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The room is dark and empty, dim fluorescent lights doing a poor job of illuminating it. The walls are painted a slate grey, uniform and unforgiving, just like the cement floor. Hannibal sits up slowly, taking stock of any injuries while he evaluates the room. It seems empty, and he’s uninjured, but he has no memory of how he got there. Standing, he looks around one last time before taking a step toward the door.
“No, sorry, I can’t let you do that,” an electronic voice says, and he stops. Of course. There is a speaker mounted on the ceiling in the center of the room, and he positions himself right under it, staring up as though he could see his captor through it. “Hello, Lecter. You don’t know me, but I know you. In fact, I know quite a lot about you. Congrats on your continued freedom, Mr. Ripper.”
The voice is silky smooth, devoid of any accent, possibly either gender, and entirely unfamiliar. Hannibal waits patiently for it to tell him what it wants from him. If there’s one thing he knows about humanity, it’s that they all want something. Jack Crawford wants to solve crimes. Will wants stability. Abigail wants to be normal again. Everyone wants something.
“So, there’s a reason I brought you here, which I suppose you’ve already figured out, intelligent psychopath that you are. You see, you aren’t the only sadist around. You’re just the only one that eats people.” There’s a dark chuckle and a beat of static before the voice is back. “I simply enjoy watching people squirm. I usually don’t hurt people, but I can still make them infinitely uncomfortable. What is your worst nightmare, Doctor?”
Hannibal almost feels fear. He would be terrified, if he had emotions like normal people. But, luckily, he doesn’t, and simply asks, “Where have you taken me?”
There’s a long-suffering sigh. “As if I would tell you. I’m crazy, not stupid. Honestly, I thought you would have gotten that by now.”
“So why have you brought me here?” Hannibal asks, though he already knows the answer.
“To play, of course!” There’s a childish giggle, and then the voice is back. “You see, I’ve taken a slight offence to how you’re treating some of my friends. Why, I think you ate one of my favorite pets last week. Too bad; he really was my favorite.” There’s an obvious pout in the sickly sweet tone, and Hannibal thinks that at any other time, he and this psychopath would be fairly evenly matched.
“What are you planning?” Hannibal replies. The speaker is silent for a total of thirteen seconds before it emits a blast of white noise, and then a string of curses. Hannibal blinks in both confusion and offence.
“Sorry, someone spilled food on my microphone. Don’t worry about it. I’ll deal with him later,” the voice growls, and Hannibal gets the distinct impression that the person on the other side is glaring menacingly at a quaking intern of some sort. It almost makes him smile.
“And me?”
“I noticed the food you make. Exquisite, that. I doubt you’ve ever even thought about eating, say, drive-through chicken?” There’s something lurking in that voice that suggests malice and ill intent, and Hannibal’s quick mind puts together the pieces that he would rather had remained jumbled.
Tinny laughter spills forth from the speaker. “There’s a bucked of chicken wings on a table to your left. No knives, no fork, no spoon, no napkins. The key to the door to your right is at the bottom, and the only way you’ll get it is by eating the whole bucket. And the door is also an automatic one, so you can’t just dump the chicken on the floor. I won’t let you open it. I have cameras.”
“You’re going to… force me to eat chicken wings?” Hannibal asks, suddenly unsure. Maybe he’s been around Will too long and is following in his footsteps instead of the other way around, having wild delusions that make no sense. He dismisses the idea immediately. One cannot catch whatever it is that Will has.
“Yep. Enjoy!” the voice singsongs, and the speaker goes off with an audible crackle.
Hannibal turns, there’s a small table in front of him that absolutely was not there when he woke up. He takes a tentative step toward it, the smell of heavily sauced chicken invading his personal space. The bucket is a small one, obviously meant for a single person, filled to the brim with drive-through wings. He winces and his legs almost refuse to take another step, but he forces himself to approach the chicken. It’s obviously meant for him and him alone.
The person on the other side of the speaker was telling the truth; there are no utensils or napkins provided. All he has is the bucket and the cheap barbequed chicken wings.
Hannibal decides to sit and wait. Odds are, Will has noticed he’s missing by now, and has at least a few people looking for him. He can’t be far from home, and they should find him before he starves to death. Of course, they might search his house for evidence if he doesn’t show up soon, and that could be potentially problematic, but he is fairly secure in the knowledge that Will will be worried about him. He’s wormed his way into dear Mr. Graham’s mind, as both a colleague and a friend, and won’t be easily forgotten about, not when he is the only one Will feels comfortable enough with to talk about his feelings. Hannibal would pride himself on his strategic manipulation of Will, if he felt emotion like regular people.
The speaker turns itself back on, and his captor sounds put-out, and more than a little annoyed. “You’re being rude, Hanni dear. I’ll give you exactly an hour before I stop the oxygen filters in your little room, and let you suffocate. That wouldn’t be a fun death at all, now would it? You’d much rather die fighting, I suppose. Being the intelligent psychopath that you are.” The speaker turns off again.
Hannibal wants to growl and attack something. He hasn’t felt such primal rage in years. It’s refreshing, almost, in the way that a scalding shower is refreshing, or grabbing a hot metal handle without a glove. It clears his mind. He knows what he must do.
He tries to pretend that his hand isn’t shaking when he gently prods the piece of chicken on top with a finger. The sauce is sticky and warm and clings to his skin when he withdraws. He frowns down at, wishing it were a person so he could strategically wipe out their entire family and serve them as a sympathetic meal given to the lone survivor.
Carefully, using the very tips of his fingers so as to minimize damage, he picks up one lone chicken wing. It’s warm and the sauce is oozing, clinging to his fingers for dear life. With much trepidation, he takes a very small bite of the chicken.
It’s disgusting. Of course it is. After eating such high-quality meals for so long, made using only the best cuts of meat, how can anything else be remotely up to par? Still, he swallows the offending meat, making a face of pure disgust at it. He now has sauce on his lips. Disgusting.
Hannibal manages to finish the chicken wing without serious bodily harm. He can picture his captor, eyes glued to a fuzzy screen, watching with delight as he reaches for another piece of the cheap chicken.
Two chicken wings in, and he’s fully prepared to give up and die in this room.
Three, and he’s contemplating choking himself with the bucket.
Four, and he’s desperately wishing for a napkin of some sort, anything to get the sauce off his fingers and face. He resorts to sucking the sauce off his fingers and wiping them on his suit pants. When he gets out, he’s going to brutally murder whoever is doing this, harvesting their organs while they’re still alive, making sure they live just long enough to become intimately familiar with the taste of their own entrails. Still, he has at least five chicken wings left to go.
By the time he’s eaten—carefully, without allowing himself to truly taste them, barely chewing the rubbery meat, doing everything in his power to not spit it right back out—seven wings, Hannibal thinks he’s about to be sick.
By eight, he’s fully prepared to lay down and die.
By the time he reaches the last one, his entire hands have the sticky sauce on them, his pants are covered in streaks of grease and chicken bits, and there is a layer of sauce all around his mouth. He’s also murderously angry, and struggling to refrain from throwing up. Of all the things he’s done, including mass murder and cannibalism, eating those things has to be one of the worst.
The speaker crackles, and the voice behind it is laced with delight and childish happiness. “There, now take the key, and you’re free to go! See, that wasn’t even hard!”
Hannibal takes the key from the bottom of the bucket and stumbles to the door, shaking hand struggling to fit it into the lock. It takes him three tries, but he finally gets the door unlocked. He tries the handle. It won’t open.
“One last thing, Hanni. This wasn’t just a sadistic power play. I was teaching you a lesson. Think about your actions before you feed people things they would never want to eat. Bye!” And then the door is sliding open, and fresh air greets him, cool and smelling of rain. Hannibal stumbles into the light, his captor’s last words replaying through his mind, and promptly collapses. He suddenly remembers, belatedly, that he’s allergic to chicken.
XXXXX
Hannibal wakes up in a hospital bed two days later, with an exhausted-looking Will Graham asleep in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs at his bedside. He grabs onto Will’s sleeve with an iron grip, and Will starts awake.
“Oh, good, you’re not dead,” Will deadpans, but Hannibal will have none of it.
“I’ve been feeding you people, Will. Everything I’ve ever cooked for you was people. I eat people. I’m a cannibal. I kill people and feed them to you for kicks,” he says rapidly.
Will gives him a confused smile and gently detaches Hannibal’s fingers from his sleeve. “You’re delusional. It’s probably the medication. You were kidnapped and had a severe allergic reaction to something. Jack will want to talk to you about it.”
Hannibal shakes his head. “I feed Jack people too. Seriously, Will, my name rhymes with cannibal. I’m the Chesapeake Ripper.”
“Go to sleep, Hannibal,” Will says gently.
Hannibal does.