180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Mulder Suicide
by Livia Balaban
liviabalaban@xoommail.com

Category:  V, A

Rating: PG-13

Content: MSR, UST, Angst, Character Death (um, duh)

Spoilers: None

Archive: Yeah, sure, just tell me.

Feedback: Okey-dokey.  Hit me.  But be kind,
I'm still a newbie.

Summary: If the title doesn't help ya...

Disclaimer:  Blah, blah, 1013, yadda CC...

Notes: Having recently come across the wonderful
world that is Xfic, I simply had to start
assigning myself little projects.  This was one.
Gotta keep exercising that conciseness.  This is
in honor of the 155-word exercises I read today
(with an appropriate bump up to 180 words - 18
is a lucky number to my tribe).

******
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Mulder Suicide
by Livia Balaban



He'd seen it happen through his living room
window.

And after nine days, eleven hours, and forty-eight
minutes, he'd played it over in his mind a hundred
thousand times.

He'd decided the moment he watched her casket lower
into the damp ground.  Closing his eyes in
inexpressible grief, lowering his head in
hopelessness, his course clarified.

And now, with one finger twisting nervously in
the thin gold chain about his neck, he was ready.
Suddenly lucid, he liberated his finger, gently
placing the tiny cross flat against the skin at
the base of his throat.

Maybe that's where he'd aim.  The place that
formed the words he'd used to hurt her, the place
where now only a simple 't' of gold remained.

Or maybe into his mouth.  His big, goddamned mouth
that suggested she go take a walk to cool down.

The mouth that sent her away to die.

He lifted the gun to his lips, lost forever to a
hope of sweet lingering over hers, and as they
moistened with the last of his tears,
he pulled the trigger.

=========
End.