One-shot, post Hannibal movie. Enjoy.

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My Lovely Clarice,

I wish to congratulate you on your recent promotion. Head of Behavioral Sciences for the FBI is certainly an admirable position, is it not? And in only three years, too—my, what a busy girl you have been. What with all those rapists and butchers you have been catching, the time must have simply flown by! Tell me, Clarice, are you any closer to putting the very last of them behind bars? Does your heart overflow with joy when you look back on all the cases you have closed, on all the lambs you have saved? Or does it overflow with sorrow as you come around life's newest bend and find that the road now before you is even longer and more thorny than the one you've left behind?

But of course you would be lying if you told yourself that you had caught them all. Because I'm still here, Clarice, out in the wide world, fat, happy, and free. Oh, I may be in retirement, certainly, but with your incorruptible sense of justice wrapped around you like barbed wire, the fact that in thirteen years you have failed time and again to apprehend me just irks you, doesn't it? I would reassure that I have no plans to slaughter any more spring lambs, but knowing you as I do I can tell that such words of comfort would be a waste of ink—your ears are stoppered with the echoing cries of lambs long dead, and you plan to avenge them. I raise my glass to you, Clarice, wishing you luck in that endeavor.

But enough of that for the moment. Let us move on to a more lighthearted topic of conversation. Did you like the white roses I sent you, Clarice? I could have bought the kind that have been genetically altered not to grow thorns, but I thought it would be much more symbolic if I took the time to strip away each and every one myself. I do hope you took a moment to admire their pale beauty and delicious scent before shipping them off to forensics to be plucked and pressed and ground and fitted onto microscope slides—after all, I did expend a great deal of time (and a few drops of blood) cutting away those thorns for you. I'm sure even now you are pouring over books and websites, trying to find a link between my gift and my current place of residence so that you may loose your dogs on me. Might I suggest that you pursue a tome on Victorian flower language as opposed to one on botany or commercial floral shipment? It might prove much more enlightening.

Have you thought about me these past three years, Clarice? I know that I have scarcely been able to pass an hour without thinking about you—although, to be fair, that is sometimes due to the ache in my severed wrist. I carry a reminder of our last encounter with me everywhere. I am certain you do as well, although you try your best to deny it. You hear me whispering in your dreams, Clarice. Sometimes you feel as though the sound of my voice echoing in your ears will drive you mad. And on those nights when at last the babbling in your mind is silenced, a severed hand creeps insidiously into your nightmares. The sight of it frightens you in a way you have never been frightened be for, does it not? It sends your thoughts hurtling into the past, pulling at the strings of logic and memory, weaving conclusions in the darkness that you are terrified of seeing in the light.

Yes. Even now, though thousands of miles separate us, I can see the wheels in your mind turning. You're going back to the beginning, back to the glass-walled dungeon where it all began. You think about how I insulted you, belittled you, toyed with you, frightened you even, and your heart hardens against me. I am only a psychopath, you tell yourself. You saw me for what I was then, before I decided to start playing sick games with you.

But then you think of that day in the rain and the dark, and how I pushed a towel to you through the metal tray in the wall—how I even took the time to notice the scratch on your leg. For a moment you begin to wonder, but then logic steps in once more. I hate discourtesy, you reason, and it would have been the height of discourtesy to leave you dripping all over the floor. Besides which, I probably enjoyed trying to jerk the rug out from beneath you, trying to rumble your foundations by showing you kindness where I have showed others such cruelty.

Yes, now you're safely back in your comfort zone of critical analysis and behavioral science. And your mind races ahead to Memphis, to your tearful confession of your torment, and you wonder what insanity took hold of you and forced you to tell a serial killer, a cannibal, about the screaming lambs. I even used it against you, you reason, by forcing you to run back for your case file and gently caressing your finger with my own.

Ah, Clarice, I can feel how something stirs inside of you at the memory of that touch. You're not quite sure what to make of it, vacillating between hating me for using your loneliness against you in one last, sick gesture, and wondering if I needed to touch you as much as you needed to be touched. But no, I will not give you an answer. I will leave it to you to work it out for yourself—I have full confidence that, given time, you will come to the correct conclusion.

We did not see each other for some time after that, did we? But I know that you frequently lay awake at night, bathed in the cold sweat of your fear, wondering if my last message to you was sincere, or if you would suddenly find your throat slashed by the stinging cold of a blade. You look back now at all those years spent looking over your shoulder, hoping that I would not come for you, and a shiver works its way up your spine at the realization that I did come for you, after all. I assume you noticed that the glass of whiskey had been moved from the side table to the coffee table, seemingly all on its own? And that a small hole had been cut from the page of the magazine lying open before you?

Interlude of introspection over, your mind fast forwards to our almost-meeting at the crowded Union Station. And again your FBI trained sensibilities tell you that the entire incident, up to and including the gift of the shoes—did you like them, by the way?—was most likely another ploy, another sick game of cat and mouse with the psychopath who delights in torment.

So far, so good. No incidents up to this point occurred between us that you cannot classify as the standard actions of a sociopath. You do know what the term means, don't you? I'm sure your training covered it extensively. But just this once, permit me the indulgence of putting it down in words for your consideration.

In the common use of the word, a sociopath is someone who understands—but is not compelled to obey—the difference between right and wrong, driven only by ambition and incapable of forming emotional bonds with another living being. Does that apply to me, Clarice? Am I a sociopath? I'm sure some of my former 'therapists' would say so.

But ah, now you find your thoughts leaping ahead to Muskrat farm and the unfortunate incident with the man-eating boars. You came to my rescue out of a misplaced sense of duty, and proceeded to shoot three of Verger's lackeys in order to free me. Very well then. We shall not delve into your feelings of guilt about the incident in this letter, but rest assured I shall help you overcome them in the near future.

Now then, in the process of saving me you were wounded by a bullet to the shoulder—I'm sure you remember. The pain of having ligaments torn and bone shattered rendered you unconscious, but a clever mind like yours must have certainly put together what occurred after you fell. I picked you up, Clarice, and carried you away from there as the boars consumed what was left of the refuse. Then, back at Paul's charming vacation home, I operated on your shoulder to remove the bullet and repair the torn muscle and ligament. Surely you saw the stitches when you awoke, even woozy from morphine?

But now you feel that you have definite proof of my status as a sociopath. For what reason could I possibly have for saving your life and dressing you in a beautiful evening gown than to watch, with sick, horrific pleasure, as you gagged at the sight of Paul consuming his own sautéed forebrain? Certainly this must be proof that I am merely a deranged mad man, determined to torment you with cruel mind games. Ah yes, I can feel your heart hardening against me further as you read these past lines. Have I hit the mark, Clarice? Have I repeated your internal ruminations with some accuracy?

Now your train of thought leads to the dramatic conclusion of the evening. You think of the way I slammed you against the refrigerator and trapped your hair, then proceeded to kiss you. How you hate me even now at the thought of my detestable lips touching yours. The tears you cried were icy and full of inarticulate rage, were they not? You desperately wanted to be kissed, and hated me for being the one to do it, hated me for toying with you, for obsessing over you, for haunting you like a nightmare that you could never seem to wake from. Am I getting warmer, Clarice?

And then you went and chained us together. My clever little bird, holding still to be kissed so that I would be distracted long enough for you to ensnare me! You're still not quite sure what reckless insanity drove you to chain yourself to a man who had just cut the top off of another man's head, especially when you saw me reach for the meat cleaver.

That was the moment of truth, you remember. With my pursuers so close at hand, the game was at an end. Now I would show you my true colors and sever your slender wrist to free myself, proving once and for all that I was naught but a heartless monster. You fainted then from a combination of terror, imagined pain, and the lingering effect of morphine. Yet when you awoke, you discovered something astonishing—your hand, still encircled by your end of the metal cuffs, was unharmed. And then you saw the blood splattered across the empty circle my hand had occupied, and you knew. You knew that I had cut off my own hand. I had taken my own flesh rather than yours.

And now, at last, your unassailable train of logic hits a brick wall. Here is the piece that doesn't fit into your neat little puzzle; here is the outlier taunting you from high above the rest of your data.

Your dilemma—the question that now keeps you awake at night and slips insidiously into your dreams—is this: What possible motivation could I have had for taking my own hand instead of yours? Surely doing so would hamper my attempt to escape, and wasn't my freedom what I sought above all? What perverse pleasure would be served by sparing you pain and the loss of an appendage?

And the thing that frightens you most of all is that you cannot think of an answer.

Regards,

Hannibal Lector, MD