Interior: Night

(INTERIOR: NIGHT - A DESERTED WAREHOUSE somewhere. In the back room. You know the sort. A dark little back office with one light bulb that swings pendulously from the ceiling, casting those sinister shadows all over the place. You're getting the picture. And of course, underneath same, is the chair. You know. The little wooden one.

And of course, tied to same chair is MULDER, naturally. And he's looking all of those cute things everyone loves so much - slightly sweaty, scared, brooding, defiant, with a faint whiff of angst. SCULLY's probably somewhere being endangered whilst this action is taking place. It doesn't really matter where SCULLY is, for the purposes of the script, it just matters where MULDER is and that he can't get to her.

Pan slightly to the desk, strewn with papers relating to whatever it is that goes on in the DESERTED WAREHOUSE during the day. A DESERTED WAREHOUSE only has to be deserted at night, after all, when the night shift of gangsters, terrorists, plucky teenagers, and stray FBI agents clocks on.

Pan up the desk, to the saturninely grinning and black leather jacketed figure of KRYCEK, who, it has to be said, is looking pretty damn sexy in his evil, wolfish way. He's definitely the filled-out, older-and-badder KRYCEK of "The Red and The Black", not the little ratnik out of "Sleepless". None the worse for absence of arm, either.

KRYCEK is idly holding a gun, not really because he expects MULDER to go anywhere, but because he knows that this is quite a scary thing to do under the circumstances. KRYCEK enjoys being scary almost as much as MULDER enjoys being miserable, so, so far, everybody is having a good time.

The two prepare to trade some tough guy one-liners.

Just off-camera there is a tiny, far away tapping. MULDER and KRYCEK appear to be too wrapped up in each other to notice it.)

KRYCEK: Got any last requests?

MULDER: What, other than you untying me and letting me go?

KRYCEK: Forget it, Mulder, you're in over your head this time. (he cocks his head slightly, thinking he can hear a faint tapping... he shakes it, momentarily confused) I have you totally where I want you... (he is sweating a tiny bit now, and his hand is shaking.)

(MULDER looks alarmed, but then also distracted a little, by a faint sound of tapping.)

KRYCEK: Mulder, can you hear something?

MULDER: I hear... this tapping. Like a keyboard.

(KRYCEK gets up angrily and opens the closet in the room, which just happens to be standing there, and points his gun inside.)

KRYCEK: Come out slowly with your hands up!

(Out comes a pale, plump woman, her arms in the air. In one hand is a laptop.)

KRYCEK: And who are you, princess?

SLASH WRITER: I'm... I'm the author...

KRYCEK: What?

MULDER: The author of what?

KRYCEK: Hey! I've got the gun... I ask the questions.

SLASH WRITER: (smirking proudly) Oh, a few little things. "Shoving It Deeper In", "Licking His Thighs Until He Comes All Over Me", and a series of vignettes on my webpage called the "Arab Strap" series.

(KRYCEK just stares. MULDER looks quite interested.)

SLASH WRITER: You want me to read you one?

KRYCEK: (scratching the back of his head with the gun) Umm... I take it they have an "erotic" content, then?

SLASH WRITER: Oh yes. They're a huge turn-on. I got lots of positive feedback.

MULDER: Oh, go on. It's not like I'm going anywhere.

KRYCEK: Hey! I give the orders... go on. Read us one.

SLASH WRITER: (blushing and smiling) Okay. I'll read you my latest.

(KRYCEK settles back on the desk, making himself comfy. MULDER smiles in pleasant anticipation.)

SLASH WRITER: This one is called "Caress My Balls". It's got both of you in it.

KRYCEK: We're in it?

MULDER: Like characters?

KRYCEK: That is so cool! I am like, totally prepared to let you out of here and not kill you.

MULDER: I'm a character in a porn story? Yet another lifetime ambition is realised.

KRYCEK: So, do I nail more chicks than Mulder in it?

SLASH WRITER: (smile faltering a bit at this last remark) Maybe I should just read the story.

KRYCEK: (gesturing with gun) Shoot.

SLASH WRITER: (coughing a little to clear throat) Okay then. "Fox Mulder stared about him, biting back his rage. He cursed his stupidity. Krycek had trapped him, knocking him out cold and then, when he woke, he found he was tied to a wooden chair, in a dark, deserted warehouse, his only illumination a dark, unforgiving lightbulb.

"He had to get free - Scully was in trouble. She needed him. As he chafed against his bonds, he heard the sound of movement, craning around. And there was his tormentor, clad in jeans and a black leather jacket, pointing a gun at him...

MULDER: (whispering) Wow, that's exactly what happened tonight!

KRYCEK: Shut up, Mulder, I want to hear about what happens when the babes get here.

SLASH WRITER: "Slowly, the other man, licking his lips, advanced on Mulder...

(Several hours later...)

SLASH WRITER: "And then, just one more time for the sake of their bittersweet union, he plunged his throbbing cock into the other man's inviting orifice, their mutual groans of lust echoing through the deserted warehouse as they came to the conclusion of their guilty, stolen tryst."

(She looks up from her laptop, and grins happily)

SLASH WRITER: So, what did you think?

(There is complete silence from the two men, who are staring at her with their jaws hanging open.)

SLASH WRITER: Do you think that the thing where the gun got inserted was a bit too much?

(Total silence still. Their faces haven't moved. KRYCEK has gone a peculiar shade of green, and MULDER appears to be in a state of deep shock.)

SLASH WRITER: You don't think it was too purple-prosy, do you? I mean, you want these things to have a spiritual dimension... a love affair like that.

(Still silence. Then abruptly, KRYCEK closes his mouth.)

KRYCEK: I think I'm going to be sick. (He rushes out of room)

(MULDER still hasn't moved.)

SLASH WRITER: He didn't like it, did he? Oh dear...

MULDER: (still staring at the SLASH WRITER) KRYCEK! GET ME OUT OF HERE!

(Offstage, there is the sound of retching.)

MULDER: Krycek! Get back here! Untie me from this chair, you sick, perverted bastard!

(MULDER is becoming increasingly hysterical, and is now using his bound together feet and body weight to inch the chair towards the door.)

KRYCEK: (reappearing, and looking somewhat the worse for wear) The hell I will!

MULDER: (panicking) WHAT???

KRYCEK: I untie you, and God knows what you'd do to me, you depraved excuse for a human being! After what I've just heard, I'll never be able to watch a power tool commercial ever again without flashbacks...

MULDER: What? You think I'd jump on you? Hey, I didn't tie YOU to a chair. You set up this whole scenario...

(They both stare at one another for a minute, slightly shocked with bracing realisation.)

KRYCEK: (turning to the SLASH WRITER) It's you... you did this! Somehow you are using some inexplicable force to make us do your bidding!

MULDER: (Angrily, to KRYCEK) Hey! You wave the gun, I come up with the cracked theories, okay?

SLASH WRITER: It's true, this is my story.

MULDER: What the hell is the matter with you? This man is EVIL! He killed my Dad! He helped get my partner abducted and experimented on! He helped have her sister shot! He ditched me to be a test subject in some Russian gulag! He poisoned my boss! He's a complete asshole!

KRYCEK: Oh bite me, Mulder, you deserved it...

MULDER: (yelling) I did not!

KRYCEK: Oh sure you did. You could have stopped the game any time you wanted to. But you never wanted to. And as for the thing with the gulag, you deserved all you got. The minute I'm in handcuffs, or unable to fight back, what do you do? Start dealing out the kicks and punches, desperate to kick my ass. And you got my damn arm sawn off, you vindictive bastard!

MULDER: (viciously) You're not in handcuffs now, Krycek, you self-seeking treacherous son-of-a-bitch...

KRYCEK: So? SO? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with being self-seeking and treacherous?

SLASH WRITER: Yeah, but Alex, you're only like that because of the terrible things that happened to you as a child.

KRYCEK: (Distracted from his Mulder!Taunting) Huh?

SLASH WRITER: Sure, you know, your tortured childhood! The one that hardened you into a sadistic killer, warped your idealism into a cold, brutal passion to survive...

KRYCEK: I don't know what you're talking about, lady. I had a completely normal childhood.

SLASH WRITER: No you didn't. You were either systematically abused by heartless guardians or else your calm ordinary life was torn apart in a single moment of savage, unpredictable violence, leaving you with only your own burning desire for revenge and a determination to survive... whatever the cost.

KRYCEK: Um... no. I think you're confusing me with somebody else. (Thinks) Though there was this one time when I was about nine that Kostya Volidovich, the school bully, knocked me off a wall and then stole my bowl of borscht.

SLASH WRITER: So then what happened?

KRYCEK: Nothing, really. I went home and got a slap for losing the bowl. Oh, and then the night before my family moved to America (my Dad got a job spying on the American Government) I went around to his house in the middle of the night and torched it.

SLASH WRITER: A formative moment! The nascent Rat King gets the revenge he has brooded on for years!

KRYCEK: (Shrugging) Not really. I was just walking back after breaking all the windows at my school and saw the can of gasoline outside their porch. It was kind of a spontaneous thing. I'd torched lots of other people's houses before then anyway. It wasn't like losing my arson virginity or anything.

SLASH WRITER: Dammit, Alex, there has got to some fundamental, angsty, tragedy-shrouded reason why you're such a bastard! Anything else is simply lazy!

KRYCEK: Nah, not really. My parents were always really nice. My Dad ended up getting killed by the British Secret Service because when they started shooting at him he was too nice to shoot back.

SLASH WRITER: That's it! The murder of your father! And thus you work out the transference of your angst, revenge, and desire by shooting Mulder's father! Mulder was educated at Oxford! It's starting to come together!

KRYCEK: Oh no, I'd already killed lots of people before Dad died. He never approved of me. He thought murder was wrong. So did Mom. What can I tell you? They were brought up in a poor, backward part of the Soviet Union. I guess they were very old-fashioned. Him and Mom took me to counsellors and therapists and all over the place. Me, I never understood what their problem was. They just couldn't get with the gun culture. After I discovered guns, I never really went back to arson. It was kind of teenaged thing.

SLASH WRITER: (exasperated) Well, there must be something! How the hell else did you join the Consortium?

KRYCEK: Oh? That? Oh, I answered an ad in the newspaper. It said; "Survive Impending Global Disaster: Join The Syndicate!" They were looking for someone interested in training as a backstabbing assassin in the world shadow government. Oh, and who had a second language, preferably from an Eastern Bloc country. I was very impressed - they offered excellent pay and benefits...

MULDER: And good travel opportunities, don't forget that.

KRYCEK: (nodding at MULDER) Well, yeah. Good travel. Goes without saying. Promotion prospects. I just thought, I could be good at that. I mean, it beats going to law school and turning into a *complete* bastard.

SLASH WRITER: (simply staring at him, then deciding she can't deal with it, so turns to MULDER) Okay then, let's talk about you.

MULDER: No. No self-analysis. I don't trust you.

SLASH WRITER: That's just your loneliness and paranoia.

MULDER: No, actually it's because I think you're scary and weird on account of the fact that you wrote a story about me ravishing Krycek's ass with kisses. And then a Black and Decker drill.

SLASH WRITER: Oh come on, it was harmless fun. You took the sharp bit off the end of the drill first.

MULDER: Let's just say, I am more psychologically scarred by the events that have transpired this evening then I ever was by my sister being abducted by aliens. Even more than I was that time a load of grey aliens came into my apartment and started to perform a Busby-Berkeley routine in front of my couch while I was lying on it.

KRYCEK: I never heard about that...

MULDER: I have enough problems getting people to take my work seriously.

KRYCEK: Yeah, strange to say, I had something very weird happen to me once. I had just assassinated this politician so I was fleeing to Canada on the back of my motorcycle.

SLASH WRITER: (Practically swooning) I can see it now. The black leather clad god astride his iron steed, the wind ruffling his hair, speeding from the scene of the crime...

KRYCEK: Ooh, it sounds good when you say it!

MULDER: Don't get too mushy, Krycek. Her next lines are likely to be, "He was dreaming about being fondled by another guy while he was chained to the back of the bike."

KRYCEK: Shut up, Mulder. Anyway, I was saying. I had to wait for a Syndicate contact on this little rural road. So I pulled up the bike and got off. And there was this sheep there.

MULDER: I'm not sure I want to hear the rest...

KRYCEK: No, nothing like that. And I took my helmet off and leant against the fence, you know, thinking about nothing, and then suddenly the sheep looked at me and said, "Hmm. So, there you go."

SLASH WRITER: That was all?

KRYCEK: Yep. "Hmm. So, there you go."

MULDER: Actually, it's not that surprising. I have at least ten X-Files (or did before the office burnt down) concerning "Strange Non-Sequitor Remarks Delivered By Animals To Lone Travellers". It happens a lot.

KRYCEK: What like animals appearing and warning you of danger, like spirit guides?

MULDER: No. That's all under "Strange Prophecies And Warnings Delivered By Animal Spirit Guides To Lone Travellers", which is actually a lot rarer. But people feel more comfortable talking about them.

KRYCEK: Hmm. Wonder why that is...

SLASH WRITER: (giving him a funny look) Well, anyway, moving swiftly on... You must have some deep dark angsty secret. Why don't you just tell it?

(KRYCEK seems to think for a moment.)

KRYCEK: But then it wouldn't be a deep dark angsty secret anymore, would it? It would be a deep dark angsty anecdote for you to share with all your crazy porn writing friends. Which is different.

SLASH WRITER: Goddammit, Alex, just stop beating around the bush and let me get a handle on your character!

KRYCEK: Why?

SLASH WRITER: You know, let out your deepest, darkest longings, your true nature. (She smirks hopefully at him.)

KRYCEK: You know, I always wanted to be on "Roller Derby".

SLASH WRITER: (Horrified) What?

KRYCEK: Yeah, you know, "Roller Derby". Everybody used to skate round this little arena, and they wore these neat seventies costumes? I always thought that would be a cool thing to be when I grew up.

SLASH WRITER: How can that be COOL? Look, you're an icon of amoral ambition, sexual danger and ambiguity, and evil, treacherous cunning! How can you stand there and say you wish you were on "Roller Derby"?

KRYCEK: Oh, I don't wish it now...

SLASH WRITER: Thank God...

KRYCEK: No, "Roller Derby" was really stupid, when you think about it.

SLASH WRITER: Yes...

KRYCEK: No, now I wish I'd been like one of the characters off "Friends".

MULDER: I can just see it. You could have been Joey's friend Alex, who murders Phoebe with a lethal injection...

KRYCEK: Okay then, Mr. Righteous, who would you be?

MULDER: Me?

SLASH WRITER: Yes, you, Fox! You driven, angsty, sensitive, stud muffin type!

MULDER: I'd be a lifeguard on Baywatch.

SLASH WRITER: WHAT?

MULDER: It would be so fine. I'd pose around on a beautiful beach in my Red Speedos while silicon enhanced babettes ran around me in a particularly pneumatic way, and I would probably have issues and problems, yeah, but they'd only last for like a week and by next week I'd've totally forgotten about them. No more lying watching television in the dark, no more angsty tears over missing family members, no more hopelessly stilted unresolved sexual tension with Scully. I'd be up to my ears with all the girls my face could cope with. And I'd get to work on my tan...

KRYCEK: But you wouldn't get to kill anybody. That's the only down side.

SLASH WRITER: Stop! Stop right now! I don't want to hear anymore! Have you gone nuts?

KRYCEK: Listen, sugar, I don't think a woman that passes all her free time writing stories about me tying Mulder to chairs and beds and motorcycles and then banging him is in any position to comment on what is or is not "nuts". Okay?

SLASH WRITER: But you can't deny your deep-seated attraction for one another!

MULDER: Oh, I think you'll find we can.

KRYCEK: Very easily.

MULDER: Like falling off a log.

KRYCEK: Or teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.

(Slight pause.)

MULDER: I think we all could have lived without the "suck" reference, Alex.

KRYCEK: Sorry. My bad.

SLASH WRITER: So... I can't interest either of you in the dark mysterious pleasure of each other?

KRYCEK and MULDER: No.

SLASH WRITER: Not even a little bit? Just to try it on for size?

KRYCEK and MULDER: (more forcefully) NO!

SLASH WRITER: (rather primly) You know, I'm very disappointed in the amount of blatant homophobia you're both displaying.

MULDER: It's NOT homophobia. It's just that I'm not interested in Krycek's ass! I'm straight, and even if I weren't, I wouldn't be interested in Krycek's ass! The only thing I want to penetrate him with is a bullet fired out of my gun! I'm heterosexual, dammit!

KRYCEK: Admittedly you're a very sad, lonely, dysfunctional heterosexual, but hey...

MULDER: Shut up!

KRYCEK: Oh. Come on... You must be the only character so far that HASN'T slept with Scully.

MULDER: What?

KRYCEK: (glancing down at his fingernails, smirking a little) Yeah, she wasn't that great, I gotta say... but still, she was better than your Mom.

MULDER: WHAT!?!

(At this dramatic point, we cut to a DIRTY BASEMENT.)

(INTERIOR: NIGHT - DIRTY BASEMENT. DIRTY BASEMENTS, unlike DESERTED WAREHOUSES, tend to be a much more specialised environment, inhabited usually by such species as your common or garden STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH. Generally speaking, anyone in a DIRTY BASEMENT who is not drooling or carrying a surgical scalpel can be legitimately said to be "in trouble".)

(In this DIRTY BASEMENT there is a table and a chair, once again moodily lit, and on the far wall there is a set of arm and leg shackles set into the concrete. Attached to them, her mouth bound by a gag, is SCULLY. She is staring in terror at the STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH, who is gibbering and capering before her, wielding an ice pick.)

PSYCHOPATH: Bwahaahaaahaaaa!!!!

SCULLY: Mmmph! Mmmhmmph!!!

(Meanwhile, back at the WAREHOUSE...)

MULDER: WHAT did you just say about my mom, you piece of shit?

KRYCEK: Oh. Nothing.

MULDER: Good...

KRYCEK: Well, nothing important. Just pointing out that your Mom has had more Syndicate members than I've had hot dinners. It's funny actually, at the annual Consortium Dinner they still talk about her Ice Cube Trick...

MULDER: (Very red in the face) You bastard!

KRYCEK: Yeah, she's quite limber for an old chick, gotta say...

MULDER (fighting strenuously against his bonds, in a high rage) : Shut up about my mother or I'll kick your ass, you...

KRYCEK: But I still preferred your sister. She swallowed.

MULDER: Arrgghh!!

(MULDER is so angry, and heaving about in his bonds so much, that he smashes the chair into firewood. What can I tell you? - it must have been bought at Ikea. With a frenzied growl, he leaps forward and starts smashing KRYCEK over the head with a piece of it. After his initial surprise, KRYCEK retaliates by attempting to pistol whip MULDER over the temple. In the ensuing melee they are groaning and rolling all over the floor, getting very hot and angry. SLASH WRITER smiles beatifically on, her considerable embonpoint falling up and down with increasing speed.)

(Back in the BASEMENT...)

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH (sporting evil psychopathic grin): Where's your partner now, huh? Prepare to die, you little slut!

SCULLY (still muffled): MMMMMPPHHMMMHH!

(STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH pulls back the ice pick before smashing the pointy end straight into SCULLY'S chest. Blood spatters across her Versace suit.)

SCULLY: Mmmmph...

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: Bwaaahaaaahaaahaaaa!!!

(They stand fixed like that, as SCULLY slumps in her bonds.)

(INTERIOR: NIGHT - DESERTED WAREHOUSE)

(MULDER and KRYCEK are fighting like dogs on the floor.)

MULDER: Take that back, you son of a bitch!!!

KRYCEK: Bite me, Mulder! OWWWW! I didn't mean actually *bite* me!

SLASH WRITER: This is so cool! This is just how I imagined it! (She lifts a hand against her heaving bosom to steady it)

(The men look at her, dismayed. Then they look at each other. They both realise simultaneously that they are wrapped around each other, and let out horrified yells as they let go of one another and leap back. They pause a second, glaring at each other in frustrated hatred, and occasionally making weak feints at one another, but the pressure is too much. Between the conflicting forces of Alpha Male Television Machismo, and Irrational Television Inter-Character Loathing, KRYCEK and MULDER are caught on each side and tearing down the middle like damp pieces of paper.)

(Incidentally, if you didn't like the above description of their relationship, and would prefer something a little less filled with lazy writing and ham-fisted and desperate post-modernist irony masquerading as humour, then be comforted in the knowledge that the author has prepared the following alternative paragraph to describe this very same phenomenon.)

(Ahem...)

(They turned to each other, their eyes glazed with hatred, and yet with an inexplicable longing. It was beyond revenge, beyond rage - in respect to each other they stood as the warring poles of the earth stand - drawn to their opposing ends in space and time and yet clasping the whole earth between their mighty, elemental attractio....zzz...zz...uh...oh! There are people out there! Shit, I fell asleep on the keyboard again! Crap! Um...elemental attraction...oh, bugger it, probably nobody's reading this bloody thing anyway, I don't know why I torment myself like this. But anyway, as I was...)

(The Test Pattern flicks on.)

(We regret to announce that the above paragraph was cancelled due to technical problems we are experiencing with our author. Normal service is hereby resumed.)

(MULDER eventually settles into a small ball and starts rocking on the floor, pulling at his desperately short and badly cut hair.)

MULDER: Nnngh! Must... hurt... Krycek!...ngh...but can't.... touch... Krycek!!! Arggh! I can't STAND it! I think I'm having a brain haemorrhage!

KRYCEK: (pointing at the SLASH WRITER) You! Look what you've done to us!

SLASH WRITER: Me?

KRYCEK: You... you with your attempts to eroticise your own subversive discourse on male/male power relationships, using us, just using us like sex-dolls, to give a commentary upon definitions of masculinity in the context of popular culture! You did this to us! You threw us out of our Eden! We were happy in the unproblematic duality of our ideologically opposed roles within our own perceived reality!

SLASH WRITER: What reality? You're fictional characters!

KRYCEK: Don't you marginalise our subjective existences with your real-people-ist assumptions, bitch! We're real if we think we are! And we were happy, just happy, to hate each other and beat the crap out of each other, but no, no, that wasn't good enough for you - you had to meddle in our hermeneutic symbiosis by symbolically loading potent and dissenting sexual meanings upon our assigned iconic roles! You monster!

(KRYCEK is now practically crying. The SLASH WRITER is biting her lip.)

KRYCEK: You've destroyed our unexamined ideological paradise of identity through hostility and replaced it with an endless relativism where instead of representing opposing stable poles that the audience can identify with in dramatico-religious sense, we are forced into an undifferentiated amalgam of erotic and socio-political subversive messages that reflect only your own dissatisfactions with the unequal and societally pre-determined personas inherent in male-female gender relationships in the late twentieth century West! How could you DO that? My God! And with power tools, too! What kind of sick, twisted person ARE you!?!

(KRYCEK bursts into heartbroken sobs.)

MULDER: (to SLASH WRITER, uncurling from his foetal position) Now you've done it.

SLASH WRITER: And, um, what about you?

MULDER: Well, I feel... exactly what he just said. (Pauses for a moment, eyeing the distraught KRYCEK with speculative malice) Though, obviously, I feel it without crying. Like a big girl.

KRYCEK: (recovering some of his savoir-faire) Fuck you, Mulder!

MULDER: No thank you. But we've had this discussion already tonight, haven't we?

SLASH WRITER: Hmm. Well, I have considered your incredibly... verbose arguments, but I must say, in the final analysis, they leave me utterly unmoved. I personally believe the language of academic discourse constitutes a blind erected by the establishment to privilege and protect non-deviant, mainstream sexual relations. And anyway, I still find the idea of you two doing one another really hot.

MULDER: Shit. Oh well, Alex, it was a good try.

KRYCEK: (shrugging) You can't win them all. Okay, (turning to SLASH WRITER) then we'll be forced to kill you.

SLASH WRITER: You're bluffing.

KRYCEK: You don't think I'm capable of murder?

SLASH WRITER: Oh, you might be, but Fox would never let you shoot an unarmed woman in cold blood.

MULDER: Um... you really want to bet your life on that?

SLASH WRITER: Yep.

MULDER: (looking at KRYCEK, and giving him a big, pantomime wink.) Oh. Okay. (Thinks) Hmm. I think I'm going to go look at this corner of the room for a little while...(he winks at KRYCEK again, who makes a big show of winking back and giving a little thumbs up sign behind SLASH WRITER's back.)

SLASH WRITER: (nervously) Fox...?

MULDER: (examining the wall) Oh, looky, rising damp. And in a new building too. That's...

(BLAM! BLAM!)

(MULDER turns around in horror. The SLASH WRITER is lying face down in a pool of her own blood.)

(Ooh! Good time to head back to the BASEMENT...)

(SCULLY is still gasping her last in her bonds, and has been doing so for the last half hour. The STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH has grown exhausted with gloating, which is pretty damn tiring over a lengthy period, and has gone to sit down in the chair. He glances up to SCULLY occasionally, and then glances down at his watch.)

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: Umm... I guess he's late.

SCULLY: Mmmmhmmm...

(STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH gets up and takes down her gag.)

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: Do you want anything while you're waiting? Tea? Coffee? Some paracetamol?

SCULLY: (blood dripping out of the corner of her mouth) Tea... would be great. And... do you have any bandaids?

(INTERIOR: NIGHT - DESERTED WAREHOUSE...)

MULDER: Goddammit, Krycek! You're meant to play the game!

KRYCEK: What game? (genuinely puzzled)

MULDER: (tearing nervously at his hair again) The Bluff Game! She would have lost her nerve! She would have backed down!

KRYCEK: Oh yeah! And then, just when she thought she was safe, I could have taken her out with a bullet to the temple!

MULDER: NO! You idiot! We were ONLY pretending you were going to shoot her!

KRYCEK: Mulder, are you on drugs? Why the Hell would I, of all people, only PRETEND to shoot somebody?

MULDER: Then we would have let her go!

KRYCEK: What? What would the point of that been? Why the hell would we be that stupid?

MULDER: Well... well... well, she wouldn't be dead!

KRYCEK: Damn, well blow me! (slapping his forehead)

MULDER: No thanks, again...

KRYCEK: I'm such a dunce! We could have let her go, with just her word on the subject, and hey, cos we're such stand-up guys, we could have let her have her little laptop back, and then she could have gone home and got straight back to writing you and me as the dysfunctional couple from Hell! Hey, in time, we could probably work through a whole home improvement store's worth of implements on each other! No thanks. A Rat's got to do what a Rat's gotta do. Now... about that computer.

MULDER: I just think that, you know, murder... that it's wrong.

KRYCEK: I know, Mulder, but this is the Nineties. (Thinks) And you know, she was probably an agent of the shadow government attempting to discredit you at the FBI through manipulating you into a controversial and shocking relationship in order to blackmail you into co-operating with the conspiracy. Obviously.

MULDER: (who doesn't believe this, but would dearly love to) Hmm.

KRYCEK: And I mean, she's probably still alive in the real world...

MULDER: The real world... imagine, though, giving up your life and your only recompense being to exist as a shadow of yourself in the real world. (shudders) You wouldn't belong to yourself anymore.

KRYCEK: (nodding sympathetically) Very true. Very true... Anyway, enough about Dead Pervert Chick. Let's see what else is on Mr. Laptop...

MULDER: (reverting to character in a quiet, dishevelled, slightly desperate and angsty way) I blame myself for her death though. I ... I could have saved her...

KRYCEK: (reading the screen and grinning maniacally) Ooh! Looky here! It's you banging Skinner!

MULDER: WHAT? That fucking bitch! Give that here!

KRYCEK: (leaping out of his reach and mimicking Mulder's low hoarse tones) "...Oh, fuck me, sir, fuck me..."

MULDER: (chasing KRYCEK around the room whilst the latter holds the laptop out of his reach, jumping about and making faces and lewdly thrusting his hips about in a mocking gesture) CUT THAT OUT!

KRYCEK: (now taking off Skinner's brusque tones, with evident, malicious glee) "...that's exactly what I intend to do, Fox baby..."

MULDER: Oh, you rat-faced son-of-a-bitch! (Catches hold of KRYCEK's leather jacket, swinging the laptop into his reach. He jerks it away from KRYCEK, who happily surrenders it. He flips it open, scrolling down the document, whilst KRYCEK pirouettes in an ecstasy of Mulder!Taunting.)

KRYCEK: Read it and weep!

(MULDER is glaring at the screen. Then, however, something catches his eye. He starts his own evil grin.)

MULDER: (now mimicking the gravelly tones of the Cigarette-Smoking Man) "... Bend over, you little rat-whore..."

KRYCEK: (grin vanishing) Mulder, give me that laptop now, or I will shoot you. Do you understand?

MULDER: (gaily ignoring him) "... yes, Mas..." (he pauses, disturbed) Oh my God...

KRYCEK: What?

MULDER: Don't fly into a panic, Krycek...

KRYCEK: WHAT?

MULDER: But there's more than one person writing this stuff...

KRYCEK: (stunned) That's impossible. There can't be more than one...

MULDER: Look.

(KRYCEK flips through the screens. After a few seconds he swallows hard.)

KRYCEK: What are we going to do? There must be at least twenty names here, Mulder! Dammit! My ass must be a literary freeway! Is there no end to this madness!?!

MULDER: This is amazing! Clearly there is some kind of mass infection or possession going on here! If we can locate the nexus of this problem, locate the original "slash writer", then perhaps we can break the hold the phenomenon has on the others!

KRYCEK: (nodding) Or, we can just go down this list here and kill everybody on it. Which would be a hell of a lot easier.

(A long silence ensues.)

MULDER: Well...

(A longer pause.)

MULDER: ...That's also a suggestion.

KRYCEK: I thought we had "murder" issues in this corner.

MULDER: Well, I think I read in FBI regulations that killing a slash writer is justifiable homicide.

(KRYCEK gives him a sceptical look.)

KRYCEK: No it isn't.

MULDER: Oh yeah, yeah, it can be. If the slash writer in question is um, likely to endanger the public, or set off a bomb or something, or... you know.

KRYCEK: These people aren't endangering the public. Or building bombs.

MULDER: (feeling his way through this moral maze) No... no. But they might be. And maybe we could bring some bomb stuff with us, and like, leave it in their houses, and then come back and then, if we shot them, it would be justifiable homicide. Kind of.

KRYCEK: I'm impressed. I never knew you had it in you to plot murder, plant evidence, and pervert the course of justice.

MULDER: Don't even think about getting gushy on me.

KRYCEK: Hokay. Who's first on the list?

MULDER: Hmm. Somebody here called FG.

KRYCEK: And what did they write?

MULDER: I'm not going to *read* it. Let's just get over there and... question this person.

KRYCEK: Okay. Just let me stock up on ammo and plastique.

(INTERIOR: NIGHT. The Basement of Death)

(STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH is sitting on the little chair in front of SCULLY, still sagging in her bonds, and he is reading aloud to her from an old copy of "Cosmopolitan".)

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: "Dear Irma, I love my current man very much but I am starting to become quite upset by the fact I have never met any of his family or friends, and have never spent the night at his house..."

SCULLY: (weakly, coughing blood) ...he's married.

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: (frowning at the magazine) You think?

SCULLY: Oh yeah. Been there, done that.

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: That's a bit of a cynical view.

SCULLY: No, I'm just a social realist.

(There is a long pause as they each sigh deeply.)

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: He's really late, isn't he?

SCULLY: I'm going to kill him.

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: It's very inconsiderate. I have another gig tonight, hiding under some kid's bed and making occasional creaking noises. And then about five am I have a job in a nightmare where I chase some sleeping person whilst I'm on a motorbike. I'm already late for the kid thing. Shit. (He sighs.) Well, never mind. Want to hear your stars?

SCULLY: I don't believe in that stuff.

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: Oh come on, everybody likes to hear their stars. How else are we gonna pass the time?

SCULLY: Alright. (coughing a bit more blood up)

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: What star sign are you?

SCULLY: (shiftily) Leo.

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: (Bending his huge, balding slicked head forward, and fastening his gimlet eyes on the glossy pages) "Today is a bad day for business ventures, but excellent for getting out and meeting new people. Later there is the possibility of romance, if you let yourself go. Your lucky number is seven and your colour is blue." Hmm.

SCULLY: See? It's crap. I'm actually an Aquarius. And I bet I get the same feel-good, meaningless nonsense...

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: Okay... Aquarius. "Today you should take time out to enjoy all the fine things in life. Take a walk amongst nature, treat yourself shopping, or simply immerse yourself in a soothing bath..."

SCULLY: (wearily) See?

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: "...as tonight you will be horribly murdered by a stereotypical psychopath in a dirty basement. You have no lucky number and your colour is lurid red, with swimming grey fading to black." Hmm. (STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH waves the magazine at her.) Seems pretty accurate to me.

SCULLY: Dammit. What's Mulder? He's Libra.

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: Hmm... oh yeah. His stars say - "Mulder, you're late. Your lucky number is three and your colour is pale satin pink with little white bows."

SCULLY: What the hell is that about?

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: (shrugs) No idea. Let's read mine...

(EXTERIOR: NIGHT - FG's HOUSE. It's this cute little place, set on its own in the middle of some lovely countryside, rather like an enchanted cottage. I could describe the setting in more detail but that would be pointless as none of the action takes place there and it's night anyway so you wouldn't see anything. Nevertheless, our boys can hear an expensive stereo playing the kind of tunes that invariably end up as songfic.)

KRYCEK: This is the place.

MULDER: How did you find the address?

(KRYCEK reaches into his pocket and removes a small palm held machine, showing it to MULDER.)

MULDER: What's that?

KRYCEK: It's a Plot Device.

MULDER: (startled, pointing at an upstairs bedroom window) There's somebody in there!

KRYCEK: Okay, let's break in.

(They break in, which they are both pretty good at since they get so much practice, so it doesn't take long)

(INTERIOR: NIGHT - FG's cottage. MULDER and KRYCEK are slinking up the stairs in the semi-dark towards somebody's bedroom. This is a sight to behold, the author can only assure you, gentle reader.)

MULDER: There was a light on in the bedroom upstairs.

KRYCEK: Okay. Just remember. No mercy.

MULDER: Right.

(They reach the landing, see the door that must lead into the bedroom, and kick it open with much shouting and bravado and gun-waving and all that good stuff.)

MULDER: Freeze!

KRYCEK: Don't move!

(They are a bit nonplussed, as they are standing and holding loaded guns at a girl lying lasciviously on a big linen draped bed. The girl is wearing nothing but a bra and panties set in pale satin pink with little white bows. She lets out a little shriek and covers herself partially with a bit of the bedcover.)

MULDER: Who are you?

GIRL: I'm Mary Sue!

KRYCEK: Who? We were looking for FG...

MARY-SUE: Well, yes, I am FG. But I'm actually also a diffraction of her. I'm her original character that happens to look like her and have all her interests and so forth. But I also embody all of her wishes and insecurities, so even though I have a good job and am, as you can see, quite gorgeously beautiful, I am nevertheless crippled by shyness around men and plagued by doubts on my own self worth.

(KRYCEK and MULDER blink at her in disbelief.)

MULDER: Just out of curiosity, how crippled by shyness can a person be if she spends all of her free time lounging around provocatively in her plunge bra?

MARY-SUE: (whose dulcet tones are starting to betray a certain shrill, authorly peremptoriness) Look, never mind questioning me. Just get on with the job in hand. I'll handle all the suspension of disbelief stuff.

KRYCEK: And badly too, by the looks of things...

MARY-SUE: (now positively shrewish) Dammit, don't talk back to me!

KRYCEK: Oh...okay. (pulls out his gun)

MULDER: Krycek, wait...(reaches over and pulls out MARY-SUE's underwear drawer. Do not ask how he knows which one it is - he just must have an instinct for these things. He drops in a small paper bag.) Got it.

MARY-SUE: What did you put in my drawer?

MULDER: I never put anything in there. That's your semtex. I never touched it.

MARY-SUE: Why did you put semtex in my underwear drawer?

MULDER: Because...(floundering a bit, as he's now relentlessly out of character, and listing like a ship in a storm) you're a danger to the public, and we have to shoot you.

MARY-SUE: (dangerously) Why?

MULDER: B-because...

KRYCEK: (waggling his gun at her) Because you wrote a whole bunch of stories about me and him having sex, even though we hate one another, and it seemed a good way to stop this ever happening again.

MARY-SUE: I did not.

MULDER: Yes you did.

MARY-SUE: I don't write slash.

KRYCEK: You were on the laptop. You're a friend of that dead chick.

MARY-SUE: What dead chick?

MULDER: (opening laptop and scrolling through) Umm... MKLovee...

MARY-SUE: (starting to sound shrill and pissed off again) She's *dead*? How?

MULDER: (pointing at KRYCEK) Krycek shot her.

KRYCEK: Only because you suggested it...

MULDER: I did NOT suggest it!

KRYCEK: You said you were going to look at the wall!

MULDER: Dammit, I was BLUFFING!

MARY-SUE: You SHOT her? What kind of sick weirdoes are you?

KRYCEK: Well, we're the kind of sick weirdoes that are going to shoot you too.

(MARY-SUE stalks up to KRYCEK and gives him a good slap across the chops. He drops the gun in surprise, and she kicks it away.)

MARY-SUE: Don't you wave your little gun at me, you bad boy! Shoot me, indeed!

KRYCEK: Ow! That hurt.

MULDER: But it was fun to watch...(SLAP!) Oww!

MARY-SUE: You behave yourself as well. Now. Explain from the beginning.

(MULDER and KRYCEK look at each other.)

MULDER: Okay. I was in this Deserted Warehouse...

(Twenty minutes later)

MARY-SUE: So, you were going to plant evidence on me and then kill me, because you thought I wrote slash about you both?

KRYCEK: Yeah...

MULDER: That's about the top and bottom of it, yeah.

MARY-SUE: I can't believe you killed poor MKLovee. She wrote *such* good slash. It was SO hot...

MULDER: I wish, I just wish, people would stop describing it like that.

KRYCEK: (miserably regarding his gun, which MARY-SUE is holding) So now what? Do we have to perform for you now?

(KRYCEK is slumped miserably in his seat, while MULDER is pouting, his cute bottom lip wobbling slightly. MARY-SUE considers this for a moment, hands on hips.)

MARY-SUE: As much as that would probably be a really hot scenario, I'm afraid I don't write slash. I specialise in M/Other and K/Other.

KRYCEK: What's other?

MARY-SUE: As in other person, as in original character, as in... well, me, actually. (She turns the gun over in her hands) You see, in this story, Alex here breaks into my bedroom in my picturesque but nevertheless isolated and lonely house, which incidentally, was willed to me by my crippled scientist father who was working, against his will, for the Consortium, and who I spent all my youth caring for until he died, thus meaning that I never got to go out and have any fun, so I'm shy and reserved as well as being incredibly intelligent and stuff, and Alex has been ordered to learn all that I know, by torturing me and then killing me. However, when he gets here, he is so entranced by my vulnerability and girlish charm (and my Wonderbra), that we end up having sex. And then you, Fox, break in, having tracked him here, and there's a big fight scene, and he runs away, and I am so torn between guilt and shame for my actions, I do a whole lot of crying, and then you comfort me, and we get along anyway because I had a younger sibling that was also abducted by aliens, and we end up having sex. But then the next day, I am still thinking about Alex, and the danger and naughtiness of it all, and I want him to lead me to the main Consortium database, so I steal Alex's file from Fox, and I try to track him down, and I do, and we end up having sex again, but he's all in a quandary because he has to kill me because I let slip during orgasm that I actually have my father's Secret Formula, and the Rebel Aliens need that to continue the Resistance, so he's about to kill me when Fox finds me again, and then you two fight, and then Alex runs away, and then we have sex again.

(KRYCEK and MULDER are staring at her, open-mouthed.)

MARY-SUE: And that's it really. Oh, except I give the formula to the Rebels and the world gets saved.

KRYCEK: Hmm. I see.

MARY-SUE: Yeah. Eighty pages, seven sex scenes, twenty-seven orgasms... It's a very ambitious work.

MULDER: And the canons of literature will be much enriched by it, I'm sure... (KRYCEK slaps a hand over his mouth) HmmMm...!

KRYCEK: Mulder, shut up and let ME handle all the talking to chicks, okay?

MARY-SUE: (suspiciously) What?

KRYCEK: Oh, nothing. Nothing. So...hmm (with a very rakish smile)... where do you want me?

MARY-SUE: (very business-like) Oh, you both go out and then Alex, you come through the window.

KRYCEK: With the gun...

MARY-SUE: (slaps him again) NO!

KRYCEK: Ow!

MARY-SUE: Not with the gun! With the knife! And the garotte! I want sneaky and stealthy! Fox! Get out and come back in an hour!

(She regards KRYCEK appraisingly for a minute.)

MARY-SUE: On second thoughts, make that two hours. Have you got something you can do for two hours?

MULDER: Um...Oh my God! Scully! (checks watch) I'm late! Shit, I'm late! (runs out)

MARY-SUE: (shouting after him) Remember, two hours from now!

KRYCEK: (smirking at MARY-SUE) Okay babe, let's make ourselves more comfortable...(he reaches over to MARY-SUE's Wonderbra)

(MARY-SUE slaps him hard again)

KRYCEK: Ow!

MARY-SUE: (furious) Does this look like Coco's Lounge Bar to you? I want evil, I want menacing, I want Natural Born Killer! I don't want "Hey, can I buy you a Pina Colada?" and "Do you come here often?" Got it? Now get out and start shimmying up that drainpipe!

KRYCEK: (a little frightened) Okay.

(And so we leave them.)

(Meanwhile, back in the DIRTY BASEMENT...)

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: So then, the rash spread to my knees and elbows, you know, and I wondered, maybe I'm lactose-intolerant...

SCULLY: It's a possibility...

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: I mean, I used to have asthma as a child...Sorry. You being a doctor, you must get this all the time.

SCULLY: I'm used to it.

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: So, I went to get tested...Whoa, somebody's coming! (leaps up and stares through the high grille leading to the street level) Yeah, it's him!

SCULLY: At long last...Ouch! (As STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH rips off her Bandaid.)

STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH: (shoving magazines back in the drawer and then hiding the tea cups in a nearby bucket of compost) Right. We're ready.

MULDER: (from outside the door) SCULLY!?!

SCULLY: (sotto voce) You are so dead, Mulder... (more loudly) M-Mulder! I...(starts to pathetically cough blood)

MULDER: SCULLY! (he breaks down the door)

(The STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH lunges at him. There is a tussle and then MULDER shoots the gun. The STEREOTYPICAL PSYCHOPATH lies still. MULDER rushes up to SCULLY.)

MULDER: Scully! Oh, God, no!

SCULLY: M-Mulder, he stabbed me...

MULDER: Scully! (tearing her out of her bonds and laying her gently on the stone floor) Oh God! If only I hadn't been at that Deserted Warehouse! Oh God! (Dissolves into angst).

SCULLY: Mulder...

MULDER: Oh, Scully! (tears are now welling up)

SCULLY: (faintly, eyes glazing with death) Mulder, you mustn't blame yourself...

MULDER: (sobbing) Oh, Scully!

SCULLY: Umm... don't you think you should call an ambulance?

MULDER: Oh... yeah. Umm...

SCULLY: What?

MULDER: Do you really think you'll last that long?

SCULLY: (harshly) What?

MULDER: It's just that... well, I'm on a promise in... about an hour and a half, and I just thought....

SCULLY: WHAT?

MULDER: Oh come on, Scully, be a sport. Just say that you always loved me, I'll say I always loved you, and then we can blow this gig. I mean, I'm sure you had other plans for this evening anyway.

SCULLY: We can't do that...

MULDER: Sure we can. We have an absentee author since... well, since Krycek shot her a little while ago.

SCULLY: (considers this) Oh. (thinks) Why did he shoot her?

MULDER: Oh, it doesn't really matter.

SCULLY: No, that's reasonably strange. Tell me why he shot her.

MULDER: (pauses, then big sigh) Because she was writing a story where me and Krycek ravished each other. With guns and power tools.

SCULLY: Like, you were having sex?

MULDER: NO. We did NOT have sex. We shot her first.

SCULLY: (thinking) Shame. That could have been kind of hot...

MULDER: God damn it! (throws cellphone into her lap) Phone your own damn ambulance. (Stalks out)

(A few seconds pass by in the Dirty Basement, as SCULLY edges herself up into a seated position. She then notices the SLASH WRITER's laptop lying on the floor, where MULDER has discarded it. She reaches out, slowly and carefully pulling it nearer herself.)

SCULLY: Hmm. (flips it open on her lap)

(She reads the following:

*KRYCEK: (waggling his gun at her) Because you wrote a whole bunch of stories about me and him having sex, even though we hate one another, and it seemed a good way to stop this ever happening again.*)

SCULLY: (more decisively this time) Hmm.

(She scrolls down a little further:

*MARY-SUE: (shouting after him) Remember, two hours from now!*)

And above it

(*MARY-SUE: I don't write slash. *))

SCULLY: (coughing a little, and holding her wound) Hmm. I see. (She starts to type on the keyboard, causing a faint tap-tapping to echo through the room.) So this is why I got left to haemorrhage to death in some Dirty Basement, is it? And then get ditched while I'm in my final speech... well, let's just see about that.

(More tap-tapping)

SCULLY: Heheheh..."Mulder entered the darkened room. As his eyes adjusted, he felt a sudden ringing blow to the temple. When he awoke, Mary-Sue stood above him, holding the gun not only at him, but also at his hated enemy, Alex Krycek. The woman smiled cruelly. "Now, both of you will do exactly what I say."... Heh. Payback's a bitch, boys...