It was simply too delicious, the opportunity that fell into Hannibal's lap.
The little fledgling Abigail Hobbs made her first kill by her own hands.
It was a complete accident, without the pointed rage or icy dark desire. She killed Nicholas Boyle simply because he was there and threatening her, almost like a cosmic compelling to lift a knife and run it into his gut. An instinct just like his own.
The only difference was she had yet to accept her dark nature.
Hannibal let his curtain drop and his real self show in applause. He hid her murder (for that was what he told her it was), and drew her blood-soaked plumage into his nest of thorns. She trembled before the gravity of his might, the extent of his reach, the depth of his darkness. She shivered in realization of her genetics.
Her primaries finally broke the skin.
If the cannibal had had time, he would have missed Miss Shule - Maryann, now, - more. He came home from the overnight trip to Abigail Hobb's grafittied house to see a change in the soil of the Spring section: it had been tilled flat, and another, lighter machine had dragged across it in narrow bands. An investigation showed seeds below ground level, their little lightning-bolt radicles finding purchase. There were tiny tags stabbed into the soil at the head of each bed, like reverse grave markers that showed where life would bloom.
Hannibal went inside and immediately opened his email.
Dear Doctor Hannibal,
Sorry, I cannot break good habits for you. Under the influence of delicious coffee, I relaxed my guard and dropped my manners. I will do as you ask and address you by your first name in speech, but it simply will not do to spill over into my virtual correspondence.
I blame you completely for any further degradation of my code! First it's the loss of honorifics, then it's forgetting to say 'yes/no sir/ma'am'... next thing you know, I'm listening to rock music and have adopted a Mohawk. (smiley)
The attempt at levity was noted. Noted, and disregarded.
I took the liberty of seeding some of the direct-seeding crops while you were away. Included is:
Arugula (my personal favorite green)
Turnips (the nice, sweet Hakuri variety, which is snowy white, as well as a purple-top variety)
Radishes (French Breakfast and Easter Egg types for color, color, color!)
Various lettuce mixes according to the textural array (frisse, leaf, mustards, etc)
Beets (Red, gold, white, and striped. We'll see how they do from seed, but I have some flats' worth in the greenhouse for good measure)
I also broadcasted by hand some red clover for cover crop on the other three areas. Cover crops are a way to grow fertility in place, and improve the tilth of the soil in their life, as well as in their death when they are tilled under. Plus, the bees love them!
There is much, much more to come! I started the first round of your transplants in the greenhouse today, and they should be ready in three weeks maximum.
I hope you had a pleasant trip!
Sincerely,
Maryann Shule
Bee All Gardening
Hannibal was marginally impressed by her devotion to her manners. Perhaps she felt as though she had overstepped, and was now backpedaling. She needed not: he was perfectly delighted to swallow whatever intimacies she presented. The very fact she was hesitantly striving for closeness was heartening to the doctor. Maryann could no more hide her feelings than a leopard its spots. Face to face, anyway, they were starting to acknowledge the same feelings.
With that thought, he typed a reply:
Dear Maryann,
as you can see, I cannot break good habits, either. He let the sting of his disproval at her regression imbue the words. He was loathe to let her take a meal from his mouth.
You are fast becoming a beacon of happiness in my life of solemnity. Our friendship means more and more to me.
A disguised low blow, true, by insinuating she didn't care for their friendship as much as he. Granted, it was his knee-jerk reaction to start surreptitiously bending her, but the sentiment wasn't founded completely out of that. Although he was self-reliant for nearly all happiness, as one of his marital and social status might be, Maryann was the browned, crunchy sugar on a crème brulee. Without her, the dessert simply wasn't complete.
For a moment, he sat back in his chair and considered the words on his page. Was he investing too much thought and emotion into this woman, who plumbed him as easily as a bee might plumb a flower?
Impossible, when the return on his investment was so magnanimous.
Thank you for the update on the plants. I'm holding a dinner for some colleagues tomorrow night, and look forward to - dare I say it - showing off.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Hannibal Lector, Psy. D.
He regretted hitting the 'send' button almost immediately, and the feeling intensified over the course of the day.
That night, he tossed in his bed. To have something to meager as a single person disturb his rest was, in itself, distressing.
He felt, for the first time, he had misstepped in his calculations.
By continuing to call Maryann by her first name, he proclaimed he was unwilling to let go of their relationship's progress. To imply Hannibal had a stake in the interaction was dangerous.
And he had nothing by way of social protocol to fall back on for reason, unlike her. She was technically his employee: she could draw back on principle.
Staring at the shadowed ceiling beyond his four-poster bed, he berated himself for tipping his hand. He had showed that he was starting to care.
If he'd lied and pretended it didn't matter, she would have remained fertile ground for his mental play with objective, subtle hands. Now, she had power over him.
The cannibal sighed to the darkness of the room. Truth was so hard to come back from.
He'd made his metaphorical bed, and now had to lay in it. In the stillness of his silent house and whirling mind, he had to admit he hoped for many more courses out of the little gardener before he killed her.
Hannibal came to the conclusion that he appreciated the gardener for her guilelessness, charm, wit, and indubious, unpretentious beauty.
He'd also came to the conclusion that he had to cannibalize her.
Like a sweet left on a plate, she had only a set amount of time before her freshness was gone. Some day, she would no longer endear him. He would utilize her alive in every way he could manage before death opened the door for the remaining ways.
The psychiatrist's inner demons rejoiced.
The man-eater turned to his side and finally slept.
The angel-maker was an instrument blunted by fear. Although Hannibal appreciated the religious connotations like Renaissance art, he couldn't fathom attributing it to his own kills with such fervent sincerity.
Hannibal preferred to keep God out of his kills. If he was simply an actor on a stage, and God was an audience member, he didn't want to know. Or perhaps he knew that to be true, deep down, and ignored the audience like any skilled actor ought.
Will Graham - just Will to him now, thanks to continued therapy that devolved in stoicism - was starting to come unraveled, like a hemline unsewn. Sleepwalking, vivid dreams, and a scent of hollowness... as though he was losing himself from the inside out. Hannibal inserted the fact into Jack's head like a stiletto blade.
Bella Crawford was a lovely woman: strong body made weak by the disease he could smell reeking from her pores. When she became his patient, he found her to be weak in mind, too. By hiding her cancer from Jack Crawford, her husband, she was wallowing in denial for as long as she could. Inexcusable cowardice: but from what his doctor's knowledge and sharp senses told him, she would not be able to hide much longer.
He enjoyed the dinner party with the Crawfords at his house, especially when he politely forced Bella eat pork. As he watched her chew with her guilty, worried expression, he deemed it fitting punishment for her lack of courage.
When the subject of his new garden came up, he conducted them into a tour of the upturned soil.
"I've got to say, Hannibal," commented Jack Crawford with an apologetic grin. "It doesn't look like much."
Bella lightly smacked his arm, but Hannibal merely lifted one shoulder and mirrored the smile.
True, there were only a few orderly, obvious carpets of sprouting seeds in the spring section and some scattered two-leaved clover sprouts cresting everywhere else. Hannibal chuckled, an elegant host. "Give it time. You'll have to come back for dinner in another month or so."
Bella Crawford soaked in the sight. "My mother used to garden," she said quietly. Behind her eyes, Hannibal saw the peace and happiness of times gone by.
Jack noticed, too. Later, he asked Hannibal for Maryann's phone number. The doctor handed him the Bee All Gardening pamphlet from his file, but made it politely clear that he wanted it back.
After one dinner party success, why not try for another?
It was Hannibal's habit to invite new acquaintances to his home to eat, both out of a cultural inclination and a need for control. On a psychological level, if he was honest with himself, formal dinners and the guise of therapy seemed the easiest way for him to interact. Within those events, his careful mannerisms were not out of place, but rather, necessary and enjoyed as a sign of a good host and therapist. When his guests or patients beheld him through a haze of blood sugar or healing tears, he was an orderly anchor of calm and trust.
Outside of those occasions, he was somewhat more stilted. Not in any noticeable way, not really. His personality was foreign, after all, and he was startlingly intelligent. He was just something like a lizard outside of a cage: staring in that indiscernible reptilian way, eyes scintillating, and out of his normal place.
For a midday pick-me-up, he started slicing organic strawberries with a lazily creative hand. Any excuse to sharpen his knife skills was time well spent.
Just as any excuse to develop his hold on Maryann Shule was.
It was afternoon and rainy, the forces of spring heat and winter cold duking it out in the atmosphere. Knowing he would catch Maryann indoors, he picked up the phone and called her, listening through three rings.
"Hello, Hannibal," came the groggy answer.
The cannibal had to chuckle. "Did I wake you?"
A reluctant little groan, born of creaking joints and stretching muscles. At the sound, Hannibal's mouth watered. He sated it with a strawberry, artfully fanned from the stem. "Yes, but it's for the best," the gardener replied. "I shouldn't be sleeping during the day."
The conversation was quiet and comfortable, as though they were the only two people in the fish bowl little world confined by droplets and warring, dense clouds. "You can hardly work in this weather. Why not nap?" he asked.
A stifled yawn. "It's the principle of the matter. I was forced to take naps as a child, and now I dislike even the idea."
"Most children require a nap. What made you hate yours?" Another pink heart's greenery was uncrowned, the core excised, and swallowed.
"It cut into my reading time, mostly," came the slightly embarrassed reply. "I was a bookish kid. Plus, as the saying goes, it's wasting daylight."
Hannibal had to admit, the sentiment fit her perfectly. Always on the move, on the go: and if she couldn't do those in body, then doing them in mind would suffice. Just like her bees. "I apologize all the same, Maryann. Please, allow me to make it up to you. Would you care to join me for dinner tomorrow night?"
He certainly wasn't expecting stunned silence on the other end.
It was by accident she fell asleep on the couch, to the hypnotic patter of rain on the roof. But between the cold medicine and the dreary atmosphere beyond the windows, she'd succumbed to her heavy lids.
Oh, no.
How in the hell could she wriggle out without hurting his feelings?
She had to! She couldn't go into his house, the house of a client!
After what happened last time...
"I'm busy that night, I'm afraid," she stammered, hating herself. The kind, exotic doctor didn't deserve her lies. He didn't deserve to be the victim of her own fears.
The came a tutting sound from the other end of the line, and Maryann relaxed marginally. "That's a pity. Some other time, then?"
"I...yes." He was such a pro. She hated herself even more.
"On another note, I have a question regarding the garden."
She straightened. "Shoot."
"You said in your email you had started plants in the greenhouse for me. I would like to lay eyes on the plants destined for my garden."
This time, he wasn't met with silence, but surprise.
"Oh! Um, okay!" She couldn't say no: it was in the thoroughly studied contract open on his knee. The discomfort was well-masked in her voice. "Just let me grab my datebook here..." Hannibal heard her walking through her house and a drawer opening. "Okay, what day and time is best for you to come out to my house?"
So she declined going into his house, but acquiesced to his invasion of her own? Peculiar. He had a few theories as to the cause of this phobia.
Hannibal grinned to himself. His secondary plan was having far better fortune. He would have his answers soon enough...
Maryann couldn't say no, she'd written one visit into the contract. It was a good way for her to sell her clients on her skills: her own gardens attested to her passion and education. It had seemed a good idea at the time she wrote the template.
Oh, good Lord, her hands were shaking.
Now she wasn't anxious in the throes of her deep-set fear. She was nervous. What would he think of the way she lived? Her tiny house, her immense gardens, her antisocial cats? Oh God, she was the Crazy Cat Lady!
After she'd read his email yesterday, she'd come to understand: he was starting to feel the same way she was. There was something there, but it was an tremulous as a candle flame. It could be snuffed with a breath, choked with a wetted pinch... or just as easily coaxed into a full, roaring fire.
Maryann set the date with him for two afternoons from then, hung up, and slid down the doorjamb of her office. Jinx slinked out from under the bed and regarded her from over a paw as he groomed.
Light grew into a defined beam from the window, courtesy of a tempermental atmosphere, illuminating her scarred, bare foot brilliantly.
"This guy is frickin' gasoline, Jinxie," Maryann groaned, dragging the mottled, puckered skin out of the sun's scrutiny. "I'm attracted to him. He's attracted to me. With the contractual relationship we already have, it's dangerous."
Juju slipped past Maryann's legs and rubbed, purring, against Jinx. "What am I going to do, guys? How do I handle this?"
The felines were classically taciturn, and another bout of heavy raindrops drowned out the momentary sun.