Storyteller's Notes: Thank you very much for your reviews and for your patience. I really appreciate your opinions.
Also, since I don't speak any French at all, making up French frases or recipes was like solving a puzzle, so, please, don't hold it against Dr Lecter if you spot some errors. I welcome your advice on the matter.
Disclaimer: as in the first part as it is continuation of the story...
Hours before Clarice Starling had a misfortune to walk into the FBI trap, a midnight fog engulfed Lower Normandy coastline and the seaside resort of Deaulveille. Towering over a beachfront, the magnificent Royal Barrière hotel was now drifting in the sea of milk like a berthed ocean liner, rigs of festive garlands twinkling and swaying with the offshore breeze. Easter Festival of Classical Music was a success, with each event attracting more and more Philharmonic connoisseurs.
Standing in the lavishly decorated lobby in the small hours of that fateful day Meredith Octavius found that his irritation with the world had finally became intolerable.
Lady M, as he referred to all of his girlfriends, – keeping things simple while appealing to their vanity – empted the last of the champagne into her ever so masterful mouth, nibbled on his ear and declared that she was hungry. His latest Lady M was a plump zesty woman with a huge appetite for pastries and pies, compared only to her appetite for sex.
Meredith Octavius D'Eath loved the sound of his name. The fact, that his real name was Melvyn Pratt didn't bother him at all. Since his mother's passing two years ago he was finally elevated from a son of the Pratt and son to a Funeral Director. Ultimately, the world was his oyster…
Now that he was his own boss, he could at last live out his fantasy world, once banished to the privacy of the bathroom mirror or to the dressing room of the funeral home. In fact, more and more often he found himself playing the part he used to confine to an unwitting audience of corpses, waiting to be made up.
In all but the name… Still he had to suffer the humiliation of being referred to as irrelevant Mr Pratt. This was a point of insufferable irritation to Meredith Octavius. He deserved much better… Son-of-a-bitch porter should be bending over with due respect, rushing out to his signal red E-type Jag. "This way Lord Meredith"…
HE, Meredith Octavius, didn't give a shit for the genealogy trees – history is a book to doodle in at one's pleasure. Like the first Roman Emperor Augustus, born Caius Octavius, Meredith recognized his bona fide heritage and this striving for a proper acknowledgment had become his overwhelming obsession...
Among the peers he spoke the language of the gentile classes, he displayed the love for oysters and gourmet cuisine and talked fine vintage. He went to opera and demonstrated a forceful indignation when at the end of the performance the plebs rushed out before Meredith considered appropriate. "I was shocked and offended," he was telling later to a patron at the race meeting at Ascot. "Shocked and offended indeed, my lord…"
If Meredith Octavius could've been engaging enough to be Dr Lecter's patient, the latter, no doubt, would've observed that his mother had figured largely in his patient's value system as well as in his psychosis…
"Death is nothing to be frightened of, Melvyn," she used to tell her eight year old son, skilfully patching the bullet hole on the forehead of the latest casualty in the gangster warfare. "Death is money and the more is the better. Ah, who is a pretty boy now?" She would stand back and admire her handiwork, patting the corpse on a cheek. "Wait until your mother sees you, luvvie…"
Maude Pratt ran a quietly very profitable funeral business in the East End of London, handsomely assisted by a sizable unreported undertaking from the volatile underworld.
"There is no privilege among the dead – whether one is prince or pauper, – when they are on an undertaker's table they are heaved and prodded all the same…" Teaching the philosophy of life to young Melvyn while he assisted in dressing up the stiffs widow Pratt saw as her parental duty as well as a form of entertainment during the tedious hours around the lifeless listeners. "The poor bastards don't care what lining you lay them in… as long as the relatives don't know…"
"...Non, monsieur. I regret but the bar's now closed, Monsieur Pratt." Meredith Octavius was convinced that the concierge deliberately left out the last "t" of his business name, the euphemism he came up with in his exasperation. Wishing he had a shirt under his cashmere pullover, he despised the fact that he had to leave the warmth of queen size duvet and the heat of Lady M's bosoms to face the son-of-a-bitch down here, at the reception, since the phone got him nowhere.
"Breakfast is served fr.."
"I don't give a fuck when you serve your breakfast, luvvie. Milady is feeling peckish NOW and I expect you to get off your arses and find me some… Get me a duty manager…"
"One moment, monsieur…" Meredith Octavius followed the neat narrow hand of the clerk to the receiver, polished nails, long feminine fingers, then pulled the small voice recorder out of his back trouser pocket. Meredith Octavius loved the sound of his voice…
"Note to myself. This place is full of fucking faggots… swarming around like flies… everywhere you go you have to watch your arse… "
Meredith Octavius paid a fortune to a voice coach to mellow his cockney into an English public school accent. The result was pretty good (stupendous, even if I say so myself), but not as good as the one that said into his ear: "An obnoxious little bugger, aren't you?"
Perfect Eton or Harrow, a slight metallic rasp beneath… Slowly Meredith turned to the fool that had an audacity to peel off the lovingly cultivated layers of gloss and class and get right to the wrinkled dwarf in a basement. Deep down that's all he really was and Meredith knew it; he kept that knowledge well, well hidden. And the fact and the immediacy with which this stranger knew it too were unforgivable.
Meredith looked up and first saw lips pulled into a smile. Menacing smile. A vile smile… Meredith Octavius felt his blood boil with fury. When he looked into the stranger's maroon eyes, reflecting light in pinpoints of red, his blood turned into crushed ice, chilling shivers went down his spine. Instinctively, Meredith stepped back as to put a barrier between them. Futile attempt… The man opposite him, sleek and small, meticulously dressed, black dinner jacket under a fine cashmere overcoat faced him, untroubled and elegant, leaning against the front desk counter. Everything Meredith ever aspired to be…
For a moment or two the stranger observed Meredith with cold amusement, head slightly to the side, and then, as if Meredith Octavius was grime on a train window, looked right through him. He turned to the clerk and said something in French. It must've been hilarious since the clerk sniggered, respect and admiration in his attentive posture. Ignoring the "No smoking" sign, the man had a lit Cohiba Panatelas between his thumb and forefinger. He gave it a light puff, winked to the clerk, picked up his black fedora off the counter and walked out into the white dew of the folding night.
There he was, Meredith Octavius, the true heir to the splendour of Rome and ruthless nobility of the Renaissance, standing among the grace and grandeur that many rich and famous had trotted through, and everywhere he saw the reflection of the vile amusement and wicked admonishment that the stranger had left behind. The shining Perl of his oyster had turned perpetually dull…
The wrinkled dwarf of Meredith's soul stirred with white-hot anger in his bog hole and its long suppressed stench intoxicated Meredith with overwhelming sensations of hate and revenge. He'll make the fucker pay for his, Meredith's, frustration and humiliation. He'll have these strange maroon eyes bleed with pain and plead for mercy… And like the Roman Emperors before he'll take his time to decide the extent of his mercy…
"Have my car brought out. Now!" Meredith ordered, abrupt, in a croaking voice he barely recognised as his. His throat stiff and dry, fingers trembling from the finality of his intentions, Meredith Octavius went through the revolving doors and glimpsed the stranger to hand his half-full cigar to a porter and slink behind the wheel of a classic grey Bentley. The porter, puffing on the discarded Havana, gratefully pocketed a large tip as Bentley slowly moved off and into a pale haze of street lanterns…
Turning of the Boulevard Cornuché, threading the slender steering wheel of 1956 Bentley SI Countryman through his hands with a tender appreciation as though he was playing theremin, Dr Lecter checked the side mirror. Jaguar's long red nose popped into a view, headlights struggling with the fog clusters that seem to thicken into a soup along this coastal road to Villers-sur-Mer.
As morning dawned, the road was empty, tranquil and blind. Suddenly the Jaguar leaped forward and, weaving in front of Dr Lecter, slowed down, coming eventually to a halt, blocking the way.
When Dr Lecter stepped out on to a damp tarmac with his coat wrapped around his left arm, a swift shadow appeared from the fog cloud. A long dark object, raised above, came down with a crushing force. Everything happened so fast that Meredith Octavius, recoiling from his attacking strike, didn't notice it happened.
The lightning speed with which his foe deflected the devastating blow of the hefty wrench, aimed at the silky temple, startled Meredith. It must've been the astonishment of his failure that made his arms unexpectedly limp and heavy; his legs started to fold when his intended victim with power and agility, surprising for an old man, picked Meredith's rag doll body and dragged it back to the car.
Sitting on a passenger seat of his two-seater Jaguar Coupe, Meredith, unable to control his limbs, observed the rest of his life in a slow motion. He watched the stranger make himself at home at his, Meredith's, own steering wheel. He tried to tell him to fuck the hell off but felt the salty liquid bubbling instead on his lips. He tried to kick his leg out but only slid helplessly down the seat. He was getting very short of breath…
As Meredith Octavius struggled to understand the slipping world around him, Dr Lecter moved Jaguar further down the road and parked on a verge, under a large crown of an old oak tree. Then he switched on the cabin light and turned to his attacker with a disturbing expression of cheery delight.
Glancing down his chest Meredith could now see that his pullover and the front of his trousers were soaking wet, hot and sticky.
"Good morning, sir." Dr Lecter said, as though he was a London cabby, and, noting bewilderment in his companion's drooping eyes, added. "Ah, would you like to see the source of your discomfort?"
Dr Lecter helpfully rolled up the blood soaked sweater and parted the slit trousers, and that is when the reality of this hideous situation finally hit Meredith Octavius with a splitting pain in his chest and stomach.
He was ripped badly, from the depth of his manhood, along the entire length of his torso, the sucking wound disappearing somewhere under the rolled sweater. Watching the dark red blood, almost black under the scant light, spilling out, rapidly depleting the treasured reservoirs of his body, he imagined that is how a gutted fish must feel. Watching his life slithering away, gashing out from the artery wound, spraying everywhere, one absurd thought was hypnotising Meredith Octavius. Here he was, sitting idly on his arse, while the fucking blood was staining the upholstery and interior of his forty grand Jag…
"Not long now, Mr…, umm hmm, Pratt, is it?" Dr Lecter said in his sweetest voice. Even as his vision started to fail, being addressed as Mr Pratt triggered a spasm of indignation on Meredith's twisted face.
"No?" Lecter said. "What would you like me to call you?"
It took almost everything out of Meredith but he breathed it out. "Meredith… Octavius… Death…" What he had left was just enough for Meredith to hear the stranger speak, feeling the hair rise on the back of his neck.
"Umm, Sir Meredith…, now I am going to tell you what I am intending to do with you. After I pierced your heart – just to make sure – I am not a barbarian," Dr Lecter opened his Harpy knife. "I'll remove your thymus and pancreas and anything else I'll find appetising. Then I'll leave you here, in your car… Would you like to be placed on the driver's seat? Yes? Of course, I'll oblige. You can trust me, you know."
"I hope your liver is up to scratch… There's a recipe I haven't tried in a while… What shall I call it today…" Dr Lecter pressed his bloody finger against his pursed lips. "Hmm, Salad de Foie au Meredith Octavius Confits… Splendid. Lunch is promising to be once again exquisite."
If Meredith Octavius wasn't dead, he might've found it comforting that he finally had his recognition at the dinner table of Dr Hannibal Lecter.
When Dr Lecter returned to his car, he went to the trunk and retrieved an ice box where he placed the harvested delicacies. Then with a wet towelling cloth he cleaned the blood off his hands and face. His clothes were beyond redemption. So he changed there, by the roadside, choosing a beautifully cut dark blazer and flannels from the ever-present leather suitcase.
Soon after he was on his way. As he drove past the parked Jaguar, he didn't give it another glance. On the red bonnet dewdrops looked like bloody tears, oozing through from the blood splattered interior. The driver inside seemed to have nodded off with his hands on the steering wheel. His face would've looked peaceful if it wasn't for the brown crusts of drying blood.
With the advancing morning the birds have rekindled their trills and mating calls. Hannibal Lecter wound down the window and breathed in the invigorating aromas of mid-spring. Driving along to the sound of Bach, he was contemplating the success of the last night hunt.
Hook, line and sinker… Satisfaction played on Dr Lecter's lips. The limey took the bait hook, line and sinker…
He was handing the room key and a mauve envelope to the concierge when the Englishman stormed in to the lobby, spitting rage, and for some time Dr Lecter had been observing the endearing performance unnoticed while considering his calculations. The self-obsessed poseur was perfect for his scheme…
The rising sun burned through the fog, rapidly clearing the vast areas of countryside. Dr Lecter picked up speed; he had a long drive and a long day ahead. He was looking forward to it…
to be continued…
As ever I'd appreciate your reviews.
CE