(I am not completely happy with my portrayal of Dr. Lecter in Ch. 2, so I will be revising it, ta ta, Jacquline Christine)
"Each
of us bears his own Hell."
-- Virgil
Dr. Lecter sadly admitted to himself he was getting use
to the circumstances of incarceration again. The tasteless nourishment they
dared to call food, the law officers whom seemed, by their smell, to busy
catching criminals to ever bathe, and the way the unhygienic things never took
their eyes off him.
He wasn't back in a mental
institution, not yet anyway. There had been some discussion over where he would
be going. The mental institution in New York wanted him. It was where he was on
his way to before he escaped…but another institution in West Virginia tried to
lay claim to him due to the fact all the patients of the Baltimore institution
had been shipped there after it had closed. Meanwhile he was stuck in Washington,
in a makeshift cell, the same one he had escaped from years ago.
Everyone seemed to be
uneasy in remembering that, thus security around him was tight. Six police
officers guarded him, two buy the door, and the other four positioned near the
cage. Not near enough for Lecter's taste
of course. At 7:00 PM they switched shifts, then once again at Midnight, and
finally at 8:00 AM.
He hadn't spoken since his
capture, and everyone around him eyed him cautiously, as though dealing with a
proverbial bomb about to explode at any moment. Dr. Lecter found this mildly
amusing and decided one evening soon he would use it to his advantage to scare
a particularly large officer who's seemingly favorite habit, other then eating,
was belching as loud as possible.
He knew he would be foolish
to attempt any escape in the next few months, the next year, even, as everyone
was much too jumpy, to wary of him. Very few of them would ever make the
mistake of underestimating him again.
Dr. Lecter continued his
drawing, sketching the outline of Agent Mapp's braided hair. He hadn't asked
for a thing, but they had given him soft paper, his drawing chalks, magazines
(no staples, of course), and all his usual privileges. It was almost a mockery
of what he had outside these four barred walls. No boundaries, no
confinement…still, there were no real boundaries for Dr. Lecter, at this
moment, if he chose, he could be admiring art in a prestigious museum, or
sipping a good wine at a café in Vienna. He could be anywhere, but when he let
go of the memory, he would still be held in that wretched cell.
He turned his attention
back to his drawing of Agent Mapp and Agent Steinbeck, the looks on their faces
as they arrested him. The small beads of sweat on Agent Steinbeck's brow, the
look of apprehension in his eyes, the look of determination written all over
brave Agent Mapp's face. He could almost feel the tension, the tautness of her
muscles as she leaned down to snap those handcuffs on him.
A cough. Dr. Lecter peered
over his drawing at the officers sitting near by. One dozed near the door;
another occupied himself with a crossword puzzle, a tinker toy for the
not-so-intellectual mind. Two officers took part in a game of cards; another
had excited the room to relieve himself. And the last officer coughed again, as
he quickly undid the wrapping on his take-out cheeseburger. He was the slob;
the one Lecter loathed the most.
Lecter had once found it
very humorous that although they were free, they indulged in food not much
better then his own, when they could have anything. At some point, such
stupidities of the human race were no longer humorous, only sad, because he
realized that they were trapped in a cell just as much as he was, and there was
no escape for their feeble minds. Of course, he could continue on about all the
pathetic things the general population did, but it would only frustrate him,
frustrate him that they were imprisoned one way, while he was imprisoned
another, thus neither had the opportunity to live life as it was meant to be
lived.
He once again gazed at the
man with his beloved cheeseburger. His hair awry, gobbling down the 'meat' as
though it would be ripped from his grasp at any moment. Dr. Lecter could see
this man's life in one glance. He had no wife, he would go home this evening to
an apartment caked in filth and old TV dinner boxes, to turn on a tape of some
bad comedy, or perhaps watch trashy women battle each other on Jerry Springer.
He would drive by the a high school near his home the next day, gaze out at a field
of teen football players an wonder why he never bothered to pursue his natural
talent for the game.
And Lecter, unable to do
anything else, would remain in this humiliating cage with these sad people
surrounding him, aching for civilization. But, that was his cross to bear. The world would never understand his
need to rid it's own race of all such people as these. No, that was his
exclusive hell, but he bore the burden gladly. Smiling to himself, he wondered
what kind of seasoning would go best with this pudgy officer's sweet breads.
"In the depths of my heart,
I can't help being convinced that my
fellow men,
With a few exceptions,
Are worthless."
- Sigmund Freud