Hannibal Lector had only just pulled his bedcovers back into place when he heard it. Low, distant, rumbling.
An airplane? Helicopter? he thought, striding to his bedroom window. No, the sound was too ground-level, and much too close. Pulling back his curtain, he peered into the early, hazy morning.
There, rattling up his driveway, was a tractor.
Needless to say, Hannibal was somewhat flummoxed.
The machine was a shade of blue somewhere between deep summer sky and robin egg, though obviously faded and flecked with rust due to age. It sputtered very little smoke from its stack: instead, the transparent ripples of a cleanly burning motor. There was a gang of plates on the back, arranged on a chassy in rows, and the entire array was held off the ground like dinner plates on a drying rack. The large rear tires were to the hips of the person bouncing in the driver's seat, and that person was wrapped in a fluorescent orange reflective vest several sizes too big.
The person looked up at him, in his second story window, and waved merrily.
Hannibal was compelled to wave back, with an incredulous shake of his rustled head. Maryann Shule, who else?
The doctor threw on a robe and came down his stairs, rubbing trace sleep from his eyes. As he went, he heard the tractor cut off. Approaching his front door, he flung it open without preamble. This time, he was ready for the descending fist and caught it easily. "Good morning, Miss Shule," he said, sounding much like the tractor in gravel tone.
The young woman beamed at him, retracting her knuckles with a deja-vu expression of amused apology. "Good morning, Doctor Lector!" she practically sang.
"Hmm, Miss Shule," he growled, though without sufficient menace to cause concern. The woman knew not how lucky she was, for her innate charm saved her from a quick snap of the neck. "It is far too early for such cheer. I've yet to even have coffee." He'd killed people for less than disturbing him before his coffee.
She bobbed her head, smiling, and the earplugs dangling from her neck jostled. "Sorry," she said more softly, but no less energetically. "I've already had my coffee. About three times over, in fact."
"It is possible to overdose on caffeine, you know," he replied in a quasi-berating manner.
The gardener threw back her head and laughed with the ease of legal drugs. "Then I've chosen the right place to OD, hmm?"
Hannibal finally smiled back. "Incorrigible you might be," he said with a chuckle. "But somewhat inaccurate. I am a psychiatrist, not a medical doctor." Not anymore, anyway. But she need not know everything about him.
Miss Shule shrugged gaily, already dancing back down his steps. "I prefer the less invasive methods, anyway. Bring the contract out when you're awake!"
"Shouldn't you sign it before you begin?"
"Hey, if you back out, you'll be the one with the hole in your yard, not me," she said, slanting her hips in a rebellious but kindly manner, still sauntering towards the behemoth machine.
The doctor smirked, outwitted in the name of progress. "Fair point. Carry on, Miss Shule."
She touched the brim of her baseball cap, eyes bright with mischief. "Thank you, Doctor."
Such a joshing little thing! Hannibal fingered down his hair in consideration as she swung back onto the contraption like a gymnast on the beam: over the tire, hitching a leg over, then sliding into her seat.
He preferred the less-invasive methods, too. At least, until he got hungry. But in a way, being a doctor of the mind was even more intimate than performing surgery or killing. He could slip into them through their ears, glide up their tear tracks into their eyes. He could wreak roiling, quiet havoc under the surface of their minds, the same way a sea monster's curling throes in the deep showed merely as ripples.
He could play with their brains because he saw a tiny piece of himself in every one of them. Even an anomaly like himself desired to feel similar to the prey he walked the planet with: a lingering subconscious urging to fit in with the herd, because predators singled out the oddballs. Since he was so inherently different, such startling mirror moments were rare.
It didn't matter. He could invade both body and mind at will, if he cared to.
Psychiatry suited him in many ways, if he were honest. The only downside was that he couldn't eat minds, only brains.
He watched as Maryann channeled her weight to one foot, depressing a seemingly heavy pedal and yanked back on a rod. Hannibal's eyes widened marginally when she reached with rather innocent titillation between her legs. From his viewpoint, it looked like she was...
She frowned with consternation, feeling around, and Hannibal's usually steady heart did a little flounder in its rhythm as he imagined her mischievous expression from before coupled with that motion. A dangerous combination, that fantasy. Suddenly, the wandering hand twisted, presumably on a key, and the engine of the tractor roared to life, breaking his trance.
Hannibal could do little more than return her wave as a slightly dazed nod.
He would never look at a tractor the same way again.
"Decaf it is," he muttered, going back into the house. He was wide awake, now.
Maryann had already marked the plot with some spray paint on the ground, and made sure the corners were square. Her trained eye critically noted the angles as she crept the tractor forward, deciding a plan of attack. Satisfied, she threw her body into another handle's resistance and the gang of disks behind her dropped heavily.
She wriggled in her earplugs and put the tractor in work gear, grinning at the snarl of response. "For Narnia!" she laughed as the disks bit into the ground. Jeez, I need to tone it down. Less caffeine around the clients. Especially this client. Maryann's hands tightened in determination even as she winced in belated embarrassment. She would not mess up, in any way, shape, or form.
Maryann settled in for a couple of hours of riding. First, the entire plot was chopped one direction. Then, she turned the surprisingly nimble tractor on it's inner wheel and sliced the soil the opposite way. Paying attention to the buffer zone, she skillfully raised and lowered the disk as needed to preserve the grass outside the plot. The once-pristine lawn was disappearing, leaving turned up dirt clumps, root threads, and tire tracks. The right speed was crucial to the effectiveness of the disks. Too fast or too slow, they would not bite the ground.
She approached the newborn garden so that her tire tracks would coincide with the paths, making the compaction of the machine a nonissue. The sun steadily rose, bathing the world in light and life. It was a cool spring morning, but soon she would be driven from her jacket by the rays. Maryann sipped her travel mug, silently toasting the astrological body that powered all existence.
The property was lovely, she had to admit. Flat, mostly, with some very slight grading towards the south, but all in all conducive to planting. Looking over the soil she was slicing up, she noted its clump size, color, and consistency. After a few more passes, she parked the machine and stood up on the tractor, making sure she had not missed any strips of grass, and that her pattern was even. "Nailed it," she murmured, finding herself significantly calmer. The coffee was wearing off leaving her slightly drowsy. Navigating the tractor to the driveway once more, she turned it off and dismounted.
Hands on her hips, she gazed proudly on the fledgling garden. The promise of what was to come enticed her.
Hannibal had paced from window to window watching Maryann work the tractor. It took skill that he did not have, and did not care to earn, but that made it no less impressive. The gardener rode her metal steed like a queen of the earth, pausing now and again to eye her previous conquests, peering over the wheels, jiggling a rod that made the tractor fluctuate in power as she demanded. The powerful machine responded to her every command, docile and obedient.
Eventually, though, Hannibal realized he did not need to be present for the marking of the ground. Being a client in this sort of service was foreign to him, and he wondered how he was to respond to each step, each stage. Just how involved was he supposed to be?
What did it matter to him? He moved away from the window, retreating to his study, but he could still hear the motor chuckling: near, far, near.
He typed up some patient file updates. He checked TattleCrime and the news. He sipped his coffee. He called to check on Abigail Hobbs' condition. Though it had not changed, he noted a flicker of disappointment in his chest. Hannibal had much he wanted to do, in regards to Abigail Hobbs. He sensed her a shelled baby bird, twitching in induced sleep, brain alight with dreams dipped in blood.
In the young Hobbs, he sensed a like mind. But she would have to wait.
After almost three hours, the tractor turned off. Hannibal's head raised, ears pricking. He brought the contract out of his drawer, already catalogued in a beige file named 'Bee All Gardening', and a pen, then set out for the front door.
His porch was hotter than before, and there was a patch of dark, disturbed earth where there had not been before. For a moment, it disconcerted him that his norm was rocked. Almost, but not quite, it irritated him. For a split second, he felt like he had made a mistake; a bad decision under duress.
But then, he saw the young woman crouched in the newly turned earth, scratching, squeezing handfuls, poking them apart with a finger. He was struck by how small she could curl around her knees, and how much she looked like a child playing in the dirt. Hannibal's irritation lapsed. He had a guide through this willingly undertaken project. She was intelligent, vivacious, and blessedly guileless. She was a sweet mystery with her teasing eyes and easy smile, like a Christmas gift he was bound to like. Maryann Shule was not a mistake.
When she noticed him standing there, she stood and walked towards him with a handful of dirt, stopping one step below him on the stoop. "Look at your soil," she said, presenting him with the handful in both palms, like a reverent offering. "See the tilth? That's the texture of the soil. It binds well, that means it's the right amount of clay, sand, and silt." She cupped her hands together, then prodded the misshapen ball with a finger. "And see how it crumbles with a touch? That means it aggregates excellently, so it will hold water well, but not for too long." She dragged her fingers through the crumbs. "It's already got a fair amount of organic matter, too. I'll add a bit more, for good measure."
Hannibal took in her smudged knuckles, her darkened nails. The contrast of the nature of the woman and what she held was profoundly evident. "I see," he murmured. Lifting a hand, he took a pinch of the dirt from her palms and placed it in his own. It was strange, holding dirt. He couldn't remember the last time he had done so. The grainy roughness as he pressed it into his hand's creases, testing it, was somehow soothing.
Maryann turned on her heel and flung her handfuls far and wide, scattering them into the grass. Hannibal dumped his own over the railing, brushing his palms together even as she rubbed hers down her pants legs. "Soil is amazing," she marveled. "One teaspoon can hold up to one billion bacteria."
Hannibal had to agree, though with less awe. "Amazing."
The gardener gestured to the file folder under his arm. "That for me?"
"Yes," Hannibal said, shaking the remainder of the spell free. "Here you go." He handed the contract and the pen to her, and she clicked the pen and signed. He hid a smirk at her confidence in the contract's contents.
"Could you perhaps run a copy for me, Doctor Lector?" she asked, giving it back. There was a dirt thumb print on the margin.
He found himself deeming the sweep of the 'y' in her signature very characteristic. Any excuse for exuberance was seized with gusto. "Of course. Would you like to come inside, where it's cool?" For the moment, it was as it seemed: an invitation.
The change in her demeanor was sudden and marked. She took a step back, declining her head and raising her hands with a weak smile. "Oh, no, that's quite alright. But thank you anyway. I'll just wait out here."
Hannibal internalized his curiosity in favor of politeness. "Very well."
As he ran the copy in his office study, he wondered what could possibly garnered such a reaction from her. She was a jovial person, given to many friends and amicable acquaintances: it was not an aversion to people. Was it a fear of being indoors, claustrophia? She had to live somewhere, and didn't exhibit any other signs.
Or maybe... maybe it was just him. Had he not been as careful as he ought in hiding the dark miasma that clouded his soul?
Nonsense, of course. He was perfectly composed, above reproach. But he could not discount the nudgings of woman's intuition. In his life, Hannibal had been surprised on more than one occasion by the astute gut of a female. He chalked it up to some kind of evolutionary gift, a sixth sense for those in touch with it.
Now, he thought, carrying the copy back downstairs. What to do about it?
Hannibal had two options. He could either allow this intuitive notion to go unchecked, and keep her at arm's distance.
Or, he could thread his fingers in hers, slide a hand down her wrist, cup her elbow, span her ribs... and convey her into a dance with him.
He knew not why he wanted to convince her to trust him, only that he did.
It was motivation enough for him. His kills were reasonless wants, after all.
"Here you are," he announced his presence as his feet found the porch. "Miss Shule?" She was not where he had left her. When he did locate her, all he could see was the lower half of her body. The rest of her was buried in a bush in his front landscaping. Her "Shh!" came from within it, followed by the snap of a cellphone camera. Slowly, she withdrew her torso and head from the shrubbery, phone in hand. "Look!" she said, presenting him the phone through the railing.
Hannibal steadied the screen with his fingers under hers. The photo was of a twiggy nest with four blue-with-brown-speckles eggs.
"Mockingbird," the young gardener declared, taking back her phone and coming up the stairs.
Hannibal presented her with the copied contract. "For your records."
"Thank you," Maryann said. When she saw him taking in the chucked ground, she commented, "Reaper is a good machine, hmm?"
"You named your tractor Reaper?"
"Like the song from Blue Oyster Cult," she explained. "'Don't Fear the Reaper'."
The doctor cocked his head. "My tastes trend towards Chopin and Tchaikovsky."
"Oh! Do you play any instrument?" she asked excitedly.
"The harpsichord."
Now it was her turn to cock her head. "The what, now?"
Hannibal found her expression of ignorance endearing, and laughed in a way that was not insulting. "I can see I'll have to broaden your horizons, Miss Shule."
"And I, yours, Doctor." She joined him in bracing against the banister, watching the birds hunt the scarred ground for bugs in a bizarre, swooping, beautiful dance. "It's going to be a great year."
The cannibal smiled in response.
Author's Note: Holy crap, I'm tired. And I have to be up at five tomorrow. Take this shortie chapter with a grain of salt, please. Thank your for all your reviews, faves, and follows.