"Hanna!" Mimren Wizt called as Hanna left her classroom.
"Hmmm?" She turned. "Wait for me, Mel?" She asked her friend.
"Right." Melinda said, gripping her cane.
"I just wanted to talk to you about the research paper you're doing. I was just going over the outline you gave me. The notes."
"The Mind of a Psychopath." Hanna said. "What's wrong with it?"
"Some of it is fine... The information you've gotten is precise, but I find your analizations rather disturbing." Mimren said.
"How so?" Hanna asked, stiffening.
"Well... Here, on Sammie." Mimren said, pointing. "You said his chopping off his mothers head was a compliment."
Hanna nodded. "Yes, he was told to give his very best to Jesus, and his Mother was the best thing he had. I think it's rather sweet, in a sense."
Mimren stared at her student, shocked. "Um... Well, here..." She said, flipping to the next page. "With Hannibal Lec-"
"I'm leaving. I've got another class." Hanna said, turning away. "And all of my information on Lector AND Sammie is precise." Renee Baccrim, a retired FBI agent, got some psychological reports for her on Sammie.
"Yes... Well..." Mimren put the paper aside, and noted, not for the first time, how Hanna's eyes were the exact shade of maroon of her fathers. Melinda and Hanna left, chattering, and Mimren picked up Melinda's paper. She scanned the outline, hoping maybe she could find some inconsistencies between Melinda's information on Dr. Lector and Hanna's. She saw the physical description, and found it odd that Hannibal Lector's eyes were maroon too.
Kitty jumped up on the sofa and curled up in Hanna's lap. The young woman was wearing black satin PJ's and had a cream colored cashmere blanket over her legs, stretched out on the sofa. It was a lazy sunday morning. She scratched Kitty's ears absentmindedly as she was absorbed in A Wrinkle In Time. Piano music filled the room.
"Hanna Clara?" Hannibal called. The music stopped.
"I'm in here, Father." She called back.
He walked in, holding a steaming tea cup. "What're you reading, Lamb?" Hannibal asked.
"A Wrinkle in Time. I wish you could really travel back through time by wrinkling space." She said with a sigh. Hannibal smiled, finished his tea, and dropped the cup, which shattered.
Hanna gave him an odd look. "You drop a tea-cup whenever I speak of time travel, and you never told me why."
"I just might do that one day." Hannibal said, teasing her. She threw a pillow at him.
"What's for lunch?" She asked, glancing at the clock. It was 11 AM.
"What would you like, Lamb?" Hannibal asked.
"Can I cook?" She asked. "I'm in a culinary mood today."
"Be my guest. I'm going down to the cellar. Want me to get anything?"
"I'll fix a brain and kidney pie for lunch." Hanna said, entering the kitchen and retrieving the correct pans and utensils.
"Ah, sorry Lamb, I ate the last bit of kidney last night." Hannibal said.
"Oh." Hanna bit her lip, thinking. "Well, can you run down to the butchers shop? Beef will do in a pinch."
"Right. Anything else?" Hannibal asked.
"No. You go on, I'll go down and get the stuff from the cellar." Hanna worked the combination to the basement, and walked down. She heard her father leave, and she peered around the room. There were tables with all types of cutlery, from table knives to autopsy saws. There were two fridges, and one large freezer, along with the huge walk in where the full corpses were stored, which was also under lock and key. Hanna was not allowed to go in there without her father. She went to one of the fridges and retrieved a tupperwear container filled with gray meat. She looked around again, and she stopped on the cold metal vault door. She placed her ear to the door, and knocked, hearing the reverberating echo. When someone particularly upset her, she would sometimes imagine having them locked in the vault and listening to the screams, her own "Cask of Armantiado". She walked back up, and closed and locked the basement door behind her.
"Do you remember," Hannibal asked as he watched his daughter cooking, "The time you found out we were cannibalistic?"
Hanna smiled. "Mmmhmmm." She said, checking on the mashed potatos.
