Confessions of a Cigarette Smoking Girl
By Erin McCole Cupp

Rating:  PG (language -- twice)

Spoilers:  None

Category:  Vignette, imagine this happens about 17 years or so 
from now.  MSR implied (so turn away now if the very thought
 skeeves you out).  Nothing sloppy, however (see rating).

Archiving: Knock yourself out.  Just let me know so I can tell
 my dad if he wants to visit.

Disclaimers:  Give to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox Network what
 is Chris Carter's, 1013's and Fox Network's.  But the other
 character is mine.  Don't sue, please.  I come in peace.



	Her eyes had been getting worse.  She was otherwise in
 excellent shape, but no matter how much exercise a woman
 gets, nor how well-balanced her diet could be, a girl's eyes could
 still go on her.  She had been meaning to schedule an
 appointment to renew the prescription for her contacts, but she
 simply hadn't had the time with all the paperwork that had been
 piling up exclusively for her.  

	Her eyes had been getting worse, but her mental
 sharpness had, by order of life circumstances, grown even more
 so over the years.  Which is why, one night while taking out the
 trash, she was able to spot the tiny tan and white blur out in the
 grass just off the back porch.  

	She spotted it on her way back into the house.  She
 stopped, thinking it was a piece of trash that might have slipped
 out a hole in the bag (Mom had put some broken glass in there
 Sunday night), and thus she picked it up, intending to take the
 stray back to the trash can.  

	However, it was not a stray.  It was a cigarette butt.

	Her heart jumped on instinct.  She turned the offending
 object over in her fingers and saw printed on its side a blur that
 could only be words.  Holding it an armlength away so she
 could see better (_how did I inherit this?  Mom and Dad didn't
 get farsighted this early in their lives_), her eyes focused and
 she read the word she had dreaded to read.  

	"Morley."

	"Damn," she muttered under her breath.  She peered
 around the side of the house, looking for someone in a
 trenchcoat, hunched over with advanced age.  

	Advanced age.  Well, very advanced age after all these
 years.  Scully couldn't help but chuckle softly at herself.  The
 offending smoker had probably been some junior high kid
 cutting through their back yard to get to the school bus stop or
 something.  If she would tell Mulder what had gone through her
 mind, even he would have laughed at her.  

	"Mom!"  A young female voice called out one of the
 second floor windows.  "Can you help me?  I'm stuck on this
 calculus problem!"

	Her fifteen year-old miracle was safe, in the house, and
 working on her homework.  _Takes after me_ the veteran FBI
 agent thought proudly, _Not only smart enough to tackle
 calculus at this age but also smart enough not to ask her father
 for help with math._

	"On my way, honey."

She decided to say nothing about what she had found, to
 try not to think about it.  

	That night, however, she was having trouble sleeping. 
 Sometime after one in the morning, she woke up for the third
 time.  She sat up in bed and looked over at the veritable log
 sleeping next to her, soundly for once.  For a minute, she willed
 him to start awake, perhaps from one of his old nightmares
 returning to him unexpectedly.  

	Minutes felt like eons, and he slept on.  Damned therapy,
 easing all his nightmares away.  She would have to do this on
 her own.

	_I'll just check in on her._  She thought.  _It's a mother's
 prerogative.  I used to do this all the time when she was little._


	She slipped into her bathrobe and slippers.  Soundlessly,
 so as not to wake her husband, her mother or her daughter, she
 crept down the hall to the room of the youngest member of the
 household.  The door was open ever so slightly, so she peered
 in.

	The bed was empty.  

	The house was deadly silent.  She looked back down the
 hall.  The bathroom door was open, the light off.  

	_Where could she be?_

	Should she wake him?  Make him come with her?  No. 
 She would not.  The girl was probably downstairs in the kitchen,
 getting a midnight snack.  She did that whenever she was going
 through another growth spurt.  Cereal at two in the morning. 
 Cereal with bananas, washed down with two glasses of milk. 
 She was already five-ten.  

	_Okay, so maybe she doesn't take after me that much._

	She was not in the kitchen.  There was no dirty cereal
 bowl in the sink, no empty glass of milk.  Stunned, Scully
 scanned the kitchen, wondering what to do.  The pantry was too
 narrow to be anyone's hiding place.  She circled the counter in
 the center, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the countertop. 
 She looked up, out the windows.

	Outside the one window that opened to the trees in the
 side yard, something glowed orange.  

More on instinct than thought, she ran to the locked
 cabinet in the hall closet and, with shaking hands, removed her
 gun just before bolting out the back door.

	_Slippers don't make nearly as much noise as heels. 
 Maybe I should wear these on stake out?_

	What a ridiculous thought to have at a time like this. 
 Tiptoeing through the garden patch that clung to the back wall
 of the house, she swung around to face the side yard and held
 her gun out before her.  The orange glow was still there, but she 
could not see the owner who hid in the shadows of the maples 
bordering their property.

	"Mom?"  The voice shook considerably.

	Half-relieved, half-terrified at hearing her daughter's
 voice, Scully held down her gun and walked over to the
 shadows.  "Are you alone?"

	She could hear her daughter swallow.  "Yeah..."  The
 girl's voice still shook, as did the hand holding the cigarette.  

	"Are you sure?"

	"Yes, I'm sure."  Her voice sounded confused, as if she
 were not clear as to why her mother was asking this question. 
 Probably because she wasn't.  

	Mother walked straight up to daughter and stared down
 at the pack of Morleys in the girl's hand.

	She tried to keep her voice calm and clinical, but it came
 out sounding anguished.  "Where did you get these?"

	Too petrified to do anything other than tell the truth, the
 girl confessed.  "At the mini-mart on the way home from school. 
 They didn't card me because I look eighteen..."

	The cigarette smoking girl then expected her mother to
 inflict upon her a lecture: beginning with the use of her full
 name (first, middle, confirmation and last), then launching into
 the medical dangers of smoking, continuing with something
 along the lines of "I'm going over there right now to arrest the
 sonofabitch who sold those to your underaged self, young lady,"
 and concluding with some sort of grounding sentence.  

	Instead, in the darkness, she saw her mother's eyes fill
 with tears which did not spill over her eyelids.  

	Instead of getting angry or indignant, as teenagers are
 wont to do, the girl's dread waxed.  Her mother hardly, hardly
 ever cried.  

	"Mommy," she whispered, "I'm so sorry.  I'll never do it
 again."  

	Her mother merely held out her hand expectantly. 
 Understanding the gesture, the girl surrendered the cigarette
 pack, along with the lighter.  She herself hardly ever cried, and
 she felt as if she would spring a leak at any moment.

	Her mother looked at the confiscated objects in her hand,
 silent.  

	"Mom?"  The girl begged out of her fear, "Say
 something.  Please."

	Except for finally using her daughter's full name in
 trademark motherly fashion, what Scully said was the last thing
 her daughter expected to hear. 

	"Margaret Grace Katherine Mulder, if you decide that
 you are going to continue to smoke, please smoke another
 brand."


END




"Space aliens!  Don't eat me!  I have a wife and kids!  Eat them!"
--Homer J. Simpson