Work Text:
Hannibal Lecter stepped towards the splendid maw of the entrance. Slightly agape moments before, it swallowed him and, one brilliant moment later, led to the other side.
The cavernous space opened before him in organic clarity. The high, sloped walls, milky white and mildly glistening, had a peculiar sense of cleanliness about them. Like petals, they were opening up, leading from one room to the next. The slick smoothness of the floors invited movement, and each space carried a purposeful presence, or a purposeful absence, despite being not dissimilar in their layout.
The construction, when focused upon, became blurry, haunting with its closeness and yet revealing little to no details as to the intricacies of its shape, like an object perpetually in one’s peripheral vision. But when the gaze simply rested upon it, the veil of the unfathomable became thinner, and thinner, and thinner, until it turned into the finest silk mesh pulled over one’s face, tight. The architecture presented itself, yielding to the pressure of perception like a carved roast duck. One could see what was inside, ready; it was unarguably the fruit of meticulous labor and supreme, advanced skill. Even if the nature of that skill was beyond knowledge, and fully outside any frame of reference, the scope of the careful changes, their elegant harmony and vertiginous precision would shine through.
The matter out of which the vessel was constructed was strange, but it was undeniably complex and cautiously selected. The travail put into the elaborate transformation was breath-taking, and would take eons to explore; even without being able to extrapolate the nature of the steps taken, or their order, the intent and the magnificent scale of the work put into creating every room stood out.
It was terrific: one could not help being aware of the artistry it took to make every space open like a flower, fresh and heavy, saturated with inquisitiveness, like the very dew was reading you. And at the same time, they evoked distance and dispassion, like the cold tiles and the shiny steel surfaces of a hospital would.
The further he made it, the deeper he advanced, the more impressive the marriage of function and aesthetics seemed to be. If the beginning had been a bright beam and a hard encasing of matter, time stiffening around him and moving upward like a marble slab, carrying all of him and nothing of what did not matter; if the follow-up had been a perfect chiaroscuro, the alternation of being and not-being, presence and absence, him and them; then what transpired now was an ethereal luminosity, all encompassing, permeating the lurid and the raw materials which had been shaped by sheer mastery and will into these exquisite structures and artifacts which constituted the different areas of their spaceship.
Everything was a tableau of delicious delight, a tasteful suggestion of utility outside of human language. There were spaces for exploration and tasting and – something else; spaces for acquaintance and refreshment and – something else; spaces for control and spaces for release.
His body did not have the organs and the senses to ascertain everything, he was sure, and his ignorance would be paining him, like a phantom limb does, had the experience not been so bright. He acquiesced to the space of the ship, and its nature was there, present. The others were there, too, present, more vibrant than the space, even more vital. They existed in the same space.
In a way, it was like standing in front of a large aquarium wall, and having a giant shark swim by, slowly. You and the shark existed in the same space. Only here, instead of a thick glass wall, only a fine silk mesh separated you.
All the otherness was spread before him, like a delicious buffet. The interactions were a dish, and the physicality of the otherly organic architecture was a dish, and the subtle aesthetics of the moisture juxtaposed with temperature, shape with color, texture with sound, were all fine dishes for his perusal. They all came together in a harmony he could never have conceived on earth. Like a thousand little pieces of information coming together, their rough jagged edges melting into one large, smooth, unbroken whole.
Time was the salt in the dishes, present everywhere, and thus he could not tell how much time had passed between then and now, between the beam hitting his Bentley on the road and the chiaroscuro of the initial transactions. Time gave everything a perfect accord, a fresh flavor of exploration, and the satisfaction of selecting, and testing, and sampling, marvelous and meticulous, like the movement of the mandible against the maxilla.
And while he never once forgot that time was finite, he found the idea comforting. It amplified his enjoyment of everything the experience aboard had to offer. The primal keenness of pain, the sophisticated sharpness of inquiry.
Being in the dewy rooms, which were simultaneously like bones and petals, and also nothing like either, had its own kind of beauty to it. This he could not liken to anything on earth, and would struggle to compare in moments of relaxation and respite.
Eventually, after an indeterminate but perfect amount of salty time, he decided that he could not truly compare this to anything at all, except perhaps the anticipation of perfectly effortless execution from a bel canto virtuoso, but only if combined with an astonishingly rare lack of aural disappointment in the aftermath.
Here, everything was delightful, and did not disappoint.
Their communication was, he decided, like a sumptuous meal. Ostentatious, but not vulgar; measured, protracted, controlled. Sincere in its strength, but never rude. Never that.
In the end, they were at the table together.
The small room at the heart of the labyrinthine spaceship was juicy, pulsing and cool. The lines that ran down the walls were of a perfect thickness, and looked like lemmas, or vines, or wires. Whatever ample functions they performed, they were also simply a beautiful design.
He smiled, and crossed his legs, and further leaned against the object he was sitting on. Habitually, he peered through the fine mesh at the giant shark, and they carried on their conversation.
“Tell me, Rrrghjfdlkmnb...”