11:47 PM December 24th
The outer suburbs of Washington D.C.
"Christmas is such bullshit, man," Matt Black said, and took another tug on the bottle. Tall and broad-shouldered, his short black curly hair was tucked under a winter cap. He passed the bottle to his friend, Jack Jones.
"I know what you mean, man," Jack said, and took a mouthful himself. "It's like...like bullshit, like you said." By instinct, he brushed a stray blond hair behind his ear. Just as tall as his friend, and also in the last year of high school, he was skinnier and had stringy blonde hair down to his shoulders.
The two young men had left their neighbourhood after the family rituals of Christmas Eve, and stolen up to this wooded hillside, lightly covered in snow, to look down on the lights of their little borough and the dark fields that stretched beyond. Illuminated clearly with spotlights on this night was the main church, its grey stone steeple bathed in pure white light.
Jack pulled something out of the inner pocket of his jacket. "I got the blunt right here, man. Lemmie light it up. Hey, what the hell is in that swill, anyway?"
"I just mixed stuff together from a few bottles so my dad wouldn't notice too much of one thing missing, y'know?" Matt tipped the bottle and finished the last of it, then tossed the bottle into the bushes and wiped his lips with his sleeve.
"Yuck!" Jack shook his head, and then laughed drunkenly.
"So anyway," Matt said, "like I was saying man, about Christmas. I can't believe the bullshit. I can hardly fuckin' stand it sometimes, man. Hypocrisy."
"Holy SHIT! Look at that!" Jack yelled, and pointed up to the sky while his call echoed around him.
Matt looked up as well, and their eyes focused on a streak through the dark starry sky. They kept their eyes on it until it disappeared from sight, and then for a long time afterward kept their eyes on the heavens.
"Did you see it to?" Jack asked, turning toward Matt with eyes glittering and heavy breath visible in the cool air. "The reindeer, and..."
"...and dragging that sleigh..." Matt continued, awed.
"...and," Jack said, "did you catch - I mean - the fat guy sitting there, giving a little, um, wave and laugh? I mean..."
"Shit!" Matt jumped up and began running down the hill. He called back to his friend, who had belatedly started after him: "I gotta get on the phone and tell people about this. We'll be famous!"
*****
Jack and Matt stood outside the phone booth on the edge of a small gas station. They were in a bit of a panic when they got to the payphone, and wrestled over the receiver, getting into a shoving match about who to call first. In the end they let the operator direct the call to the department that was appropriate (Jack had yelled in Matt's other ear at that moment, so he hadn't caught the name exactly), and the person on the phone there had asked them to wait at their current location.
Over the hill, along the two-lane highway, two police cars appeared, flashing their lights but quietly heading in their direction.
"Maybe we should make a run for it?" Jack asked.
"Nah, don't worry man," Matt said, a slight tremble in his voice.
The cars stopped around the phone booth, and a large officer with short dark hair stepped out of one.
"Misters Matt Black and Jack Jones?" he asked. They nodded. "You placed a call in about a sighting of some sort?" They started to talk, but he quieted them with a wave. "We're just here until the right person comes along. Don't tell us, we're not involved.
"We'll just all sit tight and the right person'll come along soon to straighten this all out with you, ok?"
The two boys stood around the phone booth nervously. The two police cars, belonging to the local division, each held a pair of police officers. The dark-haired one who had stepped out to talk to them was sitting beside a large black officer with close-cropped hair, and the other car held two white officers, also large and burly, one with brown hair in a brush-cut, the other shaven-headed. They kept their eyes fixed on the boys, though they exchanged no more conversation.
Occasionally a car would stop for gas, and the boys could see the accusatory glances that the customers would throw at them, and an appreciative glance towards the police cars.
"Fuck man, you think we're in trouble?" Jack asked.
"Don't worry, don't worry," Matt replied. "What can they do? We haven't done anything wrong...ok, so we're a little plastered. Big deal."
A coffee-coloured Ford Taurus drove up and stopped beside the police cars. A few of the officers got out to talk to the driver, so the boys didn't get a clear view right away.
"Hey there Scully," on of the officers said. "I didn't expect to see you. Is this an X-File?"
"Not exactly," they heard a female voice reply. "But it's kind of in the neighbourhood. I owe a few favours, and Washington wants to keep this sort if stuff hush-hush, you know?"
"Hey don't tell us, Scully," another officer said. "The less we know the better."
Scully got out of the car, and walked up to where the two boys stood, looking chilled as the air had grown colder in the early morning hours. They saw a short woman with straight red hair down to her shoulders, and delicate white skin highlighted by slight eyeliner and glossy lipstick. She was slim and fit, but not without some flesh to add a roundness to her face and curves to her body. She was wrapped in a black leather trench coat that dropped almost to the ground, where the pointed toes of her black boots peeked out.
"Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI," she told the boys, and flashed her identification. "You've reported a 'sighting'?" She raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, um, y'see, you know Santa, right? Well..." Matt started.
"Shutup!" she snapped. "Not here. I've booked a room in the motel across the street." She turned her head over her shoulder: "Officers, can you help me escort these two?"
The officers led the two to the small ramshackle motel across the street. When Scully got out the key and opened the door they were pushed into a small dingy room on the first floor, with the door and window facing out into the parking lot. It was a room with a single large bed, a dresser, a table with a couple of chairs, and a TV. A dark doorway at the other end of the room led to the bathroom. A few bland paintings hung on the walls, and the room itself seemed abandoned halfway in a repair, with the wallpaper stripped off of half the walls in the room, leaving multi-coloured, patched-up drywall visible.
"Thank you officers," Scully said, "I'll take it from here." They left and she closed the door and pulled the window curtain. She pulled two chairs, without armrests, away from the table, and placed them together at the side of the room.
"Sit down," she snapped, and pointed with her finger.
