“Mulder and Scully investigate the deaths of two men believed to have been killed by a powerful psychokinetic force“

Scully’s gonna be all “there’s a perfectly good explanation for this!” and Mulder’s gonna be all “you’re right, Scully, it’s the work of sentient, conscious, vibrating butt plugs and the government isn’t going to get away with this.”

Howard Graves is a man about to get killed by a powerful psychokinetic force! Oh wait, he’s already dead. A woman is rummaging through Graves’ office, presumably his secretary, and she’s very sad to be cleaning up the office of a man who “killed himself”. And by “killed himself” and mean “killed himself by means of a powerful, psychokinetic-type force maybe?”

That evening, the same woman gets attacked by two men as she tries to deposit her paycheck at an ATM. She goes *squirm* and *yell* while they go *punch* and *attempted rape*. But then something happens! Something mysterious. And powerful. And psychokinetic. Radical, man.

Two hours later, two young teenagers are looking for a place to fuck. They try to scale the ladder of a building’s fire escape and discover the dead bodies of the two attacky, rapey men. Cue intro.

NICE TO SEE YOU HANGING OUT! HA HA HA HAAA!!

Scully and Mulder have been summoned to the Bethesda Naval Hospital’s autopsy room in the dead of night to get their X-Files expertise! The two dead bodies, you see, they’re still kind of twitchin’ and floppin’ and their body temperatures have not dropped below 98.3°F in the six hours they’ve been dead. Agent Angry Mulder gets impatient after three minutes because the room full of government personnel aren’t coughing up answers to questions like “how were these bodies transported?” or “can I have some sex with that one?”

“The most troubling aspect of the death is the throat area,” explains the hospital’s resident autopsy-performing lady. The throats have been crushed, but there’s no evidence of bruising or tissue damaged. Like they’ve been crushed from the inside! Like thousands of tiny little Atom Ants have done some real work on these hapless dudes.

“How can an esophagus be crushed without the neck ever being touched?” Scully asks Mr. Supernatural Know-It-All after they leave the room.
“Psychokinetic manipulation,” Mulder whispers coyly. Scully smirks like she’s not used to this shit by now.

Come on, Scully. I need someone to share with. These eyeglasses aren’t gonna eat themselves!

Howard Graves’ secretary, Lauren, does some shady stuff at the office the next day. She makes a secretary spill her coffee when she doesn’t Lauren her speak to her boss. Lauren tries to quit but he won’t let him. He considers her family. “The company needs you. Especially now,” he grabs her chin creepily. Then his bracelet tightens hard around his wrist and he goes “agrgh” and “aaugh” and “rrrgh” for a minute. Lauren’s not doing it on purpose, but I think she may some of that psycho-whatsits!

After doing some research on 1993 internet, they discover that one of the murdered victims belongs to an Islamic terrorist group. After reviewing the ATM surveillance tape, they discover the two men attacking Lauren and wonder why a couple of terrorist hooligans are robbing a woman at an ATM machine (probably because they need money to fund their terror bombs and their highly decadent orgies). The surveillance tape also shows a very strange blur in the background at the time of the attack. Perhaps it’s another individual. OR MAYBE *DUN DUN DUNNNN* IT’S NOT.

Wait a minute, this isn’t the Yankees game I taped last night!

Without any other leads, they go find Lauren in Philadelphia, where it’s always sunny. Mulder rudely invites himself into her house, proving he’s not a vampire. Lauren doesn’t recognize the mugshots of the two assailants (liar), so they show her a snapshot of the attack which makes Lauren go “oh”. She acts like she sort of recognizes the blur, but doesn’t want to cough up any info. Mulder hands her his phone number and winks, tells the lass to give him a ring-a-ding-ding if she’s feeling gossipy.

Then they leave. Lauren looks out of the window and makes their car drive in reverse, out of their control. Scully yells while Mulder maintains his usual poorly-acted stoicism. They crash into another car full-speed at an intersection and leave without a scratch (proving that they actually ARE vampires). Mulder makes a big ol’ HUH? face with his pouty lips, which I find quite alluring.

They mechanic sends the car home with a clean bill of health! No severed wires, no leaked brake fluid. However, the headlights are on even though the car isn’t. Residual electrostatic charges in the filaments! Aliens and psychokinesis! Lauren did it! Lauren did it! And Scully is getting skeptical yet again. Then the headlights flicker off with a little buzz and Scully makes a big ol’ BUH? face with her pouty lips. Not as alluring.

Now it’s time to hella spy on Lauren outside her building. They catch her throwing a fit while a maintenance man tries to remove Howard Graves’ name from his assigned parking spot. Now some guy named Howard Graves is involved?! Way too many people man, this case blows chunks.

Scanning some old newspapers reveals a headline about Graves’ suicide and his connection with Lauren. Lauren’s the center of all this. Lauren’s the hub. Lauren’s the big cheese. They spy on her some more and discover her mourning at the gravy grave of Grave’s three-year-old daughter. A groundskeeper tells them that she drowned in a pool on Graves’ watch in 1969. They find it VERY suspicious that Lauren gives a shit about any of this. Mulder mentions that the daughter would be Lauren’s age if she had lived.

How many graves can a Graves’s grave grave if Grave’s grave could… grave grave?

Scully’s report includes speculations that Lauren and Graves’ connection might be a motivation for his suicide, and that perhaps Lauren is indeed at the center of all these deaths.

Mulder develops a photo he took staking out Lauren’s house. They enhance the photo of her through the window and find an ethereal visage of Howard Graves’ face. Scully claims he’s alive! Mulder claims maybe not! Who’s to say who’s alive and who isn’t?! Certainly not the Federal Bureau of Investigations! They have no business investigating this kind of thing.

Lauren hears ghostly voices in her bathroom in the middle of the night and discovers a tub full of blood. It drains itself. Lauren gasps and blubbers.

The dynamic FBI duo visit the hospital where Graves’ autopsy was performed. “Four out of six liters of blood down the drain,” the doctor relays dryly.

“I don’t suppose you ran any dental confirmations?” Mulder asks.
“What for, it was him,” the doctor responds.
“How did you know?” Scully defends Mulder here.
“…it said so on the toe tag,” smirks the doctor.

Welp, we’re done here! But — BUT — Scully discovers that Lauren was the one who identified the body, which continues the suspicion! Even though this poor bastard was cremated, Graves’ organs were donated. Time to do an identification check! We’ll come to that later, don’t forget, ok?

It’s quittin’ time. Lauren packs up her stuff during her going-away party and returns to Graves’ office to fondly look around for a bit more time. Her weird boss enters and confronts her about Graves’ death. There is an exchange that reveals Lauren knew that her boss “had Howard Graves killed”. And why does Lauren know that? Because Graves told her. From beyond the Graves!

Your chin is so soft, Lauren. Do you use special chin lotion?

Identification comes back positive on Howard Graves. He’s a very dead man.

Lauren knows too much! Her creepy boss hires a couple of assassins to take care of Lauren at her house. However, when they arrive, ghostly Howard-Beyond-the-Graves kicks their fucking asses and kills them. He busts lightbulbs while doing it, which seems extremely unnecessary to me. But hey! I didn’t write this! Someone smarter than me did!

Mulder shows up to the house to find one of the assassins hanging in the air getting his throat squeezed by the Invisible Man. The dude gets dropped once he’s definitely dead. Scully, of course, misses all of this and comes into the house too late. Just once, JUST ONCE, she should show up somewhere before Mulder does goddamnit.

Oh man, this is totally kicking rad! I’m soooooo high right now, Scully!

The government personnel from earlier in the episode start confronting our favorite resident FBI agents for interfering with the case, but both Mulder and Scully get saucy and claim that the other agents are withholding information from THEM. They look guilty about this. Cornered, they explain that the business Lauren works at are supplying parts to the terrorist group. How is Lauren involved? Hard to say. Fuckin’ Mulder and Fuckin’ Scully are interfering! So knock it off, they got some terrorists to bust. What’s this about psychokinesis? Step off with that nonsense, son!

This is the part where Empathic Mulder comes out and asks a scared Lauren, who feels like she can’t go back to her house, if Graves is still around her. Still around trying to protect her. Lauren starts spilling the beans about her company’s involvement with selling parts to the terrorists. Creepy Boss had Graves killed because he couldn’t trust him to keep quiet, and now he’s still around. Even Scully believes her. She asks Lauren to tell Graves that she loves him so he can move on to the other realm, which is always something ghosts need to do and can’t because no one tells them they love them.

Scully later reveals that she DIDN’T believe Lauren (what a twist!) and that she just wanted to do what is needed to do to keep pushing this case forward and stop the terrorist stuff. That seems a lot more real than, like, ghosts. Seriously.

Warrant in hand, the FBI moves out to try to bust the company and find evidence somewhere in the building. Creepy Boss tries to stay calm as Lauren helps them ransack the place, and Mulder notices that the guy “isn’t even breaking a sweat”. It’s a failure! Everyone’s going to go home and cry.

You can tell that we’re even more special than your typical special agent because of the intensity in our eyeballs.

Certainly, even after most of the FBI leaves, Lauren still tries to tear up the place looking for evidence, which prompts Creepy Boss to call her a “stupid bitch”. If there’s one thing ghosts don’t like, it’s hearing other men call their loved ones stupid bitches. He invisibly starts choking Mr. Boss Man while only Mulder is there and not Scully. The door is locked, Scully can’t get in, papers are flying all over the room, a letter opener hovers in front of the boss guy like it’s Macbeth. Then no one dies, but the letter opener flies into the wall. It splits the wallpaper and reveals secret documents lodged in the wall. Busted!

We all have a hearty laugh! Everyone wins! Lauren leaves forever and never comes back.

EPILOGUE. At a new job, Lauren walks around happily. But, when a woman pisses her off a little bit, a cup of coffee starts trembling on the desk. A truck passing by outside? The ghost of Howard Graves? Bugs Bunny under the desk with a giant magnet?

We’ll never know. We’ll just never know.

Next Time on the X-Files

Season 1, Episode 7 — “Ghost in the Machine”
Mulder and Scully eat so much KFC that Scully starts hallucinating about aliens and Mulder starts hallucinating about dressing up as a woman in Twin Peaks.