Hazing clouds rain on my head

Empty thoughts fill my ears

Find my shape by the moonlight

While my thoughts aren't so clear

Demons dreaming

Breathing breathing

I'm coming back again.

Godsmack

Clarice Starrling slammed the door to her office upon her return to the normal part of the Hoover building. Being there in the basement had left her feeling, out of control. It was a feeling she was not used to nor wanted to have a familiarity with. That office in the bowels of the building was all wrong. It wasn't the clutter, Clarice Starrling was a woman familiar with disorder, and she liked to save cleaning for when she was angry.

It was the stink of failure. That room had the words end of the line written all over it. She respected the two agents; they were good at what they did. Agent Mulder was the best profiler around, she knew he would come in handy for more than this case. These two were once at the top of the Bureau, a whole world of closed cases laid out in front of them. They could have had any assignment they chose. Mulder himself could have bagged countless rolls of degenerates and hauled them off of the streets.

And yet, there they were, chasing specters and getting paid the same scale as her. It made her sick. There were real crimes to be solved, real life monsters that needed to be prodded from underneath the beds of sleeping children. What went on downstairs was an abomination.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Fox Mulder had left work early; he knew it was going to be a long night with the case file. He had stopped and picked up a six pack of Beck's and a large order of take out. Mulder liked to be alone and well fed when he worked, and Scully had respected his need for privacy while he worked.

She waved him out of the office after promising not to call him that night and to finish the paperwork on her own. What a little trooper, he smiled to himself. She was going to make some lucky bastard absolutely miserable one day.

Lord willing, he'll be the one holding the winning ticket.

He had to get her out of his mind. Scully running through his mind while he profiled some sick pervert would only amplify his already vivid dreams. He had to force his mind to steer clear of Dana Scully for the night. Breathing deeply and cracking open a fresh bottle of beer, he pulled the contents of the file out, spread them across his coffee table, and dove in.

Profiling was nothing like on television, there were no neat little flashes of images or big huge clues that stuck out for a profiler to glom onto. No, when you profiled a serial killer, you were taking every piece of evidence into consideration. What would mean something for one profile would be different with another murderer. What most people didn't know were the photos. They were awful; these sick fucks never killed anyone simply or neatly. Even the most anal retentive of serial killers, like Lector, had a habit of drawing blood in large quantities, or leaving a body so disgusting the families could not even entertain the thought of an open casket.

These pictures that invaded his mind tonight were awful. The perp had an almost ritualistic routine with his girls. He bound them, all the same way, hands in front arms stretched across their chest.

Like they were praying.

See, this is why Fox Mulder had a hard time believing in a higher power. So much gore and horror was done in the name of a god, how could he allow it to continue?

He went on, examining the care and detail that the perp took in staging the bodies after he was done with them. They were propped up kneeling. In most cases he had taken great care use implements to ensure they were in this position when discovered. Mulder made a mental note to inquire to see the boards and media that were used to proffer this morbid show.

He had gouged out their eyes. From the crime scene photos, you could barely tell, because the heads of the victims were placed in a bowing position, the head rested neatly on top of the bound hands. But the eyes weren't just gouged out, as he read in the case file; they were bound into the palms of the victim's hands. The killer had carefully removed the eyes, almost with surgical precision, and had placed them in the bound palms of the victims.

This guy enjoyed what he did entirely too much.

The girls were all dressed in prim white dresses; he didn't need to call his Catholic partner to know that these were confirmation dresses. From the looks of it as he examined them closely, they were home made, possibly hand stitched.

Ok, Mulder mused, we are looking for a homicidal maniac with a sensitive side, wonder if he watches Martha Stewart.

The last gory detail almost made him lose his extra large Mu Shu Pork. The worst part of the details the writer of the summarized case files had left for the last disgusting detail, as if to punctuate the description with the world's most disgusting exclamation point.

At first they thought the tongues had been kept by the perp. See these sickos love to have souvenirs of their crimes. It was their porn. They would later hold the object and fantasize about the crime that was attached to it. Often the next crime occurred when this no longer worked for them. One of the initial investigators even thought that the tongues were being eaten by the perp.

He was so close.

The first three victims had not been handled by anything other than local PD, and this guy was smart enough to perform the first few murders over a span of four states that were not bordering each other.

See they did autopsies, but failed to really check the stomach contents, had they done that they would have known that the victims' last meal consisted of the previous victims tongue.

That was the other thing about profiling, the other reason why he had to be alone when he started perusing through the cases. You had to separate yourself; it was one of the first things they taught at Quantico. See its human nature to look into the victim's faces and attach some familiar name to them. Every teenaged victim looked like Samantha. He had an array of fourteen different Samantha's all posed exactly the same, all missing her eyes and tongue

Mulder was not well, he got up from the couch and had a sudden need to go run to Scully's and make sure she was all right.

Make sure she still had her tongue.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dana Scully could never in a million years understand her partner. Oh she got him; she knew he had about a million little idiosyncrasies that would drive Mother Theresa to pick up a few bad habits. She also knew he had more fears than a Stephen King novel. He was irreverent, shameless in his love of porn, pushy, stubborn, and maybe a little messy.

But, God was he brilliant.

All the other crap could just be laid aside and written off as eccentric behavior. He could have thirty different secret weapon stashes on his body, it didn't matter. He could drag out a hundred different crazy paranoid fantasies, so what? He could march through the office proclaiming the queen of England had ordered the hit on JFK, and? He could find a perp and hunt, and how she loved to watch him hunt.

He always started off the hunt alone; Dana had assumed that it was to concentrate, to not have girl cooties clouding up the clubhouse so he couldn't think. Secretly, she had hoped it was to separate her from it, in her mind she fantasized that this was his little way of protecting her.

Am I in love with him? She asked herself for the billionth time. Have I broken the cardinal rule of law enforcement and fell head over heels for my partner?

Maybe its just hero worship, that photographic memory of his is a neat trick, and kind of a turn on….

Aww Damn it! She fumed. I think I am in love with the weirdo.

Dana ran the bath water and dove in.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Clarice Starrling did not expect to hear from Agent Mulder so soon, she had not wanted to either. Home was her fortress, her solitude. Work only came in when she invited it in, when work invaded from either a phone call or an email she took it personally, though it was part of her job, and she never complained, she still did not welcome FBI into her house.

"Agent Starrling." Mulder grunted into the phone.

"Yeah Agent Mulder how is it going?" She said trying to sound as casual as her nature would allow.

"I need to go over the case, can we meet?" he asked. There were things about this one that bothered him, things that were too—ritualistic.

She gave him directions to her house, and greeted him at the door. Mulder was struck at the starkness of her home. Scully's apartment was so warm and soft, Agent Mulder had assumed that Agent Starrling's home would have that same inviting nature.

Nope.

Special Agent Clarice Starrling got home decorating tips from the department of Corrections. Function definitely won out over form here, a woman after his own heart.

He waved the file in front of her as he walked into the living room and plopped onto an old sofa. "This guy is a real piece of work. "He announced.

"Yes, Sir." She agreed. "That's why I asked for your help. " She was trying her best to remember that men liked their egos stroked, hadn't it worked on even Lector? Funny how all men had a little Lector in them.

Mulder ran his hands through his hair roughly, stopping at his sys. "this guy is picking up speed." He admitted. "He is enjoying this, not just the killing, but the chase. He was careful in the beginning, which tells me he has this planned out."

"Has he gotten sloppier then?" Starrling asked.

"Not sloppier, in fact he is so careful, your buddy Lector would be im—" he stopped seeing the look on her face. Mulder wasn't sure, but he had the impression that she was going to kill him. "Sorry Agent, that was very unprofessional of me." He looked down to his feet for something to say, they weren't helping any.

If Mulder had not been studying her face, he would have missed the momentary look of broken glass that swept across her steely features. Mulder decided he would just go on. "This guy, the eye thing is done post mortem, which says there is some care for the victim. There are those out there that would do it happily while the vic is fully awake. He is saying something here. The vics are someone for him, someone he once loved and cared for, though I am not sure if it would be either family or a girlfriend." He stopped here opening the file and pointing to one of the pictures. "See here?" he asked fingering the photo. "He dresses them in conformation gowns, home made ones, that is a little story there too. He sees them as little girls; the age of the vic belies how he sees them." He stopped as if figuring something out here. "Maybe a little sister, or someone he knew as very young. "

She was impressed, more than just impressed. He had reached into this case and dragged the sick fuck out kicking and screaming. Clarice had the feeling he was close here, real close.

"This is one sick fuck," he mumbled.

"Is that the technical term sir?" she asked and Mulder caught a faint grin trace across her face.

"I'm sorry to come out here like this so late Agent Starrling; I had to give you the preliminary tonight." He halted "I had to get some of it out of my head."

"S'ok Agent Mulder, I have insomnia anyway, I usually don't sleep more than a few hours a night."

Yeah, he knew about that.

"So why does he cut the eyes out Mulder?" she asked feeling little more relaxed with him.

"He doesn't want them to see the ugliness; he is trying to keep them artificially young." He mused fingering the file. "He places the eyes in the bound hands for them to pray for new sight.'

"New sight? You mean like that Bible passage, For we walk by faith, not by sight."

It was Mulder's turn to be impressed, he wasn't a religious man, and had only read the Bible for purposes of profiling. So many of these take it out of context, twisting it to their own needs. "That's it exactly Agent Starrling." He grinned. She's good. "He loves these girls in a way, some small part of him is freeing them, maybe he thinks he is giving them either eternal life, or eternal youth."

He rose, feeling much better having poured some of it out of his head, at least for the night. "Thank you for letting me rant, you seem to have a knack for the hunt yourself. "He smiled down at her. "I will have a better detailed description tomorrow, come on down to the basement after lunch."

She thanked him and closed the door. She had to admit, he was the best.

Ruthby, thanx for the review...

Lil Gillian, does this answer your question?

I would encourage anyone who wants to stay for the whole show to rent and wATCH hANNIBAL IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY. i HOPE I HAVE NOT GROSSED ANYONE OUT, JUST WANTED TO TRY MY HAND A SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT...