Karen rested her head austerely against the hallway's implacable wall, throbbing from the brusque contact as imposing tedium lingered over her pique disposition, entwining with her trepidation that began to wane with her proximity from the macabre crime scene. Muse's tune of "madness" played crassly in her mind, resonating out of tandem with the rise and fall of her staggering breaths. The fretful trembling had subsided, but not the lurid images. They held on with an obstinacy greater than her own as they haunted her every time she closed her eyes.
Idle fingers raked against the scalp in a manner that feigned consoler and reassurance as her hands cradled the despair contained within her distraught head. An untimely demise fashioned by repugnancy and graced by vile distortions beleaguered her mind, dancing impishly behind closed eyes that withered from the callous florescent lights only to be cultivated once again in the idyllic darkness of her blinks. Contorted and inert in death, her brazen imagination breathed fictitious life into the corpses that chastised and taunted her with the impious tyranny of an inexorable mortality, haunting her behind every corner of her fleeing mind as impious eyes stalked her behind her own.
I wanted to show her what she married.
The recollection perforated tersely through her mind with the disdainful tone filled with ire that spilled forth upon everything Will Graham touched, scorching and admonishing that which had the audacity to fall in its path. Evan as it passed beyond the space of its utterance, remnants of it lingered as fragments of his antipathy intonation, reverberating within her reservations as the premonition of madness.
MA, MA, MA, MA, MA, MA, MA, MA, Mad. Mad. Mad – Oh, shut up!
She cringed from their solemn finality and frantically cradled her head once more, futilely wishing to purge them from her mind entirely but they refused in a manner that was beyond her own feeble clout.
Contracted muscles rippled underneath crawling skin upon the aspect that perhaps it was not the vile avowal itself that beset her but the vicarious investigator who had articulated it with such mad disparagement. She could feel the emerging part of her that was beginning to harbor apprehension towards the broken man, swimming within her as a depraved, cancerous entity that daunted her with menacing premonitions of ire: a primitive fear of what could not be comprehended. It was a part that would not be quelled by her frail entreaties and insufferable beseeching. She dismissed it with fervor haste, knowing such imprudent trepidation would only bring about her premature demise as it intertwined with her earnest compassion, fashioning something novel that would soon engulf her with its inexorable tribulations and callous endeavors.
Despite the stigma her exultantly naïve conceptions burdened her with, Karen possessed a certain level of veteran perspicaciousness – a sort of sixth sense that she had valiantly earned by her enduring forbearance. It forewarned her against letting her conceit reign in place of diplomatic prudence, for an act of premeditated defiance against Will Graham now would be to unreservedly and unremittingly attenuate her assiduous efforts. An imprudent endeavor she wanted no part in thank you very much.
Defined by a sanguine optimism that has become tarnished by adamant assertions of naivety, Karen knew she could not simply relinquish such an idiosyncratic attribute of her life now, for it dwelled within the vivacious verdant of her eyes flagrantly and barefaced for all to see. With all the obdurate resolve her twenty-seven years have granted her with, the self-proclaimed ethical columnist vowed to assist Will by any means necessary despite the emerging pestilence of trepidation she now carried for the chipped teacup of a man. Not entirely convinced that her particular – and not all together in the past – skill set of vice and deception would fall in accordance with the special investigator's needs, Karen remained optimistically adamant on her prospect of unadulterated and earnest amity. For the naïve journalist with blistering romanticized notions of confidence and camaraderie believed that if anyone was in dire need of a friend, it was that obdurately morose man. . . She just wasn't entirely sure of her methods yet. So far he had been tenaciously apathetic towards all of her benevolent propositions.
An exasperated and overly aggrandized sigh entwined with her pungent dejection as it fell from her lips, tainting the air with its perturbed connotations of tribulation as she rested her head against the wall once more, wincing faintly from the contact. What dwindling poise she had that was compelled by her tenacious resolve would no longer sanction the grievances of brooding over incidents that best remained in the past. Enticing a benign smile to embellish the curve of her lips, the elegance of an apt stance reunited with Karen on accord with her fabricated sense of self-assurance and her tenacity to evolve from being a passive entity. If claim to Will Graham's affable trust is what she desired, then she knew she could not simply sit here and sulk with all the sophisticated grace and fervor of a chastised child.
However, as the seconds passed agonizingly languid under her adamant skin that seemed to carry away a lifetime, tedium grew daunting as it immersed Karen with tantalizing propositions of enthralling that which has become jaded. Whispering in her ears enticing prospects that became harder to refute, her gaze remained pertinacious upon her notes, scanning and searching them for an erudite pattern best used to redeem her standing with Will and his fellow colleagues. Such vigor was concocted purely out of wishful thinking for Karen knew she did not possess the intellectual rumination to solve such a heinous massacre investigation. Convoluted expressions of anatomy, psychology, and criminology peered back at her vacantly from the pages of recoded conversations scattered about her crisscrossed legs, provoking no insight into her layman perspective as they taunted her with a sagacious nature far beyond her own – what the hell is serotonin anyways? Needless to say, Karen was properly flummoxed. Regardless of her dubiously mediocre mental standing and the impending waves of nausea she felt upon recalling the contorted corpses, Karen mulishly continued her studies with an unrelenting vigor.
Profound deliberation dawned upon her visage, the epitome of tenacious pensiveness as her nose scrunched up in a fervor that one man found perplexingly whimsical, if not vaguely tedious. Despite his attempts to engage her with unobtrusive clearings of the throat that ensued into audible coughs with the passage of time, the inept journalist would not be distracted from the notes that were far from her torpid comprehension. Vaguely perturbed by her naïve ignorance and her impertinent dismissal, wisps of waning ire collected into the fine lines that etched the corners of his eyes, trailing down to rest upon the edges of his lips, perched rueful as they dragged them down to the slightest curve of a grimace. They were suavely dismissed by the reemergence of his cordial forbearance that refined his countenance into the vapid visage a man of his sagacious stature was accustomed to.
Void of sentiment as the apathy smoothed its fluidity and purged it from the grace of time, his voice rose mildly to vocalize his presence as if not to disturb the columnist's universe. "Miss Bishop," a tone enriched by a foreign enunciation that continued to elude her rang with such decisive precision in the air, knowing all too well its vital assessment as it occupied the space between them with the restrained intonation of non domineering supremacy. A shiver cascaded down her vertebra upon hearing her own name entwined with such an alluring accent, despite the temperate vexation that weighed it to the succumbing earth.
A blasé glance acknowledge her abrupt awareness as a delicate blush tinted the alabaster of Karen's lofty cheekbones upon noting the subtle twinge of impatience to Hannibal's fraudulent reassuring tone. Discomfiture wafted aguishly over her demur disposition, comprehending the gravity of her discourtesy as she marveled at just how long the affable doctor was standing there. With faint bemusement she realized that he was the caliber of man that could remain elusive in a room; disregarded until he saw fit to approach like a veiled predator on the prowl.
Soft with its cordial decorum as if to appear a clandestine whisper between two companions that was tainted by a subtle tacit of apathy, Hannibal spoke in a manner that continued to enamor Karen if only with a peaked interest to decipher the origin of his speech. "I would have assumed your place to be alongside Will."
You and me both, doctor. Karen was regretful to find a touch of acrimony plaguing her usual civil thoughts, weighing each syllable with an animosity she was unaware she possessed.
A scoff escaped from her insubordinate lips and fell wretchedly in the room, tainting the convivial air that stood between them with its boisterous conceit while threatening to rip apart the walls with its acrimonious inclinations. Karen's hand rose sharply to her lips as if to take it back, flustered that she let such a moment of exasperation besmirch her usual effervescent and benevolent demeanor.
Fluent in her perturbed and rather animated gestures that spoke volumes to his adroit gaze, Hannibal waited with resolved equanimity that was sullied by a touch of jadedness for her illumination upon the matter. Autonomic thoughts of blatant lies spilled forth from the corners of her mind where they were kept hidden from conscious thought, beseeching her to remain concealed behind her veils of deception. Searching fretfully about the room for something to alter the conversation with, Karen was dejected to only find the sea shell pattern that adorned the walls. She was skeptical that she would be able to sustain an entire conversation with such a tedious focal point.
Nevertheless, with the immaculate grace of acumen that was perhaps just initial enamor, Karen believed she could trust his staunch visage once again. After all, it was highly plausible that his astute gaze had already deduced the truth from her languid mind. The desire for her to express them into words was perhaps just a formality to assure those on the other side of his canny gaze that they still had a shred of autonomy in the manner.
"Apparently I think too loudly." Perturbed words tumbled meekly from her mouth with lips wavering between a grimace and a bemused smile. They tasted repugnantly inane and of dry metal to her as they refused to resonate with her whimsical persona. Wishing not to display her emerging disparage, she rested her speech upon jocular connotations that spilled forth a matter of inept mirth. "Is there any type of therapy for that, Doctor?"
Ever one to be molded by her rather austere experiences, Karen braced herself for the deriding laughter that was to surly come. Congenial wisps of revelation painted her visage with its startling epiphanies upon always finding its absence while in the good doctor's presence. Others had mocked her, even evolving to the point of palpable contempt, but such berating laughter of scorn never fell from the affable doctor's lips, even after he learned of her eccentric and possibly folly dream of a vocation. Vaguely, Karen was aware that she was just a withered speck in a sea of turgid enthrallment to the adept psychiatrist, lost beneath the ever-changing tidal waves that refined his visage to impassive glass. But despite this shrewd realization, she found his blasé glances reassuring for they were not marked by the visceral odium of what could not be comprehended.
A cordial chuckle parted from his lips; one as stiff as his proficient persona yet it gently ebbed away her trepidation until a rapturous beam remained. Despite the merriment such a response was entitled to, mirth was free from even the faintest of lines that adorned his visage upon ascertaining her to be trifling servile. His countenance remained as smooth as rain tinkling down the glass of a window in a winter's storm, perplexingly vapid while issuing a wafting persona of inconspicuous dominance and a beguiling disposition. Appearing the sagacious essence of refinement in his three peace suit of lush mahogany hued silk and pristine, flaxen hair combed impeccably back, Karen permitted the stray thought to cultivate in her mind as she wondered if anything could rile the doctor into such an astonishing conduct of gaucheness. She even had the audacity to believe that not even the morbid scene behind those doors could crack his meticulously constructed person suit.
Supple lips parted to the flow of velvet words, fluid with charisma and pragmatic wit, entwining under an alluring inflection that left the attention of the world hanging upon his every articulated syllable. "Will is never without his temperament. I suspect it derives from his exhaustion." Subtle traces of fabricated dynamic concern were left to rationally linger within the spaces of his words and upon his calculated countenance, drawing upon his visage in a manner that aged him beyond his years. "These malicious crime scenes take a greater toll on him than he is willing to admit." They were no act of credulous confidence but prudent words read verbatim from a script that continued to elude Karen as she regarded the deft psychiatrist with new found reverence.
His astute glance soaked her in listlessly, absorbing every animated sentiment and veiled deliberation left to sway behind the innocent glint within her eyes with the shrewd, languid pace of his visceral superiority. With ennui returning to weigh upon his contemplation, straining all thoughts as his perspicacious gaze returned back to him discontented yet again by what filled his line of vision. He still found the naive journalist despondently prosaic, as construed by his subtle apathetic features that were veiled behind an innate cordial etiquette and a trite smile whose grace stopped at the definitive points of his lips, never intending to reach his vapid eyes. An aberrant wisp of amusement had the impudence to cross his mind as he observed her sitting in the hallway pouting as a child in timeout. It was left to wither by the stroke of time as the comparison was all too palpable and became yet another tedious thing in his presence left to bore him with idle monotony. He remained standing above the callow columnist and all her naïve splendor, faintly asserting his rapacious dominance in a symbolic manner that nibbled feebly in the back of her mind before she utterly disregarded it.
Lids heavy with encroaching exhaustion fell upon her weary eyes as she closed them momentarily as contemplated the gravity of his analysis only to be greeted crudely by vile images of distorted and contorted corpses. Her eyes fluttered open on their own accord, empathizing perfectly harmoniously with Will's quandary and timidly trepid that they might become her own in time.
"And that's when he calls you," Karen mused about the good doctor's presence, inflection falling softly upon her deliberation. Her tone carried her innocence adeptly, seeping into each syllable as it spun them into soft spindles of gold left to match the value of the man's ego. "He certainly respects you." She appeared to have made a rather curious discovery as her head tilted fondly to the left with her emerging deliberation.
"And I him." The confession came effortlessly to him, yet flippant in some way as it was strikingly void of sentiment. It was left to entwine brazenly with the monotony of the hallway as idle words read from a book.
She regarded the sagacious psychiatrist as she would an enigma that all the world's scrutiny could never be made to comprehend and Hannibal felt the fragile twinge of his stroked ego from the tacit accolade. The adept doctor before her was so close with his eloquently crafted speech, yet his superior intellect imposed itself upon the space between them, stretching and lengthening it to where he felt tremendously distant and only the faintest sensation of his discerning silhouette remained to lapse upon Karen's scantiness. It continued to entice him with proclamations of enthralling jaded nerves to a place Karen knew she could never be made to follow. The ethical tabloid journalist felt remarkably inadequate whenever she conversed with him and it did not help that he was pleasantly forbearing and charitable with her. For reasons unbeknownst to even her, she shuddered at the abrupt epiphany with sudden visceral fretfulness towards a concept of him that she would not be able to comprehend.
Monsters.
The vile word rattled abruptly throughout Karen's skull, resonating dexterously within the empathic dour of Will's enunciation. She recoiled from its imposing presence and forced it from her mind in frantic hope that the doctor had not witnessed such a vulnerable moment.
Naturally, it was not so.
Inquiry filled his once blasé gaze as his pensive intellect seeped into the deepest maroon that stippled the russet within his eyes, crackling to life in a manner she could have sworn was pulsating like a heartbeat. A fragile sense of amusement flickered somewhere deep within him, but it dared not possess the audacity to lapse upon his apathetic visage. Hannibal remained adamant in his view that nothing in this world possessed the enticing savor quite like the delicate flair of the tormented soul. Fiendish delight wafted over him upon the prospect of one wandering so close to him wiling. All that remained of his insatiable appetite was a malice curl of the lips that expressed affableness and not their implicit iniquitous intentions.
His gaze was upon her with its staggering scrutiny, postulating her clandestine intentions behind her words and their underlining connotations of maturity. Karen avoided it, feeling a bit unnerved by the way he seemed to crumble her walls effortlessly with a mere glance. Realizing how utterly imprudent she must appear, not to mention bearing a striking resemblance to Will, she resolved to look him straight in the eyes, an endeavor that proved to be rather formidable as time passed.
His voice was almost taunting with a slight grace of chastisement for being too transparent as it fell flat to his perceptive tone. "Are you hoping that I will divulge in my secret, Miss. Bishop?"
The delicate trace of a sheepish grin embellished the curve of Karen's lips as she constructed her analysis with a calculated composure that seemed aberrant to her unadulterated compassionate disposition. She enunciated each syllable in such a languid pace to where they reverberated synthetically with candid deliberation. "You of all people should know how Will doesn't like someone prying into his personal life – or just his life for that matter." Karen added hastily, her brow knitted together with contemplation and garish compassion. "Despite your occupation, the two of you appear to be quite friendly."
A frolicsome smile curled upon her lips, inviting Hannibal to join its flippant nature as she began to ponder the many, and rather ostentatiously fictitious, possibilities towards such an occurrence. A mischievous glint appeared in her eyes as it captivated her heart's youth, tarnishing her jest. "Hypnosis, perhaps?" Karen inquired in a facetious tone stretched to transparency by its inept jocular nature, but there was an ardent dash of wonder that truly suspected him of the act.
Hannibal's lips quirked into a taut smile, derided upon his inconspicuous disdain towards the inane comment that hummed with a tedious frivolity inside his mind. So fervently flippant by nature, now she was rendered into nothing more than an inept child whose eyes widened at the prospect of a magic trick. It was all so frivolous to the refined psychiatrist that had forsaken such idle follies when he left the child behind him.
"Nothing quite as ostentatious, I'm afraid. I simply did not give him an alternative on the matter." His tone was insipidly thin; vacant of all sentiment as his diplomatic etiquette was all that remained to fortify his courteous demeanor.
The thin line of her lips pursed upon the confidence, contrasting against her demur disposition. It painted decorous yeas to her petulant visage with its wide strokes of deliberated acumen as she contemplated the potential benefits it provided her with. Hannibal could almost hear the faint clicks of her thoughts being processed leisurely like the typing of a computer. He savored the fine delicacy that was her distress, relishing its amiably saccharine tang that wafted upon the senses like a cream made to compliment its stout undertones of bitterness and dejection. The essence of prosy that had blatantly defined her character upon their first encounter began to fade by thin wisps of amusement as Hannibal feasted upon the subtle glimmer of anguish that tainted the naïve innocence in her sanguine eyes. Perhaps that was what had loosened his lips to the counsel that followed:
"And neither should you."
They fell light upon her ears with a tone rendered vapid of any recognizable sentiments as its absence was left to be filled by his astute ambiance that resonated deeply within all intellectual minds. They were such simple words that were crafted into a greater existence by the mere wake of his pensive intellect. They captivated her unreservedly, rendering her into a kind of stupor as she weighed their connotations upon her languid mind. The aroma of her innocence wafted from her once more, flooding his mouth with its melancholy taste of vibrant summers that left him cynically nostalgic for what he could not recall.
All at once, the congenial curves and lines that fashioned her blithe countenance danced merrily upon the return of her exuberantly effervescent persona as she savored his astoundingly benevolent advice. It was not so much the benign words themselves but what was left unspoken, wavering within the spaces of its significance as a tacit form of deference for the ethical tabloid journalist.
"Thank you, Dr. Lecter." She expressed adamantly and earnestly while an enchanting smile curled the corners of her lips to the point of chapping, elated by the arbitrary act of munificence that restored her profound sanguine faith.
Hannibal merely provided her with a terse nod that was such a fluid movement rendered into something faintly stiff by his cordial disposition before slipping past her and into the macabre room of horrors. He was vaguely appreciative to be rid of her trifling and boisterously naïve presence, and yet the faintest twinge of inquisitiveness seized him as he postulated just how Karen would perceive his advice.
Karen Bishop was nearly home when the sickness struck.
The pungent, acidic air of bleach was not enough to entice the vile stench of vomit into submission as she expelled her absent stomach of what few contents it had. The acerbic aroma stung her eyes, compelling them to water as she felt the scorching sensation the bile left her as it passed callously through her throat.
Images of contorted corpses inexorably haunted her. With every fatigue laced blink, they waited to remind her of a macabre world she hid from with feeble denial. She pulled the lever of the soiled toilet with trembling hands and watched the contents of her last meal swirl away along with the morning's dismay. They were harder to push from her mind than the others, but she managed with the same tenacity one special investigator referred to as trifling obstinacy.
She knew this new position was entangled with sinister prophecies of appalling mental disorders and the red tape of macabre murders, but they could follow it straight to hell. Nothing in her English degree covered fucking marbles in eye sockets!
What a terrible way to start the day. Such jocular connotations were tainted by the undertones of chastisement for her slip in a composed conduct.
In a sickening moment of introspected clarity, she recognized the insipidly alabaster and frail girl in the mirror with wide, terror rimmed eyes to be herself. Karen detested seeing such a feeble sight if only for a glimpse. With fretful adamancy, she wiped away the trepid filled tears that adorned her cheeks, deluding herself into believing that they would be her last.
In that repugnant instant of nausea, she gained a bit of introspection that fortified her resolve. As she left the neglected gas station's bathroom, Karen Bishop was stronger than the woman who first entered.
Author's Note:
Confusticate and bebother this loathsome editing! . . . That is all.