so radically.  This is
completely inconsistent with all of the other crime scenes.  It's a
multiple, cross-gender, cross racial, in a non-urban environment.  He's
not even becoming disorganized.  It's..."  She looked down towards the
record store.
"...taking into consideration that we've had David Silnontz in custody,
I think we have to accept that-"
Mucheski scrunched his eyes shut and every muscle in his body contracted
in a vain attempt at control.
"Don't say it." he hissed.
"... We're looking for a drug gang execution which is technically under
the aegis of the DEA or the Narcotics squad."
"Fuck!"  Mucheski wheeled away from her and slammed his fist into the
wall.
"That's really mature."  She muttered and sipped the flat coke.
"I'm fucking pissed!" he groaned and cradled his fist in his other hand.
"Breaking fingers is not going to solve this any faster."
"I'm focusing."
"We have to keep the details out of the press.  It'll cause mass
hysteria.  No one needs to know anything
other than the most basic details.  I specifically do not want the
detail about the heads leaked out.  The decapitated heads on the shelf
was a deliberate taunt."
"Catch me if you can," Mucheski agreed.
At her hip, Dana's phone whined for attention.
"What the hell is going on? Captain Kulujian tells me that five
teenagers were killed by your UNSUB at the mall tonight."  Skinner
barked the moment she clicked the phone on.
"On a superficial level this does resemble the work of our UNSUB, sir."
"You had suspect in custody.  How could this happen?"
"I beg your pardon, but our suspect was out on bail, sir."
Silence on the other end of the phone.  The line buzzed and Dana could
hear the chattering of other voices on other lines like a distant stream
babbling.
"This situation is getting out of control.  I want to see you and
Mucheski in my office at eight-tomorrow morning.  I want to evaluate
your lack of progress in this case."
"Yes sir." she agreed and got an earful of dial tone as Skinner hung up.
"Fuck you very much, sir!" she said as Mucheski made a rueful face at
her.
"Are we in trouble?" he asked.
"Basically, yes."
"Damn."
He turned and began rattling off a set of instructions to Curly, who
took notes like a well-trained stenographer.
"I want to see the videotape of the Food Court for all of last night.  I
want the SOC team to go over the Taco Palace with a fucking microscope. 
I want the Taco Palace work schedule, and a record of all outgoing calls
from the phone in there."
"Anything else?  You want the Red Sea parted maybe?"
Mucheski straightened his glasses.
"Bring me the head of Barry Manilow."
"That isn't funny."  Curly said with a dour look, but went off humming
"Copacabana."
"This is bad, right?"  Mucheski asked.
"Extremely bad."
"You haven't heard him sing."


Syntax and Measure
17/26

Who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing but the
shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in
fireplace Chicago
Who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and
shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out
incomprehensible leaflets,
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956
Loose limbed and arrogant, Mucheski slouched in the chair alongside
Dana.  He has his legs negligently crossed at the ankles and was exuding
such a post adolescent air of hostility that Dana wanted to wring his
neck.  She sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap and died a little
more through every second Skinner spent leafing through her report,

Mucheski picked at his cuticles and waited as if at a bus station,
making Dana want to strangle him.  It wasn't her first time in the seat
of pain, with Skinner making a decision based on the strength or
weakness of the sheaf of papers on his desk.  Sometimes she thought that
she was going to get one of her filed reports back with a big red "F"
scrawled on the front and she would be reduced to showing tourists
through the FBI museum.  
She stared at Skinner's desk, realizing for the first time that there
were virtually no personal effects on the impeccable Federal surface. 
The desktop was sheer business.  Nameplate, penholder, papers, phones;
in and out bins, a few pens, and a Marine Corps coffee mug.  Funny that
when he had been married, there had been so smiling family portraits. 
Not that Dana had anything personal on her desk either, now that she had
a desk to put personal things on!  There was a family photo of the whole
Scully clan taken when she was in her teens that she had brought to
work, and then decided that it was too pathetic to see the now-dead
faces of her father and Melissa.  Two days of the inane smiling later
and the photo had been relegated to the bottom drawer with her stash of
decaf tea bags and Hershey bars with almonds.
Sometimes she wished that Mulder would do the same with the photo of
Samantha that had haunted his desk the entire time she had known him.
She wondered what Mucheski had on his desk.
What funny parts of themselves people brought to work to remind them
that there was a world and a life where not everyone was a criminal or a
corpse.
"This is a good amount of work that you have invested in this case." 
Skinner remarked.
And?  Dana thought.
"But fuck you very much, I'm turning it over to the DEA."  Mucheski said
in a deceptively light voice.
"Have you ever been able to make a statement without a lacing of
profanity?  Your behavior is an embarrassment to your department and law
enforcement as an institution."
"At least I'm not limp-dick hiding behind a desk."
Mucheski smiled at Skinner, making Dana's stomach knot.
Skinner ignored him.
"Are you turning this over to the DEA?" she asked.
"I don't have much choice in the matter.  The Director is not happy that
there are five dead teenaged children of taxpayers and only one FBI
agent on the case.  I'm turning it over to the Narcotics people rather
than the Investigative Support or Violent Crimes.  Your name will be
featured prominently in the report as originating the initial
investigation."
She imagined that she saw a flicker of approval surface from the depths
of his eyes.  In other situations, this would have pleased her.
"Thank you, sir." she said with a double-shot of irony.
"You," he pointed the butt-end of the black pen at Mucheski "I'm
recommending that you go through 'Sensitivity and Protocol' training
again."
"Thanks.  I just love charm school." he stood up and leaned over
Skinners desk, his face inches from the older man's  "I already heard
that my captain agreed with your suggestion to have me suspended for ten
days."
Mucheski leaned closer, his hands on the blotter, looking for the entire
world as though he was going to kiss the other man on the mouth. 
However, the AD was not about to be cowed by an arrogant youth and he
merely looked up at Mucheski as though the MPD officer was unpleasant
patterned wallpaper he was about to steam off his walls.
"This is all far from over."  Mucheski whispered.
Skinner blinked.
Dana watched Mucheski walk to the door and turn around.
"Fiat justitia ruat coelum."
The door clicked shut behind him.
"Let Justice be done, though the heavens should fall."  Skinner
murmured.
Funny, Dana had never imagined that Skinner would know any Latin other
than Semper Fi.
"Discharge of weapon, mandatory ten day suspension with pay.  Talk to
someone at the Employee Assistance Program about the experience of
killing someone while on duty."
Shaking, she stood up.  Regardless of the fact that the suspension and
chat was standard for the use of deadly force, it still felt like a
stinging slap in the face.  Punished.  And she stung with the unfairness
of the suspension and the high-handed way she had been yanked off the
case.  A hard medicine ball of anger formed in her gut and the
capillaries in her nasal passage tightened around the dark cluster of
cells.  
So this was what it felt like to be Mulder.  
She wanted to slam her fist into Skinner's smooth, impassive face. 
Guilt grabbed her throat.  She looked at her shoes.
"Agent Scully, " his voice halted her at the door.
"Do yourself a favor, and distance yourself from that young man as
quickly as possible." he said as calmly as if instructing her to send a
report back to Forensics.
"Permission to speak off the record, sir?" she asked politely.
"Go ahead."
"That's really none of your business." she said in a soft tone and
clicked the door shut behind her.

"It's only nine in the morning."  Dana pointed out.
"It's five o'clock somewhere, Red."  Mucheski winked at her and raised
the glass to his lips.
The bar was pretty empty that early in the morning, no one was there
except the hard-core drinkers and those coming off the night shift. 
There were maintenance workers in blue jumpsuits with their names
embroidered over their hearts, and a few furtive looking men in worn
suits.  No one paid much attention to the suited law enforcement
officers slouching against the bar in an aura of civic depression.  Dana
kicked off her shoes and wrapped her hot, aching feet around the cold
wood of her barstool.  Putting her elbows down on the bar, she cupped
her chin in her hand and looked up at the tired face of the bartender.
"What do you suggest for a breakfast drink?" she asked.
The bartender only managed to look dourer and continued to dry an
already dry glass.
"How about a vodka and orange juice?" the bartender asked.
"Fine." she agreed.
At least if she threw that up the color would be interesting.
The bartender plunked a large glass of something that had many orange
juice like qualities apparent to the eye, but a strange layer of foam on
the top and an anemic orange slice bisected by the lip of the glass.
She took a deep swallow and sighed.
"At least with a ten day suspension I ought to be able to get some
laundry done."
"At least we'll be able to put a hole in this thing without having our
respective departments crawling up our asses."
Dana choked on her drink.
"What part of suspended did you not understand?" she asked.
"I understood it just fine.  I choose not to accept it."
"So you're just completely and monumentally stupid."
"No, I'm determined." he gave her a thin smile over the edge of his
glass.
"Look Red, we can't give up now.  We have the link - the lichen. Surely
that can't be all that hard to find if it's so hard to grow.  We can get
some work done on this thing without fucking around with reports."
"Can you say vigilantism?"
"You'll never guess who I saw in the Mall surveillance tape.  Your old
friend Dave, buying a burrito combo at the Taco Palace.  Only to return
with the same bag a few minutes later like he didn't like the burritos. 
He returned the bag and got another one."
"So?"  Dana asked, draining her glass down to the midway point
"So, the bag he returned was full of ghost.  The first bag had payment
for the drugs in it."
"Shell game," she said and tapped the bar with her fingernails "I hate
to say this, but you're probably right."
"Red, I think I'm in love."
"But - there was no ghost found at the scene.  Where's the ghost?"
"The killer dumped it."
"Okay smart guy, where?"

You have got to be kidding, Dana thought to herself as she looked at the
bulk of the industrial-sized dumpster behind the Mall.  She watched
Mucheski climb up the side of the dumpster and realized that chivalry
did have its upside, Mulder would have made her climb in the dumpster
with him, but Mucheski wanted to stay in her good graces for
extracurricular activities and suggested she wait.  She waited and tried
to breathe through her mouth.  
". . . can't fucking believe that Curly hasn't gone through this with a
flea comb.  The trash is where the action is." he said as he swung one
leg over the top of the dumpster.
"Good riddance to bad garbage?" she asked.
"Hardy har har. My next incarnation as a Metro DC employee is probably
going to be as a garbage man.  Laugh while you can." he said, as the top
of his head vanished below the edge of the dumpster.
"Garbage person," she corrected a moment later.
Not satisfied with merely chilling Dana to the bone, Mother Nature
decided to make Dana's life a living hell.  It started to rain.  Big,
fat, soaking, ice-cold droplets that cut straight to the spine.  She
hadn't even thought to get her umbrella the day before.  Yes, the day
before.  All counted, she had been awake for over twenty-four hours and
she was swaying on her rapidly sodden suede pumps.
Great, there went another pair of shoes . . .
The rain was running in rivulets from her soaking wet hair and down her
back in a steady, annoying stream when she heard a thump from inside the
dumpster.
"Holy shit!"  Mucheski yelped.
"Mucheski?" she yelled, running over to the side of the dumpster.
"Oh my God." the voice came from the inside.
Dana began scrambling up the side of the dumpster; shoes and hands
slipping on the paint coated surface now slick with icy rain. 
Scratching and clawing her way to the top, she hauled herself upwards,
powered by adrenaline and caffeine.
"Red," he called from the interior of the dumpster, "you don't have to
worry about David Silnontz anymore."
Mucheski was wedged up to his armpits in fragrant green garbage bags,
his face a sickly white.  One bag he held aloft, revealing the severed
head of David Silnontz staring blindly into the rain.

TITLE: Syntax and Measure 
AUTHOR: MustangSally
EMAIL ADDRESS: RWBowman@erols.com
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: ATX, ARCHIVE, WHATEVER Go for it!
SPOILER WARNING:  4th Season.  Takes place after Unrequited and 
before Tempus Fugit. There are (Obviously) a few 4th season spoilers  
(i.e. the desk thing, the big "C," and Pendrell is still with us).  
RATING: The story is rated (mostly) "Hard R" for language and general 
gore but a clearly marked section will be rated NC-17 for full frontal 
nudity 
(Scully/Other) and adult situations.  
CONTENT WARNING: language, gore, drugs, heterosexual sex, and bad 
puns
CLASSIFICATION: XRH
SUMMARY: Scully Solitaire. A new, highly addictive hallucinogenic drug 
called "ghost" tends to kill the users - by cutting their throats. 
Called in to 
help the DCPD investigate a possible series of serial killings in the 
Nation's Capital, Scully is teamed up with the slightly surreal 
Detective 
Steve "Moo" Mucheski and the eccentric DC Crime Scene team.  
Determined to prove to herself to the men she works with, Scully moves 
into the nighttime world of after-hours clubs, dealers, junkies, and 
predators, trying to catch a "ghost."
The Disclaimer Limerick:
Some characters herein are not mine
I borrow them some of the time
I just hope they won't sue,
Because if they do
I'll go on Hard Copy and whine.

Welcome to the MustangSally X-Files universe. "Where all the women are 
strong, the men are good-looking, and the villains are far from 
average."
Now that I have your attention . . . 
Comments actively sought by MustangSally at: RWBOWMAN@erols.com
Syntax and Measure
1/26
By MustangSally

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by 
madness, starving, hysterical, naked.
Dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn 
looking for an angry fix,
Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly 
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. 
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

Grinding, industrial music and flashing strobe lights were giving Dave 
Ffisher a headache, and the bass line of the music was making his heart 
palpitate.  Was he having a heart attack? He was easily ten years older 
than most of the kids in the place and he was beginning to think that he 
should not have listened to Jim after all. The club was not his style in 
the 
least. Feeling like a complete and total loser, David Ffisher slouched 
in the 
barstool. In addition to the noise, the denizens all looked weird.  
There 
was a preponderance of pierced body parts in tightly muscled torsos 
half-
bared in trendy short shirts that looked like something that he had 
purged 
from his closet in 1979.  Who in their right mind had decided to bring 
the 
seventies back?  It boggled the mind.  What really boggled the mind was 
the possibility that Dave was actually getting old.  That was not 
possible.  
It was just yesterday that David Bowie was on the Top Forty and Saturday 
Night Live was actually funny. That was a long time ago.
He worked his was down to the halfway point of his too-expensive draft 
beer and looked around again.  The women were all girls, girls who could 
have been baby-sitting his kids while his bitch of an ex-wife was out 
with 
her gigolo lawyer boyfriend.  No, Dave wasn't bitter.  In his paranoid, 
middle-aged way, he was sure that all the young girls were laughing at 
him behind his back. Old man, Mr. Ffisher, balding, middle-aged, 
misplaced accountant whose wife had left him for a younger man with a 
larger bank account and a stiffer dick.  
Dave tossed back the rest of his beer and sighed into the foam.
"Damn." He muttered under his breath.
"Yo buddy can I get you another one?" the bartender asked.
This one had a silver hoop in her left nostril and long, stringy black 
hair 
falling down on either side of her face.
"You got something to make me about ten years younger?" Dave asked, 
one side of his mouth turning up in a weak smile.
"Drink enough and you'll think you are ten years younger."
"Yeah, right."
"Let me guess, your wife took off on you and you're here to recapture 
your 
lost youth." She leaned across the bar and took the empty glass away 
from him.
"Something like that." Dave admitted.
The bartender filled another mug with beer and plunked it down in front 
of 
him, a flash of light from the dance floor fell across her face, and 
Dave 
realized that she wasn't a kid, either.
"On the house. Go home, it's over." she advised "I'll call you a cab."
"I have always depended upon the kindness of bartenders." Dave joked 
feeling a little relieved.
After the second beer, he headed to the men's room to empty his bladder. 
He kept his eyes averted so as not to see any more piercings as he stood 
at the urinal.  
"Yo man, I heard you talkin' It sucks man, your lady takin' off on you 
like 
that" a young man at the urinal next to him remarked.
"Yeah, well it happens."
The kid looked normal enough, short, kind of pudgy with a round, 
friendly 
face and reminded Dave of an overstuffed chipmunk.
"Look man, you seem pretty cool.  What would you say if I told you that 
I 
had something that would  not only make you feel ten years younger but 
give you a boner like an eighteen year-old?"
"Which does me no good as I am leaving here alone.  Nice try."  Dave 
zipped up and went over to wash his hands.
"I can set you up with that too, man."  "How do you know that I'm not a 
cop?"
The kid laughed.
"If you're a cop I'm the fucking Pope, man.  You interested or not?"
"I'm interested."
From her place behind the bar, the bartender saw Dave leave with his arm 
around  skinny blonde.  She threw her dishrag down on the bar and slid 
out from behind.  One long arm snaking out, she grabbed the chubby 
dealer by he throat.  She was several inched shorted than he was even in 
her platform sandals.  The dealer started to choke.
"what are you trying to do, get me shut down?  No dealing, no hustling 
and 
no bullshit on my watch.  You get it?"
"Chill, would ya'?  No harm done.  The accountant gets laid.  No big 
deal." 
he wheezed.
"Walk.  Walk out of here now and do not come back.  Get it?" 
She released him and gave him a meaningful shove towards the door.
"Bitch." he muttered and slouched out.
Back behind the bar,  she poured herself a double and noticed that her 
hands were shaking.
"What am I supposed to do with this?"  Dave asked.  The blonde, Mandy, 
dropped 
to her knees on the floor and flicked her lemon-colored hair  back from 
her 
face.  He could see that her toenails were painted black through the 
town black 
fishnets.  They had left their shoes at the doorway to save the carpets.
"Give me that." she took the silver aerosol can out of his hands and 
started unwrapping it.
Dave stiffly sat cross-legged on the carpet.  They were in the home 
office 
of his apartment because stereo was there.  Mandy had decided that this 
was the proper room and she tuned in the radio that has the same 
grinding noise as the music in the club.  As long as it made her happy. 
 he 
was nervous, he hadn't had a woman here.  Hell, he hadn't had  a woman 
since Katy left him.  Mandy crawled across the floor behind him.  She 
wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in the back of 
his neck.
"You seem so nice, Dan."
"Dave."
"Whatever.  Try this on for size." she supported his head between her 
small, hard breasts and  misted his face with a fine spray from the 
spray 
can.
Dave sagged against her and started to giggle.
"Cool." he said.
Carefully leaning him against the wall, Mandy left Dave to go to the 
bedroom and see if she could find any cash other than what she had 
already liberated form his wallet.  She was rummaging through the 
dresser 
drawers when a sudden blast of cold air made her yelp with surprise.
"Dan?  Dan you okay?" she called as she went back into the other room.
There was blood, a lot of blood all down the front of his shirt and onto 
his 
pants.  His head was thrown back and Mandy could see that the blood 
was coming from his neck.  She tiptoed a little closer and found herself 
staring into Dave's neck.  What Mandy could remember from her high 
school Biology classes told her that the white shining through the 
glittering 
red, brown, and blue mess of his neck was Dave's spine.  As if that 
wasn't 
bad enough, his eyes were nothing other than running pools of blood 
dripping down onto his face.  Thinking through the haze of the 
extraordinarily stoned Mandy decided that she had better get the hell 
out 
of there before anyone thought that she had killed him.  She grabbed her 
coat, grabbed her shoes, and ran bare-footed into the freezing night.
The ice clamped down on the capital with a vengeance.  The government 
stopped, 
Congress recessed, the President stopped jogging, and nothing moved 
through the 
clogged airports.  Foreigners  from a colder climate,  the Midwest, 
publicly 
mocked the last of stamina and lack of planning of the public works 
departments 
of the District of Columbia.  All who could, stayed home, and for once 
the 
museums and other visitor centers were quiet and empty.  In the working 
part of 
the city, away from the abandoned tourist attractions, at the corner of 
Pennsylvania and 9th, squatted the concrete bunker of the J. Edgar 
Hoover 
Building.  Inside the warren of corridors, laboratories, offices, 
meeting rooms, 
and every possible type of room needed to run and enormous bureaucracy 
were all 
temperature controlled by a state-of-the-art  heating and cooling 
system.  Air  
was de-humidified, filtered, and warmed before being pumped into the 
delicate 
evidence storage and computer system rooms like water for exotic 
tropical fish.  
It was  wonderful environmental control system when it was working at 
maximum 
capacity.  It wasn't. At a rough guess, without benefit of a 
thermometer, Dana 
Scully estimated that the basement was averaging almost fifty  degrees. 
 She 
heard rumors that some with windows were even colder.  The auxiliary 
heating 
systems, strained to their utmost degree, were keeping critical areas, 
such as 
the computer room and the executive offices, warm.  There was an ugly 
women's 
room rumor that the heating technician best qualified to fix the system 
had been 
sent away for lack of a proper security clearance.  Even with a heavy 
wool 
jacket and thermal silk s long underwear under her skirt, Dana still 
felt like a 
Popsicle.  She had lost contact with her toes sometime after lunch and 
had 
resorted to tapping her feet on the floor to stimulate blood flow.  
Images of 
frost-blackened fingers and toes had an unpleasant way of  drifting 
through her 
mind at unguarded moments.  She had a particularly vivid and unpleasant 
image of 
a man recently  rescued from Everest whose nose had literally frozen 
off.  It 
was starting to look like time to take a few days off.  Not that there 
was much 
work to be put aside.  Even her caseload was frozen.  She took her hand 
off her 
computer keyboard and breathed on her fingers to warm them.  This was 
getting 
old really fast.  It was one thing to be enjoying her desk, but it was 
something 
else to be freezing to death behind it.  The desk had been such an issue 
for so 
long, but now the chipped and scratched beige metal desk with the 
squeaking 
drawers was seriously lacking in glamour.  She kept snagging her 
pantyhose on 
the drawers which was both pissing her off and was becoming expensive.
The door opened and Dana jumped before forcing herself to relax.  Agent 
Haley Donner grinned at her.
"Watch out where the huskies go, don't you eat that yellow snow'." she 
sang to Dana.
"Excuse me?'"  Dana replied
Haley laughed and leaned up against the doorframe.
"Frank Zappa. The late, great Frank Zappa.  It's nice to see you back in 
town."  Haley fluffed her untidy ash blonde hair and sighed "which is 
probably why the old man wants to see you upstairs."
"Why didn't he call?"  Dana asked "He never calls, he never writes. . . 
 "
"Probably thinks that the phone will give him frostbite of the head or 
something.  You can lose up to twenty percent of your body heat through 
your head."
"I heard that they have heat up on the executive levels."  Dana said, 
stepping around her chair, the trash can, and the printer stand that 
corralled her into her desk.
"Not in the Old Man's office.  You know Walt.  Suffering makes you 
strong."
The two women walked through the deserted bullpen.  
"So where's the dark and mysterious Fox?"  Haley asked.
"Doing something dark and mysterious." 
"If it involves that blonde bimbo from the records department I'm going 
to 
kill him." 
"If it involves that blonde bimbo <I'm> going to kill him."  Dana 
agreed.
"Later."  Haley made her farewells and headed back to the Forensics Lab.
As she passed through the hallways on her way upstairs, Dana realized 
that everyone who could find a reason to be elsewhere had done so.  
Once again, she was reduced to clapping erasers and this was making 
her something other than happy. One of her resolutions for what she had 
come to think of as The Last Year had been to stop being such an apple-
polisher and doormat.
The empty, echoing corridors upstairs seemed marginally colder than the 
basement, but it may have been the psychological effect of the chill, 
official aura.  With a sick feeling, Dana realized that she'd lost count 
of the 
too many times she'd ended up in Skinner's office pleading innocence or 
remaining stubbornly silent - usually for things that no one in their 
right 
mind would hold her responsible for.  
Given the weather, Dana wasn't very surprised to see that Kimberly, 
Skinner's assistant, was missing from her desk and the vinyl cover 
wasn't 
even off her computer monitor.  Kimberly had never made it in though the 
snow.  Wimp.
Dana tapped on the door.
"Come in." 
The Assistant Director was, as ever, at his desk, looking at some 
papers.
A flicker of movement near the window caught her attention and her heart 
stuttered for a moment before she realized that she didn't smell 
cigarettes.  
She did, however, smell Yves Saint Laurent perfume.  There was an 
unfamiliar woman standing at the window, looking out.  She was wearing 
what looked like an expensive gray wool suit with a brilliant Kente 
cloth 
shawl around her shoulders and a black coat was folded over the 
visitor's 
chair.  Easily, she was one of the tallest women Dana had ever seen, 
easily over six feet tall and she looked like the platonic ideal of the 
professional African-American woman.  
"Agent Scully, this is Captain Kulujian of the DCPD.  The Bureau has 
offered your expertise to the homicide department on a series of ongoing 
cases under the captain's detectives. " Skinner explained.
The captain stepped away from the cold white light and held out her hand 
to Dana.  The Captain was closer to fifty than thirty and she had her 
gray 
streaked hair done in micro-braids pulled back into an elegant upsweep. 
 
She also wore an aura of calm control that was just short of 
supernatural.  
She was what Dana wanted to be when she grew up - whenever that was 
going to be.  Kulujian's handshake was brief and businesslike.
"I appreciate any time that you can give this case, Agent Scully.  We've 
been working on a few supposedly unrelated murders and I'm starting to 
think that this could be a serial killer.  " 
She handed Dana a worn DCPD Case file manila envelope with a pair of 
perfect  coffee cup rings marring the battered surface.  The rings were 
so 
perfect that Dana thought she could probably find the cup that had made 
them.  
"There have been three homicides with the same MO since the New Year 
and I'm significantly less than happy about this.  the detective working 
on 
the case also seems to think that a similar run of murders last year in 
the 
Pacific Northwest has similar characteristics."
"What took you so long to come to the Bureau?"  Skinner asked.
"Walt, if a housewife in the suburbs loses her cat she calls the Bureau. 
 
The DCPD is always playing second to you guys and we try to discourage 
it as much as possible.  We like to keep our cases in-house so the DCPD 
does something other than traffic duty."
Walt?  Dana wondered, well hello Walter.  Well it wasn't that her boss 
lived like a monk, she knew that much for sure, and no doubt there were 
plenty of women who found his bald virileness attractive, and Captain 
Kulujian seemed like a fairly even match in terms of age, profession, 
and 
rank.
"Besides the fact that should the Pacific Northwest crimes be related, 
this 
would be a Federal crime, I need - we need - help with the 
investigation.  
I'm having a very severe personnel shortage."
Dana looked up from the reports, the embarrassed irritation in the 
woman's voice was a very familiar sound.
"Detectives Mucheski and MacLeod are my two best investigators.  They 
have a seventy-five percent closure rate.  it verges on-"
"Spooky?"  Skinner asked with amusement.
"Uncanny.  Well, MacLeod blew his knee out playing ice hockey with 
Mucheski.  This leaves me with Mucheski," she took a deep breath and 
continued "He's the department problem child and living proof that 
overeducated  Gen-Xers make better bartenders than cops.  I'd try 
spanking him, but he'd probably like it too much.  Mucheski has had no 
less than three partners quit on him, one even left the force.  MacLeod 
 
alone likes him and God only knows why.  He's arrogant, irreverent, 
moody, and verges on the obnoxious.  He's also brilliant."
"Aren't they always?"  Dana murmured.
"We never have that problem in the Bureau."  Skinner said.
As if !  Dana thought to herself.
"I need someone to work this through with Mucheski.  Someone who can 
handle his eccentricities and let him do the work  without reining him 
in too 
much.  Someone who is secure enough to handle his insecurities."
Someone who is five foot two and female and won't threaten his manhood 
too much, Dana thought to herself.  Just sign me up.  
"Agent Scully is just the person for the assignment."
"Thank you sir."  Dana muttered, thinking 'fuck you very much'.
"We can go right over to the station." the captain said.
"Let me get my coat."  Dana said as she went into the hallway.
Got to get my chair and whip while I'm at it, she thought, I'm back 
training 
wild animals again.
Humming "Back in the saddle again," Dana followed Captain Kulujian 
through the 
halls of the police station.  
"Mucheski isn't a bad person, he just has deplorable manners and is a 
little socially challenged.  He's a fine officer and detective, but we 
have to 
lock him in a squad car when the news people come around.  He tends to 
make wonderful soundbites that do not reflect department policy.  
Department policy does not give a shit about the Existentialist 
Ramifications of the Crime, Comprendez-vous ?"
"I understand completely."
"Walt said you would."
The double door of the Homicide squad room slammed open and the 
initial impression Dana had was of a wall of noise and a wave of 
movement.  There were people everywhere, most of them screening on 
the phone and the rest screaming at each other,  It was like a wedding 
reception without the music.  These also seemed to be the only office 
building in DC that still permitted smoking, or at  least had given up 
trying 
to enforce the new law.  Kulujian waded into the surf.
"Moo!" she bellowed.
Moo?  Dana thought.
"Where's Moo?" the captain added.
Three plainclothes cops pointed at another room.
"It wasn't my turn to watch him." one of the cops whined.
"Page him, I'll be in my office."
Kulujian strode off, earrings swinging with purpose.
A young woman that Dana would have mistaken for a college student if 
she hadn't seen the gun at the woman's hip, walked over to her.
"You're the Fibbie, right?"
The charming nickname for Federal agents was something that Dana 
could have lived without.  It sounded, to her, like the name of a frosty 
drink 
served at convenience stores.
"Yes."
"You want a cup of coffee while the Captain collars Moo?"
"Moo?"  Dana asked.
"Mucheski's chosen form of address is 'Moo'." the female officer gave 
Dana a crooked smile "It probably should have been Bullshit.  You want 
cream and sugar in that?"
Dana leaned against a filing cabinet and sipped at her lousy cop coffee 
and tried to pay any attention to the faint aura of hostility that the 
police 
officers were emanating.  Working with local law enforcement was always 
a challenge and the DCPD had taken a very long-suffering air with the 
FBI, like a younger and neglected sibling.  An uncomfortable 
relationship.
She crossed her legs and began reading the files again, there was a 
shuffling, scuffling sound that made her look up.
A skinny young man, wearing one of the expensive down jackets that all 
the young toughs were sporting that winter with his hands cuffed behind 
him, was unceremoniously dragged into the bullpen by a uniformed police 
officer.  The cop slammed the prisoner into a plastic chair a few feet 
away 
from Dana and left.  With dilated pupils and a rapidly twitching eye, 
the 
young man was showing all the characteristic signs of amphetamine 
abuse.  Dana looked back at her files and tried to concentrate. Slouched 
in the plastic chair, the prisoner stared at her.  Dana felt his gaze 
but 
refused to look up.
"Hey baby." He cooed.
She ignored him.
"Hey pretty, pretty baby." He continued.
Dana opened the next file.
"Hey baby you got red pussy hair under that skirt of yours?"
She couldn't help but frown, and hoped that he couldn't see that her 
knuckles were white.  No matter how many insults had been thrown at her 
by suspects and fellow law enforcement officials, she never got used to 
it.  
Her stomach tightened.
Keep a grip, Dana Katherine, she told herself.
"You look like you need a good fuck, I could make you scream, baby."
Great, Dana thought, now what do I do, run?  Maybe if I ignore him, 
he'll 
lose interest.
"Hey man," another voice interrupted "Shut up."
"Baby, I'd split you wide open and make you come from here 'til next 
Tuesday."
Maybe I'll just shoot him, she mused.
"I told you to shut up."
A pronounced 'thwack' made Dana look up. She saw the cuffed prisoner 
slammed into the wall.  Another young man, this one with a badge 
hanging from a clip at his belt, pushed the prisoner face-first into the 
wall.  
The cartilage in the man's nose bent as he was forced into the plaster.
Dana hopped out of the chair and stepped back.
"Kiss your mamma with that mouth? You owe the lady an apology."
"Fuck you man, this is police brutality, man," the hood whined.
"Apologize."
"Suck my dick." The hood choked.
The detective tightened his grip on the hood's head and pushed him 
harder into the wall.
"You'd like that wouldn't you, faggot. Apologize to the lady."
"This really isn't necessary." Dana murmured.
"No really, he must be taught manners." The officer insisted in a 
garden-
party voice and pulled the prisoner's arms up behind him.
"Yo man! That hurts!" the prisoner whined.
"Say Uncle." The cop insisted.
"Uncle."
"Say 'I'm sorry I was crude and offensive'."
"Sorry. Sorry I was crude and offensive." The prisoner choked.
Satisfied, the plainclothes officer dropped the thug.  The thug slid 
down 
the wall and whimpered.
"Get up. Get over it." He said with disgust and motioned a uniformed cop 
over "take this piece of offal to the holding cells and let him ponder 
the 
folly of his ways."
The unformed policeman dragged the sniveling prisoner away.
Dana folded her arms over her chest and glared at the police officer.
The plainclothes cop was young, only about thirty, dressed in a trendy-
casual denim chambray shirt, khakis, and a white tie spotted with black 
Holstein spots.  He was strawberry blonde, needed a haircut, had a 
matching goatee, four thin silver hoops decorated his left ear, thick 
silver 
rings circled his fingers, and a pair of rimless glasses sliding down 
his 
nose. By no means did he fit her image of 'cop', he looked more like the 
guy behind the counter at Starbuck's.  
The noise in the background dropped sharply as officers turned to watch 
the confrontation.
"That was an unnecessary application of brute force." She said.
"You must be the Fibbie." 
The acid from his voice ate a hole in the linoleum between them.
"Special Agent Dana Scully."   
"Well, Red, things are a little different down here in the trenches than 
they 
are in the rarified air of the Hoover Building.  Here you have to wear 
cheap 
shoes because you're always tripping over scum.  Brutality is the lingua 
franca here. 'Those who use arms well cultivate the Way and keep the 
rules.  This they can govern in a such a way as to prevail over the 
corrupt.'  
I do not have time to modify the behavior of junkie scum. Get it?"
"I'm not impressed." she lied.
Actually, and she could just about kick herself for noticing that he had 
the 
most amazing eyes, sort of an electric smoky marble gray with some blue 
thrown in just to keep her off-balance.
"I imagine  Kulujian doesn't have the confidence in me to close this 
thing 
so she goes running to the Federales.  Hoc ex se intelligitur. That's 
self-
evident." He continued, adjusting his glasses.
"I'm here to give you access to the resources of the Bureau, the 
forensics, 
the VICAP database the-" Dana began in a level tone. 
"Spare me the party line bullshit, Red.  If I wanted to be emasculated 
I'd 
just stick my own penis in a food processor, 
thankyouthankyouverrramuch." he shook his head and pointed at the door 
Kulujian had left via.  
"Go home, little Fibbie, you're not wanted here."
"Moo."
Kulujian emerged from her office, arms majestically folded over her 
chest.
"In my office, Detective Mucheski.  Now."
"Well, it's been a thrill. Have your people call my people, we'll do 
lunch." 
he told Dana.
The door shut behind him.
The room seemed to exhale.
Fifteen minutes passed and Dana finished her coffee, and reviewed the 
case files before the door opened again and Mucheski popped out.
"Okay quick change of plan," he said. "We're going on a field trip, 
Red."

Syntax and Measure
2/26
By MustangSally

"Well I haven't had much opportunity to review your case files, but they seem to 
be very thorough."
"Praise from Caesar is praise indeed."
Mucheski drove with one hand and chewed the fingernails on the other.  
They were in a department unmarked car that was wall to wall fast food 
wrappers and cigarette butts, the car also sounded like the muffler was 
held on with twine.  Dana had been surprised to see that despite 
Mucheski's performance in the squad room, he was clearly running a well-
planned investigation.  The field reports were well-organized, clearly 
documented, exquisitely detailed and all the text summaries were written 
in a clear, lucid style.  She'd seen worse in  FBI case files.  Hell, she'd 
written worse, usually because she was trying to cover Mulder's skinny 
ass yet again.  
There had been three murders in the DCPD area, all had been young 
people. The initial reaction was that the murders had been byproducts of 
robberies, as their wallets had been missing or empty of all the cash.  But 
all three victims had cut throats.  Cleanly slit throats, sliced nearly to the 
bone with force and forethought.  Mucheski had speculated that a mugger 
was far more likely to shoot or stab the victim rather than the intimacy 
needed for throat-cutting, The crime scene and post-mortem photos were 
clean and precise,  showing the sprays and blood and the severed blood 
vessels in bright, clinical detail.  No witnesses, no trace evidence, no 
fingerprints, and inconclusive crime-scene evidence.  The interesting 
factor, and one of the elements that gave the case X-File potential, was 
that the eyes of all three victims were mutilated.  The eyes of all the 
victims had been punctured by a dual serrated blade.  The DC Medical 
Examiner's office hadn't been convinced that the eye injury hadn't 
occurred prior to death, either.  No wonder the captain hadn't been happy.
"Did you write these?" she asked.
"My partner's prose style is somewhere between Sergeant Joe Friday and 
Dame Barbara Cartland."
"They're quite good." she murmured and went back to looking at the crime 
scene photos from the Ffisher murder.
"The value of a liberal arts education."
David Ffisher had lived in an anonymous square brick apartment building 
in the less fashionable end of Georgetown.  Dana and Mucheski showed 
the landlady their ID's and she let them into the building and under the 
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape as she complained about the 
interruption to her husband's dinner.  Mucheski apologized to the landlady 
as Dana went into the apartment.  The apartment was warm, as a matter 
of fact, she could breathe without seeing it for the first time that day.  The 
air was stale and under the stale smell was the unmistakable sweet odor 
of drying blood.  She moved through the rooms.  Ffisher hadn't made 
much of an impact on his surroundings other than bleeding to death.  She 
glanced down at Mucheski's notes.  Ffisher had moved into the apartment 
in May after separating from his wife.  Dana was glad that she hadn't had 
the task of  breaking the news to Ffisher almost-ex that she was a widow.  
Somehow, Dana had always ended up with that particular task as it 
tended to wear out Mulder's limited repertoire of tactful phrases.
The mostly beige apartment had the carefully inoffensive feeling of a suite 
in a large hotel chain.  The only sign that a human being had lived there 
was a pair of small framed photographs on the coffee table. Static, posed 
school photos - a pair of dark-eyed, dark-eyed children that resembled 
that static, posed photograph from Ffisher's personnel record rather than 
the butchered corpse of the crime scene photos.  The little girl looked 
about ten and the little boy looked about thirteen and the girl about nine.  
She shuddered and turned away.  Moving around, she focused on details.  
Every surface had been dusted for prints.  There were marks on the 
carpet where forensics has vacuumed all the  detritus and evidence for 
analysis.  Lamps were off-center on the tables and the TV stand had been 
moved.  Dana thought she could smell garbage somewhere.  One of her 
more painful memories was  having to clean up her apartment after the 
Bureau forensics team went through it.  She had been down on her hands 
and knees mopping up Melissa's blood with paper towels.
She went into the office, a bedroom with a desk, next to the bathroom,  
The fingerprint dust was thicker here especially on the door and the door 
jamb.  How casually people caught the door above the knob to pull it shut 
making a beautiful opportunity for prints. 
"Ma'am, I'm sorry about your husband's dinner, but this is a federal 
murder investigation . . ."    Dana heard Mucheski's voice through the thin 
walls.  "No we don't necessarily consider you a witness, unless you saw 
something you neglected to mention in your statement."
She pushed the door open with her foot.  The smell of the blood slapped 
her in the face, making her eyes water.  She swallowed and drew breath 
through her mouth.  The cold light from the window fell squarely onto the 
brown stain on the beige carpet.  The smell was making her stomach 
churn, it was a combination of blood and some sweet cleaner or perfume 
that was just tickling her nervous system the wrong way.  She started to 
break out in a cold sweat.  Normally she wouldn't have felt too 
compromised with Mulder to step out for some fresh air.  She'd seen 
Mulder go green at the sight of a corpse often enough for there to be no 
doubt as to who had the stronger stomach.  But there was no way that she 
was going to let any sign of weakness be visible to this young cop.  No 
way.
Taking a deep breath, Dana continued.
She looked at the large spot of blood, ragged scallops around the edge, 
noticing that there wasn't much in the way of splattering or splashing.  
Unusual. Ffisher must not have struggled at all.  The blood had soaked 
right into the carpet.  He had sat perfectly still while his throat had been 
cut from side to side and his eyes were punctured.  Who in their right mind 
would simply it there while someone grabbed them around the neck and 
cut their throat?  Ffisher had laid there, dead, in a pool of his own blood for 
three days until a co-worker had  noticed that he was missing.  At least he 
hadn't lain there dying.  Death had been mercifully fast.
She turned on her heel and left, She didn't shut the office door behind her.
Out in the freezing twilight, Mucheski was leaning over the unmarked car 
in the street, picking ice out of his windshield wipers.  Dana caught her 
breath and  shook her head to clear it.  Too much free time made for 
sloppy thinking and a lack of focus, she reasoned, but you had to be dead 
yourself not to notice that Mucheski filled out the seat of his khakis in an 
aesthetically pleasing fashion.  Can I have some fries to go with  that 
shake?  
He turned around and threw a last chunk of ice into the gutter.
"So what do you think?"
She blinked and hoped to God that she hadn't been thinking out loud.
"I think I need more information before I can make a valid analysis of this."
"That's the fucker, pardon my Anglo-Saxon," he made a grand, sweeping 
gesture that encompassed the entire street. 
"There are no less than two inches of snow, salt, and sand everywhere in 
this town, and there isn't a footprint to be had for love or money at any of 
these murder scenes.  This ought to be a criminalist's wet dream and we 
have bupkis, nada, nothing."
This, at least, was familiar territory.  She crossed her arms over her chest 
and cocked her head at him.
His eyes, she noticed, were exactly the color of the overcast sky, a moody 
bluish-gray. She had to stop, this was getting silly.
"Do you think something flew in there and cut their throats?" she asked.
"' Good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest?' I 
think not. I'm inclined to believe that the murderer was an obsessive-
compulsive foot-wiper. " he said in tones of infinite disgust and then looked 
at his watch "Well it's five-thirty and I think it's Miller time."
"The DCPD keeps business hours?" she asked, amused.
"Do Red Head Feds eat?"
"I have heard of it done."

"This is strange, " Dana remarked, pointing at a photograph from the 
autopsy of Dan Stockwell, one of the other victims "The ME calls the eye 
injury a rupture here, " 
"Could be a typo."  Mucheski suggested and sipped at his beer, "you know 
doctors, untrustworthy, arrogant, and bad handwriting. The majority of the 
medial profession can't recite the Hippocratic Oath.  Did you know that the 
most common form of medical malpractice is when the pharmacist can't 
read the physician's writing and gives the patient the wrong drug.  Major 
oops!  Then again, you don't have to worry about killing your patients.  De 
Mortuo. He is dead."
Behind the rimless glasses, his eyes telegraphed mischief.
Bite me, she telegraphed back.
The restaurant Mucheski took her to was a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria with 
an uninspired decor of faux brick walls festooned with sports 
paraphernalia, neon signs advertising beer and the TV permanently tuned 
to a cable sports channel,  and the only other woman in the place was 
waiting tables.  Mulder would have loved it.  He collected unpretentious 
places.  Dana looked around at the stoic men in their workingman 
uniforms of jeans and flannel shirts with their eyes trained on thick white 
plates of pasta.  The heat from the pizza oven was finally thawing out the 
bones in her toes and she was getting a little warm.  She wanted to take 
off her jacket, but she wasn't sure how happy the owner would be that she 
was wearing her sidearm.  Better to be miserable than impolite.  Mucheski 
pulled off his jacket and adjusted his sidearm in the holster.  He gave her 
a challenging look from his frosty eyes. 
"Mike, the owner, used to walk the beat.  Make yourself comfortable."
Dana took off her jacket.  Mucheski cast a frankly appraising glance over 
her body underneath her cream blouse. She hoped she wasn't blushing.
"You eat here a lot?" she asked.
"Everybody knows my name."
The waitress appeared with a tray full of food.  Dana scooped the files up 
off the table, but not before the young woman got a good look at he dead 
bodies in the photographs. The waitress paled and Mucheski leapt up to 
help her with the tray before she dropped it.  Tight lipped, she passed out 
the plate of pasta and beat a hasty retreat.
"Sorry about that."  Dana muttered.
"I'll leave her a big tip."
They spread the files out around the dishes and returned to work as they 
ate pasta and red sauce might not have been a good choice with throat-
cutting, but they were in a quiet corner and didn't disturb anyone.  
Nevertheless, Dana kept her voice pitched low and shortly they were 
hissing over the dinner table.
"All the bodies have the eye mutilation.  I find that to be highly significant." 
she said.
"Quite."
"The killer wants to obliterate his image from the victim, so they didn't see 
him."
"Him?  Right.  Statistically, serial killers are male.  The only female serial 
killer was that woman in Florida.  That is if we aren't counting 
Munchausen's by proxy."
"There may be female serial killers out there that we don't know about." 
she said, letting her eyebrow rise to the challenge.
"Getting away with it, you mean." he teased and wiped the last of his white 
sauce off his plate with garlic bread.  " You know what Kipling said about 
the female of the species being more deadly than the male."
"You sound like a man with practical knowledge."
Mucheski leaned across the table and stared directly into her eyes.
"You know what I want?" he asked.
Dana sipped at her Pete's Wicked, willing herself not to squirm.  There 
was something about this hyperactive, Latin-quoting, sarcastic man that 
blurred the boundary between charming and obnoxious.
"What?" she asked in an identical intimate tone.
"A fingerprint.  A nice fat, juicy fingerprint, in the victim's blood." he 
admitted as if informing her of his most deviant sexual practice.  
He licked a spot of foam off his lower lip.
"Not a partial, but a full print from someone who already has a record.  
You can not comprehend how stupid the normal murderer is."
"How do you define normal?" she thought she sounded a little squeaky.
" I once nailed a guy because the misbegotten loser left his wallet on the 
bedside table after he whacked his girlfriend."  Mucheski shrugged and 
shook the dregs of beer in his glass.  "Most of the cases I see are just 
ordinary, stupid brutality.  Junkie kills dealer, wife kills husband ad 
nauseum. Drugs and domestics. Sordid little dramas.  Crime du passionel 
are messy and leave a lot of debris, a lot of clues, a lot of suspects.  
Suspects who start crying for their mother and their lawyer the minute you 
begin an interrogation.  If the case ever gets to court, the defense lawyer 
takes you apart in the stand, making you look like Mark Furhman, and the 
perpetrator  walks. Alternately, the criminal gets parole before the court 
stenographer's nail polish dries. "
"Sounds frustrating."
"Tell me about your frustrations, Red."
Once again, Dana took refuge in her beer.
"Paperwork.  I hate paperwork." She admitted, that much was safe.
The waitress brought the check, intentionally not looking at the papers 
spread between the plates.  Mucheski grabbed the check before Dana 
could make a move for it.  This annoyed her.
"Detective Mucheski-" she started.
"Moo." he corrected her.
"Moo-don't pay for my dinner. This is not a date."
"You're breaking my heart, Red." He clutched the check to his chest. "You 
can get the next one. But did anyone ever tell you that you have eyes as 
blue as the flame from an acetylene torch?"
Dana blinked with surprise.
"No, they have not."
The fun receded from his face.
"I want to nail this guy." he said.  "Where do we start?"
"I want to take another look at these files, and I need to cross-reference 
anything that I might have at the office.  Why don't I call you tomorrow to 
touch base."
"Sounds good."
They went through the ritual exchange of business cards.  Dana saw that 
Mucheski has his cellphone number listed as well as his office extension.  
He hadn't asked for her home number.  But Dana scribbled it on the back 
of her card, just in case he needed her in a hurry.  Sure, fine, whatever. 
As Dana got ready for bed, she dabbed an extra smear of moisturizer under her 
eyes and on either side of her mouth.  The cold weather was making her peel.  
Looking at her pale face reflected in the bathroom mirror, she grimaced and 
poked at her hair.  Did she need to get it done or was the cold weather just 
making it all pooky?
What was the point?  Why bother at all?  So she could make exquisite 
corpse?  No thank you, she was still having nightmares about Donny 
Pfaster and his exquisite corpses.  The world lurched for a second and her 
throat tightened.  She suddenly had an intense desire to be cremated. 
Grabbing the sides of the bathroom sink, she held on with shaking arm 
muscles until the ticking urge in the back of her throat that tormented her 
to cry was choked off.
Control.
Get it?
Got it?
Good.
She took a deep breath.
"Lunatic with a knife.  I ought to be able to wind that up before Mulder gets 
back.  Piece of cake." she gave herself a grim little smile and dry-
swallowed a mild sleeping pill. 
"I'll get the son-of-a-bitch or die trying." she told her reflection.
The wind rattled the sashes of her windows as Dana Scully crawled into her 
cold and lonely bed.  After midnight, it began to snow.

3/26
By MustangSally

Who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the 
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities 
contemplating jazz.
Who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angles 
staggering in tenement roofs illuminated,
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl", 1956
The underside of the city, where tourists were infrequent prey, still wore a 
dirty layer of snow.  Night had fallen and the glowing pink, turquoise and 
scarlet neon signs stained the remainders of the white snow like light falling 
through a shattered stained-glass window.  The people out on the street on this 
cold January night moved in quick little clots dorm one end of the street to the 
other.  It was Thursday night and this was the place to be if you wanted to be 
someone.  The row of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs was swarming with the 
young and terminally hip, who wanted nothing other than to get out of their 
houses where they  has been trapped during the week.  After a hard week of near-
blizzard conditions, bad roads, and cabin fever the young were dying for light, 
sound, and color, and a low cover charge.  They wanted to see some new faces, 
listen to some loud music and drink until they could no longer stand up. 
Black leather was, as ever, the uniform of the night, and the couples, groups 
and hands prowled up and down the street in the skins of dead animals with 
plumes of  warm breath and cigarette smoke floating about their heads.  Light 
broke and shattered in radiant haloes  around the street lights, making them as 
gaudy as their neon sisters.  Doors opened, bodies passed in and out.  Bodies 
circles in black leather, cocooned in parkas, hip bumping  hip in companionable 
embrace, cheek to cheek, pierced nose to pierced nose.  All under the film of 
powdered snow drifting down from the rooftops, blown by an errant wind.  
Shoulders hunched inside an authentic Nazi  stormtrooper leather jacket, Kuy 
hurried down the street, running late as usual.  He has sent his own agenda and 
was now running late.  Typical.  A day late and several dollars short.  A thin 
gloss of sweat brightened his face and spiked his short black hair, pooling 
under his armpits in the thin gray T-shirt.  Fighting through as body-pierced 
pre-law students, Kuy made it through the door of the Inner Eye, and was 
immediately engulfed by the smoke-thickened, strobe-light sliced interior, 
smelling as always of sweat, cigarettes, and sweetish perfumes.  Dance music 
reverberated through his sinuses.  Kuy squinted through the gloom, looking for 
familiar faces among the cool and nearly-cool longing at the faux-steel bar or 
twitching on the dance floor.  The club was tricked out like a high-tech morgue, 
down the doors on the walls and the wait-staff wearing latex gloves.  Squeezing 
into a small space at the bar, Kuy looked down at the faces lined up like so 
many pale brown eggs in a carton until the faces and the features blurred, ran , 
and melted like the dirty snow.
A hand caught his arm, the fingers digging hard into his biceps.
"Go home." the woman warned him.
"Where's Jamie?" he asked.
"You've had enough, Kuy.  You're sick you need to go home, you need to be in bed 
or in the hospital." her eyes were dark holes in the pale expanse of her face.
"Too much is never enough." he said in a thin voice.
"Junkie." she crossed her arms over the shiny surface of her dress "You're a 
fucking junkie."
"So?" 
She watched him go, chewing on her dark lower lip before tuning to the bar and 
ordering a double vodka.
Kuy finally found Jamie looking at CD cases near the DJ booth.  When Jamie saw 
Kuy coming, his face creased into a merry grin.
"So what can we play for you man, a little Doors, a little Hendrix?" he grinned 
more "How about some Nirvana?"
"How much do you want?"  Kuy wasn't even in the mood for the ritual of 
conversation.
"How much have you got?"  Jamie wanted to know.
"Fifty."
It was the remainder of Kuy's work-study money and should have lasted him 
through the rest of the week.
"Fifty?"
"It's all I got, man."
"How much would you pay for a Porsche?  A Ferrari?  For a chance to  step out of 
your miserable little life and experience genuine pleasure?  You offer me fifty 
bucks to save your miserable little soul?  I don't think so."
The green lights from the mixing board glowed up into Jamie's pudgy face.  "The 
other option is that I punch your fucking lights out."  Kuy grabbed a handful of 
silk shirt.
Kuy's light frame barely moved Jamie's more solid body.
"Whatever."  Jamie flinched away from Kuy's grasp and smoothes his shirt, "Give 
me the money."
Kuy dragged a handful of crumpled bills out of his jeans pocket.  Jamie took the 
money, smoothed the bills, and neatly folded the bills in half before tucking 
them into his pocket.  He reached inside a black nylon case and pulled out a 
small cylinder.  It was a sample size aerosol hairspray can,  He lightly tossed 
it to Kuy.  Kuy awkwardly caught the light object against his chest.  
"There's nothing in here."
"There's more than what you paid for."  Jamie said with a warm, malevolent smile 
:Now don't come back here for another handout..  Do you get it?  From now on, 
you pay."
Kuy didn't argue, he took the canister and ran, bumping through the crowd like a 
pinball in a madly flashing  game.  The woman at the bar, the woman with the 
shiny dress,  the woman with eyes like dark smears of ink, watched him go. 
Outside in the cold again, Kuy cradled the little silver canister in his hands 
and smiled as  the snowflakes started to fall again.  He slid around the side of 
a building next to a Dumpster and unclenched his cold hands.
Sparking in the diffused light of the neon was the silver aerosol can bearing 
the name of a well-known hairspray.  With trembling fingers, Kuy peeled the 
clear plastic from the nozzle.  Swallowing hard, he aimed the spar at this face 
and sprayed two quick jets of mist into his face.  The most was as gentle as 
water and smelled like a heavy, sweet spice.  It wasn't what he liked.  It was a 
little too feminine for Kuy but he wasn't in any position to complain.  
Gradually, very, gradually all the muscles all over his body began too relax.  
The screaming along his nerve endings died down too a faint whisper.  
Slowly, back dragging along the hard wall of the club, Kuy  sank to his haunches 
in the snow,   Snow that didn't seem cold to him at all.  The light on the snow 
entranced him, the tiny lights  casting tiny starbursts of pure, clear light  
into the air and the thin blue shadows of the   in the ground were all so 
beautiful that Kuy wanted to weep.  He saw every point to every translucent 
snowflake that fell from the featureless sky between the buildings.  It was all 
too beautiful.  Kuy reached out toward the shattered light.  The light was so 
bright that it seemed to reach the back of his skull, sweeping through his 
entire mind and body.  Kuy never saw the splattering arc of his own blood arch 
and describe a perfect curve in the new white snow.
At two twenty-one the phone rang.  The woman reached our and grabbed the 
receiver without tuning on the light.
"Mulder?" she croaked.
A long pause on the other end of the line.
"Uh, no, it's Moo - Steve Mucheski."
Oh shit, wrong man.  That was not good.  Dana sat up in bed, trying to jump-
start her brain.
"Yeah, and-" she prompted.
"I've got another killing down in Georgetown.  It was outside a club and the guy 
is frozen like a pizza.  Can you come?"
"Right.  Sure .  Fine.  I'll leave in ten minutes."
It was a combination of sheer will and muscle memory that got Dana to struggle 
into a black trouser suit and white blouse,  This was her standard "middle of 
the night emergency" wardrobe and it lived in a permanent state of readiness on 
hangars in her closet.  She made a cup of instant coffee whole her curling iron 
heated up. She took a moment to look out her kitchen window, and watched the 
snowflakes fall through the shower of light from a streetlight. Somewhere along 
the line, she had forgotten how beautiful snowfall was at night.  When the iron 
was hot, she curled her hair, flipping the ends under with memory rather than 
skill.  The truth of the matter is that when Mulder bounced her out of bed at 
two in the morning, he did not rate hair curling.  This was another matter, she 
had the Bureau image to keep up in front of the DCPD.  On a bet, Dana had once 
been clocked at going from pajamas to a full suit with trousers with hair and 
make-up, in less than ten minutes. She put on two pairs of socks and made a 
travel cup of coffee. It was a long and slippery ride to the crime scene.
"Kuy Leong," Mucheski shouted over the noise of the generators "age twenty-two. 
Film student at American University.  Another student found him out here when he 
was looking for someplace to puke."
"Ironic."
"Don't you think?" he smirked.
Kuy Leone was curled up like a fetus in three inches of fresh snow.  The harsh 
generator-powered lights made the entire scene look like a movie set between 
takes,  Mucheski's features were washed out and flattened in the hard light, and 
he looked pale.  It was painfully obvious that he had been dragged out of  bed 
his hair was rumpled and he was wearing a faded Penn sweatshirt and even more 
faded jeans,  Dana  nodded hello and crossed over to the body as Mucheski 
continued filling her in.
"Leong was last seen alive leaving his dorm at around ten.  His roommate was 
surprised that he went out since he had a chest cold for the past week.  You'd 
have to be a pretty dedicated party animal to come down here in the snow with a 
chest cold.  Don't you think?"
Dana leaned over the body and looked at the dead man's face. Sure enough, his 
eyes looked like two scrambled eggs with ketchup.
"I was thinking, " Mucheski began, leaning in next to her, "that the puncturing 
of the eyes could be a substitute for sexual penetration."
Dana stepped back and bumped into the crime scene photographer, a woman with an 
outrageously luxuriant mane of black curly hair.
"That's because the profile for this kind of criminal indicates a man who is 
impotent and sexually dysfunctional in the extreme.  But I think it's a little 
early to reach that conclusion, don't you?"
The photographer snickered.
She looked around.
"You would have to be a pretty dedicated party animal to come out here in this 
weather. Why out here, specifically? Why would you come out to a Dumpster when 
you could be inside in a nice, warn club?" she asked, looking down at the blood 
frozen in the snow.
"Drugs." Mucheski offered, "You don't want to be seen and you don't want to 
share."
"Does he have anything on him?"
"We haven't moved him yet."
"Make sure that your lab does a full tox screen on him.  I want to know if he's 
been taking Nyquil. That could be the thing that you're looking for - drugs."
Mucheski crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Dana  from under his 
floppy bangs with patronizingly amused annoyance.
"That's it? Drugs? You think that I haven't been down that particular route of 
inquiry any less than six times?"
"It never hurts to have someone else look.  What club did he come out of?"
"There are sixteen places on this street that legally serve alcohol.  I sent 
some uniforms around but I don't expect a lot of cooperation."
"Seems to me that you need a little syncopation."
"How d'you mean?"
"'An uneven movement from bar to bar'.  Didn't you take music in grade school?"
"You're funny, no matter what they say about Fibbie Chicks."
"What do they say about Fibbie chicks?"
"That the FBI only recruits old maids, dykes, and whores."
Dana stopped short, sucked in a calming breath, and dug a pair of latex gloves 
out of her pocket.
"You're way out of line, mister." She said in a calm, reasonable voice that 
implied slow, painful death. 
"When did they say that Leong was seen leaving his dorm room?"
Mucheski colored in the harsh light and shuffled in the snow.
"About ten, when the Fox news came on."
"That narrows the gap for time of death a little bit.  I think that the freezing 
that we see here is on the surface more than anything else."
Crouching down in the snow next to the dead man, she touched the hair that was 
frozen to the dead man's face.  The shining crystals were ices made from eye 
fluids and blood.  A sweet, spicy odor was coming up from the body.  Leong must 
have been wearing a lot of cologne when he died, she decided.
"What have your people been able to do with the footprints in the area? Other 
than make more."
Making a face, Mucheski gestured around the alleyway at the badly trampled and 
dirty snow.
"It's been like Union Station out here tonight.  I think everyone from all the 
clubs has been to take a look at the show. 'Like omigod he's dead.! Look Buffy, 
a real, dead body. We don't allow dead people in Annapolis..'" Mucheski 
effortlessly imitated a vacuous female voice.
"Tourists. Keep them as far away as possible. Keep the press away as well. 
Details are on a need to know basis and anyone with a Press ID does not need to 
know." Dana picked up Leong's hands and examined the fingertips..
She sniffed the waxy, dead fingers.
His hands smelled the strongest of perfume.
Odd, very odd.
"The average serial killer is excited by the attention that his crimes produce.  
Let's not give him any more fun than he's having already. And I'll bet you a 
pizza that it all boils down to a very simple, Freudian explanation - sex."
Looking up with the cold, dead hand in her latex-covered ones, Dana noticed that 
Mucheski was starting to look a little green around the gills.
"What's the matter?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"So you want a total press blackout?  You're the Fibbie, you ought to know. "he 
said and made a note in his notebook.
Dana looked around the scene again.  Near the Dumpster, something glittered with 
the reflected light from the search lights and the flashbulbs, something 
directly between Leong's hand and the Dumpster.  She fishing her pocketknife, 
flicked out the longest blade, and poked at the glittering piece  of snow.  It 
wasn't snow, it was a clear, curving half-moon of thin plastic, too clear to be 
tape, thin, fragile and familiar with its pale green spots.  
A tamper-proof seal.
Sitting back on her heels, Dana heard her spine make the terrible crunching 
noise that reminded her that she wasn't twenty-two anymore..  She looked around 
the scene.  The plastic could have blown out of the Dumpster, but there didn't 
seem to be any other trash around, so it could have belonged to Leong..  But 
what the hell did it mean?
"Have this bagged and tagged and sent to the lab with the rest of the evidence."
"What is it?" Mucheski asked.
Standing up, she pulled off her gloves.
"If I knew that I wouldn't be sending it to the lab."
Trudging back to the patrol car, Dana noticed the small crowd of clubb0looking 
college types huddled in their coats just beyond the Crime Scene tape. God, they 
all looked so young, and what the hell were they wearing anyway?  What ever 
happened to skinny ties and stiletto heels with baby-doll socks? What ever 
happened to black rubber bangle bracelets.?  Maybe she was getting more boring 
as she got older but as far as Dana was concerned, the grunge thing was just 
ugly.
She noticed a young uniformed cop leaning up against another car, looking cold 
and miserable.
"What's your name. Officer?" she asked., flashing her badge.
"Rovinski." The kid said with a sullen look.
"Rovinski, I need those people questioned, I need statements, and names and 
phone numbers.  Real names and phone numbers, nothing remotely cute like Ronald 
Reagan or Dick Hertz, okay? Got it?"
She reached the cruiser she had arrived in and began pulling on her lined 
leather gloves. It was shaping up to be yet another exciting night in the life 
of Dana Scully, waiting for the morgue meat wagon and freezing her ass off in 
the presence of the dead.  It was starting to snow again, big pretty white 
flakes dripping onto the dark coats of all the law enforcement officers standing 
around the body of one small man who probably wouldn't have gotten that much 
attention in life.
"Ma'am?" A male voice called from the crowd.
Turning, Dana found herself facing one of the cops from the murder scene, this 
was a young, earnest black man with a smoothly shaven head wearing a dark blue 
CRIME SCENE jacket. He was holding out a white Styrofoam cup that steamed in the 
cold night air.
"Coffee." he said and pushed the cup in Dana's direction, "Nothin' in it but 
cream and caffeine. Looks like you need it."
"Thanks." Dana said and accepted the cup.
Standing as he was in the shadow of the building that Leong had died behind, the 
man was little more than a dark shape in the cold night. The cup was full of 
coffee, hot and tasting like heaven.
"You're the Fed, right?" 
"Special Agent Scully."
"Officer Berks. Call me Curly. Hair and Fibers. " He passed a hand over his bald 
head and smiled.
"Thank you, Officer Berks."
"The photographer is Annie Miller, they call her Moe.  She's good, and a little 
mean, she'll give you a good eight by ten glossy of you picking your nose or 
barfing if you're lucky.  If you're not lucky it ends up in the union 
newsletter.  She used to be a paparazzi and it shows."
"Who's your fingerprinter?"
"Larry DiLanzo. Best there is."
Larry, Moe, and Curly? Dana thought, Mary Sweet Mother of Jesus, I am working 
with the Stooges.
Snow crunching under his Timberlines, Mucheski ambled up.
"No coffee for me?" he asked Curly.
"She's prettier than you are." Curly said.
Mucheski folded his arms across his chest and leaned up against the cruiser next 
to Dana.
"Mea culpa maxima." He said.
"You know, we ought to go over a few ground rules here." Dana sipped her coffee 
and watched the lights sparkle in the storefront window across the street,  "I 
am pleased to be working with local law enforcement to solve these crimes.  I am 
not trying to grandstand you here, but you have to understand that I will not 
tolerate any undermining of my authority.  I will treat you as the primary 
investigator on this case and with the respect you deserve. All that I ask in 
return is that you treat me with the same amount of respect in return. I trust I 
make myself clear?"
"Crystal." He said and leaned up against the car next to her, his breath 
billowing out in the light from the bar across the street. He sighed.
"So, I guess asking you out is out of the question." he said.
From years of practice she knew how to handle this level of impertinence.  
She ignored it.


Syntax and Measure
4/26
By MustangSally

Three hours later, the sun was starting to come up, cold and green in 
the east. 
Leong was finally zipped into his eternal rest sleeping bag and put into 
the 
Coroner's van to be taken to the city morgue where a stranger's hands 
would 
probe the inside and outside of his chilled body.  While Leong went on 
his last 
trip downtown, Dana and Mucheski  went back to school to search Leong's 
dorm 
room.  After awakening the Dean of Students and Leong's roommate, 
Mucheski sat 
on the edge of Leong's bed and questioned the roommate.  Dana searched 
through 
Leong's belongings and the Dean leaned up against the doorframe looking 
mournful 
and yawning from time to time.  The roommate, wrapped in a Chicago Bulls 
blanket, was shivering uncontrollably.  Dana almost felt sorry for the 
boy as he 
was trying to think through a haze of sleep and shock.
The testosterone in the room was stifling, it smelled of dirty clothes 
and 
spilled beer.  Nude photos of blondes were taped to the walls and after 
a few 
moments, Dana was starting to believe that the rouged nipples of the 
starlets 
were eyes watching her, reproaching her for being clothed while they 
were not.  
She started to sweat under the wool of her suit as she searched through 
the 
debris of Leong's desk.
"I mean, he's like really dead?" the roommate asked.
"Quite dead.  His throat was cut."
Brutal phrase, that.  The Dean of Students winced and rubbed a hand over 
his 
unshaven face.
Erik, the roommate, pulled the blanket a little closer around his chubby 
body.
"Why would anybody want to kill Kuy?" he asked.
"That's what we're trying to find out.  Did anyone ever threaten Kuy?"
"No."
"Was he involved in a gang or anything?"
"You're just saying that because he was Vietnamese.  No.  No gang would 
have 
Kuy, he was too much of a geek."
Takes one, Dana thought.
"Kuy do drugs?" Mucheski asked.
Dana picked up a stack of MAC machine receipts and started looking at 
times, 
dates and amounts.
"What, are you crazy? He was a film major, he did shitloads of drugs.  
Coke, 
pot, Scooby Snacks, and some really nasty shit that made him giggle and 
sweat."
"Kuy did drugs?" the Dean asked, shock on his face.
"No shit, Sherlock." Erik said "guess you can't take away his work study 
now, 
huh?"
"How much was Kuy getting paid for his work study?" Dana asked.
"We pay our students ,minimum wage for work study, but they also get a 
percentage defrayed on their tuition, based on need." The Dean of 
Students 
explained.
"The transactions I'm seeing on Leong's MAC accounts show some pretty 
hefty 
deposits and withdrawals that don't match a minimum wage job."
The Dean of Students was honestly confused.
"They aren't allowed to work outside the school. It's against policy."
"Get a grip, everyone works for money under the table.  Kuy bartended in 
Ashton-
Morgan. Brought home tip money. All cash, all untraceable." Erik said 
with a 
nasty laugh "you sit in your fucking office and don't have a clue."
Mucheski stood.
"We'll be in touch."

"When I was in college, there was this rumor that if your roommate died, 
you got 
an automatic 4.0." Mucheski said as they walked made their way across 
the frozen 
and crusty lengths of the campus to where Mucheski had parked the 
unmarked car, 
"The only thing that saved Dave's life was the fact that I couldn't 
figure out 
how to dispose of the body." 
"Erik's going to need that with his charming personality," Dana pushed 
her hair 
behind her ear with one gloved hand "Whatever Kuy was into it was 
expensive. The 
movement on his MAC card indicates transactions of hundreds of dollars a 
week. 
That's expensive for minimum wage.  He was probably in deep with his 
dealer."
"And I  thought I blew a lot of money on beer in college." He unlocked 
the 
passenger side door for her.
"Where did you go to college?" she asked.
"University of Pennsylvania."
"Major?"
Mucheski laughed and looked away.
"Dual major, Philosophy and Criminal Psychology.  Now I know the whys 
and the 
wherefores of the criminal mind whilst I ponder the true nature of evil. 
What 
the hell is this?"
He pulled a piece  of yellow paper out from under the windshield wiper.
"What are you doing here being a police officer? " she asked.
"Oldest story in the canon - a woman.  I followed a girlfriend out here 
after 
college, we were going to get married, but she returned by geographic 
devotion 
by dumping me for a Congressional Aide.  I needed a job and the cop 
thing beat 
the hell out of the Quick-Mart."
He flopped into the driver's seat and stared the yellow slip of paper 
for a 
moment.
"Failure to pay for this ticket will prevent me from receiving my final 
grades.  
Bummer."
"Do you want to oversee the post-mortem with me?"
"I'll pass.  I have to drive to Richmond and tell Leong's parents that 
their son 
is dead." He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "you want to 
trade?"
"I'll take a rain check."
"It's a joy and a pleasure to be sure.  Mr.  and Mrs. Leong, your son is 
dead. 
He was doing drugs, and he was murdered.  He blew his education to get 
high. All 
the love that you had for him doesn't count for shit because your little 
boy is 
dead. He'll never have a chance to turn his life-path around. He died in 
an 
alleyway next to a Dumpster full of garbage like a stray dog."
The pain that roughened his voice made a flash of something much like 
terror 
dance along Dana's spine.  How was it that he could summon up so much 
sympathy 
so easily?  Mucheski was young, the job hadn't yet turned his feelings 
into 
emotional beef jerky. Dana felt old, mummified, dead.  Anesthetized.  
Did anyone 
talk about her with the same ruefulness?  She found her hand on his 
sleeve.  
Looking up, without his glasses, Mucheski's eyes were younger, less 
wary.  He 
caught her gaze and she watched the pale motes of blue float in the 
restless sea 
of gray.  She pulled back her hand, and knew that she was blushing. 
"Can you drop me off at the morgue?" she asked.
"I'll call you when I get back from Virginia." He said and put his 
glasses back 
on.
"Sure."

"Spray and Stay." Haley Donner said at three o'clock, throwing the 
report down 
on Dana's new desk.
"Spray and Stay?" Dana asked, opening the file and looking at the slip 
of 
plastic in the evidence bag.
As usual, Haley  wafted into the X-Files basement office on a cloud of 
Poison 
and plopped into the battered chair at Mulder's desk.
"The plastic came from the packaging from a bottle of Spray and Stay.  
Extra 
Hold.  Unscented has blue dots and Regular has pink." Haley gave Dana a 
crooked 
smile "I personally punched a major hole in the ozone layer with Spray 
and Stay 
in the eighties.  I had some seriously big hair."
"What would Leong be doing with a can of Spray and Stay?"
"Well he wasn't doing his hair.  Not outside in the snow.  Men aren't 
even that 
stupid. Must have been huffing.  Inhaling the propellant to get high. 
Psychoactive substances composed of organic solvents like toluene and 
trichloroethylene and volatile components are found in many aerosol 
products 
users either huff directly from a can or a bag with the substance 
inside. This 
results in a characteristic "Sniffer's Rash" around the mouth and nose. 
Charming 
little habit, isn't it?"
"The absorption rate in the lungs must be almost instantaneous. It would 
be like 
being hit in the back of the head with a two by four.  But death would 
occur due 
to asphyxiation, aspiration or cardiac arrest." Dana looked down at the 
grainy 
faxes of Leong's postmortem.  
"Only a human can cut another human's throat." Haley pointed out.
"Mulder could give you an argument about that." Dana said, throwing the 
file 
down on her desk with disgust. "No rash on our boy, I think. I just wish 
I'd 
done the PM myself instead of that arrogant dickhead Gagliardi down at 
the City 
Morgue."
"He throw you out again?"
"The DCPD does not work and play well with others. He said I was 
implying that 
he was incompetent and that he's been performing PM's since before I was 
playing 
with Barbie dolls." 
"Ah, he's just saying that because he has a really small penis." Haley 
began 
rummaging around in the top drawer of Mulder's desk.
"Right.  I ought to nail his ass for making a sexist comment.  You know, 
I 
really resent having to apologize for being a woman.  It's as though I 
have to 
overcompensate for having ovaries." 
She leaned over the desk and tapped the Formica laminate top. "You know, 
no man 
would have to hover over the edge of a desk for four years. He would 
have had a 
desk, a phone, and stupid little desk toys from day one.   A man would 
be 
invited to play golf with Skinner on the weekends.  I have to be three 
times 
better than any man to be taken seriously around here and I still get 
patronized 
and treated like I'm a secretary."
"Go girl." Haley muttered, taking a square candy out of Mulder's 
chicken-headed  
Pez dispenser.
Dana tossed her glasses down on the blotter and massaged the spot over 
her eye 
where the malignant cells multiplied like mold in a shower stall. 
"Sorry. I got three hours of sleep last night."
"Did that have anything to do with the cute blonde guy that dropped you 
off this 
morning.  New man?"
"That's no man, that's Moo. Detective Steve "Moo" Mucheski of the DCPD."
"Very nice. Very cute. Married?"
"Never."
"Cool. Get him now before he becomes somebody else's ex-husband."
"True." Dana agreed. "But he's not exactly my type."
"So, use him for sex and dump him cold. Be a man about it."
"Oh go back to your lab and leave me alone." Dana groaned.
"I'll tell Agent Pendrell you send your love."
The door shut behind Haley and Dana turned back to the files, staring at 
the 
shredded remains of Kuy Leong's throat.


Syntax and Measure
5/26
By MustangSally

Incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping 
toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time 
between
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawn wine drunkenness 
over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic 
light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, 
ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956
"You goddamn cocksucker!" she screamed, making heads turn.
"Jesus, will you shut the fuck up?" he hissed.  
If it was possible to make enough noise to draw attention away from the flashing lights and
thrumming 
music of the dance floor, Maureen was managing to do it.  A screaming drunk with an attitude
problem is 
generally a big attention getter.  The woman was screaming mad, barely coherent and
embarrassing the 
living hell out of her boyfriend.  
"I hate you!  I wish you were dead  I wish you were fucking dead and buried with your fucking
heartless 
heart cut the fuck out!" she wailed, mascara pouring like ink over her pale cheekbones.
"Redundant." The bartender drawled and went back to drying a glass.  "You expect me to sit  and
watch you 
do this to yourself?" the man asked "I think not.
"Eat shit and die!" Maureen shrieked and threw the glass at him.
The beer spilled onto the dirty floor.
The door shut behind Peter.
Maureen sagged to her knees on the floor, a green spotlight shining off the mucus running from
her nose and 
the tears from her eyes.  The bartender dialed the local cab company and then went around the bar
to the 
woman kneeling on the floor.   She knelt next to her and passed her a napkin.  The drunk girl
scrubbed her 
face with the square of paper, searing the trails of her make-up into swirls.
"He said he loved me and that he was going to help me through this.  He said that he was going to
help me 
to stay clean." She sniffed "It's so fucking hard." "I know, baby, I know."
When the cab came, the bartender escorted her to the waiting cab and waited to hear Maureen tell
the cabby 
her address.  The bartender watched the cab drive away, rubbing the tattooed flesh of her bare
arms, the 
streetlight illuminating the halo of breath rising around her head.
In the cab, Maureen leaned back against the dirty vinyl of the  back seat and looked out the
window, "Hey 
man, she said to the cabby. "you know where I can get some ghost?" "That's bad shit." 
The cabby was young, shaved, pierced, and tattooed.
"Pussy." She taunted him.
"Is that an offer?"
"Can you get ghost?"
"I've got it."
In the flashing yellow light of a traffic light the cabby held up a shining silver object that glittered
in 
Maureen's eyes.  She licked her lips.  "You got a roommate?" he asked.
"I don't share."
He smiled at her in the rear-view mirror.
Dana really wasn't surprised when the phone rang at ten minutes to two.  "We've got to stop
meeting like 
this, people are starting to talk." She said and stepped under the Crime Scene tape.
"Gee, you mean you'd go out with me and I wouldn't have to kill anyone first?"  Mucheski looked
down at  
his notebook. "And today, ladies and gentlemen, our contestant on 'Who's my killer' is Maureen
Spencer. 
Aged twenty-four, grad student at Georgetown.  Studies English Lit, single, no roommate, and
worked at 
Borders. She was last seen alive leaving a downtown club at eleven tonight.   She was found by
her 
boyfriend about half an hour ago.  Boyfriend is now down with the EMT's being treated for
shock.  Let's 
give Maureen a big hand." The Crime Scene Team gave a polite round of applause and went back
to work. 
Dana tried not to yawn as she pulled on yet another pair of latex gloves.  Maureen Spencer was
laying on 
her back on her sofa, dead and nude.  Her sightless eyes, punctured and bleeding, stared at the
ceiling.  It is a 
normal human reaction to want to close the eyes of the dead, but Dana had to settle for noting
that the blood 
and the fluids had run down her face in an unkind parody of tears. The throat wound was a little
different, 
too, this time a series of jagged slashes across the throat, not a tidy incision.  Dana lifted the dead
woman's 
arms and saw nicks and slashes on her hands and forearms, the signs of defensive wounds.
Whoever had done this to Maureen Spencer, had gotten a fight for his trouble.  "I think we might
get 
something from under her fingernails.  Please see that the hands are bagged properly." Dana told
the woman 
with "Coroner's Dept" stenciled across the back of her jacket.
The woman chewed gum and gave Dana a sullen look.  Dana leaned over the body and sniffed. 
Like Leong, 
Maureen Spencer had a definite odor, something spicy and floral at the same time.  "Detective, I
want you to 
smell the body." she said.
"Excuse me?" 
Under her Medusan glare, Mucheski meekly knelt next to the body .
"What am I sniffing for?" he asked.
"You tell me if you smell anything."
He shrugged.
"Perfume or something."
Mucheski's shoulder bumped hers.
"Any possibility of sexual involvement?" he asked
Now  Dana could smell him; leather jacket, coffee, soap, and something like patchouli. She
glanced down at 
the bruises on the dead woman's thighs.  "Maybe after the autopsy." 
He leaned closer, his breath ruffling her hair.
"Don't tease." he said and stood up.
Shaking, Dana began looking on the inside of the dead woman's arms for puncture marks.
"The boyfriend let  himself in with his own key.  He said that the door was locked." Mucheski
read from his 
notebook.
Standing up, Dana heard her knees crack.
"We're back to doors, fingerprints, and footprints, oh my." Mucheski said, "which should be
simple, but-" 
"This place has fingerprints from over a hundred individuals so far, and that's not counting
partials." Larry 
the lurking fingerprinter complained.  "Landlord said she had a party last weekend.  Good thing
Larry's on 
the case." "Fuck you." Larry said, "this place is a fucking nightmare.  More prints here than on
Madonna's 
ass."
"Well, run them all and see if we don't get some kind of hit. Even if the hit is for passing bad
checks, but I 
really want to see a couple of prints from individuals with drug convictions." she said, snapping
off her 
gloves.  Dana was unable to suppress a yawn, she held her hand over her mouth and shook her
head to clear 
it.
"Are we keeping you up?" Mucheski asked.
Stepping away from the couch, Dana began looking around the apartment.  As she had at the
Ffisher murder 
scene, trying to get to know the victim.  Unlike David Ffisher's stark single man apartment and
Kuy Leong's 
grubby little dorm room, Maureen Spencer had plenty of items around her apartment which
served to paint a 
clear picture of what her life had been like before someone had ended it by slicing her throat open. 

Textbooks were piled up on a table with a notebook computer.  Spencer seemed to be reading
Victorian 
poetry, from the titles that Dana could recognize.  She looked down at an open book.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Shuddering, Dana walked towards the bedroom and something squished underfoot.
"Boyfriend lost it." Larry explained.
"Great." she groaned and wiped the vomit off the side of her boot by rubbing her foot on the
carpet. 
Sure enough, Maureen Spencer had a liking for perfume,  there was a collection of older-style
perfumes on a 
small silver tray on  the dresser.  Shalimar, Tabu,  Ambush, Bird of Paradise and Topaz, names
that Dana 
would have associated with her grandmother rather than a woman with black fingernails.  Dana
picked up 
one of the bottles, which was empty, and sniffed it.  Something wasn't right.  She remembered
Shalimar as 
being a little more floral. . . Then again, perfume could change a little as it aged, eventually
becoming quite 
nasty.  Dana had a Love's Baby Soft experience that she would have been happier forgetting.  She
dropped 
the Shalimar in an evidence bag and labeled it.  "To die so pure and lovely. Morir! Si purea e
bella." 
Mucheski muttered into Dana's ear "Although by all the signs it looks like our Maureen wasn't
going to get 
married in white."
He nodded at the BJ's Wholesale Club sized box of condoms on the unmade bed, and Dana wasn't
imagining 
that there was disdain in his voice.  "Now we have to hunt down every guy that she slept with and
see if 
anyone of then had a reason to whack her.  I hate promiscuous corpses, they complicate
everything."
"And you're what? A good Catholic boy?" Dana asked, raising an eyebrow at him.  "Buddhist,
actually." he 
gave her a mischievous smile "Let's go talk to the boyfriend, shall we?"
Peter Gilroy was sitting in a miserable lump on the rear bumper of a police cruiser with a dark
green wool 
blanket around his shoulders.  He was drinking coffee from a steaming cup and still looked a little
green in 
the flashing blue and white lights of the squad cars.  Thin and pale, with long brown hair and a
pubic goatee, 
Gilroy was a caricature of cappuccino bar culture.  He was shaking, coffee spilling over his
fingers.
"Agent Scully, FBI." she showed him her ID   "Mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"My veracity is questionable at this juncture.  I am both intoxicated and dazed.  
I am not, however responsible for extinguishing the life of my beloved."
"I'll let  you handle this one." Mucheski muttered.
"Do you know where Maureen was between the club and her apartment?"
"Unfortunately, I had already quit the club when Maureen left."
"Can you think anyone who might have cause to kill Maureen?"
"Not really, no. She wasn't universally liked, but then who is?"
"Did Maureen do drugs, Mr. Gilroy?"
"Maureen was a great aficionado of recreational chemicals." Gilroy said and looked away "I'm
afraid that we 
quarreled in the club and things were said, that, if taken out of context may be potentially
provocative.  
Maureen had been trying to get off her pharmaceuticals to not  great  success and I was rather
infuriated 
with her at the time.  I wanted her to cease the narcotics and cease haranguing me in public.  I
was not 
motivated to end her life." "Where were you until eleven thirty ?" Mucheski asked, his voice with
sharpened 
edges.
"I was at my old roommate's, drinking. I only came to Maureen's to try and reason with her.
That's when I 
found her."
"One thing, Pete, how is it that you left your drunk, junkie girlfriend alone in that club?" Mucheski
asked. 
He leaned closer to the shivering man.
"Didn't you think that she was going to go and fuck  some other guy?" With his shoulders
hunched in his 
jacket, and a cold smirk on  his face, Mucheski metamorphosed into the prototypical copy bully. 
Dana 
stepped back and stared, the skin on her arms beginning to creep.  This was the Mucheski who
had ground 
the suspect in  the police station's face into the wall when the man had made obscene comments to
her.  This 
was the Mucheski that didn't want her on the case.  This was the Mucheski that said the Bureau
only 
recruited "Old Maids, Dykes, and Whores."
This was the Mucheski she didn't like.
What was it lately?  Were there no normal men left?
"Was she balling somebody else when you walked in on them?" Mucheski asked.
"It wasn't like that." Gilroy whispered.
"What was it like, Pete?" 
"Not. Like. That."
"Did you whack her, Pete?"
Mucheski out-weighed him by about thirty pounds and was pressuring him against the trunk of
the police 
cruiser.  Gilroy sucked in a shaky breath and tried to look away, but Mucheski's smile got wisder.
"You know it'll make it easier if you just tell us now."
Gilroy's eyes filled.
"I want my lawyer." he whispered.
"Don't leave town." Mucheski warned, "We'll be in touch." Shoving her hands in the pockets of
her black 
wool coat, Dana followed Mucheski over to the battered and ugly unmarked car he drove.  "Why
did you do 
that?" she asked.
Leaning against the car, Mucheski took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.  There were two red
spots on the 
bridge of his nose where the frame rests had pressed into his flesh. They looked like two burns.
"I put a little pressure on him to see if he would squeak.  Didn't they teach you anything at the
Academy?"
"Just proper interrogation techniques, nothing important." she looked back over to Gilroy and
sighed "He's a 
very un-promising suspect." "He doesn't have the balls." Mucheski.
She put her hands on her hips.
"And you do?" she asked.
"What?!" he demanded.
Gunshots.
Four.
"Man down! We got an officer down!"
"Fuck." Mucheski hissed. 


Syntax and Measure
6/26
By MustangSally

I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the 
actual Ping-Pong 
of the abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal 
it should never 
die ungodly in an armed madhouse
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl", 1956

"Man down!"
"I need an EMT up here."
"Fuck that man, he's fucking dead."
"Gun.  We got a gun up here."
"Backup, we need fucking backup."
"Oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit . . ."
Staccato montage: voices over voices, shrill with adrenaline, shriller, 
shriller still, crackle of radios, dispatch otherworldly voices through 
the ether. Abbot and Costello bumbling on staircase, feet, hats, men, 
men, men. . . Spillover of bluelight flashing from patrol cars outside. 
Cold night, hot hallway, everyone breathing and sweating in the stale, 
confined space.
Dana pounded up the stairs behind Mucheski, flashing through blue 
uniform jackets, the glitter of badges in the narrow stairway leading up 
to the roof, sound bouncing off the dirty beige walls, jarring the teeth 
in her head. She had her gun in one hand and was elbowing her way 
through the clot of cops in the stairwell just a step or two behind 
Mucheski.  
"What the fuck is going on?" Mucheski demanded of the cop at the head of 
the stairs.
On the stairs was a crumpled form in blue, Dana knelt beside it and 
probed in the 
bleeding mess that had been its neck, the blood hot on her fingers as 
she rummaged in the 
wreckage for a pulse.  Most of the officer's skull was gone, she noted, 
and his head had collapsed inward like a pumpkin left too long on the 
front porch. 
 "Came out here to take a look, and boom, out of nowhere, guy with a gun 
jumps out and shoots!" the cop in charge was an older man with a 
doughnut gut and more bald than hair.  "I ain't never seen nothin' it." 
"Where'd he go?" Mucheski demanded.
"He's dead." Dana announced.
"Fuck." Mucheski muttered.
"The roof, man, he's on the roof." someone yelled.
"Aw man, he's got Laura Chu with him.
"Great now he's got a fucking hostage?  Why don't you just give him the 
fucking keys to 
my house? Didn't you search the fucking hallway?" Mucheski asked, 
pushing past him to the 
door.
"Fuck you, kid! "
Pausing in the doorway, Mucheski's face was bleached blue from the 
lights outside. The rattling and clattering stopped in the stairwell.
"Call dispatch.  Get the TAC officer on duty, get a SWAT team, and the 
chopper. Call the fucking Marines if you have to.  I do not want this 
motherfucker leaving the building." he said and stepped out on the roof.
"Mucheski," Dana hurried after him.
"Go away." he told her.
"The hell I will."
Mucheski's mouth twitched but he made no further comment.  Dana followed 
him.  Crouching, he scuttled along the edge of the air conditioning 
unit.  Up this high, the wind whipped between the chimneys and 
television antennas, blowing ice crystals into Dana's eyes.  She looked 
out and saw the gold lights of the city glittering like broken glass on 
the highway, and she thought she could make out the red light crowning 
the Washington Memorial.  Mucheski looked up over the top of the air 
conditioner and then dropped to the ground, looking for all the world 
like an angry rabbit glaring out of its hole.
"Hey man, I wanna talk to you." he called over the roof.
"Stay the fuck away from me." the man screamed.
"I'm not moving.  Is officer Chu okay?  Can you hear me, Laura?"
"Okay." came a shaky female voice.
"That fucking bitch!" the man yelled.
"Oh shit." Mucheski groaned, peeking over the air conditioner again, "We 
shall put fetters about this fear, which now goes too fleet footed.  
Hamlet, Act 3, scene 3." 
Bobbing up on her knees, Dana looked over the louvered top of the air 
condenser and across the roof at the two figures silhouetted against the 
garish wash of a searchlight.  From what she could make out in the blaze 
of light the man was bare-chested and bare-footed in the frigid air, and 
he had Officer Chu clutched to his chest like a lover.  Chu's hair blew 
loose in the cutting wind, and Dana could see the drying  tearstains on 
her face.  The suspect noticed Dana for the first time and he jerked 
Chu's body around so she shielded him from Dana as well.
"We just want to talk to you." she said.
"Big fucking deal."
"I'm Dana.  What's your name?"
"Fuck you, that's my name, bitch."
"Nice guy." Mucheski muttered. "You keep him talking and I'll flank 
him."
"Wait for the SWAT team."
"What and miss all the fun? I could get shot. What a rush." he gave her 
a sickly grin and crawled off along the air conditioner.
"What happened to Maureen?" Dana called, flexing her fingers around the 
now-sweaty grip of her gun.
"That bitch killed her!" the man shrieked.
Officer Chu whimpered.
"What bitch?" Dana asked.
"The bitch was on fire, she came in and touched Maureen, then she ripped 
her eyes out. 
Maureen didn't even scream, she just stood there all bloody and I 
smelled the fire. It 
was like hamburgers cooking." came the now-broken voice through the 
metal and cinderblock 
forest of chimneys and flue vents "I ran, man, I had to get the fuck out 
of there." Clearly delusional from drugs, Dana classified the man's 
ramblings. In a matter of moments he was probably going to start talking 
about Eric Clapton being God and that the devil was trying to eat his 
brain.  She sighed and looked over the edge of the air conditioner at 
the suspect.  His olive skin was shiny with sweat and he was breathing 
heavily and Dana noted all the classic external signs of a paranoid 
rage.  Even behind the sheltering bulk of the air conditioner, the cold 
night cut into her body and she began to shiver.
Build a rapport, gain his trust.
"We want to help you." she suggested.
Show him sympathy and compassion.
"We know what happened to Maureen and we understand why."
Make him trust you.
"Why don't you come inside where it's warm so we can talk." she said in 
her most soothing voice.
So they can fry the cop-killing bastard.
"Put the gun down, motherfucker."
Mucheski's voice was colder than the night.
Startled, Dana scrambled to her feet and went cold to her spine at the 
sight on the edge 
of the roof.  The suspect still held Chu around the neck, the muzzle of 
his revolver 
pressing into the thin skin at her temple, her face blue-white with 
fear. The suspect was 
flushed red as a pomegranate, and his chest heaved. Mucheski had his gun 
to the suspect's 
neck, his arm fully extended, and his body well out of the man's reach. 
His glasses sparkled.
"Put the gun down you cocksucker or I'll blow your head the fuck off."
"Don't do it. Don't push him." she muttered under her breath.  A 
terrible blast of wind and an ear lashing wave of sound made her stumble 
and grab the air conditioner for support.  The eye beam, the 
searchlight,  the wrath of God came down in sound and light and noise 
and the voice of a terrible angel made the atoms of the night vibrate 
with terror and righteousness. Gusts of air pounded Dana's face.
"Put the gun down and step away from the edge." came the monstrously 
amplified voice from 
the police helicopter. 
"Back off!" Mucheski screamed at the helicopter, making slashing motions 
with his arms "Back the fuck off."
"Fuck you!" the man screamed.
The gun now off him, the suspect took the opportunity to drive his elbow 
up and into Mucheski's chin. Head snapping up at a horrible angle, 
Mucheski spit out a spray of blood before hitting the ground like a sack 
of cornmeal.  His gun bounced out of sight. The light from the 
helicopter swung crazily over the scene making it flash and stutter like 
a black and white horror movie.  With the lighting and the howling of 
the helicopter, Dana couldn't even see if Mucheski was breathing.  It 
was conceivable that he could have broken his damnfool neck.
Fucking fantastic.
He whipped Chu around and started running, dragging the stunned officer 
with him.
Trust, yeah, right, great, trust my ass, Dana thought and started 
running after him. She 
followed them down a narrow strip of roof between the stairwell and  the 
chimney, managed 
to scramble across the space between that roof and the next without 
falling, and finally caught up with Chu and the suspect against a 
waist-high wall, behind which she saw only darkness behind them. Slowly 
she advanced, the man's hand wavered and Chu silently started to cry.
"Come on, it's not too late."
"She's going to kill me." he stuttered "We took the ghost away from her 
and she's angry. She kills whoever does that."
"What's ghost?"
"Best high in the world, but the crash is murder - she kills you."
"We'll keep you safe, I promise."
She took another step.
His eyes were bloodshot.
"I promise." she repeated.
A flicker of clarity, of sanity danced across the melting surface of his 
face.
"You can't help me." he said and pulled the trigger.
The wet splatter of Chu's blood and brains swamped the side of Dana's 
head, drenching her hair, splattering her face and her camel-colored 
trench coat, trickling down her neck, her back, seeping into her beige 
suit and white blouse and dripping onto the white snow at her feet. 
Blood.
Blood.
Blood.
Blood.
Blood on the tiles on the bathroom floor.
Blood under the clear shell of her fingernails.
Blood on the carpet.
Blood on her pillow.
Blood on her panties.
Blood on the sheets.
Blood streaming down her upper lip over, and down into her mouth, the 
stigmata of her disease, the dying, the dead, and the blood.
The blood tastes like a rusty nail.
Ohmarysweetmotherofjesus all the blood. 
All her professional detachment was ripped away with one deafening 
gunshot and the wave 
of hot red blood that drenched her.  Unwillingly, a strange, 
high-pitched hissing sound, not a scream, not a cry, escaped from her 
throat as the man thrust the still-twitching body 
of officer Chu into Dana's arms.  More blood and bone fragments dropped 
from the ruined head onto Dana while the arms and legs of the dying body 
did a mad, spastic dance.  Dana's stomach lurched and she would have 
vomited if she had anything more substantial than coffee in her stomach. 
Gagging, Dana dropped the body and Officer Chu's earthly remains fell to 
the snowy roof.  For all of three seconds, her brain froze. That was all 
it took. Just three seconds.
The suspect slung Dana against the wall, she hit hard with an 
un-ladylike grunt and slid to the ground as he ran off. Swearing under 
her breath, she ran after him, wiping the blood out of her eyes. She 
followed the bloody bare footprints across the rooftop, over a narrow 
walkway and onto the roof of a nearby store.  This roof was a veritable 
jungle-gym of antennas and square projections the size of compact cars. 
 The tracks rounded a corner, and Dana slowed, her ears stinging from 
trying to hear. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye as she 
heard him move. Screeching, he burst from cover, grabbing at her gun 
arm.  Just as she had done ten thousand times in class, she ducked, 
going onto one knee, and the man's forward momentum sent him hurtling 
over her head. She even managed to keep a grip on her gun.
There was, after all, something to be said for the practical application 
of the study of Physics.
His gun landed with a clatter somewhere in the shadows.
The helicopter wheeled overhead, the light chasing them across the roof, 
the backwash from the rotor blades pulling at Dana's hair from the roots
On the ground, he grabbed her ankle and she went down, swinging. She 
kicked him in the face, twice, before he grabbed her around the waist 
and began crawling up her body, crushing her into the ice on the asphalt 
surface of the roof.  He grabbed at her wrist, scrabbling for the gun.  
They rolled one over the other for what seemed like a heart-crushing 
year.  He punched her in the mouth and Dana spit blood into the snow. 
"Son of a bitch." she grunted and kicked as hard as she could at his 
legs and crotch. They rolled further, until the edge of the  rain-gutter 
was pressing into the back of her head and Dana could feel her hair 
dangling into space. 
Dying in a hospital bed did have an attractive side to it.
He was a foot taller than she was and sixty pounds heavier and Dana 
could feel her ribs compressing like a Thanksgiving turkey's the day 
after.  The air rushed out of her lungs and the edges of Dana's vision 
glowed red. He was trying to push her over the edge.
She stretched her neck out and savagely bit whatever was closest.
The man screamed and rolled off her.
Dana spit out part of an earlobe and three hoop earrings.
"You're --- under --- arrest." she panted. "Don't -- make -- me -- 
subdue -- you."
Blood dripping from his mutilated ear, blood from her clothes dabbing 
his bare chest like some savage fertility sacrifice, he fought his way 
to his feet, Dana clinging to his back like a tick. She brought the gun 
down on his head, hoping to stun him, but he staggered sideways, right 
off the edge of the building, taking Dana with him.
The street below rushing up at her, Dana Scully opened her mouth and 
howled.
When the impact came, it was like being slammed into the wall all over 
again, only straight down.  
They hit hard, Dana landing on the suspect's back and then bouncing free 
only to land in a bone-jarring heap four feet away. Her breath was 
jolted out of her in a sickening squeeze, and her feet seemed to hit an 
eternity after her spine. For a moment, before the pain hit, she thought 
she was dead.  Once the pain hit, she wished she was dead.
She lay there, her breath wheezing in her chest, cataloging all the 
possible injuries from a fall like that. The initial phase of 
painlessness made her fear paralysis, but as her body started the pain 
roll-call, she realized that the situation wasn't as bad as it seemed. 
She lay there on her back and panted, the shock abating somewhat as she 
realized that she didn't seem to have sustained any major injuries, and 
she still had her gun clutched in one nerveless hand.  Slowly, 
painfully, she got up on her knees and focused on the unmoving body of 
the suspect crumpled in the snow.  
Trailing blood from her scraped and stinging knees, Dana crawled over 
and probed at his neck for a pulse.  There was a pulse, strong but fast, 
the drugs were still hot-wiring his system even though he had been 
knocked unconscious. Wearily, she unclipped her handcuffs and 
half-climbed on the suspect's broad back and lifted one heavy, 
incredibly heavy arm, and clumsily fit one beefy wrist into the cuff and 
clicked the lock shut.
Overhead, the helicopter circled, kicking loose snow into her eyes. She 
looked up and a dark figure inside waved and the pilot's hand made the 
universal thumbs up gesture.
Dana waved back.
"Red? Holy Shit, Red!"
Mucheski, blood from his split lip clotting in his beard and smearing 
his face, trotted up the alley with a full chorus of blue-uniformed cops 
behind. He looked at Dana, and she felt the blood drying on her skin.  
He looked up at the roof overhead, realizing how she and the unconscious 
man had gotten into the alley. A broad grin split his face.
"Agent Scully, you rock my world."
Standing up, she tucked her gun back into the holster and pulled her 
coat straight.  She jammed her hands into her pockets so Mucheski 
couldn't see how badly they were shaking from adrenaline and fury.
"Can I have a moment, Detective Mucheski?" she asked.
Under the raccoon-mask of blood, Mucheski paled.
"Sure." he said and followed her a few feet away from where they were 
wrestling the suspect onto a backboard and a gurney.
"Look, I don't know what kind of training they give you at the DCPD 
Police Academy, but screaming 'put down the gun motherfucker' is not an 
FBI approved method of dealing with an armed suspect with a HOSTAGE."  
she said in a voice that fell to the ground in ice cubes.
"Uh-"
"I don't care what they taught you at Penn and I don't care what they 
taught you at the Academy, but pull one more Dirty Harry macho asshole 
stunt like that and I'm going to make sure that you get busted back to 
meter maid. Got it?" she jammed her finger into his solar plexus.
"Your warm and fuzzy 'I know how you feel' method got her killed anyway, 
didn't it?" he asked.
Dana stared at him, but was saved from saying anything by the opportune 
arrival of a pair of EMT's who whisked her off to the waiting ambulance.

Coming soon: Part Seven!


Syntax and Measure
7/26
By MustangSally

Who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture 
postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
Suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under 
junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
Who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, 
and went, leaving no broken hearts,
Allan Ginsburg, "Howl" 

"It's called 'ghost', Dani, I have no idea what it is other than a drug of some sort.  
Can you 
do a cross-reference with the DEA?" Dana said into her battered but functional 
cellphone.
The EMT continued to dab at the blood on her face, visibly annoyed because his patient 
wouldn't sit still.  He began putting an adhesive bandage on the drying gash on her 
forehead.
Bruised, scraped, but basically intact, Dana sat on the tailgate of the ambulance, 
drinking 
lousy cop coffee, and waiting for the EMT to finish.  Her beige trench coat was soaked 
in 
blood, her suit was torn at the knees and elbows, bloodstained, and ruined, the crystal 
in 
her watch was smashed, and she had lost one of her earrings.  All things considered, she 
was in pretty good shape for someone who had fallen three stories onto a pavement.
"You're going to have one hell of a shiner tomorrow." Mucheski observed, holding a blue 
cold-pack to his chin.
"And what degree of medical knowledge brings you to this conclusion?" she asked, still a 
little testy.
"I've had my share of black eyes." he said in a low voice "As well as my share of busted 
balls."
Dana almost started to giggle, then stopped herself.  God, she was punchy with 
exhaustion and adrenaline.  She drank more coffee to cover her lapse.
"Have we found anything out about our suspect?" she asked.
"Quien mal anda, al acaba.  He who lives ill, dies ill. He left ID at the crime scene in 
his 
jacket.  All criminals are stupid, quod erat demonstrandum. " Mucheski looked down at 
his 
ever present notebook. "Diego Rivera, nice Irish boy, twenty-five, cab driver for the 
American Cab company of Greater DC.  Known drug-user and all-around party dude.  No 
social security number on file, has a couple priors, and no green card.  The INS is 
going to 
come down like the Wrath of God on the cab company when they find out that  he's an 
alien."
Dana  choked on her coffee.
"What?"
"Illegal alien. Drove to support his habit.  Nice kid."
"How do you like him for our serial killer?" she asked.
"Not at all.  Wrong type. He's a cop-killer and that's bad enough." Mucheski said in an 
uncommonly flat tone.
"I don't think he's our killer.  A stand-off with a serial UNSUB is so rare.  They 
usually go 
along very quietly, either because they have always suspected that they would be caught, 
or they believe that they have outwitted the police and will get away with it.  Unlike 
Ted 
Bundy who managed to escape . . . The killings of the police officers were done with a 
gun 
rather than a blade and that raises a few other issues.  If he had a gun, why didn't he 
kill 
the others with it?" she swirled her coffee around in her cup for a moment and sighed 
"He 
also said some things on the roof that disturb me."
"What?"
"He has a delusion that it was a female who was on fire that killed Maureen Spencer.  A 
woman cut her throat."
"Do you believe him?" Mucheski asked.
"I think he was high enough to tell me that Larry King reached out of the television and 
killed her."
Mucheski grunted and stuck the notebook back in his pocket. Dana sighed and sipped at 
her coffee again, her mouth still sore from being punched by Rivera.  A woman killed 
Maureen Spencer, a woman covered in flame, to be precise.  Must have been a drug-
induced hallucination.  
More coffee.
Something fell out of her hair and into her lap.  She looked down,  it was a chunk of 
officer 
Chu's skull, looking for all the world like a bloodstained bit of nutshell.  
"I need an evidence bag."
Mucheski began to change from his normal pink-beige to something like seafoam green.
Curly, passing through with a cellphone held to his head, handed her an evidence bag 
from the Scene Of the Crime van, sometimes known as 'the Mystery Machine'.  She put 
the skull fragment in the bag and sealed it.
"I really need a shower." she said.
After clicking off the phone, Curly took the bag from her and began to give the sick bay 
report.
"Fuckface Rivera is resting comfortable in full restraints with enough Thorazine in his 
bloodstream to knock out the entire US Marine Corps." he looked at Dana "They took 
blood before they drugged him and are running tests.  But I don't see that he'll be 
useful 
before morning."
Yawning, Dana touched her hair, and found that the blood had dried into a crusty, 
immobile mass. Great.
"Nice job, by the way. Can't let anybody who kills a  fellow officer get away with it."
Kicking her little feet in the snow, Dana  gave him an embarrassed half-smile.
"It's no different than anyone else would have done."
"Bullshit. won't catch me jumping off any fucking building, girlfriend." Curly said with 
a 
smirk.
Patting Dana one the shoulder, he took the evidence bag away from her and walked to the 
SOC van.
"What about me?" Mucheski called after him "after all we've meant to each other?"
Curly raised a single finger.
"You're making me cry." Mucheski whined.
"Nice job you two." a female voice thawed the air.
Captain Kulujian smiled at them from the depths of her fur-trimmed parka.
"You look like shit, FBI."
"You should see the other guy."
"Go home and sleep it off.  You too, Moo."
"We have to tell Max and Laura's families." he said, tossing the cold-pack into the 
ambulance "I thought we could go over at about seven, no need to wake them up-"
"What's this 'we' shit Kemosabe? You get that delightful task when you make captain.  
Until then, it's my job."
The captain smiled and patted him on the side of the face.
"I can--"
"Go home, "she repeated "and take those damn earrings out, you know it's against 
regulations."
After Kulujian left, Mucheski sat on the tailgate of the ambulance next to Dana and put 
his 
hands over his face.
"Max has - had - a wife and two little girls.  I went to the Academy with Laura.  I even 
asked her out once and she turned me down flat."
"Max was ambushed, and Laura's death is my fault if anyone's."
"He was crazy on drugs," Mucheski muttered from between his fingers "No one could 
have predicted what he was going to do."
The sky was starting to turn a paler shade of gray in the east and every muscle in 
Dana's 
body began begging for bed.
"Go home, go to bed." she told him "you'll feel better after some sleep."
Mucheski's head came up his glasses cocked at an absurd angle.
"How are you going to get home."
"The usual way, drive."
"Not to Annapolis."
"No traffic this time of day."
She reached over and straightened his glasses.
"No way." he said "Sleep in my guest room."
"Not." she said.
Hands closed over her wrists, flipped her hands palms-up, Dana looked down and saw 
that she hands and fingers were shaking as though she were standing at the epicenter of 
a small earthquake. His fingers were hot against her skin. She had a hard time 
swallowing.
"Are you going to come along quietly or do I have to get out the cuffs?" he asked.
"Don't tease." she said.


Syntax and Measure
8/26
By MustangSally


Who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's 
salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for 
a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals 
with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang 
sweet blues to Alcatraz,
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl", 1956

The bloody water pooled around Dana's feet before making its way down 
into the drain.  Blood clots, bits of officer Chu's skull and brain 
tissue were washed away and sucked into the sewers of DC. Dana scrubbed 
at her hair and looked at the cracked gray-white surface of the tiles 
and the old silver shower fixtures.  She was no stranger to the dead or 
disembodied human brain, but washing it out if her hair was another 
story.
The hot water felt obscenely good against her bruised flesh and stung 
the scrapes on her back, knees, and elbows. Letting the warmth seep into 
her bones,  she groaned with the pleasure of it.  Stepping out of the 
shower, she shut off the water and wiped steam off the mirror.  Her skin 
shone pink from the hot water, almost pink enough to cover the pallor of 
her illness. Oddly enough, she had never felt quite so vividly alive as 
those moments up on the roof.  The cut was drying on her forehead and 
the bruises were beginning to darken on her face.  She combed her hair 
back from her forehead and dabbed triple antibiotic ointment on the cut. 
 
She pulled the soft cotton T-shirt over her head and a pair of faded, 
cut-off sweatpants over her naked lower body.  Her bra and panties, 
washed clean of blood, were drying on the radiator. Stretching and 
feeling her muscles start to stiffen, Dana gathered up all her 
bloodstained clothing and stuffed them in a garbage bag. She doubted 
that her dry cleaner was going to be able to do anything with this mess. 
 A small can of body spray fell out of the pocket of her jacket. She 
picked it up and rolled the silver cylinder over in her hand.  She 
didn't remember sticking that in her pocket.  Nonetheless, she gave her 
body a quick spritz and jammed the spray into her briefcase along with 
the rest of the contents of her pockets, her cellphone, and her gun.
Garbage bag in one hand, briefcase in the other, she went back into 
Mucheski's spare room and put the briefcase on the dresser.  There was a 
half-empty highball glass of Scotch on the dresser next to her. In short 
order, Dana made the glass three-quarters empty. The alcohol stung her 
mouth where Rivera had punched her and sent a benevolent warmth through 
her tired muscles.  It almost gave her enough energy to sleep.
Pinching back the sheer curtains, Dana looked down at an oppressed back 
yard and watched a dew stray snowflakes fall from the lightening sky. 
The sound of the shower didn't penetrate her reverie.  Time passed, snow 
fell, and Dana stared out the window.
"Hey."
She turned, slowly.
First Aid kit in one hand, a glass, and a full bottle of Scotch in the 
other, Mucheski nudged the door shut with his foot.  His hair was still 
wet and he was wearing a dark, bleach-stained T-shirt advertising the 
Washington Capitols.  
"Hey little girl, want to play doctor?" he asked with a crooked leer.
"Sure.  I always wanted to perform a lobotomy." 
"You sit down and tell Dr. Moo where it hurts."
Obediently, Dana sat on the edge of the bed while Mucheski spread out 
the First Aid supplies next to her.
"This is a nice house." she said in her most polite voice.
"Yeah, I'm a landmark in the neighborhood - I'm 'the white guy'." he 
crouched on the floor in front of her and stared at the scrapes on her 
knees.
Looking up at her, Mucheski's face was cut by the colored shadows of the 
stained-glass bedside lamp. A green swath fell from his forehead to his 
cheekbone, turning one stormy eye into an un-faceted emerald, while ruby 
and amber spots rained on his wet hair. He ripped open a package of 
sterile gauze and soaked it in rubbing alcohol.
"This is the only antiseptic I have." he apologized "It's going to sting 
a little."
It didn't sting a little, it burned like acid.  Dana winced and grabbed 
the bedspread with one hand, the knuckles of the other hand whitening 
around the glass.  Mucheski began cleaning the scrape on her knee with 
quick, efficient fingers. She could feel his breath on the cool skin of 
her thighs. Gooseflesh danced down her spine.
Jesus, she thought with trepidation, I'm almost enjoying this.  
So used to being the caregiver, the doctor,  or the patient locked in 
the steel womb of the MRI, the CAT scan, and the PET scan with the 
humming vibration rattling her tissues down to the bones in her spine, 
this was a novelty. Dana could almost enjoy leaning back and letting 
this young man fix a mundane pair of scraped knees.  A quick fix.  A 
no-brainer. Then again, her reactions to Mucheski were not getting past 
the lower centers of her central nervous system.  Her sadly over-tired 
muscles were shaking with reaction to the burning pain in her knee. She 
shut her eyes.  The vanilla scent of the body spray radiated from the 
warm flush on her breasts, mixing with the smoke and leather smell of 
the Scotch, the sharpness of the rubbing alcohol, and the indefinable 
smell that was Steve Mucheski.  The adrenaline tide had gone out again 
and left her high with a languor that felt sexual.  No wonder men went 
in for violence, the rush was orgasmic, and the aftermath made her want 
to lie back and smoke a cigarette.
She sighed and pushed her wet hair behind her ears.
Mucheski patted a large adhesive bandage on her knee and began working 
on the other knee.  Leaning back, until she was lying on her back with 
the glass resting on her stomach, Dana looked up at the cracked plaster 
ceiling and tried to think professional thoughts. The stinging pain 
started all over again, and she winced. It was a good pain. Professional 
thoughts, Dana, she reminded herself.
"Sorry." he muttered.
"'S'okay." she muttered back.
Carefully, she raised the glass to her lips and poured the remainder of 
the Scotch down her throat.  She heard the rattle of the bandage wrapper 
and felt him pat it into place.  A shifting on the mattress alerted her 
to the movement of his body was he crawled up alongside her. The stained 
glass light turned his skin gold.
"What?" she asked.
"Your forehead."
He took a smaller bandage and gently placed it over the cut on her 
forehead, smoothing her hair away from her face.  She could feel the 
heat of his body through her T-shirt, and felt her own body respond, 
with an allover rise in temperature,  tissues filling with blood and 
other tissues becoming slick with other bodily fluids.
There were times when she was a little too clinical, Dana knew.
"You have the most beautiful-" he started and then broke out in a 
wolfish grin "--black eye I have seen in years."
Despite the hour, despite the tension, despite the pains criss-crossing 
her body, Dana chuckled. Laughing softly to himself, Mucheski took the 
glass away from her and reached up to put it on the bedside table, 
giving Dana a perfect view of the muscles and sinews moving underneath 
the dark T-shirt.
"Mucheski,"
"mm?"
"Take off your glasses."
"I can't see a thing."
When he settled next to her again, his face was naked, vulnerable, and 
boyish. He raised an eyebrow at her.
She reached up and touched his face, Mucheski held his breath as her 
fingers danced over the surface of his face like a blind woman reading a 
poem.  She traced the fine arches of his cheekbones, the scar under his 
right eye, the laugh lines, the soft brush of his beard, and the silver 
hoops threaded through his ear. His hair was soft and curled around her 
fingers. He touched the side of her face, his pupils eating the gray of 
his eyes.
Mucheski leaned closer and his lips brushed the hot and swelling flesh 
under he eye,  Pain and delight flashed down her nerves like a flame on 
a trail of gasoline, pooling between her legs.
Her fingernails tore into his hair, dragging his mouth to hers.  Tasting 
of scotch and coffee Mucheski's mouth was hard on hers.  Teeth clicked, 
noses collided, and he clamped one hand under her jaw. Half sliding 
underneath him, Dana ground her pelvis against his hipbone, gnawing on 
his lower lip.
She burned.
She froze.
The blood, the death, the blood dripping, seeping into her hair, the 
look on Chu's face before the gunfire blew it into gobbets of meat, the 
pavement rushing up to meet her, and the endless stream of blood that 
ran from her nose, over her lips, over her chin, over her breasts, down 
her belly, between her legs, and ran down her thighs to pool at her 
feet.
She just wanted to forget, to lose herself in another warm body.
Her hands grabbed at the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up to his 
armpits, finding warm and alive skin underneath.  Mucheski's tongue drew 
a long, hot glyph down the side of her throat to her collarbone, she 
arched harder against him, her mouth blindly caressing the hot skin of 
his forehead.
The shrill and annoying sound of her cellphone cut through their frantic 
breathing.
"Aaaaaah SHIT." Dana grunted and slipped out from underneath him.
"I don't fucking believe this." he groaned and flopped face-down on the 
bed.
"This had better be good." she hissed into her Noika 100.
"Yeah if you want to know about your perfume bottle it is." Dani 
snickered from the other end of the ether.
"Do you know what time it is?" Dana asked.
"Yeah, you can put my overtime on your E-07.  I've got the shit that you 
wanted from the DEA, and this ghost is one mean motherfucker, I don't 
even want to go into it over an unsecured line. You want to drop by the 
lab?"
"I need to sleep first, Dani."
"You need more coffee. Better wired than tired."
"Eleven.  I'll be there at eleven, and call security to get a pass for 
Detective Steve Mucheski of the DCPD. Good night Dani."
She clicked off the phone and turned.  Mucheski was snoring quietly into 
the bedspread.
It was nice to know that she made such an impression.
"Hey, c'mon." she nudged him.
"I don't wanna go home." he whined.
"At least get under the covers."
"Right."
Passively, he crawled under the sheets and rolled over to face the wall, 
Dana slipped into the other side of the bed and let the warmth of his 
body and the weight of his breathing lull her to sleep.


Syntax and Measure
9/26
By MustangSally
Ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe and how you're really in 
the total animal soup of time---
And who therefore ran through the streets obsessed with a sudden flash 
of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the 
vibrating plane,
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl" 1956


Pain.
Crunching, grinding pain contracting all of her muscles like a giant 
electric shock. Muscles breaking her spine, rending her flesh into 
strings and fibers, bloody torn and shredded muscle tissue filling with 
fresh oxygenated blood, blood harboring the black cells, the blood on a 
fruitless task of healing the still-dying abused tendons and large 
muscle groups to keep the machine in working order.
So this was what rigor mortis felt like.
Pain was the body's warning system.
Pain was a good thing.
Pain served a purpose.
Pain was a bitch.
Dana lay on her side, gently flexing her muscles in air that felt like 
quick-set concrete.  She assessed the damage to the large muscle groups 
 and the movement eased the spasms somewhat.  It was amazing that she 
hadn't hurt herself more badly.  then again, she must have been in a 
near-perfect state of relaxation when she fell, like a cat landing on 
its feet. Or it could just have been luck.  Plain old stupid dumb luck. 
 It could happen, statistically.  God knew she had precious little of 
that lately.
She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the blonde hair of 
Steve Mucheski spread out on the pillow of pale olive percale next to 
her.  A moment of panic passed once the events of the night before were 
run in QuickTime though her mind.  Even lying there with the midmorning 
sun sliced into strips by the mini-blind, Dana blushed at the memory, 
and more at the memory of what could have happened, rather than at the 
memory of what was.
Last night, she had been about ten minutes away from flinging herself at 
Mucheski. Thank God in Heaven Dani had called, thank God he had fallen 
asleep, thank God she'd fallen asleep. 
and
Goddamn Dani for calling, Goddamn him for falling asleep, and goddamn 
her for not waking him up and pulling his sweatpants off.
She could still taste the salt and vanilla of his skin on her lips.
The red lights of the alarm clock said eight.
Creaking, groaning, aches turning into sharp pains, she eased her 
glassine body out of the bed and padded back into the bathroom.  Full 
morning sunlight was falling through the opaque-frosted window-glass  
and made her squint against the light on the white and the chrome.  She 
stripped off the DCPD Phys Ed Dept. T-shirt and stood in front of the 
mirror. The entire bathroom was a 1930's Fred Astaire fantasy with a 
dingy Art Deco round mirror and a pyramid of glass shelves running up 
the sides.  In the bright light of the morning and the unromantic 
mirror, Dana looked like hell. The scratches on her face and body were 
drying into orderly, crusty brown lines, and the haematomas blossomed 
over her pale skin like maroon peonies.  The brilliant auburn of her 
hair seemed dull, and even her breasts looked flat.  She rubbed a hand 
over her stomach and was pleased to note that the pain was only on the 
skin level, the blood was lying under her skin, lying where gravity had 
pulled it during the night.  If she had been dead it would have been 
postmortem lividity.  The swelling around her eye had gone down somewhat 
and the bruise looked like smeared make-up. 
She looked like a cheap whore who had been beaten up by one of her 
tricks.
Pulling down the cut-off sweatpants, the turned and examined her back in 
the mirror, the uberous was still chasing her tail in an existential 
frustration, clear and bright with the brilliant yellows and the 
treacherous red.
Oh shit . . . Ed. 
Please do not let me think about that now.  
Over the white curve of her shoulder, Dana saw the white knuckles of her 
hands biting into her reddening skin.  She caught her own eye in the 
mirror, noted the expression floating in the woman's clear blue eyes.
Hunger.
She looked like a child in a commercial, the hopeless defeated eyes from 
behind a barbed-wire fence any time in the twentieth century, starved 
eyes, eyes without hope, eyes staring into the hole of pain.  Starving, 
gnawing at the inside of her mind for some kind of reassurance.
With brutal will, Dana sliced off the head of that serpentine thought 
and let it writhe on the bathroom floor, bleeding doubt and weakness.  
She stepped under the stream of hot water in the shower, felt her 
muscles loosen and her skin tingle under the scalding spray.

There were few things in the world as comforting as the rattle of thick 
white diner plates on a cold winter morning.  Dana looked down at the 
coffee cup bearing the imprint of her coppery lipstick across the brown 
Greek Key design around the rim.  The colors clashed.  She looked up 
from the cup and across the table at her dining companion. On the other 
side of the booth, Steve Mucheski was doing the crossword in the Post 
with an absorbed expression and a battered Cross Pen.  He'd made an 
effort to dress appropriately for Quantico, in a dark grey-blue suit, 
white shirt, a subdued Jerry Garcia tie, and he'd removed all of his 
jewelry except for his watch.  He looked like a sober, respectable 
government employee, even down to the mousse holding his hair down.  
Dana herself had dragged her beige suit out of her trunk along with her 
emergency overnight bag.  Why hadn't she thought of that the night 
before?  Had she been in shock or was she suffering from some adolescent 
need to feel Mucheski's clothes against her skin?  One of Dana's guilty 
secrets was that she collected the clothes of her lovers like a big game 
hunter collected the skins of his prey.  The DCPD shirt was not going to 
be returned any time soon.  
Mucheski sighed over a particular clue. She tried not to stare.  
The carcass of his breakfast was spread out over the table between them, 
half a grapefruit, whole grain cereal, and  coffee.  Dana's waffle was 
an embarrassment in comparison.  Who would have thought that the cop 
followed a low-fat, vegetarian diet? 
My ever-changing Mucheski, Dana thought, unwittingly paraphrasing the 
Style Council.
"Mucheski?" Dana asked.
"Hmmmm?" it wasn't a word as much as a throat-sound as he filled in 
another clue in the crossword.
"We have to talk about last night." she began.
Finally, he looked up, his eyes an opaque pewter. In the background, 
Dana heard their waitress arguing with the cook behind the counter.  
Apparently there was some dispute as the difference between a Western 
omelet and a Spanish omelet.
"I -" she started.
"Let me save you the trouble.  You saw someone killed in front of you, 
you fell three stories onto a suspect, and you picked brains out of your 
hair. I'm not going to hold you accountable for anything after the brain 
thing." he gave her a thin smile.
Taking another sip from his black coffee, Mucheski gave her a 
speculative look over the rim of his cup.
"However, you owe me for not telling the entire world that you tried to 
jump my bones last night."
"You have such an elegant way with words." she murmured.
"You are going to let me take you out to dinner when this is over."
"Like a date?"
"It will have date-like qualities, yes."
"Okay, Mucheski, but there had better not be a drive-through involved."
"I'm hurt, Red, I'm really hurt."
While Dana finished her coffee, Mucheski worked through the rest of the 
crossword.
"Red, what's an eleven letter word meaning happening at the same time 
that starts with 'I'?"
She had to think for a moment, swinging her feet several inches above 
the linoleum floor.
"Isochronous."
Mucheski filled in the word and dropped the paper on the table.
"Twenty-six minutes.  I must be slipping."
"Can I get  youse anything else?" the waitress asked.
"Just the check, please." Dana said.
"Your treat?"
"Your tax dollars at work." she assured him.
The cashier gave them a curious look as Dana paid, the well-dressed 
couple with the woman's eye blackened and a drying scrape on the man's 
cheekbone. Mucheski held the door open for Dana and whined, loud enough 
for the cashier to hear.
"I'm sorry, baby. I know I was wrong. Just please don't hit me anymore."
Dana narrowed her eyes.
"You know you like it." she growled.
The diner got very quiet.
Mucheski snickered all the way to her car.

TITLE: Syntax and Measure 
AUTHOR: MustangSally
EMAIL ADDRESS: RWBowman@erols.com 
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: ATX. Whatever 
SPOILER WARNING:  4th Season. 


CONTENT WARNING: 
This section rated NC-17.  If you are under 17, you have been warned. 
You can pay for your own therapy. 


CLASSIFICATION: XRH
R=Scully/Other Man
The Disclaimer 
Come and Get me, Surfer-Boy

Missing parts?
Syntax and Measure is archived in the Gossamer Unfinished Site.

Comments actively sought by MustangSally at: 
RWBOWMAN@erols.com 
*******************************************************************
*Caution SMUT warning!*
**Athletic sex ahead**
*Hide the delicate and the children*
****You have entered a plot-free zone, please feel free to skip this
section if you feel the need****
********************************************************************

Syntax and Measure
17a/26

Who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart
a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed and continued
along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a
vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of
consciousness,
Who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset,
and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of
the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot drawing near,
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy breath shall no more be found
Not in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms will try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."
Too fucking apt.
Dana shut the book with a snap and stuck it back in its place on one of
Mucheski's many bookshelves.  The Norton's Anthology of English
Literature was wedged between Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols and the
Chilton's Automotive Guide for the 1970 Mach I Mustang.  Mucheski's
bookshelves seemed to be arranged by weight more than anything else. 
The big, heavy, coffee table books on everything from Classic Cars to
Classic Statuary were on the bottom shelves and the books grew gradually
lighter until the paperbacks touched the ceiling.  The brick and board
bookshelves took up two of the living room walls and groaned under the
accumulation of bound paper.
Passing a shaking hand through her wet hair, Dana crossed to the window
and looked out at the rain.
Was there a calendar somewhere in an anonymous government building where
a man with thin lips and a cigarette was crossing out each day of her
life with a thick, black felt-tip marker?  A metronome clicking away on
a piano while a little girl with strawberry pigtails clicked away at
Chopin's Raindrop Etude or whatever it was called.  So sad, so long
ago.  Such terribly sad music.  Drip by drip, moment by moment, life
leaking away like rain through a rusted gutter.
She wanted this to be over and done.
She wanted the cold and the rain to stop.
She wanted to be split open like a ripe melon, mindless, and divided
with her hollow innards open for all to see the black spot of rot eating
away at her flesh.
She wanted ten minutes of mindless, shuddering oblivion.
She wanted to lick the sweat from underneath Mucheski's left collarbone.
She wanted to forget that she had no future.
She wanted to kiss the sun.

Mucheski was rummaging in a low drawer in his dresser when Dana found
him in the bedroom.  His hair was wet from his shower and all he wore
was a Hilton towel knotted around his waist.  The smell of soap and
shampoo was a considerable improvement over eau du dumpster.  Dana
watched the flow of his muscles under his skin as she leaned against the
doorway.  He looked up at her, eyes tipped slyly at the corners.
"You lookin' at me?" he asked.
"You got a problem with that?" she asked, her heels making predatory
clicking noises on the hardwood floor.
"I got a problem if you're all talk and no action."
"What do you think?" she put her foot on the hard muscle of his thigh.
Had she known that she was actually licking her lips, Dana would have
died of embarrassment.
"I think you talk a good game.  But I think you're afraid." he said in a
voice like shantung, drawing his fingers up from the arch of her foot to
the bulge of muscle in her calf and back down again.
"I'm not."
"Maybe you should be."
Mucheski ran his hands up the full length of her leg, reaching the hot,
soft skin above the cutting elastic of her stocking.
"Stockings?" he asked, smirking.
"I ran out of pantyhose."
"Tell me another one."
Dumping her foot out of his lap, he stood up and grabbed her wrist in a
hurtful grip.  Before Dana could react, he had scooped her off her feet
and plopped her onto the bed.  The mattress squealed and she was crushed
under his weight.  She blew hair out of her face and looked up into his
glass-less eyes, deep as the Chesapeake.
"You, "he said, his face a scant inch from hers "need to be a little
less uppity, Miss."
To prove his point, he jerked her blouse out from the waistband of her
skirt, and began to gnaw and lick at her stomach, the sensation so sweet
that her breath caught in her throat.  She passed a hand through the wet
mass of his hair and stretched like a cat.  Parting her blouse, Mucheski
buried his nose in the narrow valley between her breasts, breathing her
in.  She rubbed her hands across the slick skin of his shoulders and
murmured in contentment.  Through the thin nylon of her bra, Mucheski
rubbed his thumbs over the hardened tips of her breasts.  Then he was
gone, sitting up on the bed with the towel around his narrow hips,
bunching up over the taut length of his erection.
"What?" she asked in a plaintive voice, afraid that he had decided that
she really was too fat in the hard cold winter sunlight.
"Take off your blouse and your skirt." he said in a brittle tone.
Self-conscious in the entirely too-bright watery light coming in through
the window, Dana sat up and began unbuttoning the long row of buttons
along the stylishly long cuff of each sleeve.  The air was cool against
her bare skin.  She dropped her blouse in a rayon heap on the floor and
began to unzip the back of her skirt.  Mucheski watched her with a gaze
that made her run liquid as she awkwardly raised her hips to slide the
skirt off.  Her heart was hammering in her eardrums in a combination of
embarrassment and lust as she finally eased the tube of fabric over her
feet and reached down to slip off her shoes.  He grabbed her hand and
stopped her.
"Leave the shoes on." he ordered.
Sitting back on the bed Dana watched in fascination as he stroked her
legs form the knob of her anklebone up to the tops of her thighs with
the very tips of his finger-pads until her skin crawled most pleasurably
under his touch.  Moving upwards, he caught her mouth with his, pulling
her lips into his mouth where he sucked on them as if hungry for the
taste.  She clasped her hands to his head, feeling the wet hair cling to
her fingers, the silver hops pressing into her fingers and the velvet
skin of his ears.  She wanted to devour him and pressed up against the
soft rock of his body.
Drawing a napalm line of kisses down her throat, he paused to lap at the
hollow between her collarbones, nudging the crucifix out of his way with
his nose.  He had one leg between hers; she ground her pelvis into the
unyielding bulk of his thigh, and moaned in the back of her throat. 
With deft fingers, he peeled the thin fabric of her bra away from her
breasts, tucking the up under the hard line of the underwire, until her
breasts were sticking out at an aggressive angle and the nipples were
red and hard with arousal.  Slowly, he brushed his lips against one and
then the other.  She arched her back towards him, and he crushed both
breasts together and began to nip and suck at both as streams of
pleasure coursed like hot water through her veins and puddled in her
groin.  She felt as though someone had poured an entire jar of honey
between her legs.
One hand sliding down between her legs, his fingers slipped under the
elastic band of her panties and he pulled the soaking triangle of fabric
down her legs and off one foot.  His fingers were quickly wet and
slippery as he probed for the sensitive, swollen center of her.  She
moaned into his mouth as he slid hid fingers deep inside her, she
gripped the bedspread between her fingernails as the rough surf of
sensation that started pounding through her body.  Slowly, he worked on
her, watching every twitch and movement of her hot face and body while
he wore an expression of detached, feline contentment.  Embarrassed, she
turned her face from him, only to have him roughly grab a handful of her
hair and jerk her face back to where he could see her.  The sharp pain
in the surface of her scalp, coming when it did, on the crest of a wave
of trembling, made her gasp in delight and nudged her one step closer to
oblivion.  
In her mind's eye, the finger that moved in and out and around was
transformed into a black enameled pen, shining wet from her insides, the
clip glistening as it rubbed against the angry rose of her clitoris. 
The pen was held in shorter, thicker fingers, different hands, hands
that were capable of strangling a man in the depths of a fetid jungle
somewhere on the other side of the world.
Her spine seemed to ignite like dynamite set off by a laser.  A gold
flash of ecstasy races up and down from her belly.  She arched harder
against Mucheski as the stunning shock of the climax wiped out her
higher centers,
Making a strangled choking noise, Mucheski roughly pulled his finger out
of her and yanked her legs up almost to her shoulders, his grip bringing
angry red marks to her pale skin.  She tried to brace herself, but to no
avail.  She could hardly move and could only manage a thin whimper when
the soft hair of his goatee brushed her innermost thighs and the hard
point of his tongue flicked against her.
Sweat broke out on her forehead and under her breasts as he sucked on
her, pulling mewling gasps out of her terribly dry mouth.
Really, she just couldn't go on like this.  It was absurd.  Sex had
never been her forte, especially this ambushed, painful, and primitive
sex.  This fucking.
Dana twitched underneath him, her stunned nervous system coming back on
line as she started climbing up the pleasure curve again.  The deep
muscles of her belly started to shake.  No doubt reading the oracle of
her body, Mucheski grabbed her inner things and wrenched her legs apart
until the tendons creaked and the ball joints of her hops strained. 
Throwing the towel on the floor, he drove himself hard into her,
bringing himself into her to the root.  The combination of pain from her
legs the undeniable pleasure of the man so deep and hard with her that
he bruised the mouth of her womb, tipped her over the edge and plunged
her into the wine-dark sea of another orgasm that dragged a hoarse
shriek from her dusty throat.
ohgodhogodohgod
He pounded into her, sweat from his face, water from his hair sprinkling
her breasts like hot oil.  The muscles in his arms and shoulders stood
out in high relief like those of a Roman statue, his eyes elemental.
"Come on baby, come on for me," he muttered raggedly.
Another rough wave rose and battered her again, making her whimper.
The blood dripping from the ceiling.
"Come on baby."
A hand with the ring muscles torn and hanging.
Her spine was melting.
David Silnontz's severed head in the garbage where it belonged.
Hands on the desk, caressing a Mont Blanc pen.
A heart in her hands, the blood still pumping.
"Beautiful So beautiful."
Somewhere, someone was screaming.
Screaming as though she were dying.
Red light flashed on the corners of her consciousness as the devastation
obliterated for a delicious wracking eternity.  Dimly, she was aware of
Mucheski's body going rigid as his heat jetted into her.  Slowly, he
collapsed onto her, heavy and soft as a down comforter.  His face,
buried in the curve of her shoulder was wet, possibly with tears.

Later, she eased herself out from under the heard weight of his arm and
stumbled off to the bathroom on legs that were made of soft-boiled
eggs.  She stopped and kicked off the one pump, which still clung to one
foot, and the stocking followed.
Wiping herself, she saw a bright blossom of blood on the toilet paper. 
Not the deep red blood from menstruation but the scarlet from a wound.
Naked and shaking, she put her head down on her knees in the cold
bathroom and wept.


***Author's note: I don't know about you guys, but I need a cigarette!
;)***

Comments actively sought by MustangSally at: 
RWBOWMAN@erols.com 
Syntax and Measure
18/26

Who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window,
jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on Negroes, cried all over the
street, danced in broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records
of nostalgic 1930's jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into
the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal
steam-whistles.
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

"The annoying thing is the stunning regularity with which anyone we
question ends up dead."  Mucheski remarked as they drove through the
dark city.
Rested, showered, and fed, Dana nodded as she drove, the wipers hissing
on the shatterproof windshield.
They had stopped at a convenience store for coffee and Mucheski made an
anonymous call to the MPD. 
Using an impeccable Hindu accent he informed the 911 operator that he
had found a body in the mall dumpster, wiped the telephone free of his
fingerprints and they were underway again.
"So, you're with me on this, Red?" he asked.
"Let justice be done though the heavens should fail." she agreed.
"Jeez Red, it's evil to quote someone to his face." he said, sounding
embarrassed.
"Thought we could take this opportunity to search Silnontz's apartment,
seeing that he isn't in any position to complain."
"You know where he lives?"
"Yeah."  Dana turned at the light and drove down the Desolation Row,
where
David Silnontz had lived
his sordid little life.
"You've been here before." Mucheski raised an eyebrow as Dana parked the
car.
"Long story.  Maybe I'll tell you someday."
Dana reached under her leather jacket and checked her sidearm resting
against her jean-clad hip.  Why hadn't Skinner demanded that she turn
her weapon over?  Had he forgotten basic procedures or was it just an
oblique Skinneresque act of sensitivity to the fact that she'd almost
been raped less than a week earlier.  In all likelihood, the AD was
probably hoping she'd shoot Mucheski.
Mucheski watched her pop the lock and advance into the filthy apartment
with her pistol drawn.  They went through the rooms as if in a training
exercise, covering each other's backs, weapons at the ready, looking in
each closet, under the bed, and anywhere a human could hide.  Very
procedural, very correct, and highly illegal.
They were alone.
Mucheski slipped his gun back in his shoulder holster and began poking
around the mess in the living room.  They were both still wearing their
gloves so fingerprints weren't an issue.  Dana sat on the grubby sofa
and began sifting through the papers scattered on the scarred wood
surface, held down by a pizza box.  Bills, newspapers, junk mail. 
Nothing interesting on the other side of the room, Mucheski began
rooting through a series of piles of dirty laundry stacked up against
the wall.
"Say you're a drug dealer," Mucheski began.
"You're a drug dealer."  Dana parroted.
"Smartass," he growled before continuing, "an your people are getting
picked
off by the police. 
Questioned, brought in and anyone of them could lead the cops right back
to you.  What are going to do to put an end to it?  You can't scuttle
all of your people - you'd have a serious labor shortage.  So how do you
stop the cops from knowing who you are, what you're doing and where
you're doing it?"
"Kill the cops.  But they knew who I am.  David Silnontz recognized me
from the police station."
"Yeah and he was probably holding back that information which is why his
body parts are in the dumpster and you're sitting on his couch, not the
other way around."
"Get to the point, Mucheski."  Dana snapped, slamming the bills down on
the table.
"They don't know who we are." he said in a silky voice, advancing on
her.  "We can go to the clubs, make a buy, find out where the fucking
lichen comes from and wham!"
He slammed his palm down on the coffee table, making Dana and the papers
jump.
"I get a promotion, and you get a promotion and baldy's office."
"So you're suggesting that we pose as drug dealers?  Tell me you're
kidding."
"I am totally and completely serious."
Dana stood up and rubbed her now-aching temples.  Investigating a crime
from
the outside was enough of a psychological drain but from the inside? 
Forget it.  She'd be as nutty as Mulder in hours.  Besides, she'd never
had more than a brief seminar on undercover work.  Undercover work, good
convincing undercover work required considerable acting ability and Dana
hadn't acted since she'd been a Shepherd in a Christmas pageant at the
age of nine.  She hadn't even been particularly good.
All the men in her life were insane; there was no other explanation.
"Come on, Red.  Where's you sense of adventure?" he prodded.
She gave him an acid look and but her lower lip.  There was something
very
appealing about the idea of stalking the killer in his own habitat. 
That would certainly show Skinner that she was an excellent agent in and
of her own right, and not just Mulder's pretty little sidekick!
Mucheski shrugged and went back to his search, obviously taking her
silence as a negative reply. 
Opening the cabinet under the television set, Mucheski jumped back in
alarm as a veritable avalanche of Stay and Spray bottles cascaded to the
floor.  Under the bottles lay neatly bundled and stacked piles of cold
hard cash, and a Taco Palace bag.
"It looks like someone has been a very bad boy." he muttered.  "Silnontz
must have been holding back from the boss."
"Once a slimeball, always a slimeball."
The telephone rang, making Dana and Mucheski freeze.  Although anyone
with
half a brain knew that an answering machine didn't pick up ambient
noise, they both held their breath and waited.
The phone rang four times before the machine picked up.
"Yo, this is Dave.  I ain't here.  You know what to do." the dead man's
voice said.
A woman's voice, high pitched with fear and strangling on tears blurted
across the terminal beep.
"Dave pick up the phone.  Pick up the fucking phone...Okay, Fine. 
Uh...this is Mandy.  James cut me off and I need some stuff real bad. 
You gotta help me.  I have money.  Can you meet me at the Inner Eye at
ten? 
I'll be wearing the pink dress.  The one with the flowers.  Okay? 
Please be there."
Click and dial tone.
"This is too good."  Mucheski gloated.
"It's probably a trap."
"You are so negative."
He hurried into Silnontz's bedroom and came out with a duffel bag.
"You know that negativity just builds up and eats away at you." he
continued
as he knelt in front of the entertainment center and began stuffing the
cans of ghost and the cash into the bag.
"If you want to be a winner, you have to think like a winner."
"That's evidence and illegal drugs.  I suppose you don't have to be
reminded
of that fact."
"Who popped the lock without a search warrant?" he asked, looking up at
her with his changeable eyes drenched in mischief.
Dana shut her mouth with a snap.
"Are you with me on this or not?" he asked.
The zipper sealing the bag shut, sounding like a saw on bone.
"I'll clear my social calendar."  She said.
"You rock my world."

This time Mucheski drove, deeper into the interior of the city, into
more oppressed looking buildings, and more disenfranchised looking
people.  The burned-out cars became older and less expensive, and there
were check-cashing offices and convenience stores on every corner. 
Mucheski seemed nonchalant, at ease, while Dana tried not to cringe
inside.
They were in gang turf.
Her badge was no longer worth the alloy it was made from.
Mucheski pulled in front of a building, marginally better than the rest
and
killed the engine.
"You're going to love Scotty and Miss Bianca." he announced.
"I'm sure I will." she murmured.
Brushing a hand over the top of her head, ruffling her hair in an
unusually
intimate caress, Mucheski gave
her a brilliant smile.
"This will be fun." he assured her.
A slender black woman with a cascade of microbraids down her back,
opened
the door and smiled when
she saw Mucheski on the doorstep.
"Hey, baby, how you been?" she asked, enfolding him in her arms.
"Missing you Miss Bianca." he stepped back and pulled Dana through the
door.
"Miss Bianca, this is Special Agent Dana Scully of the FBI."
"FBI?" she smiled at Dana.  "FBI and you're hangin' out with this
loser?"
"We're on a case."  Dana explained.
"Where's Mr. Scott?"  Mucheski asked.
"In the basement, messin' with that damn computer of his." she waved a
dismissive hand behind her. 
"Probably looking at the porn web sites again.  Give me your coats.  You
guys want a beer?"
"Love one." Mucheski said.
"Go on down.  He'll be thrilled to see you."
Handing her coat over to Bianca, Dana looked around the living room with
admiration.  Tastefully decorated in rattan furniture with Kente cloth
cushions and brightly embroidered throw pillows, and an unknown quantity
of lush plants, the room exuded warmth and comfort that she always felt
her own apartment lacked. 
Mucheski took her wrist, a faint tremor of sexual desire flickered
through her body, and Dana let him lead her down a narrow flight of
stairs into the basement.  Among some home gym equipment, a punching
bag, and cartons for storage, was a large computer hatch crammed with
multiple towers, three monitors, speakers, and an array of top-notch
equipment that Dana couldn't identify.  It actually reminded her of the
"Top Secret" setup in the offices of the Lone Gunman.  Sitting in front
of the main monitor was a young black man, headphones clamped over his
head.  While he tapped in the keyboard, his head bobbed to unheard
melodies and he sang in an appallingly off-key falsetto.
"He met Marmalade, down in old New Orleans.  Strutting her stuff in the
street.  Hello Joe, you wanna give it a go?  Gitchie Gitchie ya ya da
da.  Be your Lady Marmalade."
Grinning, Mucheski crept up on the unwitting net-surfer and licked the
side of his face.  Scotty shrieked, propelled out of his chair, ripped
off his headphones, and glared up at Mucheski, before punching him in
the chest.
"Don't you fuckin' scare me like that!" he shouted in a bone-rattling
bass of fury.
"You Schmuck.  I could have been anybody."  Mucheski rubbed where Scotty
had hit him.
"You tryin' to kill me again?  Fuckin' with my knee ain't good enough
for you.  No!  You gotta give me a fuckin' heart attack.  Fuckin'
vegetarian freak."
"Yo, asshole, there's a lady present."
"Lady.  I don't see no lady, just your ugly white mug."
"Turn around, dickhead."
Scotty swiveled in his chair to stare at Dana.  He was a good-looking
young
man with close cropped hair, wide-spaced intelligent eyes and a lopsided
smirk.
"Yo, man.  She can't be with you.  She's too pretty to be with an
asshole like you.  Come on baby, tell me you're not with the Kung-fu
freak."
"Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI."  Mucheski gloated.
"Get the fuck out!"
Sighing, Dana pulled out her ID case and handed it over to Scotty.
"You're much prettier in person." he apologized, handing the case back
to
her.
"Thank you." she said, tucking it back into her jeans pocket.
"Look man, I need your help."
"Need all you want.  You ain't gettin' shit."
"Come on man..."
"This asshole," he jerked his thumb back at Mucheski, who tried to look
innocent, "takes me to play hockey.  You know why brothers don't play
hockey?  It's fuckin' dangerous.
That ice is slippery shit.  I wipe out, on my knees and fuck up my
paella."
"Patella baby.  Paella is food."  Bianca corrected as she came down the
stairs with four longneck beer bottles dangling from her strong hands.
"That's what I said, my PATELLA.  So I'm stuck here with a fucked up
knee-" "Driving me crazy."  Bianca handed Dana a beer.
"Bored out of my mind-"
"Underfoot-"
"- While you're working this eyeball thing, man!  I wish I had a piece
of that case.  It's got promotion written all over it."
"I'm letting you in."  Mucheski took a deep draught of his beer and
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"How's that?"  Scotty asked, his mobile face becoming utterly serious.
"We need in on a drug deal."
"So you ask the black guy?  That's cool, Mr. Moo.  Real fucking cool. 
Color
me Negro and offended."
"I know you used to be a homey and know what's goin' down in the
neighborhood."
"Don't talk black, it doesn't suit you."  Scotty said with a trace of
genuine displeasure.
"Sorry.  Let me just get you up to speed on what's going on-."
By the time Mucheski had finished his narrative of the case so far, Dana
was
drinking her third beer and feeling a dreaded buzz.  It was actually
kind of nice.
Should she be drinking with her meds?
Probably not.  But life was short, especially in her case.
"-so we've got to meet this Mandy girl at ten.  Hopefully she'll be the
key
to this Jamie guy who might be
the central dealer.  " Mucheski finished.
"Brutal."  Scotty breathed, tapping his fingers on one leg.  "These are
nasty motherfuckers."
"Exactly.  That's why we need to get on the inside.  We're hitting wall
here, man and I need your help."
"Any assistance would be greatly appreciated."  Dana added.
"I know I'm not a copy, but - " Bianca began, "there is no way on God's
Green Earth that either of you are gonna look like anything other than
you are . . .cops."
"Let's slap'em in Blackface." Scotty said, giggling at his own joke.
"Get real."  Bianca said with disdain.
"I thought maybe you could help us out on that count."  Mucheski said.

Comments actively sought by MustangSally at: 
RWBOWMAN@erols.com 
Syntax and Measure
19/26

Who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid bursts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter if the iron
regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of
advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were
run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

"What do you think of this?" 
Miss Bianca held up a dress that like a navy blue polo shirt that had
been unfortunate enough to be born into a family of lycra.  There were
stripes running up the sides like an expensive sneaker and Dana's
stomach turned with revulsion.
"Could someone explain to me why all the retro seventies stuff is back. 
I mean it was ugly the first time and it hasn't improved with age."
Bianca laughed.
"So you were the only girl in America that didn't harbor a secret desire
to be one of Charlie's Angles?"
"I wanted to be Wonder Woman."
Seated on Bianca and Scotty's waterbed, wearing a pair of Bianca's
ridiculously stacked platform heels with her jeans, Dana felt like a
fifteen-year-old at a slumber party.  Bianca had set Dana's hair in huge
rollers, which were now making her scalp ache with the weight.  Her
hands now looked like those of a stranger.  Despite Dana's weak
protests, Bianca had spent half an hour applying long acrylic nails over
Dana's short, sensible ones.  Now she had squared-off silver claws and
matching toenails.  Instead of the strong, capable hands that she was
used to seeing holding a pen, a gun, or a scalpel, she saw the hands of
a woman who held nothing but a phone and a credit card.  
Absolute frivolity. 
Is this me?  
Can I be this long enough and well enough to convince someone?
The CD player was on and Bianca hummed along with the music.
"Let's get this party jumpin' baby . . . "
Picking through the assortment of costume jewelry on the bedspread, Dana
was reminded of a Halloween party years before where Melissa had talked
her into dressing up like Madonna and she had gone decked out in black
lace and black rubber bangle bracelets.  That had been one of the last
times that she had actually had fun with Melissa.  
"You know," Bianca broke into Dana's glum train of thought " Steve is a
really nice guy."
"I know that."  Dana said, looking up at Bianca as she stood in the
closet doorway with a length of marabou around her neck.
"That girl hurt him real bad, I ain't never seen him with no one else. 
We have parties and Steve comes alone and leaves alone."
"Are you trying to warn me off or something?"  Dana asked, a little
confused.
"All I'm sayin is that a person can only take havin' their heart broke
so many times."
"My life is really complicated right now . . ." Dana started and let the
words die under the happy music.
It was so tempting to tell this woman with the friendly face everything,
everything about her cancer, her fears, her nighttime horrors, and the
impossibility of getting up in the morning for an empty day.  But Dana
knew that it would be more the Budweiser talking than anything else and
chose not to continue.
"Whatever."  Bianca said, clearly not happy with that answer.
She held out another dress.
"I like that one."  Dana said in a placating tone.

Who would have though that hair and make-up would take so long?  Who
would have thought that you could actually duct-tape a holster to your
leg without looking like a moose?  Who would have thought that Dana
Scully was actually dressed up like a know-nothing club slut an enjoying
it?
Mucheski's mouth sagged open.
"Holy harem Batman!"  Scotty commented as the women came down the
stairs.
"You look like the kind of girl that my mother warned me about." 
Mucheski said.
"Flattery will get you nowhere."  she said in an unsure voice.
The dress was a black slip-dress of cut velvet that barely covered her
breasts and her ass.  If she was going to bend over, she was going to
make a lot of close friends very quickly.  Bianca had mussed her hair
into a wanton mass like a go-go dancer who had gone through a wind
tunnel.  She had smoky, smeary eye make-up and a red whore's mouth.
Mucheski was not looking like someone that her father he would have
liked her to know either.  He had put something in his hair that had
made it hang in greasy strands onto his face and he was dressed in a
style that could only be described as retro-pimp.  Dark print polyester
shirt, black jeans, and a cowboy-back sport jacket in an appalling
charcoal double-knit.  
In the persona of an out-of-town drug dealer, Mucheski had replaced his
glasses with contact lenses, which made his eyes brighter, harder, and
borderline bloodshot.  Actually his entire bearing had changed; he was
sharp, sleek, and disdainful.  Dana had the feeling that this was the
Mucheski that the opposing team saw at face-off.  
Game face.
She wasn't sure she wanted to play.
"All for the cause of Justice." he said, acidic.
"At least you get to wear flats."
Scotty, Mucheski, and Bianca laughed, a high-pitched and fragile laugh,
masking fear.  This was a dangerous game they were about to begin with
their brave tawdry costumes, a dangerous game where the unknown opponent
played for lives with decapitation, mutilation, and mind-altering
drugs.  It was like dancing on a minefield.
Juggling gelignite.
Scotty drove, playing the radio loud despite Bianca's attempts to turn
it down.  In the back seat, Dana looked out the window and realized that
she really had no idea where she was, none of the streets looked
familiar and she could have been in Denver or Chicago as easily as DC.
"So you tell me, are you guys like together or what?"  Scotty bawled
over the radio.
"No."  Dana said at the same moment that Mucheski said, "Yes."
"He's my partner," Mucheski explained, "Don't you tell your partner
everything."
"No."  Dana snorted.
Mucheski put his hand on her thigh.  Even his touch was different, with
a metallic aftertaste, and it made her hackles rise in a not-unpleasant
way.  Hot fingers traced up the stocking-clad length of her leg, leaving
a trail of fire on the skin underneath.  She caught her breath when he
hooked a finger under the top of her stocking and tugged at the elastic.
The silver claws clutched seat vinyl.
"Not going to tell him about this?" he muttered into her ear, his breath
tickling the tiny hairs on her neck.
"Need to know basis." she said in a small voice as his fingers hit home.
"And he doesn't need to know." her voice came out thin and strained.



Syntax and Measure 
20/26

Who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C.,
secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy to the
memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards,
moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt
waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat uplifting & especially
secret gas-station solipsisms of johns & hometown alleys too,
Who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted to dreams, woke up on
a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over
with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled
to unemployment offices,
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

When Scotty finally parked the car in the lot near the Inner 
Eye, Mucheski withdrew his hand from under Dana's skirt 
and helped her out of the back seat with an effusive show 
of gentility.  It would have served him right if she had 
hauled off and slapped him right then and there.  Her legs 
felt like overcooked pasta and she wobbled on the stupid 
shoes and held onto his arm.  The cold wind made her 
eyes sting.  Wind blew their words away in thin streams of 
steam.
"Yo man, you got a light?"  Scotty asked Mucheski.
Mucheski produced a plastic cigarette lighter from the ugly 
jacket and held the flame to the end of Scotty's Newport.
"There's been a big ol' Black Bronco followin' us.  He 
pulled in half a block back."  Scotty said.
"Interesting."  Mucheski remarked, "the plot thickens."
"I called Mario and Delaine.  They said that there's this 
Jamie character who is the head Ghost honcho around 
here.  They've set it up so he's lookin' to meet the Lady 
Miss Red who is an out-of-town dealer."
"Red's the dealer?  I'm hurt man."
"She's more fun to describe than you are."  Scotty gave 
Dana a bright smile, "You ladies go on in and we'll case 
this Bronco thing out." 
"Come on baby, let them play cops and robbers.  I'm 
freezin' my ass off." 
The two women paid at the door, had their hands 
stamped, checked their coats, and moved into the dark 
and noisy club interior.  Lights flashed off bodies jerking to 
the mad beat of TechnoRave.  The noise was almost too 
much to bear and Dana found herself wishing that she 
had the ear defenders that she wore on the shooting 
range.  Humid air felt like moist hands running up and 
down her body under the short dress.  Fear and 
excitement champaged her blood and her heart thrummed 
with the bass line.
"The music's too loud." she bawled at Bianca.
"Then you're too old."
"I need a drink."
They found a sticky table near the one of the back bars 
where they could watch the dance floor.  While Dana 
scanned the crowd for a young woman in a pink flowered 
dress, a bald, bored, tattooed waitress brought them 
beers.
"So what's this FBI gig like?"  Bianca asked Dana over her 
long neck.
"It's ten minutes of intense excitement after ten hours of 
boredom followed up by ten days of paperwork."  Dana 
said and gave her a lopsided grin, "but it's a living."
"It's gotta beat doin' hair.  I swear to God if one more fat 
old lady comes in expectin' to look like Whitney Houston I 
am going to gouge her eyes out with a teasing comb."
Gouge her eyes out.  Dana felt cold in the hot room.  All 
those bleeding eye sockets.  That was the reason she 
was here, not to have fun.  Her hands tightened around 
the beer bottle.  How much had she had anyway?  Three?  
Four?  The music was making her eardrums vibrate.
Scanning the crowd, Bianca's eyes settled on a quadrant 
near the entrance.
"Look, it' Steve.  What ails that boy?"
Following Bianca's gaze, Dana saw the now-greasy head 
of Steve Mucheski moving through the throng of clubbers.  
He was holding his head and shoulders at a strange, 
puppet-like angle and was walking with a peculiar shuffle.  
Scotty loped alongside wearing an amused smirk over his 
shiny yellow shirt.  It was Scotty's nonchalance that kept 
Dana from going for her sidearm in her handbag.
Mucheski plunked down in the chair opposite Dana, and 
she realized why he had been moving so strangely.  
Someone had gripped the back of Mucheski's shirt and 
jacket and had marched him ahead like a bad toddler at 
the Mall.
"You're never going to guess who was driving that 
Bronco."  Mucheski drawled.
"You are laughably predictable."  AD Skinner said, 
releasing the younger man.
"Who's Yul Brenner?"  Scotty asked.
"Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner of the FBI," Dana 
explained " my boss."
She tossed back the rest of her beer and sighed.  Great.  
Fantastic.  Maybe she should just turn in her gun and 
badge now and avoid the Christmas rush.
"Somebody's ass is in trouble."  Bianca said and drank her 
beer.
"So Walt what you doin' in this part of town?"  Scotty 
asked, pulling up a chair next to Bianca's.
Unzipping his leather jacket to reveal a gray T-shirt 
stretched over the muscles of his chest, Skinner sat on 
the chair between Dana and Mucheski.  Bianca's eyes 
widened and she kicked Dana under the table.  Dana 
kicked her back.
"Your fingerprints were all over the dumpster and you 
failed to remove or erase the tape in the answering 
machine at David Silnontz's apartment."
Dark eyes flicked over to Dana.
"Sloppy, Agent Scully."
She bit the inside of her mouth and said nothing.
"Well pardon the fuck out of me.  What are you going to 
do?  Suspend us?"  Mucheski asked in a lightly malicious 
voice "Buy you a beer, Walt?"
The waitress was summoned for refills.  Skinner ordered a 
dark beer and proceeded to tap the tabletop with the cap 
from the bottle.
"This undercover op you're running is ill-planned in the 
extreme.  You have no back-up, a poor cover story, and 
you're endangering the lives of your two friends here."
"Say what?"  Bianca asked, shooting Scotty a dangerous 
look.
"Baby, this is the point when I ask you to dance and then 
grovel my ass off."
"You better grovel."
"Nice move asshole, "Scotty muttered to Mucheski as 
Bianca pulled him out to the dance floor.
"Your ego is writing checks that your experience can't 
cash."
"Young pigs squeal now as old pigs have squealed 
before."  Mucheski returned.
Raising an eyebrow, Skinner took a thick envelope out of 
his jacket's inner pocket and placed it on the table.
"Keys to a suite at the hotel Excelsior.  I hope you 
appreciate the amenities of a round bed and a mirrored 
ceiling."
"That was unnecessary."  Dana said in a soft voice, barely 
audible above the music.
Her face burned as if she had been dipped in acid.  
Inclining his head by way of apology, the AD continued.
"There are also credit cards and a large amount of cash 
for making a buy.  You see the Bureau isn't as worthless 
as you would like to think Detective.  I expect you to call 
me on my private cellphone should you encounter any 
complications."
"You're jealous."  Mucheski said and smiled a malicious 
smile.
"And you are out of control."
"Fuck you, old man."
"Okay!"  Dana stood up and slammed her beer bottle 
down on the table.  "That's enough!"
She wobbled a little bit on her platform shoes.
"Now, you two gentlemen do whatever you have to do to 
get your little dominance thing straightened out.  I'm going 
to go look for Mandy in the pink flowered dress and the 
Ghost dealer.  If you don't mind, I would like you to have 
this solved by the time I get back."
Grabbing her handbag and her beer, Dana clomped off 
into the crowd on the dance floor.  She didn't see the 
highly male-encoded look that passed between the two 
men at the table.



Syntax and Measure

21/26

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness
without a body!  Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! 
Moloch whom I abandon!  Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the
sky!

Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

The ladies room was tucked away in a corner behind the DJ booth.  Dana
pushed past the two women making out in front of the sink and made her
way into one of the stalls.  She smelled the sweet burnt sugar odors of
pot and smiled at the memories that it evoked.  Memories of a simpler
time in her life. 
Afterwards, she found herself alone in the bathroom; she stood in front
of the mirror and fluffed her hair.  She put on more lipstick and stared
into the face of a stranger.  As stranger with make-up narrowed eyes,
smudged violet on her lips and a hard cast to her face under the wanton
hair.  Smoothing the slipdress over her breasts and hips with the
metallic claws, she remembered how Mucheski's body had felt on hers that
afternoon.  The woman in the mirror smiled back at her.  Predatory and
feline.
The door slammed open and a young woman burst in, her hair wild around
her face and tears running black down her cheeks.
"You have to help me!" she wailed 'He's going to kill me!"
Dana twisted the lock on the doorknob and hauled the girl to her feet. 
The young woman was rail thin- had the pale smudgy look of a junkie and
a pink flowered dress.
"Mandy?"  Dana asked.
Sniffing, the girl nodded.
"Okay, look, I'll get you out of here you have to go back into the main
room of the club and find a table where a bald man and a blonde man are
glaring at each other.  Tell them what happened and they will help you."
Someone began banging on the door.
"You bitch!  You bitch!  You fucking bitch!  I'm going to fucking rip
your heart out!" a man bellowed.
Over on the far wall of the bathroom, above the radiator, was a tiny
window.  Barely a foot high and equally narrow.  Dana decided that Mandy
was small enough to fit through it.  Leaning over the radiator, and
feeling the heat sear her skin; Dana undid the latches and hauled on the
window.  Great.  Some moron had painted it shut.  The kitchen window in
her apartment had been painted shut and she had spent over and hour
coaxing it open with a utility knife and patience.  She had neither the
time nor the patience right now.  Grabbing the metal trashcan in both
hands, Dana swung the can and hit the glass with all her strength.  The
window broke with a sound like a car accident and glass blew outward
into the freezing night air.  
Mandy's mouth hung open.
"Come on MOVE! "  Dana pushed the suddenly unwilling girl over the
windowsill and out into the dark.
"What the fuck is going on in there!" the voice from the other side of
the door demanded.
Stepping outside the Ladies room, Dana straightened her dress and
adopted her most officious face and tones.
"Do you mind?" 
She was facing three men dressed like rejects from The Dating Game circa
1973.  Their expressions were as ugly as their clothes.
"We saw her go in there.  Where the fuck is she?"
"You can't go in there it's the Ladies Room." she explained as if to
children.
Blank looks appeared.
"Your dicks will fall off," she added in a dry voice.
They pushed past her and threw the door open.  Cold air swamped a corner
of the hot club.  Dana examined her nails as they looked through the
room and ascertained that Mandy was not hiding in one of the stalls.  
"What the fuck happened?" the tallest of the men demanded.
Dana shrugged. 
"I guess she flushed herself."
The man raised his hand to slap her and Dana braced herself for the
blow, reaching into her handbag for her sidearm.
"Petey, knock it off." another voice suggested.
Like a dog with a jerked leash the tall man stepped back and adopted an
obstinate expression.  A short, chubby man with the face of a choirboy
stepped up to Dana.
"Are you the chick that they call Red?" he asked.
"Who wants to know?"
"I'm Jamie.  Marco said you were looking for me."
This was the dealer?  The guy looked like he should have been at home
watching Beavis and Butthead.  He didn't look old enough to drive let
alone drink and sell drugs.  Small wonder he was getting away with it.
"I'm looking to acquire some product and set up a franchise in
Annapolis," she said, settling for a sleety voice and a haughty
demeanor.
"You don't waste time, do you Red?"
"Time is a non-renewable resource." 
"Why don't you come up to my office, we can talk there,"
Jamie's office turned out to be the manager's office high over the back
bar, in a protruding space not unlike a superbox, looking out on the
mayhem in the club below.  A narrow stairwell lead from a door behind
the bar to the aerie.  Hands clammy with fear, Dana walked along the
barrow utility steps flanked by the three men who had accosted her
outside the Ladies Room.  She followed Jamie up the dark steps, hearing
the hoof-like clatter of her heels on the steel treads.
Be cool, Dana Katherine, be cool.
The room was decorated in high Height-Ashbury, down to the oriental
carpet on the floor and the beaded curtains surrounding the thick glass
windows that looked out over the flashing lights below.  
A lava lamp glowed on the table.
"So Marco tells me that you are really hip to branch out.  What have you
been dealing in Annapolis?"
"Uppers mostly.  We pass a lot of coke.  Plenty of money there.  But
we've been getting requests for Ghost."
Crossing over to the window, Dana looked out.  From her vantage she
could not see the table where Mucheski and Skinner were locked in ego
combat.  She thought, however, she could make out Scotty and Miss Bianca
having an argument on the dance floor.  Her legs were shaking from beer
and fear as Jamie came over and stood close enough for her to smell the
CK-1 cloud that surrounded him.
"You know you're a very beautiful woman, I think we can work out a deal
that would be advantageous to both of us." he suggested.
The skin on the back of her arms rippled at the suggestion.
"I don't think my associates would care for that."
"Associates?  Both of them?  You intrigue me.  Okay it works like this,
I supply the product, you distribute it and give me eighty percent of
the take."
"Eighty?  Get bent."  Dana said and managed a derisive snort.
Eighty may have been a perfectly good offer in the drug world, but she
was enough of an Irish sea captain's daughter to know that any deal when
you are getting the smaller amount is not a good deal.
"That's the going rate.  That's what Dave was getting."
"Dave ended up dead in a dumpster.  Maybe if you hadn't screwed him in
payback he wouldn't have been tempted to steal from you."
"How did you know about Dave?"
"I do my homework.  Fifty-fifty."
Jamie laughed.
"This is not aspirin.  This is the highest quality shit that money can
buy.  It doesn't get any better than this."
He held up a bottle, a cut-glass perfume atomizer, delicate and
glittering purple under the black light.  It was long and slender with
an unmistakable phallic shape.  The head of the bottle had a gold cap
and the spray button was almost at the bottom of the shaft.  Teeth
purple, Jamie smiled.  He held the bottle out as though it contained
nitroglycerine.  
"Pure Ghost.  Uncut.  Unadulterated ecstasy.  Heaven and Earth. 
Unsullied by human chemicals, just the lichen oil and pure spring
water.  This is not what the street junkies are using.  The way God
intended it.  One quick sniff, one feather light touch and you have
cosmic enlightenment."
More like rapid-fire hallucinations and creeping psychosis.
The liquid in the bottle had a milky, opalescent quality like a clouded
eye.
"Where does it come from?" she asked, unable to look away from the
black-light glowing mass within the bottle.
"Takana Wachiru.  She calls me and I go and pick it up."
Takana Wachiru?  What kind of a name was that?  And the main supplier
was a woman?  Dana took a perverse feminist pride in that bit of
information.
"Pure enlightenment, used by the Zen monks in the highlands of China for
over a thousand years.  All the answers and solutions to all your
problems, past present and future."
The mist from the bottle caressed Dana's face like a breath of soft
spring rain.  All the cloying sweet scents she had smelled at the murder
scenes could not compare with the sublime fragrance that filled her
head.
Vanilla.
Lavender.
New car.
Her grandmother.
Wet earth.
Soap.
Bread.
Light.
The pattern on the carpet at her feet became a liquid swirl, pulsing. 
The lava lamp enveloped half the room, and Jamie held the bottle before
her face.
"Nice, isn't it?"
"I don't use." she said, her voice a blue flame.
"It's a sample.  Show your friends.  Meet me back here tomorrow night."
Feeling the warmth of his hand as hey caressed the sides of her face,
her shoulders, and the thin fabric covering her breasts, Dana sighed,
her body swimming in heavy liquid.  
"I think I'm going to like doing business with you." he murmured into
her ear.
"It's still fifty-fifty." she stubbornly insisted as he tightened his
grip on her breast.
"I can make you change your mind."
The bottle cap was cool against her lips, she gasped in horror as Jamie
thrust it far into her mouth, hitting the back of her throat and he
pressed the button.  Cold stinging spray filled her throat, making her
choke and sob for air.  The room spun like a tilt-o-whirl and she sagged
to the floor.  From the back of the room, she heard the goons snicker.
"Tomorrow night."  Jamie told her and then turned to his goons.
"Get her back to her table." he ordered.


"Where the fuck have you been?"  Mucheski demanded as she folded herself
onto a chair and plunked the glass penis on the table.
"That's Ghost. I made contact with the dealer.  We meet him back here
tomorrow night." she reached across the table and took Skinner's beer.
She didn't like dark beer but she drained the bottle.  The liquid foamed
around her teeth.
"She's totally fucked up."  Mucheski said in a green voice.
"I'm taking her back to the hotel, you get a change of clothes and meet
us there," Skinner ordered.
The warm leather of Skinner's jacket enfolded her shoulders and she
inhaled the swampy thick, rich and dark smell of him.
"Come on Scully, you're - - - impaired."
She smiled, her cancer glowing orange in the bone-cage of her skull.


Comments actively sought by MustangSally at: 
RWBOWMAN@erols.com 
Syntax and Measure
22/26
Moloch!  Moloch!  Robot apartments!  invisible suburbs!  skeleton
treasuries!  blind capitals!  demonic industries! spectral nations!
invincible, mad houses!  granite cocks!  monstrous bombs!
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

All men are dogs.
Poodles, schnauzers, great danes, border collies, bulldogs. 
Dogs.
All of them.
She wasn't going to think about it.
Aside from a slight headache and a generally bruised feeling, Dana
decided that she had suffered little physical damage from her little
misadventure the night before.
She was, however, completely and totally pissed off.
Checking her gun, she noted that the ammo clip was full and added to
extra clips to the rapidly growing pile of weapons on the bathroom
floor.  Seated on the black tile floor, dressed in Miss Bianca's
clothes, she felt ridiculous.  Baggy, low-slung black jeans, a bright,
tight poison green chenille sweater that continually rode up to expose
her belly or the serpent tattooed on her back, she thought she looked
like a sheep dressed as mutton.  At least the high-top black Converse
sneakers were comfortable.  
She felt like a fuzzy jellybean.
>From Mucheski's jacket, she had taken his extra gun, his pocketknife,
his brass knuckles, and his car keys.
It was three in the afternoon and Mucheski was still snoring on the bed
that looked suspiciously like a hockey puck.  Dana had woken up at one,
drank room service coffee, ate a bagel, took a shower, and dressed.  She
wondered if her edginess was a by-product of the Ghost or the endorphins
that were zooming through her bloodstream like vehicles in the fast
lane.  She wanted to go down to the club and look around while the place
was quiet.  A big truckload of drugs pulling into the loading dock would
have been too much to ask for.
One gun went into a shoulder holster, the smaller one went into her sock
above the sneaker, concealed by the baggy jeans, the brass knuckles fit
neatly into a pocket, the switchblade went in her back pocket, and she
tucked the pocket knife into her bra, under her left breast.  It was
uncomfortable but invisible.  Creeping through the quiet black room, she
deposited Mucheski's almost-empty jacket on the malevolent sofa and
locked the door behind her.
The parking lot was full of cars covered in a thin dusting of snow that
still fell from the leaden sky.  The car keys on Mucheski's key ring
were for a Ford and looked old.  What the hell had been that Chilton's
Guide on the bookshelf at his house?
Mustang, Mach 1, 1970.
There was only one car fitting that description in the parking lot. 
Smooth and black under the snow, and shaped the way a car should be
shaped.  The key fit in the door and she let the engine run as she
cleared snow from the car with a brush she found in the passenger seat. 
Not surprisingly the engine sounded like a boat; there was a collection
of hockey sticks and skates in the back seat, and a scentless Playboy
bunny air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.  
The interior of the car smelled like him.
Thank you God, she thought, for having my brother teach me how to drive
on a stick shift, Dana thought as she fought the engine into gear and
pulled out onto the street in the dismal afternoon light. 
The DC traffic was light as the locals were afraid to drive in the snow
and the one DC snowplow was doing the government sections.  The club
district was deserted at that time of day.  Bleak, abandoned and
toothless without the glamour of neon night.  She pulled into a parking
spot a half a block away from the Inner Eye and walked to the street
corner opposite the club.  Cold wind nibbled at her from underneath the
black suede Super Fly maxicoat that billowed around her ankles.  Pulling
on her tight leather gloves, Dana looked across the street at the dark
building with the unlit neon Eye of Horus over the door.  One of the
many "housing disadvantaged" locals was lounging in a doorway nearby. 
The woman was thin, young, and hollow-eyed under the ragged and dirty
clothes.
"You got a buck for a cup of coffee?" she asked Dana.
"You hang out here?"  Dana asked.
"Yeah, I have the penthouse suite."
Walking through the snow, Dana went over and peered into the woman's
eyes.  She seemed lucid enough and she was certainly more lucid than
Dana had been the night before.
"What do you know about that place?"  Dana asked, handing the woman a
five-dollar bill.
"I know the beer is expensive and the doorman won't let me in."
Holding three of Dave Silnontz's twenties between raised fingers, Dana
smiled.
"You know more than that?" she asked.
"I know a lot for sixty bucks."
"Share with the class."
The bills vanished in a ragged mitten.
"A couple of times a week a big truck comes and drop off cases of a beer
I ain't never heard of.  Some Japanese name.  They don't like being
watched one of the assholes chased me away when I was checking out the
dumpster."
"You ever see an owner?"
"Some chick comes in a Lincoln Town Car twice a week.  Wears a fur
coat."
"She here today?"
The woman licked her lips and smiled at Dana through a mouthful of
broken teeth.
"No, but the truck is."
"You should go to a shelter."  Dana felt compelled to say.
"What?  You a cop or something?"
"Thanks for your help."
"Have a nice day." the woman smirked.
Leaving the woman with her pride and her cash, Dana started around the
back of the building.  There were stacks of flattened cardboard boxes
waiting for recycling.  A plain white delivery truck idled near the
partially open loading dock door.  She looked through the boxes, seeing
common beer names, and halfway down an unfamiliar design of a tree on a
windswept mountain caught her eye before she read the blocky,
Oriental-style script underneath.
T'ien Ti.
Heaven and Earth, she translated.
Dana's gut clenched when a familiar rainy odor came from the damp
cardboard.
The loading bay door was still two feet open and she crawled
underneath.  The bay was dark and all Dana could make out was stacks of
beer boxes, piles of chairs, and other assorted junk.  She slid between
the boxes, headed for the main room of the club when two men's voices,
made her freeze.
"So the bitch took my money and she went to Chicago."
"Chicago?"
"Chicago."
Peering around the boxes, Dana watched the two men stack boxes of
Budweiser cans in crooked piles.  She tiptoed away, finding the dark
doorway to the dance floor.  Without the lights and the music, the club
was little more than an empty box full of scars, dirt, and scratched
furniture.  Looking up at the DJ booth, she saw that the upper office
windows were dark.  As quietly as she could manage, Dana climbed up the
metal staircase.  She popped the lock and went into the dark room.  
A moment later, she was on her knees in front of a sealed box with the
T'ien Ti logo, cutting the tape open with Mucheski's switchblade.  Her
hands shook as she pushed aside Styrofoam pellets.  Cut glass bottles,
long and bulb-shaped as a crystal dildo capped in gold.  Settling back
on her heels, Dana clutched at the edge of the box and stared into a
glittering array of liquid hell.  There was enough Ghost in that box to
make sure that Congress got along far better than anyone would ever
imagine.  Holding up one of the bottles, she watched the ambient light
flicker on the glass and the milky contents.  
Heaven and Earth.
A phrase from a song gnawed at the base of her mind.

Give yourself over to absolute pleasure
Swim the warm waters of the sins of the flesh
Erotic nightmares beyond any measure . . .

Quickly she put the glass bottle back into the safe sea of Styrofoam. 
Putting a gloved hand over her mouth to quiet her panting, Dana waited
for a moment to let her trembling to cease.  The stuff was addictive as
hell; she was suffering from all the physiological symptoms of an
addict, after only one usage.
She felt cold.
Once control had been established, she began rummaging around the untidy
room, looking for anything useful to lead her back to the manufacturer
of this vile substance.  It didn't matter that she didn't have a
warrant, it didn't matter that she was there illegally, breaking many
FBI codes, and a couple of laws as well, that son of a bitch had shoved
that shit down her throat and she wanted his ass.
Nothing.
She leaned against the doorway and sighed.
Men's voices again.
"You where the fuck are you goin?"
"I gotta piss."
"Don't be all day, man I wanna watch the game."
"Who's playin', Chicago?"
"Fuck you."
"No, fuck *you*."

Crouched behind the dumpsters Dana watched the two men close the back of
the truck and climb into the ca.  There wasn't enough time to go and get
the car, and she had no way of tracking the truck.  There was only one
choice.  At a rapid scurry, Dana moved through the truck's blind spot
and climbed up the back loading gate until she made it to the tiny
handholds leading to the top.  She climbed to the roof of the truck and
prayed that they weren't planning on *going* to Chicago to see the
game.  The cold wind made her nose run as they pulled away from the
club.  Dana saw the woman still lounging in the doorway and their eyes
met for a moment.  The woman laughed and waved.
"You go girl!" she shouted.
The truck made it to a tired neighborhood with Dana still clinging like
a carbuncle to the top.  An anonymous square building was the ultimate
destination; a small warehouse tat had been squat and ugly in the
forties and hadn't improved with age.  Three stories of blind
white-painted pane glass windows stared like cataracts.  The truck
backed around to the loading dock in the behind the building. 
This is where I get off; Dana thought to herself and looked around.  The
alley was narrow and the top of the truck five and a half feet below the
fire escape leading down from the roof.  If the truck backed under the
ladder, Dana would be able to reach it with ease.  Only the truck
stopped four feet short. 
She had to jump.
Great.
Let's kick the tires and light the fires.
She jumped.
Catching the fire escape with her gloved hands, Dana almost yelped in
shock as her full weight pulled on her arms and her feet kicked into
empty space.  Slowly, she pulled herself onto the balcony of the fire
escape and panted.  She really had to start doing more arm work at the
gym.  Groaning under her breath, she got to her feet and climbed the
ladder to the roof.  Cold wind stung her eyes.  She wiped her running
nose on her sleeve and found the roof door, in a little hut of its own.  
The door was unlocked.
She walked into the darkness.


23/26
Moloch!  Moloch!  Nightmare of Moloch!  Moloch the loveless!  Mental
Moloch!  Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

Standing on the edge of the platform, Dana looked down on a scene that
could have served as an illustration on a book on Hell.  Four vast vats,
the size of aboveground swimming pools bubbled beneath her feet.  The
smell from the vats threatened to singe the hair from inside her nose. 
On a superficial level, the interior reminded her of a micro-brewery she
had once visited on a case, from the pressure cookers to a machine that
filled bottled one by one on a short conveyor belt.  Large barrels full
of a noxious green ooze lined one wall and she assumed that this was
t'ien ti in its natural state.  Half a dozen men and women moved through
the plant, checking gauges, making notations, and filling bottles in the
now-familiar phallic shape.
Above the rumble and pop of the vats, she heard voices.
"--I told you that this is too fucking expensive." a man protested.
"It's not too expensive if the marks are willing to pay." a woman
answered him.
"We can move more of the hairspray bottles than we can the perfume."
"You are beginning to annoy me."
Takana Wachiru.
It had to be.
The woman had a voice that sounded like sherry and biscuit parties,
scones and Earl Grey tea.
Come on, bitch, Dana thought, let me get a look at you.
"Look honey," the man began in a wheedling tone," Just calm down.  We
just double up on the hairspray and close the plant under the Inner
Eye.  I heard that the Fire Marshall is coming in for an inspection next
week.  I don't think that he's going to be happy to see equipment for
bottling explosive hairspray in the basement."
"Pay off the inspector, and if that doesn't work, kill him."
Finally the man walked out from under the overhang Dana perched on; she
wasn't surprised to see that it was the chubby dealer, Jamie.
"You just keep in mind that you work for me.  This is all mine and you
only work here at my pleasure."
The woman passed underneath Dana as she made her way to the door.  All
Dana could see from her platform was a red sable coat underneath a Grace
Kelly upsweep of pale blonde hair.
Damn, Dana thought.
Sitting down on the platform, Dana took stock of her situation and found
that she didn't much care for it.  Once again, she was hampered by the
fact that she had perpetrated criminal trespassing and nothing she heard
or saw was admissible as evidence.  She sulked while the work continued
below her.
The winter sunlight faded from the blind windows and the work crew below
dispersed for the day, locking the doors behind them and shutting out
the lights.  Dana waited a good half an hour before she stood and
stretched the knots out of her muscles.  Alone in the Ghost factory,
Dana climbed down the metal ladder bolted to the wall, the bubbling vats
surrounding her.
Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Devious Drug Dealers.
Quietly she began surveying the processing operation.  It looked as
through the raw lichen was cooked and fermented like beer and then mixed
with an alcohol base before bottling.  Oddly enough the raw Ghost was a
dark and opaque green which thickened after fermentation, and only took
on the milky opalescence after mixing with the alcohol.  From the open
vats of the raw Ghost to the closed bottles of the finished product,
Dana surmised that it was the alcohol mix that activated the narcotic
properties of the plant extract.
Raw Ghost also stank to high heaven of vegetable rot.
Dana made a mental note of the name of the manufacturer of the obscene
bottles and wondered if they knew what their containers were being used
for.
"Here kitty, kitty, kitty, " a man's voice sang.
Dana ducked behind the nearest vat.
"You were pretty fucked up last night.  I could have banged you right
there on the floor and you would have liked it."
She circled around the vat and took her gun out of its holster.
"Who'd you fuck when you got home?  Mr. Clean or the young stud?"
Jamie smiled at her on the other side of the vat; he was pointing a gun
at her.
"You're crashing my party.  Motion detector alarm system.  I wanted to
know who was collecting overtime on the sly.  Put down the gun, bitch."
"I don't think so," she said.
The familiar feeling of a gun-muzzle in her spine made Dana sigh.  Bad
hair day, all around.
"Drop it." the man behind her suggested.
The gun made a clattering sound when it hit the cement floor.  Shoved
into the wall of the vat, Dana waited patiently as the goon searched her
for weapons, his hands traveling over her body in a highly
unprofessional manner.  However, he was so enamored of the curve of her
ass that he completely missed the pocketknife digging into her breast.
"You disappoint me, we could have done business."  Jamie chided when she
had been turned around to face him again.
"Get bent."  Dana suggested.
He slapped her across the face, the handgrip of the gun grazing her
cheek.  
"Listen bitch, this is the part where you become a statistic."
"We're gonna be late for the delivery," the goon reminded him.
"Right. Come on, baby, we're going for a ride."


24/26 
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! 
Pavements, trees radios! tons!  lifting the city to Heaven which exists
and is everywhere about us!  
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956  

The Inner Eye was packed as usual.  Dana found herself wondering if
anyone in all of DC was going to any other club.  Trust her luck that
she was in the hottest club in town - with a gun in her back.  Jamie
held her bicep and marched her neatly along the edge of the crowd. 
Regulars with day-glo hair and pierced eyebrows parted to let him
through.  Breaking away and bolting for the nearest exit was a
possibility, but the gun muzzle was level with her lung and Dana thought
she might need that particular organ again.  As they moved through the
club, a half a dozen men joined the little procession until Dana was
surrounded by an honor guard.  
They must think I'm very dangerous, she thought and found it amusing. 
On the other hand, there was always the possibility that she would be
gang-raped in the office made this thought somewhat other than amusing.  
Their feet clattered up the metal staircase, unheard under the
relentless beat of the music.  The occupants of the office made both
Dana and Jamie's jaws drop open in surprise.  A greasy-haired white man
lounged on one of the sofas, a black man smoked a cigarette, and an
undernourished white girl stood in a corner and sniffed.  
Dana gaped at Mucheski and Scotty while Jamie gaped at Mandy.  
"What the hell are you going here?"  Jamie demanded dropping Dana's
arm.  
"Shut up!"  Mucheski said in a cold voice that cut the sensual haze of
the office.  
It was then that Dana noticed he held an ugly handgun casually against
his thigh.  
"The deal is this.  You hand over the Ghost, we trade the blonde for the
redhead, and you get paid.  Full stop.  Non-negotiable.  No arguments. 
Get it?"  
Something about Mandy's presence had reduced Jamie to a red-faced and
sweaty mass of anger.  He glared at the cringing girl and a brutal smile
crossed her face.  
"Kill the bitch."  
One of the thugs raised his gun and rested it against Dana's temple. 
She swallowed with difficulty and managed to marshal her face into an
expression of nonchalance.  Not easy to do when a bullet was being aimed
at her brain.  With any luck, the bullet would pass through her
forebrain and take the cancerous tumor with it, leaving her a blind,
drooling, but cancer-free vegetable.  
"Jamie."  Mandy whined.  
"I don't give a shit about what happens to you."  Jamie smirked.  "This
is a golden opportunity to get you off my ass once and for all."  
"This sounds like a domestic to me."  Scotty drawled.  
"You know," Mucheski began in a conversational tone, addressing the girl
but never taking his eyes away from Jamie,  "you could tell us
everything about the little operation here, turn State's evidence and
you'll be safe forever."  
"They're fuckin' cops, man."  One of the goons moaned.  
"We're fucked."  the other one said.  
"We'll never be safe," Dana's captor announced.  
"You just don't get it do you?"  Jamie asked, and started to laugh "you
fucking morons.  Dave Silnontz and Garcia were killed to protect Takana
Wachiru.  I know I killed them because I was told to.  You've sold your
soul to the Devil when you work for Takana Wachiru.  Plain and simple. 
You go to the crossroads, offer up your soul to the devil for money. 
Money from Ghost.  Money that kills and when you're no longer useful,
Takana Washiru has you killed.  Just like Dave, just like the others."  
Rubbing a hand across his sweating face, Jamie turned to Mucheski.  
"No one would even be safe in prison.  You know that's bullshit.  A shiv
in the shower, a pillow at night, and you're a name carved on a granite
headstone.  Full stop period.  Witness protection?  That only protects
the cops so that they can say 'Oh, we did what we could' When you end up
with a heart attack and a suspicious needle mark in your arm.  No!  Fuck
you!  Fuck you all!"  
He swung back to the cowering girl and his demeanor became pleading,
face, and voice melting into misery.  
"You know I loved you.  You know I did." he said.  
Raising the gun, he took aim at her face.  
"I'm sorry, Jamie." she said.  
The first explosion rocked the office like a small boat in a hurricane. 
The metal supports screamed with the occupants who were thrown about
like snowflakes in a waterglobe.  Mucheski leaped off the sofa and
tackled Dana to the ground underneath him as the glass window exploded
into the confined space.  Over her shoulder, Dana saw a spike-like shard
of glass cut through one of the goons, so that he fell, cut neatly in
two like a chicken breast.  The body fell to the blood slick floor and
began to twitch.   "Oh, gross" somebody whined and there was a sound of
painful retching.  
The second explosion set the office twisting on its moorings like a
dancer.  The compromised structure dipped to one side, the metal singing
an aria of destruction.  Dana clutched the front of Mucheski's jacket as
pieces of acoustic tile rained down on them.  The floor opened like a
mouth and tongues of flame began licking through the gap.  "There's an
aerosol plant in the basement.  This place is going to go up like the
Hindenburg."  Dana bawled into Mucheski's ear.  
"Shit."  
The floor began to tilt toward the opening and Mucheski grabbed at the
stripping that held the carpet to the floor, Dana clinging to his chest
like a baby possum.  
Two of the goons slid into the gap, and were washed by the greedy fire. 
Flames devoured the two men and the rooms smelled like a backyard
barbecue.  Blackened bones with chunks of cooked gray flesh under
cracking burnt skin slid into the opening/.
"Jesus."  Mucheski said in a thin voice.
Smoke from the burning downstairs began to fill the room with thick,
toxic clouds.
"Get downstairs!"  Mucheski screamed at Scotty, who hovered in the
doorway.
"And do what, man?  Get marshmallows?"
"Get the place evacuated, Tell backup be need a full EMS team in here
and the medivac."  Mucheski yelled over the screams from downstairs.
"What about you?"
"We'll manage!"
"Cluster fuck."  Scotty proclaimed and ran out the shifting door.
"You have backup?"  Dana asked.
"I'm crazy, Red, not stupid."
"Look!"
Jamie has crawled across the undulating floor and had ripped the
mural-sized Led Zepplin poster from the wall to reveal stubby handgrips
in the wall.  Swarming up the metal like a fat spider, he pushed aside a
ceiling panel and hoisted himself up, the remaining goon close on his
chubby rump.
"Come on!"
With Mucheski behind her, Dana crawled up the floor to the wall and
began up the handgrips.  The only good thing about the days' events was
tat she could skip the gym with a clear conscience.  The handgrips went
up to a metal trap door in the roof that, Jamie and the goon had exited
through.  A few moments later, Dana and Mucheski flopped onto the hard
tar and gravel surface and dragged in deep breaths of cold, fresh air. 
As the building shuddered underneath.  
"How - did - you - find - me?" she gasped.  
"You stole my car."  
"You have a twisted set of priorities."  
"No, I reported the car stolen, an unmarked found it and your friend the
wino said you'd gone off atop a truck and the traffic detail spotted it
en route here.  I told them a Federal Agent had been kidnapped."   
This long speech resulted in a spasm of coughing that left Mucheski limp
on the roof.  "Thank you." she said. 
 "You still stole my car." he muttered.  
"We've got to get Jamie."  
"Thataway," he pointed,  "But you better get a move on." 
"What about you?"  
"Sidelined for the last period of play."  
A wicked metal shard, serrated like a steak knife, protruded from his
left thigh.  Blood stained his jeans and even in the ruddy light of the
fire, he looked pale and shocky.  Coughing, Dana pulled off the torn and
dirty poison green sweater and started wadding it around the metal
fragment.  The cold air bit into her skin not covered by her bra.  
"This is hardly the time - " he began with a smirk.  
"Shut up."  
Sitting down on the roof, she pulled the penknife out from underneath
her breast and hacked off Miss Bianca's jeans above the knee.  With
strips torn from the fabric, she made an ugly, if businesslike
tourniquet that she cinched tight above the wound.  
Mucheski handed her his handcuffs and his gun.  
"Blow his fucking head off."  
She smiled.  
"You rock *my* world." she said and kissed him.  
As she backed away, she saw Mucheski take his cellphone out of his
pocket and dial.  
"Scotty," he yelled.  "Get me the fuck out of here."  
Dana set off across the roof.



25a/26

I'm with you in Rockland
In my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across
America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

"That hurt, damnit."  Mucheski complained.
"If you would quit squirming I could get a better grip."  Dana bent back
down to her task again.
Standing in the bedroom at Mucheski's house, Dana was cutting through
his jeans with a large pair of shears.  Mucheski leaned on his crutch
and watched as she dissected his 501's.
"This is not the scenario I envisioned when I thought about you ripping
my clothes off."
Getting down on her knees, Dana began to cut up the pant leg of the
injured side.
"Me either." she admitted.
Laughing, Mucheski sat down on the bed and began to pull the undamaged
pant leg of his undamaged leg,
"Well, it's been a thrill.  More excitement than one poor white boy can
stand,"
Dana sat on the floor and unlaced her sneakers.
"I'm going to enjoy the next couple of days off and I swear I'm going to
do laundry,"
"Let's run away to Bali so you only have to wear flowers in your hair."
he suggested.
"I'll become the human freckle." she said and yanked off her socks.
"We'll buy gallons of sunscreen and I'll rub it all over your tender
white skin."
"Sounds like a deal."
Clambering up onto the bed next to him Dana started unbuttoning the ugly
polyester shirt.  Mucheski kissed her bare shoulder and a warm, sensual
glow began to build through her tired and aching body.
"You're taking advantage of me in my wounded state."
"Something like that." she murmured before kissing his mouth, and
feeling his lips soften and open under her tongue,
The moonlight through the blinds turned his skin a luminescent silver as
he lay back on the bed Dana knelt and quickly removed her jeans, and the
thin nylon bra and panties.
"You are so beautiful." he breathed.
She smiled, crookedly, and crawled across the bed to him.  Ever so
carefully, she pulled down his long, tight shorts over the
semi-slumbering length of his penis and the heavy bandage on his thigh.
"Come here." he said and patted the blanked next to him.
Dana lay alongside him felling his warm skin against hers.  Her head was
pillowed against his chest m and her hair fanned out over him.  She
sighed as his hands stroked her body in lazy circles.
When was the last time she had felt this safe, this warm?  Years,
easily,
Content?
Yes.
Happy?
Yes. Thank you, very.

Dana awoke hours later in the same dark room, the strips of moonlight
painted across the ceiling, to a most delicious sensation.  She felt
Mucheski's soft hair against her toughs as his tongue moved in a languid
fashion over her innermost recesses.  This was far better than a
traditional alarm clock.  He must have sensed the change in her as she
awakened, as he lifted his head for a moment to give her a lazy smile
before going back to the matter at hand.  His hands pilled her thighs
further apart and he suckled harder at her.  Skimming along on he hot
wavers of sparks that emanated from her pelvis, Dana moaned and gripped
the blanket between her fingers.  Fire blazed behind her skull.
I am alive.
Here and now.
For however long.
The Inner Eye collapsed behind her and she screamed wit the dead and the
dying pinned under the red-hot I-beams, collapsing scaffolding as their
bodies sticky with melted polyester and hairspray.
Mucheski's body covered hers, breast to breast, and his arms stretched
out over hers on the bed.  Already he was sheathed deep inside her as
she was coming back to herself.  He kissed the tears from her eyes, her
flushed face, and her swollen lips.  She looked back into the murky
depths of his eyes, dazed and dilated with languor.  On her lips, she
tasted her own slat and almond flavor.
"Dana, I love you."
Slowly he began to move inside her, each miniscule shift of his hardness
against her sending blue silver shivers down her body, She relaxed and
felt the rippling endless waves move through her body. Kissing her
throat, her collarbones, the silky skin of her burning nipples Mucheski
soothed and aroused her at the same time.  She stroked his back, his
shoulders,  the hard muscles of his ass, and the delightful furrow where
spine met buttocks. Grasping her hips in his hands, he drove smoothly
into her, shining liquid and molten like quicksilver.  A high, thin wail
rippled from her lips as she tipped over into a climax as shatteringly
beautiful as a summer rainstorm.  Mucheski's cry harmonized with hers as
his essence filled her to the throat,
Limp, sweating, brought back to earth, they lay wrapped together, legs
tangled, fingers locked, and hair twined.  His chin was on her forehead
and her face was in his throat.
A wet stickiness now flowed over her face.  Initially she had a confused
thought that he was crying until she tasted the metallic tang of her own
blood.
Her nose was bleeding - no, gushing, as violently as though she had been
struck.  She began to wipe at her face with sharp frantic gestures,
rousing Mucheski from his sensual fugue.
"What the hell?"
"I need a tissue or ---" she babbled.
He wiped her face with a tissue from the box on the bedside table,
soaking it in moments, his eyes lighting with alarm.  Before she sat
upright and pinched her nose between shaking fingers, half a dozen
tissues were soaked with her blood, staining the sheets underneath.
"That's nasty," he said, wiping at her chin like a nanny.
"You ought to see a doctor about that."
The kindly ignorance made tears burn her eyes.  Feeling the confusion in
every muscle of his body, Dana clung to Mucheski as she dissolved into
hopeless sobbing.



25/26
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!  Moloch whose
skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs!  Moloch
whose factories dream and croak in the fog Moloch whose smokestacks and
antennae crown the cities!
Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

Full circle.
The serpent was eating her own tail.
Dana Scully up on a roof, chasing down a man with a gun all because of a
plant extract that brought enlightenment and destruction in equal
measures.  Maybe there were elements of enlightenment that humans were
not to have.  It can be uncomfortable to look one's baser instincts in
the face and see a snarling beast.  The wind coldly reminded her of
Skinner's icy mouth.
Behind her, the front section of the club began to crumple in flames
like a card board box set aflame by ruthless children.
Dana followed the twin sets of footprints through the melting snow.  She
heard the inhuman feeding of the fire and human screams.  At odd
intervals came the sirens, choked off, the hypnotic thrumming of
helicopter rotors.  She held the gun in a steady teacup grip as she
trekked across the rooftop. Finally, behind the water tank, she found
Jamie and the remaining goon.  The goon raised his gun.
"Drop it or I'll blow your fucking head off."
Funny, the adrenaline forced the Moo-ism out of her mouth like soda
forced a belch.  It seemed the most natural thing to do under the
circumstances.  The goon didn't even waver before he shot, and Dana
reacted without thinking, taking the money shot in the middle of his
forehead.  He dropped like a sack of sugar and began to leak blood and
brains into the snow.
"You crazy bitch!"  Jamie screamed, "We're going to die up here."
She closed the gap between them, kicking the goon's gun over the side
and knocking Jamie against the water tank.  Pulling <Mucheski's cuffs
out of her pocket, she kicked Jamie's legs apart, frisked him, and
clicked the restraints around his wrists.
"Who the fuck are you?" he gasped.
"Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI and you are under arrest."
The thrumming of the rotor blades stunned her ears and set her
sweat-soaked hair whipping into her eyes.  Through the gouts of smoke,
she could see Mucheski hoisted aloft in something between a harness and
a swing, his injured leg geld out at an uncomfortable angle.
The section of roof that she had left him on was digested by the fire. 
Sincerely doubting that the section she and Jamie were perched on would
last much longer - not long enough for the helicopter to make a return
trip.  This meant that she had to find a way off - fast.
The tide of fire drifted closer.
Hauling Jamie over to the edge of the roof, she looked down.  The damn
white truck was still parked there, near the loading dock.  Eight feet
out and maybe fifteen feet down.  A painful fall, but not lethal. 
Dragon scale, by dragon scale, the roof sections lifted and belched
fire.
"Did you ever see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?" she asked.
"Crazy bitch." he repeated.
"Come on.  Jump or burn."
Looking first at the encroaching flames and then back at her, he nodded.
Dan dragged bum back to the most stable part of the roof that was close
to the fire.
"Run and jump.  Do not look down, do not hesitate." she instructed, not
because she wanted the scumbag to live for anything other than his
trial.
They ran, flames nibbling at their shoes, and jumped.  Dana forced
herself to keep her eyes open as the sheer drop flew by.  The fall
seemed to take at least six or eight weeks until she hit the roof of the
truck, tumbled over in a bone-jarring kaleidoscope of white, fire, and
pain.  She came to a halt with her head dangling over the edge and a
sobbing Jamie clinging to her left leg.
A long moment she lay there, afraid that she was going to throw up.  At
the rate that things were going in her life, she wasn't going to live
ling enough for the cancer to kill her.  Once the nausea had faded, she
sat up and shook the drug dealer from her leg.
"Come on, you piece of shit, I want o get out of here before the whole
place goes up."

Steve Mucheski, sitting in the hoot of a squad car, while an EMT cut
through the makeshift on his leg, was treated to an unholy sight.  Form
the side of the building, dragging a man in handcuffs strode Special
Agent Dana Scully, ramrod-straight and unblinking.  Her hair was wild
around her face, and the exact color of the flames as the building
exploded behind her.
Mucheski's mouth dropped open as did many of those in the police units
and emergency vehicles, this tiny woman walking out of the fire like an
avenging angel in a bra, sneakers, and cut-off jeans hanging around her
hips.
Passing the sobbing dealer over to a handful of uniforms, Dana shoved
her handgun in the waistband of her baggy jeans and sauntered over to
where Mucheski gaped at her.
"What took you so long?" he asked in a shaking voice.
Her eyes glowed as blue as the center of a flame.
"I missed the last flight out."
Her hair smelled like smoke when he wrapped his arms around her and
kissed her hard on the mouth.  Some MPD wag let out a wolf whistle and a
smattering of rude applause broke out.  Mucheski flipped all and sundry
the finger and burned his face in her neck.

The emergency room was a zoo.  There were club victims wandering
aimlessly around with their finery burnt or covered with blood, and an
undercurrent of sobbing could be heard under the efficient hospital
noises.  Dana managed to get herself and Mucheski treated in the nurses
lounge buy a nervous resident who didn't much care for any of Dana's
suggestions.
The mental spike finally lay in the table on a bloody strip of gauze, as
Mucheski was being stitched while Dana cleaned her own cuts and scrapes.
"You don't seem to have any nerve damage here." the woman told Mucheski
"you should go to an orthopedist and have this looked at and get some
physical therapy."
"Mom always said I'd end up in therapy."  Mucheski joked.
"I like my patients better, they're usually quiet."  Dana said as she
dabbed antiseptic on the re-opened scrape on her knee.
"Red, your patients are already dead."
"Best kind to have. They don't complain or make bad jokes."
"How are you doing?"
Dana's gut tightened as Walter Skinner filled the doorway.
"Fine sir."
"And you?"
Mucheski gave him a poisonous look.
"Tis not so deep as well, nor as wide as a church door, but 'tis enough,
'twill serve.  Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. 
Fuck you very much."
"James Michael Winslow is confessing to every crime he committed from
juvenile shoplifting through drug-dealing, conspiracy to murder Garcia
and the murder of Silnontz.  He denies all knowledge of the so-called
eyeball killings."
"Have a nice day." Mucheski muttered.
"There's enough to prosecute.  More than enough." Skinner sighed and
looked at the dark window "there were thirty nine dead at the scene of
the fire, and the fatalities will rise as the night continues.  The EMS
Chief told me that it was the worst fire she had ever seen in terms of
casualties."
"What about the bottling operation?"  Dana asked.
"All the DEA found at that location was a heap of smoking rubble.  The
plant went up at the same time as the club."
"Looks like Takana Washiru has a scorched earth policy."  Mucheski
smirked as he watched the resident wrap his wound.
Finished, the resident began to clear up the bio-waste with efficient
latex fingers.  Skinner consulted his watch.
"Take the rest of the week off, Agent Scully.  Needless to say both your
suspensions have been removed.  I'm writing letters of commendation for
both of you."
Mucheski smiled.
"Shove it up your ass."

While Mucheski collected his crutches, Dana filled out the last of the
medical forms at the admissions desk.  The resident pressed prescription
bottles on her and Dana put them in the pocket of Mucheski's polyester
jacket, which she was wearing.
"That's a broad-spectrum antibiotic, I also gave him some Tylenol 5 but
I guess he's the kind of guy who takes his painkillers in liquid form."
"Did you give him a tetanus shot?"  Dana asked.
The resident compressed her lips, clearly not liking the fact that she
was being told how to do her job.
"He said he had one in ninety-five.  I think he'll be fine."
"May I have a moment, Agent Scully?" 
This was the part that she had been dreading, less than seventy-two
hours after she had been naked in his arms, stoned out of her mind; Dana
had to be face to face and alone with her boss.  She wanted to crawl
under the Admissions desk.  
"Sir?" she asked.
"I owe you an apology I--" he began in a tone that managed to mingle
officiousness and trepidation.
"Sir," she said the words that she had been mentally rehearsing for
hours, "I think there are some things that it is best just to let go,
don't you?"
Nodding, he turned and walked away, moving through the milling garish
club creatures like a hawk in a flock of wounded tropical birds.
"Hey," Mucheski prodded her backside with his crutch "looks like you get
to drive home."
He tossed her the car keys and she caught them in mid-air.
"Don't scratch the paint."
"You know," she said, slowing her pace to match his limp "it's a known
psychological phenomena that men equate their car with their penis."
"So you're saying that I'm big and I make a hell of a lot of noise when
I get to full throttle?" 
"No.  I'm saying you're an old piece of junk that takes forever to start
and fails emissions tests."
Mucheski grinned through a mask of soot.
"I think I'm in love."




Syntax and Measure
26/26
The plane was a half an hour late.  Dana threw the paper cup from her
instant cappuccino into the wastebasket and started to the arrivals
gate. There was much promiscuous kissing in the lounge.
Dana didn't plan on doing any kissing.
A familiar lanky form sliced through the crowd, carrying battered
luggage and wearing an equally battered leather jacket and a battered
expression.
"You're late."
"Blame Quantas." 
In the car, his luggage piled carelessly in the back seat, Mulder
unzipped his backpack and rummaged around the interior.
"I got you something."
"Mel Gibson?"
Dana jumped in surprise as he thrust a stuffed toy kangaroo into her
lap.  The 'roo was staring at her from underneath a little felt bush
hat.
"Thanks." she said.
"Don't say I never gave you anything." he slouched back into the seat
"wake me up when we get home."
"Yes Miss Daisy." she drawled. "I'm drivin' ."
"One thing," he said between yawns "What is with the nails?  Making a
fashion statement is so unlike you."
She looked down at the silver claws squeezing the toy's belly.
"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do."
Starting the car, Dana drove into the rain.

>From her vantagepoint, Dana could see most of the area around the base
of the Washington Monument.  She was early, and Mucheski was, as ever,
late. 
Dana, I love you.
God, if he hadn't said that.  If only.  The weight of the words settled
yoke-like around her shoulders.
I'm dying.
Bad bloodwork, no improvement.  Cancer had metastasized in her
bloodstream.  Chemotherapy.  Radiation.
Dana I'm sorry, Roth had said.
Me too, she had said.
Dana I love you.
I'm sorry.
You can't have the end of my life, that belongs to me.
I'm sorry.
"Miss, excuse me, Miss?"
She blinked.
"Are you all right?"
A Park Guide was standing there, three feet away from her, his face
concerned under the absurd hat.  Doyle, his nametag read.
Dana touched her face, realized that the painless blood was spilling
from her nose, mixing with the painless tears running down her face. 
She dug in her coat pocket for a tissue.
She didn't have any.
The Park Guide handed her a pink tissue.  She took it with a trembling
hand and wiped at her face.
"Are you going to be all right?" the man asked.
"I'm fine."
If she said it enough, she might believe it.
Clap your hands if you believe in fairies.
On weak legs, she walked away, leaving the guide, leaving the pristine
white phallus penetrating the sky, and leaving Mucheski behind her.
The cold rain began and washed everything away.



To recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before
you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected, yet
confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked
and endless head. 

The madman bum and angel beat in Time unknown, yet putting down here
what might be left to say in time come after death,

And rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the golden-horn
shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for
love into an eli eli lamma lamma subatchani* saxophone cry that shivered
the cities down to the last radio.

Allen Ginsburg, "Howl," 1956

"My God, my God, why hath thou forsaken me?"  
Christ's last words on the cross.


Finito.
Thank you for your indulgence.

*************************************************************