Hello, I'm home! I left you all stranded for a whole week while I wasted away in Disney World! I am happy to be home, however. I hope never to leave you for so long again. I love all favorites, followers, and reviews! Thank you all so much for your fantastic support. Truly.
-M
Cursing, shouting, hitting.
He was a man of strength, wringing her by the hair, slamming small bodies into walls. An angry drunk, cowering in the light of day, hidden in a suit and tie.
How many times had he slapped her hands when they hit the wrong note, smashed her face when a pirouette wasn't precise?
Mother mother, doing nothing. Silent to the rage, unwilling to help.
Standing, watching as her husband mercilessly beat her own daughters.
Summer would melt into fall, bruises lower, under high collars. Their outer shell was one of perfection: two straight-A daughters and happy foreign parents, working high-class jobs.
It all
made
her
Sick.
Margaret, her beacon of light. Optimistic, bubbly. When she made friends they were real and true: they cared for her.
Anna had no such thing. The people she knew were but acquaintances. Beings whom she used to get what she wanted, and nothing more. They were pigs.
"You're late" His voice was low, deadly. The youngest sibling away at a friend's, leaving Anna to fend on her own.
Two dreamy eyes found his, smiling. "I've been home all along, with mother. Would you like to see her?"
Nailed to the wall by her hands.
Scalped, chest skinned.
The horror pulsed through him, staggering.
He turned.
A knife fell swiftly into his torso.
"She had no problem watching her children be beaten. Why shouldn't the same apply to you?"
Three stab wounds were inflicted by the young teenager; through the chest, the pit of his stomach, finally forced into a thick, sweaty neck.
He fell dead, glassy eyes upon her.
Anna Astor did not feel the slightest guilt or sympathy.
Only pure, unadulterated bliss.
"911, what's your emergency."
"H-Help, I came home and found my m-mom dead. My dad tried to k-kill me-"
"Where is your father now, ma'am?"
"…
"I killed him."
"It must have been very traumatic for you, Anna."
He watched the young woman lean in her seat, yawn. He crossed his legs as she glanced to the window.
"I suppose so. May I leave, now?"
"I'm afraid not, Anna." She hated how he said her name.
As if she were a child, needing to be soothed. A sharp remark was on her lips before he broke in.
"They were not the first people you've murdered, were they, Anna."
Dr. Abel Gideon was pierced by feline eyes, thin smile faltering. "I don't know what you're talking about. My father butchered my mother, and I-"
"No. You butchered your mother. Do not lie to me, Anna." Abel lifted a leather-bound notebook from a side table, scribbling notes. "You think you're alone. You think that it's a disease, what you do. It's not."
"I really have no idea what you're talking about," Her answer was so innocent, young. Abel Gideon flicked his eyes from the journal, slowly closing the pages.
He smiled.
"Would you like to see the photographs of men and woman I've killed, Anna?"
Run, run, run.
She would not escape.
Panting, stumbling.
The woman let out a shrill scream at the impassive, young woman towering over her. A man was slowly making his way to them, looking relieved.
"P-please! What have I done to deserve this? Wh-what have I ever done to you?!"
The brunette leaned low, hands on knees. Her head tilted, smiling pearls.
"My dear, you haven't done anything to us."
It spiked her senses like a high.
She breathed deeper, saw clearer.
Anna Astor was alive, when a victim took their last miserable breath.
They were dirt beneath her feet.
They deserved what she so generously gave them.
They
were
Inadequate
and
Unnecessary
Trash.
She would reincarnate famous murders simply to watch the FBI, police, fall over themselves in hysteria.
The woman cut in half, with the Cheshire smile. The prostitute strangled by her own undergarments, the eyelids cut from three different corpses, placed in the mouth of another.
It was a hot-blooded euphoria.
It was her reason of existence.
Her life was perfect.
And then it wasn't.
"She wants to live with you."
"I have no qualities of a parent. I would ruin her."
Cold grey eyes were on her, mouth a tight line. It did not sway her cordial, off-putting aura.
"You are her only remaining family. I am willing to move in and work with you, but you must take her. She needs you, Miss Astor."
It was a whining, blonde trouble. Crying at the break of dawn, sneaking into her bed halfway through the night. Constant attention, money, guidance.
Lily Astor was the worst thing to ever strike Anna's life.
She hated the snotty, pathetic child in her presence, the girl's very existence a pain in her side.
"You can't possibly even think about killing that girl, Anna."
Gideon held no sway over her, now. She was in too deep, too far gone.
"She is your sister's daughter. Doesn't that mean anything to you now?"
Anna Astor looked at him curiously, a slight smile turning those lips.
"Why would it?"
She had been drugged.
Her mind a blank slate, unable to remember. Blue eyes glanced to see a man watching her warily.
It was a patient of Gideon's, an unstable man who was drawn to the doctor like a moth.
Unintelligent, slow.
She killed him and felt the same flame of satisfaction, burying her hands into his chest.
She felt his heart beat one last time before ripping it to a stop.
"Anna," The woman rose to her feet. Abel Gideon stood in the doorway, grave.
"Abel? Abel, why? We are the same. Of all people, you should understand how I need this. You can't ask a dog to change his spots any more than you can ask me."
"No," He answered, walking slow, steady, "I guess you can't."
Anna Astor looked to the bloody corpse, smiling fondly.
She turned, to recall a memory of another they had murdered together.
A sharp, quick pain caught the crook of her arm.
Abel Gideon, remorseful, determined.
"You can't ask a dog to change his spots, but you can shave him clean."
"Anna, Anna,"
"An-na!"
She was hurdled into the present, convulsing, seizing. Bruises would form from the strong grip on her arms, forcing her still. Sobbing, gasping breaths rattled her, eyes blurred.
"I killed them, I killed them all."
It was an elegy of entrapment, a voice so alone and lost. It wounded physically and mentally, coursed through the air. Hannibal Lecter held her down by the shoulders, smoothed hair from her face.
"An-na, Anna, it's okay, it's alright. You must calm down."
The woman he once knew so well pulled her face away, placid.
As if she had never felt sadness and torment to begin with.
Hooded eyes, a sneering mouth between trails of silver, looked at him not as Anna, but as someone new. She seemed amused by his comfort.
"Why, Hannibal. I am calm."