Speech Thoughts Emphasis
"You catch these killers by getting into their heads, but you also allow them into your own"
- Hannibal Lecter
The Trojans had been thwarted by lack of vigilance, too busy conquering the far distant planes on the edge of the horizon to notice the insidious creeper infiltrating their homes. Their gift had become their curse.
Will felt that the same applied to him.
His imagination. It had haunted his steps; twisted his dreams warped them into the lovely fields of broken twisted bodies, repulsive, beautiful chaos. He had taken the Devil's clawed hand –"Can I borrow your imagination?"- and the world was made anew. He looked, even though the revelations and horrors seared his eyes, blistered his lips, burned his flesh to ashes and so much dust on the merciless wind.
Now he couldn't, wouldn't stop.
Garrett Jacob Hobbs had been the first, far more important that his first lover that blind fumble in the back of a rundown truck at his junior prom-so meaningless.
He had been the rock that had shattered the divider between Will and other, the first to blur the lines between good and evil. A simple man, loving man, who had loved so deeply that he couldn't bear to lose that which had elevated him, made him so much more than one face among multitudes. He had beseeched him, begged him to view the world as he did, and Will Graham was not one to refuse a dying, twisted, loving father of his last request.
"See" had been the dead man's petition, the last whisper that he had leaned forward to catch before it was lost to the grasping reaches of time.
He had removed the glasses, stained with the dying girl's ichor & the spray of Hobbs' blood from bullet wounds and shrapnel and opened his eyes.
Garret Jacob Hobbs was the Minnesota Shrike. Garret Jacob Hobbs was a murderer. He had killed eight girls, eight girls who had merely had the misfortune to share his daughter Abigail's features. He had butchered them used them- honour every part of her if-we-don't-its-just-murder, he wants to consume them, keep a part of them inside.
"I don't know this kind of psychopath, never read about him. I don't even know if he's a psychopath. He's not insensitive, he's not shallow," he conveyed to Jack at the meeting the next day. And Jack had turned, and frozen him with a look.
"But the bad guys aren't always so transparent with their delusions, superiority and evil minions. They're like you and me and Alana. But not. There's something broken inside, something irreparably shattered that can never be the same."
Jack had delivered this little slice of wisdom with a grim smile not unlike a corpse frozen in rigor mortis.
Multiple cases later a-multitude-of-cracks-in-the-pane-separating-him-from-madness-vigilante-from-murderer and they were traipsing the balcony of a plain block of flats, unremarkable in any way, save the police crew and tape that obscured the end of the walkway. It was the reflex observation of an uncaring spectator, something to be expected from a man who had slept a mere hour the night before my fair lady, isn't-she-lovely-speared-on-her-bed-of-thorns before being summoned at the crack of dawn. Here boy, good dog came the sneering thought, as his irritation he was merely a convenient toy to Jack Crawford, useless once broken, wind-him-up-and-watch-him-go spilled over into biting words.
"Jack are we here for a reason, or is this a sightseeing tour of suburbia?" Will muttered mutinously as they hurried toward flat 105. The tone rolled off Crawford like water off a duck's feathers as he turned with an unimpressed snort.
"Oh trust me honey,"Crawford stated, "This should wake you right up," as the two of them crossed the threshold.
The room was appallingly ordinary in every sense of the word, with the slightly peeling white-washed walls and miscellaneous, treasured clutter. In this, Mr and Mrs Grayson were quite unexceptional. There were chintz coverlets on the paisley love seat beneath the small window, worn pine shelves containing photos of nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, books and stacks of newspapers. Two unfinished mugs of tepid tea sat on the small coffee table, beside a well-thumbed, dog-eared paperback that laid face down on the polished mahogany.
All of this paled in comparison to the tableau in front of the large double bed.
The lone irregularity.
The bed was framed by the two shells facing it, one at the bottom right hand corner, one at the left. They were naked, bound and kneeling, hands tied together in an obscene modus of supplication, heads bent in reverence. They seemed peaceful with their serene expressions, backlit by the glow of the early morning sunrise filtering through the thin curtains on the windows.
Bringing their glorious wings into full splendour.
The skin and flesh on their backs had been sliced, lovingly ruptured and shaped and delicately positioned with taxing care into the perversion that Will now looked upon, displaying the inner workings of these two human beings; the organs, barely held in position by the ribs and tissue, to the view of the homicide team and lone consultant.
He felt the bile rising in his throat as he took in the glint of thin razor wire ascending to the ceiling, holding this warped masterpiece in position, the rumpled sheets that suggested a deep night's sleep, the subtle metallic edging to the wings that shone with reflected radiance, giving the ravaged corpses a nimbus of divine light.
He stared blankly at the double bed with the rumpled cream sweat-stained sheets and sighed, turning to the Head of the FBI's homicide unit.
"Yeah, I think I'm"-
"Fully awake now?" Crawford interjected, the business-like undertone not quite disguising the hint of disgust the carnage in front of him inspired."Good."His tone was cold and unforgiving at Will Graham's jerky nod of affirmation.
Jack Crawford turned and strode to the threshold, murmuring orders to the team around him to finish the forensics portion of the sweep; chivying Eva Grimes along as she collected the hair samples from the bed and barking at Tanner as he carefully snapped shots of the crime scene. The chief paused mid-stride at the threshold and glanced back to Will's frozen and tense form at the foot of the bed.
"Is there anything in particular you need Will?"Crawford inquired in the usual gruff bark.
"Rest."he stated quietly, eyes resting on the mussed duvet."I'm going to need a plastic sheet."
Less than 10 minutes later, fully clothed save his battered shoes, he looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes, relaxing into the comfortable mattress.
For him, the world went black and the other rose.
The man on the bed had opened his eyes, observed the elevated beings that blessed him with the Lord's favour, felt relief at his angels that shielded him from the world, and muttered "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall feel no evil." with the zeal of a supplicant all too aware of their mortality.
He pushed himself up by his elbows and languidly reached over and haltingly touched the holy being's face, traced the eyes that had been so delicately sewn shut, basking in their Grace. He had glorified them, raised them up to be worthy of the gift of sound mind and body that they so carelessly took for granted.
No, the man who surveyed his pièce de résistance was a different fiend entirely.
Angels watch me through the night,
Until I wake with morning's light.
THIS IS MY DESIGN.