Next thing you know, Scully's kicking in the door at the Sam Houston Motor Lodge. The last of her pizza shakes off the bed, courtesy of the still-going-strong Magic Fingers. A lone pair of socks pokes out from behind the bed. Scully walks in just as Ronnie Strickland leaps from behind the bed and growls at her fiercely, all glow-in-the-dark eyes and sharp, pointy teeth. She gets off a shot before he pushes her to the ground and makes for the door. Scully squeezes two more rounds from her weapon before he disappears.

LBO. Mulder is resting his head on the desk like he and Scully are in the midst of a spirited round of Heads Up, Seven-Up. "That's it?" he asks. Scully shrugs and explains that, luckily, she'd gotten there in time and that although he was "drugged," he was "more or less unharmed."

Best scene ever. Scully Vision: she kneels beside Mulder, who's prone on the motel floor. His eyes aren't focusing properly. Basically, he looks stoned out of his mind. "Mulder, are you are okay?" she asks, patting his face, then shaking his chin. He finally looks up, his eyes drugged and dull. "Who's the black private dick who's a sex machine with all the chicks?" he sings, matter-of-factly. Then, in a quiet falsetto: "Shaft!" Scully looks...um, concerned. "Can you dig it?" Mulder asks. It's hard to make a call, but if I had a gun to my head, I'd have to say that the best part of this particular musical interlude is the way Mulder keeps looking around the room, as though he's serenading a wide audience, perhaps at dinner theatre. "They say this cat's a bad mother -- shut yo' mouth!" he sings. "I'm just talkin' 'bout Shaft," he finishes.

LBO. Mulder leaps out of his desk chair. "I DID NOT!" he insists. Scully gives him an "oh, yes, you did" look, but says nothing. "Long story short," she continues, taking us back to Scully Vision. She explains that although her first two shots missed Ronnie Strickland, her fifth took out a tire on his car, forcing him to flee on foot. She left Mulder behind, she explains, and entered the woods in pursuit. "I assumed you were incapacitated," she tells the pacing Mulder back in the LBO. But when she entered the clearing, she found that, somehow, he'd reached Ronnie first and "overreacted." They look at each other for a beat. "And that his vampire teeth were fake," she adds. Mulder's pacing, worried. "And that's what you're going to tell Skinner?" he asks. Scully makes a sour face. "Well, I'm going to argue that we caught a killer," she points out. "An utterly unsupernatural killer, but a killer nonetheless." And also that Mulder was drugged, and therefore shouldn't be held responsible for his actions. "You are afraid to tell the truth!" Mulder blurts out, pointing an accusing finger at her. "Excuse me?" Scully eyebrows. Mulder crosses the LBO and stands real close to her, yelping that Scully is concerned that if she tells the truth, "[she'll] look like an idiot. Like [he does]." Oh, dear. Issues much? Poor thing. Scully just looks up at him calmly and suggests that he tell her his version of the story. "Starting at the beginning," she directs. Mulder looks down at her for a beat. "You're damn right," he says finally. "Yesterday morning started like any other morning," he says. "You arrived at the office, characteristically less than exuberant."