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It was peaceful.
The rushing water from the river smelled of salt, and the rustling leaves sang a faint melody in the breeze. Abigail was knee-high in the water. It was dreadfully cold and numbed her skin, yet she paid it no mind.
She let the beautiful summer morning soothe her and let the perfect moment wash over her like a wave.
Beside her, Will was looking out down the stream. Fishing rod in hand, he surveyed the water.
Abigail couldn't quite understand his expertise, it was as if he was one with the water, as if he knew it's every bit and it knew his. She tried to copy his mannerisms, but she could never be like him when it came to his craft.
She had followed his first rule, to wade into the quiet of the stream. To accept and be accepted by the life force that was the calm river. She was at peace, as was he.
There was a dark motion in the water, then a tug on the line. Will jerked his arm back and retrieved a plump gray fish at the end of the rod. He held his catch with boy-like pride. Abigail smiled at him and he smiled back.
“Good catch,” she told him with a tilt of the head.
“Well, I'm a good fisherman.”
Will unlatched the fish from his hook and held it in his hands. Abigail laughed as it frantically flipped around in his palms in search of its watery home. He tried to hold it still and calm its panic, and when the fish’s attempts persisted, he turned to the girl,
“Would you like to throw it back or keep it?”
Abigail took the fish from his hands and pondered. It was slippery and slick, and its silver scales shone in the rays of sunlight that found their way through the trees.
Near its head was a small cut from the hook, a zigzagged line across its animalistic flesh.
It reminded Abigail of her scar, the one marred forever across her skin. A constant reminder of who she was. A monster. A monster and a victim.
Suddenly she and the fish seemed quite alike.
Its glossy, frantic eyes looked so very similar to her own.
“Throw it back,” Abigail said as she crouched down and freed the fish. It slid out of her hands and swam gracefully back into the depths.
If it could be free, could she?
When she stood back up, her overalls now soaked in water, Will held out the fishing rod to her.
“Would you like to try?”
When Abigail hesitated, he added, “I have a feeling you'd make a very good fisher-woman.”
She smiled and shook her head. She had caused enough harm and was content to watch Will at work.
While she watched, the slow realisation she had been trying so very hard to drown came crawling back. She found that she was starting to view Will as more than just the saviour of her life and more of… somewhat of a father.
Maybe it was fate. When she lost hers she gained another, gained two. And the second had just arrived.
Abigail turned when she heard footsteps from behind.
Hannibal, as per usual, yet still pretentiously, was wearing a suit as he made his way down to the pair in the river.
Will turned to Abigail and smirked, and the two shared a mutual understanding.
When Hannibal found himself at the side of the river, staying just far enough to stay at a safe and dry distance, Abigail and Will grabbed hold of him and pulled him straight into the water.
Losing all of his poise and elegance (along with dignity), Hannibal splashed and clawed his way out of their grasp. Abigail and Will laughed and wheezed hysterically when he stood in his drenched suit and pants.
He sighed and slicked the hair out of his face,
“Hello Abigail, Will.”
Their names were laced with a poor attempt at portraying annoyance.
“We're fishing!” Abigail told him from behind her shoulder before returning to her place watching Will throw his line back into the water.
“Ah,” Hannibal said from somewhere behind her, “A poor job at it. It appears you haven't caught a thing.”
Before Will could retort back, he was grabbed from behind and pulled into the river.
Abigail laughed as Will resurfaced with a look of utter betrayal plastered on his face.
And as quick as it had happened to Will, Hannibal dragged her down as well. For a brief moment Abigail felt fear rattle down her spine, for when Hannibal grabbed her, he had also held onto her neck.
A flash of a memory came back to her, of blood and death, but it faded as fast as it came.
Hannibal would never hurt her.
And she convinced herself of such when she stepped towards him in the kitchen.
Continued to when the blade coated in Will’s blood found its place in her neck.
The thought faltered and shattered when she fell to the ground and felt her insides gush onto the tiled floor.
Abigail splashed at Hannibal in the river and he chuckled at his victory.
Her hair was soaking now with blood, no, water. She wiped it from her face and Will helped her up onto her feet.
“What are you doing here, Hannibal?” Will asked as he swam to the left to find the fishing rod that was drifting away in the stream.
As Abigail watched him, she got the odd feeling he wasn't going to come back.
But he did, and when he returned to her side, something was different. He looked the same, sounded the same, yet his eyes looked tired from concealing something behind them.
Something wrong, but for him, right.
Hannibal was now faced directly at Will, “I wanted to surprise you.”
They weren't looking at her anymore; they acted as though she simply didn't exist.
Before Abigail could address their odd behaviour, they both broke out of the trance. Will continued fishing and Hannibal tried to wring out his jacket.
Will held out the rod once more, “Here, try.”
And though she had previously rejected, she nodded and took it from his hands.
When she held the fishing rod, it felt sharp and splintered; it cut into her skin and drew cold blood from her body. And though it ran down her forearms and dripped into the water, she looked over to Will and asked her father what to do.
“Now throw the line out.” He smiled and gestured the motion to her. Abigail did as she was told.
What else could she have done?
Will patted her back, “Good job, Abigail!”
She waited for a tug on the other end.
The moment was simple once more. Fauna surrounded them; Birdsong rang out overhead and she was with her dads. Their presence was all she needed to feel safe and calm. She felt light as a feather, either because of the blissful tranquility or the fact that a liter of her blood was now dying the water red.
Abigail was jerked an inch forward when there was a yank on the line.
“I think I caught something!”
“I think you did. Try to reel it in,” Will responded as he rested a hand on her arm to help steady her.
Then a fish swam past.
And another.
And soon dozens of fish were swimming upstream towards and behind Abigail.
As the hundreds of fish appeared and disappeared from her vision within the grand sea of red, Abigail held tight onto the sharp rod in hope of being grounded.
It did not help. It simply continued to cut deeper into her flesh. Through her veins and tissue and bone.
The fish caught on her line was resisting with tremendous passion, causing her to begin being pulled into the water.
Her breath quickened with dread.
No one was helping.
“Abigail, look,” she heard Hannibal call out from behind her. What could he possibly want her to see as she was mere seconds away from being completely submerged in her own blood?
It took near impossible effort for her to turn around to view what Hannibal was referring to.
A stag was stood in the middle of the river, beautiful and tall. The fish swam in a synchronized circle around its feet. Worshipping the stag like a cult or a lover.
And then Abigail was pulled into the red sea.
She could feel her lungs burning from inside her body as she frantically searched for air. She was pulled out by the armpits onto solid ground.
Abigail coughed up her own blood as she gasped and heaved. When she looked up she wasn't with Hannibal and Will.
Abigail had a corrupted understanding of safety, but that place, with those two, was the closest she'd felt to it in a long time. Now she was somewhere old. Somewhere familiar.
A hunting rifle was in her hands and her father was by her side. Which one? They all now felt very blurred together.
He looked alive and well, no bullet wounds in his abdomen and soul-filled eyes. But he had a long gash across his throat. The one Abigail had given his dead body.
He rested an arm on her shoulder, just as her other, newer father had done, and pointed out into the foliage.
She squinted her eyes to see. This was like the old days. The days before the dead girls, before the cannibalism, and before her father had slit her throat.
She liked these days; she knew them. There were many things in her present life that she did not know. She didn't like the uncertainty, but here everything was as it should be.
Through the leaves and trees was a deer. It wasn't a large stag like the one she had seen in the river.
It was a fawn. A baby.
Abigail looked over at her father.
“Shoot.” He told her. His voice was cracked and coarse.
She shook her head.
“Shoot.”
The deer turned its head towards the commotion and blinked in innocence. She couldn't do it.
“Shoot!”
As her father persisted, tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Shoot, Abigail, shoot!”
Abigail let out choked sobs as she aimed the gun and shot the baby deer in the head.
In the kitchen, the sobs were not hers; they were from the man who lay bleeding beside her on the floor.
She tried to speak. Blood ran from where the words should have been.
She looked at Will’s face, and he looked at hers.
He was never her father.
She was never his daughter.
And even in her final ephemeral moments, she knew he wasn't thinking of her.
He was thinking of him.
Of Hannibal.
Of her killer.
In the kitchen, Abigail Hobbs died.
In the river, she now stayed.
In the lie she fought so hard to live.