Too Dangerous to Keep
[Closed to @masonverger-rising ]
Fever dreams. That’s what it had felt like, the slow purr of the car’s slick engine as it sped through the night, winding through back roads with ease and precision. Was it the same car? Abigail couldn’t tell, though the sense of deja vu was strong, her flushed cheek pressed up against the cold window, the skeletal trees outside embracing one another and blurring to nothing. In the front seat, the driver was silent - barely visible behind a tinted screen. The last time she’d been in this position the drugs had made her woozy, everything softened around the edges. But this time it was sharp. She felt it acutely; every swerve of the tires on rain-slick road, every mile of asphalt between herself and Hannibal Lecter. And Will, of course. And what might have passed for home.
When the first sheet of paper had fallen from between the pages of a book (notably, Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’), Abigail had thought it a mistake. But curiosity had gotten the better of her, as it so often did. And when Hannibal was away from the house one evening she’d picked up the phone, dialled the number scrawled in neat and refine cursive.
In retrospect, part of her had always known - that it was too unlikely to be a coincidence, far too serendipitous to be a secret message from the FBI. Jack Crawford’s police work left a lot to be desired. Everyone thought she was dead.
Everyone, apparently, except for Mason Verger.
His voice on the other end of the line had gutted her, reached through the telephone and down her throat, splitting tissue and membrane until it curled itself in a vice around her heart.
You didn’t think I’d given up on you, now, did you Abigail? After everything we’ve been through?
It was a strange thing, to be caught up in the machinations of two deranged maniacs simultaneously. And that was, after all, what Mason was. Deranged. Monstrous. Evil, if such a thing existed. And after everything she’d been through, Abigail still wasn’t sure that it did.
She’d adjusted as best she could to her life with Hannibal - bought into it when he sprayed her blood across the kitchen floor in an expertly staged death scene. She’d believed him, when he’d told her he was birthing her anew. Abigail Hobbs is dead. Long live Abigail Hobbs.
And then there were the months of painful recovery, isolated and alone. And then Mason, his angelic face, his white fur coat. Vermont. New York. Soft tongue licks on the outside of her ear. Bloody patches on hotel sheets. The dim and creeping realization that something was very, very wrong.
She’d made it out, eventually. It had been luck, really. An unguarded cell phone and Hannibal Lecter’s natural propensity to staying one step ahead of the game. And, seamlessly, her agency had been transferred once again; out of the frying pan, back into the warm glow of hades.
And it had felt like a rescue, at the time. To be back in Hannibal’s house. To be clean, sober, clear-eyed. He hadn’t made her speak about what happened with Mason. It had been evident enough in the bruises on her body, her hollow features, the way she stammered when she spoke.
It’s alright, Abigail. I have a plan for us. Will, too. We’re going to be a family. And all of this will go away.
And then Mason, whispering down the phone line: do you really think they want you? Aren’t you, at best, an inconvenience? How do you think daddy Graham will feel when he finds out his murder husband kept you from him all this time? Allowed him to take the blame for your death? Disfigured you?
He had a point. And as much as Abigail had wanted to hang up the phone, to cut all contact, to tell Hannibal, even - as much as she’d wanted to ignore him, Mason’s words haunted her. What had she ever been besides a tiny, compressed force of chaos? Schroedinger’s daughter; both dead and not, and equally burdensome in either state.
She had no doubt Hannibal truly believed happy families were possible. It was just that, as Mason had so eloquently stated, Hannibal Lecter is a damn fool.
The closer they crept to the date, the greater Abigail’s anxieties became. And for the first time in a very long time, it had begun to feel like she had a choice. A shitty choice, certainly. But a choice nevertheless.
All you have to do is make the call, Abigail. I can have a car there in twenty minutes.
The car had taken a turn down a shadowy driveway, stopped outside a nondescript looking house - certainly not as grand as Mason’s tastes customarily dictated. It was too dark to make out much; a sort of woodsy, ranch style. Windows lit, glowing warmth. It reminded her of something, but she couldn’t put her finger on what. The lie of home, perhaps. The illusion of safety.
As Abigail steps out of the car, allows the driver to lead her up the stone path to the front door, she wonders what really motivated this ‘decision’. She’d like to pretend it was selflessness; perhaps now she’s out of the picture Hannibal and Will can really begin again, find some understanding in one another without the cruel fact of her very fucking existence. She wants to feel like it’s noble, this voluntary descent into hell. But as she stands on the threshold, she’s just not sure.
Perhaps it’s fear of stability, of being wanted. Perhaps it’s a desire to watch everything burn to ashes.
The driver punches a series of complicated codes into the world’s most elaborate lock, and the front door swings open, swings just as quickly shut behind her.
The entrance hall is lit by the soft glow of many lamps, furnished with rustic, grandmotherly things; a hat stand, an end table. Familiar. It’s all so familiar, and for a few moments she can’t figure out why. She stands there in the hallway, shivering despite her woolen coat, taking in the details of her surroundings. A stack of magazines next to a kitsch looking piece of pottery - an ugly, malformed vase painted in a lurid shade of green.
A vase Abigail had made in third grade, her childish thumb prints still visible in the glazed surface.
Her brow furrows, heart rate accelerating. It can’t be the same piece - just as it can’t be her great grandmother’s hat stand, or the same dog-eared copies of Martha Stewart’s Home Living that her mother claimed to collect for the recipes. A coincidence. A really weird, uncomfortable coincidence.
She’s still reeling as the driver ghosts away through an adjacent alcove, as his footsteps disappear only to replaced, moments later, by familiar, purposeful footfalls.
Abigail Hobbs jerks her head up, away from the shattered relics of her childhood. Her eyes are bright, wide.
“Where did you get this shit?”
