IMAGES FROM "PATIENCE"


TEASER
A man creeps into a house suspiciously. Upon entering, we see that it is the husband of a woman in bed, and he was only trying not to wake her. She tells him that she could smell him as soon as he came in because the formaldehyde is so strong (he is a caretaker). She tells him to go outside and take his clothes off to get rid of the smell.

The man walks outside and starts to undress. Suddenly something attacks him. His wife hears his scream and comes out of the house. The human size bat attacks her as well.

ACT ONE
Scully is in the office. She picks up Mulder’s nameplate and looks at it. She puts it away in the desk drawer.

Doggett opens the door. He was talking in the hallway to some other agents. He tells her that they are just some friends and were curious. She tells him that she’s not there to be a curiosity, she’s there to work. He tells her that he is there for that too.  He tells her that the whole weekend and that morning he read all of the X-Files in the filing cabinet, and just came back from getting some coffee. She is surprised and asks him if he has any questions. He just laughs and says, “Just a few.”

Doggett asks her where her area in the office is and where in the room he will be. She tells him that they are in Mulder’s office and it is only temporary. She then takes the nameplate back out of the drawer and puts it back on the desk.

Scully tells Doggett about the case and shows him some slides. There have been two homicides in Idaho, the first being a white male of sixty-two who was killed on his front porch about ten feet away from his wife. The cause of death was blood loss from numerous deep wounds, bite marks. The bite marks were on his head, torso, and hands. Two of the man’s fingers are missing. They were eaten off. Doggett asks if it was by an animal. She tells him that they were murders. The bites on his wife appear to be human. He tells her that he has seen some violent crimes, but that this is serious screwed up stuff and extreme.  He asks if there was any demonstration of a motive. She tells him that according to the local PD there wasn’t, nor was there any patterns, signs of ritual, or anything else. He tells her that he has to admit he’s at a loss.

BURLEY, IDAHO
11:18 AM
Scully and Doggett go to the home of the couple that was killed. They are met by the sheriff. He tells them that they think they can handle the problem themselves, but some hotshots in the county seats think that it is beyond them. He tells them though, that that doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate their help.

Doggett tells the sheriff that he is baffled by what he has seen. The sheriff is surprised. Scully tells him that they see cases like this regularly in their area of unit, and that Doggett is just new to the X-Files. She says that she can assure him that there is nothing baffling about human bite marks.

He tells her that now they aren’t so sure that they bite marks are human. The neighbors found the bodies, thus contaminating the crime scene. However his men did a good job of separating the shoeprints and pulled the ones below on the porch.

Doggett looks down at the prints and asks what they are from. The sheriff tells him that whatever they are, he knows they’re not human. Scully says that they are not from an animal either. He wonders how that could be because there are only four toes. She tells him that that’s not an uncommon birth defect, no more rare than polydactyly. 

SHERIFF: What did she just say?
DOGGETT: I assume she means it could be human.

Doggett asks her if that’s a fair assumption. She says that she thinks that assumption is the problem there. A strange footprint is found and immediately the most important evidence is thrown out to try to force an explanation. She says that maybe the print can help explain the bite marks. The sheriff asks her how. She tells him that she’s not quite sure yet.

The sheriff questions that and Doggett says that he has to say that he’s worked a lot of homicides, and if the victim is laid out for any amount of time at all, in a setting like that, it would be pretty remarkable if they didn’t attract animals.

They both look to Scully, and she says that postmortem predation is definitely a consideration, but she only sees one print. If it were an animal, there would be numerous prints all over the porch and yard. The cops all move around looking beneath them.  Scully asks Doggett if he believes her, and he just says that he’s going to go look around.

The sheriff tells Scully that they have no motive or anything, but she stands there, sure that it is a man they are looking for.

Meanwhile, Scully finds some scratches on the top of the doorframe.

Scully tells him that she’s sure what he is going to tell the hotshots in the county seat will alleviate their fears, but only until it attacks again. Then she tells him that she never said it was a man.

Scully follows Doggett inside the house where they find more of the same footprints. 

In the bedroom Doggett tells Scully that there is a more logical answer. They are simply looking for a psychotic killer with a deformed foot.

DOGGETT: You familiar with the principle of Okam’s razor?
SCULLY: Yeah. You take every possible explanation and you choose the simplest one. Agent Mulder used to refer to it as Okam’s principle of limited imagination.

She asks him if he has a simple answer as to how it happened when there are only prints every twenty-five feet.

They keep looking around, and in the closet Scully finds a door to the attic that has been opened. She goes up and looks around. Doggett follows her. Scully walks over to the window and surmises that whatever it was probably escaped that way.  Doggett pulls out a flashlight and shines it in her face.

DOGGETT: You ever carry one of these?
SCULLY: Never.

They keep looking around and come upon the fingers that were missing from the caretaker’s body. They’re in pretty bad shape. Scully tells Doggett that from the smell of it, they were regurgitated.

Above them, Scully finds more claw marks. She tells him that she saw them on the porch too. 

DOGGETT: It looks like to me,I don’t know, like it was, it was…
SCULLY: Hangin’ there?
DOGGETT shakes his head in agreement

McKESSON RESIDENCE
3:18 PM
After retrieving it from a closet, a woman sits and looks at a photograph album. Suddenly she is attacked by the creature.

CASSIA COUNTY MORGUE
Scully is in the morgue when Doggett walks in. She autopsied the woman’s body, but found nothing that would alleviate anyone’s fears about what killed the man or his wife. Doggett questions that and says that she means ‘who’ killed them. She tells him what she found leans more towards an animal explanation. The scratches on the body match the four-toed print they found, and the bites have fang-like tears. What she thought were marks left by human molars are now inconclusive because of enzymes that were found in the bites that are clearly inhuman. The enzymes are anti-coagulants which are found solely in the saliva of bats. She tells him that she can’t explain it, but she owes the sheriff an apology. He tells her that maybe she doesn’t.  He shows her a Montana newspaper article, circa 1956, that is pretty much the same as what she has told him.

Scully looks at the paper and starts to read it. She says that the creature was taken to the county coroner who confirmed that it was neither man nor animal. Doggett adds that two days later the coroner was found disemboweled by something with sharp teeth and four-toed claws, that ate several body parts and regurgitated them elsewhere. Scully asks if they ever found it. He tells her that five men either died or disappeared and then the killing stops, but it doesn’t say why. Forty-four years later it appears it’s back and killing again.

The scene changes and the camera pans to show the dead woman on the ground on top of the photograph album. The bat-like creature jumps in front of her.

ACT TWO
McKESSON RESIDENCE
5:51 PM
Doggett crouches on the floor of the woman’s house and looks at some more scratches.

The sheriff shows him some more marks on the rafters. He tells Doggett that they look like claw marks to him.

Before Doggett can show the sheriff the newspaper article, Scully comes up behind them. She found something that she thinks is a break in the case. She tells the sheriff something he already knew. The woman’s daughter, Ariel -- her body was pulled from the river the previous week. The sheriff tells her that he got the call and had to tell Mrs. McKesson the bad news. He asks if she thinks there is a connection. She says that he told her that her daughter had been horribly and inexplicably burned.  The two hadn’t seen each other for over forty years, forty four to be exact -- which is the that the date that the newspaper article says the killings first took place. She tells them that the daughter is the connection, and the killings only started up after her body was found. She says that the body was burned for a reason and they need to find out why. She wants the woman’s body exhumed. The sheriff says that he won’t do it, so Doggett whispers something to him and he agrees to have it exhumed.

Scully angrily asks Doggett what he whispered to the sheriff. He tells her that he told the man to listen to her, that she is in charge of the X-Files that deal with paranormal phenomena and is the expert. She tells him that she is not an expert, but a scientist who has seen a lot. He tells her that she is taking a leap, and that it is not the way he works, even if most of the X-Files were solved with leaps of logic. She tells him that she thinks believing the newspaper article was a pretty big leap.

A man with a cloth around his face walks into some kind of shack or barn. He walks over to a wooden beam and pulls two small bats off of it, then puts them in a cage. There are more bats around squeaking. He then walks out and carries them into his cabin. He shuts the door and on the back is a stuffed bat.

CASSIA COUNTY CEMETARY
10:23 PM
The sheriff arrives at the cemetery. When he gets there, the coffin has already been pulled out of the ground. He tells the men that they work fast, but they tell him that they only had to move the coffin, because someone had already dug it out. The lid is covered in scratch marks.

As they leave, the sheriff walks over to a tree stump. There is an eye peeking out. Suddenly he is attacked by the bat creature and killed.

ACT THREE
1:07 AM
The sheriff’s body is wheeled into the morgue. Doggett is called out of the room by one of the cops.

Before Scully can start an autopsy, the cops tell Doggett that they don’t want her autopsying the body and that they are not welcome. The cop says that Scully is responsible for the sheriff’s death. Doggett tells him that the only one responsible is the one who did it. They say that they should have been out looking for whoever was doing the killings, not bringing out the body for her. He tells them that that’s what they should be doing now.

Doggett goes back into the morgue. Doggett starts covering up the sheriff’s body and says that things have taken a turn. Scully says that they haven’t. He tells her that she can think what she wants but it looks bad for the FBI. Scully tells him that the sheriff’s murder was unavoidable. She uncovers the woman that was pulled from the river, her body is completely burned beyond recognition. The woman died of natural causes, from congestive heart failure, and her body was burned afterwards, to cover something up. He asks what they are trying to cover up and she tells him that that’s what she still doesn’t know. He tells her that they know what they are looking for and they should be out looking for it. She tells him that it kills like an animal but with purpose. It stalked the detective for the same reason that it stalked the old woman and the undertaker. Each of the victims had had contact with the burnt body. The undertaker prepared it, her mother ID’d it, and the detective got the call when she was found. He asks her who else would have had contact with it, and she tells him that the man who pulled it from the river would have, Myron Stefonyak. Doggett pulls out the newspaper article and says that one of the hunters’ names was Ernie Stefonyak.

SLADE RIVER
6:58 AM
They find the man, but he tells them that he is safe, and he won’t let them help him. Doggett mentions Ernie, and he says that he is his brother. Doggett says that he was one of the three hunters of the creature. When they ask more about him, he tells them that Ernie is dead. He was killed by the creature. Doggett says that in the newspaper it just says that he disappeared. He says that it was forty years ago and to leave it alone.

4:28 PM
They watch him from the car as he leaves some supplies for his brother on a raft in the lake. Scully starts doubting herself and thinks that maybe she is wrong about the case. She tells Doggett that she was sure of the facts as she had deduced them scientifically, but maybe she is trying to force them into shape and manufacturing a theory.

DOGGETT: Well, what happened to takin’ a leap?
SCULLY: Maybe I’m just trying to hard.
DOGGETT: To do what? To be Mulder?

Doggett tells her that he may not be Oxford educated. All he knows about the paranormal is that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. However, he doesn’t think she’s wrong. She asks him what makes him think that. He tells her that he’s no Fox Mulder, but he can tell that the man is hiding something. He says that Myron fished a woman out of the river who’s been gone for forty years. He has a brother he hasn’t seen in over forty years -- a brother who just happened to hunt down some creature over forty years ago. She asks him what the man has to hide. He tells her that that’s what he’s hoping their good cop work is going to find them.

Myron goes into his garage and loads some supplies on his truck. The camera pans back to show the creature hanging from above.

Myron carries some more supplies outside to the edge of the lake.

BIRD ISLAND
9:17 PM
While in a small rowboat Scully and Doggett watch Ernie go to the edge of the lake to take the supplies. They yell to him and finally catch up with him. He is the man from before who had the scarf covering his face. 

The three of them go into the man’s cabin. There are stuffed bats and the like all around them. Ernie asks them what you do when fear becomes obsession. He has stayed hidden in the cabin for forty-four years in case it came back for him. Doggett questions what he knows about it. He tells them that on the evolutionary scale bats are near apes, and that a human could have came from a bat. It hunts like a bat but with the cold-blooded vengeance of a man. Scully says that even if that were true, how could it find him out there on an island. He says that he needed to cut off all contact. Communication could be only one way.  However, his brother gave him help. He tells them that there was also his wife. Doggett guesses correctly that she was the woman who his brother pulled from the river. Ernie says that she gave up everything to be with him. He forbade her to tell her mother. In forty-four years and six acres of island, she had only one demand -- to be buried in consecrated earth, she was a Catholic.

After a moment of silence, Scully tells him that it has killed four people, all of whom would have had traces of his scent from various degrees of contact with his wife’s body.

He asks about his brother. They tell him that he left and is all right. He asks them how they know he is okay, because he might have been all right before, but it is night, which is when the creature strikes.

Doggett goes out with his gun to find out what is out there. Scully jumps up to follow, but he tells her to stay there.

The man tells her that they have come in contact with him, and now it has their scents as well.

The creature attacks Doggett on the lake and knocks him under water. He hits the bat with one of the oars from the boat and knocks it away.

When the bat is getting close, Scully gets out her gun. It starts attacks the man and she shoots at it, but it is too late. It leaves, but she is not sure where it has gone.

Doggett comes in, his side tour up. She starts to help him when the bat comes after him again. Both of them shoot at it and finally it leaves.

Two weeks later in the office, Scully is looking at Mulder’s nameplate again. Doggett comes in and tells her that Myron Stefonyak has moved to Wyoming and is all right. He’s gone into hiding.

Scully asks Doggett if he believes that the creature will come after them again. He tells her that he shot it, and so did she.

She tells Doggett that she never had a desk, but she will make sure that he gets one. Scully hesitates.

SCULLY: And I just, I just wanna say, um, thank you for watching my back.
DOGGETT: I never saw it as an option. I’m sure you don’t either.

She then takes Mulder’s nameplate and resolvedly puts it back in the desk drawer.

IMAGES FROM "PATIENCE"


Overall Rating : 7
*Shippy Rating: 2
*Note: Shippiness will ALWAYS be based on MULDER and SCULLY. The scale is based on the Redux II scale (1-10, as Redux II being a 10 [now with Triangle being an 11, All Things being an 11.5, and Millennium being a 12, all above the scale])*


If you have any more information, spoilers, or questions for me, feel free to email me. If you give me a tip, I don't have to reveal my source, unless you want me too.