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I didn't get a tattoo every time I picked up a new scar, of course. I'd have been an Illustrated Man for real, and I'd look like that freak show carnie that Mulder investigated years ago. No, I saved my reclaimings for the big stuff, the things that left scars on my soul as well as my body. The next two were the worst. I was humiliated over having my cover blown and by having Spender treat me like a disobedient child, but I didn't have nightmares about those things. Often. And they didn't leave me gasping and sweating when I woke, trembling and panting, with my heart about to burst out of my ribcage.
Hong Kong. Mulder's body pressed mine back into the phones. He was closer to me than I've held some lovers -- both of us angry, wanting to hurt, wanting to fuck.
I'd lusted after him from the first; from the feel of his body against mine, he felt the same way. But this was a passion deeper than simple sexual hunger. For me, the initial attraction had changed to need, a need for him to acknowledge my worth. I wanted his respect as much as I wanted his body.
When we were partners, Mulder tried to put me at a distance. It was like he only saw the superficial "Agent Alex", and only wanted me to see the "Spooky" mask. Like he wasn't real.
He was real in that moment in the airport, no longer aloof, icy, and distant. I love watching people like him melt. Man or woman, that loss of control excites me like nothing else, passion roiling under the control of an iron will. But I didn't get to enjoy myself for long.
When I walked out of the men's room, I was a passenger in my own body. I was aware, dimly, of everything that went on. The oilien didn't put me to sleep; in fact, I got the impression that it took a sadistic joy in my panic. Terror fed it, gave it more control, and as it sifted its oily tentacles though my mind, it sought out my deepest fears in order to play me better. I can't believe that Mulder sat next to me in the plane and in the car on the way to get the DAT tape and never noticed a thing. I cried out to him in the prison of my mind to save me; he never even looked me in the eye. The oilien gurgled in my mind, a sound of sick amusement, and stroked my memories of childhood abandonment.
I was just a momentary diversion to it -- a throwaway pet like the little chameleon lizards that you used to be able to see at the circus, wiggling, pinned on a board. The vendors knew that they'd die in a day or two, even if they made it out of the little paper cartons alive. I struggled in my mind, trying to regain control. But there was no escape from the alien until it was done with me. It gushed out of my body; the remnants of its control freezing me in place even as I heard the door clang shut.
The puddle was on the opposite side of the silo from the door. It became my nightmare that the door would open when I lay sprawled, belly down, licking at the rough, damp floor, and I wouldn't be able to get there before it slammed shut again. Or, on the other hand, that if I stayed by the door that the seep of ground water would dry up. I first paced, and then crawled, in an agonized circuit of that infernal place, tethered to my fear in the echoing dimness.
I was by the door when it opened. I think that the militia guys would have missed me if I hadn't forced myself back around the room. By that time I couldn't walk any longer and the stench of my waste and my unwashed body hung like a miasma in the air. The smell was what made the patrol open the door. They figured that a dead body in an installation like that one might have on it some weapons worth scavenging. I don't know who was more surprised - them that the "dead" body wasn't, or me when the door swung open.
I was semi-conscious for about three days, barely alert enough to drink the soup and Gatorade that they offered and to be guided to the toilet. My one clear memory of that time is hearing them argue over whether to kill me or not. "He's deadweight; well hell, he's just about plain dead." The voice was a sarcastic Texas drawl floating somewhere above my head.
"I don't know; he might be useful. What the blazes was he doing locked in an abandoned missile silo? What was that in there with him?" said a thoughtful voice with no discernable accent.
"Looked like a UFO to me, sir."
Pushing up from the blessedly clean cot I was laying on, I croaked, "I know things. I can get you in. Why do you think they left me there?"
"`IN'? In where?" `Sir' questioned sharply.
"Computers, 'm a hacker. Did the FBI. Can fight, too. Good shot. Sniper. Black Belt." I sank back down into unconsciousness not knowing if I'd managed to save my life or damn it.
My next conversation with `sir' was marginally more coherent. "I figure you for Black Ops," their leader said calmly. He was sitting beside my cot, putting an edge on a Bowie knife that already looked sharp enough to shave with. "Whose, I can't figure out."
I blinked, my still half-starved brain scrambling for a cover that would hold. "And I figure you for some kind of right wing militia. Patriots."
He gave a grim half-smile the likes of which I'd seen on veterans of several wars, declared and undeclared. "You might be right. Now answer my question. Comrade."
"Huh???" My gut clenched in terror. Had I talked in my sleep?
Jon, as I later learned his name was, touched the tip of his blade to edge of the sweats that rode low on my hips. "Your tattoo. Russian churches, right?"
"Russian, but not `Comrade'," I retorted, ignoring the fact that my father had indeed come to the USA under the auspices of the KGB (or at least the Consortium controlled part of it) during the Cold War. But I'd been born in Omaha, Nebraska. That makes me an American.
"My folks immigrated right after the Second World War. And back then going to church in Russia got you sent on a nice one-way trip to Siberia. I love my country. This country." I glared at him, but I imagine it wasn't all that effective right then. "I'm a mercenary," I finally admitted. That was the safest cover right now. Them thinking that I had skills that could be bought might not get me into all their plans, but it wouldn't get me shot either. Probably.
I was with them for several months. I taught hand-to-hand combat, small arms, and one-man ops tactics using a combination of what I'd learned at Quantico and from the Consortium's training. It's funny what skills come in handy sometimes. In addition, I funneled what proof I could to Mulder. There was no way I was going to help put together another Oklahoma City. If I didn't think about what they were doing, it wasn't a bad time in my life.
There was one kid, all of maybe 15, who followed me around like a puppy. I think he had a crush on me. He talked me into tattoo number three. One of the guys in the group was a licensed tattoo artist, and I was leafing through the three-ring binder that held the `portfolio' of work he'd done. "Al, this one's nice." The kid was pointing to an American flag with the words `Live Free or Die' on a banner underneath. "And it'd prove you're an American."
"Why the hell not?" I figured that tattoo was weirdly appropriate. I had the artist do it on the front of my left thigh. `Live Free or Die.' `Resist or Serve.' There are all kinds of freedom. My Freedom, the fresh air that I never thought I'd breathe again when I was buried alive. My Freedom, mind and body back after they'd been hijacked by something out of a sci-fi nightmare. I'd kill myself before I let something like that happen again. Or so I thought.
Tunguska. Mulder took me there. I left him there. I left him under the implacable netting of wire while my nightmare dripped onto him, into him. I stood by, nauseated; watching and praying to every saint my blessed Mother ever mentioned that the Russian scientists knew what they were doing. I promised myself that if I saw his beautiful eyes glaze over black that I'd kill him myself. But the vaccine worked, the oil shriveled to dust trying to escape his body, and I've lit candles to those saints every chance I've had ever since.
The other thing that happened on that trip was hell --something right out of Dante. The peasants had it down to almost a science, really. Smothered under unwashed bodies, the bright clear pain of the knife, the sickening crack of the bone parting under the chisel's edge, the disgustingly appetizing smell of charring flesh.
To this day, I can't eat pork. That's what human flesh, my flesh, smelled like when it burned - like a pork chop that had fallen into the barbeque. It's taken me years to stop hating them and to forgive Mulder. But like the prayer says, "Grant me to see my failings and not condemn my brother". If you want forgiveness, you have to forgive. I finally got to a place of peace -- no, acceptance -- about it.
After the last surgery healed and I was used to the prosthesis, I hit a tattoo parlor. The one I chose was nicer than what I'd used before, not a little back street dive with fly-speckled windows. It took me a long time to decide on the design. I went back several times and talked to all of the artists in the shop. They had real artists' portfolios, with professional looking layouts and neatly categorized copyrighted designs. Made me rather nostalgic for the old bald guy in Kansas City with his drawings stapled to the walls.
I chose a tribal tattoo of a phoenix, a firebird. In the folktales of Eastern Europe, the firebird is a soul who was trapped by evil but escapes by love and sacrifice. The only thing that held me back was that tribal tattoos are usually done in stark black ink. It's graphic all right, but not the kind of graphic I could stand to look at, let alone have permanently on my body. These tattoos are supposed to make me feel better, not to make me flash back.
I had almost decided that the scars on what was left of my arm didn't need any claiming. But I happened across a picture of some Aboriginal Australian artwork done in those brick red Ayer's Rock pigments. And I remembered my Mother embroidering. The crimson threads traced across the pure white linen, and her voice with the heavy Ukrainian accent told a younger me, "Red keeps the demons away". So I decided that a red tribal tattoo would work. I've seen several since then; maybe I started a trend.
I don't think that the kid who did the tattoo on my shoulder had ever inked a stump before. I know it more or less freaked him out. He kept asking me, "Are you ok? Does this hurt?"
`Heck, kid, you're poking a needle into my skin. So yeah, it hurts,' I smirked to myself. But it's a good hurt. It means that I'm alive, that I survived.
Note: (from the website of the Dallas, TX Russian Orthodox Church) The Prayer of St. Ephrem is said in most services of Great Lent, and pious Russian Orthodox believers include it in their morning and evening prayers:
O Lord and Master of my life, a spirit of idleness, despondency, ambition, idle talking give me not. But rather a spirit of chastity, humble-mindedness, patience, and love bestow up me Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my failings and not condemn my brother; for blessed art Thou unto the ages. Amen.
Alex had BETTER pray for all the things in that second line, since he doesn't do any of them well <G>
Note 2: Here are some Firebird stories. http://www.lacquerbox.com/graywolf-long.htm http://www.russianart.com/rrfirebird.html And of course, the Stravinsky ballet, which combines the two tales