All disclaimers apply. Don't shoot me by Kate "You shot me." "I had no choice." "Yes you did. You could have stabbed me, poisoned me, or just plain conked me on the head. Why'd you have to shoot me?" He squirmed uneasily. "The fans - they like shooting." "They didn't want you to kill me. They liked me. And do you have any idea what it's like to die of a gunshot wound? Do you have any idea what it's like to die?" He squirmed again. "But... I didn't want to kill you. It was-" he searched around for a suitable scapegoat "- it was all John Shiban's fault. He was the one who said the fans wanted more blood." "We were all killed off in your episodes. You're the one responsible." "No! It wasn't me! I swear! It was - it was all Spotnitz's doing. He threatened me - forced me to do it." He dropped onto his knees and started grovelling. "We don't believe you." "But you have to believe me! It's the truth!" "Truth smuth! There is no truth! Only a collection of lies. Lies created by you." "No, please, noooooooooooooooo..." Chris Carter woke with a start. As he wiped the sweat from his forehead he glanced at his watch. 10:13. "Oh great, this is getting really freaky" he muttered. That was the fifth time he'd woken up at 10:13 in the past one and a half days. He'd see people - no, they weren't real people; they were characters, *just* characters - and they haunted him remorselessly, blaming him for their stereotyped deaths. Deep Throat. Bill Mulder. Melissa Scully. X. Pendrell. Cancer Man. It wasn't even the fact that they'd died that they objected to. It was the fact that they'd all been shot. They said he was being unoriginal. They said he was being uncreative. They said he was being boring. They said that if he didn't think of more interesting ways to kill off characters they'd shoot him while he slept. Even when he was awake they haunted him. Melissa Scully would refuse to leave the room while he was writing a script and would continually offer suggestions, such as cutting out the long bits of prose and making Mulder and Scully more than partners. He tried to ignore her, but it was hard. She claimed to know what the fans wanted, but he knew she was wrong. He knew that the fans enjoyed hearing Mulder and Scully recite the thesaurus. Pendrell appeared ocasionally, usually to beg him to write a storyline involving Pendrell returning from the dead and asking Scully out. Carter refused every time. He wasn't that desperate for storylines... yet. Deep Throat wasn't as bad, which was good as he'd been dead the longest. To be truthful, he was Carter's favourite dead character. He liked him enough to bring him back for a few episodes. Bill Mulder he hadn't seen much lately - he had a feeling that ever since Cancer Man's death the two of them had been waterskiing. Whatever. X was doing his best to be helpful. He displayed his artistic side by sketching (graphically) all the different ways he could have met his demise. His favourites were being attacked by a swarm of killer bees whilst being run over by a train about to explode, and being pushed off the top of the Empire State Building into a pool of hungry alligators. Chris couldn't handle it all. It was just too much. He pulled open the top desk drawer. Inside was a loaded gun. He picked it up and cocked it, holding it against his temple. "Chris! No!" Melissa Scully appeared beside him. "Chris, you're better than this! Fight it! Fight it!" Chris lowered the gun. "Isn't that what Scully says to Mulder in Pusher, when he's pointing a gun at her?" Missy thought about it for a minute. "I think so." "And so that would mean that I should be pointing the gun at... you!" He pointed the gun at Melissa, who seemed completely unpeturbed. "Chris?" "Yeah?" "There's no point in shooting me. You've already done that? Remember the Anasazi trilogy?" Chris was angry that someone he created dared to speak to him like that - to tell *him*, the Creator - what to do. He pressed the trigger. Melissa Scully sighed as the bullet hit a framed photo on the wall behind her. A photo of Chris Carter shaking the hand of Zutron's world leader, Dnrwecuuserenwkl-Jo. When Chris saw what had happened he started to sob. "Nooooo. Not my precious picture! Nooooooo!" Missy sighed again. "I told you not to shoot. Are you ever going to learn?" She vanished. Chris rubbed his eyes. "I need to cut down my workload" he told himself. "I haven't slept in almost three years. I knew letting Spotnitz sign me up for that sleep-deprivation experiment was a bad idea." He put his gun back away in the desk drawer, threw the bits of broken glass in the waste-paper basket, and booted up his laptop. "Hello Mr Carter." He heard a familiar voice behind him and he spun around in his swivel chair, losing his balance and falling to the ground. "Pusher! What do you want?" Robert Modell, aka Pusher grinned. "Chris, will you do something for me?" Chris stared at him with a gaping mouth. "I- I.. I didn't create you. Gilligan created you. He was the one who shot you!" "I read the original script Chris. I wasn't going to die. But you made Vince change it. You made him shoot me." "No, No!!!! I didn't, I swear! I didn't..." he started crying hysterically. Pusher grabbed Chris by the collar of his Hawaiian shirt. "Listen to me!" "Okay" Chris said meekly, sniffing back a tear. "Chris, I need you to do something for me. Will you do something for me?" Chris Carter nodded dumbly. ~X~ The next day Bill Scully died after being run over by a semi-trailer filled with X-Files merchandise and Chris Carter slept better than he had in years. the end e-mail me. please. its not that hard.