Title: The Man in 119
Author:
Fandom: X-Files
Characters: Fox Mulder
Warning: Post-series 7.
Word Count: 155
Rating: SFW
Summary: The man in 119 takes his tea all alone
Notes: Songfic the way I do it. Answer to an E-Muse Ultimate Songfic Challenge.
The man in 119 takes his tea all alone. I hear his opera through the door. “‘Aida,'” Kate says. “It’s about a woman who died for love.”
“He’s been here all summer,” Mrs. Leaven tells Kate. “He doesn’t get any letters and doesn’t send any. He never uses the telephone. I think he’s nursing a broken heart.”
“We should invite him to eat with us,” Kate says, but there’s something about him, in the way he holds his head as if he’s listening beyond us, that tells me he’ll say no.
I find a Polaroid on the table, beneath the morning paper: the man in 119, a tiny baby in his arms. He comes running back into the restaurant and takes the picture with shaking fingers.
“I thought I lost that.”
“Your son?” Of course it is, but he’s so lonely.
He puts the picture away. “No one,” he says, and goes back to his room.
end
Mood and various lines stolen from “Verdi Cries” by 10,000 Maniacs.
‘I draw a jackel-headed woman in the sand/Sing of her lover’s fate, sealed by jealous hate/and wash my hand in the sea/With just three days more I’d’ve just about learned the entire score/To ‘Aida'”