Fic: Drop [X-Files]
An online rp/art shop had an X-Files themed event for Halloween. I entered the prompt-based storytelling contest. This is the result. The kitten is the prize. <3 I guess I can still write.
Drop
By Loki’sRose
Scully walked through the door of the tiny basement 'office' and dropped her coat over the back of her chair with a weariness that went unnoticed by her partner. Mulder looked up from his desk, his eyes alight with excitement. The sort of look he got just before they ran off to investigate a particularly intriguing case. Vampire style murders, ghost sightings, Neanderthal creatures wandering through campsites. All usually on the other side of the country, where the even the most expensive motels only offered century-old wallpaper and lukewarm showers.
"So what was so important that you needed to call me in at this hour? ...I was busy."
"Busy doing what?" Mulder replied before a small smirk started to spread over his features. "Entertaining someone? A daaate?"
The redhead merely raised an eyebrow. "Washing my hair." She stated blandly. "Like you're one to talk. When was the late time you-"
"This is better than any ol date!" Mulder suddenly interrupted her and held up a folder. "I just got a tipoff about this case. It's one I remember going through when I first started working down here but there was never any new leads to go on."
"What did you find out?" Scully asked, taking the case file from his hand and flicking it open. Her eyes skimmed quickly across the first page.
"Well let me explain it to you from the beginning..."
“Just the relevant details, Mulder.”
Mulder grinned at her. “Drop Bears,” he said.
Scully gazed at him for a moment, then shook her head. “All right, from the beginning, then.”
“There’s an Australian legend,” Mulder began happily, his voice taking on the tone that had earned him his nickname, “of a kind of… monster koala bear-”
“They’re not bears, Mulder.”
Mulder pouted at her but kept going, “- a monster bear that lives in the highest eucalypt trees and drops down onto passing humans to feast on their still-living flesh. They say it can be warded off with -”
Scully slapped the file back down on the table.
“Australia is outside the Bureau’s jurisdiction. Mulder, this file is about murders in LA.”
“As I was saying, I got a tip-off.” Mulder flipped the file to the back page, to the gory crime-scene photograph taken by Los Angeles police. It looked as if something had taken a shark-sized bite off the victim’s head and torso. Behind the carnage, the tall, smooth trunk of a eucalyptus tree towered over the landscape.
Mulder pushed a pair of flight tickets across the desk, expression hopeful as Scully sighed and retrieved her coat.
***
The anachronistic trees loomed over them as they drove from the airport, sparse finger-long leaves filtering the early morning sunlight. Mulder hadn’t bothered to research when the gum trees had first been planted in Los Angeles, but there seemed to be a lot of them, thriving in the LA climate, interspersed between the more usual palm trees.
The motel they stopped at was every bit as bad as Scully had imagined.
“How long is this investigation going to take?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at the musty bedlinen. Mulder shrugged, busy with the new case files he’d picked up from the police station on the way.
“Where did this tip-off come from, anyway?”
“…I was in a bar. Got talking with some tourists.”
“You know drop bears are a fictious creature invented by Australians to frighten foreigners?”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not real,” Mulder retorted, choosing as usual to ignore the technical definition of ‘fictious’.
***
They spent the morning doorknocking everyone who had known the victims or heard about the murders. Scully went over the most recent autopsies (which showed massive bitey trauma and traces of alcohol, but nothing supernatural), while Mulder questioned the locals about creatures in the night. Reports were hazy. Scully suspected her partner was not so much investigating as sowing paranoia. People had started carrying around pointy umbrellas against the cloudless blue sky, brandishing them wildly as they passed anywhere near a tree.
When Scully got back to the motel, Mulder was spreading thick black gunk along the roof of the hire car. He offered her the jar as she came up. “My sources tell me it has protective properties again drop bears.”
Scully had reached the upper limit of her exasperation for the day. “I’ll be inside, washing my hair.”
***
They staked out a likely stand of trees late in the afternoon. The car smelled of vegemite and sunscreen, so Scully chose to stake from some distance away, perching herself on a fallen log with a good view of the area. It was peaceful, and the air was warm, even as it grew dark.
Her phone startled her when it rang.
“What is it, Mulder?”
“Look up!”
There was something above them, a round lump in the crook of a tree that hadn’t been there when the sun was going down. Scully shone her torch at it, the strong beam reflecting off soft grey fur and wide confused eyes. It looked a lot like a soft toy, scruffy and huggable.
It blinked in the light and opened its mouth, yawn-wide. Then kept opening. Snake-wide, impossibly dislocated jaw-wide, gaping-chasm-wide. It seemed to be all mouth, and inside that black hole, teeth came out like stars, tiny white points that multiplied every time it shifted. And it was shifting now, moving sluggishly but with intent.
Scully’s torchbeam wavered as she scrambled up off her log and backed away, dancing light skittishly across the creature’s paws. Its claws on the smooth bark were elongated, serrated like hunting knives, darkened with old blood.
“Scully!” Mulder hissed, his voice doubling through the phone and across the clearing as he rushed out of the car towards her.
Her back met the uncompromising column of another tree trunk, and she swung her torch above her head. Two more sets of eyes peered down at her and became, like magic, sets of mouth. She threw herself sideways, out of their line of drop, catapulting into Mulder as he reached her. He caught her around the waist, and for a very small moment she was aware of his hand steadying her, before she sensibly pulled away to draw her gun. The branches above them stirred, laden with danger.
“It’s a colony!” said Mulder, inappropriately delighted.
Scully trained her gun on the swinging leaves, trying to judge where the monsters would appear from. “Back to the car!” she said, moving cautiously. It seemed the gumtree branches were bending impossibly low around them, weaving a canopy they wouldn’t be able to escape. Motioning to her partner, they started to run.
They were halfway there when the first creature made its drop, aiming for Mulder. Scully cried an inarticulate warning and aimed with both gun and torch. She wasn’t sure which one had the most effect, but Mulder got clear, rolling to his feet beside her. The creature appeared confused, as if unsure how to react to prey that knew it was coming. It lumbered awkwardly along the ground for a few steps, then grasped a treetrunk and disappeared up it at lightning speed.
The second one dropped, catching Scully’s torch arm with vicious claws. The torch spun out of her hand and across the ground, the beam of light scything the clearing floor before settling like a spotlight back on her and the creature. The jaws of death loomed above her, but they didn’t seem as immense as before. In fact, the drop bear was closing its mouth and giving her what could only be described as a puzzled expression.
A long-clawed paw gently patted at her short red hair, freshly washed and bright in the torchlight.
“Prime?” it said, in a little gravelly voice, blinking at her.
Scully fired. The creature vanished into the trees, the branches receeded. Silence reigned in the bush.
***
There were no further murders, but neither was a search able to turn up any evidence of the drop bears. Australian experts were called in, and they laughed and asked how the hoop snakes were doing.
Sadly, the case remains unsolved.
Drop
By Loki’sRose
Scully walked through the door of the tiny basement 'office' and dropped her coat over the back of her chair with a weariness that went unnoticed by her partner. Mulder looked up from his desk, his eyes alight with excitement. The sort of look he got just before they ran off to investigate a particularly intriguing case. Vampire style murders, ghost sightings, Neanderthal creatures wandering through campsites. All usually on the other side of the country, where the even the most expensive motels only offered century-old wallpaper and lukewarm showers.
"So what was so important that you needed to call me in at this hour? ...I was busy."
"Busy doing what?" Mulder replied before a small smirk started to spread over his features. "Entertaining someone? A daaate?"
The redhead merely raised an eyebrow. "Washing my hair." She stated blandly. "Like you're one to talk. When was the late time you-"
"This is better than any ol date!" Mulder suddenly interrupted her and held up a folder. "I just got a tipoff about this case. It's one I remember going through when I first started working down here but there was never any new leads to go on."
"What did you find out?" Scully asked, taking the case file from his hand and flicking it open. Her eyes skimmed quickly across the first page.
"Well let me explain it to you from the beginning..."
“Just the relevant details, Mulder.”
Mulder grinned at her. “Drop Bears,” he said.
Scully gazed at him for a moment, then shook her head. “All right, from the beginning, then.”
“There’s an Australian legend,” Mulder began happily, his voice taking on the tone that had earned him his nickname, “of a kind of… monster koala bear-”
“They’re not bears, Mulder.”
Mulder pouted at her but kept going, “- a monster bear that lives in the highest eucalypt trees and drops down onto passing humans to feast on their still-living flesh. They say it can be warded off with -”
Scully slapped the file back down on the table.
“Australia is outside the Bureau’s jurisdiction. Mulder, this file is about murders in LA.”
“As I was saying, I got a tip-off.” Mulder flipped the file to the back page, to the gory crime-scene photograph taken by Los Angeles police. It looked as if something had taken a shark-sized bite off the victim’s head and torso. Behind the carnage, the tall, smooth trunk of a eucalyptus tree towered over the landscape.
Mulder pushed a pair of flight tickets across the desk, expression hopeful as Scully sighed and retrieved her coat.
***
The anachronistic trees loomed over them as they drove from the airport, sparse finger-long leaves filtering the early morning sunlight. Mulder hadn’t bothered to research when the gum trees had first been planted in Los Angeles, but there seemed to be a lot of them, thriving in the LA climate, interspersed between the more usual palm trees.
The motel they stopped at was every bit as bad as Scully had imagined.
“How long is this investigation going to take?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at the musty bedlinen. Mulder shrugged, busy with the new case files he’d picked up from the police station on the way.
“Where did this tip-off come from, anyway?”
“…I was in a bar. Got talking with some tourists.”
“You know drop bears are a fictious creature invented by Australians to frighten foreigners?”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not real,” Mulder retorted, choosing as usual to ignore the technical definition of ‘fictious’.
***
They spent the morning doorknocking everyone who had known the victims or heard about the murders. Scully went over the most recent autopsies (which showed massive bitey trauma and traces of alcohol, but nothing supernatural), while Mulder questioned the locals about creatures in the night. Reports were hazy. Scully suspected her partner was not so much investigating as sowing paranoia. People had started carrying around pointy umbrellas against the cloudless blue sky, brandishing them wildly as they passed anywhere near a tree.
When Scully got back to the motel, Mulder was spreading thick black gunk along the roof of the hire car. He offered her the jar as she came up. “My sources tell me it has protective properties again drop bears.”
Scully had reached the upper limit of her exasperation for the day. “I’ll be inside, washing my hair.”
***
They staked out a likely stand of trees late in the afternoon. The car smelled of vegemite and sunscreen, so Scully chose to stake from some distance away, perching herself on a fallen log with a good view of the area. It was peaceful, and the air was warm, even as it grew dark.
Her phone startled her when it rang.
“What is it, Mulder?”
“Look up!”
There was something above them, a round lump in the crook of a tree that hadn’t been there when the sun was going down. Scully shone her torch at it, the strong beam reflecting off soft grey fur and wide confused eyes. It looked a lot like a soft toy, scruffy and huggable.
It blinked in the light and opened its mouth, yawn-wide. Then kept opening. Snake-wide, impossibly dislocated jaw-wide, gaping-chasm-wide. It seemed to be all mouth, and inside that black hole, teeth came out like stars, tiny white points that multiplied every time it shifted. And it was shifting now, moving sluggishly but with intent.
Scully’s torchbeam wavered as she scrambled up off her log and backed away, dancing light skittishly across the creature’s paws. Its claws on the smooth bark were elongated, serrated like hunting knives, darkened with old blood.
“Scully!” Mulder hissed, his voice doubling through the phone and across the clearing as he rushed out of the car towards her.
Her back met the uncompromising column of another tree trunk, and she swung her torch above her head. Two more sets of eyes peered down at her and became, like magic, sets of mouth. She threw herself sideways, out of their line of drop, catapulting into Mulder as he reached her. He caught her around the waist, and for a very small moment she was aware of his hand steadying her, before she sensibly pulled away to draw her gun. The branches above them stirred, laden with danger.
“It’s a colony!” said Mulder, inappropriately delighted.
Scully trained her gun on the swinging leaves, trying to judge where the monsters would appear from. “Back to the car!” she said, moving cautiously. It seemed the gumtree branches were bending impossibly low around them, weaving a canopy they wouldn’t be able to escape. Motioning to her partner, they started to run.
They were halfway there when the first creature made its drop, aiming for Mulder. Scully cried an inarticulate warning and aimed with both gun and torch. She wasn’t sure which one had the most effect, but Mulder got clear, rolling to his feet beside her. The creature appeared confused, as if unsure how to react to prey that knew it was coming. It lumbered awkwardly along the ground for a few steps, then grasped a treetrunk and disappeared up it at lightning speed.
The second one dropped, catching Scully’s torch arm with vicious claws. The torch spun out of her hand and across the ground, the beam of light scything the clearing floor before settling like a spotlight back on her and the creature. The jaws of death loomed above her, but they didn’t seem as immense as before. In fact, the drop bear was closing its mouth and giving her what could only be described as a puzzled expression.
A long-clawed paw gently patted at her short red hair, freshly washed and bright in the torchlight.
“Prime?” it said, in a little gravelly voice, blinking at her.
Scully fired. The creature vanished into the trees, the branches receeded. Silence reigned in the bush.
***
There were no further murders, but neither was a search able to turn up any evidence of the drop bears. Australian experts were called in, and they laughed and asked how the hoop snakes were doing.
Sadly, the case remains unsolved.
