anahi-menesesitas

[randomfoggytiger]

"Time Passing in Moments"

(Fictober, Day 4)

Courtesy of my first ever prompt: "Oooh, if you are taking requests: couples costume for fictober! or one dragging the other to a horror movie and needing snuggles to feel better!"

Thank you, anon!

*****

Scully knew that Mulder was on tenterhooks-- hopeful ones (with their corroborating eyewitness accounts and the bee as proof), yes; but tenterhooks, nonetheless. The wait was excruciating as top-down procedures dragged out endlessly despite the strings Skinner had been pulling.

In short, Mulder needed a break but refused to take one. 

So, she decided to make him. 

*****

It took an hour to gather her meager supplies and arrive, unexpected, at Mulder's Arlington building; and by then the street doors were already spilling out whooping little cowboys, ballerinas, and equal opportunity vampires. Scully let a hoard of chocolate-dirtied fingers rip open her mixed bag of candies and pass it around so everyone could get a piece. A few shy thank yous, one bold “I want another one!”, and a parental apology rippled through the group before they all parted ways, the children wobbling off to further plunder and Scully tapping, tapping her way, staccato, to her partner's door.  

*****

Mulder answered after her first set of knocks, teeth glazed with a sticky Sugar Daddy. “Mm, Scuuhly, whah are you dooingh here?” 

She held up her ravaged candy bag and another bag of Halloween odds and ends. “Trick or treat?” 

He grinned-- got-- and let her in. “Treeht sounths….” Wiping at his teeth, he scowled. 

Not a person in Arlington was as endearingly smug as Scully that night. “Well, since you’ve already been tricked, you might as well enjoy your treats.” 

Mulder smiled-- got her this time-- and accepted her bag left-handed while pick-axing his molars with the right. 

*****

“You got any 1-900-Spooky calls tonight?” 

Scully reveled in peeking at Mulder as his head swiveled and eyes widened in the glow of cartoon reruns. 

“Not that I know,” he bantered, game on, “I’ve been too busy wondering where my partner went. She's been missing since pilfering three candies from the pail in Kim's office--”

“Mulder, I did not take three--” 

“--and didn't call until she showed up at my door, candy indulgent with half an assorted bag gone, a street urchin cover story, and party favors she bought but decided were less interesting than a rerun of Looney Tunes.” 

The aforementioned ‘she’ would not be ruffled in her victory. “If I recall, Mulder-- and you’ll have to forgive me because my memory is a bit fuzzy about our recovery in McMurdo Station--” 

Mulder’s face blanked, dread spilling from his eyes and collecting in the tight corners of his half-opened mouth. 

“--but you said, and I quote: ‘There’s no other frosty I’d want to come down from a sugar high with’.”

“And as I recall,” his mood recovering with a quiet intake, outtake of air, “you said: ‘Tapering off of intravenous dextrose does not count as a sugar high, Mulder’.”  

Scully popped another (the last) chocolate piece into her mouth. “It doesn’t. But I figured this does.” 

Facing him fully, she watched Mulder’s expression softly undergo a few layered revolutions before he hemmed out a tender, “Like I said, there’s no other frosty--”

“No, Mulder. ‘Frosty’ died when you said the definition of solid stool would never be the same.”

"I still stand by my theory, Scully. It isn't the same."

Neither of them needed to say that Antarctica changed more than that. Sitting on Mulder’s body-warmed couch as their blood jumped in chaotic glucose spikes, they felt life and hope thrum between them.

"No, it isn't."

******

"Who knew that Looney Tunes could be so..." Mulder shook his head.

"Dark?"

"Yeah."

Scully stared, baffled. "Mulder, are you telling me you've never seen this episode?"

"You enjoyed this?"

"...Yes."

They both sat in silence while Mel Blanc belted out a chorus of tormented screams.

"...Well, it's not The Exorcist, but I can see the similarities."

"Mulder, they're nothing alike. ...Mulder. Go back, it's just getting good."

******

Scully knew Mulder spent his life counting the costs of his work: the X-Files weren’t theirs yet, his partner was robbed of a chance to stroll the streets with her own tiny ghost or goblin, and he would inevitably wake the next day and writhe some more on the tenterhook until, until, until. But every time her partner fiddled with his sproinging party headband (a twin to the outlandish one he'd found in the loot bag and good-heartedly smashed on her head-- “Matchy, matchy”) and flashed her his gleaming pearly-white-and-caramel teeth, Scully knew that he knew that she was still on the journey with him. 

If I quit now, they win. And she wouldn’t quit, not on him.

*****

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

Tagging @today-in-fic and @xffictober2023 and @fictober-event

[pb-dot]

Last Voyage Of The Demeter

It's honestly a bit of a wonder that nobody has done something like this before. The doomed voyage of The Demeter is a small piece of the overall story, but it is very much a story within the story, and even though the ending is a bummer and kind of a given, there are enough turns there to make a decent horror movie and at least one very memorable character in the form of The Demeter's captain whose final middle finger to his Transylvanian passenger is pretty iconic

Anyway, I was pretty excited to watch this movie, partially because I'm re-experiencing Dracula along with the rest of the world through Dracula Daily and partially because the director is Andre Øverdal, whose career I've been gleefully paying attention to since Troll Hunter in 2010 and, perhaps more salient to this movie, the locked room chiller The Autopsy of Jane Doe.

As for the results, it was certainly a decent attempt. From an adaptation standpoint, it was a mixed bag. While some choices were unexpected but decidedly sensical, like the decision to use less of the Debonaire and Devilish Dracula and more of the Fucked Up Man-Bat Dracula, others I didn't love but understood, like doing the "vampires and thralls burn like hell at the slightest brush of sunlight" thing. Some choices, however, did feel like they were motivated by a series of studio notes. One such presumably noteborn idea is having the landlubber characters of Mr. Clemens and Anna taking the lead on the whole thing, one presumes to not spend too much time with salty sailors in this salty sailors having a bad time movie.

Other decisions still seem more like Øverdal seeing what he could get away with, like including a child in this doomed journey for no other apparent reason than to tell the moviegoing public he isn't afraid to put some child murder on screen. As far as transgressiveness goes it's not paradigm-shatteringly huge, but he'll get some point for having me wonder if he's actually going through with this child peril business.

In general, the horror in this movie works decently, although I do feel we're given too much of Dracula's gnarly ass too early. I know references to the shark basically not being in 75% of Jaws are practically a cliche at this point, but it keeps being harped on because it works and so many horror movies forget that no matter how good your FX is, it's nothing to the power of growing paranoia. Granted, Drac has a few tricks up his fleshy sleeves to save for the finale, and seeing those tricks unfurl it's pretty rad, but I would be happy with sacrificing some screentime from the feature character for some tension-building.

From a cinematography standpoint, the movie works fine. Some of the day-for-night-looking business in the third act does strain the suspension of disbelief a tad, but I appreciate the effort put into a movie that is for the most part perceivable to the eye in a generation where more and more horror movie ADs seemingly go "It's dark, because dark is scary, right?" without thinking much on the people who try to watch the thing.

When we are talking aesthetics though, I would say Demeter's biggest sin is choosing to give the Count's blood draining the most comically overstated Glugg Glugg-noise I have heard outside of depictions of thirsty Looney Tunes drinking water. Like, I get using sounds the audience might be familiar with as a base, but when I expect your very scary horror villain to eventually tilt his head back and go "Ahhhh" then it might be time to reconsider.

So in short, I wouldn't call Last Voyage of The Demeter an instant classic or anything, but it's entertainingly pulpy gorefest of the kind late summer is made for in my opinion. I could have done with more gore actually, but it could be that the two new Evil Dead movies have desensitized me somewhat. Also, you know what they say, Waste Not, Want Not.