campylobacter | X-FILES FANFIC: Crucified Toad (PG-13/Teen) 1/5 (Reply)

TITLE - Crucified Toad (1/5 Chapters)
AUTHOR - campylobacter
EMAIL - campyspornshack at gmail d o t com
RATING - PG-13/Teens (language)
GOSSAMER CATEGORY - T (Adventure)
SPOILERS - Little Green Men
KEYWORDS - Pre-XF
SUMMARY - 10-year-old Scully shows a 12-year-old boy her secret hideout. Who is he, and why is he so mysterious? I challenged myself to write Mulder & Sully meeting as kids, yet preserve future canon.
STORY TIMELINE - Sunday, June 16, 1974, Father's Day
EPISODES - Space, Little Green Men, One Breath, Piper Maru, Christmas Carol
SEQUEL -The Pilot episode of The X-Files is the sequel.
DISCLAIMER - My cat eats lawyers.
SIZE - 38k / 6397 words
DEDICATION - To Xandria and her request for me to develop this idea
AUTHOR'S NOTE - "The whole idea behind the show was kids acting the way kids really act.... it's children who are all corrupt and you sort of learn to be a decent human being hopefully by the time you grow up." -- SOUTH PARK co-creator Trey Parker. Beta-read 6 years ago by the lovely and talented MaybeAmanda, who pointed out a kink in my timeline that I've only just finally resolved!

CHAPTER 1: False Silence

A long, long time ago, there lived a toad named Mr. Wharton Oddbottom who dwelt in a velvety, green marsh. One early winter day he hopped to a wee tidal pool to sun himself at the water's edge, only to find that the pool had receded to a small puddle in the center. Hoping to escape the chill wind, Mr. Oddbottom slogged through the muck to reach the last of the water, where he submerged himself in the warm mud and contentedly fell asleep.

A not so long time ago, little girl named Dana trampled through scrub and brush to visit Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. When she arrived within a stone's throw of Uranus, she saw, through the bushes, a strange boy peering into its dark opening. Dana watched him carefully inspect the large concrete drainage pipe before putting his head and shoulders inside. He appeared to be listening for something.

Before she could react, he disappeared into the pipe on his hands and knees, piece by piece: blue shirt, rumpled jeans, dirty sneakers vanishing into the dark of the hole.

Dana waited for him to exit, but the minutes were too long, and the summer too short. She crept closer, surveying the late afternoon landscape around her hideout for other intruders. Occasional insects swayed lazily in the amber sunshine above scruffy, scentless wildflowers. The rest of the gully revealed no one.

She wondered if the boy had reached Tunnel Pluto, her hideout; or if he had discovered her stash of toys; or if he were eating her candy.

She did not see him carrying a flashlight, and hoped her belongings were safely hidden in darkness. She considered the possibility that maybe he had passed her secret fort and was continuing farther to where the teenagers would hang out and smoke in Jupiter, the larger, main culvert that opened near Westmoreland Avenue.

Positioning her ear closer to the tunnel, she listened for reasons not to follow him, but heard only the false silence of air softly whooshing through the tunnel. Without further hesitation, Dana hopped into the cool, dry pipe and began crawling toward her underground hideout. She passed the sign she had chalked onto the smooth, curved walls:

KEEP OUT! NO TRESPASSERS!

A skull and crossbones emphasized her warning. Why had the boy paid no attention to it? Dana turned on her flashlight, which reminded her that he could not have read her sign in the dark. When she looked back, the sunlight beyond the end of the pipe shone like a bright, waning moon, partially eclipsed by the sloping angle of the tunnel. Realizing that her flashlight's beam might betray her presence and drain the batteries, she turned it off.

Continuing in the increasingly cooler underground darkness, Dana listened for the boy, but heard nothing save her own noises. She knew she had passed her second chalked warning because of a slightly sharper upturn between pipe sections. The warning read:

STAY AWAY!! NUCLEAR MUTANT TOAD!

If revealed by light, the three joined triangles carefully drawn within a circle in green chalk would bear witness to Dana's pride in not spelling it "nucular", the way her big brother pronounced it.

Only one more sign remained before Tunnel Neptune.

Suddenly, Dana heard a strange sound: a sharp, truncated croak or bark. She froze, startled. After the odd, distorted echoes had faded, she convinced herself that the boy had made the noise. If he had tried to frighten her, he failed; the sound had been more comical than menacing.

She crept carefully along the passage, straining to hear more sounds. She knew she had reached her third sign, because she felt the sudden yawn of a branching tunnel. In yellow chalk, her warning, if seen, read:

INTRUDERS WILL BE VIVISEPULTURED

Dana was dissatisfied with this sign, because her handwriting had gone sort of wobbly and looked as though she had misspelled the last word. She was glad the boy had no light by which to read.

She sat still and listened intently. The boy was definitely in this second tunnel; she could hear breathing. Or maybe he was sniffling, for the breathing was ragged. Did he have a cold? Was he crying? Was he scared? Had he lost his way? At those thoughts, Dana stopped worrying about the intrusion on her hideout. She turned on her flashlight and shone it into Tunnel Neptune, in the direction of the sniffling sounds.

Continued in Chapter 2 of 5: The Mention of Her Name (published Sunday 20 June 2010)

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