Labyrinth of the Burning Heart
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A/N: We apologize in advance for the cliffhanger, for we are such sweet innocent angels…*ducks as her halo falls and shattered pieces fly everywhere* And as a note to those who've read this story already, we've changed some things, done some editing and whatnot, so you might want to read again. *hint hint*
Chapter 2
The Encounter
Clarice awoke around eleven in the morning. After dousing her nightmare-stricken and tear-stained face with her water bottle and futilely attempting to straighten her rumpled clothes, she began the long journey back home. From her windows, she watched the young children laugh on their way to church as she drove through the Memphis suburbs.
It took her the better part of the day to return home. And when she passed by Arlington she kept on driving, circling around and around the interstates. She was so lost in thought that she never noticed the car following her.
Clarice couldn't face Ardelia yet. She couldn't face anyone having anything to do with her screwed-up life for that matter. One way or another, Clarice ended up in Baltimore, roaming through desolate side streets and blind alleys. When the road became too narrow for her car, she got out and walked. The streets twisted over each other and looped around silent buildings and broken lampposts. Clarice felt as if she were descending farther and farther into an endless darkened labyrinth. Fair enough, as long as she could leave her life behind along the way.
An hour later, she found herself pushing through the swinging door of a smoky bar and diner and ordering her first glass of Jack Daniels over the counter. As dusk settled, Clarice prepared for a long night. She'd face her persecutors later. Everything was so much more bearable when she was totally hammered.
The bar was a dingy little place, filled with the haze of cigarettes and other less legal drugs, smelling of stale urine and bad breath. Set in a back alley in a tiny room that had been used four times before for various questionable functions. It was a place that only the lost seemed to be able to find. An old, cheap neon light boasting the sovereignty of Budweiser illuminated the interior of the bar with an eerie blue glow. Oldies wailed on the jukebox. For a hard dollar, the bartender would sell a glass of unwatered liquor. As Clarice carried her drink away to a booth, none of the other bleary eyes from the shadows of the bar turned to follow. She sat in the darkest corner where the neon would not flash into her eyes, and no one bothered her. Everybody minded their own business. Here was a safe, unchanging world. And people wondered why there were so many alcoholics in America.
Four drinks and an indefinite period of time later, Clarice found herself at the counter having a vicious argument with a customer possessing a face that would have fit better on a pig. The cause of the dispute was never determined but Clarice found her drink knocked over and amber liquid staining her shirt like blood. A huff and she was off to the bathroom; when she came back, her glass was set back upright and what little drink that remained still in the glass. Pig-face was nowhere to be found. Good riddance. She finished her drink, ignoring the odd numbness in her brain immediately afterwards, and proceeded to order three more.
She carried them all back to her darkened booth, away from the cold, blue neon. She was holding a glass in her hand, admiring the swirling patterns of the drink inside, noting how they seemed to slow with the time that passed, when she heard it.
The voice was choked by smoke and blurred by the alcohol in her brain. But there was no mistaking the peculiar metallic rasp. One that she had definitely heard only one time before.
"Hello Clarice…"
Clarice's eyes instinctively flashed toward the voice and her hands gripped her glass a bit tighter. A distinctive smell suddenly assaulted her nostrils, sharp and biting, unidentifiable, and she almost choked on it. Her heart half-skipped a beat before her liquor-laced brain slowed it almost to a stop.
Oh hell, he's here. I should…oh, let me just finish this one last drink, I'll deal with it then.
The bearer of the voice saw nothing more than a brief roll of the eyes before Clarice returned to her drink. "Tsk tsk, Clarice. Hardly the greeting I was expecting. May I sit?"
Clarice waved a limp hand at the fake leather cushion across from her. "Sure, whatever."
They sat in silence as Clarice slowly sipped her drink, stopping every now and then to re-examine the swimming amber swirls in her glass.
Whoa, hey, that blob kinda looks like a bunny. That's odd, it looked like a buffalo three seconds ago…
If her companion felt any impatience, it wasn't evident. As the last drop went down Clarice's throat, a hand reached forward and moved her other glasses out of her reach.
"I think that's quite enough for now."
Something seemed to be wrong with Clarice's hearing. The voice changed every second from silky smooth, to raspy, to throaty and deep without warning. Her vision was still performing butterfly strokes before her eyes so her companion looked to be nothing other than a fuzzy neon glow. A sickly smile appeared on her face. "Do I know you?"
"We--I have known you for quite a while."
"What d'you mean, you? I thought we had a mutual agreement, ya know, quid pro quo and that whole show."
"Ah, I see." The voice paused for a moment, considering what to say next. "Would you mind stepping outside for a moment? It is oppressively hot in here."
"Really? Well, actually I thought it was kinda nice, ya know. See, it's kinda cold outside and I don't think I wanna get cold cause that'll be bad for me. I know you don't really care but…" Clarice stopped talking and realized that she had completely lost herself.
"Hmm…exactly how many drinks have you had tonight, Clarice?"
"Dunno. Not enough yet, let's go get another…"
"Okay, okay, we'll go."
Clarice felt herself lifted to her feet. She got her feet under herself, but the moment her companion let her go; she nearly fell flat on her face. A sigh of exasperation and then Clarice was leaning on a shoulder, shuffling along.
"Did I just fall?"
"Almost."
"Okay. Are we going to the counter?"
"Maybe. How many fingers do you see?"
"Uhhh…four, no…three, oh this is stupid."
Clarice was so preoccupied trying to control her vision long enough to count the number of fingers in front of her face she barely registered the swing of the door or the cold night air suddenly hitting her face.
"I perceive that now would not be a good time to talk about your current situation."
Whoa, slow down. That went by way too fast. She took several seconds to comprehend it all, but when she did she was mad. "What's to talk about? The idiotic police have no idea what they've got on their hands. There's a madman out there somewhere who seems to have developed a sick fascination with you and wants to imitate you in any way possible."
"Do you think he's doing a pretty good job?"
"Phhh…on the surface yeah, but I don't think he has any idea what he's dealing with."
For the first time, Clarice realized that the neon lights of the bar had long since faded away. Oldies from the jukebox were no longer saturating her ears and there were no sounds other than their own breathing and the sound of their feet shuffling through dead leaves scattered across the sidewalk.
"Wait a minute, where are we?"
There was no answer.
"Hey, hey I asked a question, where are we?"
The voice, now soft and silky. "Somewhere safe, Clarice. Actually it is my opinion that you have no idea what you're dealing with and that you never have."
Suddenly, ripping pain as a blow landed in her stomach. Clarice gasped, clutching her stomach, winded. She waved her hands around wildly, trying to claw at something, anything. Something was clamped over her nose and mouth now. And when Clarice was next able to draw a breath, she inhaled chloroform.
Blood-red circles swarmed into her field of vision and slowly began to spin, faster and faster. A rolling scarlet whirlpool like an exploding supernova with a black hole already forming at the center. The compress over her face pressed down and fingers of darkness flicked away the scarlet and then she was falling down, down, down…
"A pitiful copycat, eh? We'll see about that, Clarice Starling. But you were right, they should have watched for Baltimore…"
It was the last thing she heard before hitting the ground and continuing to fall through and out into the endless darkness.
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When Clarice came to, she was sitting upright and bound tightly to what seemed to be a chair. A rag was tied around her eyes. Her head was tilted slightly upward and when she tried to straighten it, she found that she could not. There was some unidentifiable wetness on her face. That was all she comprehended before waves of sickness from the combination hangover, chloroform and other drugs seized her stomach and seemed to push her entire body out of her mouth from the inside.
It was all she could do to turn her head slightly sideways to avoid choking on her own vomit. She retched until there was simply nothing left in her body to come out. She wrinkled her lips, unable to lift her hands to wipe her mouth. Her head was spinning like crazy again; she felt like she had just regurgitated several organs.
Look at me. Pitiful, tied to a chair and…where am I? Clarice suddenly remembered that she had heard none of her sickness hit the floor. Then she noticed that something was held under her jaw and a filthy smell assaulted her nostrils. She nearly jumped out of the chair when the voice came again, this time from just behind her ear. Without the influence of alcohol, the voice sounded clear and crisp to her ears and…no, impossible.
"I was afraid you would never come round, you've been out for almost 16 hours." The voice seemed to move away, growing fainter. Clarice heard a clink as the bowl was set down on some table. Then the sound of footsteps and the voice grew stronger until it was right in front of her. "I was afraid you'd had a fatal reaction to the chloroform, please forgive me. I could never live with myself if you had died before we even got a chance to meet each other."
Clarice's head stopped spinning for the moment, and she could finally get some sense of her position. She was indeed sitting in a chair, and by the cramps in her lower back, had probably been sitting there for several hours. She was bound to the chair by her ankles, her knees, her wrists, her elbows, her waist, and her neck with thick rope, which explained why she could not tilt her head.
Clarice had a sudden, idiotic flashback to junior high and reading the Chronicles of Narnia.
Prince Rilian was bound to the silver chair an hour every night, helpless, unknowing, and afterwards forgetting that only in those fleeting moments was he free of the enchantment that had controlled him for ten years.
"Clarice, do attempt to be polite and grace me with an answer."
"Don't call me Clarice. Who are you? You aren't Dr. Lecter." But you sure as hell sound just like him…almost.
"An astute observation, Clarice. A shame that it took you so long to realize it. If you hadn't been drinking so much, you might not be in this position right now. Then again, you should have also realized never to leave a drink unattended, you never know what someone would put in it."
A brief silence as Clarice comprehended the true seriousness of the situation. "What do you want with me?"
A merry laugh. "I think you know, Clarice. But I'll give you a hint, it's not for quid pro quo. I want you. I want you here and not meddling in affairs you have no business with."
Clarice twisted her head against the rope with all her might so that she was looking directly toward the voice. "You'll never get away with this. The FBI will be looking for me."
"Oh, is that what you think? Try again, Clarice. This is a most convenient way for the Bureau to let you disappear, quietly and without incident or investigation. I know of your reputation there and I know what you did to Hannibal Lecter."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
The voice came closer, it was right in her face now. "People say that you're in love. But it's so much worse than that, Clarice, you have no idea. You have done something unforgivable and now you will pay for it, Clariiiiccceeeeeee…" Her name was hissed slowly through clenched teeth.
And then the blindfold was torn off her face. Clarice closed her eyes tightly.
The voice, high and cruel now. "Abre los ojos, Clarice." No response. "Open your eyes now or I will staple your eyelids to your forehead, which do you prefer?"
Clarice slowly forced her eyelids apart. There was little light, but she could see that the room she was in was bare, except for that table behind her and the figure that stood before her. And as the figure slowly came into focus, Clarice gasped.
"You!"
Rachel Ariadne Cahlin laughed. Eyes that had previously been filled with crocodile tears were now triumphant. Her jaw was still oddly slack and twisted into an awkward position like the first time she had seen it, and Clarice realized that it had probably been broken sometime before.
"But you--you can't be--…"
Cahlin stopped laughing as soon as she had started and her eyes were now blazing with anger. "What? I can't be the one who committed several heinous crimes, one involving my 'best friend' just because I'm female? Watch yourself, Clarice. I don't think you want to piss me off anymore than you already have. You of all people shouldn't be so narrow-minded."
"That…that's not what—."
Cahlin ignored her and walked behind the chair. She picked up the bowl of sickness from the unseen table before walking in front of Clarice again. "Now don't worry. We'll talk again, maybe later when you feel a little less sick and less disruptive. Ta-ta for now."
The door closed and locked behind her.
Clarice struggled with her bonds for ten minutes before collapsing with fatigue. If what Cahlin said was true, it must be Monday afternoon by now, in which case, it would be 24 hours before anyone would start looking for her. She was strapped to a chair in a little concrete room with someone close by who wanted her dead or worse.
Where was she? She could sense water nearby, how much, she didn't know. She also had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. The last time she had felt so was when she had been atop the largest hill of the largest roller coaster in a local amusement park. She felt an odd rumbling from somewhere far far below ground.
"I just never get a break, do I?" she thought. Her neck ached. When she saw that there was nothing else in the room worth noting, she leaned her head back against the chair to ease the muscles in her neck. In doing so, her eyes looked up and at the ceiling.
Her breath froze cold in her throat and her heart skipped several beats. And in that moment, Clarice realized how little chance she stood of escaping with her life. From where it was nailed across the ceiling, the skin of Heather Levenson stared down at her with empty eyesockets, mouth twisted into a silent scream.
TBC
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A/N: "Abre los ojos" means "open your eyes" in Spanish and was the title of a very popular 1997 movie of the same name, and it was the inspiration for the more well-known "Vanilla Sky". "Abre los ojos" is a twisted, dramatic, arthouse movie playing upon preconceived notions of dreams, love, and desires. I *strongly* recommend it.