Unless you have a blocker, above are advertisements that were put on by Angelfire. Because this is a free site, you may also get pop-ups. The most disturbing new addition to this is a "whole screen" version of a pop-up. If you click to go anywhere on my site, and it suddenly turns into something very different, this is just one of these "whole screen" pop-ups. Leila

Assistant Directors Skinner and Follmer, Special Agents Reyes and Doggett, and Doctor Scully are seated in the big office of F.B.I. Director Kersh. Kersh's face is stern. It looks like a typical scolding is in the offing.

"Thank you all for coming," says Kersh, in a cold, brusque manner, "and Doctor Scully-I appreciate your Supervisor at Quantico letting you attend this meeting." Kersh gives Scully an insincere smile, as if anyone at the FBI Medical Training facility would ignore a "request" that an underling meet with the Director of the FBI. He drops the smile.

"Now...What's this I hear about Mulder being missed again? I don't believe I've authorized another search for him." Kersh gives them a stern look, then decides to throw in a little joke. "He didn't get himself buried again, I hope." He smiles the same smile again, then drops it.

"I just want t' point out, Sir," says Doggett, "that I was opposed t' him bein' dug up." Doggett must want to get back into Kersh's good graces. The Suck-Up!

Kersh ignores him. Skinner gives Doggett a look that would bore into metal. Scully would do this also, but she is beginning to struggle with her deep emotions. (Cue the "Dee-Daaaaa" song, which starts to play softly in the background.) She begins to breathe noisily. Tears have welled up in her eyes.

"I miss him." Scully dabs her eyes with the cuff of her shirt. Kersh leans back in his chair and pulls a big box of tissues off a shelf. He scoots it like a curling pot across the vast expanse of his highly polished desk. It stops exactly in front of her. Kersh quells a little smile as he surreptitiously checks who is impressed with this trick. The group is a collective brick, and as unobservant as one. Scully excavates a large handful of tissues, dabs her eyes, and says, "I miss Mulder...all the time." The "Dee-Daaaaa" song recedes as she dabs and dabs and dabs.

"That's th' very thing, Sir." says Doggett, leaning forward. He loudly taps on Kersh's desk with his pointer finger, and leaves it there. Kersh looks at Doggett's finger like it's some old half-eaten hot dog left in his path. One eyebrow lifts. His lip curls. Doggett removes his finger from the desk.

Kersh now directs an squinty-eyed, curly-lipped look at Skinner. "...And this...missing of Mulder... is somehow... work related?" This is obviously meant as a rhetorical question, but negative, VERY negative.

"Well, it is very peculiar, Sir. We've been treating it as an X-File." Skinner offers, quietly.

"That Doctor Scully misses former Agent Mulder...you are treating it as an X-File?" sneers Kersh, his lips roiling. His eyes have narrowed to narrower slits. Career death rays shoot from his eyes.

"Well, Sir," says Skinner, "It's that she misses him by inches and by seconds..."

"An' by moments an' by maybes..." Doggett adds.

"She takes the elevator, while he is on the stairs." offers Follmer.

"Sometimes we get a glimpse of him from the Beltway carpool lane as he takes the exit to Tacoma Park." says Reyes, who then suggests, "He might be on a mysterious mission of mercy."

"He's been in my apartment. He leaves his underwear on the floor, not in the hamper," sniffs Scully, sadly. Kersh gives her his "appalled" look, which she fails to see, as a new bunch of dabbing and dabbing and dabbing has begun.

"He's the phone call you run to get...it happened at my apartment last night...and when you pick up, there's no one on the line," says Skinner.

"No, that was me." says Doggett. "I forgot t' tell you...I was lookin' for some paperwork, but I found it."

"He honks if he loves Jesus." says Follmer. "He gives the President high marks on Foreign Policy."

"He's coming out the door at Nordstrom's," says Reyes, "and he has made a small purchase. Then the traffic light changes and a Ryder truck moves forward and blocks the view."

"He squeezes the toothpaste from the middle." Scully holds one nostril shut, then the other, and empties her nose into a wad of tissues with two long honking noises. She coughs. Kersh, although already at the other side of the big desk, involuntarily moves back into his chair.

Skinner resumes, "He's a vaguely familiar voice on the radio talk show last Saturday, and you have just tuned in. They thank him, and cut to the news..."

"Which show?" asks Doggett. "If it was th' one talkin' about us white males bein' th' new victims of discrimination in th' workplace..."

"As the bus at the Mall pulls away from the stop, he lurches and catches hold of the stanchion," says Follmer.

"There he sits, hunched over his coffee, at a brightly lit luncheonette bar, late at night in Georgetown. But you have ten minutes until Conan O'Brian comes on, and there's no place to park anyway." says Reyes.

"...and the seat is left up-usually in the middle of the night-and I have to catch myself from falling in..." Scully directs this to Reyes, who nods sympathetically. Kersh starts to say something, then represses it. No sense in getting into some sort of "women's issue."

"He may have already won ten million dollars," says Skinner.

"He wants t' be a millionaire!" says Doggett.

"He has left his lights on in the parking lot and his prescription is ready," says Follmer.

Reyes leans forward and whispers, "When the wind is a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, and the moon is a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas, he wanders around the X-Files office, moaning, moaning...he's in the X-Files office, moaning softly like a breeze." She shrugs, and continues, "Well, sometimes he goes in there when it's just an overcast day, too, and hums pop tunes."

"When I came in yesterday afternoon-it was overcast-and the chair was warm," Scully confirms.

"No, that time it was me, too. I was sittin' there, before ya came in," Doggett explains. Scully doesn't like Doggett sitting at "Mulder's" desk and she gives him a look of displeasure.

"It's my office now, Doctor!" Doggett responds hotly.

Scully puts her nose in the air, which apparently causes backflow problems. She snorts it up and continues, "He's the blur in your peripheral vision, the sound too indistinct to quite make out, a cold draft of wind from some baseboard crevice that makes the hairs on your arm stand up." She dabs again.

"He's a bad smell in the mens' room not just ten minutes ago...I had to use the one upstairs." says Skinner. Skinner, Follmer, Reyes, Scully, and Kersh wait a beat, but Doggett doesn't say anything.

Doggett sits looking at his hands. He has turned beet red in the face.

"Oh." says Skinner.

Kersh decides to re-enter the conversation at this point. "Well, it seems to me that Mulder doesn't want to be found around here anymore. Nonetheless, since none of you-and Mulder too-none of you have ever given a rat's behind about whether anything you do is authorized, I guess I may as well declare that you are all on the case to discover why Mulder isn't here for this, the ninth year of the X-Files investigations. Report back to me on a regular basis. You are all dismissed."

You may contact me at leilafile@hotmail.com