We Grow Accustomed To The Dark

Chapter 1

Either the Darkness alters - Or something in the sight adjusts itself to Midnight - And Life steps almost straight.
-Emily Dickinson, We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

***

This feeling wasn't quite new to the man, though it had been quite some time since he had allowed the feeling to enter his blood stream. His fingers drummed on his desktop in silent fuming, his other hand propping up his chin, an index finger over a frown on his lips as maroon eyes stared down at the tablet in front of him with a new Tattle-Crime article.

This was the third in a row and the good Doctor Hannibal Lecter, in all of his usual cool elegance and collected mind, was seething quietly. This couldn't be a coincidence, he didn't think that most things in life were, but this was something special. Something different. Something just as intriguing as it was infuriating.

Without fail, his last three soon to be victims had fallen prey to someone else on the eve of when Hannibal had decided to pounce and Hannibal had the displeasure of the feeling that someone had somehow read into his own mind to find the details of his carefully planned killings.

Miss Josephine Langlais had been the first. A barista who had been incompetent enough to ruin Hannibal's afternoon coffee more than once. The first time had been accidental and he could let that go. Everyone had their bad days. But by the fourth time, Hannibal had decided to stay and watch. Each order came out wrong to destroy any organized person's carefully prioritized schedule and each one was purposefully messed with in ways that only solidified Hannibal's desire to never eat or drink anything that wasn't made by his own hand.

The morning that he was going to snatch her up he had been stopped by a news broadcast on the radio in his bentley. He stopped outside of the cafe to listen carefully to the proceedings of a nearly carbon copy of his very own design, laid out for the world to see and not by his own hand.

Josephine had been found with her chest carefully cut open and peeled back to reveal lungs that were no longer a lively pink color. Instead they were medium rare to match the bright burns over her face from being forced to drink boiling coffee before slowly drowning in the black liquid that was the temperature of the sun.

The second had been a Mr. Mitchel Haven. Mitchel Haven was a maintenance man who had done a botched job of some work in Hannibal's office when Hannibal had needed a rather unsightly hole in the drywall, from a not so nice patient, repaired. The man had refused to return any of Hannibal's calls about the unprofessional manner in which his office had been left. With some deep digging into online reviews that had been meticulously hidden or deleted, Hannibal found that he was not the only one left unsatisfied.

The very next day, Haven had been uncovered in a park. A large sheet of drywall had been stood up and the man nailed to it. Nails from a nail gun carefully placed through feet, shins, thighs, wrists, arms, torso, chest and neck. The killing had been from a single nail driven through the man's forehead and into his brain, but not before his hands were carefully dissected. Skin was carefully pulled back and muscles and arteries and bones were pulled apart in loving attention. They were splayed across the drywall like a crude art project, each one labeled as if belonging to a medical textbook.

The last had been found several hours before Hannibal had gotten from bed to start his morning routine. Mrs. Julie Greene was the third victim of the person they were calling The Baltimore Butcher. A name that Hannibal found oddly inappropriate for the works of art that were being displayed. The individual behind these pieces was not a butcher in any sense of the word. Each and every detail was precise in it's placement, each decision perfectly thought out ahead of time. The only thing separating the kills from Hannibal's was the fact that there was never anything missing from the body. No souvenirs were taken.