The all consuming desire to be more important or attractive than others - excessive love of oneself.

Em was not a morning person, she was a stay-up-all-night-sleep-at-noon person. It was three o'clock, too early then, when she woke to a sprig of lavender curled in her fist. She did not make a habit of carrying plants to bed, so at first, she was mildly confused, kind of entertained. She didn't even have a lavender bush around her little house. A thump startled her and she sat up, gasping hard enough to invert the hollow at her throat, and threw the small flower to the other side of the room.

She covered her mouth with one hand - realized that tasted like flowers - and threw it away too, like she could dislodge her hand. She snatched up her phone and stared at the floral arrangement at the end of her bed, where the crime scene photos were propped up like morbid flowers, in a pretty enough arrangement.

"Jack speaking-"

"He was in my house!" she said, in a voice that was both bellow and scream. "That murderous bastard was in my fucking house!"

"Em - what happened? What did he do?"

"In my room, Jack, in my room! He's seen me practically naked- oh god!" the window was wide open and she really wanted to fling herself out of it, run and jump into her pool and not ever come out. She flew instead, into the bathroom, and slammed the door shut, snapping the lock closed, putting her shoulders on the wood.

"Em?"

She only replied by making a very distressed noise at the bouquet of precariously arranged flowers in there too, propped precariously against her leaky faucet.

"Em, are you okay?"

"Not really!"

"Did he touch you?"

"Not that I know of!"

"Okay, Em, listen to me. I'm going to put you on loud speaker. Dr. Lecter and Will are here with me." she heard the dull beep that indicated he had done as he said he would. "How do you know that he was in your room?"

"Well, all the flowers kind of gave it away," she was breathless, sliding down the door. "There are photos - Jesus Christ, more photos." she covered her eyes with one hand.

"What flowers?"

"There are bunches of flowers everywhere." she replied in a drawl. "My house smells like a florist. Why am I even awake? What's the time?"

"Quarter past three." Dr. Lecter intoned, and she made a disgusted nose.

"I shouldn't even be conscious right now." she mumbled, and removed her hand from her eyes. "I don't think I'm actually sober right now. Nope, the room is still spinning. Can someone come and pick me up, please?"

"I'm on my way. Stay with us."

"I'm not going-" but a suspicious thump made her bite her tongue.

"Em?" that was Will in her ear. "Em, what's going on?"

"I can hear..."

"Em?" that was Jack. "Is he still there?"

"Give me a minute. Just a second..."

She cocked the free ear to the door, holding her breath. She stayed so positively still her pounding heart was the only thing she was aware of. She wished it'd stop beating, not for the first time in her life - this time was for a different reason. Jack, Will and Hannibal were quiet in her ear, so silent she wondered absently if she'd accidentally hung up on them. There was no noises, no indication of an unwanted visitor. She breathed out, prepared to tell them she was drunkenly hallucinating again.

Another photo slid under the door.

She launched back from it, smashing her shoulder against the sink, making the flowers tumble on top of her head. It was only then the smell of lavender parted, leaving room for the unforgettable scent of coppery blood and meat going bad. She made panicky noises, dropping the phone, as she realized that ten dislocated and strategically placed fingers were in the soil and petals now on her head. The maggots were just an added, writhing bonus.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" she threw it away, smashing it against the wall. A stray finger rolled out and stared back at her. "YOU GET YOUR RAT BASTARD ASS BACK HERE! I'LL FUCKING GUT YOU!"

She slid in the dirt, the stems, deaf to the increasingly concerned FBI agents on the phone - which she tossed to her side without hesitation. She wrenched the door open and saw his shadow darting through her bedroom door. She followed, naked legs and baggy shirt be damned. She didn't know where he'd been hiding, she didn't know where he had been watching, but she'd woken up in the process of his set-up and he'd stuck around.

Now she would stick him.

She was breathing hard and fast, knowing that now she had started, she wouldn't be able to make herself stop. He was on the second floor landing, taking three steps at a time - she simply catapulted her significantly smaller body after him, catching both his legs in constrictor like arms.

She hadn't been anticipating what to do if she actually caught him. She had been wanting to get a look at his face. Now she grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked it back to see...

And that was all she remembered clearly. The fact that she saw his face. There was a brief tumble, she got a good right hook in, but the larger man dominated the fisticuffs, and she came to with a very worried Will kneeling at her side, his very blue eyes staring into hers behind his slightly uneven, foggy glasses. Hannibal was holding her face, two fingers at her pulse, a small smile on her mouth as she roused.

"Welcome back." he said, rather dryly. "How do you feel?"

There were FBI everywhere... Ed Scarab was looking at her Mighty Thor underwear. She caught Will's coat in one fist, and cracked a wide grin at the doctor.

"It's about time you got here." she shifted, lifted her other hand, to reveal a chunk of dark hair and scalp in her palm. "Guess who's got DNA?"

"How's the description going, Em?"

Her glasses flashed as she glanced up from the paper and pad on her knees, the scribbled words that pressed deeper and deeper into the page the further down she wrote. There was a lengthy smudge of grey lead up her right hand and she was forming a callous on her finger from where she gripped the pencil. Not only was she frustrated, they were in the car, on the way to the next co-ordinates. The neat scrawl is steadily slanted the further she writes on one side of the page, a result of having nothing but a knee to lean on.

"I'd say not good, Jack."

The frown on her mouth was small, but pronounced. She rubbed one bloodshot eye under her lenses and kicked one leg over the other, proceeding to scowl at the page with a fist at her lips.

"Everything helps." he reminded her, matter-of-factly.

She scoffed.

"Not this. This is-... Nonsense."

"You may be in a stage of shock." Dr. Lecter had offered his council but she had nothing to discuss - she gave the scalp and hair to Beverly and had been running on fumes since she packed a heavy bag of her things and locked the front door behind her. He didn't once attempt to read what she had written for privacy's sake, but he was inclined to. "Give yourself time."

"I don't have any time to give anyone," she peered at him from over the cracked frames of her specs. "Least of all myself."

"Read what you've written." Jack said. "There might be something in there that makes sense."

"It's not a physical description."

"Everything helps."

She watched him over her glasses in the rear view mirror. He was bedrock - he wanted to hear what she had to say, and she didn't get a chance to decide whether she would share that or not. So flicking the pages, clearing her throat, she did.

"He is warm blood, dirt and poorly. He smells like sick and bad meat. There's an intelligence behind his eyes but he masks it in a veil of madness. He is swirling masses of hurt and awe. He looks at me like with deer-in-the-headlights-eyes." her golden gaze flicked up to Will, then down again. "He is tall. His weight is not kind. He has dark hair. I know his face, I am familiar. But I don't know who he is, and anything I've seen is obscured in rage and in half drunk memory."

She sighed, folded the book shut, and tucked it in her bag (between the handy cannister of alcohol and her mobile phone.)

"How's that for helpful?"

"You recognised him." Hannibal noted. "That is something."

"Just think on it, Em." Will offered. "That list can't be longer than the one we had before."

"No, but I make my acquaintances whilst I'm under some influence." she twirled the pencil around her fingers with a repetitive, practised ease. "I'm what you call anti-social at the best of times. Drunk if I'm lucky. Responsive and involved if Bert has anything to do with me."

"You can go over the list again." Will said, and glanced back over his shoulder at her. "See if it's jogged your memory."

Silence. She leaned across and dusted a few stray lavender petals from the doctor's knee, collected from when he'd knelt to find her alive and stirring at the foot of her staircase.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." She sat back in her chair and yawned, leaning her head against the window. "How long until we get there?"

"We've got about an hour."

"Great. If any one needs me..." she shut her eyes and proceeded to dream.

It was probably for the best. Hannibal found a maggot still clinging to her hair.

The intense smell of lavender made the writer halt in her tracks. Her hand flew out to brace Will's arm, though she didn't appear to be conscious of that action.

"Oh." she was shaking her head, sleep-sticky lashes fluttering. "I thought I could do this. I don't know..."

"What's the matter?" Dr Lecter and Will shared a brief glance - all the colour had drained from Em's face.

"I-" she swallowed a hard mouthful, let go of Will's arm, but wrapped it around her midsection. "I, am what's wrong." she spat the word like it was poison in her mouth, her aggression not aimed at them.

Hannibal put his hand on her shoulder as an offer of small comfort.

"It's- just -... I draw inspiration to write my best. I draw it from Google searches of phobias to my own obscure nightmares. It's a therapy." she sent a half joking smile in Hannibal's direction, then returned to staring at the large, fragrant barn. "This... This will be... sensitive, for me to handle. This one comes out of the darkest part of my deepest fears. This is... Projecting. This is... what scares me, personally. I don't know..."

"If you can handle viewing it?"

"Hannibal, I couldn't even edit this chapter."

"The lavender..." Hannibal paused. "This wouldn't happen to be that model, would it?"

She put her hand over her mouth and nodded. As most of her face was hidden behind her hand, her expresison was somewhat a mystery. But when Dr. Lecter offered his arm, her hand flew to it, and her eagerness to get away was betrayed by the wobble of her bottom lip. She quickly sucked it into her mouth and bit down.

"Sorry." she said to Will, with wide eyes. "I'm really, really sorry, for this one."

"It's not you." he told her vehemently.

"This is me." she caught his wrist, and squeezed. "This, this is me." she swallowed a heavy mouthful, her thumb digging into his forearm, like she didn't want him to go. He could feel that she didn't. She was both ashamed of this particular killing and scared of him seeing it.

"We will be in my car." Dr. Lecter offered, adjusting his hand to support rather than comfort her.

The walk into the barn alone made Will feel as though his insides were doused in ice.

It had been painted a vibrant orange in recent weeks - the muted smell of paint was mostly masked by the heavy smell of lavender. There were bushels of it in every nook of the barn, little lilac petals littered the floor. There were dried husks wedged between the victim's toes, and in her palms, which were bloody stumps.

There was an odd shape to her lower abdomen; a protrusion that shouldn't have been. Will briefly noted that the killer seemed intent on putting things into the victims by way of their sex; he remembered that at heart, the killer was a twenty year old girl, and it probably was a metaphor for rape.

Will shook his head, taking off his glasses for a moment to rub his eyes.

"This doesn't feel like bugs... or dirt." Katz was pressing the pads of her fingers into the swollen belly of the woman. "If I didn't know any better..." she dropped her fingers to the woman's bruised and swollen vagina, which is when Will turned his eyes away.

The barn was well removed from people, easily accessible by the road. His mind started to piece together parts of a picture he wasn't sure he wanted assembled. He found himself wishing that Em would walk in and start rattling off information to ease him into the correct mindset.

Jack quietly rounded off the crawling agents, herding them like curious cattle out of the barn. It was easier to do when Em wasn't trying to push the visions out of him, or when Dr. Lecter wasn't studying his nervous ticks. He allowed himself a single moment as Will Graham, then he sunk into the shadow of the Encompassed killer with a swipe of gold.

"I strip her down to nothing. She is perfect and I want to see all of her, so I hang her from the roof by her hands. Every angle." she's struggling lamely from the heavy duty binds at her wrists, the hooks of which are still in the ceiling. She's drooling around the gag in her mouth, crying, a thick stream of mucus on her upper lip. It's not far enough removed that he is allowed to hear her screams, so he keeps her compliant by injecting alcohol directly into her veins. He doesn't really want to hear it, but everything she says and does and is...

Perfect.

The darkness at the crook of her elbows indicate the forceful injections made by a non-surgical, clumsy hand. Infection has started to bubble and crust the ditches he's dug in her skin, and even that is perfect. The neatly sorted vodka bottles give further detail to his smarts; they'd be common and unquestioned, untraceable, making his woman compliant and weak. He meticulously turns the labels all facing in the same direction, obsessive lines of pristine bottles staring back at him, cementing his scene.

Perfection.

There are fans directed on the table to his right - a heater is aligned with her torso on the left.

"Everything is about her. I show her I care. I take my time with her because she is special. I keep her as comfortable as I can." she's on the table, her head loosely lolling. Will reaches out and touches her hair - it's clean and smells fruity. It's been brushed through, tended to methodically, arranged in a fantastic flourish around her head, like an ink blot in water.

There are several styling products under the table she was on, and he followed the lead of a light to a cupboard, casually glancing over his shoulder to see her writhing, pleading, crying to be let go. He uncovered the photo printer with very little grandeur. A part of him knew that he had this here. What public servant could print his photos without comment? What person could do it right?

The machine smelt faintly burnt. Broken, maybe. There were many more photos than the last victims - more there than the previous ones combined and double the number again. He uncovered the stash of pictures, flipping through them aimlessly. She was dead in all of them. More eternal that way. The lighting is professional and she looked every inch a model, sometimes with the bulging belly and sometimes without it. In all of them, she was beautiful, glowing, shimmering, perfect.

"She is a work of art. This is my design."

He came back to see that the barn was mostly empty. Em and Dr. Lecter are standing side-by-side but are not touching; she was staring at Will with the photos in his hands, blinking rapidly.

"Will?" her voice was breathy, rough. Will put the photos back in the cupboard, staring at the medically clean floor. "What-... Do you see?" She had never been scared of anything, but he could feel her fear throbbing through the air, and he didn't like it.

"He thought she was perfect." he mumbled and the writer agreed with a strangled hum.

"So did she." Em volunteered. "He's put a baby in her."

"He got her pregnant?" he glanced at the horribly distorted and stretched skin of her lower belly. Now that she mentioned it, he could almost distinguish a head.

"Not exactly." she managed to make herself walk stiffly over to the table on which the victim lay posed. "It's a baby born. A plastic doll."

A beat.

"Did he want her to have his children?"

"He wanted to ruin her." she lifted her hand, keeping inches away, and couldn't help but look incredibly sad. The fear is gone now, and both men sense that she is capable, in control of herself. Willow had tried to break through, but Em kept the lid on her. "This woman..."

She paused, following the bloated belly up the thin line of her toned muscles. She would've otherwise been in incredible shape, had she not had a baby doll wedged in her stomach. Em went to the woman's head, and turned her face away, looking at the vodka bottles all neatly lined up in rows.

"This is different again." she said, muted. "The elements are there, but he's... taken creative licence. Dr. Lecter, you've read the story."

"Yes."

"Is this what you saw?"

"No." he looked around with raised brows. "I imagined a far more... chaotic, setting."

"Exactly." she swallowed a nervous mouthful, digging in her bag. "She's been washed and taken care of, like in the story. He feeds her and lets her throw up if she needs to, wears it like - like liquid jewels. He's cleaned up whatever mess he's made by putting the baby in her, stitched her back up again. Kept her compliant with alcohol. Those are all things Tom Blithely did."

"There are no broken bottles." Hannibal said mildly, and settled in a graceful crouch to inspect them for prints. There are none. No one had expected there to be. "Not a single one. Broken bottles did feature quite heavily in the scene. I think you described them as crystals covering the floor."

"Diamonds." she returned with a quirk in her mouth that wasn't quite a smile. "But... I didn't do that to her hands." she dropped her voice an octavie.

"That was all for me, wasn't it? The flowers in my room. The piece de resistance. He wanted to send me more than photos."

"I think so, yes." Hannibal surveyed her grey face, the tight set of her shoulders and jaw. "Em?"

"I'm- handling it."

"You're internalizing."

"I'm a writer. It'll be expressed. Just not yet." she looked around with a small frown and hunched shoulders. "I think he's... settling. Getting bored, maybe."

"He's definitely not bored." Will assured her. "If anything, he's gaining speed."

"Escalating or falling?" she wondered out loud, and turned to the back of the barn, inspecting the orange paint, each of the dead straight brushstrokes. "Gaining notoriety, infamy, of course, after Gold, a high profile killing. But he's gaining speed in his decent. He's falling. Losing control. It's like he's..."

"Running out of time." Will finished the thought for her. "Like a countdown."

"Like he's got an agenda planned." she nodded along the sentiment. "The first few are all so precise. They're all so-... So..."

"Structured." Will agreed, and nodded to the lines of bottles. "He craves the structure but he's, working to achieve something. He's getting -..."

"Impatient for it." she turned to him then with slightly narrowed eyes. "Like a kid at christmas."

"More like an advent calendar. Unwrapping a present every day until the finale." Will painfully imparted the thought with a twist to his mouth. "The countdown has already begun. At first he was happy with one. Then he skipped a few days and got two. Now he's trying hard to do it right."

"And he's not content with putting so much effort in any more." Em glanced at the cupboard with all the photos. "He is like a kid. Started off honestly doing his best. But he got tired. Lazy."

"Distracted." Will found himself looking at Em, and she looking back. He didn't feel obliged to glance away, only a small discomfort that they both so easily tuned into the train of thought, and how fluidly they completed parts of the puzzle with pieces the other didn't know were missing.

"Are we interrupting something here?" Jack broke the moment. Em quietly went to the cupboard and proceeded to peer at the pictures she could see without touching them. Hannibal was at Jack's side but soon drifted, a supportive, silent shadow for the writer and empath.

"No." Will retorted, but he did and it annoyed him. It wasn't every day he managed to connect with someone, let alone someone who caught the gist of what he could do, and could equal it, offer their own.

"Dr. Lecter said you've uncovered some photos." it is a badly constructed pretense to interrupt them. "Also, Ed Scarab and Theodore Knott are now out of your hair. They overheard your conversation and have handed in their resignation. Said something about being unable to be objective when the two people working this case were outwardly narrating the killer's sentiments." he only partially aimed the comment to Will.

His eyes flicked to Em, who didn't look up but saluted him in acknowledgment with a mumbled derogatory comment. Will dropped his head to hide the cheeky grin that split on his face.

"Also, there's been another development." he paused, looking old and grey. "There is a baby in this woman's womb."

"We know." Will said with maybe a touch of petulance.

"No, you misunderstand. Katz did a quick ring around. There's been a still born go missing from a hospital ten minutes drive from here."

Will instantly looked up to Em, who had gone completely rigid. She was staring at pictures but her head was cocked on a nearly unsettling angle, listening to what Jack said. Very slowly, she turned, and marched out of the barn. Will gave Jack a quick, withering look, then followed her out.

"Em." he said, though she didn't so much as acknowledge him. She just about pulled the door off it's hinges and threw herself bodily in the backseat, shaking hands digging furiously in her bag. Her face had never been such a green colour. Knowing that it was possibly the worst thing that she could've imagined, Will pulled open the other door and likewise climbed in Jack's Humvee.

"Don't judge me." she demanded, and unscrewed the lid of her travel container. She took several long pulls from it and when she resurfaced for air, the smell of rum was pronounced. "I'm an alcoholic. Let's not talk about it."

"I won't." he pulled off his gloves and tucked them in his pocket. Dr. Lecter had a quick word to Jack, who sullenly followed the two sulking parties into his truck. Will was there because she needed his presence, and they both knew it. When they first met, one of the first things she'd said was that it was nice to know she wasn't alone.

It was something that stuck with him entirely, something he outright associated with the tiny writer.

Age complex. Right handed. Doesn't do well with authority figures. Likes to know she's not alone.

"It's not even six o'clock." Jack reasoned.

"Do you want some?" Jack did not, but she passed it to Will and he took a healthy draw without further comment, pulling a face at the percent of straight alcohol burning his mouth.

"I've organised a detail for your hotel tonight." Jack told the windscreen.

"Thanks Jack." she sighed heavily, taking an unashamed draw from the bottle. "I'll sleep so easily now."

E.M Hart = Teenage Girl? by Freddie Lounds

It may be of no surprise that the highly confrontational works of E.M Hart have inspired yet another spree of violent murders as modeled after the ones written about in the thriller novelist's best selling series of three.

Enraptured, Encompassed, and Enveloped have all sold around the world and been printed into seventeen languages, supposedly being suggested for next year's blockbuster and at a reported sum of at least $4.5 million dollars.

But how would you feel, if instead of the supposed middle aged man we've all been lead to believe E.M Hart actually is, we find instead an alcoholic, emotionally unstable teenage girl?

And how would you feel if it was revealed that working on the slew of vicious murders alongside the girl herself was "special agent" Will Graham, of who has been linked to several notorious cases of the last few weeks?

"They have a psychologist present at all times, in case one of them snaps." says all-round good guy Edward Scarab. Constable Scarab was involved in the case when alleged best friend of E.M Hart stayed the night, innocently opening a package that changed her world forever.

"It was sick." the once friend, who wishes to remain unnamed, looks ill when asked what was in the pictures. "They were dead. These twins together. I threw up and she just looked at them, looked through all of them, so calmly, like she'd seen them coming. I was screaming at her to call the police and she barely looked away to talk to me."

The alleged best friend has since neglected contact with the author, and with good reason.

When Constable Knott (involved when his partner took the case) was asked what the actual name of the renound author is, he politely refused to impart with it.

"I swore to the captain I wouldn't tell her name to any one. I will tell you she's young, and she is in fact, a she. ... She, emotionally, is a mess. I've never seen a girl so angry before. Mentally? I mean, this kid has written like, how many books on brutal murders? ... I don't think that should qualify any civilian to be working a live case, especially one that's unstable like that. She's already messed up."

Constable Scarab also mentions that Miss Hart has a very real alcohol problem.

"I didn't once see her without a hangover or bottle in her hand. She would just whip it out and drink it, and we would be in the middle of a crime scene. It was really upsetting to see an underage kid go so astray. And I had to just, deal with it, to keep her happy."

"('Special Agent') Will and Em (E.M) get along great." Constable Knott notes. "I was there when she explained to him about her fascination with incest, and how in love these twins were with each other. He called it sweet, like he understood. ... The things the both of them come out with are twisted. They're on the same train of thought, and it's bound to go off the rails. They're finishing each other's sentences and everything."

The FBI really know what they're doing with America's safety in their hands.

The good news is, on all reports, it appears that a relationship between the multimillion dollar teenager and the slightly insane profiler is the silver lining to all of this mess.

We here at have the sincerest hopes that they don't produce offspring.