Promises to Keep

Chapter 5: Walking through Syrup

Everything that Hannibal had told him felt .... surreal.

It couldn't possibly be true. The man he loved, the man he had been involved with for several weeks now, the man he was sleeping with, the man he'd given his virginity and his heart to, couldn't possibly be the dreaded Chesapeake Ripper.

He was dreaming all of this. Yes, it had to be a dream. This couldn't possibly be reality. This wasn't the real world, with Hannibal telling him these horrible things.

He felt as though he was walking through syrup, trying to navigate a path that had quickly become too hard for him to find his way along. He didn't want to believe what Hannibal was saying to him, yet he knew that the words had to be the truth.

Hannibal wasn't the kind of man who would lie about this.

He wasn't making this up for fun. It wasn't a joke. Hannibal, his lover, the man he wanted to spend his life with, was the Chesapeake Ripper. It seemed unbelievable, yet here was the truth, staring him in the face, a truth that he couldn't deny.

How was he going to cope with this?

How was he going to explain to himself just why he wasn't already running for the phone to turn his lover in to the authorities? How could he justify his actions?

This wasn't just some joke that Hannibal was making up. It wasn't a game that was being played. It was very real, and very serious, not some kind of surreal dream.

He should turn Hannibal in. He should have already called the cops.

But he couldn't do it. Hannibal was his lover, the man he'd given himself to, the man he wanted to spend his life with. It was inconceivable that the man who had made love to him, who had sworn eternal devotion, was a serial killer who'd taken countless lives.

Yet it was. It was the truth. And he didn't know how to cope.

Every breath he took felt as though it was drenched in blood; he was walking through syrup, trying to climb uphill even though his feet kept slipping out from under him. He was losing his footing, drowning in the uncertainty that his world had become.

What was he going to do? How was he going to reconcile himself to the fact that his lover was a killer -- and what was he going to do about it?

Will didn't know what he was going to do. He'd promised Hannibal that he wouldn't turn him in -- yet. But he needed to think about how he was going to fit this new information in with the life he led, the life that he'd been comfortable with until just a few hours ago.

The life that now felt as though it had shattered into a million pieces around him.