Subject: NEW: Meditations in the Sewer (1/1) by Dragan Antulov Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 16:01:44 +0100 From: "Dragan Antulov" Organization: HiNet Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative TITLE: MEDITATIONS IN THE SEWER AUTHOR: Dragan Antulov E-MAIL: dragan.antulov@st.tel.hr CATEGORY: V KEYWORDS: Pre-XF RATING: R (for language) SPOILERS: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man SUMMARY: We all know what went through JFK's head. What went through CSM's? ARCHIVE: yes to Gossamer; to others, with permission DISCLAIMER: The following story is based on characters created by Chris Carter, Fox Network and Ten Thirteen Productions. The characters named are the property of those entities and are used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Special thanks to Haphazard Method for the swift beta-editing and many useful suggestions. Author's notes are available at the end. MEDITATIONS IN THE SEWER X-Files Fan Fiction Story Dallas, November 22nd 1963 I'm in the sewer. Waiting for hours. Outside is a lovely, sunny day. Inside is cold and wet and my clothes are covered with shit. Somehow I think that this assignment is a perfect metaphor for my entire career. Yes. I'm the one that always does the dirty work. The others like to pretend it's noble and clean. Of course, they don't spend half of their time travelling to God-forsaken hellholes in the middle of nowhere only to witness horrors that would give nightmares to grown men. They don't have to spend hours, days and weeks trying to dig information out of some poor captured soul. They don't encounter rotting corpses or attend autopsies on a regular basis. Or confront monsters horrible beyond imagination. They don't have to supervise experiments personally, and impersonally write reports, often distracted by screaming test subjects. But when the time for taking credits comes, they know whom to give medals, decorations and promotions. For people like me, a tap on the shoulder is enough. I see him through the telescope. He is driving in the motorcade, with the roof open, just like they told me. Waving to the crowds. He has a great smile on his face. It's no wonder the crowds love him. Of course, I do those things because they don't like it. They don't want their precious, manicured hands to get dirty. They don't like their expensive, tailor-made suits covered with someone's blood and entrails. They don't want to stash corpses in the trunks of the Bugattis and Rolls Royces they like so much. When they spend their days at exclusive golf courses, they don't think about their clubs as something with the potential for breaking someone's skull. They simply can't imagine themselves hiding in cheap motels, frequenting seedy bars and meeting junkies, homosexual perverts, hookers, gangsters and other creatures of the underworld. Of course, I'm the one who is forced to do it for them. Always me. I look at him again. He's still smiling. The smile on his face is so big. I'm not surprised. Not surprised at all... Men like him. Ivy League. Family connections. Wealth and power. Born with the silver spoon in their mouths and convinced that they can get away with anything. They are not like me. Never liked me and never liked my kind. They are the ones who write the briefings, and present in front of more people like themselves. They are the ones who receive the applause at the end. Who will receive invitations to exclusive yacht, golf and country clubs. Men who can expect to show off their sultry women on the society balls. And men like me... never get invited. Men like me are forced to sit in holes like this one and clean all their shit. For days, weeks, months, years. Never receiving proper reward and never earning their trust and respect. Yes, they think that I'm useful, but they don't like me. I'm not good enough for them. Too raw, too brutal. Too much blood on my hands. Not enough of the proper blood in my veins. Blue blood. Blood of the people who can track their ancestors back to the Mayflower or some castle in Europe... Europe. Yes, they have their own Europe. Ski resorts in the Alps, while I sweat my ass off in the jungles of Congo. Sunbathing at the French Riviera while my piss turns to ice in the Arctic. Drinking champagne in Tuscanian villas while I'm dying of thirst in the middle of Sahara... Such thoughts depress me, but right now, they are distracting me from my job. I concentrate on the motorcade again. I watch Jackie. She's with her husband. In a lovely pink dress. So beautiful, so radiant. Reminds me of another beautiful woman with dark hair... No. No, no and no. I can't think about it. Well, I can, but definitely not now. I can't allow myself to screw this up. I'm a grown man and professional, not some romantic teenager... Oh, no. I shouldn't think about that word. Teena. I must think about another woman. Jackie. She reminds me of Teena... Okay. There are a lot of similarities. Think, think. Don't let yourself slip. Better to think about Jackie than about Teena. Yes. Jackie. Beautiful woman. She smiles, same as her husband. But I know that her smile is phony. That she's as unhappy as... Once in awhile, Ronald and Bill call me to their houses and make me meet their families. They don't treat me as an equal. I know that. They pretend that they know my pain. Unlike them, I have no family. No roots. Nothing. No place I could call my home. And I know that for them and for all of them I'm nothing more than a curiosity. A freak. A twisted version of themselves. Unworthy. Untouchable. Worthy only of shitty jobs like this one... I see Jackie. She's waving to the crowd. If only she knew... Teena knew. She was different. Or at least, I try not to think otherwise. Her beautiful, caring, angelic face. Drops of seawater glittering in the sun on her nude body... Concentrate on the job. Jackie. Yes. She doesn't know. She knows something, but not everything... They can afford to enjoy movie stars in their private projection rooms. They can enjoy specially made stag films. They can even fuck movie stars if they are powerful or charismatic enough. But people like me can meet movie stars only when such movie stars become an unnecessary liability. To all the men in the world she was a goddess. And I killed her. After that, she was only another pretty corpse to me. For them... I don't want to think about her. It's better to think about Teena. Thoughts of her magnificent body kept me going through years. Thoughts of those lovely eyes. Of a boy I could have... No. I couldn't. She was way out of my league. Ivy League. Prestigious families. Boarding schools in Europe. Not for the orphan whose father was nobody. Men like me couldn't approach women like Teena with the proverbial ten-foot pole. If we tried... I know what they all think about me... They are probably too subtle to act like those rednecks in the South when they accuse some poor Negro of looking at white women. I probably wouldn't end up castrated and burned alive, but in the end the result would be the same... Subtlety. Somehow I could live with this job, if only this was done with subtlety. But, no, they decided that they want spectacle and drama. Some of them probably had some doubts... I know that Ronald told me that he didn't like it either, but... I watch Jackie again. And her husband. She's smiling because of the crowd... Inside, she is a lonely, unhappy woman, always humiliated... Like Teena. Bill's bimbos calling his home and Teena picking up. But it's all right for Bill. It was always all right for Bill and people like Bill. Someone like Bill probably did the same to my grandmother. She was a serving maid or something. Made pregnant by her wealthy, arrogant employer. Fired and thrown out at the street. It's no wonder my father, raised in poverty and humiliation, hated the rich. Which led him to Bolshevism. And his own reputation led me to this shitty sewer. Reputation... I'm looking at all those cheering fools and they disgust me. Who do you cheer for? For some spoiled rich brat. For someone whose bigwig papa bought the nomination. To someone who even became President against your will... Yes, all those Mob votes in Chicago... Nixon should have become President. He is the man who would be like us... Someone who had to work his way to the top. Someone who knows the hunger, misery and humiliation... But, no, they wanted some new, fresh energetic face. Some poster boy who would cover for their failed policies. No matter how stupid and irresponsible he is. So precious to our Project, that they even called me to solve this little problem... Teena would never do the things Jackie did... With me and her it was love. Pure and simple. Not this silly revenge thing Jackie did. Is it really possible that she fell for that fat ugly Greek faggot? No, she did it to hurt him. But, that is something that couldn't be tolerated. No, sir. If she divorced him, or word got out to the public, that would be it. He could kiss next year's campaign goodbye. Him and his brother, and everyone around him. So, they call me. I couldn't believe it. I've seen and done things... Some stuff normal people wouldn't... But this. This would be ridiculous... If not tragic... Yes, Ronald was against it. Perhaps even Bill. But they lacked guts to stand against some of their own... I may have second thoughts. But orders are orders and now I'm sitting in this shithole, ready to blow the brains out of the woman... Woman who reminds me of Teena? What if, by any chance, Bill asks me to do the same thing to Teena? Could I do it? Would I do it? They are in my line of fire. They'll be out of there in a few seconds... No time to think. BANG! BANG! BANG! Oops. That's all I can say. Did I say it aloud? It doesn't matter. I don't think that anybody would hear me. Even if they were right inside this sewer. I watch all those people scrambling for cover. Shocked. Disbelief. But I don't care. Right now, I'm concerned with my own survival. I fucked up. I fucked up. Fucked up. Greatest fuck up in the history of the world. I know a few people who might be able to make sense of what happened. Men in elegant offices and smoke-filled chambers, suddenly forced to make decisions they didn't plan. Heads will roll. Would mine be one of them? Of course. I was in charge. I fucked up. Or, perhaps... How many people knew all the details? I don't know. This is getting above me. The only time I did something that would enter history books and... I can't even write about it in my novels... It's over. My writing would be destroyed... No. It won't. I know what to do. The cover-up plan. Instead of the investigation, I'll cover my traces. I already have the patsy. He can take the fall. He flipped. Something went wrong in his head. He fired those shots from book depository... Wrong target terminated. Yes. There would be some problems... Angry faces demanding answers. But it would blow over. I've seen it before. I know them... If I tell the story, they'll believe... They can't grasp that they are responsible for this... Same as the public, they'll buy it... It's simply easier. More simple. Plausible deniability... Heh, finally I realize there is one good thing about doing this work... When you are in the shit long enough, you learn how to swim in it... People like Ronald and Bill would probably drown... If they ask me to clean up the mess, I'll be happy. For the first time in a long time, I'm proud of my work. AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm aware that this story might stir some controversy, because it covers the real historical tragedy that, in many ways, re-shaped the entire nation. When you deal with such subjects, set between the realms of history, myth and speculations, it is possible that some people, either with strong opinions or familiar with details, might be offended. To them, I apologize. This story is simply the work of fiction, that speculates what might have happened, and whose characters are the work of fiction too. Besides, CC himself opened this can of worms, thus legitimizing the use of real history as an inspiration for the X-Files fan fiction. Another that I must address is the terminology. Members of certain social groups might be offended by the slurs used in the story. However, the story takes places in a certain historical period, when some of the terms were not as offensive as they are now, and certain lifestyles not accepted nor tolerated as they are now. The character that uses those terms is simply the product of its time, and, as most of the readers should know, isn't someone who should be taken as a role model. So, his words, including his terminology, should be taken with the grain of salt. Finally, just to avoid any confusion, I must state that "Ronald" and "Bill" just happen to share the same first names with two of JFK's future colleagues. Those who are familiar with XF mythology arc will recognize the characters easily. The coincidence is spooky, though. Comments are welcome at dragan.antulov@st.tel.hr