His Sweet Suffering // Hannigram

PROLOGUE: A Sense of Foreboding.

Pyres of taper candles were set aflame at the heart of Hell's dining table, and the fireplace served no help in accentuating its polished chestnut top; its light showed dullness— smudges and fingerprints riddling the edges, uneven layers of dust buildup— but it didn't matter. Even if he had sprayed and scrubbed with all his might that evening, the candles would nonetheless drown the surface with their red wax, then clot like blood only for it to be cleaned a second time.

The only part of the table that received care was the figurehead at the end. Hedonism granted him the ability to polish the little section to the point of becoming glass, and even in the muddled, newborn lunar eclipse settling behind him, he could still see the vampirism in his irises orbiting around his large pupils. And in front of him, he didn't harbor a plate, rather, he set a blanketed mirror down.

Before he descended upon the chair, he stood back to make a mental picture of the scene; and yes, it was perfect. A crevasse unattainable to his mind palace, nor accessible to the pigs of reality or his unrequited beloved. He dared a grin at the crack of his left lip. The flames in the fireplace swirled at him flirtatiously for it, and an Organ chimed mightily in his head. This space was his and his alone.

He swiveled around the dining table, and sat at the figurehead. Then he absorbed the emotion beyond him at the heart of it: A bouquet between the candles with flowers unlike the ones he typically adorns, not blue hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, or bleeding red foxgloves; but with spotted orchids, fluffed peonies, and the most crimson roses he could find, among others. He had removed every horn from his home to embellish the display, and even tore an old taxidermy swan from his attic to accompany it, and stuck the feathers that fell from the journey into arbitrary places. Together, It was the ugliest, most ghastly bouquet he had ever cursed his eyes with, but it was absolutely perfect. perfect in the way horns bursted out like succubi limbs swatting at the air, perfect in how it beckoned him, reposed the feeble swan, perfect in how it was the only prominent thing in the darkness surrounding him. Why, the only thing left to do was brandish a mutton and plate it in front of it! Perhaps even lamb, but no matter the vitality of neonatal mammals, none could cure such raw innocence needed for this ritual, and would thus taint the purity of the bouquet (perhaps a lamb could watch from the background...), and given tonight's series of events, this could not be tolerated.

Nonetheless it sucked the breath from him. His hands shook at the rims of the mirror, pulling at the red handkerchief in his suit pocket along with the blanket on top of the mirror, folding both into his lap. He didn't dare look into the reflection yet, for his eyes sought comfort in the painting above his fireplace, The Nightmare, and he pondered what place he assumed within it. The numb woman, lost in time as a submissive for an eternity? The Incubus? Staring whatever God down with a vermillion gist on his face? No, in this moment, he felt like the eyeless horse in the background, analyzing the situation, the sole factor in determining whatever outcome could come about this after the demon's deed was done (though in most moments in his life, he felt like the Incubus, and some others, especially moments of being around him, he didn't like to admit that he felt somewhat like the woman.).

He peered back to the mirror and resented the feeling of susceptibility. He knew this thing was a kind of untamable beast, unpredictable and ready to eviscerate him without any given notion. He knew though, that it would not harm him if he respected it given the circumstance in which he had obtained it (which he was given to by a gypsy in Italy; had claimed he roused her soul, and that God had told her to give it to him. She then expressed with a odd, maculated eye facing him, on how peculiar he was to have caused such a stirring within her. All he did was stare at her eye as he took the "gift", and never used it till now, when that same beckoning which he assumed she felt, had birthed inside him.). He had literally been forced to snake it out from the dredges of his basement by whatever force within it, and to use it all because of him. He had forgotten about it until he had landed in his life and consumed every bit of his being, adding new rooms to his mind palace, the sole unrestricted mental boundary.

Examining the texture of the mirror's rim made him very aware of the power it had over him. It was absolutely decrepit, rectangular, with onyx where the glass lay. Chiseled pillars of ruby kyanite towered proudly along the edges, offering support to gold medallions either infused into the stone or added on as the centuries progressed, and occasionally he was met with a gold wolves with daggers for teeth, haunching their chests out mightily as if to taunt him. At the bottom left corner there was a hawk eating one of them alive, an assurance of balance, but they claimed power at the top of the mirror, where a wolf made a ballet with the same bird: They were biting each other's necks. It was concluded that this wasn't some form of a baroque art: It was a story of convergence, and a very idyllic kind at that. Idyllic enough to probe at even the most profound parts of his cerebrum, and grew black around his muscles. His stomach turned, and he was overcome with the need to see himself; see whatever being exists beyond the line of that onyx parallel.

The wolves were pushing him, hawks pecked at his fingernails, and his muscles contracted all the way down to his piriformis to meet the glass. He could feel the moon outside bronzing, pushing the hand of Pluto to press further down the nape of his neck.

Then in the glass, he saw it: Death. Himself. Blackness. His eyes. Was there even a difference? What was he expecting to see other than that? The limbs of Cthulhu encompassing him? The most convulsive, abstract form of necrophilia imaginable? Will Graham?

He leaned back, dabbing his forehead with the handkerchief on his lap, straightening out his suit, pushing away flyaway hairs, and glancing at the untouched bouquet. The candles were now half the height they were from earlier, and their blood had almost defiled the wolf-hawk ballet on the mirror. Whatever it was he wanted to achieve, he did not succeed in. He felt conned just as he felt spent, so he bathed in the dark pallor of the Blood Moon, who was probably just as repulsed to feel him like that as he was himself, and he shut his eyes. Oh, today has been a wicked day indeed.

But the day did not relent as his phone abruptly started its ringing. He wrenched his eyes open, and listened to it ring in his kitchen, allowing it to complete its obnoxious chorus until it died out in voicemail. The voice was Jack Crawford's.

—"Hello Dr. Lecter. I know it's late, so I'm not surprised that you aren't answering this call, but I called to ask you about Will Graham. I worry about him sometimes, you know? Sometimes I think he's gonna fall off his rocker."

Hannibal entered the kitchen, and played the message on his landline continuously until his eyelids hung half open in séance, listening to the name that had repeated itself over and over again to him so much that he physically stopped berating his paragon of back arrow button first, press play button second. It was a broken record in his head now, pristine and haunting. Indeed, despite this miraculous psychological phenomena revolving inside him, Will Graham was in far more of a plight (and may Clementia fish out the water herself for Hannibal to wash his hands...) than him, but thinking about it made Hannibal regress back to that exiguous mirror. He considered banishing it back into the basement, or trashing it. Neither seemed permissible, so he raised a brow and examined it deeper. The golden creatures glued their eyes on him as Death perfumed his cheekbones through the tainted glass. He was being taunted, and he wasn't going to bow down to some faulty God.

He decided to burn it.

Hannibal chauffeured the mirror, along with its greased covering, into his backyard and drowned the useless thing in gasoline he found from a decayed canister in his basement. This wasn't destruction, it was an act of him receiving recompense for the meaninglessness he mirror gave him; you are not a part of my design. The glass shattered into a million versions of himself (all the same person), and the medallions screamed on their kyanite palls. The wolf-hawk ballet at the top grew rugged, and they pressured Hannibal to deliver them, but it was to no avail. He watched them melt gruesomely in Earth's geosminic skin, and he departed to his dining room.

After dousing the fireplace to death, Hannibal returned to his ode—his bouquet— keeping its annulus of candles burning in vitality, though now about an inch tall. The pig burned behind it through french doors, surrounding the display like a guardian angel. It was definitely alluring, a beauty no other human being besides himself could comprehend; so he stared at it. He stared until the flowers writhed at him in motherly longing, and stared until it had seemed the array of horns began to move on their own. He stared until his eyes burned, and stared enough that it seemed the moon outside painted him in her fertile blood.