'Showdown', Part 13: Call of the Wild
by Jean
A 'sudden knock on the door' carries with
it a menacing omen, unless you are Ed McMahon, of course. For
Krychek, this sudden and untimely interruption could not bode
well, considering that the clue to world domination was finally
within his reach, if only Mulder would shut up about the kissy-face
incident and realize that Krychek was not making amorous demands
at all, just trying to brain the guy for clinical obtuseness.
And, if he could find out the secret location of the thong, so
much the better.
But this unknown visitor insistently pounded on the door as if
it were the men's room at half-time, and Krychek's continued torment
of
Mulder by slowly disemboweling smiley-face throw pillows had the
odd effect of activating the new and improved (lower) prosthesis,
and Krychek suddenly had too many (and conflicting) decisions
to deal with. He set his (upper) prosthesis on 'cook', and prepared
to dispatch whatever unknown fiend (and they were many) was stalking
Mulder, even if it were Diana Fowley with Scully's head on a pike.
However, only Mulder knew what secret horror lay on the other
side of that door, and Krychek was momentarily disconcerted by
the blissful smile that lit up the boyish face, as if rescue had
finally arrived. It then occurred to Krychek that, full of regnant
satisfaction, he'd forgotten to surgically remove the cell phone
stapled to Mulder's sternum......
It was a hellish scene that greeted the
AD and agent Scully at Mulder's apartment, and wholly chaotic
due to Krychek's screaming in offended vexed tones at a cowering
pizza-delivery boy, Mulder curled up in a corner, fondling his
pepperoni with double-olive, and hordes of emergency medical teams
crashing in through the windows.
"Here's your 'tip'!" screamed Krychek, bouncing a sticky
remote off pizza-boy's head.
"....bullfrog. Was a good friend of mine....," warbled
Mulder.
"Who called 911?" yelled the female commander, casually
brushing glass shards from her Donna Karan kevlar vest.
"Me!" howled pizza-boy, "They tried to stiff me!"
"You wanna see 'stiff'?!" hollered Krychek, "I'll
show ya 'stiff'!"
And he did. Suddenly, and temporarily, all was silence.
The aliens, in their wisdom and hard-earned
efficiency, had fitted Krychek with a prosthesis guaranteed to
satisfy all contingencies, genders, and species. Besides being
gently ribbed, knobbed, rainbow-hued, and flashing like a Christmas
tree, it emitted honks, chirps, bahs, bleats, hisses, and coos
from four stereo speakers implanted in each kidney. In his navel
was the combo chocolate syrup/bubble/fog machine which the aliens
found particularly clever, and Krychek beamed, at both ends, so
to speak, truly a man to be reckoned with.
"Talkin 'bout Shaft," mumbled Mulder.
"Is that a missile?" asked the commander, driving her
humvee over to Krychek for a closer look, as the watchful SWAT
Team began poking through Mulder's laundry.
"I got sixteen large cheesy-crusts cooling in the van!"
wailed pizza boy.
"Your lease is history," said Mulder's landlady, drawn
upstairs by the commotion and eye-balling Krychek as a possible
new tenant.
But the significant drama and ultimate battle of raw vigor was
taking place unnoticed by all in attendance, as Krychek and Skinner
stood on opposite sides of the room in soundless confrontation,
sizing up each others' motives, comparative advantage and potency.
Scully, undeflected and focused, began silly-slapping her partner,
trying to gain information on the thong's whereabouts, while pizza-boy,
now totally bemused, sped out of the building like a quarterback
at fourth and three, vowing to forever give up his dreams of entrepreneurship
and instead become a pearl diver off the Bermuda Triangle.
With new-found confidence, to say nothing of, at last, gaining
the attention and admiration he had always craved, Krychek commenced
strutting and preening, his visage swollen with nascent pride
long denied. For the first time, he would vanquish the AD at his
own game, reduce him to an inferior status amongst the world's
libidinous icons, and seize for himself the fame, awe, and free
room and board at the Playgirl mansion. If only he could suppress
the flood of deranged giggles issuing unbidden through his smacking
lips.
For the AD's part, he maintained a heroic grip upon his dignity,
even when presented with the blatant squalor of being forced to
view his arch enemy's apparent success in the one venue where
stellar mastery meant sell-outs at Mr. Universe awards' ceremonies
and Tupperware conventions with attendant groupies, travel expenses,
and complimentary barrels of chest-hair mousse.
Yet Skinner, in total command of his impulses due to enduring
Mulder's dithering and constant explanations for ceaselessly becoming
lost in the FBI basement, and being a consistent target of Rogaine
manufacturers' hit men, had only reinforced his innate taciturn
nature and dauntless stoicism that would have reduced the Borgia
popes to hysterical sobs.
Skinner knew that he had only to bide his time and await for the
prancing Krychek to jitter himself into fits, at which time he
would stomp his tallow butt into floor wax, but Skinner could
not escape the
irksome reality that Krychek had fortuitously stumbled into the
secret of global fulfillment and satiation, for which the villain
would receive undeserved homage and power that could only be misused,
consigning whole demographic groups of women to perpetual servitude
that the AD *would* have liked to indulge in except for the insurmountable
logistics of steering half the world's population through the
FBI lobby's lone metal detector, even if the required background
checks could be waived.
"I'm king of the world!" yelled a delirious Krychek,
not known for his originality.
"Is he watching those tapes again?" sighed Mulder's
neighbors in resignation, and reflecting on the more clement environs
of their native Kosovo.
"That's not radioactive, is it?" wondered a goggle-eyed
commander, "And you're gonna need a permit for that, she
informed Krychek.
"I'm moving back to Seattle," said Frank Black, darkly.
"Wow, it's the fourth level, " observed Dante.
"Baaaaah!" trumpeted love-besotted flocks of sheep,
pouring down the hallway and through the door, attracted by Krychek's
warbling prosthesis and making their way to that newly sanctified
altar of
zoological consummation.
Krychek, totally submerged in visions of himself with the Dallas
Cheerleaders, spun around the room like a gymnast in detox, dodging
livestock, and hooting disparaging comments at Skinner. Unfortunately,
the assembled disorder strained the load-bearing capacity of the
floor joists, and the entire tableau tumbled into the basement,
as the ancient apartment gave way under the unanticipated stress.
Skinner, being the largest in attendance, hit bottom first, bounced
over drowsy and tangled transients and, coming to rest, like a
beached and shorn Samson, lay comatose and helpless, as the rest
of the human clot tumbled and plopped in startled shock around
him.
The competent commander was the first to recover, of course, and
immediately grasped the import of the situation. Knowing how to
prioritize emergency care, she lovingly began performing gentle
and skilled CPR on the AD's groin.
"There's an extra charge for those pets!" yelled the
landlady.
To be continued.......