Story 153: "Octopods" by Penumbra
What better way to finish up a fic marathon than with snippets by JET (go check out Friday's fic) and Penumbra? Octopods is first. I remembered it from the short time it was up on Penumbra's now defunct website. She took it down ("I'm not sure how polished it is," she disclaims humbly) but has kindly agreed to let me post it to the book club for our exegetic purposes.
Title: Octopods
Author: Penumbra
Author's Notes: Because April is the cruelest month.
---
It was a mystifying case involving a countdown, accumulating bodies, and octopods rampaging like orcas to a swimming moose, a case that was complicated by a side bet with Violent Crime and compounded by an upper-echelon medical banquet (for Scully), and the possibility of impending cosmic disaster (for Mulder). Mulder left a hasty police station interrogation, driving with his hand in a bag of Cheetos and a file opened against the steering wheel, reading at stoplights. It was nearly midnight as he jogged up several flights at the Georgetown University Library, and began to troll the metrical meandering stacks.
When he saw her down an aisle he halted abruptly, for she was standing in a little black dress with a narrow bottle of wine at her feet and a stack of books opened one upon the other in her hands like flying birds.
He walked forward slowly, and he felt shaken by the inky dress, by the enchanting glyph of her breasts beneath the fabric, by her sugary white skin phosphorescing in the dusty light. Her lips were a gothic valentine and he felt as though he no longer knew her, if he had ever known her; she was devastating, unknowable.
He picked up the bottle and sighed, and she put her finger in the weary Windsor knot of his tie, uncinching, and as he drank they revolved in a circle, or a camera dollied around them, books moving by on the shelves, Scully's eyes and the wine so dry it was like swallowing velvet, like drinking that dress. And Mulder forgetting the chase and looking a long moment into her eyes, thinking: this is actually what it's all about. Dana Scully, or the truth. If indeed they are two separate things.
________________
There was something called octopods. Life was wonderful, life was beautiful while something called octopods potentially existed. He rolled down the window and patted the warm flank of the car. Like love, mysticism came in a series of revelations. It was partly octopods and it was partly the vastness of the universe.
"Octopods, Scully," he said. "There is, of course, a precedent for this."
"Oh, really."
"Spain, 1968," said Mulder. " A strange craft landed, and creatures emerged. The farmer described them as 'octopus-like' and 'thoroughly disgusting'."
"Have you noticed that it's always a farmer?" Scully asked. "I mean, is it something to do with being down on the farm that turns you into a UFO nut? Or could it be that farmers are simply more observant of the natural world?"
"Maybe UFOs just like a big landing strip," said Mulder. "Those octopods like the wide open spaces. You can't fence 'em in."
"It's not octopods, Mulder," said Scully decidedly.
---
And because I didn't remember Octopods was quite such a tiny little snippet, I felt perhaps two such snippets were in order, so there's also a second, if you choose to partake, about which the author says:
Probably 'R' rated. In the good old days, we called this a smut biscuit. And because I insist on continuing to foster bad XF ff cliches, we'll call this one:
Going Down
Title: Octopods
Author: Penumbra
Author's Notes: Because April is the cruelest month.
---
It was a mystifying case involving a countdown, accumulating bodies, and octopods rampaging like orcas to a swimming moose, a case that was complicated by a side bet with Violent Crime and compounded by an upper-echelon medical banquet (for Scully), and the possibility of impending cosmic disaster (for Mulder). Mulder left a hasty police station interrogation, driving with his hand in a bag of Cheetos and a file opened against the steering wheel, reading at stoplights. It was nearly midnight as he jogged up several flights at the Georgetown University Library, and began to troll the metrical meandering stacks.
When he saw her down an aisle he halted abruptly, for she was standing in a little black dress with a narrow bottle of wine at her feet and a stack of books opened one upon the other in her hands like flying birds.
He walked forward slowly, and he felt shaken by the inky dress, by the enchanting glyph of her breasts beneath the fabric, by her sugary white skin phosphorescing in the dusty light. Her lips were a gothic valentine and he felt as though he no longer knew her, if he had ever known her; she was devastating, unknowable.
He picked up the bottle and sighed, and she put her finger in the weary Windsor knot of his tie, uncinching, and as he drank they revolved in a circle, or a camera dollied around them, books moving by on the shelves, Scully's eyes and the wine so dry it was like swallowing velvet, like drinking that dress. And Mulder forgetting the chase and looking a long moment into her eyes, thinking: this is actually what it's all about. Dana Scully, or the truth. If indeed they are two separate things.
________________
There was something called octopods. Life was wonderful, life was beautiful while something called octopods potentially existed. He rolled down the window and patted the warm flank of the car. Like love, mysticism came in a series of revelations. It was partly octopods and it was partly the vastness of the universe.
"Octopods, Scully," he said. "There is, of course, a precedent for this."
"Oh, really."
"Spain, 1968," said Mulder. " A strange craft landed, and creatures emerged. The farmer described them as 'octopus-like' and 'thoroughly disgusting'."
"Have you noticed that it's always a farmer?" Scully asked. "I mean, is it something to do with being down on the farm that turns you into a UFO nut? Or could it be that farmers are simply more observant of the natural world?"
"Maybe UFOs just like a big landing strip," said Mulder. "Those octopods like the wide open spaces. You can't fence 'em in."
"It's not octopods, Mulder," said Scully decidedly.
---
And because I didn't remember Octopods was quite such a tiny little snippet, I felt perhaps two such snippets were in order, so there's also a second, if you choose to partake, about which the author says:
Probably 'R' rated. In the good old days, we called this a smut biscuit. And because I insist on continuing to foster bad XF ff cliches, we'll call this one:
Going Down