My Murder Dads, episode 1: Abby Dances
Abigail Hobbs's feet pounded against the beautifully finished wooden floors of the home of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. She was only vaguely aware of the growing sounds of harpsichord notes echoing through the house. Her sprinting made her heart pound and her breath quicken. Her lungs burnt, but she couldn't stop, rest, or slow; the fire in her lungs lit a panic that spread through her chest like a flambé. Rushing through the entryway, she turned down the hallway and burst into the living room.
The music ceased.
"Abigail," said Hannibal. "Why are you so hurried? You look frightful."
The esteemed psychologist had stopped testing his new composition and looked intently at the out-of-breath girl leaning against the doorframe. From the other side of the room, FBI consultant Will Graham peered over the large magnifying glass he used while crafting a new fly for his next fishing trip. He also looked rather concerned at the worrisome arrival of Abigail.
"What's wrong?" Will asked.
"I got asked to go to the Homecoming dance," Abigail. "And I don't know what to do."
The facts were these: Abigail Hobbs grew up as an only child in Minnesota to a pair of loving parents, who taught her the basics of hunting and recycling. After the untimely death of Abigail's family, she was sent to live with her two guardians—the well-respected psychologist Dr. Hannibal Lecter and the highly empathic FBI profiler Will Graham. The courts knew it was much more than a hunch that this group would somehow form a family, even though Will had shot Abigail's father to death, Hannibal had indirectly incited Mr. Hobbs to murder his wife and try to kill Abigail thus prompting Will to his abovementioned action, and Abigail has some deep emotional issues due to all of the above. But these three were trying their best to make their intensely unconventional family unit work.
"I don't think this is a good idea," Will hissed at Hannibal. "After everything she's been through this year—moving to a new city, changing schools, her father killing her mother in front of her, her father dying…"
"When you killed her father, you mean?" Hannibal interjected.
"Yes," Will admitted with annoyance. "And I don't think Abigail needs any additional stress right now, certainly not the kind of strain something like a school dance might involve."
Hannibal stroked his chin as he thought about Will's position.
"I think she might be stronger than you think," Hannibal said. "Also, do you not think she can hear our conversation, Will?"
The two men turned back to Abigail, who was still leaning against the doorframe.
"Yeah, I can hear you," Abigail said. "You guys are, like, ten feet away. Do you think I'm too crazy to go to a dance?"
Will very carefully put away the fly he was working on constructing. Will loved fishing. He then went over to Abigail and put his hands on her shoulders, something he was fairly sure was reassuring.
"Interacting with people can be, sometimes, strenuous," he said. "Believe me, I know how infuriating and confusing it is, particularly when you have a past filled with…traumas. And dating, it's interacting with people on the most concerning aspect."
"Are you saying I'm too unstable to be dating?" Abigail asked, and before Will could answer, Hannibal had glided over to them.
"Do you feel unstable?" Hannibal asked. "I think more socialization would be good. Even if you fear it. The Ute people believed that the spirits of deceased children lived on in the rivers and streams, and still they used these waterways for everyday drinking, washing, and travel. It is natural to feel afraid interacting with people again, but you have to get in that river."
"And cast your line," Will said, warming to Hannibal's metaphor if not his general point. Will loved fishing an awful lot.
"What?" asked Abigail. "No, I'm not afraid of going to the dance. Dane, the guy who asked me, he's kind of a wiener, but he's kind of cool too."
"Then what are you worried about?" Will asked.
"They asked me to head the committee to create the theme for the dance and design the decorations for the gym. And I don't know what to do."
Hannibal smiled.
"In that I think we can help you Abigail. I have been looking for a reason to pick up my pencil again, and helping design your fancy school dance could be good exercise."
"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you," Abigail exclaimed as she grabbed Hannibal up in a hug that Will thought made him look a tad smug. Will wondered if Abigail thought him a better dad.
"Well, I think I could help too," Will found himself saying. "I'm at least somewhat familiar with how a high school dance works."
"Aw yay," Abigail said. "You guys really saved me."
"I suppose we have," said Hannibal. "Now give us some time to compose our thoughts, and I think we will get you out of this trouble."
The next afternoon, Hannibal had just finished arranging his drawings and diagrams for the dance when he heard the familiar clattering as Abigail sprinted through the house and then burst into the living room. She leaned on the doorframe, again out of breath, like someone running for her life. It was not an unfamiliar tableau for Hannibal.
"Okay, I have some dance news," Abigail said once she'd caught her breath.
Before she had the chance to share her news, Hannibal took her by the arm and led her to the couch where he presented her a stack of beautifully rendered sketches of what looked like a gateway to hell.
"I thought perhaps an interesting theme for your dance would be Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo," Hannibal said as Abigail leafed through the pages of his drawings. "Since Monteverdi adapts the legend of Orpheus, the hallways leading to your gymnasium could reflect his decent into Hell. The dance space itself would be the underworld, with its traditional imagery. Since it is a party, you can make it festive with glitter and sparkles, if you want. In addition to L'Orfeo, there are a number of other compositions influenced by the same sources, so you would have no shortage of music for dancing."
Abigail looked at the detailed and macabre drawings Hannibal had created as a sample of his idea—a tapestry of skeletons, a forest of bodies, and grinning teens dancing among them—and she decided that perhaps a high school dance was the one thing Hannibal Lecter might not be skilled at crafting.
"I think not a lot of kids like opera," Abigail said, putting the drawings aside, letting Hannibal down as gently as possible.
Then Will stepped in and placed a shoebox diorama of a decorated gymnasium in front of Abigail.
"This is my design," he said.
In the shoebox diorama, the walls of the gymnasium were decorated with giant trout and enormous fishing lures. A portion of the floor looked as though silt had been dragged in, creating a look of the bottom of a river. Netting dangled from rafters, and hanging from the ceiling was a banner that read Fly (Fishing) Through the Night!
"I went with what I knew," Will admitted. "It was either that or gruesome crime themed, and I didn't think that would be best."
Will looked over at Hannibal. Hannibal shrugged, but seemed to consider the thought.
"I also think not a lot of kids are into fishing, sorry," Abigail said.
"So we have failed you," Hannibal said. Will thought he sounded a tad morose, but he was somewhat hard to read.
"No," said Abigail. "Well, yeah, kind of. But it doesn't matter. I talked to Steph in the theater department, and they have a bunch of old trees and sets and stuff from this production of Goldilocks they did for kids last semester, so we're just going to reuse those, have a "night in the woods" theme, and we'll save a ton of money to hire an actually good DJ. So, yeah, it's good."
"I'm glad it worked out, but I still wish there was something we could do to help," Will said.
"Well," said Abigail, seemingly building toward angling for something. "I do need to pick up some supplies to make signs and decorations and stuff, so could I maybe possibly borrow the car?"
Will had concerns. Abigail hadn't driven since she had moved in, and Will worried that she might be rusty behind the wheel. He worried that the stress of driving might set off some panic attack, long building since the death of her birth parents. He worried about the lunatics and psychopaths that he knew prowled the streets. He worried for her, but he wasn't sure how best to convey it.
"I don't know," he said.
"What, do you think I'm too crazy to drive?" Abigail asked. Her eyes flashed as Abigail felt her anger steam and bubble over at being treated all the time like a fragile teacup and not a very nearly grownup human being.
Then Will's cell rang, interrupting the argument before it had a chance to really launch.
"Have you had dinner yet?" asked Jack, Will's boss, over the phone.
"No," said Will.
"Good," said Jack on the phone. "I need you on a crime scene right now, and it it'll empty your stomach. Beverly's coming by with a car to pick you up. She's probably outside now. Get moving."
On cue, a car horn started blaring outside. Will shook his head and stepped away from his family drama.
"I'm sorry, it's the office, I have to go," he said. "We can, I guess, we can talk about this later."
Will thought Abigail still looked aggravated with him as he ran out the door to face untold horrors. He was more comfortable with untold horrors than with the emotional reactions of a teen daughter.
"Do you agree with him?" Abigail asked Hannibal once Will had left. "Do you think I should be kept from driving?"
Hannibal smiled. "Will wants to protect you. You have been through great trauma. He wants to keep you safe from any harm or anything that might cause you stress during your recovery."
"Yeah, I guess," Abigail said, visibly disappointed.
"But, sometimes stress is part of recovery," Hannibal said.
Then he handed a set of car keys to Abigail.
Meanwhile, at the crime scene, an abandoned warehouse, Will was glad he avoided an early dinner. Someone had assembled, or rather disassembled, several human bodies into chairs arranged in a semicircle around a lectern that was most definitely made of heads nailed together with little precision. In the human chairs were the intact bodies of three people of ranging ages, all missing fingers, eyes, noses, and tongues. There was also a surprising lack of blood.
"What do you see, Will?" Jack asked when he greeted him on the scene.
"Well he didn't kill them here," Will said aloud. And then any further insight was interrupted by the shrill ring of Will's cell. Jack looked annoyed as Will answered his phone, had a short discussing that verged on argument, and then eventually hung up.
"It was Hannibal," Will explained. "Abigail had a car accident. He can't pick her up because he's running errands, something that's evidently too important to drop to deal with this. I have to go Jack."
"Will," Jack shouted as his top profiler made his way out of the crime scene. "What about my bodies? Are we supposed to wait for your family drama to play out, or do you have some thoughts?"
"Oh, you're going to look for a disgruntled teacher, probably college, probably without tenure. He wants them to listen to him, Jack. He's disfiguring them while they're alive, taking away senses except hearing. I don't know about the chairs yet. I think he just likes them."
And then Will borrowed Jack's car to race across town to the location Hannibal had mentioned. There, he saw police cars, he saw the mangled front of his vehicle, and he saw Abigail, seemingly unhurt, looking intensely sad, waiting by his destroyed car. He ran up to her and pulled her into a hug.
"Are you okay?" Will asked.
"Yeah," Abigail said. "The ambulance guy said I was okay. But I think the car's dead. It's not my fault. I know you said not to take the car, but the accident wasn't me. Oh god, I'm sorry."
Abigail launched into tears.
"It's okay," Will said. "As long as you're okay, that's entirely what matters. It's okay."
Once Abigail's sobs died down, Will sat the two of them down on the curb. Then he felt he could ask something.
"Hannibal told me what happened. Why didn't you just call me when he couldn't pick you up?"
Abigail looked embarrassed. "You didn't want me to take the car. You were right, but I took it anyway and look what happened. I thought you'd be mad and wouldn't let me go to the dance."
It was Will's turn to look a bit embarrassed. "No, it's okay. You can go; you should go to the dance. You should experience things that give you a real life. I think sometimes, I know sometimes I'm projecting on you, projecting my own need to avoid the stress of connection. I can look; I can understand anyone. But interacting with anyone—I'm not so good at that."
"You can interact with me," Abigail said.
"Yeah, but you're family now," Will said. "You've got to interact with family."
Then the touching moment was interrupted by an asshole who walked up to Will and kicked him in the leg.
"Hey, are you responsible for this dumb girl?" he asked. The man was in an expensive suit covered in a substance that resembled soda, expensive sunglasses, and was chewing a large wad of gum while talking. Will imagined the lecture Hannibal would have if he were witness to such rudeness.
"I'm sorry?" Will said.
"Yeah, you should be," said the man. "Your daughter careened right into my car—destroyed my brand-new Lexus. It was entirely her fault, and I expect to be compensated. I hope you have good insurance and a good lawyer and a good counselor for that brain-dead kid."
"It wasn't my fault!" Abigail said, glossing over the worse of the man's offenses.
Will shook his head and stood. "Where's your car?"
At the man's shrill direction, Will walked over to the Lexus. He surveyed the damage, looked inside the car, and assembled the facts. Then Will closed his eyes and let a warm pendulum of light remove the bustle of the accident scene and push him back to a less chaotic time. He found himself in the Lexus in the driver's seat as the car careened down the road.
"I am drinking a large Pepsi that I bought at the gas station," Will-as-the-driver said, taking a sip of soda.
A ding signified that a text message came through and Will-as-the-driver checked the text. It was a picture of a woman making a goofy face along with the characters howz ur day bb? Will-as-the-driver unzipped his fly and took some pictures of his own.
"I am sexting a girl I met in a bar last night. I am hoping pictures of my penis can make up for the lack of conversation topics I might share with her. This is my design."
Then Will-as-the-driver looked up just in time to see his car speed through a red light and crash into the vehicle Abigail was driving.
"Are you having a fit?" asked the man who had actually driven the Lexus.
Will opened his eyes and reentered the world and time of the present. He clasped the driver by the shoulder.
"I think you're just going be best off writing a check for the damages to our car," Will said. "You were illegally texting while driving, and you caused this accident because you just couldn't wait to get that 'message' out."
"How do you know that?" the man asked, his eyes bulging from his face. "You can't prove that."
Will smiled and pulled his temporary FBI badge, covering up the "temporary" with his thumb. "I work for the FBI. I can have your phone records pulled to show the exact time you sent those texts. It be unfortunate for any insurance investigation if it could be proved that texts were being sent at the same time you were driving this car."
With that, Will left the man to sputter and look incredulous so that he could return home with Abigail. He reminded himself to try to get the car back to Jack as soon as possible.
At home, they unsurprisingly found Hannibal setting the table for dinner—some kind of roast and a salad of cucumber, dill, and chard with a rosemary vinaigrette. Abigail regaled him with the account of the events, quite enamored of Will's rescue of them from legal and insurance woes.
"It sounds like you were quite the hero, Will," Hannibal said as he began plating their meal. "It's fortunate you were able to step in, as I was predisposed and unable to come to our Abigail's aid."
"Yeah, I was going to ask, where were you?" said Will.
"I'm afraid my errands were a bit more resilient than I had anticipated," Hannibal said. "I had to procure the items for tonight's dinner."
"So you were at the supermarket?" Abigail asked.
Hannibal paused as he carved up the roast.
"Yes," he said. "Let's say that."
Will looked intently at the meat steaming on his plate. He thought back to grisly crime scene from earlier in the day. What were those muffled sounds he heard in the background on Hannibal's call? What kind of errands could be considered "resilient?" Why was the grocery budget so low and the bill for cleaning supplies so high? A tiny, but concerning, inclination sparked in the back of Will's mind.
"Well, I think I'm just going to make some oatmeal for me," he said and pushed his chair back.
Hannibal shook his head with a disapproving click of tongue. "Will, I am sure you do not wish to waste your meal. Abigail, do we let food go to waste in this house?"
"No," she said, shoving a forkful of meat into her mouth. "We have to eat up every bit. Anything less would be disrespectful."
Will sighed. He sat back down at the table. The food did look fantastic. He plunged a bite of the roast into his mouth and found himself inclined to say sorry, although he couldn't quite put together why.
Eventually the night of the big dance came, and Will found himself shaking hands with a kid in an ill-fitting suit who introduced himself as Dane. Hannibal had visibly winced at the cut of Dane's suit.
"Now, I believe there is a ritual with the flowers, is there not?" Hannibal asked the nervous, sweaty young man.
"Oh yeah, sir, yeah," Dane said, and he remembered the wrist corsage he was carrying in a massive, protective plastic box.
"The camera!" Will exclaimed. "Hold on, I've got to get the camera!"
Will ran off to some other part of the house to dig through drawers in an attempt to find the camera to capture the moment. After a few minutes without his return, Hannibal eventually shrugged and indicated the exchange of corsages could commence. Dane slid his flowers around Abigail's wrist with no more trouble than her mild embarrassment. Abigail had a bit more of a problem when it was her turn to pin a flower to Dane's lapel. Perhaps a bit nervous about the whole endeavor, Abigail's hand slipped and she jammed the pin directly into Dane instead of his suit coat.
Perhaps he was unused to the sight of his own blood or perhaps he was overclocked with endorphins from his nerves, but Dane immediately passed out, dropping to the floor. Abigail, having perhaps finally reached her capacity for dramatic occurrences and perceived tragedy, immediately thought the worst.
"Oh god, I stabbed him," Abigail cried. "Dane? Oh god, he's not answering."
"Is he all right?" Hannibal asked.
"I don't know," Abigail said. "He's not moving. I don't know how to check for pulse. I don't feel it. I think he's dead. Why does this keep happening? I didn't mean it."
"Regardless of what you meant, this does not look good," Hannibal said, kneeling by the unconscious boy. "You know what we have to do."
Abigail nodded, swallowing her tears. "We have to hide the body."
In the guest bedroom, after digging through the bottommost drawer of the dresser and pushing aside a lot of old towels, Will finally found the camera. Whistling, he jogged back with his prize to the front room, hoping that Abigail was able to wait for him before doing anything photo-worthy. He expected that perhaps his long absence would have caused the scene to perhaps move past the exchange of flowers, and he dreaded that Hannibal would have let the couple head out before he could get a picture. He really hadn't expected to find Hannibal and Abigail rolling a body up in the hall carpet. That said, Will couldn't admit to being wholly surprised; he just hadn't expected it.
"So," Will said. "I guess I missed the photo op, huh?"
And at that point Dane, with sinuses filling with carpet dust, sneezed and luckily brought the whole gruesome charade to and end. He luckily didn't fully wake up until after they had unwrapped him, so he was much less concerned than he should have been when he was propped back up.
"Maybe I should see a doctor," he said. "I just blacked out."
"I wouldn't worry about it," Will said. "Happens to me all the time; it's probably nothing, right Dr. Lecter?"
"Absolutely, Will," Hannibal said. "You two should go enjoy your party."
And with that, Hannibal ushered the young couple out. Will watched them drive off into the distance, and the made a note to try to not worry too much.
"Shall we hunt down something for dinner?" Hannibal asked.
"I believe that it's my turn to make dinner," Will said.
Hannibal smiled. "I'm sorry Will. But it's never your turn to make dinner. Let's start with the wine. Red or white?"
End