Day 15 - Tattoos/Shaving - X-Files

“It was all so fuckin scary, man,” The biker dabbed at his eyes with a tissue. He was built like a barrel, tattoos climbing his bald head like ivy up a lattice, though not circling around to his face. His goatee was salt and pepper, though the salt was beer-stained and the pepper was turning whiter than the salt. His denim jacket was sleeveless and decorated with patches for bands with names like ‘Mortuary Drainage’ and ‘Vomit on Authority’. As his shoulders shook with his shuddering half-suppressed crying, his leather pants squeaked on the chair.

“I’m… sure it was,” Scully looked at him for a second before forcing herself to look back down at her notes. She didn’t want to be rude. Not even because he was intimidating, him breaking down so openly was oddly humanizing. This looked like the kind of guy who tried to intimidate your boyfriend at a dive bar, but his voice was Disney-Channel soft and he clearly didn’t have any problems showing his emotions. His name was also Beverly.

“I’m lyin there in bed, I think I might have been havin one of those… whatchacallems… I couldn’t move?” He gesticulated with a massive, tattooed hand. His knuckles were a patchy, scar-tissue white.

“Sleep paralysis,” Scully filled in for him.

“Right, like, I’ve heard about those episodes from a friend,” Beverly blew his nose. “But I’ve never had one, see? I thought I didn’t get them.”

“Everyone can get them,” Scully looked up. It was a little difficult to look him in the eye. More now because they were swollen and red. “Some people are predisposed to get them more often, but not having had one before doesn’t mean you’ll never get them.”

“Of course, some people experience their only episode during a paranormal occurrence,” Mulder offered from where he was slouched against the wall. “Strange coincidence.”

He was standing up and away from Beverly like he was trying to avoid the biker looking at him. Considering that it looked like Beverly could have snapped Mulder over his knee as easily as he breathed, it made a little more sense. Still, there was a bit of a duality with guys that looked like Beverly did. Until they actually opened their mouths and started talking, you assumed they were more than happy to kick the ass of anybody and everybody. Then half of them let so much as a single word out and you realized they were gentler and safer than the majority of more normal-looking men. That may not have been the kind of thing that Mulder understood, but it was something Scully did.

“But while I’m layin there paralyzed, I’m not panicking or nothing. I keep thinkin about how weird it all is, how my room seems brighter than normal. Then I get this feeling like I’m floating.” Beverly blew his nose. “Then I blink and suddenly I’m somewhere else.”

“Look, Beverly.” Scully looked up apologetically. “I don’t want to sound like I’m saying you didn’t experience this, but most of the time during sleep paralysis, sensations like you’re describing - feeling like your floating followed by a quick transition elsewhere - those are usually the person falling back asleep and not realizing they’re dreaming.”

“No, I get it, I get it,” Beverly looked back at her more apologetically. “This is all so crazy. That’s why I haven’t told anybody else. I just heard that you guys were specialists with this and… you guys don’t think I’m crazy, do you? Or that I’m making this up?”

“Since I started doing this job, I’ve encountered both groups of people.” Scully pushed the box of tissues closer to him. “If you’re making this up, you’ve missed your calling as an actor. And the crazy ones usually don’t give their stories willingly.”

She gave Beverly a moment to compose himself. As he did, Scully looked over at Mulder, who simply shrugged.

“Right, so,” Beverly took a breath and continued, “After I open my eyes again, it takes a bit for me to see where I am, but I’m in this big room. I’m on this… table, and when I look around I see there are hundreds of other tables, all with people on them. Men and women. Some of ‘em are naked, some are wearing pajamas, some are wearing normal clothes-”

“Probably whatever they went to sleep or were walking around in,” Mulder commented.

“That makes sense,” Beverly nodded. “I never thought of it like that, I was too scared at the time to think much of it.”

“This table,” Scully tapped her paper very softly. “Were you… restrained? Tied down? Strapped?”

“It didn’t look like it, but I still couldn’t move.” Beverly shifted nervously. “Like I was still paralyzed. But now, when I tried to move, there was this… light stuff on me like a blanket.”

“Light as in not heavy, or-”

“Light as in shiny,” Beverly gestured. “Like if instead of layin down in it, a sunbeam was holding a cat against the ground.”

“Gotcha,” Scully pretended to make a note.

“And then these… figures showed up,” Beverly shuddered. “I didn’t think they were aliens at the time because they weren’t little and green or big and gray.”

“Most of them aren’t,” Mulder moved a little closer, like a dog whose owner had just called its name, “What did they look like.’

“They were… blue, baby blue.” Beverly closed his eyes. “And they were like… blurry? Like your eyes couldn’t focus on them.”

Mulder made a soft, ‘a-ha’ like sound under his breath and grabbed Scully’s paper, making notes in his chicken scratch handwriting. Scully sighed softly under her breath, then looked back to Beverly.

“Please, go on.” She asked softly.

“Well they… they moved from table to table,” Beverly seemed to get a little nervous. “And the people that weren’t naked, the figures pointed this device at them-”

“You say figures, plural. How many were there?” Mulder interrupted.

“I think three? No, more like four.” Beverly looked startled. “It was hard to tell because of how blurry they were. Is the number really important?”

“Extremely,” Mulder mumbled. “And how big roughly were they?”

“Mulder,” Scully hissed.

“It was hard to tell layin down, but probably… human height? A little taller?”

“Weird to see those not in a group of five,” Mulder scribbled furiously.

“Beverly, please continue your story.” Scully sighed much more loudly. “You can ignore him if it helps.”

“Is he an expert on this stuff?” Beverly asked skeptically.

“Yes-” Mulder started.

“If all of this is real, he thinks he is,” Scully cut him off, then caught her own slip-up. “Apologies.”

“No, I get it.” Beverly didn’t seem offended. “I don’t usually believe in this kind of kooky stuff, if it didn’t seem so real, and if I didn’t have the proof, I wouldn’t believe my story either.”

“Sorry, proof?” Mulder put down the clipboard.

Scully sighed and flipped a page ahead, then pointed at a polaroid picture that she had pinned into the case file. Mulder squinted at it.

“What am I looking at?” Mulder leaned in a little closer. Scully gestured to Beverly.

“Well, ah… when they had removed our clothes, or if you were like me and you slept in the buff, they had this device that would… remove all of the hair below your waist. Then they’d use this other device that… gave you this sort of tattoo above your… privates. That’s my crotch.” Beverly scratched the back of his bald head.

“The depilation is immaculate,” Mulder gave an awkward thumbs up and flipped the paper back over the picture.

“We appreciate your cropping job,” Scully added.

“Well it’s not advisable to send unsolicited pictures of your bikini area to federal agents,” Beverly cleared his throat nervously. “Or anybody, for that matter.”

“So they… shaved you and gave you a tattoo?” Mulder asked a little suspiciously. “When are they opening the rest of the spa?”

“I’m not sure what the tattoo is for, and I didn’t like walkin around with it, so I got it covered up,” Beverly slid back a little in his seat. “I can still… feel the area where they left it. Like a scar.”

“Then that picture isn’t recent,” Mulder gestured like he was going to flip the page again, then thought better of it.

“No, took it before I got the cover up. Couple months ago now.” Beverly shuddered. “It’s just… the hair, it won’t come back.”

“You’re telling me you’re walking around without a single hair below your waist?” Mulder gave Beverly a strange look.

“I figured you’d take my word for it, but if you want proof,” Beverly gave an answer testy enough to suggest it was a sensitive subject.

“No, no, it’s just-” Mulder cleared his throat and then mumbled, “And you’re still wearing leather?”

“Could you let Beverly finish the story?” Scully turned to Mulder. Mulder put his hands up.

“There’s ah… not much more to it,” Beverly looked apologetic. It seemed like they couldn’t tell which of us was which with our body hair, because as soon as they were done removing it and tattooing us, they blew this sort of… gas into the faces of all the guys. They got me with it and next thing I know, I’m waking up in my bed.”

“So they kept the women and returned the men,” Scully made a note. “Are there reports of women in this area going missing?”

“Not more than what’s probably usual,” Beverly frowned. “That was another strange thing about it. I recognized a couple of the people and tried to talk to them about it. Girls and guys, they don’t remember a thing. You looked at their legs and you couldn’t see a hair on them, but then if you went to look for a tattoo… it was like they couldn’t see it. Like their brain had blocked it out.”

“What do you think made you the exception?” Mulder leaned forward and asked a little too pointedly to be polite.

“I’m not sure…” Beverly tilted back a bit in his chair. “I had some… stuff in my bloodstream, maybe that messed with their gas.”

“What kind of stuff?” Mulder pulled the clipboard out of Scully’s hand.

“Not the kind of stuff I can tell a government agent about,” Beverly scowled.

“Beverly, we’re not with the DEA.” Scully leaned forward and tried her best to play good cop. “Officially, the DEA does not recognize our existence. Unofficially, they think we’re crackpots and we think they’re buzzkills.”

***

A while after Beverly left the office, Mulder and Scully were both still sitting in silence. Scully had finished her brief, which mostly discounted the affair, very shortly after he had left. Mulder was still working on his, but eventually he pushed his rolling chair back and leaned toward her.

“Should I bother asking you what you make of it?” He asked with a smirk.

“John Doe was under the influence of several illicit substances and experienced an episode of sleep paralysis” Scully responded casually. “Sudden mass depilation is strange, but not the kind of thing that lacks a rational explanation.”

“And the tattoo?” Mulder’s smirk had deepened. Like this was his favorite part of the job. “A blackout episode prior to his sleep paralysis?”

“Almost certainly,” Scully shrugged. “Though the fact that he covered it up and it can no longer be seen is… convenient.”

“So… I guess we’ve got two paths forward” Mulder closed his brief, which from Scully’s estimate looked thinner and less rambling than they usually tended to. “We either go around town making a crotch census, or we assume that he made it all up as an excuse to send pictures of his groin to people?”

“I think he was authentically scared,” Scully frowned. “But he also had enough junk in his system that you have to put his testimony in question. Plus, that type of guy, he probably had enough to be anxious about already. You’re worried about some rival gang jumping you and beating you up, suddenly you wake up from a blackout with your hair having fallen out and a strange new tattoo-”

“Considering the mixture he was on, you also have to consider a stroke.” Mulder tossed his brief onto his desk. “Though, for my own amusement, I did make sure to suggest that the government give any troops who may come into contact with extraterrestrials a mixture of cocaine and amyl nitrite.”

“So you’re with me on this one having a normal explanation?” Scully stood up, picking up her brief and Mulder’s.

“On this one,” He shrugged. “If you want the believer angle, none of what he describes has any precedent or comparison. In fact, it flies in the face of some previous accounts. The Occam’s Razor to make this a true story is that this guy encountered an entirely new strain of alien who at least resembles one we’ve already contacted, then they behaved in a way that no other alien species we know has, and somehow he’s the only one who remembers any of it. The only thing we could do to disprove it is something we would never be able to pull off and could be doing for the rest of our lives. At least with snake oil, you get to keep the bottle.”

“Well, I’ll make a xerox of the picture for you in case you have any second thoughts,” Scully said with a snicker as she left the room.

***

3:33am. There was something about that time of night.

Of course, that was gambler’s fallacy. Scully, for whom sleep paralysis was something she was used to even if it wasn’t especially common, woke up at all times of night and only remembered the few times she’d woken up at three-thirty-three on the dot because Mulder had talked so much hot air about it being some kind of witching hour. Some peak moment of supernaturality. He’d probably even called it the moment when the gate to hell opened at some point, knowing him.

Still, as Scully failed to turn her head but managed to roll her eyes over toward the clock and saw that time, it did give her a bit of a panic. But she reminded herself that, during an episode, everything was going to make her panic.

Her head was tilted down, pointed nearly directly at her chest. It was one of those truly awful hotel beds. The pillows were too plump, the sheets too thin but the blankets too thick. She was lying uncovered, her silk bathrobe mostly untied, half-open. One breast was hanging out, pale as porcelain in the moonlight. Her legs were splayed just enough that, if somebody had walked in, they could tell that she had forgotten to bring a razor when her current road trip had started nearly a month ago. Her ginger pubes were thick and curly against snow-white skin.

There was a strange eroticism to it, though Scully blamed that mostly on the couple glasses of wine she’d had before bed. Of course, she was probably drooling and her face was probably contorted in some half-panicked, groaning grimace. So not necessarily hot to anybody but her. But she was held in place, exposed and ****. If anybody was peeking through her blinds, if anybody walked in, they would find her trapped in a sort of brain-imposed bondage. Put in the stocks by her own mind. Thinking things like that kept her from feeling the usual panic that came with sleep paralysis.

Of course, if she was seeing her skin and the cream-colored sheets this clearly, it was too bright in her room. She wished she could see the window to tell for sure if anybody was going to look in on her. It must have been a full moon, and the blinds must have been open. In the corner of her eye she could see the shitty hotel CRT, the cabinet and clothing hooks nobody used. But there was the land of hard half-shadows, patches of darkness her brain could **** her into thinking were faces and figures.

She felt like she was floating. Her eyelids getting heavy. The weightlessness of sleep was coming. The idea that she should wake up enough to check her blinds was powerful, but everything else was stronger. Then…

It had only been a blink but the room shifted. Scully tried to convince herself she had slipped into a dream and started trying to move. **** lucidity on herself in one way or another, either struggling to wake up or taking control of what her brain was creating. Neither came. She could feel her fingertips twitch, and she tried to will slightly greater movement into her limb with each twitch. Trying to move a full finger now, now her hand.

Scully’s surroundings faded in only slowly. Below her was a kind of featureless black table, though there was a circular divot like an autopsy drain or a billiards hole down toward the bottom between her inward-bent feet. She could feel that her head was no longer supported by a pillow, now locked forward uncomfortably by her own muscles. As she unkinked the knots in one arm, she managed to loosen her neck and let her head roll back, wincing at the tightness in her shoulders.

Around her were dozens, maybe hundreds of other people. All of them partially or fully-frozen, some with eyes open and some with eyes closed. Dressed in robes, oversized shirts, mumus, gowns, lingerie, boxer shorts, and nothing at all. All ages, all body shapes, all ethnicities.

Her brain couldn’t decide if it wanted to panic or not, and that was probably a sign that she was most of the way out of sleep paralysis. Scully tried to lift her arms and legs, but they wouldn’t move. She could roll them, turn them side to side, even shimmy a little up and down on the table, but she couldn’t go up. As her brain started to decide that she did want to panic, Beverly’s story wasn’t exactly quick to her mind, but as she looked over, it finally occurred to her.

A giant, overhead beam the color of a headlight was moving from table to table. When it got to one, it would lock into place with a metallic snapping, then brighten itself until it was nearly unbearable. Around the cone of light, blueish figures would appear as if condensing clouds of gas. She heard sounds like dueling sets of windchimes. There was a mechanical hum, then an even more tinny whir. Then, a vicious and violent sounding thunk.

They were five tables over to her right, but as the light moved on to four away, Scully could see that table they had just been at was now empty. The table they were moving toward was an especially heavyset man, Scully grimaced at the fact that the only part of him she could see was his hairy belly. The light brightened over him, then came the hum, then the whir, then the thunk. A chiming set of voices exchanged in a way that sounded almost amused.

She couldn’t lift her head enough to look over at the occupants of any tables other than the ones immediately to her right and her left. To her left was an older-looking man who was peering at her, his eyes heavily lidded and his lips moving wordlessly. Scully tried to speak, but her voice sounded like she was trapped in a coffin. To her right was a young, fairly attractive man in a business suit with somebody’s puke on it. He might as well have been dead for all the reaction he was showing.

Three tables away, Scully tried to strain to see who was there and thought she might have seen the curve of somebody’s breast. As the light settled over her and brightened, Scully could hear whoever it was thrashing, violently enough to be heard even from where Scully was. The chime sounds were sharp and short, Scully could convince herself they were angry.

No matter how they felt about it, there was the same hum and whir, but the thunk didn’t come. Instead there was a motor whine, some kind of wet vacuuming sound like a dentist’s suction pump. The thrashing and chiming grew fainter until they both stopped. Then, the thunk came. Two tables away.

The man in the ruined suit seemed to be gaining some amount of consciousness, at least enough to glance over at Scully and give a stupid smile, then look over the other way. He started to move weakly as the hum kicked up, then jerked like he was going to be sick in time for the whir. Finally, as the thunk sounded out again, he struggled like he was trying to get free.

Scully felt her eyes water as the light settled over him, even one table over it was bright enough to hurt. The blue figures, blurred around the edges, were suddenly loud enough to make her wince. As the hum began, a beam of red light extended from one of the figures toward the man. His suit, vomit and all, slowly just… evaporated. Lifting up away from his body in little fragments like bits of ash from a dying fire. As they did, Scully could see that he was already hairless below the waist, tattooed on his crotch. There was a whir, a green beam of light from another of them scanning the red tattoo until letters popped up in the air. Scully had to crane her neck to see them.

Not Compatible.

Then the thunk came, a sound like an ax slamming down on a log. The man simply was no longer there, like he’d never been there. The table slowly withdrew into the floor. As Scully looked down past it, she could see that the rows of tables stretched on for what looked like a mile.

The light came overhead so brightly that it made Scully squint and groan. She tried anew to get up off of the table, but she could see blue light like a covering of plastic wrap loose around her. Several blue figures appeared around the cone; it was hard for her to tell exactly how many, she couldn’t see where one started and the other ended. Their chimes were loud enough to make her teeth hurt. As one bent forward and his red light hummed, Scully opened her mouth to scream. Her one voice echoed in her ear as her bathrobe came away in little particles, whisked away by the light like a vacuum. She could smell her hair burning; legs and crotch within seconds turned smoother than they’d been since before puberty.

And then there was a pause instead of the usual whir, an exchange of chimes quickly. Letters shone above her as they had the man before.

Compatible.

A hard, eye-watering whine split the room as the words needled themselves into her skin just below her waist. They burned, her skin stinging like it was being plucked at by dozens of microscopic tweezers. Scully felt a dark laugh at the fact that this had probably hurt Beverly a whole lot less than it was hurting her, but that the things responsible probably couldn’t understand that.

When the letters had finished sealing into indistinct figures like an alien barcode, Scully squirmed her hips a little uncomfortably. They stung, worse than anything she could remember stinging. A bee sting hurt worse but in a smaller area, this was dispersed and constant. Throbbing and nasty like a twisted ankle.

She waited for the thunk, but instead she heard the same motor whine as before. From the hole in the bottom of the table, a thin, phallic probe snaked its way up along her leg. It was slick and slimy. Scully screamed again. It was metallic, she could feel that, but she could also feel it pulsing.

It pushed between the lips of her pussy and Scully ground her teeth, clenching her hands into fists. It didn’t hurt, it wasn’t thick enough to hurt, but the feeling of something so articulated, so cold and metallic, but also so clearly alive made her skin crawl. It pushed its way further and further in until she felt a brief moment of discomfort followed by a less brief moment of panicky pain. It felt like it was in her stomach, it felt like it was somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be.

And it stopped there. She felt it shift slightly, and then it started to leak. Something much warmer by contrast, thin and watery. Scully felt it fill whatever part of her it had wormed its way into, then slowly pull back out again. As the tentacle drew back out again, Scully gave one final, horrified scream. Inside the fluid it had left behind, she could feel something swimming.

Then the thunk.

***

Scully woke up with a sore throat and a bit of a headache. Though, really, it was more of a body ache. She must have slept with her mouth open, and when she sat up and checked, despite having the blinds closed she’d also have the window open. Outside was the green of some Pacific Northwest State. Some Oregon or Washington or something. She’d clearly had a little too much wine last night.

As she stumbled out of bed, she paused for a moment. Maybe she had helped herself to more wine that was responsible last night. She could have sworn that not only had she packed her favorite bathrobe, but that she’d worn it to bed. Despite that, she was naked as the day she was born. And between her legs…

She shook her head. Her mind had trailed off. There was a sore spot on her crotch, and when she looked down…

There would have to be a wine break. She couldn’t think straight. As Scully stumbled into the bathroom and sat down to pee, she felt a strange sort of flutter low in her stomach, closer to her groin. She shuddered. Some kind of weird symptom to let her know her period was coming? Some kind of cramp from having to pee? The warning of a stomach ache?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t pleasant either. It was a bit indescribable. Strange. Alien.

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