The chaos started every night at six o'clock in the Lecter house. Mr Lecter would sit at the dining table and Mrs Lecter would bring in the delicousy she had created that day. Their eldest son would run in from his room and plant himself in his chair beside Mrs Lecter.
"Hannibal!" Mr Lecter yelled every night. "Get your goddamn ass in here, boy!"
These nights went one of two ways. The first being that Hannibal would walk into the dining room, a frown on his face.
"Sorry," he muttered and sat by his father.
His mother would serve the food and they began to eat. But Hannibal would just pick apart the meat and eat some of the salad on the side.
"For Christ's sake, Hannibal! Eat your goddamn food! I do so much for this family to get food on this table and you pick around it."
"I- I don't condone the murder of our neighbour. Miss Hooper was a very nice person and here we are eating her arms," he responded, glaring down at the food.
Everyone froze. One half of the table stared at Mr Lecter. The other either stared at their food or stared down the youngest child.
"It's rude not to eat your dinner and you know what we do to the rude," his father snarled out.
"We eat them," Hannibal replied, having the phrase drilled into him.
With that, he'd lift his fork to his mouth and take a bite. He'd finish his meal while his father watched from his side.
Other nights, Hannibal would sneak out the back door while his father yelled abuse. By the time Hannibal was on the street, Mr Lecter was opening Hannibal's' bedroom door, yelling for the boy to eat with them.
After the second type of night, Hannibal walked around the town, nowhere to go and nothing to do. Where was the child to go? The whole town knew they were cannibals and Mr Lecter was having to outsource people to eat. All Hannibal wanted was some vegetables or maybe a cheeseburger. Instead, he starved on those nights, eating whatever he found on the streets.
One time, a homeless man was kind enough to offer a few dollars to Hannibal who rejected as polite as he could. After all, where could Hannibal get food in this town without the people getting angry and abusing him? Nowhere.
It had all started about ten years ago, when Hannibal was only four. His parents had gone on a "hunting trip", as they called it, where they looked for people to kill. They brought their eldest son, an eight year old boy who was used to lure in unsuspecting people. While that happened, Hannibal was baby sat by a woman a few streets away.
"It's roast beef for dinner, Hannibal," she had said the last time she baby sat him.
Hannibal shook his head at her. "No, that's not beef, that's Mrs Margery from across town," he replied, ignorant to his words effect.
"Pardon me?"
"Yeah, that's Mrs Margery. Dad brought her over a few days ago and told her that she was being very rude. I don't know what she did, but it was bad. So, he killed her," he said with a smile.
The baby sitter's jaw dropped and her eyes widened. "O-oh. So, your daddy kills people who are rude?" she asked. Hannibal nodded at her and sat on the chair, waiting for his dinner. "Am I being rude by asking about it?"
Hannibal considered this for a moment. "Yes, I think so. But I'm being rude by mentioning it. Don't tell dad I mentioned it, please?"
Silence fell over the room as the baby sitter tried to comprehend this. "Uh, only if you don't tell him that we were talking about it," she replied.
"Alright! Now, can I have dinner?"
The baby sitter had frozen with the plate in hand. It was a moral dilemma, give the boy the food or take him out for something. If he didn't eat it, the Lecters would get suspicious. If he did, she was going to vomit.
Of course, the next day, she confided in her best friend about what had happened that night and about what the youngest Lecter had said. Sure enough, it had spread around town and everyone began to believe the Lecter's were cannibals. As soon as someone went missing in the town, there was a knock on the Lecter's door, asking what they knew about it all.
Mr and Mrs Lecter were very angry, to say the least. "That was rude, Hannibal," Mrs Lecter said a few days later. "That was very rude."
"A-are you going to eat me?" Hannibal asked, beginning to sweat.
Mr Lecter sighed at his child. "No because then we'll be in even more trouble, won't we, Hannibal? Then we'll go to jail."
There was a flicker of something in his father's eyes that put Hannibal on edge. Even at such a young age, he knew he had to watch his back.
The thing in his father's eyes stuck with Hannibal for years and years to come. When he turned 18, he decided it was time to get out, to go somewhere where people didn't know him and to never be put in the situation of having to eat people. Hannibal was going to help people to redeem himself.
After graduating from university and being a certified psychiatrist, Hannibal moved as far away from his parents and set up his own office. He was stationed in Minnesota and had developed ties to the FBI. For Hannibal, being able to help as many people as possible was all that kept him going. There was no way he'd return to cannibalism.
Until he realised how people did not catch any correlation between his name and the art of cannibalism… uh, act, not art… Hannibal began to grow hungry for the kill and hungry for the food that comes after. There really wasn't anything like human meat to quench one's thirst for murder and excitement.
"Hannibal, for God's sake!" a man bellowed as he entered the office, almost twenty years since Hannibal has left home. "Why didn't you tell your mom and I about how successful you became?"
The psychiatrist's head snapped up from his desk to see two older people standing in the middle of his office. "What are you two doing here?" he asked, still with his adopted accent.
"Christ, boy! What's that Goddamn accent about? Are you forgetting your roots, boy?" Mrs Lecter asked, closing the door behind her.
"I'm trying to hide from it, actually. Now, what do you want?"
Mr Lecter frowned at his son and sat down in the chairs in font of Hannibal's desk. "We've heard about a lot of murders in the area and we wanted to know if you've reconsidered your stance on cannibalism."
"After having 'eat the rude' and 'cannibalism is an act of dominance' drilled into me, it's hard to not resort to murder and cannibalism when one desires," he explained, crossing his arms.
"Well, son," Mrs Lecter started, "we're proud of you. You make a good name for yourself, alright?"
"I was doing well until you walked in the door. Now the secretary will talk," he complained, leaning back in his chair.
His parents laughed and stood up, making their way to the door. "It was nice to see you again, Hannibal. We're always here for you," Mrs Lecter said before walking out.
"You know what to do to the rude," Mr Lecter added before walking out.
Hannibal went to see them leaving the building to find a certain redheaded woman perched by the door. "Miss Lounds. Why am I not surprised?"
He opened the door and motioned her to enter. "I know everything, by the way. I heard it all," she told him while walking to the chair his parents had just occupied.
"I know. We're going to have a little chat, Miss Lounds, and then you are never to come back to my office, understand?" He closed the door behind her and began to think over what he would say and how he would effectively threaten her.