“2Shy” is episode six of season three of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night in Cleveland, Ohio, and a man and a woman are in a car. By the sounds of it, they’ve been in communication for a while, but this is their first in-person meeting. The woman hopes that the man isn’t disappointed. He isn’t. He’s saying all the right things. The woman accidentally breaks her chain in her nerves and the man leans forward to fix it. A rash is seen on his neck. They start to kiss, but the woman reacts badly and draws back. There’s something on her face and in her mouth that appears to have come from the man’s mouth. He lunges forward again.
In the morning, a police car notices the car still parked where it was. The officer gets out and heads over to it. He tries to gain the attention of the occupant. When he wipes the window, what he sees shocks him, and he calls for backup. The necklace identifies a body inside as the woman.
There are a lot of people at the crime scene when Mulder and Scully arrive to be greeted by Detective Alan Cross. Cross explains that the car belongs to a Lauren MacKalvey, but they haven’t been able to confirm it’s her body, as they couldn’t make a positive ID. The body is missing much of its flesh and is covered in a substance that isn’t found anywhere else in the car. Cross asks Mulder if he has any idea and he tells him not yet.
Scully thinks Mulder knows more. A couple of months ago, a report crossed Mulder’s desk from the Mississippi office. Four women had disappeared and only one body was found, too badly decomposed to autopsy. Mulder wants Scully to find out what the substance is. He’s going to see if the victim was a lonely heart. The other four all answered personal ads in the local papers. If it’s the same killer, he’s just getting started.
The killer is currently in a chat room online with someone, reassuring her about meeting. There’s a knock on his door and he answers it. A woman tells him that the locks to the storage closets have been changed and she has the new key for him. She would appear to be the landlord. The woman appears taken with the man, and says she knows what he does, believing he’s an author or an editor. She wants him to take a look at some of her poems.
Scully is at the morgue when Cross arrives. He didn’t know she was going to be observing the autopsy. She isn’t; she’s doing it. Cross admits he’s possibly surprised she’s a medical doctor. He claims he’s old fashioned in certain regards and thinks female law enforcement officers shouldn’t be on certain cases. Like this one. The killer has an attitude towards women; that must be affecting Scully’s judgement. No, it isn’t. When Cross leaves, Scully notices liquid seeping from the morgue drawer. She pulls it out and finds that only a few bones are left.
Mulder is speaking to Lauren’s roommate. She never met the person Lauren saw, but he seemed nice. They met in a big and beautiful chatroom, because Lauren has a bit of a weight problem. The roommate says the letters he sent were amazing. So amazing, she printed off hardcopies and kept them herself. Mulder calls Scully afterwards and tells her the killer’s online account, 2Shy, was opened using a Mississippi victim’s credit card. She tells him there won’t be an autopsy.
Scully tells Mulder just how hard the bone she is holding normally is. Except it’s squishy. The substance on the body is very similar to stomach acid, but twice as acidic. Mulder wants to know if anything is missing from the chemical analysis of the remains. Well, there’s very little fatty tissue. Mulder says that will explain the weight discrepancy; the body was less than half the weight listed on the license. And Lauren had put on weight recently, not lost it.
The woman the killer was chatting to online is being warned by a friend not to meet with the man, as the FBI had warned women in Cleveland. It seems this ended up putting the woman off, for 2Shy eventually gives up waiting and goes hunting in the red-light district, picking a larger streetwalker. He attacks her and she rips some skin from his hand, which comes off oddly. Another streetwalker and her client stumble across him before he has finished and he runs off.
The victim’s air passages were blocked with the same substance found on Lauren. Mulder thinks the killer was forced to improvise. Also, he’s been using lines from 16th century Italian poems, from obscure texts only found in privately owned libraries. Books normally lent to academic affiliates. Scully has found the skin.
2Shy is cutting skin from his hand when he’s told he has a package to sign for. The landlady’s blind daughter greets him. Afterwards, she tells her mother that the man creeps her out and he smells gross. She’s noticed more wrong with him than her mother has.
Mulder tells Scully that the analysis of the skin showed no oils or fatty acids. He thinks the killer isn’t psychotic but hungry to replace a chemical deficiency. A fat-sucking vampire is Scully’s description. She’s less than convinced.