Sigh... two short scenes to see if anyone's still out there. :)
Hannibal summoned Maryann from the garden with a tray of citrusade in a water-beaded pitcher. As she knocked her boots on the lower step he poured the concoction into tall glasses, accenting them with slices of blood orange that, when held to the light, reminded Hannibal of a chapel's stained glass windows.
"You have yet to mention any reason for ascribing to vegetarianism due to moral or ethical hazard," Hannibal stated by way of conversation.
"Oh, here we go," groaned Maryann, tempering the roll of her eyes with a grin as she ascended the steps. "That argument is as old as the stigma of vegetarianism."
"So you have no quandary of conscience with the killing of animals?" Hannibal probed.
Maryann flopped into one of his porch chairs with a huffed sigh. "It's... difficult to explain."
He offered her a glass of the cold drink. "We have until your sweat cools."
The gardener sipped the drink and popped off the glass rim with a satisfied smack. "Ah, that grapefruit hits the spot. I guess... if I had to trace it to the source, it has to do with my religion."
Hannibal settled into the opposite chair, politely curious over the rim of his own glass.
"When God created the world - bear with me, I understand your viewpoint - he commanded the first humans to the occupation of stewardship of His Creation. There are many schools of thought that maintain before the serpent's fateful visit, everything in existence had a vegetarian diet. As the Word has said, nothing died before the fall of man."
The cannibal could parallel his own nature with this train of reasoning: in a way, he dwelt in pre-serpent fundamentals when he allowed his victims to live, having taken whatever edible portion of their bodies that struck his fancy. His own queer brand of doctrine.
"So obviously it was after the eviction from Eden that meat became a food source. I've always wondered how, though, Adam and Eve and their children decided to take that first fateful bite." Maryann studied the juicy veins in the blood orange slice from her glass' lip. "Were they so used to Eden's agricultural perfection that they could not adjust to farming outside the garden? Were they driven to taste animal flesh by hunger?" She lifted the citrus to her mouth, nipping out a fragment of the fruit from the rind. "Or was it something much darker that turned them into omnivores?"
"Anger?" suggested Hannibal. "Towards God, towards themselves?"
"Possibly. Or did they see the newly bastardized lion and imitate him?" Maryann shrugged. "Who knows."
"You're forgetting one possibility," the doctor said.
"What's that?"
Hannibal took a drink of the piquant, ruby red liquid. "God did it." At her thoughtful hesitance, he continued, "They had to have seen and heard the lamb God slaughtered for their clothing being killed. The must have felt and smelled the viscosity of its blood, clinging to the hide that covered them. Really," he pinned her with maroon eyes. "It was God that taught mankind how to kill."
"So tell me, Maryann," he said, serpent's tongue flitting in his mouth. "How much of a leap is it to believe that God allowed nothing of His sacrifice to go to waste? The only real question is did Adam and Eve cut strips off the dead lamb of their own accord... or did He lift the dripping flesh to their lips Himself?"
"Where are you going?" Maryann asked, propping a hip against the frame of his bedroom door.
Hannibal finished adjusting his tie in the mirror as he caught her reflected eye. "Will's trial starts today."
The gardener's head snapped up, a gleam of fight in her expression so sudden that she had no time to temper it. "That's right, it does. Can I come?"
The cannibal's lips quirked below his own, predatorily protective eyes. It was good that she felt the same as he: he need not hide, then. "Will can use all the good will and friends available," Hannibal replied.
"I'll break out the dress slacks and meet you downstairs in ten," Maryann promised.
Hannibal passed her doorway and caught a glimpse of her savagely straightening her hair in the bathroom, the same fierce expression as before now given full sway in private. She looked positively warlike, right down to the minimal makeup that smoked her eyelids. Hannibal now understood what close friends Maryann and Will had become, through their letters. (Maryann knew they were opened and read on Will's end, but did not think to suspect them being opened and read on hers. Hannibal was careful in his jealousy, but all Will really seemed interested in was the status of his dog pack.)
And to think, a chance encounter months ago in his garden had caused such a relationship. It was good, though, that Hannibal and Maryann were united in this battle.
Hannibal had many, many plans to throw wrenches into the trial proceedings. And he planned to use every single one.