Story 213: "Undying" by Elanor G

[wendelah1]

This story is told from Tooms's POV and it's just as creepy as that suggests. Elanor G is better known for her well-plotted casefiles, and they are excellent too, but this story is darkly original. The author rates it R but I would give it no more than a PG-13 for violence.

Please send the author some feedback and then let us know what you think.

Read "Undying".

Comments

[bardsmaid.livejournal.com]

Really nicely done! And I like the tie-in about Scully's immortality at the end. Thanks for picking this.

[mogster495.livejournal.com]

They never really developed the Tooms character in the series, and somehow he is a huge part of XF lore. I like stories that explore previously unexplored avenues. I particularly liked the part where he was laughing at Nosferatu. It makes sense that he would find the consumption of blood weak and trivial compared to his hunger for livers.
Not sure about Scully being undying though. I've always thought Clyde Bruckman was referring to her not dying of cancer. I never been a fan of Tithonus, I just thought the writers were being lazy with that one.

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

Eeep, I'm still reading "Fish for Fallen Light"!

(http://badforthefish.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/494/35946)

Edited to add: oh well this was short so, I read it anyway. It was an interesting piece. It's not often that you get to see the POV of the monster. Tooms laughing his head off at the cinema was a great scene - love his comment about blood being too thin, how creepy! And I liked the way the story travelled through times with the different characters. I thought that "his thoughts are long and slow" was a clever way to describe his 'otherness'. I liked that the old detective was used as one of the character.

One nitpick though. Are we supposed to think that the cross in the last piece belongs to Scully? Because the necklace Tooms got off Scully was not a cross. It was some roundish trinket.

This would make a good Halloween story. Nice and creepy.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

Yes good. I liked that we got a little more about Frank Briggs, who I always thought was an interesting character.

I think that the cross and crucifix were meant to be symbolic? Also given that he mentions the vampire movie. They're symbols that ward or kill vampires. The wooden crucifix was something he took at the beginning of his life, and the gold cross at the end (of course I have to disregard the fact, like badforthefish said, that he didn't actually take her cross necklace, but another one (I suspect the cross necklace didn't have a long enough chain for him to plot-point it from around her neck without her noticing, or they would have used it)).

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I liked this story, though "liked" is as far as I can go. It's fairly original by X-fic standards, but not by horror standards.

Specific things that I liked. It's well-crafted. Frank Briggs. The ambiguous perceptions of Scully and Mulder at the end. It might have been a reference to S's immortality, but M is mentioned too. Maybe it's that "shining" of hers, the sensing of the weird that made up to a minor extent for the way the writers kept her away from actual supernatural events during the first seasons. They should have done more with it. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Sometimes it occurs to me that we're discussing ancient history. Not Roman Empire ancient, but still...