Never Again

"Never Again "is the thirteenth episode of the fourth season of the X – Files. The episode belongs to the "monster of the week" type and is not related to the main "mythology" of the series.

Scully, without Mulder, is investigating Pudovkin – a member of the Russian mafia, who Mulder believes is related to a UFO that fell in Karelia. In the Russian quarter of Philadelphia, she meets a certain Ed Gers, who the day before got divorced and, after getting drunk in a bar, got a tattoo of a girl in the style of a pin-up with the signature "Never again". The tattoo unexpectedly takes over Ed's mind and is not going to share it with Ed's favorite Dana Scully.

A man gets a tattoo of a woman's face in memory of his ex-wife. After a while, he begins to hear a voice – the woman with the tattoo is talking to him. She constantly humiliates him, is jealous of other women and forces him to harm them. The tattoo itself does not change much, only sometimes opens or closes one eye.

Later it turns out that the red paint used by the tattoo artist is made from rye, infected with ergot, which gets into the blood causes hallucinations and aggressive behavior.