Author's note:
Yes, a while since I updated this one. One of my originals seized control of my creative faculties. That and I did have to figure out how to put the GD in here. But inspiration has struck.
The middle section of this is very gory. You have been warned. (The gore's in the middle, see? Goreos. Anyways. Enjoy.)
Dr. Lecter was torn.
He sat at his desk, calmly reading through newspaper clippings from the American newspapers he had. LECTER DAUGHTER ESCAPES CUSTODY IN DRAMATIC GUN BATTLE, screamed one headline. FBI AGENTS GUNNED DOWN AS MADWOMAN BREAKS FREE.
Dr. Lecter's life since his departure from Chesapeake had been what he had always hoped it would be. His accounts were denominated in American dollars. In the United States he would have been well-to-do. In South American he was phenomenally wealthy. All the things he wanted in life were his for the asking. He could purchase fine china, fine linens, artwork – everything he could possibly want.
But he was alone. He had his servants, but they were there to see to his needs, not to provide companionship. All this grandeur, all this fine food, everything he wanted…and yet he woke up alone and went to sleep alone. This situation had once meant nothing to him at all. Now, however, it was intolerable.
He was torn between two women. Alice, his daughter, and Clarice…ah yes, Clarice. He was pleased that Alice was free. Hopefully, he could intercept her and get her to safety. She was troubled and would need his wisdom.
However, he was not pleased at all that Clarice had been hurt in Alice's escape. According to the Baltimore papers, her injuries were not serious and she would recover. There was that. The other agent had apparently been killed. Dr. Lecter did not mind that as much; it was Clarice who was special to him.
There was another question here. Before, in Alice's home, he had planned to spirit Clarice away with him. A few drugs and a bit of therapy, and she would come to the realization that he had long hoped she would. She was not happy in the FBI. He could show her that.
Counterpointing that was the fact of his daughter. She was out there, and presumably she had remained free. Still, Dr. Lecter felt a sort of obligation. For one thing, she knew his address, and if she was recaptured she might be drugged and give him up. For another, he was curious to get to know her. He had never known that he had a daughter. He would like to give her the benefit of his knowledge derived from years of living as a fugitive.
On the other hand, he could not exactly have two of them in the same house. Whether or not Alice had been involved in gunning Clarice down, Clarice was likely to bear a bit of a grudge. Law enforcement officials tended to be awfully vengeful when you killed their fellows. Such anger would get in the way of Clarice's therapy.
No matter who he decided to take back with him, however, his choice was clear. He had returned to his solitary life as a wealthy man-about-town in South America. Such a life had no further interest for him. One of them would return with him. Whether it be daughter or paramour, his duty or his desire, he would no longer be alone.
He walked over to a telephone and looked for a broker of last-minute cancellations. He had identity papers in several different identities, and traveling to the United States would be no bother. His destiny could take two paths. He would have to see which it took.
…
The second movie proved to be as bad as the first.
Again, Clarice and Josh assembled in the meeting room. Again, the flickering screen promised them further mayhem. This time, however, it was not directly aimed at them.
The words MARCIA SKEWER KILLING flashed on the screen and dissolved into Alice Pierpont standing in her kitchen. She wore a skirt that fell just below the knee, pumps, and a silk blouse. On her head was a blonde wig. She smirked at the camera and adopted a soppy look. Her voice was plummy and sounded fake.
"Hello," she said. "I'm Marcia Skewer. Today, on Marcia Skewer Killing, we're going to look at different ways to engage in home decorating." She raised her hands and clasped them in front of her breasts and looked tres domestic.
The camera zoomed back to indicate that Alice was standing in a kitchen. Next to her, on the kitchen table, a young man was tied down to the table. A piece of duct tape covered his mouth. Sweat beaded up on his forehead. He made muted foghorning sounds through his gag and stared at the camera helplessly, as if the viewers might help him in his plight.
"This is Dave," Alice said. "Have you ever had the problems of a troublesome victim in the house and no décor? Today, I'll show you how you can take a victim and make a lovely bouquet suitable for sprucing up your kitchen table." Amazingly, she giggled.
With a wave of her hand, she indicated some tools next to her. "You'll need some tools," Alice said thoughtfully. "For this project, we'll need a wide-bladed skinning knife. This is a Schrade Sharpfinger skinning knife. You can find it in any sporting goods store for about twenty dollars. You'll also need some pruning shears, which you can find in any hardware store. A grinding wheel or a sanding block is also handy, and that's obtainable just about anywhere. And finally, you'll need a scalpel, available at medical supply stores anywhere you go." She stopped and stared directly into the camera, a cool grin wreathing her face.
"The fact that you can buy these anywhere you want, available for cash and with no questions asked, is very useful," Alice said. "It means that when someone…say, the FBI, maybe…tries to track down your purchases, they'll have a lot more trouble than if you were buying, say, a gun." Then the pleasant hostess smile took over again.
"To begin with," Alice said, "first you'll need your skinning knife." She lifted the small, wide-bladed knife and waved it at the camera. She ran it up the aforementioned Dave's shirt and opened it neatly. A sound like a muted scream came from under the tape.
"Next," Alice said, not at all interested in her victim's reactions, "you'll need to access the ribs. This is where a skinning knife really shines." She smiled again and bared her white teeth at the camera. The blade slipped easily across his chest. The wicked point of the curved blade slid underneath her victim's skin. Blood began to well from the wound.
Clarice took a deep breath. There was something awful in these movies. Worse than Buffalo Bill had been. She could not save the fellow on the screen from his tormentor. She could see his suffering and make it her own. What she could never do was save him.
"You may need to try a few cuts to get the blade between the skin and the ribs properly," Alice advised. Slowly, carefully, she slid the blade between the young man's skin and the ribs. Horrible muffled screams came from his taped mouth. Blood welled from the slits. Alice slipped on a rubber glove and grabbed the edge of her cut. Expertly, she began to flay the young man on the table.
Clarice found her knuckle creeping to her mouth. The horror on the screen before her struck deep in her gut. Alice calmly pulled back the skin, exposing the young man's ribs. During the whole time, her smile did not waver.
"Once you have the skin flayed back from the ribs," she said, still sounding eerily calm, "you simply need to free a few of them. Pruning shears work well for this." She lifted a set of pruning shears and brandished them at the camera.
It seemed to take her some effort to chop out the ribs. Finally, a loud click sounded on the audio. She lifted three or four ribs that she had cut free and waved them at the camera.
"It's a good thing," she said approvingly, and smiled. Below her, the young man writhed and made muted sounds of pain. Blood oozed from the wound and began to puddle on the table. Calmly, Alice stepped back from the table to avoid getting any blood on her.
"You can go with all twelve, but that's a lot of work," she advised. "Now, you need to sharpen the edge of the ribs." For this, she displayed a belt sander. It turned on with a hum, and Alice held the ribs one by one at a forty-five-degree angle. A few minutes later, each rib was sharpened to a wicked point.
"Next you have to cut the blossoms," Alice said, smiling perkily. "For this, I like to use a scalpel." She lifted one and waved it at the camera. "You can use the skin that you carved away for that, or you can take skin elsewhere."
Her victim bucked and screamed on the table as she lowered the scalpel to his skin. Carefully, Alice cut a strangely festive flower shape out of his skin. In the center she cut a small hole. Then another, and another. At first, she used the flap of skin she had flayed away from his ribs. Then she cut a few others from his stomach and chest. Clarice found herself nauseated as she watched. The horror was bad enough. What was worse, for Clarice, was that Alice was able to simply ignore her victim's suffering even from a few feet away.
She held up the blossoms she had cut and carefully slipped the pointed end of the rib through the center hole. The resulting flowers lay limply. Alice smiled another big fake plastic smile and put the hideous bouquet in a glass vase.
"Now for the finishing touch," she said thoughtfully. A latex glove snapped as she put it on. She dipped a finger into the open wound and carefully daubed the 'flowers' with blood.
"See?" she said, and clasped her hands in front of her chest again. "A beautiful bouquet." The camera zoomed in on the bouquet, capturing the carved flesh hanging off trimmed ribs. Blood dripped from the edge of the flowers. A few gobbets of flesh hung from the edges of the flower petals, where the victim's writhing had caused Alice's hand to slip.
"Of course," Alice said, smirking at the screen, "you do have to clean up the trash."
Clarice sat up. This wasn't going to be good, whatever it was. Alice reached under the table and produced a machete. She waggled it at the camera. The poor schmuck under her bucked and twisted at the sight of it. Besides Clarice, Josh closed his eyes and glanced away.
Alice held the machete two-handed. She brought it down sharply. There was a wet thunk and then the guy on the table stopped moving. A spray of blood jetted from the stump of his severed neck. Alice picked up the head and stepped away from the severed trunk. Blood pattered on the floor. Some got on her arm, but she didn't appear to notice. She brandished the severed head at the camera.
"That's all the time we have," she said "Join us next week on Marcia Skewer Killing, when I'll show you how to make a lovely vase out of this head." The camera cut to black, displaying the words Marcia Skewer Killing. This has been a Homicidal Production. Copyright 2004.
Clarice felt nausea staining the back of her throat with acidic vapor. This was simply insane. They were killing people, having fun doing it, and filming it. Then to top it off, they were sending the tapes to the people pursuing them.
There was a faint click as Crawford turned the lights on. He faced both his agents and looked calmly at them.
"Okay," he said. "What are you thinking?"
That Alice Pierpont is a thousand times crazier than her father ever was, Clarice thought. But that wouldn't help.
"Well," she said. "They're obviously cocky. The fact that they're continuing to send videotapes tells us that they think they can get away with it. But they're not that cocky. Do we know where it came from?"
"Baltimore postmark," Crawford replied.
"They're not in Baltimore, then. Probably out of town. Alice commented in the last movie that their second production – this one – was 'in the can'. They made this to have something to hold us over while they moved. I'd bet there's going to be nothing at all for a few days, maybe a week. They need to get out of town, set up shop, and film their next movie."
Crawford shrugged. "I need something to help catch them," he said drily.
Clarice pressed her lips together. She did have something. "Do we know Alice Pierpont's bipolar cycle?" she asked.
Crawford tilted his head.
"She's bipolar. We may be able to use that to catch her," Clarice explained. "Her depressive phases aren't long. But when she's down, she's down." Her throat hitched a bit, remembering her captivity at the mentally ill woman's hands. "It'll be hard to get her to do anything, especially if she's off her meds, and I bet she is." As she thought about it, the possibility looked better and better.
"Right now she's ramping up," Clarice continued. "When she gets to the high point, she's totally jazzed and she'll be bouncing off the walls. But when that happens, they won't be able to get her to do much either, but for different reasons. She'll be bouncing off the walls. Like a little kid."
Josh nodded solemnly, realizing what she was talking about. "She'll have trouble traveling when she's down, and when she's up, she'll behave oddly and maybe stick out."
Crawford considered. "Not a bad idea," he said judiciously, chewing the inside of his cheek like a cud. "Good work, Starling. Any ideas on where she'd be going?"
Clarice thought. "There's the obvious," she said.
"Which is?" Crawford's voice was challenging.
"Where anyone goes if they want to make movies," Clarice said. "Hollywood."
…
The Burger King was busy. Its location by the side of the Interstate guaranteed for brisk trade. Hungry travelers would stop, grab some burgers, and head on their way, leaving this small chunk of rural Pennsylvania far behind. No one paid any particular interest to the trio that stopped in that day.
All Chatiqua wanted was some food. There would be no killing today; a Whopper would satisfy her hunger. She waited in line with more patience than she was accustomed to. She was pleased. Her vision was rapidly coming true. Her first visions had been simple practices. She knew that she could create. She was more than a mere camerawoman. She'd known this from the first few movies she had filmed. She was a director. Her visions might be viewed as shocking and scandalous, but then again, so had Stanley Kubrick's. And Chatiqua's plans made the movie A Clockwork Orange look like a kiddie movie.
She fumbled out the piece of paper on which she'd scribbled down what her actors wanted. Her actors. She liked thinking of them that way. She'd known back when she was twelve and had first met Alice that they could do great things together. Back then, they'd been inseparable. Race and class meant nothing. They were two people who understood each other.
They'd both been in for violent crimes, and so the authorities had made them both attend anger-management classes and group therapies before they were eligible for release. Memories swirled through her mind as she waited in line. How they'd made fun of the therapist behind her back! You need to learn positive coping skills. Lashing out with violence only creates more victims. When you get angry, try hitting a pillow or counting to ten.
Once, Alice had whispered in her ear that Dr. Thompson's idea of positive coping skills probably included the liberal use of marijuana. You need to learn positive coping skills, Teek. When you get angry, just do a few big bong hits. Then you'll be too baked to lash out with violence, man. After that, all one girl had to do was purse her lips and inhale sharply while the hippyish psychiatrist was talking with her back turned and the other would break into hysterical giggles.
It was silly, anyway. Positive coping skills meant little in a world in which everyone else existed largely for your own personal amusement. Only rare ones like Colin and Alice were worth anything to Chatiqua; everyone else was fodder for her vision. They weren't flesh. They were merely light and sound and airy material, and when they died the world did not change one iota for their passing.
But for now her hungers were more jejune. No one need die for her artistic vision today; a few burgers would do her fine. She got up to the line and eyed the clerk. Colin wanted a bacon double cheeseburger. Mmmm, his arteries would start hardening before they even got back in the car. Alice wanted a chicken sandwich, as if that was any healthier than the burgers. Chatiqua ordered a Whopper for herself.
The clerk had a scatter of pimples across his forehead, covered none too successfully by his Burger King baseball hat. Chatiqua's nose wrinkled. He would never do for the camera. He was just too ugly. The image of his face being forced into the deep-fat fryer occurred to her. That would leave bigger red marks. Then again, no. Whoever did the deed would need gloves. Colin would be good for that. It was time for him to have a feature of his own. Alice had worked hard on her features, but Colin would want something of his own.
They were her actors. It was her responsibility to keep them happy, so much as she was able to. She was in charge, but she needed them to achieve her vision. Chatiqua would take care of her actors. She'd done it before, back in the detention center, when Alice got all mopey and sad for a couple of days like she often did.
So she handed the clerk a rumpled twenty. Alice had tons of money, fortunately, and she was grateful to the people who had set her free. If she was willing to keep the purse strings relatively lax, Chatiqua thought, they might be able to afford a better budget for their productions. He rang it up and handed her back some limp bills and dirty change. A few minutes later she was provided with a brown tray covered with paper-wrapped burgers, French fry containers, and waxed paper cups.
Where had they gone to sit? Oh, over in the back. That made sense; if the FBI happened to track them here they'd be able to see them. She and Colin had always been armed, and she made sure Alice had a gun too.
Alice was talking, her face animated, as Chatiqua approached. Her eyes were fixed on Colin and she was smiling. Neither of them looked over as she crossed the distance to the table.
"So, anyway," she was saying. "After I got the guy in my basement, I sawed his hand off. Then I dumped him on Starling's porch and set him on fire!" She laughed merrily, as if the murder of James Winfield had been great fun. And of course, for her it had been. "It was a tremendous effect. It had the effect I wanted, all right. She was freaked. Should've filmed that. Maybe we can do a remake."
"Wow," Colin said. "That sounds like a lot of fun. We'll have to try that."
They finally did look up at her as she placed the tray on the table. Chatiqua frowned. Ever since she could remember, she had been other. Her parents had never quite known how to deal with her. She had always been outside, fenced out, not like the others. Other people cared about each other; no one had really cared for her. She had grown up clinically aware of her cold heart but unable to do anything to warm it.
The only people she had ever felt connected with were the two people sitting at the table. First Alice, who had been her friend and confidante in a place where friends were at a premium. Then Colin, who had been the only one at the company she worked for that had actually harbored darker tastes.
They glanced up as she sat down. Alice smiled pleasantly.
"Hi, Teek," she said. "Thanks for getting the food."
It was invisible and it was subtle, but it was still there. It was they and she. The lines had been quietly redrawn and now she was on the outside again. Chatiqua's eyes narrowed. Alice seemed surprised.
"I was just telling Colin about some things I'd done," Alice said brightly. "Come on. Sit down. Let's eat." She patted the seat next to her. For a moment Chatiqua found herself wondering if she was being oversensitive. People had told her she was that way sometimes.
It's just nothing, Chatiqua thought as she sat down. She passed out the food and they set to eating hungrily. No one wanted to waste time, and the lines seemed to redraw to include her again as if she had never been excluded. Nothing at all. It better be.