Sure. Fine. Whatever. A Dana Scully Origin Story

Pen Pal

Without even telling her mom that she was home, Dana booked it up the stairs to her room and shut the door hard enough to rattle every trinket on her dresser. Her whole life, up until this point, had been so meaningless and mundane. She went to church every Sunday, prayed to God every night, did her homework, got good grades, came home, ate dinner, read a book, and went to bed only to do the same thing again tomorrow. Why would something this disturbing and mysterious choose her as its prey? It felt as if she was being attacked from multiple angles and she had no corners to hide in. Her life was a circle. An ouroboros that never ended. Why was her life now beginning to take a turn in a direction that she neither wanted to go in nor knew how to handle?

Gripping the tiny cross pendant that hung from the chain on her neck, Dana stepped into her closet and closed the door. This is where she went to escape the world. Inside, she had little to no clothes hanging but rather pillows, blankets, stacks of books, and glow in the dark stars that she stuck to the walls. Her closet was her fortress. It was her safe haven. She sunk to the cold, wood floor and wrapped a blanket around her bare legs. Trying to compose herself, still holding her necklace, she flipped on a flashlight and began to breathe deeply just like Melissa had taught her when they would do yoga together. She concentrated her mind on the air escaping her lungs and refilling them with life. In and out. In and out. Her mind began to relax and her shoulders no longer ached with stress. She released one last deep breath and the grip of the tiny cross in her hand. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the crumpled up note she found in her locker as well as the key.

"I just don't understand," She whispered as she examined them both carefully. Holding the key up to her eyes she noticed that it had another inscription on the converse side of the one labeled 617. In letters nearly invisible to the naked eye, Dana read, "Cum Sit Credere". She read it again in her mind, "Latin," she confirmed to herself. She had to think back to when she took Latin in Junior High School. "Credere is a form of credo, or to believe, and Cum is seeing or to see," She said as she closed her eyes deep in thought, "Believe and see.. See it to believe it...." How she wished that she would've continued taking Latin throughout High School instead of Spanish. A lightbulb went off in her head, "Seeing is believing," she cracked the code. But what did the key have to do with seeing or believing? More importantly, where did the key come from and why was she the new owner of it?

Dana did not believe in coincidences. Everything, in her mind, happened for a reason. Everything was destined to be before it even was.

The note, however, was more unsettling than any little key to her. Her first thought was of Pauline, dead, on national television. The last thing she wanted was to be made famous for being slaughtered by an unknown man, leaving this earth as the only witness of the crime. Nope. That is definitely not what she wanted.

"They may think you're a nobody, but just wait until they see you on TV." She read it out loud again and it still gave her the creepiest feeling. Dana needed to know what it meant, but she didn't want to know. She wanted to get rid of it. She wanted it to disappear and never come back. She crumpled the note up again and threw it deep into the darkness of her closet. The wad of paper hit something. Dana panned her flashlight over to where it landed and found an old shoebox of school work and letters. She crawled over to it, removed the lid and began to thumb through the old memories. She found a folder with the words Pen Pal scribbled on the front. With a smile, she opened the folder and began to skim through the letters that she and her pen pal had written nearly ten years ago.

August 15th, 1972

Dear Dana,

How are you? What is it like living in Germany? Is it hard to move a lot for your dad's job? I have always wanted to go to Europe. Do you like dogs?