Story 168: "The Crouching Thing" by Sarah Ellen Parsons

[wendelah1]

This story was suggested by infinitlight (thank you, thank you, thank you), who thought it might generate controversy and discussion! Though I'm just back from vacation, and I'm still pretty jet-lagged, I'm always up for that. Since I haven't had a chance to read it yet myself, here's the header.

TITLE: The Crouching Thing
AUTHOR: Sarah Ellen Parsons
E-MAIL ADDRESS: se_parsons@yahoo.com
DISTRIBUTION: Wherever you want, just tell me.
SPOILER WARNING: Very mild spoilers for: Everything including Requiem
RATING: PG-13
CLASSIFICATION: Story, horror
KEYWORDS: Scully, Scully-angst, Skinner
THANK YOUS: To M. Sebasky and Perelandra for uber-beta and, Sab, Ropobop,
Livia, Alicia and the YV gang for comments and nit-picks.
SUMMARY: Sometimes we see things we don't want to see.


"The Crouching Thing"

Ready, set, read!

Please leave your recs for next time here.

Comments

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

Welcome back! I hope your vacation was great.

The thing in "Waiting" that reminded me of this story was Mulder's presence. In "Waiting" he's sitting in corners or standing in doorways, waiting for her. In this, he's waiting, too, and following her. Like "Waiting", as well, I think it's not completely clear if what Scully is seeing is real. I like unreliable narrators, and I like that this is a pretty unusual position for Scully to be in. Usually we can completely trust her viewpoint, but in these stories it's not so certain. She's not so certain.

The aspect of "The Crouching Thing" I've always liked best is the atmosphere--it's so strange and foreboding. It reminds me of some unsettling dreams I've had--where most things are normal but there is one thing that's horrifyingly turned on its head.

I think it is a story that's challenging to understand, so I'm not surprised to hear it being described here as confusing. I've read it several times but I think I still only have my own interpretation to go by. The summary is: Sometimes we see things we don't want to see. Sometimes the past won't leave us alone, no matter how much we want it to. Is Mulder a ghost? Scully can feel him touch her (and he punctures the basketball), so he's corporeal. No-one else can see him--but as she points out, she's the only one who knows how to look. Scully thinks she needs an exorcism; thinks simultaneously that he (it) might go away if she can ignore it. And yet the only thing it wants is her attention. Her son and the crouching thing both are trying to get her to pay attention. Is this a story about Mulder? I wonder.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Scully can feel him touch her (and he punctures the basketball), so he's corporeal.

Does he? I know he was trying to puncture it, but I can't find the part where it says he actually does. It's an important distinction, one way or the other, because if he really does puncture the ball before her eyes, then it's harder to explain him not being real. It sounds as though Scully thinks he's broken other household items in the past, but we have no evidence that she's actually seen him break anything. She may well have found things broken and attributed it to the creature's doing.

Also, throughout the fic the creature seems to become more agitated and more spiteful whenever the conversation between Michael and Scully takes a turn that would not, we can presume, be to Mulder's liking. The more Scully refuses to speak the truth, and the more Michael pries, the more proactively invasive the creature gets. Does the creature have extrasensory powers of perception? Can it hear/sense their kitchen conversation from out in the yard? Or is Scully's conscience reacting to the conversation and projecting her own guilt and agitation onto her imagined ghoul?

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

Good point. The story doesn't say he actually punctures it. I found the line:

If she didn't stop it, her grandson's toy would be destroyed.

So *she* believes he could break it, but we don't actually know that he could. His touching her and breathing on her is subjective, too; we don't know whether we can fully trust her judgment. Later I found:

Its feet tore at the grass

but the description then goes onto his actions, rather than being more specific about whether the grass is damaged.

Scully says the agitation also increases when he sees Walter, which would definitely make sense in terms of the creature reacting to conflicted feelings about her marriage.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

She thought back. When exactly had she first seen it?
It seemed to her that it had been hanging around
forever, but it hadn't been. But remembering its
advent was very nearly the same thing as trying to
remember what Mulder had been like.

Another part that could suggest the creature is imaginary. Scully doesn't remember when she'd first seen it, which makes sense if it's imagined, but seems unlikely if it's really there. Thoughts - even thoughts that seem to have a reality of their own - are much less concrete, and easier to forget the specifics of, but Scully one day out of the blue actually, literally seeing Mulder, who also happens to be a supernatural entity? I think she'd remember a thing like that pretty clearly.