First off – thank you so much for all the support! – the reviews, follows & favourites, they really keep an author going.
... so I realised it's easy to forget the man we're dealing with – the psychopath – the murderer and the mentality around it.
I strive for a bit more realistic depiction of Hannibal, not another Romeo gone all soft like a biscuit dropped in milk...
And we can't have that, can we now?
[This chapter contains a bit of vi·o·lence]
It wasn't that he was being sloppywith the new girl; it just felt like he'd been eating too fast, like he didn't have time to chew properly – but there were no one else to blame but himself.
She lay on the cemented bank of the Baltimore River, her head turned away from him, she wasn't moving. The headlights beamed in the darkness of the surrounding shipyard. That's why it felt hurried, he decided and folded his arms, it was the improvised atmosphere of it all...
Dr. Lecter scolded himself for being so negative, at the very least he would be able to finally get his head clear.
He stooped and turned the girl to her side, he had sedated her with a careful dosage of etorphine so that she would still be able to use her sensory system when he got to work on her after she'd woken.
Her eyes flickered open then, glassy and confused and he could see her try and make ends meet.
"Don't you just wish you were someone else?" He mocked in a grave voice, smiling brightly and walking away to check on the other two girls in the trunk, they were awake too, more so than the one he'd already taken out.
He'd given it much thought; it'd been too long since he'd spent some proper, personal time. He felt like he was unravelling, fraying at the edges or curling in the corners like a page from some overused handbook and it would go on no longer. Hannibal did not need any extra complications, the friends he had fought to make bought enough, she was getting too close for comfort and he was letting her closer each time they were together. The price for good company, companionship was too high and he had checked his finances, he could not afford to waste a penny on something he didn't really need.
It was not in his nature to collect strays like Will Graham did. Hannibal needed reasons - good reasons.
Again, there were no one to blame but himself. And it needed to stop, the frivolous game he had no reason to partake in.
He would let her go softly so there wouldn't be any awkwardness but all expectations would be stripped away.
A cold gust of wind wafted past him and he clasped his hands behind his back, revelling in the smell of fresh blood and fear travelling past him.
They looked like a bunch of grapes, or maybe rather bananas.
Definitely bananas, only... with more red.
The three girls were strung up in a bunch by their feet, hooks from the boat cranes used to keep them were them suspended above the gravel at the edge of the water. Hannibal took his sweet time sharpening his favourite scalpel and admiring the view like one would a sunset from the steps leading up to the stores.
The one with the reddish hair wriggled but made no sound, he'd made sure that none of them would bother him with screaming or pleading, he'd hear them all an in every pitch. The vocal cords were being eaten by the fish scavenging for food in the water.
They couldn't look at him with all the blood running into their eyes so he shook out his handkerchief again, regretting that he would have to burn it and wiping most of the clotted liquid away, reminding him of Adelaide at the concert but this bunch wasn't anywhere near smiling as prettily as she did.
Yes, he did notice and appreciate beauty, the pretty things God put on this green earth.
But he could not be controlled by it, in no way, he had to have the reigns.
What would reigns mean when the horse is wild?
He snapped his irritable thoughts back to reality when he ran the sharp edge of the slender blade in his hand over the soft skin of the nearest sheep's face, hard enough to draw more beads of blood. Cheeks were soft and the flesh would be perfect for a stew.
No, a salad, that would place more emphasis on the meat.
So he took their cheeks and thought of Adelaide.
He thought of her while he wrapped the tender meat carefully in cloth, when he checked their dying pulses under the dried blood, when he was cleaning up after himself and when he drove away - the clouds cleared from his head... or maybe there were more than before now? Perhaps he'd only made it worse, he could smell the rain carried on the air with the wind, he could smell a storm brewing.
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