Story 270: "Finding Rokovoko" by prufrock's love

[wendelah1]

"Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are."
— Moby-Dick; or The Whale, by Herman Melville

Fanfiction, both reading it and writing it, has been off my radar entirely these past few months. You can easily guess why. I even forgot the xf_book_club's anniversary date. Sorry about that.

But since I've been in bed with a cold this week and in need of amusement, I decided to see if there was anything new to read. You haven't checked the fic forum at Haven in months, my brain chimed in helpfully. That's true. Okay. I'll do that.

Since I struck gold, I decided to bypass the nomination queue. Lo and behold: prufrock's love has posted a new story! Like so much of her best work, it's an AU, but this is not a historical. This X-Files universe stays fairly close to canon, though with a more realistic take on the cancer arc.

"Finding Rokovoko" is a spooky horror story set in the fourth season, beginning right after "Never Again." The casefile/X-file feels just like an episode of the series, complete with classic Mulder/Scully banter and a myth-arc related plot. Also, perfect title is perfect. You'll see what I mean.

Read Finding Rokovoko.

If you're in the mood for holiday-themed fic, you might check out maybe_amanda's daily posts at Haven.

Please come back and let us know what you think. Remember, the nomination post is always open for suggestions.

Comments

[zinnia03.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed this story very much, as I do most Prufrock stories. I was, I admit, a little leery of the "horror" description, but it's not Friday the 13th/Halloween type of horror, but a more realistic (and maybe therefore in some ways even more horrible) than those types. It reminded me a bit of reading Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" which remains one of my favorites in the genre. Things are simply not what they seem.

More specifically, the dialogue between M&S sounds like an episode to me, in the best way. P's Mulder always seems slightly in awe of Scully, even when he's ticked off or annoyed with her.

I devoured this story when it first came out so now I need to go back and give it a more careful read.

BTW, if anyone is having trouble loading it on their Kindle, what I did was save the story as a text file in Word, and then emailed it to my Kindle account and it worked fine.

[keslei]

More specifically, the dialogue between M&S sounds like an episode to me, in the best way. P's Mulder always seems slightly in awe of Scully, even when he's ticked off or annoyed with her.

I didn't realize it until you pointed it out, but this is so true, and one of the reasons I love her characterization of Mulder so much. And this time around, her Scully was pretty spot on too.

I was, I admit, a little leery of the "horror" description, but it's not Friday the 13th/Halloween type of horror, but a more realistic (and maybe therefore in some ways even more horrible) than those types.

I rarely read horror, but this story was the kind of creepy that I like. I think you're right about about it being more horrible due to its realism, though. I also think that having the story set in a middle-of-nowhere asylum allowed readers' imaginations to fill in the mental picture to the fullest horrific extent - we've all seen shows or movies with a creepy haunted asylum and we can take the descriptions we're given and envision whatever we find most frightening following Mulder through the asylum...