Socks

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Chapter Eleven: The Wrath Of Mr. Bubbles
by Odie
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Through the dark DC streets the trash can roved, his giant tongue licking the sole of a half-eaten white leather Ked. The warm drool flowed freely from his silver mouth as he tossed the soggy shoe behind him into his opening where dozens of other half-eaten shoes littered his inside.

His greedy eyes saw what he had been searching for and he decided that a little more salivation was in order to celebrate this momentous occasion. Stopping and resting on his haunches, he peered lovingly into the hardware store window. Rolls of duct tape lined the display case and a spasm of delight rode through his little metal body. Shiny gray, dull gray, the exotic blue from China, the sensuous red that made his outer rim quiver... They were all there...

His life now had purpose.

And as he heaved a Doc Marten work boot through the glass window and proceeded to greedily take all the duct tape his little bin could carry, he knew now that he had to seek out the one man who could help him with his plan. This man sat alone in a prison cell awaiting trial. This man was known as ‘Ed’. This man would believe in his design.

*****

Ed lay awake in his bunk, the night traffic echoing with a hushed murmur through the poorly insulated walls. He sighed disheartened. He had failed. He was going to spend the rest of his life in jail. And worst of all, he still couldn’t prove the Elvis had never really left the building but was in reality, lurking on the island of Nantucket, sitting on a lumpy chair in a squalid room watching reruns of ‘Wings’ under the assumed name of ‘Chaff Boxer’. Ed silently cursed Chaff for revealing his true identity to him during the summer of ‘96. He cursed him and wished for his death. Or if not death, at least partial rights to whatever movie of the week would be made out of his life story after that embarrassing Disneyland fiasco.

*****

Poris lay in a hospital bed, his brother, Zoris sitting by his side with concern in his features. The block of cheese that Alex Krycek had hit his poor brother with was enough to put him in a coma. Poris never stirred, his limp body reeking of cheese and...

"What the hell is that? Wet chimp?" Zoris asked out loud..

No matter. Zoris had a plan to avenge the comatose state of his brother. And to avenge the death of his other brother, Boris. And even though he knew it wasn’t really Krycek’s fault for the death of Boris, he wanted more reasons to add to his list of ‘Why Alexander Must Die’ which he kept neatly folded in his breast pocket.

"Don’t worry, Poris!" He whispered to the sleeping Russian. "I have a plan! A plan that would make our parents proud had we not killed them in that unfortunate sponge accident! Mr. Bubbles, Poris! Mr. Bubbles! I will use the evil powers of that blasted pink bath solution for my own purposes!! I will harness the evil in it and make the world pay for all that it’s done to me! Oh, and I’ll also avenge your current state, too. But remember!" Zoris said as he stood up to leave.

"Remember the power that is... MR. BUBBLES!!!"

*****

Mulder screamed in pain. So far, his stay at the roomy Chicken Kiev was less comforting than he had hoped. The brochure he had read in the blimp had promised relaxation and recreation. So far, all he had gotten out of it was a stone bed and a 1978 McCalls to read.

After being forced to watch the entire OJ Simpson murder trial backwards AND in Spanish, he was now strapped in a chair, a Russian barber with a thick beard was coming at him while holding a menacing black bag.

"What are you going to do to me??" Mulder demanded, his mind still reeling from the countless times he was shown the Bronco chase. "Please! Tell me!"

The Russian barber placed the bag down on the counter, his yellow teeth revealing themselves under a wicked smile. "I am going to..." He paused to add a dramatic air to his words. "Give you..." He paused again, this time to open the black bag and stick his hand inside.

Mulder cowered in fear.

"A perm!!" The barber finished as he pulled out a dainty pink roller.

"NOOOOOOO!!!!!" Mulder screamed in horror. "No! Please! No!"

The barber came at him with the roller in hand, his jaw clenched to hold back his excited giggles. "And... It’s going to be... A spiral perm!!"

Mulder’s screams were heard all the way to the second floor where Russian scientists were busy trying to bring trash cans to life.

*****

In another room at the Chicken Kiev...

Scully was twitching violently. The radio in front of her blared a Japanese rendition of ‘Blue Moon’ for the twentieth time in a row and it showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.

"Please," she gasped. "Turn it off! Turn it off!"

Doris smirked. "Now, Miss Scully, I am surprised at your weak will. I had a bet with Patrov here that you would last a hundred playbacks of this before you cracked."

"Damn it," Scully spat. "Turn it off! For the love of God, turn it off!"

Doris opened his wallet and handed the guard known as Patrov some bills. "Turn it off. And prepare her for the Latin dubbed, 24-hour viewing of ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’."

*****

And in yet another room at the Chicken Kiev...

Skinner didn’t like this one bit. Not one bit. It wasn’t because he was dressed as a giant hamster, either, because he rather enjoyed that part of it. He also didn’t mind the wheel, he was getting rather good at staying on it.

What he didn’t like was how he was put in a giant cage, called ‘Mr. Nibbles’ by the guards, and forced to live off of water and green pellets.

"Hey!" He yelled to one of the guards. "You call this a salt lick?" He asked, holding up a huge wheel of salt. "Mrs. Dash makes better salt than this crap! And she doesn’t even USE salt!"

"Go play on your wheel, Mr. Nibbles!" A guard hollered at him, his accent thick with Russian.

Skinner paused for a moment, scratched behind his ear with his left foot, stuffed a few pellets in his cheeks, and then clambered back on the wheel. He decided he would behave. After all, they had promised him a giant toilet paper roll to sleep in if he acted like a good little hamster and he had the perfect spot already picked out for it.

Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. This whole set up wasn’t really that terrible now that he thought about it. His life was simple, uncomplicated, and all he needed now was a toilet paper roll to crawl into so that it would be complete. Maybe later he would sniff around by the food dish again, eat a few more pellets, and if he felt up to it, climb the bars of his cage.

Maybe this wasn’t so bad...

*****

Brian didn’t bother to yell at the fates. He didn’t bother to curse Murphy or his damn laws. He saw no point in it. They liked to mess with him. In fact, he pondered as to whether God himself had not dropped all the other problems of the universe just to focus his full attention on him so that he could better screw with his life.

Little did Brian know, God had. God was enjoying this all immensely and had left Phil, the new guy, in charge of running things while he played with Pendrell and Krycek.

Just when things began to look up, in favor of Brian and Alex, just as the socks in the pot over the fire had finished bubbling and were now clean, just as the little trash can in DC had reached the prison, a hurricane formed suddenly and had decided to set her course for a little cabin in the middle of nowhere. And as Brian stared remorsefully out the window and watched as trees, rocks, ply wood, and insurance salesmen went whipping by in the thrashing wind, he couldn’t help but curse everything he had ever known for causing the recent events in his life to, well, bite.

Alex gathered up different items into a tote bag, his face beaded with sweat as he glanced at the shaking walls and creaking roof. "Damn balsa wood cabins," he muttered under his breath.

"Come on, Brian. Get your socks out of the pot and let’s get out of here! This whole place is going to hell in a hand-basket!"

Brian pursed his lips together and stood up, his arms crossed over his chest. "What’s the point?" He asked as a wall began to peel away from the rest of the structure.

Alex looked up. "What?"

"You heard me! What’s the point? Even if we do escape this new little wrench that’s been thrown into our lives, what makes you think we’re ever going to get to do anything that we’ve wanted to do? This entire things sucks, Alex! This entire week has sucked! And what’s worst of all, I never paid my electric bill so if I even do get home, I’ll miss my soap operas on TV and I’ll never find out what happens with Shelia on the Bold and the Beautiful! And that REALLY sucks! Forget it! I’m staying right here!"

Alex winced as the roof flew off and went tumbling away. The wind entered the room and the furniture began to whip around in circular patterns on the floor before being sucked up by the gale force winds and thrown into the night sky.

"There’s no time for this right now! We have to get out of here! You act like everyone’s out to get us!"

Brian scowled. "Everyone IS out to get us, you twit!"

That was it. No one called Alex a twit and got away with it. As one of the walls blew away and took the bookshelves with it, Alex marched over to the bubbling pot on the fire and fished out Brian’s socks with his prosthetic arm.

"You see these?" He yelled over the wind that carried his voice far off to distant lands.

Brian glanced at the wet socks and then down at his bare feet. "Yeah."

"If you want them back, you’re gonna have to follow me!"

Pendrell snickered but stopped when Alex went running through the new giant doorway that had been formed when the wall had been ripped off by the wind, and he saw that he was serious. He stood confused for a moment and then grumbled under his breath, chasing after Alex who still waved his wet socks high over his head.

*****

A library in Dallas fell over.

*****

2000 miles away, on a little island tundra that has no impact whatsoever on this story, a group of yet undiscovered Neanderthals sat over a fire, cooking their meat. Through the cold air came a hollow sounding voice that they all heard. As the voice came, they paused and their ears perked up. The words this mysterious voice spoke would later become their national anthem and a popular war cry. It had been taken as a sign from their Gods to develop brimless hats and centuries later, as schoolchildren celebrated National Hat Day and the words that echoed in the wind so long ago were said over and over in song, their origin forever unknown, scientists still puzzled over what the words really proposed:

‘You see these?’.

*****

While the Neanderthals were busy discussing in excited groups the voice that had been carried in the winds, and God was yelling at Phil for causing a small library in Dallas to fall over, the little trash can was talking with Ed in his prison cell.

"It’s a brilliant plan!" Ed marveled at the slobbering metal waste basket, his warped mind not even noticing he was conversing with an inanimate object with feet and a tongue.

"Why didn’t I ever think of it before?"

The trash can shrugged and handed him a roll of green duct tape.

Ed nodded at his new friend and followed him out the small tunnel that the can had dug to get into his cell. The world would see once and for all that he was not crazy. He and his little litter basket were going to prove it.

*****

Alex jumped onto the long flattened wooden object in the water. He glanced behind him and saw Brian thrashing through wet grass, pushing pine branches out of his way.

"Come on!" Alex yelled urgently.

Brian ran onto the pebbly shore, the wind throwing grains of sand in his face, and he swam to Alex who appeared to be sitting on a wall of some sort. It wasn’t until he was actually on the makeshift raft that Pendrell realized that it was wall -- the exact same wall from their cabin that had been ripped from the rest of the structure just a few minutes before.

"Close the windows!" Alex ordered.

Brian looked at him skeptically. "What windows?"

Wet hair flew in Alex’s eyes as he pointed to the raft under them. "They’re letting in water! Close the windows!"

Brian finally saw what Alex had been talking about as he looked at the two open windows on the wall. Water came flooding in and he struggled against the pounding waves to close and lock them.

*****

Zoris cackled gleefully as he looked around the warehouse. The Mr. Bubbles were ready. He had over 20,000 gallons of pink Mr. Bubbles solution at his disposal. With this much soap came a high degree of responsibility that he was more than capable of handling.

He walked around the well lit room, his heels clicking on the cement floor and echoing on the metal walls. Adjusting his monocle, he nodded to a guard.

"Now?" The guard asked.

"Now!" Zoris bellowed. "Release the bath soap into every body of water you can find! Lakes, streams, rivers, and especially the oceans!! No one will be safe from the polluted water! And when the world learns of what I’ve done and listens to my single demand, they will more than happily bring me Alexander Krycek so that I may kill him! The world is my tub, now let me soak in it!! Release the bubbles of death!!"

*****

Alex scowled at Brian who sat hunched over one of the wall’s windows, watching the ocean lap underneath it. The hurricane had long since past and now the two men were stuck on a floating wooden wall in the middle of the Pacific ocean with nothing to look at but the water and the sky, both of which, as they quickly discovered, were immensely dull.

"Will you please say something?" Alex asked.

Brian looked up. "There’s nothing to say," he murmured.

Alex gave an exasperated sigh. "There’s plenty to say!" He paused. "What about *socks*? Surely you’d like to talk about them?"

"No," came the reply.

Alex’s face became hard. "And why not?"

Brian shook his head. "I would think you’d know why, Alex. Look around us! Look at us! Look at yourself, for heaven’s sake! We’re two grown men who ever since we’ve met have had nothing but bad luck! And the subject of socks hasn’t helped us at all! If anything, it’s complicated matters more! I’m tired. I’m sick of having everything backfire. For the next several days, until we die withering of thirst and the gulls peck out our eyes, I want to sit here and feel sorry for myself."

"Feel sorry for yourself?" Alex repeated. "If anyone on this wall should feel sorry for himself, it should be me!"

A snicker came from Brian’s lips. "You?"

"Yes, me! I have lunatics at every corner chasing me, my head has a price on it, and worst of all, I can’t get you alone for ten minutes by myself!"

Brian showed no sympathy. "We were alone last night," he reminded him.

Alex winced.

"It wasn’t *me* who wanted to wash our socks before we did anything!" Brian said. "It wasn’t *me* who insisted that we boil them to get out a week’s worth of grime! It was *you*! ‘Let’s delay it for a few more minutes,’ you said! ‘What could possibly interrupt us this time,’ you said! ‘I want everything to be perfect,’ you said!"

"Okay!" Alex cried. 'Okay!"

But Brian continued. "So we waited because you wanted clean socks! We put it off when we could have finally gotten it done!"

"Hey! It’s not my fault that hurricane came up! I couldn’t have prevented that! We still would have had to abandoned the cabin even if we had opted for proceeding with dirty socks!"

"Yeah, but we could have left with smiles on our faces! It’s your fault that we don’t have those smiles on our faces, Alex! You and your damn waiting! And look where that waiting got us! Alone! In the middle of no where! No one around for miles! Likely to be stuck this way for days with no one but each other for company!"

They both paused.

"Alone," Alex mumbled.

"In the middle of no where," replied Brian, looking up from his window at Alex with a grin on his face.

"No one around for miles," mused Alex.

"Stuck here for days," said Brian.

"Just you and me. No interruptions. No guns. No Doris or Boris or monkeys or beavers."

"But our socks are soggy," Pendrell complained, looking at the wet socks on his feet and then at Alex’s feet.

"Screw the socks," Alex whispered as he pounced on Brian.

Passionate kisses were placed on Brian’s sunburned face, a gentle hand through his damp hair.

"Really?" Brian asked. "Screw the socks?"

Alex’s mouth clamped on top of Brian’s to shut him up. "Yes," he said in between kisses. "Screw them."

"But--" Pendrell began.

Alex put a finger over his lips. "No talking, Brian. It just slows us down."

Brian nodded and greeted Alex’s lips back to his. A nervous hand traced its way down to the small of Alex’s back, resting gently on the firm bottom.

"Oh, come on, Brian," Alex gasped as he sat up, ripping off his shirt. "Don’t be so timid."

"But--" Brian began as he sat up.

Alex pushed him back down roughly, his one hand holding Brian’s wrists tightly behind his head. "Don’t talk, just act. Before a goddamn cruise linear passes by and rescues us or something."

Brian smiled and then nodded in agreement. Alex released his hold on Pendrell’s wrists and slid his hand through his hair. Placing light kisses on Brian’s chin, then bottom lip, he quickened as he felt a impetuous and confident hand squeeze his butt tightly.

"Much better, Brian," he whispered.

Brian suddenly pushed the surprised Alex off of him and onto his back, the wall rocking unsteadily underneath them.

"What are--" Alex asked, getting no farther as his mind was suddenly distracted by the spontaneously suave and cool Pendrell who was ripping off his shirt by the buttons, exposing his chest underneath.

"What, lover?" Brian asked, climbing on top of him.

"I..."

"Yes, I know. Now don’t talk. Do that thing with your teeth on my ear again, Alex."

Alex happily complied and began to nibble on Pendrell’s right ear lobe. Steady hands were working swiftly at his belt buckle and Alex was certain that this was it. He could die a happy man if this would just take place, he was so sick of waiting and letdowns.

Then there was a noise underneath the wall. At first, neither noticed it because they were caught up in the heat of the moment. But then it grew louder, like a beak pecking on glass.

"What is that?" Alex asked, tearing his lips away from Brian’s.

Brian tried to push Alex’s face back to his. "Oh, God, who cares?"

Alex paused for a moment and then pressed his mouth back to Brian’s. But then the noise came again, this time louder.

"What IS that?" Alex asked again, throwing Brian off of him as he looked about.

"I don’t know! I don’t care!" Brian cried. "Ignore it!" He ran a hand over Alex’s bare shoulder in the attempt to make him forget the noise. But Alex nudged him away, his attention drawn to one of the windows.

"Brian, look!" He said, tapping on the glass.

Pendrell grudgingly crawled over to the window and peered down into it. "What am I looking at? Water? I’ve seen enough of that," he said as he placed kisses on Alex’s flushed cheek.

"No," whispered Alex, ignoring the kisses and staring intently out the window. "I think it’s a penguin."

"Oh, come on, Alex! Don’t get me all in the mood and then pull this! It’s probably just a crab!"

"No," Alex replied calmly. "It’s a penguin. And there’s a few icebergs over there," he said, pointing off into the distance.

Brian looked up, his jaw dropping then clenching in anger. "Oh, perfect!" He cried. "Just perfect! We’ve been lost at sea for less than three hours and we’ve somehow made faster progress to the North Pole on a floating wall than an actual boat with an engine could have! Typical! So typical!"

"I think penguins live in the South Pole," Alex informed him.

"Who cares? What’s the difference!" Brian said exasperated.

Suddenly, the penguin who had been tapping at the window, got the sudden bright idea that it would be easier to get on the strange floating thing if he just swam around to the side and jumped onto it, and this is exactly what he did.

Alex and Brian stared flabbergasted at the penguin who clambered aboard their wall and shook his pudgy little body off, spraying cold water all about him. The penguin studied them for a moment, decided that he would happily share his new floating home with the two pink creatures, and promptly coughed up a dead fish to show his hospitality.

They glanced at the fish and then back at the penguin who had already lost interest in them and was preening himself. A wind picked up and with it came a deep chill. The two men reached for their shirts and put them back on.

In the corner of Brian’s eye, he spied something and he turned to look at it. "Uh, Alex?" He asked, tapping him on the shoulder without looking away from what had caught his attention.

"What do you think we should name him?" Alex asked, ignoring Pendrell. "He looks like an ‘Iggy’ to me."

"Alex!" Brian hissed. "Over there! Big white things!"

"Yes, I’m aware of them, Brian. They’re called icebergs, which means the weather will soon be freezing and instead of someone finding our dehydrated and withered bodies in the future, someone will find our frozen, blue bodies. Isn’t death nice?"

"Damn it, Alex! I’ve seen icebergs before and these aren’t them! Look!"

Alex turned a weary glance in the direction to where Brian was pointing and then looked back to the penguin. Then he did a double-take and his eyes bulged. "What is that?" He asked.

Iggy the penguin also noticed the big white things and began to panic, flapping his wings around wildly while calling for his mother in his penguin tongue.

"Are those..." Brian paused. "Are those bubbles?"

Alex nodded. "Really big bubbles."

****

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