IN THE MIDDLE X
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a Malcolm in the Middle/X-Files crossover. It goes over a bit better if you take in the fact that it is a bit of a parody of both shows, although it is hard to parody comedy. X-Files parody, then. I acknowledge that these characters are not copyrighted to me and are not my property. Many thanks to my friend Emmy who had the idea for this story.
Dewey scampered into the house, clad in his rocket ship pajamas. "Mom! Dad!" he yelled. "I've just seen a UFO!"
Lois and Hal raced into the living room. "Honey, there are no such things as aliens and UFOs," Lois said calmly. "Which one of your brothers told you about them?"
"They didn't!" said Dewey. "Malcolm saw it too. It was shiny and floating around in the sky and made a buzzing noise. And then the aliens came out and said that they were going to eat me."
"Dewey, it was all a very bad dream," said Hal, trying to be a comfort. "I used to have alien dreams too, but I never let them get to me. That's what you have to do. Don't let them suck your brains out. Now go back to bed."
Dewey reluctantly walked outside. He had been camping out in the backyard with his brothers. "They didn't believe me," he said.
"We'll make them believe you, Dewey," Francis said assuredly. "Because you saw that UFO, we all did."
"Look at this, Scully." Fox Mulder held a newspaper. "There's a little bit in here about a kid who saw an alien."
"Mulder." Scully did not like investigating alien sightings. "Remember that time that we went to Springfield to see the alien? Remember how it turned out to be the town millionaire who just wanted to live longer, and he was so full of medication that you couldn't tell he was a human being? I don't want to spend the rest of my FBI career chasing aliens that probably don't exist."
"Homer Simpson," Mulder replied. "I liked him." Scully rolled her eyes and took a sip of coffee.
It was a Saturday morning. Reese, Malcolm and Dewey were sprawled out on the couch, watching cartoons. Francis was still asleep, while Hal and Lois groggily drunk coffee in hopes to waking up. There was a knock on the door. Hal stumbled over to answer it.
"Sir, we're with the FBI," said Mulder, as he and Scully flipped down their FBI badges for Hal to see. "We'd like to talk with your son Dewey and his brothers."
"Sure, do whatever you want," said Hal as he stumbled back to the kitchen. At least the FBI is onto them, he thought. They can't do bad things forever.
"Hello, boys," said Scully. They look average enough, she thought to herself. Perhaps they saw a shooting star or maybe—
"Who are you?" asked the youngest one.
Scully smiled. "My name's Dana, or you can call me Scully," she said. "We want to know about the UFO you saw." She glanced over at Mulder.
"I'm Agent Mulder," he said.
"An agent? An agent for what?" Reese asked.
"The FBI." He and Scully pulled out their badges. It was almost an automatic response now to show people the badge.
"What did we do?" asked Malcolm. Not even Francis had an FBI agent come talk to him.
"Nothing," said Scully. "We just want to know about the UFO you guys saw."
"It was scary," said Dewey.
"It made a weird buzzing noise," Malcolm added. "Classic UFO shape. Flying saucer style. I mean, I know that it's pretty unlikely that UFOs would be coming around here, but I'm pretty convinced that it was real."
"How come?" asked Mulder. He was pretty impressed. This kid seemed to know something about UFOs.
"Well," said Malcolm, "people have said that after they've seen a UFO, strange things happen around their home. Plants won't grow, things go missing. Stuff like that. I mean, look at our yard."
That was true. The yard was a sickly green-yellow color. Mulder was becoming more and more convinced that this was not a hoax. If it was, if it was real, then he could prove to everyone that he was not a failure, an embarrassment. He could finally show Walter Skinner that he could be taken seriously. He could show everyone, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, Krychek, everyone that they had not discouraged him from finding the truth.
"I think we've seen enough," said Scully, inturrupting his train of thought. "We'll be in touch. Thank you boys very much." She glided gracefully out of the living room just as Francis walked in.
"What did you think, Scully?"
"I think that it's a huge hoax. There's no possible way that they saw a UFO. For one, that grass probably could have done well with watering, which is why it won't grow. After all, did you see the state that house was in? It looks as though they never clean up!"
"I think that this is it. We're finally going to prove that there are aliens!" said Mulder excitedly.
"Mul-der," Scully said warningly.
"Who were they?" asked Francis. "Why didn't anyone wake me up?"
"They were with the FBI," said Reese. "They wanted to know about the UFO."
"How come I always miss the good stuff?" complained Francis. "No one in this family loves me any more."
"We love you, Francis," Hal called from the other room, more awake with coffee. "We just don't love you when you do bad things." Francis frowned.
"I think that they'll be back," said Malcolm in attempt to make Francis feel better.
That night, Mulder and Scully decided to investigate the household perimeter in order to see if there really was an alien. ("Of course there is!" said Mulder.) Quietly, they crept into the backyard with their flashlights, sending out heavy beams of light. "I can't see a thing," Scully complained.
"Look, Scully!" Mulder pointed to the sky. A little beam of red light floated in the clouded night sky. It made a strange humming noise that grew steadily louder as Mulder and Scully came closer to the house.
"An obvious fake," Scully immediately dismissed.
"No, Scully, it's real!" said Mulder. "We've finally come to the truth. No matter how much they tried to hold us back, we prevailed. We proved that we weren't failures. We have found the truth, Scully."
A piercing scream filled their ears.
"Trouble," said Mulder. He broke into the back door, gun pointed out. "Federal agent! I'm armed!" he yelled. He walked down the hallway to the boys' room. He opened the door. Dewey stopped screaming.
"What's going on in here?" he asked. Malcolm and Reese were at the window and Dewey was on the bed, looking wearily at a stuffed teddy bear.
"What…?" Lois pushed her way through a bewildered Mulder and Scully to Dewey's side. "Dewey, honey, what's wrong?"
"Reese said my bear would eat me. So I tried to scare him." The teddy bear simply sat there, with its stuffed smile.
"Reese!"
"Sorry, Mom."
"Reese, what's that in you hand?" Lois asked. She was so used to her sons misbehaving she wasn't about to take any chances.
Reese held out a kazoo. He knew better than to argue with his mother at one o' clock in the morning. "Look at what Malcolm has," he said. Malcolm threw him a look. Something was obviously wrong.
Malcolm held out a flashlight with a piece of red cellophane on it.
"Hey," said Mulder. "That looks exactly like—"
"The UFO," Scully finished, rolling her eyes. All this trouble for a simple childhood prank? And Mulder actually believed all of this?
"Boys," Hal started sternly. "You are in big trouble."
"Why is everyone up?" Francis yawned from the doorway.
"Agent Mulder, where do you want these papers?" Malcolm asked. This had to be the strangest punishment ever. He and Reese and Dewey were to help Agents Mulder and Scully for as long as they wanted. At first he was almost glad, because no one he knew had ever worked with FBI Agents before, but this was definetly not what he had expected.
"Hey, you," said Scully. "Get me some coffee." Dewey raced out of the room.
Reese came in with two heavy boxes of X-Files. "If only Francis could see us now," he groaned.
"He would have been proud," said Malcolm.