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Title: X Author: darkangel38 (dancingchickensshaw.ca) Note: Yes ANOTHER story from me, even though I have like 101 on the go. Just had to start another one. I hope you guy's like it. Set in Season 8. M/C married, R/R not together and so on. Review if you like :)

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It had been dumb. A stupid idea really. Joey's great idea one afternoon when the two had been sitting around deciding how to kill time. Joe had thought it would be fun to peek into that clear window above his apartment door and make faces at anybody who lurked in the hallway. Not huge entertainment for Chandler, but at the time he figured he owed it to Joe since he had recently married Monica and moved out. And of course standing on the foozeball table hadn't seemed worth it to Joey, so the only thing left had been the padded stools placed behind the counter.

Chandler had stepped up to the plate after Joey had expressed his concerns of injuring himself standing on something so unstable (in Joey language, "Duuuuuude.")

So Chandler had climbed up so he was standing on both feet on the stool thinking that it couldn't be worse than Ultimate Fireball. That was before somebody had decided to enter the apartment at that very moment; the glass above the door had been too foggy to really see anything. The door had nudged the stool and Chandler had spiraled to his bloody death onto the hardwood floor. Okay, so he didn't die. And there was no blood. But it had still hurt like a bitch.

The culprit behind the door had been Phoebe and she had screamed and cursed her dead grandmother directly afterwards. Chandler had been okay with a hand up and an apology from Joe. Somehow his back had been hurt of twisted in the small crash but he hadn't thought that the dull ache would last for long.

But it had lasted an annoying two weeks and that's when Monica had made him drop by the Doctor after work to pick up anything to get rid of his excuse on why he couldn't help clean the apartment ever.

He entered the apartment in the late afternoon holding a small white paper bag from a clinic down the street, containing an orange cannister of white pills and a printed out pink piece of paper with instructions of when to take the pills and how to get the prescription refilled.

Monica hadn't arrived home from the restaurant yet, so he set down his briefcase and keys on the kitchen table and opened the little white bag, pulling out the pills and instructions.

"Take one every six hours with water. Discontinue use if death occurs," Chandler read out loud from the pink slip from inside the bag. "If death occurs? Is that something they should be telling their patients? How can you continue to take pills after your dead anyway?" He asked the empty apartment. "And why am I talking to myself?" he asked the apartment again and waited for a response.

The refrigerator whirred.

Chandler shrugged off his suit jaket carefully and swung it over a chair, making a note to put it away properly before Mon got home. He took a tall glass from the cupboard on the left and filled it halfway with water. He quickly took one of the pills and made a 'bleh' face at the bitter taste the white pill left on his tongue, even though it had almost been a completely clean swallow. He dumped the rest of the water back into the sink, thinking it now tasted like the pill and slowly made his way to the couch. He picked up the remote that was neatly laid out on a stack of magazines and relaxed to a laying position facing the tv.

If Chandler would have been paying attention, he would have questioned the 'one' pill every six hours. But he was just satisified enough that he had gotten through the uncomfortable exam (which only had included a few questions from the Doc) and that his back was about to be cured. Work was a bitch. It was hard to get any actual work done. Even though he had a nice chair, leaning back and feet up on the desk was the most comfortable, but hard to use the computer that way without looking like he was having "cyber relations" with an internet nerd. The little white pills were going to bring back the 'old' Chandler, not the Chandler who walked around like he was 80 years old.

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That black dot. What was that? A bug?

Chandler sat on the couch, arms draped over his knees, tie loosened around his neck, blue dress sleeved rolled up. He squinted at the black dot and waited for it to move. Then it would most certainly be a bug. Because nothing else would move right? It was just sitting against the purple wall, only speck that could be seen.

He sat up straight, back pain totally gone, engrossed and fascinated by the black splotch. Waiting for it to... move. Just once. So he could be satisfied that he had identified what it was. Why didn't he just stand up and get a closer look?

Couldn't. Too hooked from his position on the couch. As if he was locked in cement in that very position. Unblinking, eyes almost twitching, just intrigued by the dot.

Wait.. It moved! Or did it?

He set landmarks and did math in his had as to where the dot was originally and where it would have moved to. It didn't move any further, it seemed to just move 'within itself'...

Even more intrigued about finding out how that was even possible, he leaned closer, but yet didn't move one single inch at all. His 'mind' zoomed ahead a bit. His brain did more math and calculations turning the entire wall into a grid with X and Y coordinates, as he waited for the dot to move into a fresh square.

It didn't, but continued to morph and transfer within itself. Chandler's eyes blurred and the apartment disappeared and all he could see was the dot. Large now, taunting him. Laughing as it turned all sorts of rainbow colors, moving so much, yet NOT MOVING at all!

He was hooked on the spot which he was sure was some kind of alien bug, that he didn't even notice Monica slip into the apartment, call out, "Hi Sweetie!" brightly, take off her coat and go over to him to shake his shoulder.

Her hand on his right shoulder burned and his mind snapped back. The dot disappeared along with the white chalk grid his mind had created. Able to move again by his own will, he blinked deeply and rubbed his eyes which he hadn't even noticed had been watering due to excessive staring.

"Sweetie, what were you looking at?" Monica asked and smiled.

Chandler looked back at the wall and started to point.

"That...black thing-"

Monica frantically looked at the wall wondering how the hell some 'black thing' got there.

"Chandler, there's no black thing," she said looking back at him.

He searched the wall still seated on the couch.

Nothing.

"It moved! It moved and I missed it" Chandler threw his arm out toward the wall.

"Honey, are you okay?" Monica sat down beside him.

Chandler didn't answer and stared at the wall.