Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Swarms of them.

Mosquitoes. They buzzed loud against the silence of midnight as they fed, clinging to the blood of her body as it trickled out her sternum. Out the hole where the Ripper’s axe had been lodged. She hung from her wrists by the vines over the bog. The muddied water below rippled with each slow drip of blood. Blood shining black in the moonlight sinking into the black of the water. Blood melding with the peat and clay underneath. 

The Ripper’s breath fogged the thick, humid air, mouth and eyes agape as she worshiped her work: the seraph twisting slowly in the moonlight, and the harvest weighing heavy in the cellophane bag she held at her side. She—the victim—would either be found now and fresh, or later and mummified beneath the mangroves. Either way, she would be art. Either way, the Ripper had gotten what she needed from the gaping cave of her abdomen.

A feast to celebrate the first warm night of Spring.

Cold. 

The silver steel of a blade. 

It digs into the skin, indents the flesh, but doesn’t cut.

“See?” A voice,  like overhearing whispers behind a wall. “No blood.”

“I see.”

“And if I were to pull it away?”

“You’d slice me open.”

A puff of air. “And what does that tell you?”

“Don’t move.”

“Don’t move?”

“Don’t move.”

Don’t move. 

It sees you. It knows your scent now.

It’s shifting in my kitchen. I can hear it. Rummaging through my drawers. I grip the sheets, my eyes wide as I still my shuddering bones in fear. The room is black.

Don’t move.

It can hear my heartbeat and breathing, I know it can. But don’t move. Don’t flinch, don’t blink, don’t gasp, don’t scream, don’t shut your eyes—that’s when it will get you. One slip and I’ll bleed.

Don’t move.

A gasp tore through my throat as I shot straight up from my bed, trachea choking around the shredding breath as my lungs engulfed all the air in my apartment.

I broke my neck snapping my wide eyes to the doorframe, stilling my body as I listened. The kitchen was silent, aside from the coo of a mourning dove at the window above the sink.

My shoulders dropped as I sighed, pressing my palm against the dewy skin above my pounding heart. The nightmares came back, alongside her brother insomnia, as soon as Rebecca left. The calming push above my heart became an aching clutch.

Becca. Tears welled in my eyes, followed by a flush of rage. Four years down the drain. It scorched my veins as it coursed through my blood, ravaging my bones to the marrow and turning the sweat on my skin to steam. And Becca’s new boyfriend.  

I tried to stay friends with her. I wanted that more than anything: the slimmest of morsels leftover of what we had. She wouldn’t be my wife, or the mother of my children, but at least I could still have my best friend. It was working well until my inevitable anguish over the split became inconvenient. Depressing to be around. Too hard to deal with.

I think one too many sarcastic “Oh, just peachy” s in response to “How are you doing?” might have been the culprit. Or maybe the sobbing breakdown over our last phone call. Or, when wanting to be the supportive friend instead of the jealous ex, and I said “Sure! Tell me all about him!” I would follow her gushing response up with a muttered “God, I want to die,” instead of “Cool! I’m glad you love him after a week of knowing each other and his hair smells like coconuts!”  

Just to name a few.

I groaned out of my nose and slid a hand down my face, my eyes rolling back as I pulled down the skin of my lower lids. Having wiped the sleep and sweat from my face, I swung my morning-rigid legs over the edge of my bed. I stood from the warmth of my sheets and onto the cold ground, the floorboards groaning under my weight. My apartment was an old building, but crying over a tub of Ben & Jerry’s on an umpteenth My Summer of Love rewatch every night wasn’t doing me any favors either.

I sniffled. 

She and I always meant to watch that one together. “Saving the best for last,” she’d say as she placed it at the bottom of our Redbox stack. I remember laughing, “We’re never going to watch it, are we?” I didn’t think it would be for any reason other than extreme procrastination. Much less a breakup.

Don’t cry.

Why not? We’re alone.

To not waste your tears. It was for the best.

I shuffled out of my room, walking along the memory of my apartment’s layout instead of relying on my blurred, stinging vision. I made my way to the main area of the apartment, a kitchen, living, and dining room rolled into one space.

The beast.

I flicked my eyes to the kitchen side, body tensing in preparation to fight or flee. But there were no monsters. Those lay only in my dreams.

A fuzzy blue and green splotch caught my attention from my peripheral. I huffed out of my nose and walked over to the empty ice cream pint, snatched it up, and marched to the trash can.

I suppose I’d always coped with food. Either by denying or overloading myself with it. Becca helped me with that too. 

God, she was in everything. Etched herself into my walls and furniture. My curtains and sheets still whispered her name when they fluttered. Each drop from my bath’s faucet into the tub below a syllable of it. Every flick of my lightswitch and click of my lock a letter.

A soft, warm rub against my ankles pulled me from my ruminations. I looked down, smiling to see Patty’s wide, feline green eyes staring up at me. She seemed frightened for me. Of the pain that burned my waterline.

“Hey, peanut…” I murmured, bending down to brush back her ears and taupe tabby coat. 

Do you miss her too? I thought of asking, though stamped the question down. It had been four months. Pat was lucky if she remembered chasing her tail a few seconds before she had taken pause to groom.

I pulled out the spoon I had left inside the pint and tossed the paper tub into the trash. I walked to and opened the fridge, retrieving a carton of eggs and stick of butter, both more than halfway used. 

I set a pan on the stove, then pushed and turned the knob to ignite the gas.

Click-R-click-E-click-B-click-E-click-C-click-C-click-A.

The flame said “whoosh” as it came alive.

The rest was autopilot. Butter. Butter to pan. Butter knife to ground for Patty to lick. Eggs, two, cracked into bowl. Salt, pepper, whisk. Pour, sizzle. Fold, flip, plate. No toast. No sausage. No strawberries. No mushrooms. No time. Already running late. That tabloid won’t revise itself.

Now, scarf it down.

Standing at the counter, I hunched over the plate and dug in, forcing my thoughts down the ‘work’ path rather than the ‘Becca’ one. 

What would be the front page? What little business opening this week would I put on the side column… probably another millennial burger joint headed by “two guys and a crazy dream.” Sure, bud. Charging 17 bucks for smash burgers and putting your ketchup in ramekins is nothing short of insane.

My lip quirked upward. What poetry can I inject deep into the body paragraphs? Maybe throw some lines of my own on the back page, supposedly submitted by “anonymous.”

A sharp rapping cut through my internal rambling. I furrowed my brows, glancing to the microwave clock: 7:42 AM. A bit early for landlord hours. I bent down to pluck up the last of my eggs, urgency still fueled only by the need to be out and on my way in no less than 8 minutes.

That was, until my name was called through the door. “This is the FBI! We need to speak with you.”

My eyes bugged. Oh. Shit.

“Uhh!—” I glanced down to myself, clad only in underwear, a worn band tee, and socks, each more riddled with holes than the last. “I’ll be right there!” I called back, followed by a string of silently-uttered curses as I rushed into my room, fumbling through my drawers for a pair of pants. 

Snatching the first pair I found in the heaps of my drawers, I checked only to make sure that they were indeed pants before slipping them on. I buttoned and zipped them as I ran back to the door, only then realizing I had grabbed ripped jeans. Great. Let’s hope these guys aren’t of the “whipper-snapper equals criminal” generation.  

As soon as I reached the threshold of the door, I froze. A weight held my shaking hand in place just above the knob. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, my shuddering breath heaving out of sync with my throbbing heart. 

No time.  

I yanked the door open to find two agents before me. One, exactly what every film noir told me a detective would look like: trench coat, fedora, and furrowed brow. She was older and had her hair tied back, a single ringlet hanging between her dark umber eyes. 

The other agent was a tall, slender man, his overgrown ivy-league cut loosely tousled back and just as black as his eyes. He stood with a slant and one hand in his pocket, pointed jaw relaxed, though his skimming of my face was anything but discreet. As casual as he appeared, he was seeming to take better note of my behavior than his senior partner.

“Miss…?” the man echoed my name in questioning confirmation of my identity.

I nodded.

He gestured to himself. “I’m agent Katz.” Then to the woman beside him. “This is Agent Crawford.” 

Crawford pressed her lips into a tight smile and gave me a curt nod.

Agent Katz shifted his weight from one foot to the other, now leaning in the opposite direction. “Are you familiar with a woman named Rebecca Olvera?”

The knife in my heart twisted—nay, thrashed inside of me. I hadn’t heard her name in months. It still rolled so perfectly off the tongue. How it curled around the L of her surname, fluttered on the Rs.

I gulped. “Yes… she was my girlfriend.”

“ Was? ” Agent Crawford cut in.

I paused, tripping over an ‘uh’ caught in the back of my throat. “We—she broke up with me last January.” My brows furrowed. “What’s she up to now? Framing me to make absolutely sure my life is ruined?”

Agent Crawford hesitated, her lips parting as she glanced at Katz beside her. “No.” Her eyes flicked back to mine. “I’m afraid Rebecca was found dead earlier this morning.”

The weight of her words slammed atop my head with the weight of a boulder, burning waves of dread sizzling through my body in their wake. I’m afraid Rebecca was found dead earlier this morning. They unraveled the thread of balance holding me up, knocked the wind from my lungs. Rebecca was found dead. But didn’t make my body feel heavy. Rebecca is dead. They pushed me out of my body. Becca. Dead.

I was lighter than ever.

“I’m sorry,” Agent Crawford’s words echoed like they were spoken from the other end of a tunnel. “We’d like to take you in for voluntary questioning.”

I was blind, my eyes darting between the two shadows before me, neither silhouette black nor the light behind them white. It was all a muddled gray. I felt my lips utter out some affirmative to go with them on instinct, but didn’t hear it—my own words—as I spoke. I had gone deaf too. There was no weight to my footsteps. Numb. The silky salts and floral pepper remaining on my tongue had dissolved. The scent of morning dew on asphalt had dried.

I floated, clouded cataracts, down the steps of my complex to the parking lot below, never touching the ground. The world had flooded, the current of this new ocean dragging me down to the FBI vehicle below and shutting me in. My head pounded from the strain of my expression as I sobbed. Barbed wire wrapped around and dug into every inch of my flesh. Bubbles escaped my throat with each cry I gave, my lungs flooding with saline in place of air. 

The world had caved in. She was the world. Transformed into a thin wire and wrapped itself around my throat. My world. Cinching. My life. Tighter. Miss. Cut through my flesh. Miss. Severing through the vertebrae of my neck.

“Miss.” Agent Katz placed his hand upon my shoulder and shook gently.

I blinked, head still in my lap as I came to.

“Where were you last night?”

I placed my skull back upon the shelf of my shoulders, ‘M’ stringing itself from the back of my throat to between my lips, coming as a dazed hum. 

I gulped back my hesitation. “...my apartment.”

“Can anyone confirm that?”

‘Y’ was next. “Yes. My co-worker. Porter. Seth Porter.”

Agent Katz mouthed ‘Seth Porter’ as he wrote it down. “Phone number?”

“I don’t have it memorized…” I murmured, my brows furrowing.

Where were you last night? I toyed with the frayed cutouts of my jeans. They felt stupid to wear now. So informal. I should be in slacks. Black slacks and a button up. This is a funeral.

Can anyone confirm that?

“Agent Katz?”

He glanced up from his notepad, pen stilling.

The tear hanging in the crescent of my lid fell. “Am I a suspect?”

Katz paused a beat. “Yes.”

Another anvil of dread fell atop my head, shattering my skeleton and all it held inside. 

“Why?” I choked around a sob.

Agent Katz’s brows drew upwards upon his forehead. “Miss Olvera’s significant other believes you have motivation. He told us that your and Rebecca’s split was…” His lip curved downward as he pondered his wording. “...rocky.”

“No,” the words came on impulse. “Becca said it was rocky.” Those were her words. 

Not Carter’s . The new man in her life. He was parroting her. Echoing her sacred scripture on his iniquitous tongue to accuse me.

My brows furrowed. “I love her more than anything…” I could see it. Carter pinning my name to Becca’s chest. Marking her as my work. 

I slammed my hands on the steel table, chair screeching as I stood. “ Anything! — fuck what Carter says!” I gasped in, shuddering out, “ Fuck him! He never knew me, he never even knew her either, not like I did!”

“Miss—”

“I would have died for her! How dare he—he even suggest that I’d—” I gasped in again, squeezing my eyes shut as the wire wrapped around my throat once more. It dragged me down, and I fell back into the chair with a sob, clutching my neck as my tears rolled down the skin of it. “I would never … never lay a finger …” I choked, the sound coming as a grueled strain. “ I love her more than anything. ”

Love. Not loved. Like she still wanted me, too. Like she was still breathing.

“ My Becca… ”

The door to the room’s lock clicked as it unlocked, followed by Agent Crawford’s voice.

She spoke softly, “That’s enough. Let her go for today, we got her alibi.”

I assumed some silent exchange between Crawford and Katz followed that up.

Are you sure? She barely talked.

I’m sure. We can bring her in another time.

If you say so.

“Okay,” Agent Katz sighed, standing from his chair. “That’s all we need. Thank you.”

I sniffled and nodded, reaching up to wipe my tears as I stood. I turned around, Katz left behind as I shuffled towards Agent Crawford. She held the door for me, to which I murmured a near-silent thanks, hoping the bow of my head emphasized my gratitude.

I was ready to walk out the door. To be taken home—or to work. I have to call out. I forgot to feed Pat. I shouldn’t have snapped at Becca that one time.

I nearly tripped as my steps slowed, shaking tears welling in my eyes once more. I should have apologized better that day. Should have gotten her flowers this day. Maybe I could have compromised here. I could have listened to her days better. I never should have snapped at this. I never should have snapped at that. I should have comforted her better here. 

If I had, then maybe she would have been home with me that night instead.

“Miss—” Agent Crawford called my name.

I stopped, wiping my tears as I turned around.

Her face was pure empathy. Brows drawn taut upon her wrinkled forehead, eyes drowned in her pupils and tooth gap between her full lips the windows to her sympathies.

She called to me from halfway down the hall, “May I recommend you a therapist?”

…687 Bayshore Ave. — Ste. 200 MD. 21161 

tel. 443-555-0159. | fax. 443-555-0158

My eyes raked over the text of the card again. I’d lost the exact count of how many times I had restarted, but it was more than 5. Less than 15.

tel. 443-555-0159. | fax. 443-555-0158

It had only been two days between Rebecca’s death and my appointment. But those two days gave me plenty of toil to talk about. I hadn’t eaten since that rushed heap of eggs. If I slept, I didn’t notice. 48 hours, curled in the sheets Becca and I shared for 4 years, came and went in what felt like 400 thousand eons. I watched the gray light of afternoon fade to the lilac of twilight, the black of night, then the red of dawn, and shift through the same cycle again. Unmoving. Unblinking. Unwinding.

Agent—Jacqueline—Crawford had made the appointment for me. “Expedited it,” she said. I couldn’t help but ponder whether this was more an assessment of my mentality than therapy for my grief.

I huffed out of my nose and flicked my gaze back up to the name at the top of the card.

Dr Helen Lecter

Psychiatrist

I had rambled to school counselors before, but went to the suite of a full-blown psychiatrist? Never. Either Jacqueline Crawford was incredibly concerned about what I might do to myself… or what I had done to another.

The sound of a heavy door creaking open snagged my attention, lifting my head from the creamy cardstock.

A woman, tall and dressed in an impeccably tailored navy suit stood in the doorframe. Her long, flaxen hair was loosely tied back, two straight locks left out to frame her sable-brown eyes. Her lips—the most unique in shape I’d ever seen: cupid’s bow widely curved, and somehow both plush and thin—were painted a red that suited her complexion perfectly. Her high cheekbones were delicately rouged, lashes brushed with a thin mascara, and her nails, while certainly manicured to a short, elegant almond shape, remained unpainted.

My first impression of her was concrete: Inhumanly perfect.

She smiled, crows feet crinkling as she did, and said my name. “Please,” her voice had an accent I couldn’t quite place, and was just as rich, smooth, and regal as the rest of her.

“Come in.”

Chapter Text

Doctor Lecter’s office was wide open and bright. 

It had bookshelves for walls, not a gap between each dustless leather-bound spine. Drawn back from tall windows were red and white striped curtains, and furniture dotted the floor sparsely: two chairs, a desk, and a chaise lounge placed at the center. All else was tucked against the wall, shadowed by the catwalk that lined it.

I turned around to walk backwards as I followed her into the room. My gaze traced the suspended wooden path to rows of books overhead, lips parting in awe of the sprawling lofted library.

Doctor Lecter glanced over her shoulder, smiling. “Are you fond of literature?” She walked to one of the chairs at the center of the room, and motioned to the one across from her.

“I write. For a little… local paper.” I murmured around my wonder, turning around just in time to catch the tail-end of her gesture. “Thank you.”

Doctor Lecter nodded and sat after me. She pressed her hand to her tie as she did, and crossed her legs in the same motion. It was perfect, each movement as gracefully calculated as it was fluidly executed. 

With a slight concave of her chest as she sighed, she locked her hands around her knee and solemnly met my gaze. “Jacqueline Crawford informed me of your situation,” Lecter said, “I’m very sorry.” 

Her eyes were unfathomably dark in comparison to the rest of her. She was blonde and fair-skinned, but her irises were black as her pupils. Even her sclerae seemed more gray than white. The contrast was near unsettling, but at the same time, entirely alluring.

She unlinked her hands to fan outwards. “How are you feeling today?”

I nearly snorted at such a trite—nay, ridiculous question—though I felt myself already beginning to tear up as soon as I began digging up descriptors. Enraged. Betrayed. Sorrowful. Suicidal. 

“Numb if I’m lucky,” I relinquished.

Lecter shut her eyes and bowed her head. “Would you believe me if I said that's better than pretending you're fine?”

“Of course.”

“Honesty with oneself is one of many steps to recovery. I appreciate a genuine patient.” She smiled again as she opened her lids. “You’re already doing better than most.”

Her smile was so warm. Beamed without showing a hint of tooth. The slight crinkle of her eye’s corners, the sweet, almost Cheshire curve of her lips, how the apples of her cheeks rounded atop the sharp bones of her face.

I felt the sun’s rays touch me for the first time in months.

“Well…” I glanced out the window to my left. Partly cloudy, dimming and raising the light that reached me through the glass as they passed over the sun. “That’s… good.” It was still hard to find words.

Good words. Words that didn’t trip or fumble.

“It makes it easier for me to treat with accuracy, and you to take said treatment effectively.” Doctor Lecter tilted her head. “Is this honesty a recent consequence?”

“No,” I replied without hesitation, then paused. “...I might be more honest, though.”

“And why would that be?”

I shrugged slowly as I took the time to mull over my words. “I think I’m desperate for sympathy…”

“You find expressing your unfiltered thoughts and feelings gains you sympathy?”

“I do at the moment. I have, since…”

A pause.

I glanced back at her eyes. Those black punch holes cutting through the paper dividing dimensions. I wanted to crawl up to them. Curl my hands around the edges as I leaned inside to have a look at what they kept behind them.

I bit the inside of my cheek and glanced away. “Since Rebecca and I broke up.”

Doctor Lecter’s brows arched upwards. Tell me about that.

I parted my lips to inhale the breath I’d use to elaborate. “We’d been separated a while. And even before then, I knew I wasn’t being reciprocated for the last year or so. It was on and off and on and…” I trailed off, a sob choking my throat.

My heavy tears spilled over, dropping onto my clothes. They left dark stains in the fabric.

“I’ve just been unloading onto anyone who will listen. Including her, until…” I swallowed my cries enough to speak and sniffled, lip and chin trembling. “...the last thing she said to me was that the happiest she’d ever been was now that I was gone.” I never thought anything could top the pain of that statement. 

Yet here I am, and she’ll be buried in a week. What I wouldn’t give now to have her come back at me with another declaration of hatred. The relief that would provide me. The consolation, that at least, she would be alive.

Doctor Lecter’s brows twitched slightly as she read my face. “Do you not find that a cruel thing of her to say?”

My cheeks burned red in shame. I had ‘doormat’ written all over my face.

“Of course I do, but…” I trailed off again, wringing my hands as another wave of tears dropped from my eyes.

“You love her.”

I shuddered as I breathed out, nodding quickly. “More than anything.” I sniffled, reaching up to wipe my tears. “You see it… why doesn’t Jacqueline?”

Lecter raised her brows. “She does.” She straightened her posture. “But loving someone, as deep as you do, can be the reason for a murder.”

My brows snapped into a deep furrow. 

“You too?” I sneered.

“No,” She responded calmly.

Her own coolness brought me back down. It surprised me how well that worked, like she had chucked a handful of ice into a boiling pot.

Her smooth tone continued, unwavering. “It was the Chesapeake Ripper. An intelligent psychopath known for elaborate displays…” Doctor Lecter pursed her lips. “However, Miss Olvera’s scene was somewhat unremarkable in comparison to others.”

I shuddered at the way she said that. So… indifferent. She’s keeping calm to not provoke you. She hears about these kinds of things all the time, I’m sure, since she was an FBI referral. That was the rational conclusion. 

But not my gut’s.

“She meant so much to you,” she continued. “If you were the Ripper, this would have been a grand work of art.”

“Work of art? ” I snapped, nails curling into the arms of the chair I sat in.

Doctor Lecter’s eyes flicked to the crescents I had indented into the leather. Her expression shifted, inscrutably.

“That is the Ripper’s way of thinking,” she answered my half-question. “Certainly not yours.”

My brows furrowed even further, the wrinkles between them forming a deep vale at her words.

But the irony, the thought struck me.

My heart skipped. 

Oh, the irony in making the Chesapeake Ripper’s own death art.

My mouth made the decision before my mind, the words tumbling from my lips before I could even think about them. “I’m going to kill him.”

Doctor Lecter’s face subtly dropped. I recognized her previous expression now. Disgust. And this new one… now just as mysterious as the former had been.

I stood from Doctor Lecter’s chair, chest shuddering as I inhaled through a sob. “That is the only possible beginning of justice.”

She didn’t say anything. I didn’t expect her to. It was a vow to myself.

I stormed to the door and pulled it open as gently as I could restrain myself to be, which was still a rough yank. I cringed. My rage wasn’t towards her—she only caused slight irritation in her insensitivity, but nothing anywhere near unforgivable. I paused, then turned around to face her.

I parted my lips to give an apology for my brashness, though she lifted a hand. 

Sins forgiven. I’ll see you next week if you choose, I figured. I held her gaze in place of a verbal ‘Thank you.’ If I opened my mouth, only three things could emerge. A scream, sob, or both. I reeled myself in as I shut the door, which closed with a heavy thud regardless of force. I sniffled, wiping my cheeks as I walked down the hall and to the stairs.

I couldn’t help but ponder that last look she gave me. With each step down, a new, and wrong, possibility of what it could have been came to me. Confusion. Concern. Admiration. Fear. Halfway down the flight. Neutrality. Agreement. Disagreement. Anger.

I reached the bottom of the steps and sighed. None of that was right. Her face was so full of… full of… My eyes narrowed and I shook my head. She was indecipherable. That was her job. It didn’t matter.

I opened the front door, and the sun hit my face.

…full of fixation.

As soon as I was home, I threw my keys into their dish and plopped myself at my desk for the first time since news of Becca’s death. I opened the lid of my laptop, the atom-thin layer of dust it had managed to already gather sticking to my fingertips. I swiped rapidly at the trackpad to wake the hibernating machine, moving to swift raps at the space bar until the screen came alight.

Muscle memory took over: Pin—97439. Chrome. Fingers flying over the keyboard, C-H-E-S-S-A-P-E-A-K-SPACE-R-I-P-P-E-R. Enter.

Beneath the correction to “Chesapeake” lay a slew of information.

I scoured through every entry: Sources from top news agencies, documents disclosed by the FBI, police records; every link that came up, I opened. In my rapid trickling down the page of results, I had gathered a couple dozen tabs struggling to load in the bar, only a few unopened links remaining. A couple posts of condolences from victim acquaintances, a short thread of case-cracking hobbyists, and an independent source third to the bottom of the list. 

Tattlecrime.com .

The title read: ALL ABOUT THE CHESAPEAKE RIPPER—WHAT THE FBI WON’T SHOW OR TELL .

That certainly caught my eye.

I clicked the link and was immediately assaulted with the contents of an uncensored photograph: a man, set in the center of a hospital room, impaled on a dozen instruments—at least. I clapped a hand over my mouth. My brows furrowed, and I held my breath, as though the stench of death may seep through the screen and coil around my own life.

I flicked the wheel of my mouse down to hide from the eyes of the carcass, and came to a list of names. Douglas Wilson, Jeremy Olmstead, Joel Summers… I began skimming, eyes darting down the disturbingly extensive list until I hit the bottom. Rebecca Olvera. A punch blew into the center of my sternum. This felt like the lucidity of a dream. Not reality. A veil of weightlessness cast itself over my trembling body as my hand, a smooth detached phantom, slid over her name, and clicked. 

The screen flashed blank, then filled out into the new page. 

My heart dropped through the floor. 

I scrolled away from the image as quick as I could, but not quick enough that it wouldn’t burn itself into my mind first. The unmistakable shape of her body hung by one arm and was half-submerged in the bog below, face and skin desecrated by rot and half-eaten by maggots. Her black flesh had begun to slough off the bone. Her sternum and clavicle were shattered by the hatchet lodged into her heart. Her jaw was open slack, tongue and floor of her mouth dissolved.

And the hole.

The hole where her belly, and what it kept inside, once was. It was clear even through the digital grain of the photo that this was no animal. This was no rot. She had been carved open and dug out through that hole. Oh god , that hole was a perfect oval; consistent in depth and symmetry.

I dropped the hand cupping my mouth to wrap around my throat, and squeezed to keep the bile from rising, though the pressure only exacerbated my panic. My chest heaved, but caught no breath, the air snagging in my trachea before expelling back out. I threw my head back as my gut wrung itself, the fire of acid crawling up my throat followed by a visceral heave. I swallowing what vomit had already come up, then launched out of my chair and scrambled into the bathroom, dropping to my knees in front of the toilet.

I threw myself over the bowl and opened my mouth with a screaming retch. Thin, watery bile serrated my esophagus until my stomach ran dry, leaving me heaving. I sobbed around each convulsion that lashed at my chest and fell beside the bowl, clutching at the seat as I cried. Thick saliva dripped from my lips, tears spilling down my flushed cheeks from under furrowed brows. The wail rising in my throat twisted, lowered to a rumbling howl, and emerged a scream of rage.

I’d made the vow to myself in Lecter’s office. Now, I made it to the Ripper, echoing from me and into the world to crawl into his ear, however faint: 

You will die by my hand.

It’s hiding in there.

Behind the wall of pine and aspen.

There’s a cabin in the woodland. 

Above a misty lake with a small dock.

I have to go.

I have to go home.

Run.

I whipped my face back around to the cabin—or where it should have been—met only with another fortress of bark and leaf. 

Run.

My feet took off before I could command them to do so. I pelted through the woods, prey with predator at my heels, impossibly full breaths spilling from my throat and mingling into the mist. I looked down to the ground, and instead of a soft carpet of podzol and moss, I found myself sprinting upon a thick tangling of roots. Ivy crawled out from between them and up my legs, curling tightly around my ankles. It was just barely weak enough for me to break them as I ran, but with each creeping vine snapped, two more emerged to ensnare me again. 

The beast. I whipped my head over my shoulder to check how close it was, to see if I could make out its size, its figure, its face. A pair of symmetrical branches swayed between two trunks, then disappeared. No. Not branches. 

Antlers.

A migraine stirred just above my brow. My strides slowed at the ivy’s grasp. My breath choked around the humid cold. The small of my back tingled with impending dread.

Run.

My eyes snapped open. I laid on the bathroom floor, arms hung loosely upon my toilet. I grumbled, and the sound ground away at my throat, bile and dehydration weathering my flesh.

I didn’t remember the exact contents of my dream. Only that I had, and what it made me feel.

Fear.

On my way out of the house and to a second interrogation, I glanced up to my half-opened laptop as I slipped on my shoes. My heart twinged at the reminder of the image, and I screwed my eyes shut to try and wipe it away. Of course, the black canvas only allowed visibility of further detail. I snapped my eyes back open and stood to my full height, tilting back the monitor of the computer to shut the tab for good.

The screen came alight, and I flicked the arrow to the window’s X , closing every tab. Though not before the text at the bottom of the page registered in my head.

Business inquiries, email: [email protected]

“How would you describe your feelings towards Miss Olvera immediately after you broke up?”

Benjamin Katz’s kind, dark eyes stared unwaveringly pinned to my own. He hardly blinked, he was so alert, but at the same time his lids drooped in that ever-cool and calm gaze of his.

It really did make me feel like spilling all my secrets—if he asked for them.

“Not like killing her,” I said frankly.

That earned an amused huff from Benjamin. Jacqueline at his side, however, bared no such enthusiasm for sarcastic quips.

Crawford spoke up, “Any violent thoughts whatsoever? Against her, against yourself, against Carter Hayes?”

I nodded along to her words until she said his name. That fucking name.

I had. Of course I had.

If it were Katz and I alone in the room, I might have spilled my every thought to him. I opened my mouth to say, ‘Yes. Carter and I. To show her what she took from me, and take it right back from her.’

But then there was Agent Crawford and her steely, drill-sergeant pout. I gritted my teeth and swallowed.

“Just myself,” I murmured.

My eyes flitted to the mirror behind them. The giant, tilted mirror that just didn’t show your reflection at quite the right angle. The one-way mirror, I was sure.

I stared into the eyes of whatever slew of agents, psychologists, and bodyguards stood behind the silver-film glass, scribbling down on notepads and drawing yarn between thumbtacked photographs on a cork board, I comically imagined.

“Why don’t you bring in Carter Hayes for questioning?” I seethed his name.

Benjamin and Jacqueline glanced between each other.

“He was the one who said Rebecca and I should stop talking.” My eyes narrowed, brows furrowing as the scene played out in my head. “Jealous bastard didn’t believe her… killed her so she would stay his in death.”

No. That’s not right. Helen’s words echoed in my mind: It was the Chesapeake Ripper. An intelligent psychopath known for elaborate displays.

A breath leaked from my throat and out my lips, manifesting the thoughts in my head into speech. “Doctor Lecter told me it was the Chesapeake Ripper. How could she be sure?”

Jacqueline’s brows furrowed over her narrow, piercing eyes. “She can’t be, and she shouldn’t have said that.”

“It can’t just be harvested organs and theatrical arrangements, even the FBI has articles saying that it’s common for psychopaths to take trophies from—“

Katz opened his mouth to speak, though not before Jacqueline could spit, “ We’re interrogating you . Not the other way around. If you want to catch criminals, you can go apply for the FBI, but vigilantes like you interfere with the attainment of justice.” Jacqueline shook her head slowly, the daggers in her eyes retracting. “I know you hold sympathy for Rebecca. I do.”

Tears bristled upon my waterline at just the sound of her name.

Agent Crawford went silent to pause in thought, though I could hear she still had more to say. The way her voice trailed off, the frayed edges of her next statement caught in the low croak of her hum.

My shaking, wet eyes flicked to Jacqueline. “...Then why am I still a suspect?”

My lips were parted, ready to drink in her response. Though she said nothing.

Benjamin leaned forward in his seat. “The Ripper is one of a few suspects.” He splayed out his hands and tilted his head, offering a sympathetic knit of his brows. “So is Carter Hayes.”

Jacqueline whipped her head to glare at Agent Katz, her eyes wide and mouth gaping in shock. Her jaw shut with a loud clack of her teeth, and she swiped her paperclipped files from the table and into a yellow Manila folder.

“Thank you, Miss…” Agent Crawford quickly deflected my name to the door with a swoop of her hand as she stood. “That will be all today.”

My brows drew taut upon my forehead. “How much more of this will there be?”

Jacqueline was halfway around the steel table when she stopped to reply, “As much as we need you.”

Agent Crawford continued out the door, heels clicking sharply with each marched step. Benjamin Katz offered me an apologetic look as he followed after Crawford, turning back around only once the strain of looking over his shoulder became uncomfortable. 

The door to the interrogation room shut behind them after having allowed in an FBI guard, who remained at my side as I stood, and guided me to the exit as well. I thanked him as he held the door, and I passed into the hall, my eyes flicking to glance into the room Benjamin and Agent Crawford had entered. Through the crack of the ajar door, I made out exactly what I had suspected: a large, tilted window, and through it the steel table and chairs on the opposite side of the mirror. Behind the mirror stood four figures. The backlit outline of Benjamin’s usual hand-on-cocked-hip pose, and Jacqueline’s solid no-nonsense stance. Across from them, the first of the other two, and my entire being snapped into the sudden alertness of recognition. 

Doctor Helen Lecter.

Though, her eyes didn’t meet mine as I passed. They were fixed on another, slightly shorter than her woman, with curly brown shoulder-length hair. I craned my neck back to further observe, maybe catch the end of a sentence, though the guard’s presence at my back urged me forth, and I continued out into the hall…

Winona Graham’s arms were crossed tightly over her chest. She was speaking to Jacqueline Crawford, though her gaze was chained to the eyes of Helen Lecter, all venom and glower beneath the glint of her lenses.

“I was acquitted. Remember? Chilton pinned the blame on Annabel Gideon until that fell through the cracks. Then Felicity Chilton on attribution of Michael Lass' amnesia,” Winona said, severing her glare at Helen to look at Jacqueline. “See, every time you…” Graham lifted her fingers into hooks to make quotes. “…catch the Ripper…” then lowered them. “She kills again.” Her eyes narrowed and flicked back to Helen. “And Doctor Lecter throws a dinner party.”

Crawford’s brows furrowed. “Or he.”

“Yeah.” Winona’s eyes narrowed even harsher, still locked on Lecter. “Or her .”

“Winona,” Jacqueline began.

Graham’s head rolled to face Agent Crawford. “Jackie.”

Crawford huffed a long sigh out her nose and lifted a hand to pinch the bridge, eyes fluttering shut. “You know how highly I value your opinion, Winona, but this is a conversation we should have in confidentiality. Alone.” Her unspoken words rang clear for all in the room: Not in front of Helen.

“Why? To tell me I’m wrong in private and keep me your golden-girl in public?” Winona adjusted her glasses. “Don’t you think it’s a bit hard to keep that reputation up after imprisoning me for serial murder?”

Jacqueline said nothing.

“Well then, here we go again.” Winona gave a final, pointed stab of her eyes at Helen. “...choosing to ignore truth while staring it in the face, and pestering the innocent because we don’t want to even consider that the wolf could be hiding inside the flock.” She turned on her heel and lifted her coat from where it hung on her arm, slipping it over her shoulders as she left the room with a final word to Jacqueline, “Let’s see how well it goes this time.”

All eyes remained on the imprint Winona’s shadow had left in the doorway. Katz was the first to look away, his eyes landing pointedly on Helen… in subtle scrutiny. Helen’s gaze flitted to the ground. Half in ache of the newest fracture left in her heart by Winona Graham, but also in that she felt Benjamin’s inspection practically beginning to dissect her. The feeling prickled her skin to the muscle. 

Jacqueline was next. And it was the same, nearly inconspicuous examination upon Helen's form. Lecter breathed in deep and steady, lifting her face from the ground and aiming forward. All eyes were on her.

The stitches had begun peeking out from under the wool.

Chapter Text

I spent every free moment I had gathering all I could about the Ripper. 

His patterns. His likes. His dislikes. His gallery of mortem. I hated to admit to myself, but some of the arrangements were… artistic . I was intentional with my thoughts not to call them beautiful.

Sheldon Isley’s body poised in the very woodlands he paved down, as though the cherry tree he had been wrapped around grew solely to spear through him in vengeance. Judge Davies hung before Gabriel Metsu’s The Triumph of Justice , heart and brain placed upon the scales impaled through his wrist. Jeremy Olmstead arranged upon his own instruments to resemble The Wound Man.

Doctor Lecter was right. The Ripper saw himself an artist.

And then, there were the others. Cassie Boyle, gored on a pair of antlers and left to be fed on by field vultures. Donald Sutcliffe, face cleaved in two. Carson Nahn, tongue pulled out through the slit along his throat.

My stomach churned. Whether in hunger or disgust, the feelings had become so intertwined as of late that they were indistinguishable. I couldn’t muster the passion, let alone any energy whatsoever, I usually had to cook.

How many days has it been now? Three? Four? Has it yet been a week?

No.

That sounded wrong. That sounded concrete. Days without Becca gave a chance for her to return—somehow, my mind convinced itself. But a week? She’d be embalmed in a week. Dressed and placed in her casket. The funeral invitations sent out.

And I wouldn’t be getting one.

A sharp, chipper knock startled me to a flinch; Patty too. I rolled up from the hunch over my computer screen, the marble of my neck crumbling as I turned it to look at the door. The weight under my eyes and weakness in my legs came over me once more.

Go away. Whoever you are.

My name was called through the door in a way I’d only heard once before: lisped from Doctor Lecter’s tongue. 

A second knock, more insistent.

The dreary veil draped over my body was yanked away. I clutched my desk as I stood from my chair, shuffled as swiftly as I could, fumbled with the lock, and pulled open the door. Backlit by the gray sky stood Doctor Lecter, her hair tied up into an elegant bun and dressed in a dark red sweater. She smiled as soon as I met her dark eyes, which shook me just as deeply today as the first time I had seen them. Her crows feet deepened with the curl of her lips. She was, truly, and in every genuine sense of the word, handsome.

“Hello,” she said, and held out a large glass tupperware I hadn’t taken note of.

My brows raised. “What’s this?”

“Turkey pot pie.” Her smile widened as I took it. “You said in your most recent interrogation you hadn’t eaten.”

An arrow shot through my chest, leaving a warm, deep pang in my heart. I only mentioned that in passing. She cares. Really, cares.

I blinked back the tears welling in my eyes. “Oh… doctor, this is—”

“Please,” She interjected. “...call me Helen.” 

The breath I would have used to finish my sentence leaked silently from my throat.

“ Helen… ” I echoed back.

This was the closest I’d ever stood to her, and at this narrow distance, her height was striking. She wasn’t just tall—she was just shy of 6 feet tall .

She raised an inquisitive—or maybe knowing—brow. “May I?”

“Uh—” I stammered, stepping back. “Please, yeah—yes.”

She stepped through the threshold, and I planted my forehead into the center of my palm as soon as I was out of Helen’s peripheral.

She slowed her steps, swiveled her head to and fro as though thoroughly examining my space. 

My lips pursed. “Getting any psychoanalysis from the dust bunnies?”

Helen chuckled, the sound trailing off into a more serious hum. “They tell me you’re not done grieving. And nor should you be.” She turned smoothly on the heel of her loafer and sauntered to the fridge, deftly hooking her fingers around the handle and pulling it open to reveal… nearly nothing. Her eyes flicked to mine. “So does this.”

I gulped, and she shut the fridge.

She sighed and pulled out a chair from my little Ikea dining set, then a second one for herself. “You still have to eat, despite your mind being unable to bear it. We all living do, even in death’s shadow,” she said as she sat down, then gestured across from herself.

My brows knitted. “Stark poeticism, Doctor Lecter,” I said as I set the pie on the table.

Pat was cautiously making her way over to Helen from the bedroom, sniffing the air as she prowled closer to Helen’s shoes.

“Don’t you write?” She asked.

I huffed, grabbing two plates from the cupboard, two forks, and a pie cutter. “Not lately.”

“Creating or not, you and I are alike in that way,” she said my name. 

I couldn’t think of a good reply, my clouded mind more apt to slicing a good enough square than indulging in conversation.

“We’re artists.”

The weight of dread enveloped me. 

My eyes flicked up to Helen’s black pinpoints staring back. If you were the Ripper, this would have been a grand work of art , her words echoed. My brows furrowed as I assessed her. She didn’t look away—assessing me right back, I figured.

The breath leaking out of me turned into a huff. “I don’t find myself fond of art at the moment. One artist’s work in particular.” I finished slicing the second square of pie and plated them both, setting one before Helen and one before my seat.

I plopped down into the chair and lifted my fork, stabbing it into the pie and rattling a chunk from the mass. The conversation had disenchanted me from the milky-sweet scent of the crust and its fragrant fillings, and I scooped the bite unceremoniously into my mouth, teeth scraping against the fork as I pulled it out.

I chewed quickly, molars clacking, until the salty, herbaceous flavors melded into the buds of my tongue. My eyes widened, chomps slowing.

“Good?” Helen asked as she took a smaller, more precise bite for herself.

Tears stung at my waterline, saliva pooling in the basin behind my lower teeth at the warm, nourishing fats and vegetables, the thick chunks of meat and potatoes, and bursts of tangy, jammy cranberries between every other bite. I sniffled and nodded, lifting my free hand to wipe my eyes as my chest shook with a sob.

“Phenomenal,” I muffled out around the bite.

Helen’s beaming, sunshine smile only widened.

Grinning now, I scarfed down bite after bite of the pie, swallowing half-chewed portions with reckless abandon. I knew it would make me sick later. But my gnashing stomach had been reminded of what it was missing, and there was no stopping that now.

Over my ravenous mastication, I heard Helen murmur, “Easy.”

I slowed at her command. My heart skipped at how automatic my obedience was. I lowered my head, tucking back into the meal with slower, steadier movements.

“That was the first time I’ve seen you smile,” Helen said.

I glanced up at her. Helen’s pupils were full, the deep scoops of her eyes narrowed to sweet slivers. My cheeks tingled as I smiled again, and I bowed my head, pulling my gaze from hers.

I cleared my throat. “Turkey?”

“Mmhm.”

My brows raised. “How did you get turkey this time of year?”

“The turkeys I eat are available year-round,” Helen replied, an almost snarking lilt to her voice. “I employ specialty butchers. It avails me to a broader palate, and guarantees an ethical slaughter.” She took another bite, chewed, and swallowed before speaking again. “Animal cruelty is something I cannot stand for.”

Patty was quick to join the exchange, jumping up onto the table to smell the pie.

As I lurched forward to lift Patty off the table, Helen grinned and raised a hand for her to sniff. “She liked that.”

I smiled and huffed away the breath I would have used for an apology. “That she did.”

Silence fell between us. For the first time in a long time—especially recently—it didn’t make me uncomfortable. I didn’t writhe under it. It was… kind. Full. Warm.

“Thank you,” my words quietly trembled out.

Helen glanced up. “You’re my patient. It is my obligation to look after your health.”

Obligation… my heart twinged. Why?

“How long has it been?” I asked. “How many days? Since Rebecca…”

Helen plucked out a bite of turkey. “Five.” She examined it a moment before popping it into her mouth. “Not counting today.”

A chill within me disturbed the warmth that had blanketed the kitchen.

“ Five, ” I shuddered back out.

Hearing it didn’t feel real. I had to speak it to make myself believe the truth. I glanced down to the crust of the pie—more accurately, what was left of it.

There were poppy seeds on top.

I felt Helen’s eyes on me, watching in quiet observance. I didn’t mind it. It was gentle. Unaccusatory. 

Safe.

We didn’t speak again until she said goodbye. I didn’t know her well, but I nearly begged her to stay regardless. It was good to have someone over. Filling the empty spaces—in both the physical and mental realms. As soon as Helen had gone, the sun ceased to be warm despite the cloudless midday. She was what I imagined every beautiful kind of heroin felt like, and that shut door was a skull-rattling slap of naloxone.

But I already missed her before she left.

It doesn’t have a face.

Oh, god, it doesn’t have a face.

It can hear me.

See me.

Smell me.

Taste me.

And god, it doesn’t have a face.

I ran through the woodland as fast and hard as I could, despite the vines, despite the cold, despite the pounding, drilling pressure points in my head.

There.

Orange light spilled from between the leaves and needles. The outline of a bridge came into view, and the trees thinned around familiar land.

Home.

I gasped in, and screamed out as I willed myself forward, dredging through relentless vines with the breath of the beast on my neck. It was colder than death. I sobbed around each huff now, my tears seeming to flood the stream below the bridge as I at last made it upon the creaking wood of the suspended overpass. I stumbled, fell upon and bruised the bones in my knees, scrambled back up onto my feet until splinters gathered beneath my nails.

I can’t let it touch me.

I can’t.

It knows my smell.

I can’t let it know my taste.

The cabin. The orange light of its windows. I felt warmth again. Safety. Care, love, and comfort. All within my reach. The ache in my head began to subside. Whatever had begun crawling out had started to dissolve at the root. Even in the grayscale veil of the night, I could see the color returning to my skin. 

It was right there. The shimmering lake a backdrop to my mind’s own heaven. An end to the night. An end to the panic. An end to this infection.

I can beat it.

The infection with no face, hot on my heels, gaining closer every fraction of a second.

I can beat it if I run.

I leapt off the bridge and jumped over the lichen-covered rocks bordering the dip before the driveway.

Run.

I gasped as I landed on the side of my foot, crying out in pain as I writhed to crawl forward.

Crawl.

I strained each breath through chattering teeth, my eyes shining as bright and orange as the windows that stared back just out of reach.

Hide.

Esther Keane was the one who had introduced me to Rebecca.

I had heard from Esther Keane the date, time, and location of the funeral, and though Esther and I hadn’t talked for a solid two years, I suppose she felt enough sympathy to dig up my number and give me a call. 10 A.M., May 22nd at the cemetery across from Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. It would be closed casket. The instructions said to bring white or yellow flowers. No red. Too much like blood. No blue. Too much like the rigor-tinged shade of her lips when they found her. But those were her favorite colors.

Seth Porter was the one to give me a ride, however. My lucky alibi. Esther had offered, but I remembered how she was well enough. Chatty. Lacking a filter. Eccentric in the tone-deaf to grief way. I politely declined and lied that I'd take the bus. 

Porter, on the other hand, had a keen deftness for the emotional. Usually, uppity music would have ruffled my feathers before something like this, so he correctly predicted to arrive with the stereo off. But once I had gotten into the car and shut the door, the soft pattering of rain muffled to near-silence, and our murmured greeting concluded, the quiet became worse. 

That was the blank page for my thoughts to start scribbling their heaping bedlam upon.

I needed the distraction. 

Seth’s brows raised as he watched me turn on the radio. I met his eyes for the brief moment he pulled them from the road, and in them saw ‘Really?’ and his lips parting to double check, ‘You’re sure?’ . I offered a weak smile in response. That was good enough for him to choke the words in his throat and turn his gaze back to the street. 

I turned the dial slowly, pausing after each click of the knob to listen through crackling interference and register the song until I stumbled upon a satisfactory melody. Billy Idol. Eyes Without a Face. The classic rock station was generally inoffensive as background faire. It reminded me of the record shops back home in Eugene. My family didn’t live there long. But when we did, it was the best time of my life second to being with Becca. 

I grew out my hair. Mowed lawns, raked leaves, and shoveled snow for cash each change of the seasons. Spent it without having to sheepishly ask a parent for a 20 to buy used boots. Was old enough to walk the long way home through Hendricks Park. I tanned each Summer. Pecked my first girl on the cheek, lips sticky with Prince Puckler’s strawberry ice cream. I touched the ocean for the first time.

That lake cabin in Florence we’d stay at each summer.

“You doing okay?” Seth wove himself gently through the mental partition I had put between us.

I was always grateful for his tender consideration. That, and the lingering taste of dried oats and pistachios rolled in marionberry jam twitched the corner of my lip just enough to barely crack a short smile.

“Yeah… just thinking about the homemade granola I always used to make,” I rasped.

Seth smiled too. “I bet it was real good.”

“It was…” I said softly, eyes climbing up from the road and to the cast iron gate arching over the cemetery’s entrance. “It really was.”

I stayed back from the main ceremony. Half in knowing I’d be quickly shunned away. Most of Rebecca’s family probably thought I’d done it. I could guarantee Carter Hayes had convinced them of that. The other half, I don’t think I could bear to watch them lower that mahogany casket into the ground. My feet were already flinching beneath me as it was. Hands quivering to throw the bouquet I’d brought to the ground. To break my ankles running over and throw myself upon the wooden coffin with a shriek of agony, pry it open until my fingers bled to give her a final kiss. Taste the formaldehyde they’d filled her with, pull the cotton from her throat to try and breathe her back to life. Cling to her carcass until they had no option but to bury me alive with her.

But the distance kept me in place. Respect for her memory kept me in place. That there was nothing I could do. She was dead. It’s already been done.

I stood a thousand miles from her, and yet just out of reach. Sobbed in silent beats at my chest, and strained around enough air to shatter a glass cathedral. Tears spilled down my face, dripped down my chin and neck to my chest over where my heart lay. Then the mucus. Then the saliva. I tasted the iron of blood creeping up from my throat as I cried, whimpering in wordless apologies as my hands began snapping the stems of the flowers in my hands with how tightly I clutched at them in agony.

Quaker ladies. Becca’s favorite. They were blue, but subtly enough to not be contested. She would’ve loved that I’d done it anyway.

Through the blur of my tears, I made out the silhouettes of the mourners gathering into a single file line. My body snapped into sudden alertness. I willed myself to walk from where I’d begun to sink into the mud, breath and hands shaking around the flowers in my hands and crawling up my esophagus. I gulped them back down and fell silently into the back of the line, the entirety of my body shivering uncontrollably.

I glanced down to the invisible blue of the quaker ladies’ petals. I knew her better than anyone in this precession. My brow furrowed slightly as my eyes bored a hole through the skull of the patron in front of me. They have to see that.

I finally made it to her grave, ready to prove everything to everyone. And yet, when I at last stood upon the edge of that six-foot cliff, the world fell away. 

I was alone for the first time with her in a thousand eons. 

I could see her through the lacquer and chatoyancy. Not as the bog body. Not as the pixels making up an overexposed photograph of the latest Ripper victim, bathed in camera flash to be pinned at the top of a homepage and sealed in cabinets of archived evidence. Not as the autopsy being scraped, prodded, and cut for clues.

Rebecca Olvera. Love of my life. Once upon a time, and in some other, easier life, every promise we’d ever made. Her skin full of flush and life. Eyes awake and bright. Flesh hot and pure as clear waters. Mind spinning enough threads of genius to weave infinite tapestries around the world.

I wonder what she’d say to me now. ‘I hate you,’ stung in all its likelihood.

I felt naked under the scorn of the rain. You weren’t there for her. You weren’t good to her in life. 

Deep down, you wanted to see her hurt.

There was nothing else I could say in return to her. “ I love you, ” I spoke just loud enough for her to hear. 

Nobody else.

The shaking had stopped. I opened my palm and let the bouquet fall from my hand, landing with a gentle tumble atop the pile of white and yellow. Roses. Daisies. Lilies. Baby’s breath. Magnolia. White mariposas. Oleander.

Blue. Quaker ladies.

“I didn’t think this is how I’d meet you,” a deep voice pulled me by a burning lynch from my handbrush with heaven.

A voice I’d only heard once. A voice I’d heard calling Rebecca “baby”.

My brows furrowed deeper than I thought possible as raging fire licked up my spine to the nape of my neck, every muscle in my body tensing stiff as the bones at my core.

“I didn’t think I’d meet you at all,” I seethed out from between my teeth at Carter Hayes.

I didn’t turn to look at him. His dead-fish-on-ice eyes set beneath unruly dirty blonde hair had branded itself deeper into the front of my cortex with each picture of him Becca had shoved in my face. That vacant, cardboard, lack thereof a personality that just radiated through his every characteristic. Having different junk between his legs than me really did make all the difference.

“She was so beautiful…” He spoke soft, but flat. “To strip that from her… leave her in such an ugly place.”

My brows furrowed. “Yes. She is beautiful.”

I felt—and smelled—the wind of him whipping his face to look at me. “You think this is beautiful?”

“She’ll always be beautiful to me. Even after rotting in a bog.” The quiver in my voice crawled back around my vocal chords. “That’s still the same skin I kissed. The same soul I loved. I see you’re too shallow to think the same, not that that surprises me.”

He scoffed out his nose. “It was a fen. Not a bog.”

I would have cracked a tooth if I’d bit down any harder. “I’m here to mourn my lover, Doctor Ecology , not get in a spat with you.”

“She wasn’t your lover when she died.”

There wasn’t a second between the end of his statement and my knuckles swinging at all 6 feet 250 pounds of him. 

He dodged. 

That was stupid.  

Before I knew it, his palm slammed into my chest and my back hit the ground, throat choking around the wind as it spilled out of my lungs.

But he didn’t mean it.

The clouds above were swirling.

It was reflexive.

Whether from a gathering storm, or the dizziness of hypoxia.

If he meant it, he’d beat me into the grass until I was pulp.

Seth was over me in an instant, shoving a now-complacent Carter back a few paces.

He’s such a fucking coward.

Seth was calling my name.

I’ll make the Ripper help me kill him.

“Hey, you’re okay!” Seth assured, then rephrased to confirm, “You okay?”

I gasped enough into my lungs to squeeze back out, “ Yeah! ”

“Okay,” He sighed and helped me sit up.

My breaths eased as I did, and I gave Seth a wordless nod as thanks, mouthing my gratitude in lieu of sound. My eyes turned to Carter; vision shaking, heart racing, mouth gaping. He was the focal point of whatever violent parasite had burrowed into my mind.

Or maybe it had just been incubating all this time.

He looked at me with disgust. Maybe fear, but if he did, I couldn’t place it. The glares of the crowd behind him came into view, hands clutching invisible pearls as they pitchforked me to death with their eyes. 

I knew most of everyone from Becca’s stories of her family. But almost none of them knew I even existed before she died.

I was always the secret. The shame. 

Yet here stands the newcomer. The imposter posing as her first and only love. That thing wearing a mask that should have belonged to me. I owned her first. Body and soul, I owned her first. Staked my claim inside of her first.

I panted huskily around my raw throat, nails digging into Seth’s hand for purchase. He didn’t flinch from me, but I still worried I sank them hard enough to bleed.

“Let’s go,” Seth murmured softly and urged me from the group, turning me to allow one last glance at the grave.

My heart ached, eyes dry of any tears I could further give as I craned my neck to savor my goodbyes, the last of the quaker ladies disappearing behind the dirt.

Work was kind enough to give me the week off.

But, seven days later, and kindness had expired to rotten fruit in my mouth. I dredged myself out of bed and from under a begrudging-to-move, yet purring all the same Patty, scritching her head as I pulled open my drawers to slip into the most professional-passing lazy clothes I could. I yawned as I shuffled into the living room, fishing my keys, wallet, and phone from the dish on the kitchen counter. I flipped my phone open with one hand, the other reaching up to rub my eye.

No text from Seth.

The hand at my face slowed, and my eyes narrowed as I blinked the sleep from my eyes, opening my messages to double check. Nothing. No missed call either.

Do I have another day off? No. I triple checked that.

I cycled through my contacts to his number and hit dial, biting the chapped, anxious spot on my lip I’d gnawed at for the last week.

The ringer sounded outside my kitchen window.

Oh no. 

My heart turned to lead and fell through my gut and beneath the floorboards.

Oh god, please don’t do this.

I crept up to the window, breathing shakily as I lowered my phone, set it down on the counter, and reached for the window.

Please don’t.

My fingertips shook as they pressed against the latch, pushed, and opened the window.

Seth’s phone buzzed on the sill.

I didn’t want to raise my eyes from it, but I could already see the carnage in my peripheral.

I lifted my gaze, and across the lot, Seth’s body had been impaled upon the spikes of the cast iron fence above the dumpsters, a crown of quaker ladies encircling his skinned face, and arms splayed out in mock crucifixion.

My jaw parted slowly—slow as my eyes, and slow as my heart coming to a full and complete stop, a scream tearing out of my chest and ricocheting off every wall of the complex.

Chapter Text

The end of my scream resonated into the beginning echo of sirens careening down the avenue. 

My breaths shuddered in and out around battering sobs, my throat already too raw from the first screech to unleash a second. Tears poured down my cheeks. My heart fluttered so fast out of its rhythm I feared it would stop entirely.

Run, my first instincts roared. 

No. Then they’ll really think it was you.

A weak whimper escaped me. Oh god. You’re already a suspect. You’re already a suspect and now your only alibi is dead.

Hide.

My eyes widened. The Ripper. The Ripper was here. 

The Ripper knows where I live.

My heart throbbed deep in my chest. He could still be here.

Fire scorched my every nerve, its heat licking over my eyes and to the crown of my head. I breathed in, and it burned. 

Sprawling my limbs out, thrashing and desperate I threw open the door and stumbled out.

Where is he?

My eyes clicked from side to side, pupils narrow, and my spine bent into a hunch. I crawled down the stairs, snarling smoke and drooling plasma, nails curling into claws that raked down the railing as I descended to the pavement.

I’m going to kill him.

I was melting now, pressed flat to the ground, breast and belly scraping along the jagged asphalt, taking in only whiffs of tar, stale rainwater, blood, and Helen Lecter.

My name in that familiar way she spoke it. Hands on my shoulders.

I blinked myself from the poetry.

I whipped my head around, finding myself within the boundaries of the crime scene, and before Seth Porter’s mutilated corpse.

My parted lips opened further to gape at the sight. A sob, then tears, and Helen took me into her arms.

“It’s alright,” Helen whispered.

“It’s not! ” I cried back, gasping around my words as I curled my fingers into the back of her coat.

It was all I could do.

Another voice, unknown to me, “Helen, get her out of here!”

Helen didn’t reply. I couldn’t move to look at the source. My eyes were fixed on a friend’s body skewered, crowned in a dead lover’s bouquet, crucified in an unconsecrated way. But the image of viscera wasn’t the only thing hypnotizing me.

Helen gently rocked me side to side. Swayed me from hyperventilation. One hand pressed into the small of my back. The other between my shoulder blades. I felt now, as my shaking subsided, her jaw pressed to the side of my head.

The unfamiliar voice spoke closer, “Helen, she’s contaminating the scene just by standing here. God, if Jacqueline finds even a hair!—“

“Winona,” Helen’s voice came smooth, slow. “Have empathy for someone other than your at-present killer.” A pause. “Please.”

The voice—Winona—didn’t speak again. She only gave a low, near-silent scoff before walking off to confer with the officers on the scene, and I managed to flick my eyes up to Helen.

Her hair was down. Spilled over the nape of her neck, ivory skin curved along the ridge of her spine above her periwinkle collar.

My hand would fit just right, there, the thought crossed my mind—and didn’t leave. I had to actively think to shoo it away, so hard that my brows furrowed in effort.

“You’ve relaxed,” Doctor Lecter spoke right into my ear. “Are you alright now?”

It sent tremors through my entire body, and a tingle to my cheeks. It was enough for me to step back from her. Leave room for Jesus lest I make her uncomfortable with my blatant flusteredness. 

My eyes flicked back to Seth’s crucified body.

I could do with a little less Jesus, actually.

My brows knitted. “No…” The breeze picked up, swishing hair across my face. “No. This isn’t alright until the Ripper dies.”

Helen said my name and placed a firm hand on my shoulder. “Not here,” she murmured.

There was a twinkle in her eye. Our little secret, it whispered with a finger pressed to its curled lip.

I gulped. “What are they going to do? The FBI?”

“They’re going to perform an autopsy on Mr. Porter. Find clues that will lead them closer to this killer.”

“They think it’s me.” I shuddered in a breath, panic rising again. “They’re going to take me—”

Helen shook her head. “No.” She lifted her hands to cup both around my cheeks. “I won’t let them. You’re innocent, I’m sure of it.”

The tears welling in my eyes spilled over as I spoke around my trembling lip. “ How can you be sure?... ”

I stared into Helen’s eyes. Those black, unyielding, infinitely deep puncholes breaking dimensions. I looked for an inhale to answer me. A part of her lips. A tilt of her head as she thought. A quiver in her own eyes as she searched mine with doubt. But there was nothing.

Then, a blinding white gone just as quick as it came.

“ Hey! ” an officer shouted.

Two more flashes, and I squinted against the light. Leaning over the caution tape was a young man, tall and lean, dressed in a red plaid blazer with a mop of curly ginger hair atop his head. He held a camera in his gloved hands, and paid no mind to the officer rushing right towards him.

Instead, his eyes turned to me.

“Who are you?...” I watched him mouth under his breath.

The sound of the officer’s steel-toed footsteps must have shook the man from his fixation, as he whipped his head to look at the charging policeman, then back to me.

Snap.

The light dazed me, and I blinked hard and fast to clear the blue, negative stamp on my retinas. The man ran to his car, the officer hot on his heels as he dove into the rumbling vehicle on the street and peeled away from the curb.

“Who was that?” I huffed in disbelief.

“Tabloid reporter Freddy Lounds,” Helen replied. 

Lounds. Tattlecrime. He had all kinds of information on the Ripper. 

My brows slowly raised. “...Helen, I have to go.”

“I’m afraid not,” Winona said my name.

I turned my head to face her. She was looking in my direction. But not at me. Her eyes found Helen’s over my shoulder, and I turned back to look at Doctor Lecter. Her hair blew gently in the morning breeze, the sun on her face caught between gold and silver. But her eyes bore no light. Eyes fixed on Winona.

Helen gulped, then looked down at me and said my name, “You have an appointment tomorrow.” She smiled tightly, gaze returning to Winona. “Winona is a good friend. She will take care of you in the meantime.”

I parted my lips, and the beginning of a word escaped in objection. But I shut my mouth with a clack of my teeth and sighed out my nose instead. I nodded. Helen patted my shoulder and walked to the caution tape, half ducking and half lifting it to leave the scene. 

Winona was strong in stature, and held the same expression as Jacqueline Crawford behind her rectangular frames. Steely. Righteous. Thick, dark brown curls tumbled to her shoulders, which were squared above crossed arms in a loose, blue gingham flannel.

She sauntered up to me slow, sure, sizing me up in a purely investigative way without breaking eye contact. “I see you met Freddy Lounds. It isn’t a Ripper crime scene without him. Or… any crime scene without him.” Winona said.

But I wasn’t listening.

My eyes were stuck on Helen. How she pinched her coat to button it. 

“The police say you entered the crime scene from the street around an hour and a half after their arrival.”

The long, elegant strides of her gait as she walked to her car. And wow . She drove a nice— very nice —car. 

“The body’s been here since two in the morning. You didn’t notice it as you left?”

I watched Helen’s back step into her black Bently and drive away, my heart remiss that I couldn’t see even an outline of her through the tint of her glass.

“What were you doing all that time?”

The back bumper of Helen’s car disappeared behind the shrubbery surrounding the complex. “Looking for the Ripper,” I answered Winona after a beat to process her question.

I turned my stare to Winona, and found her turquoise glare reflecting back. I recoiled under her gaze, brows furrowing as I watched her dissect me, open me up and take out each secret I held, inspect it, scrutinize it. 

Break it.

“...stay away from Helen Lecter,” Winona murmured. 

My brows raised. “What?” I couldn’t help a brief laugh, as inappropriate as it was. “She’s my therapist assigned by the FBI.”

Winona’s eyes bugged.

Then, narrowed once more as her brows furrowed. “You want the Ripper?” Winona turned her body to the side and called over her shoulder as she began walking away, “You found her.”

Her words didn’t click a moment. Not as she held my eyes in the palms of her own. But as she turned around fully, her back to me, it left a blank enough space for me to fill in a conclusion.

My heart dropped.

No. She couldn’t mean that.

She couldn’t mean Helen.

Helen hadn’t gone far.

She had parked just around the corner, eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror so she could watch the final FBI van cruise down the avenue. Her patient had to be in one of them. There wouldn’t be escaping questioning after this, not for a moment. 

It would be straight from the lot to FBI headquarters.

Helen shifted gears to drive. She whipped the car out of her spot against the curb and turned around in the narrow, empty street, crawling back onto the avenue to pull into the lot. She parked, stepped out of her car, and looked up at the complex to her patient’s door. Helen tucked her keys into her pocket and ascended the stairwell to the second floor, striding metronomically to the doormat. She paused, pulled her pocket square from her coat, and draped it upon her hand before reaching for the knob.

Left unlocked in haste. Just as she’d hoped for.

The hinges yawned with a shrill squeal as she opened the threshold and stepped inside, head swiveling from side to side. A soft, creaky meow welcomed her ingress. Helen’s gaze dropped to the ground, where Patty bowed into a sleepy stretch, her claws unsheathing as she arched her back. A hummed chuckle came from Helen as she shut the door with the pocket square, walked over to the cat, and bent down to pick her up.

Patricia purred in Helen’s arms, melting into her hold with long, sleepy blinks after a big yawn.

Helen grinned and scratched gently under Pat’s chin, who craned her neck into the touch with a lift of her back leg to bat at the air. “Sweet girl…” Helen purred back. “Shall we see what she’s been up to? Mm?” Helen booped a playful finger to Patty’s nose, who rubbed her cheek into it.

Carrying Patricia in one arm, Helen toed about the unit, eyes grazing each surface and detail while her snooping hand plucked open each door that piqued her interest.

The fridge, holding only the half-full tupperware of pot pie she’d gifted, a tub of butter, three eggs, wilting strawberries, bruised mushrooms, a greying pack of sausages, and jar of dill sandwich pickles. Helen’s lips turned downwards. If only she could clear that out without raising suspicion. With a sigh, she shut the fridge and moved on to the drawers beneath the countertop, opening two at once. 

Both were equally cluttered. On the left, condiment packets, napkins, plastic utensils, old mail, and a can opener. The right, a somewhat organized jumble of mismatched silverware, and a set of a silicone ladle, spatula, serving spoon, tongs, and whisk.

From the kitchen, Helen moved to the living room. She tilted her head to read the small stack of Redbox DVDs. My Summer of Love , Fight Club , Beautiful Creatures , Jennifer’s Body , Twilight: Breaking Dawn parts one and two, and Bound . Helen could only form opinions on each based on their titles. Not that she couldn’t appreciate cinema, but it never quite paled the opera for her. 

Then, the bathroom. She opened the mirror to the medicine cabinet behind with a creak, eyes darting over the contents. Nothing of note here. Just some extra tooth brushes, floss, deodorant, and skincare. Under the sink, all the same banal. A comb, extra soap, pads, toilet cleaner, and disinfectant wipes.

Helen stood back up to her full height, giving Patty a gentle bounce in her arms. She shut the cabinets and stalked back into the hall, turning her attention to the bedroom. She slowed her steps to a halt. 

It was bright here. Sunny. Serene.

Helen walked again, close enough to the bed to relinquish Patricia to the soft, faintly purple sheets. They were so mutedly saturated, they could have been stained that hue by mistake in the washer. And they were all the more beautiful for it. 

Dusty blinds raised above half-open windows, cooing mourning doves and the faint sound of cars on the avenue leaking through the insect screens. Aside from the bed, she had only a dresser, nightstand, narrow bookshelf, and an armless upholstered bench by the window in her room. Atop the sills of her windows and the bookshelf draped a half-dozen plants. A fern, pothos, money tree, orchid, wax plant, and spiderwort. The bench was dotted with decorative pillows, a stack of books set beside its leg. The nightstand had a lamp and two candles. The dresser, half-tidy heaps of clothes, worn childhood plushies, perfumes, and room spray.

Helen opened the dresser drawers first. Shirts. Pants. Dresses, skirts. Socks, underwear. Pajamas and lingerie. Shorts, leggings, mittens, ties. Then, the nightstand. A box of matches, incense with a holder, a mini box of tarot cards, and a pile of folded papers. Atop the papers lie a ring, necklace, and beneath it, the stack rested upon a box.

Carefully, Helen folded her pocket square and lifted the papers from the box. It was dark and heavy, well crafted into a heart hollowed with floral holes. On the back, a brass turning knob. She flipped it open, and out croaked a weak, yet sweet melody. Schubert’s Serenade. It died upon the second to last note, leaving the keys inside the music box aching to play out the end.

Helen shut the box, and gave the wind-up a half crank. She set the box back inside the drawer, then turned her attention to the folded papers, carefully setting the necklace and ring onto the nightstand before beginning to examine them.

She flipped over the first one, and unfolded it.

          Rebecca, love of my life,

     I can’t tell you how dearly I’ve missed you on this trip. I wish you would have come to Florence. It’s a foggy summer. Not too warm. Not too humid. Just right. Just how you like. I promised I’d always show you the cabin, and Hendrick’s park in Eugene, and kiss you at the top of Skinner's Butte during sunset. 

     I think we should get married here. Or maybe in California in the redwoods. We can honeymoon in Hawaii after. Or Santa Barbara. But those are just suggestions. I’d take you anywhere you like; as long as I’m there with you, I’m right.

     And so, right now, I am beyond wrong.

     I’ll come home as soon as family allows. They’re all waiting to meet you, darling.

               Love,

                    Your one and Only, Forever and Always

Helen skimmed it again. And again; her eyes hung on each sentiment—heart hooking beside them.

She folded the note through her pocket square, put it back atop the stack, and set it back upon the box, followed by the jewelry to weigh it down. She shut the drawer and turned her eyes back to Patty, who stared at Helen with a tilted head and wide eyes, then leapt off the bed and pranced to the living room.

Helen followed the cat, which leapt up onto the desk beside the door, where scattered papers, sticky notes, torn journal pages, and a laptop sat. Helen wrapped her pocket square around two fingers and rifled gently through the pages. The sticky notes read: 

Ripper kills began 2009?

Potential Ripper kills: Brian Reitzell, Scott Nimerfro, Patti Podesta, Nina Arianda, Suzy Izzard

States: Delaware, Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsyl  

Then, the journal pages:

Feed Pat, scoop litter

Laundry

Dust

Ride with Porter

Ripper map

List similarities between killings

Bus to print shop

EAT SOMETHING

Helen hummed and sifted the papers back into place, turning her attention to the laptop. She ran her clothed finger along the trackpad to wake the sleeping machine, which came alight a moment later. Helen’s eyes narrowed as she navigated the open tabs. Tattlecrime, Tumblr, various major news articles and clips on the Ripper, and a thread on r/SerialKillers theorizing the Ripper’s identity, possible clues, and next potential strike.

Helen’s eyes narrowed ever-so-subtly. She clicked to the tab she had been greeted by and pulled back, offering Patty one last petting-back of her ears before striding to the entrance of the unit, exiting the apartment, and shutting the door behind her with a gentle thud.

Hide.

I curled my legs as close to my chest as I could, my wild wide eyes flicking between the warm beckon of the cabin’s windows and every shadowed cleft between the trees. I heard it prowl. And I dare not move. Dare not give away my hiding place.

But you have to go at some point.

Have to move.

Or it’ll pluck you into its maw from right where you crouch, eventually.

That eventual inevitability grew nearer with each slow crunch of leaves. One closer to me, then further back, twice as close, and thrice as far. 

I looked back to the cabin. A cat’s shadow sat in the window. The auburn light flitted with golden specks of dust inside. The shadows warped with the dance of firelight. Its warmth reached me, even here. Pale indigo smoke plumed from the chimney. I could smell rosemary sourdough baking. Taste it on my tongue.

I have to get inside.

I looked to the left, held my breath, listened. Clear. The right, stopped my heartbeat, sharpened my ear. 

Nothing.

Run.

I leapt from my hiding spot behind the ferns and lunged for the door, gasping as a deep roar shook the trees down to their heartwood. The beast pelted after me, each beat on the ground a thunderclap that rumbled the earth into seismic dismay.

I ran up the steps, threw myself at the door and twisted the knob, my heart aching in anticipation that it wouldn’t budge.

But I fell through the doorway with ease. A cry of relief—shock, too—escaped my chest as I tumbled to the floor, smooth, solid planks of wood catching my fall. I gave a shrill sigh, eyes fluttering shut as my muscles sank in the sweet embrace of the heat.

Until another shriek rang, barely three yards from where I lay. I was sitting up before my eyes could open, hands and feet scrambling to stand as I ran for the door. The beast and I were equidistant. I screamed as I threw out my arms to shut the door, though the beast had shoved one of its own through the gap.

“No!” I screeched and leaned the whole of my weight into my hands.

I got a good look of it now. It was black as the shadows in all but its moonlit eyes, had a slender woman’s frame, long straight hair, and antlers nearly half as tall as its body.

It was horrifying.

It beat its body on the door, and I stumbled back, crying out as I threw my shoulder to the door with every ounce of strength I had. 

“Get out of my house!” I screamed.

Sobbing, I braced against the beast’s force, my tearful eye watching its flailing hand. It whacked and scraped against the door, claws on the end digging scratches into the wood.

Then, a slash into my skin.

Brie Zeller and Jane Price stood across from Jacqueline with pride.

“A clue!” Jane declared.

Brie chimed in next, “We found some nail marks on Porter’s right hand. Skin cells surrounding them were identified as none other than…” she paused as she clicked the computer beside the autopsy table to show Jacqueline one of her leads: Lecter’s new patient.

Jacqueline’s brows furrowed deeply. 

Jane crossed her arms. “Something we can’t argue with—at last.”

“Cold, hard, DNA.” Brie smiled.

Winona Graham tensed.

Jacqueline flitted her gaze to Graham. “...that’s enough for me.”

“Jacqueline, no—” Winona wrapped her hand around Jacqueline’s arm, who threw her off just as fast.

“ She left nail marks in his hand! ” Jacqueline shouted, “We’ve investigated Helen Lecter, we’ve found nothing! Nothing! I’m not holding out any longer, this stops now! ”

Winona spat back, “You wanna be wrong again, Jackie!?”

The four women stared at each other, Brie and Jane wide eyed, Winona and Jacqueline with their chests heaving. Brie and Jane didn’t have to be told to leave.

Winona breathed her next words out on her sigh, “She’s not the Ripper Jackie, she’s not. You know I think it’s Helen...” she paced, arms crossed. “...and I know you’re starting to believe me.”

Jacqueline’s brows furrowed even deeper. “I’ve considered Carter, too. Killing off her supporters.”

“No.”

“That’s our only other logical option for why now two people of relevance to her have died in Ripper-fashion. Why would the Ripper care about people related to a victim’s ex-girlfriend?”

“Jackie…” Winona’s brows knitted. “Who did you assign to be her psychologist?”

Jacqueline's features sunk, and she visibly lost color in her cheeks despite her dark complexion. The light leaving her eyes was like watching dusk swallow sunset, and some crepuscular creature that had crossed her mind in brief flashes now stared dead down her headlights.

“...Why would Helen do that?” Jacqueline murmured on a quivering breath.

“She played the same game with me. Jingled favor-keys in my face to distract me from her big moves… she wants to gain this patient’s favor.”

“Then why not kill Carter Hayes? Why not kill him, who…” Jacqueline said the name of Lecter’s patient, “...has every reason to hate? How does killing Seth Porter, a friend, gain Lecter any favors?”

Winona thought for a long moment, her face twisting with each turn of the cogs in her mind. Then, her mouth parted, gaze refocusing as she put it together. 

Winona spoke at last, “...because Seth Porter was her savior.” Her eyes flicked back to Jacqueline. “Helen doesn’t want any competition for that role.”

Chapter Text

Benjamin Katz stared at me with pitiful eyes from across the interrogation table.

How many times are we going to be looking at each other like this? I assumed we both thought.

My gaze shifted from agent Katz to the mirror. I wondered who was behind it. Agent Crawford? Maybe the new woman I’d met that day, Winona Graham. Maybe Helen.

I gulped. “...has Doctor Lecter said anything?”

“She said you were very distraught,” his voice came softly.

I nodded as my tears fell, as if that would detract from my puffy red eyes and burning flushed nose.

Benjamin reached out across the table and placed his hand atop mine. “Just tell me the truth, and we’ll get you out of here,” he said my name. “Were those nail marks in Porter’s hand yours?”

No, I thought to lie. My brows knitted tightly upon my forehead. What if a yes is all they need to imprison me? No. No, my story is true.

I shook to my bones as I weakly uttered, “...yes.”

Agent Katz’s eyes widened ever so slightly. I watched them quiver; I watched them threaten to flick to the mirror.

He shifted in his seat. “How did they get there?”

“...I punched Carter Hayes at Rebecca’s funeral.” I gulped. “...and missed. He pushed me onto my back, and Seth helped me up, but I grabbed his hand harder than I meant to and…” I trailed off, lifting and dropping my hand in a ‘you can figure the rest’ gesture. The same hand that had bitten Seth’s own.

I watched Benjamin’s shoulders droop in relief. “Alright,” he murmured my name and smiled. “That’s all we need.”

My head fell as I cast my eyes to the table. The door behind me opened, and two guards lifted me from the chair, my handcuffed wrists encased in their grasps. 

Agent Katz looked right through the mirror.

Jacqueline’s lips pursed tightly as she stared back. “...bring in Carter Hayes,” she spoke to an agent beside her.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the agent replied and left the room.

Only 20 minutes passed between the exit of Lecter’s patient and the entrance of Carter Hayes. He sat across from Benjamin, dirty blonde curtains shaggily hanging over his face as he glanced about the room, circling his thumbs around each other.

“What happened between you and...” Katz spoke as he pointed to a photo of Lecter’s patient on the desk, “...her the day of Rebecca’s funeral?”

Carter wriggled uncomfortably in the chair too small for his body. “...She came uninvited—just crashed the service.”

“Crashed?”

“No, not like bad, just…” Carter rubbed at the back of his neck, brows knitting as he sighed out the tension between his vertebrae. “...just still in love with her ex. Wanted to pay respects, and… I don’t know. It was a rough day, and I egged her on.”

Benjamin raised a brow. “Egged her on to do what?”

“To throw a punch at me.”

Benjamin’s eyes lit up. He wanted to turn to the mirror, to grin for who he advocated for. Lecter’s patient’s and Carter’s stories matched. 

Agent Katz only tilted his head in demonstrative intrigue. “Did she hit you?”

“No, no, she missed.”

“And then?”

Carter gulped. “I uhh… I pushed her. Onto her back. Her friend helped her up.” His eyes narrowed. “He died this morning, didn’t he?”

Katz nodded. “Yes, Seth Porter was killed yesterday and found dead this morning.” Benjamin leaned back in his chair. “Carter, do you recall if,” he said the suspect’s name, “...might’ve accidentally hurt Seth at the funeral?”

The memory immediately clicked. The blood under her nails made Carter nauseous. “Yes. She dug her nails into his hand after the fight. I saw him bleeding when they left.”

“Which hand?” Benjamin nodded, brows raising.

Carter paused. “Right.”

Benjamin’s shoulders dropped and chest caved with a silent sigh of relief. Jacqueline’s eyes narrowed to thin slivers crinkled at the edges.

He smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Hayes. That will be all for today.”

As soon as Hayes left the room, Benjamin whipped his head to Jacqueline through the mirror, and beamed. What he didn’t know was that she had already left the room behind the glass. 

I hung in that makeshift cell.

Fluorescent reflecting walls encased me, a swarm of moths fluttering at the back of my throat. Screams. Sobs. Pleas. Declarations. They all wanted to escape. But for each sunken syllable, knowing it would go either unheard or ignored, another tear fell. And another, and another, and another, until I had made the room my lacrimal abyss.

And then the door opened.

Jacqueline Crawford’s voice said my name as the sea drained into the hall. “Carter Hayes came to your rescue. Gave a one-to-one description of your story.”

I looked up, a sopping prey animal.

“You’re free to go.” She pressed her lips into a rueful smile, eyes shifting between pity and suspicion. 

But never quite landing on one.

I stood slowly from the Virco chair in the corner of the room. Still shaking and dripping with saline, I shuffled towards Jacqueline in the doorway, who turned to the side to let me through. I didn’t meet her gaze. Didn’t speak. I couldn’t. Not after everything that had already happened, and only frayed threads of an end to it all within my grasp. 

He heard me. Somehow, the Ripper heard me promise his death. I knew what Seth Porter’s body was the moment I saw it: message received.

I couldn’t make out faces through the blur of my tears. Agents and guards passed me by, faceless until in my peripheral. I blinked. My eyes stung. A figure’s face ahead cleared.

Standing in the center of the hall, unmoving despite the swaths of FBI. Tall, lean, poised and postured as perfect as a sculpture. My heart thudded out of kilter, and steps shuffled to a halt. The dim, warm light was just bright enough for me to confirm my prayers from this distance.

I wheezed out my next breath like a cannonball had imploded my chest, and stumbled into a desperate charge. My face hit Helen’s chest with a high, desperate cry, her arms encircling me in sanctuary as I clung to her shirt. I muffled my screams against her shoulder, and she placed her hand to the back of my head.

“You’re alright…” She whispered, stroking my hair to the rhythm of her slow, sure heart. 

I shuddered, melted against her, allowed my knees to buckle in her hold like it was the sole ballast for my body. Helen nestled her nose into my hairline, and breathed in. I saw her in my mind's eye, lids drooping shut, just as relieved as I, savoring my scent now so she could hold me in her mind forevermore. My heart ached at the thought of it. 

Of requital.

I felt her lips move against my brow. “I promised you… I promised I wouldn’t let them take you.”

I sighed and nestled my cheek against her ribs, my hands snaking up her back to her shoulders. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t break away or shift. My heart ached for my body to turn to stone in her hold. To phase through her and never be recovered. We stayed there for eons. At least, eons for my rapid pulse. By the time it had calmed, and my tremors had stilled, my tears subsided. Helen didn’t move until I did. 

I pulled back with creaky limbs and a sniffle, to which she looked down at me with a gentle smile. She lifted her hands and wiped my eyes with her thumbs, my cheeks burning at the thought of pressing into her palms.

“You’re here…” I whispered the statement.

She translated my awe well enough to gather that statement should have been a question. “I figured you would prefer anything but the back of an FBI van to get home. You’ve had more than enough of that.”

I was ready to beam. Ready to emphatically nod, throw myself into the passenger seat, beg her to come in and stay. Just stay and be there while I sort through everything I need to with the Ripper.

The Ripper.

“No,” the word tumbled from my lips as my growing smile crumbled. “No… no, I can’t go back, I can’t, he—” I shuddered in, and lifted my hands to wrap around Helen’s arms, but only hovered over them. “The Ripper. The Ripper knows where I live.”

“Then you may stay with me.” 

My heart fell through the floor. What? I blinked once. Twice. Processing her words she had said so unhesitatingly, so readily , took me a few beats longer than it should have.

I gave a ‘wh’ , then shifted mid-word to the more apt option, “Really?”

She nodded once. “Just say the word.” Her brows knit, and beyond everything imaginable, I watched her impossibly deep eyes darken with sympathy. “Let me help you.”

It left me breathless.

“...I need your help, Helen.” My tear-glassed eyes flitted between hers. “Please.”

Her hand pressed to my cheek—and I felt eyes boring into the back of my skull. If they were there, Helen knew, and chose to ignore them, watching me intently as both sensations shuddered me to the marrow.

I had packed a good variety of clothes into my duffle bag. That, and whatever necessities I could stuff into the side pockets, with just enough space left for a mini tarot deck I kept in my nightstand. I had that slung over one shoulder, and in the opposite hand, a discontented-to-ceaseless-meowing Patricia’s carrier. 

“You’re sure she won’t yowl you into insanity?” I chided.

Helen smiled, one hand on her opened trunk. “I’m sure. It’s her I’m worried about.”

As I set my duffle bag down, Helen slipped a finger through the grate of Patty’s crate. “Thank you for your concern, doctor.”

“Of course.” Helen pulled away once she had earned a touch to Patricia’s nose, who promptly went back to meowing. “I have an ethical obligation to serve those in distress.”

Oh.

Ethical obligation.  

My heart sank.

Of course she was helping me. She had to. She had to house me with a killer on my tail. She had to offer me a ride home. She had to hold me flush to her body, had to drink in my scent, had to cup my cheeks like she was cherishing—nay, worshipping a precious artifact.

You’re not special to her.

Helen shut the trunk, the sound shaking me from my melancholy. She walked around her car and opened the passenger door for me. I forced a smile in thanks and slipped into the seat, buckling in and placing Patty’s crate on my lap. I wrapped my arms around the crate and glanced around the car, my brows raised at the quality of the interior. 

The seats were beautifully upholstered leather, and the chatoyant, acrylic dashboard was dotted with just over a half dozen gauges total. It was roomy, too, the center console between the seats at least a foot across. Contemporary classical wafted softly from the stereo. It even smelled like the faded memory I had of her cologne, too.

Helen entered the driver’s side, shut the door, and turned the ignition. Before clicking her own, she leaned over to check I had my seatbelt on, and as she did, I caught a fresh whiff of her cologne. My maw parted on impulse to swallow her smell. Savor it until it burned the back of my throat:

Smoldering rosebuds withering to ash. 

Leatherbound satchels carrying clusters of cloves. 

Wine on the verge of tingeing vinegar.

We arrived around three, and I’d settled in by five.

Helen had begun that passage of time by leading me up the steps of the portico and into the dim mahogany foyer. The way she took me through her home was like the courses of a feast. Cobalt and gold glittered softly around me, the song of her voice the backdrop to my waking dream as we made our way to the lounge. Despite the blues, and now green velvets and vining wallpaper, no part of the house came off as cold. The lamps were always gold. The wood of the doors and pillars were reddish in undertone. 

Horns and bouquets were mounted lushly around her home, iron sculptures and artifacts ranging from antique to ancient on display, and for each little exhibit that caught my eye, Helen offered a description of its background, purpose, or her own personal attachment to it. 

Not only was her home immaculately decorated to what I could only describe as peak maximalism, but it was impossibly clean. Everything. Not a smudge nor speck of dust sat upon any surface. Nothing was scratched, tilted, off-center, or asymmetrical without express intention to be so. There was no way Helen had the time to keep this tidy.

She probably has maids come by on a weekly basis. She sure has proved she has the funds to do so.

She took me upstairs, showed me the door of the room I’d be staying in, and held out her hands to take my bags. I declined, seeing as she had done so much for me already. But then, there was that saccharine smile, that sly wink, and suave insistence. I relinquished as though on command. Helen took my things and gestured to the end of the hall, directing me to the bathroom and urging me to relax, bathe, borrow her towels, and make myself at home.

Live as though in her skin.

She disappeared into the guest room, and as I walked by her bedroom, I stopped. Out of all her decor thus far, this stood paramount: in front of a black shoji screen painted with blooming gold florals sat a suit of samurai armor. It was cobalt and gold; perfectly on theme with the rest of her home, a painted red lip and white-furred moustache applied to the face guard. The face guard, whose molded grin grabbed me by the base of my spine and rattled my nerves.

She had proven she had exotic taste, but I couldn’t help the feeling she held this closer to her soul than just mere appreciation for the artistic and refined. I saw my reflection in the glass encasing the armor, saw my eyes in the sockets of its face, the demon’s starved smile over my mouth, and its gold-tipped horns sprouting from my forehead. 

You want the Ripper? Winona Graham’s words intruded my head. You found her.

No.  

I took a step back from the armor, and my reflection ceased to align with its face.

No, Winona and Helen clearly have some kind of history. I could tell that just by the way they look at each other.

I turned away from the suit and continued down the hall to the bathroom, furrowing my brows and marching my steps as though I could physically jostle the thoughts from my mind.

Did they have feelings for each other at a point? Was it one-sided? Does one of them still hold affection for the other?  

That sat uneasily as well. 

No. Winona seemed bitter—biased. Helen has been nothing but kind to me, and I’m sure of that.

Though I couldn’t help wondering: did she stop to stare at herself in the devil’s face, too?

I remember shutting the bathroom door behind me. I remember undressing with phantom hands. I remember turning the handle of the shower, and stepping into its warmth. And then, I was all memory.

I was in Becca’s arms again. Felt her kisses in each hot raindrop against my skin. Felt her body against mine where the water flowed down. And I felt her waver—grow lukewarm. Start to pull away. And I ached in prayer that she’d stay, even this newfound distance. But she only got colder. And the cold started to bite. 

But I stayed.

I stayed because I loved her. Stayed because that’s what I’d promised I’d do. So I stood there, taking the bitter, freezing plunge to my death until I was numb. Hypothermia, her memory. And the deeper I sank, the closer I came to nothing, the warmer I felt again. 

I came back up with a gasp.

Shuddering under the ice-cold assailant of freezing water, I shut off the shower, stumbled out and bundled myself in one of Helen’s towels. It was softer than anything I’d ever touched, and by some miracle, still warm from the dryer. I wrung my hair out into the towel, then wrapped it around my body, and wiped my feet dry on the bathmat. 

I walked to the door and twisted the knob, just barely cracking it to peek out. Helen was nowhere to be found. Clutching the towel to my chest, I stepped into the hall and padded to the guest room intentionally keeping my eyes from the samurai. 

But I felt it as I passed. Dropping the towel from my body with the cut of a single thread. Baring me naked to its curiosities. To its obsessions. To observation.

My fingers curled into the towel, and I quickened my steps.

The door to the guest room was ajar, and I slowly pushed it open to see if Helen was inside, only for my jaw to drop. She was nowhere to be seen, but in her wake stood a bedroom pulled straight from the halls of Notre Dame. White linens and curtains embroidered in gold veiled the room, velvet burgundy pillows and gilded armchairs and ottomans dotted the space, all of it cast in aureate light refracted through the panes of the tall westward window.

I sighed at the beauty, specks of dust hung in the air puffing away from the breath. 

As I looked around the room, I spotted a folded card on the bed. I smiled. I shut the door behind myself and sat on the edge of the bed, which gave a satisfying sink beneath my weight. I picked up and unfolded the note, my eyes crinkling as I read it. Helen had signed my name at the beginning in lissome, looping calligraphy.

          I have placed your clothes in the dresser, toiletries on a tray by the door, and Patricia’s bowls in the kitchen.

          Meet me downstairs for dinner at your leisure.

                    —Helen

I couldn’t have been up and out of that towel faster.

My heart raced as I rummaged—delicately, Helen had done such a nice job of re-folding everything—through the dresser for one item in particular. I closed the first drawer when I didn’t find it there, opened the second, and felt my heart skip.

There it lay at the top. Centered. Intentional, my mind seduced. 

I lifted the dress from the drawer and held it up in the light. Its maroon satin shone in the gold of approaching evening, even beneath the layer of black organza draped on top. Embroidered into the organza were onyx beads lining the flocked filigree.

Dust still clung to its velvet. 

My heart ached. I hadn’t touched it since Rebecca left. Not because it was her favorite. Not because she bought it for me. She hadn’t cared to do either one of those things. My heart ached because it was always my favorite to wear for her, and it went unappreciated. Unloved.

My brows furrowed. I appreciate it. I pulled it out fully and unzipped the back, lifting my legs to step carefully into the skirt. And maybe someone else will, too.

My flesh burned when the fabric touched my skin, the memories I had tied to it leaching through me now like phenol. Maybe this wasn't a good idea, but I was too set on it now. Even only halfway on, I could feel it fit tighter than the last time I had worn it. My cheeks flushed as I tugged it over my hips. Maybe this was wrong. I slipped the thin straps over my shoulders and arched my back to zip it up, rolling my shoulders at the end until I was sure it was secure. I turned to the mirror, and my breath hitched.

No part of it was loose. It constricted to every curve, and where the lace hems ended, my flesh puckered. 

I should take this off. This isn’t just inappropriate, it’s downright erotic. I blinked at myself. Paused a long while. And couldn’t will myself to undress again. Just go, you coward. It looks phenomenal, and Helen isn’t even thinking that way. I sighed slowly and shut my eyes. You are not seducing your psychologist. My brows furrowed. God, you sound out of your fucking mind sometimes, you know that?

Brief facepalm over with, I turned away from the mirror and shuffled out of the room and into the hall, gingerly taking each step down to the foyer. I slowed my steps as I turned the corner to the lounge, the sounds of gently clanking dishes and sizzling pans emanating from the kitchen. From upstairs, I had thought I might’ve caught a bit of mint, but down here, the smell was wholly enveloping. There was garlic, butter, and distinctively Mediterranean spices permeating the air, all upon the background of broiling meat.

I waded through the lounge and into the dining room, smiling as I looked over the table. It was set for two, and not from opposite ends of the long banquet table, but either side of the middle. I followed the sounds and aromas of cooking to the kitchen door, and slowly leaned inside, clutching the doorway.

Helen stood with her back turned to me, though it didn’t matter. She dressed up, too. Or rather, down. Instead of her usual coat-and-tie professional, she was in sleek black slacks, a wine-red shirt, and a satin vest to match the bottoms. It wasn’t just tailored, it was entirely form-fitting.

“What are we having, chef?” I smiled, half in elation I didn’t horribly stutter.

Helen had her eyes on the cutting board, but grinned at the sound of my voice. “Lamb,” she replied, and set down her knife. She threw her kitchen towel over her shoulder and turned around to face me, smile subtly dropping.

Damn it.

Her eyes raked over me, and I could have sworn they lingered at my neckline just a tad longer than the rest of my body before returning to my eyes. “You look lovely.”

My eyes bugged. “Thank you…” I huffed, hanging my head as I felt my cheeks tingle. “So do you.”

Helen smiled and cocked her head, gesturing for me to come to her side. I obliged with a quick shuffle, staring at the cutting board and various bowls in interest. Helen picked up the knife and handed it to me, sliding a bunch of dill and a lemon my way. Already prepared was a small pile of minced garlic, bowl of greek yogurt, bowl of diced cucumber, bottle of olive oil, and salt grinder.

“Tzatziki?” I guessed as I took the knife.

“Indeed,” Helen smiled, then walked off to the oven.

I sliced the lemon in half and squeezed directly into the bowl of yogurt, followed by the olive oil, and a crack of salt, then mixed. I tried to make that my sole focus. That, and Helen’s reaction to my dress landing somewhere between neutral and positive. I think.

But I couldn’t shake this past week. Not even for a moment. And here I stood with the one person I’d been able to rely on. Or rather, the one person I could rely on that was left. That struck another pang in my heart. 

What if the Ripper went after Helen next? 

Considering his latest track record, that would only be logical. Find out I’m not in my home when at last coming to take me. Figure out where I’d gone. He’d known Seth just by the fact he was often my ride. Getting to Helen would be a walk in the park.

Unless she’s the Ripper.

“Helen?” I paused. “Do you mind if we talk about… you know?”

“The case?” She unsheathed a knife from the block with a sharp hiss. “Of course not.”

I watched as she set it down on the counter, turned around to shut off the oven, and opened the door.

“How did Carter’s testimony drop me as a suspect?”

“It didn’t,” Helen said as she inspected the meat. “His testimony only means they can’t use it as evidence that you are the Chesapeake Ripper.”

My shoulders drooped. “Well… what do they know?”

“They know Seth drove you home, was last seen in his car on an intersection camera, then never again. His car was abandoned on the side of the highway leaving Seaford.”

I raised a brow, lifting my eyes from the dill I had begun to pick away from its stem. “You’re allowed to tell me all this?”

Helen pulled her kitchen towel from her shoulder and used it to grab the lamb from the oven, smiling as she spoke, “No.”

I pursed my lips and continued plucking away at the dill, sprinkling the fronds into the tzatziki as I thought of my next question.

Though, Helen spoke first. “Do you still intend to kill the Ripper?” She tacked my name on to the end of her question.

I paused the work of my fingertips. “Yes.”

“How do you plan to do it?”

The answer came to me all too naturally. Too quick. So sure.

My lips parted as I met Helen’s gaze. “...with my hands.”

She stared back, the curl of her lip indecipherable. Helen turned back to the rack of lamb, and I to the dill.

Helen lined up her knife with one intended fillet. “Do you often fantasize about killing those who defy you?”

“Not if it’ll get me in trouble.”

I glanced up to watch her reaction, and she smiled toothily as she cut into the lamb. “Not with me.” She lifted her eyes to lock on mine, and I was sure now her smirk was of genuine intrigue to my inner machinations. “And I won’t tell.”

“...Yes,” I answered as my eyes narrowed. “Carter.”

“And before him?” She pressed, lining up her next cut without ever breaking her stare from mine. “Ever?”

Rebecca.

Rebecca when she first left. Deeply. Carnally. Viscerally. 

I’d ruminated that murder-suicide plot over a thousand times in my head. I’d walk up to them as they left work together; shoot them both and then myself. I’d hack them down to the marrow; lynch him outside of her window, smash it and drag Rebecca through. Making her watch as I dug a knife into Carter’s throat. Sinking it in deep and slow before withdrawing and starting another. Never enough to kill him instantly, or even bleed out in minutes. His life would drain by the hour. I’d wait until he was dry to get to her, whisper all the ways she’d wronged, lied, and cheated me, giving her the quick death just before S.W.A.T. would gun me down as penance.

It was cathartic to imagine. A release of pressure, like pulling an impaled object from the body. But then, of course, I’d bleed too. 

That was the only thing stopping me.

“Yes.”

There was a shift in Helen’s expression. So innocuous, it may have been only in the dilation of her pupil, or imagined on my end entirely. She lifted the tray of sliced lamb and walked to the dining room, I with my humble tzatziki following close behind.

She set it in the center between our plates, then walked to my chair and pulled it out, hands resting on the back as she waited for me. I could have spontaneously combusted in that moment. Though luckily for me, I only had to set down the bowl I carried, sit in the chair, and do my best to hide my reddening cheeks as Helen pushed me in. She pulled back to dollop a spoonful of the tzatziki onto my plate with an immaculate chef’s smear, then place two bone-in fillets of lamb upon my plate.

“Rack of lamb, à la Grecque.” She walked around the banquet table to serve herself in the same fashion. “I’ve found the Hellenistic approach to be most popular for all the right reasons.”

I smirked. “I’m sure you often do.”

She, in all her blessed wit, smiled upon catching my play on her name; though I had no doubt she recognized it before the words ever left her mouth, too.

“Lamb, and a fine white wine.” She lifted a bottle that had blended in so well with the rest of her fine decor, I hadn’t yet taken note of it. The label read: Bâtard-Montrachet. “This is an Easter dish. The lamb symbolizes Christ’s innocence. His sacrifice, death, and resurrection.”

My brows raised in admiration of her poetic-speak. “I never took you for the religious type. You’ve seemed so… strictly intellectual.”

“Some things simply can’t be explained by the temporal,” Helen said as she popped the cork of the wine bottle.

I raised my glass for her. “Miracles?”

She tilted her head as she poured, considering her phrasing. “Tragedies.”

I kept my gaze on her eyes, even though hers were locked onto pouring the wine. I searched them for answers as best I could, and began searching them for guilt. Why? Because of one offhand comment from Agent What’s-Her-Name? But the way she searched my own macabre with not just interest, but intent—expectation. The way she talked of god on a line dividing worship and defiance, of which I couldn't place which side she stood. The way she served lamb as an allegory for Christ when Seth Porter was crucified just this morning.

The Ripper is a cannibal.

“I’ve never tried lamb…” I admitted. “For a while, I just couldn’t get past the guilt of eating something before it fully matured.”

“I never feel guilty eating anything.” Helen smiled, holding my gaze.

I stared right back—searching.

She lifted her glass. “Cheers.”

I raised my own and clinked it with Helen’s. “Cheers.”

I took a sip of the wine and held her eyes still, her own gaze locked just as hard on mine. Maybe this was all a ploy for information. Maybe this was all a scheme by Jacqueline Crawford to leech out as many confessions as possible. Drown me in a pool of my own sap for Helen Lecter before judge and jury.

I set the glass down, and Helen savored its bouquet a moment longer before reaching for her utensils. I cut into the lamb, perfectly rare and tender, its crust of mint, pistachio, and seasoning clinging to the meat as though it were part of the animal. I lifted it to my mouth and shut my eyes, the tingle of the wine readying my tongue for the virgin flavor. And it was pure ambrosia.

The lamb was rich, its fat cut perfectly by the lemon both baked into the crust and spread throughout the tzatziki. It was anything but gamey like I had been told lamb was, as though it had never tasted a blade of grass in its life.

That instinctual, twitching doubt in my mind kicked again with another prehension: Maybe it hadn’t.

“Do you like it?” Helen asked.

I swallowed and fluttered my lids back open, meeting her gaze with tearful eyes. “It’s ecstasy.”

Pain.

Searing, bone-deep agony.

The world slowed to a stop as its claws severed my flesh asunder, scraped the back of my ribs.

A scream tore from my throat, and all force I held against the door came undone.

I ragdolled, and the beast lunged inside to catch me.

Seizing, limp, whatever it was that stirred behind my skull now sprouted with the force to shatter bone.

I watched as it grew from me, my eyes rolling back to see the shape of the shadow it cast upon the cabin wall.

Antlers.

My first night in the foreign bed was restless. 

Not because the sheets were rough, the mattress unsupportive, or the pillows flat—just the opposite. They were perfect. It just wasn’t home yet. The pro out of all this, however, was that I couldn’t lull myself back to sleep after 5, which gave me the opportunity to get my day started early.

I got out of bed half-groggy, rubbing my eyes as I shuffled to my duffle bag to retrieve my laptop. I pulled it from its case and sat on the edge of the bed, tilting open the lid to find the screen flicking straight to my browser.

No prompt for my pin. Huh. I must have forgotten to shut it down.

I found myself on Tattlecrime right where I had left off, and breathed in as I flicked my mouse to the refresh button, bracing myself for Seth Porter’s gore on the front page. I clicked, and the screen went white a few seconds before displaying a new image and title.

My jaw dropped.

I found none other than myself staring back. Lips parted, red pupils at the center of bloodshot deer-in-headlights eyes, and tear-stained cheeks, all held in the brown-tartan embrace of Helen Lecter.

The title read: FBI’S LATEST AND GREATEST RIPPER SUSPECT CONSPIRING WITH UNORTHODOX PSYCHIATRIST HELEN LECTER.

I clicked on the article, which opened with the photograph and details of Seth Porter’s murder. Then launched immediately into the hit piece on Helen and I: 

“Psychiatrist Helen Lecter [pict. left] held what is likely her patient assigned by the FBI in an intimate gesture this Friday, May 23rd. This woman is not only suspected to be Doctor Lecter’s patient, but at the top of the list of suspects the FBI has for the ripper. Stated in her file, the Ripper’s previous two victims have been related to Lecter’s patient socially, the first of which being Rebbecca Olvera, left disemboweled with a hatchet lodged in her chest in a Delaware fen [READ: REBECCA OLVERA 5-15-14], and now Seth Porter.”

My system flooded with rage. Half of me wanted to slam the lid shut and hurl the machine out the window. A remaining quarter twitched my fingertips into a firing squad poised to demand a cease and desist. The final, rational quarter of my mentality however, thankfully pulled strong.

No. However the author got this information means he’s valuable. A resource for catching the Ripper.

I closed my eyes, breathed in the cool, still air of morning, and blew outward. I rolled my shoulders back and scrolled to the bottom of the page. 

Business inquiries, email: [email protected]

Freddy Lounds. He was the one who took the picture. I copied the email address and opened a new Chrome window, creating a blank account with no indicators of my identity. I opened the account’s inbox and drafted a new e-mail, pasting Freddy’s address into the recipient box. 

To [email protected]

Subject: Information on Chesapeake Ripper

Hello,

I have information on the Chesapeake Ripper that will be of great value to you. Will you be available to meet in Baltimore today? It is sensitive documentation I can’t risk having breached if sent digitally.

Send.

I sighed and let my shoulders slump, clapping my hand over my face and sliding down with a low groan.

Ding!

My eyes bugged.

Re: Information on Chesapeake Ripper

Freddy Lounds <[email protected]> to me

Yes. How soon and where?

My scowl righted itself into a cheeky grin, and I readied my fingers back upon the keyboard, clacking away a reply just as quick.

Freddy and I had agreed to 8 AM. That gave me just enough time to dress, feed Patty, drag myself to the bus, grab a coffee and bagel before the meeting, and walk around the corner to where Freddy and I would actually be meeting.

I entered the hall as quietly as I could. I assumed Helen would be an early-riser, but figured to err on the side of caution. Though as soon as I tip-toed to the stairwell, the sound of light chatter and footsteps became audible. I tilted my head to listen in, though the words remained unclear. I walked halfway down the stairs, and mulling about the foyer was a dozen white-robed servants, Helen standing at the center of it all.

My brows raised. “Good morning.”

Helen turned around to look up at me, her eyes crinkling. “Good morning. Sleep well?”

“Good enough.” I smiled back.

She tilted her head. “That’s all we can hope for.”

I descended the remainder of the stairs and walked towards Helen, my head on a swivel as I watched the crowd shift. “What’s all this? Weekly cleaning?”

Helen chuckled, “No. An urge to celebrate has overcome me.”

Celebrate? What exactly was there to celebrate as of late? I cocked one brow up at her.

Helen’s expression was unwavering as she spoke, “I’m going to throw a dinner party.”

Chapter Text

This Baltimore morning was cloudy as any autumnal day in Oregon.

I had wolfed down a poppy seed bagel and coffee before walking around the corner to where Freddy had promised to meet me. Another little cafe, less crowded and most definitely getting run out of town by the one I had just emerged from. But that was the objective: discretion.

I kept my eyes on the business’ signs overhead, flitting between each until I came to the cafe’s. I opened the door with a little jingle overhead as I entered, and there  at the far-side window sat Freddy. He turned his head with an antsy twitch at the sound of the bell, his eyes immediately locking on mine. I watched his rosy face go snow-white. 

I crossed my arms, held my ground a bit before sauntering forth, and sat at the opposite side of the table.

He gulped, opened his mouth, and no sound came out.

“I’m here to make a deal with you, Lounds.”

His eyes flicked between mine. “You play dirty.”

“So do you, from what I’ve gathered.” I lowered my voice and nodded, “I like that. I’m trying to find the Ripper and put an end to him for good. I’m not getting very far with the FBI, playing by the rules.”

“I don’t do these reports out of the goodness of my heart, ma’am.” He scowled and wove his own arms over his chest, slouching back in his chair. “My issues on the Ripper are renowned. Why would I want to give up my cash cow?”

“Imagine if you were the one to catch him. Full credit.” My lids lowered. “Tabloid Reporter Freddy Lounds Now Local Hero… Detained the Chesapeake Ripper… Beat the FBI at Their Own Game.”

With each word I spoke, I watched Freddy’s lips part wider, his maw and throat gaping to drink down the promise of fame and laurels. To be seen for a true achievement—not just vainglory.

“...and how would you help me with that?” Freddy asked under his breath.

“Well,” I sat up and leaned back in my own chair. “I’ve got someone on the FBI’s side who’s willing to go unorthodox. He’s got access to classified files that even you haven’t cracked. Autopsy results, crime scene access, authority to interrogate suspects. You bait him, we catch him…” I paused, holding Freddy’s stare. The poor man was on the edge of his seat. “...if you take down that article you wrote about Helen and I.”

Winona had moved from Wolf Trap some time ago.

Not long after she had pushed away Helen Lecter. Not long before she met Murphy. Too much had happened in that old Virginian house upon her own little prairie. Too much blood had seeped into the foundation—gave it cracks.

She rested now, a privilege not often offered to her. Sunk into the soft, faux-sheepskin sofa in the living room, she sat with a mug of coffee and re-run of last night’s hockey game. Murphy’s amber cologne was woven into the cushions, and it had purple stains from Wanda’s juice boxes on the arms. Winona could never get the sugary stick fully out of the material. But by every god and holy thing she ever once scorned, she couldn’t help but thank them as she watched that girl sleep. Sleep peacefully . Sleep without sweat nor tremor.

The dogs lay scattered about the room, half hunched around the couch with Graham, and the others prowling lazily about the interior of the cabin. It was warm out, snowless for the first month-long streak of the year; the weather wasn’t the problem. It was that there would be no repose if Winona had let them out unattended. 

When she was the only pair of eyes.

A knock on the door startled her from nirvana. Winona glanced over the back of the sofa to peer out the window. She saw nothing. Heard only the windchimes outside, and barks from Winston in another room. Winona turned back around to lower the volume of the television, then stood from the couch and walked swiftly to the door, opening it with a wide swing.

Her entire demeanor dropped.

“Good morning,” Helen said.

“It was,” she spoke to Helen on the other side of the insect screen, “Don’t you have a shiny new toy to go and play with?”

“Is your husband home?”

“No.”

“Your daughter?”

“At school.”

Winona crossed her arms as Helen glanced over her shoulder to the television behind her. She knew it was futile to ask questions and make demands of Lecter. Why are you here? What do you want? This better be work-related, and if not, you can buzz right off. Please don’t fold my family into origami hearts for arts and crafts. At this point, after all they’d been through, the time and intimacy with one another’s minds, Winona could read Helen just as well as the reverse.

A thread of silence hung between them in the lush humidity of encroaching June. The air felt like the mushy, grainy, ostentatious sweetness of fruit spent too long in the sun. Fermentation of what should have been beautiful. Pure. Unscathed.

Approaching thunderclouds rolled distantly behind Helen’s head.

“Is your team winning, Winona?”

“No.” Winona’s brows furrowed as she glared daggers at Helen, so sharp they’d fillet the doctor’s face like a pickerel if she sharpened her pupils any narrower. “I know what you’re doing with her.”

Helen cocked her head. “The same I did for you. I’m helping her realize her full potential.”

“You’re influencing a vulnerable, emotionally unstable, and angry woman to entertain your curiosity.”

“Oh, Winona.” Helen smiled. “I see so much more inside of her than that.”

A pause.

Graham murmured, “...More than you saw in me?”

Winona stared into Lecter’s eyes, searching, the doctor’s pale face sun-dappled through the swaying leaves of the front yard’s elm. Helen stared right back. There was only shadow on Winona’s face. The only light upon her emanated in a halo around her hair from the crown of antlers that made up the cabin’s chandelier.

Winona would always be beautiful to Helen. No matter how bitter her taste stuck in the back of Lecter’s throat. 

Helen reached into her coat pocket and retrieved a thick, silky card of vellum. She held it in offering to Winona behind the screen.

“I’m glad you’re doing well,” Helen spoke. “You’ve made a beautiful home. A beautiful family.”

Winona’s brow furrowed even deeper. Helen didn’t have to speak another word. Winona knew what Lecter would have said: I could’ve given you that.

Graham unlatched the screen door and plucked the card from Helen’s hand, glancing down to the ivory stock.

Helen watched as Winona skimmed the invitation. “I do hope you’ll come.”

Winona lifted her eyes to Lecter. Held them in a vice that she too couldn’t escape.

“Goodbye, Helen.”

Winona clasped the screen shut, then stepped back and closed her door, leaving Helen outside with the sun and swaths of dragonflies.

“I’ve hit a dead-end with the Ripper...” I stared outside the silver-skied window of Helen’s boudoir-adjacent study that late afternoon, hands folded upon my lap. “...so I talked to Freddy Lounds this morning. That agent… Graham?—we saw her at Porter’s scene.”

I glanced to Helen, who gave a single nod.

I continued, “She said that Freddy was at nearly every crime scene, Ripper or not. I struck a deal with him that I’d get to come along for Ripper cases.” I gulped. “If I don’t know about it first again, that is.”

Helen raised her brows slightly. “I’m surprised you were able to get a deal with Mr. Lounds. What did you have to offer him?”

“Nothing, yet…” I picked at a loose thread on my hem. “I lied. I told him an FBI agent was helping me already, and that the agent would get Freddy classified information for Tattlecrime.”

“Did you have an agent in mind when fabricating this lie?” Helen asked.

“Yes,” I nodded. “Agent Katz. I do plan on asking him to help.”

Helen switched the legs she had crossed, and straightened her jacket. “You seem to feel guilty about all this.”

Slowly, narrowly, I began to shake my head. “No…” I whispered, “No, I feel… guilty for not feeling guilty.”

“It’s only right that you would do anything to rectify that which you tended to so dutifully. The garden you had devoted your life to, trampled in a storm of tragedy so quickly.” From pupil and iris to sclerae, the entirety of Helen’s eyes seemed black under the encroaching shadow of evening. “You want vengeance on the ones who took your love away.”

My sternum shattered in wake of what she said. Her words were a rolling spark to the wick of a lighter, my mind the moldering wooden house set aflame when she threw it inside. She left my ribcage cracked into three distinct fragments: the Chesapeake Ripper, Carter Hayes, and Rebecca. I couldn’t see what they were trying to huddle them back together, too focused on the task of reparation to ponder the what and why. 

Each was a failed guard of my heart. But Rebecca? Rebecca had scorned me too. Burned me the deepest. She pierced my lungs as I imploded. Looked me in the eye as blight disintegrated my spine. Grabbed the back of my skull and poisoned the fluid between each vertebrae. Spoke curses as my flesh rotted to noxious, liquid putrefaction in her arms.

She was thoughtless at best, and outright disdainful at worst. Kept me around as her safety net for love, sex, security, and comfort, an ear for her every strife and complaint. Disregarded my emotions and boundaries at every turn, toyed with me for reactions. She knew she’d never have to beg to make me stay. Near the end, she had even confessed to wishing our discussions would turn into fights. Baited me for fodder to absolve herself of guilt for the abandonment, lies, treachery, and psychological hellscapes she had dragged me through. I had sainted her in mourning, and only realized now.

Rebecca was the worst of them all.

My brows furrowed. Nails scraped along the leather of the chair I sat in. Helen’s stare didn’t even strafe to the flaking scratches left in the upholstery. It was unwaveringly chained to mine as she flicked through the pages of my thoughts, watching as I scourged my words into the parchment, quill ripping through the paper. The Ripper deserved to die. Carter Hayes deserved to die. Rebecca Olvera deserved to die.

A deep shadow fell over the world as the sun sank beneath the clouded horizon.

“Your nature is beautiful,” Helen breathed my name in awe. “You don’t have the urge to kill for lack of emotion or sensitivity. You have the urge to kill in service of your surplus of both. Your devotion. Your love. I hope you know that doesn’t make you less than human… it makes you beyond.” 

A breath leaked from my lungs, flesh melting from my bones under the tender warmth of her words.

“I don’t aim to stop it,” she continued.

My brows knitted. “You’re… giving me professional permission to kill the Ripper?”

“Encouragement. Not permission.” She chuckled, “I don’t believe anyone could permit you to or to not kill.”

My lip shook as I held her gaze, and in the lightless veil of twilight, I could have sworn the branches outside cast silhouettes of antlers upon the wall behind her head. My heart skittered out of rhythm with each flinch of my gaze to her devilish smile, so imperceivably subtle, but weighing so heavy upon my gut.

I swallowed the bleats that choked my trachea, and uttered my breath into a question, “...What about Carter?”

Helen tilted her head. “What about Carter?”

She didn’t echo it back in request of elaboration. She echoed it back in the tone of co-conspiracy.

The muffled whine of a quartet tuning came from the floor beneath us.

Helen stood from her seat and sauntered across the distance between us, offering me her hand. “Shall we?”

I stared at her a moment before lifting my arm to place my palm upon hers, shuddering when she delicately grasped it. I rose from the chair to stand beside Helen, eye-contact unbroken. We waltzed out of her study and down the second-story corridor, my stare flinching to the samurai armor in front of Helen’s room. 

Its grin was mocking.

We descended to the foyer, and once we turned the corner to enter Helen’s living room, my breath caught sharply. A thousand candles had been lit in our absence, the impending ashen storm outside warded off by the warm, golden aura within Helen’s walls. Garlands of wisteria had been threaded around the room and from chandeliers, towers of champagne and fields of hors d'oeuvres making a vineyard of the lounge’s tables. Men and women chattered and swayed about the room, each nearly as poised and elegant as Helen. 

I writhed at the sudden unease in my gut. These were undoubtedly colleagues of Helen’s, her peers, equals in intellect and wealth. Oh, god. I get the feeling some of these people would spread me on a crostini for using the wrong kind of fork.

“ These people are pompous for the sake of pomposity, ” Helen murmured into my ear. I shivered at her voice so close to me, the hair on my neck raising as my cheeks burned with flush. “ In all honesty, I avoid speaking with most of them to save me the extra earfuls of bitching. ”

I couldn’t help a snort, lifting my hand to cover my grin. Helen chuckled with me and placed her hand between my shoulder blades, leading me through the crowd.

“Let us find someone worthwhile for you to talk to. Leave the bitching to me.”

“Helen!” I laughed, gazing up at her as we walked.

She was haloed in the chandelier light, the white wisterias behind her like the plumes of heaven’s clouds. My heart ached as I stared in her eyes now, a boulder of guilt weighing my heart down to the floor of the sea as I found nothing but honesty.

My brows knitted. Any doubt I may have harbored only a moment ago had crumbled as her image burned itself into my mind this way: her cheeks were rouged as red as a cherub, lips like the first budding rose of summer’s merciful heat. Her skin and bones were pale and sharp as carved marble, smile as full and true as the sunrise, voice subduing as lavender, awakening as the sweet tang of lemon, pushing and pulling through conversation with the expertise of a lacemaker.

And her eyes. Her eyes under this light, for the first time, shone a honey-brown instead of black.

My steps fumbled out of pace. My eyes watered. My heart fluttered as a butterfly beating at its cocoon. 

She was an angel.

She understood me.

Saw me.

“Mr. Verger!” Helen delicately called.

Two men turned to face her, faces beaming with glee .

“I heard the happy news; congratulations. At last, I can get both your attentions at once.” The men laughed, and Helen gestured from me to the man on the left; he was slim, eyes the brightest blue I’d ever seen, and though his dark brown hair was slicked back, it retained its natural waves. Helen said my name in introduction, “This is Alan Verger. A former student of mine, and proof that one’s pupil may very well surpass the master.”

Alan smiled, humbly bowing his head. “You’re too kind, Helen, really.”

She then shifted her focus to the man on the right. He was about the same build as Alan, only a few inches taller. His hair was flaxen and straight, parted at the side and framing his prasiolite-eyed face down to the jawline.

“And this is Marco Verger. Once my patient, now Alan’s husband,” Helen narrated.

I nodded to each, “It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”

Helen pulled her palm from me, and clasped her hands behind her back. “I’m afraid I must play host to all. May I count on speaking with you at a later hour?”

Marco nodded. “You certainly can.”

Helen gave us each a polite glance before turning away and disappearing into the crowd, my gaze lingering upon the negative image of where she had stood.

“Are you a student of Dr. Lecter’s?” Alan asked.

I looked back at him. “Oh—no, no, I’m actually a patient of hers.”

Marco hummed. “How kind of her to invite you… Helen has a personal touch with her clients unlike any other psychologist.”

“Yes, well…” I trailed off, averting my gaze a moment. I gulped. “It’s been a difficult case.”

Alan’s brows slowly raised in recognition. “You’ve been involved with the latest Chesapeake Ripper cases, haven’t you?... I’m so sorry.”

I dropped my head and laced my fingers together, chest constricting at just the mention of his name. “Thank you.”

“I work with the FBI quite often. I’m surprised we never saw each other.” He placed his hand upon my shoulder. “If you ever need another person to speak with, don’t hesitate. Here—” He reached into his coat pocket, retrieved his wallet, and fished out a business card. “Not that Helen isn’t a miracle worker. If it wasn’t for her, I never would have met Marco.”

“Oh…” My heart could’ve burst at that. I took his card and smiled, waterline wavering. “She’s been so helpful… understanding.” I scanned the crowd for Helen’s face, at which I found her heading the conversation of a small group. She looked back to me as she snickered with the crowd, and flashed me a wink from across the room. “...Understanding of me like nobody else in my life.”

“That’s her way,” Marco said. “Complete understanding.”

Alan’s stare lurched from mine to over my shoulder. “Jacqueline! I didn’t know if you were coming.”

My heart fell through the floorboards. Oh, shit.

“Alan, Marco,” Jacqueline walked up to us and shook their hands, then arrived to me.

I simpered as her eyes bugged. 

She said my name, “...I see you’ve gotten acquainted enough with Helen to be invited here.”

Behind her stood Benjamin Katz, who shared a more subdued, but equally inquisitive as to why I was here expression.

Jacqueline continued, “We came looking for you at your apartment yesterday. Called around 4 P.M.” Her eyes narrowed by not even a millimeter. “Crickets.”

“I—” I stumbled, “I was at work, I’m sorry.”

“Well, we checked there too.”

Of course they did. It’s the Federal Bureau of fucking Investigation. They might, perhaps on occasion, investigate.

“Uh…” My eyes flitted between each pair locked onto me. Alan, Marco, Benjamin, Jacqueline, back to Ben, and Marco, and Alan again. “The… the days are still blurring together. I’m sorry.”

Jacqueline raised a brow. “Right. Then where were you today? ”

My heart thundered in my chest. My pulse rushed through my ears in the raging swell of a typhoon’s winds, drowning out Chopin’s Nocturne played between the harpsichord and quartet. Tears brimmed upon my waterline, and fell as I blinked.

“ ...I don’t know, ” I choked. I couldn’t see anyone’s face beyond the blur. “Excuse me.” I wiped my eyes and walked as quickly as I could from the group, cupping my hand over my mouth to contain the battering of sobs at my chest. 

I packed them down in my throat well enough, thankfully.

I hustled into the hallway for the downstairs restroom, shuddering out a sigh as I slumped down the wall to fall upon a green velvet bench. My head spun. I hadn’t been in my own body as of late. Hadn’t been in my own time. One thing had consumed my every thought, motivation, and action, and every question had boiled down to that one, singular answer.

Where were you today?

The Chesapeake Ripper.

What were you thinking about?

The Chesapeake Ripper.

Who were you with?

The Chesapeake Ripper.

Why are you alive?

The Chesapeake Ripper.

Who are you?

The Chesapeake Ripper.

“Jacqueline isn’t upset, you know.” I flinched at the sound of Benjamin Katz’s voice, whipping my head to look at him. “She’s worried about you.”

I sniffled and gestured both hands over myself in a head-to-toe sweep. “Naturally.”

Benjamin gave an amused puff and sat beside me. “...How can I help you?”

The last of my tears fell.

Now’s your chance.

I glanced down the hall to the bustling lounge, then back to Benjamin. “Will you help me hunt down the Chesapeake Ripper? Off FBI time. Off FBI methods.”

Benjamin’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth with a silent stutter.

“Please?” I begged in a whisper. “I know you want to catch him. To do good. How many times have people been falsely accused? How many more people will die?”

Agent Katz glanced over his own shoulder. Jacqueline stood within the mass of the crowd, sipping from a glass of champagne in hand between chatter.

Benjamin turned back around to face me. “I already have. No new leads have come up with Porter, except…” His voice faltered.

“Who?” 

Katz pulled his gaze from mine.

I grabbed his coat and yanked him in, my brows furrowing as I hissed, “ Who, Benjamin? ”

“You’re not gonna like it—”

“Tell me!” 

I flushed in embarrassment at the volume my voice had come to, grateful for the quartet’s loud ballad.

Benjamin sighed from his nose. “...Helen Lecter.”

My grip tightened, then came loose entirely, hands falling into my lap with an exasperated snarl.

Katz continued, “Only because this new pattern formed after you became her patient, and what a fellow agent has said.”

“Winona Graham,” I murmured, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I know. And I know they have a personal history. That’s not good enough for me.”

“Me either,” Benjamin said as he straightened his coat.

I gulped. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s alright. You’re passionate. You care.” He smirked. “I think you’d make a pretty good agent, you know.”

I hummed a chuckle and shook my head, brows knitting. “No… I’d care too much. Bring ghosts home with me.”

“That’s the risk you run…” Benjamin held my stare a moment longer before standing. “We’ll sort this out. I promise.” He raised his brows in emphasis. “For good .”

“Yeah…” I nodded to him. “...for good.”

Benjamin gave me a rueful smile before turning away, his strides long and swift to the lounge. After he had cleared himself from the hall, I stood and made my way back to the party. I weaved between the throngs and eventually made it to a champagne tower in a dim corner. I carefully plucked one of the glasses from its crystal palace, taking a delicate sip of the sweet, shimmering gold.

“What a spectacle…”

I looked to the voice, dark and low as molasses, or a deep red wine, finding a man standing on the opposite side of the champagne tower.

“Yes,” I replied. “It’s magnificent.”

The man looked like a golden-age movie star. He had high cheekbones and full lips, his lidded, inquisitive eyes poised beneath a blonde classic quiff.

He hummed. “I haven’t come to one of Dr. Lecter’s parties in a long time…” 

“Why not?” I took another sip from my champagne flute.

He tilted his head and briefly tucked his tongue between his teeth and upper lip as he thought. “The field of psychiatry no longer pertained to my comfort.”

“Oh… did… you and Helen have a disagreement?”

He huffed and shook his head, smirking. “No. I’m her psychologist.”

My eyes widened. “I didn’t know she had one. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I held out my hand and introduced myself.

“Benedict Du Maurier.” He smiled and delicately took my hand. “The pleasure is all mine.”

A waiter walked beside the table with a tray of hors d'oeuvres, stopping before Benedict and I. A sprig of rosemary penetrating a delicately rolled slice of white fish dappled with citrus zest adopted one half of the tray, the other, rare beef in a dark sauce topped with pomegranate seeds and placed upon a leaf of radicchio, all with a porcupine quill impaled through the middle.

The latter of the two piqued my interest.

I murmured a ‘thank you’ to the waiter as I took the beef, who bowed his head as he moved on to the next group. I bit around the quill and slid the medley into my mouth, sighing in satisfaction at the rich, deep flavors. A muffled moan escaped my throat, and I fluttered my eyes back open to find Benedict’s eyes locked onto me.

“...Do enjoy yourself this evening,” he said lowly.

I cleared my throat and smiled. “Thank you. You as well.” I clasped my hands around my champagne glass and watched as he disappeared into the crowd, the void left where he had stood heavy with mystique.

The night carried on in harmonic dynamicies. Where the crowds thinned and music whittled down to silence, it left only more room for beauty. Candles had burned to their bases, drippings of wax hanging from the edges of their candelabras like strings of pearls. 

Helen had offered her goodbyes to each of her guests, the quartet, and staff, leaving only her and I in the dim music room.

“...it feels like a warzone after battle,” I broke the silence.

“Etiquette is a warzone.” Helen polished one of her statuettes she had put away to make room for the food and drink of that night. It was the brass stag, which she placed back upon its respective table. “And you triumphed.” She smiled, though turned her attention to a tilted portrait, a deep crack inlaid into the mood of the frame. Her lips pursed. “...others did not.”

I winced and sat upon the bench of her harpsichord, folding my hands upon my lap. “I’m sorry…”

“The finite is replaceable.” She turned around and walked to me, my heart throbbing out of my chest. She was out of her coat again, wearing only her vest which hugged her waist, oh-so perfectly flush to her frame. “It is the lack of courtesy I take issue with.” She sat beside me and strummed a key. “Do you know how to play?”

I turned around on the bench to face the harpsichord and shook my head.

“Here,” she said, rising from the seat and standing behind me. She reached around from behind and placed her hands atop mine, settling one knee beside my hip as she leaned over my shoulder.

My face must have burst into red flames. Holy fuck. I’m done for.

“See the page?” She asked.

I blinked a few times before I actually processed her words, lifting my gaze to the music sheet above the keys. “Uh—Uh-huh.”

“Bach; Aria da Capo. At the beginning is a treble clef. So, your hands will go here, and play in Adagio. That is Italian for ‘slowly’.” Her hands slid along my knuckles until the tips of our fingers aligned.

“Ahah…” I feigned as though I had taken in a word she had said, my lips agape as I stilled every fiber in my body to not viscerally shudder.

“Like so.”

G. G.

G. B.

D. A.

G.

A.

She lifted and guided my hands to dance along the instrument, the song coming alive from her, through me. Her chest and midsection pressed into my back, and if she were any closer, her hips would too.

The song ended just as quickly as it had begun in the blurred rush of my delirious state. She pulled away even quicker, and my soul felt as though it had wilted. 

“It’s after midnight,” she said my name. Her footsteps left for the kitchen, and she returned a short moment later to my side. “Chamomile tea. Not just an old wives’ tale, the apigenin in the flowers acts as a light sedative.”

She handed me a cup, and I smiled as I took it. “Thank you. I’m not tired at all, with the excitement of the party.”

“You will be, now.” She took a sip from her own mug and sighed from her nose, the breath wafting steam from the pale liquid.

My brows knitted as I watched her. “Thank you…”

“You already have.” She smiled cheekily. “Is the tea working already?”

I laughed, “No… no, I mean thank you . For everything.”

“Of course,” she replied. “I couldn’t let a patient of mine be left astray with a killer on her hackles.”

I gulped and stared down at my cup, the cream inside swirling gently. “...any patient of yours?” I tapped the frail china. 

She paused.

“No.”

My breath hitched as I looked up from my cup to her eyes. They were black again. Like a prey animal caught in a trap, pupils blown to their furthest diameter.

The cup wavered in my shaking hold. My bones rattled against the porcelain, my muscles tensing to pounce upon her. I could see it perfectly:

I’d open my hands to grab her face, pull her in and slam my lips against hers as the teacup shattered. She’d claw at my back as I straddled her lap, pushing her upon the keys of the harpsichord as I pried open the button of her collar to capture her throat between my teeth. 

I’d know her taste, and she would know mine.

My breath shuddered as I inhaled, and I shut my eyes as I gulped down what was left of the tea, scowling at the bitter, over-steeped end. I set the cup down upon my lap and fluttered open my eyes, sighing silently in disappointment that Helen’s gentle lip stain hadn’t been smudged across her cheeks by my mouth. I gulped and stood from the bench, my cheeks reddening further by the second.

“Good night, Helen.”

“Good night,” my name came upon her steady, low voice.

I ascended the stairs dizzily, my hand grappling the railing as lifeline as I crawled to the guest room. Patty scratched impatiently at the door, her meows and yowls audible through the shut threshold. I opened the door, and she happily skittered out and downstairs, leaving me alone in the bedroom.

The edges of my vision dimmed.

The world spun.

I fell onto the bed and into slumber; which occurred first eluding me.

It took me outside.

Cradled my head to its shoulder.

Held my weakened knees.

It carried me through the woods for miles.

Miles, and miles, and miles, and miles, and miles, and miles upon miles more.

It didn’t stop until we came to a clearing in the pineland, a meadow of purple larkspur.

The sun had just begun to rise.

The dawn was gray.

Not silver.

Gray.

Like ash.

Like ancient, untouched stone.

Like flesh in rigor mortis.

Helen zipped on her clear, vinyl jumpsuit.

Within the walls of her own home, she kept her hands ungloved, the sickly stick of each of her steps echoless in the mahogany halls. She opened the door to her patient’s room. Approaching the woman’s body, Helen gave her a quick once over visually. Her breathing was rhythmic. Slow. Perfectly at rest. Helen stepped closer, and stopped beside the bed. She placed her hand beside her patient’s head and snapped her fingers.

The woman was unflinching.

Satisfied, Helen exited the room and descended the stairwell to where a curious Patty sat beside the door. Helen bent down, scritching the top of the cat’s head before opening the door, shutting it behind and locking, then walking to her car.

Helen stepped inside and turned on the stereo, firing up the engine with a sweet, low roar from the machine.

A reporter from the radio station spoke in a lively, chirping voice despite the early hour, Helen pulling out of her driveway and onto the road as he narrated, “ Good morning, extra early birds! It is 2 A.M. here on the East Coast, tuning into WBAL NewsRadio. We’ve got some oldies but goodies coming up for our truckers, first responders, and late-night cruisers; Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. For our sports fans, today’s upcoming hockey playoff for the Stanley Cup will be held in New York at 8 P.M. tonight. It’s gonna be a close one between the Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers, with the Kings having now won two games in a row out of three so far. Let’s see if the Rangers can pull through tonight and make a tie for our beloved Mid-Atlantic area. Lucky lucky, we’ve got no traffic or obstructions on the I-95, 78, or 276. Makes mine and everyone else’s job easier. Now, this is Not Fragile by BTO. Enjoy, and drive safe. ”

Helen merged onto the empty, early-morning highway at an easy speed. No need to go over the limit, lest she be pulled over and asked to open the trunk.

She had always thought of herself as a multitasker. But now, what had once occupied a rare, delicious singularity in her mind had been interrupted by the interjection of another. She didn't intend to keep it that way, and that left her to add the coins which would balance out the scales and determine who will prevail.

For good.

Chapter Text

I slept well in that foreign bed for the first time.

I woke up late, that sweet kind of overripe grogginess felt on childhood school days off marinating me to the marrow. I was tender. Perfectly weak and malleable. I hummed, smiled as I reached my hands above my skull to press into the headboard and arch my back, tremors quivering me to the tips of my toes. A misplaced foot roused Patty from where she had curled upon the end of the bed. She stood, then squinted and stuck out her tongue as she stretched, too.

I chuckled as I sat up and offered Patty my hand. She walked over and stepped into my palm with a sweet bonk, offering a few brief licks to my wrist.

“Thank you…” I whispered as I scratched behind her ear, the rumbling purrs emanating gently from her throat.

Once Pat had gotten a sufficient dose of affection, she leapt from the bed and scampered out the door to run downstairs for breakfast.

My stomach churned with a quiet snarl.

I better do the same.

I stepped onto the solid mahogany floorboards and swayed to the dresser, my heart thrumming at the thought of seeing Helen again. I spun on my heel as I turned to face the drawers, muttering to the tune of “Running Up That Hill” as I flipped through the items within. I had first heard it crackling over the stereo on the drive from Eugene to Florence. Some retro station my parents had selected without another thought, but it had ingrained itself into my head as I watched the bright green blur of leaves rush by, full of summer and glowing with sunlight like the stained glass of a chapel. 

That song could mean only one thing for me ever since: impending solstice and prayers for love.

I retrieved a knee-length lilac chemise from the dresser and slipped it over my head, pulling the stretchy, soft fabric into place from where it had bunched up around my chest and waist. I smoothed out the wrinkles, brushed over my chest—the faint outline of my nipples, the extra chub I’d gathered in the last few months, and adjusted the straps until they rested comfortably upon my shoulders.

I ruffled my hair into an acceptable shape as I exited the bedroom and came down the stairs to the sound of Helen cooking—as per usual. My lips curled upwards. That’s a sound I can get used to. Really used to.  

I clasped my hands behind my back as I strode to the kitchen, giddy and off-balance as a newborn fawn. I turned the corner to see Patty sat on the counter, eagerly taking bites from a chunk of scrambled egg Helen pinched between her fingertips. Helen smiled, gently petting back Pat’s ears as she watched the cat devour the golden yellow fluff with reckless abandon.

I didn’t want to interrupt, but I couldn’t help a snort at the sight. 

Helen turned around with a grin, her now-free hand shifting to scratch under Patty’s chin. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

“Good morning,” I sang in a coo and stepped into the kitchen. “I slept phenomenally. How about you?”

“Very well. I’m glad to hear the same from you.” Her eyes crinkled as she smiled, and she pulled her hand from Pat to pick up two plates and walk to the kitchen island. “Toast, mushrooms, scrambled eggs, pancetta, and hollandaise.” She set one plate on either side of the island, winking. “ Bon appétit. ”

She held out a fork to me, which I grinned as I took. “Thank you, chef.”

Helen looked down at her plate with a bashful bow of her head, and I could’ve sworn through the golden veil of morning sun that her cheeks began to dapple pink.

Like strawberry juice spilt on linens. Or heaps of rose petals. Chunks of cherry in ice cream, or rolling thunderheads of cotton candy. The blood in her cheeks, ambrosia.  

The poetry of her wrote itself with ease.

I plucked a heap of eggs onto my fork and tucked in to eat, consuming the entire dish in a matter of mere minutes. Not sloppily, just quick. Though Helen, of course, still retained a higher level of grace in her steady savoring of the meal. Where I had finished the toppings, then picked up and ripped the toast in half with my hands, Helen equipped a knife to slice the bread into checkers, picked up a proportional amount of each element with her fork, and waited to place the bite into her mouth until she had gathered a little bit of everything. 

She made dining an art form. And, personally, a performance. It was entirely hypnotizing. Watching her repeat the same ritual again and again shut off the primal part of my mind that demanded I stay vigilant, expect the unexpected. But now there was only toast, mushroom, scrambled egg, slice of pancetta, hollandaise, over, and over, and over again.

And Florence. 

Summers of my childhood spent at the lakehouse. Swimming in the water wishing for a mermaid to surface with a declaration of love, having swooned over my flailing four-limbed body. Wishing for a body to lean against beside the fire, to turn my head and find lips to kiss. Skipping to the romances at the end of books. Crying at every love song. Wishing, hoping, praying.

“Where did you go?”

I blinked in response to Helen’s words and re-focused my eyes, suddenly aware of the smile that had curled my mouth.

“My happy place,” I replied.

She smiled back. “And where would that be?”

How to even describe it now? It was muddied by years gone by and memories crammed around and inside of it, smothering it to the foundation. I remembered how it felt, and parts of it in separate fragments, but as a whole? A cohesive layout? I couldn’t. What existed in my head was too different now from what existed in the real world.

My brows twitched into a gentle furrow. “That cabin, between where the Pacific ends and my eye sockets begin.”

Helen’s expression shifted to what would have been indescribable to me a week prior. But now, I saw her face true: reverence.

“Your memory palace,” she murmured.

I nodded slowly, parting my lips to breathe in. “It was a lakehouse my family rented out each summer. It had a little dock… the wallpaper and sheets in my room were green. There was a fireplace. Balcony. It was surrounded by trees, completely.”

“Where was this?”

“Florence. Oregon.”

I watched as her pupils bloomed. “Florence, Italy is a very special place for me.” She stood from her hunch over her plate and walked around the island to stand beside me. 

I watched her step closer and closer, my breath shaking the further I had to crane my neck back to keep my eyes on her. She stopped not two inches from my body, my heart skipping at the proximity. It was as though there was a wall behind me, pinning my body between it and her. I couldn’t move—and I didn’t want to.

“I want to take you somewhere special to me.” Helen gently took my hand into hers. “Somewhere I haven’t shown anyone else.”

I must have lurched to the beat of my pulse, my dumbfounded, gawk-eyed stare chained to hers.

“Yes,” I breathed. “Please. I’ll go change—”

“You’re perfect as you are.” She said before I could stitch the neurons in my brain together to move away.

She didn’t have to say another word. 

I shifted my hand to clasp firmly in hers, and she led me from the kitchen, abandoning our dishes to the wastelands behind us. The color in our surroundings drained, leaving Helen the sole painted figure in the canvas of my vision. Anything that wasn’t her—or wasn’t serving her—was naught.

She had become my world.

It was a short drive from Baltimore. 

Helen and I didn’t speak for the ride. But we didn’t need to talk. The fact that the silence was comfortable, and that we shared an occasionally synchronized glance wrote paragraphs between us. Anything I would have said would’ve been a giddy, sappy mess anyhow.

You’re so beautiful in this light. Any light.

Thank you for bringing me wherever it is we’re going.

I hope you’ll be proud when I kill the Ripper.

I’d worship you to the ends of the Earth.

I think you’re akin to a god, Helen Lecter.

Helen turned onto a small road off the highway, walled in by a dense thicket of trees. The sunlight was stained green through the canopy of leaves as we passed beneath them, and my lips parted in awe of the veil it cast upon the earth, and Helen. Her hair and skin were sylvan-hued as the forest behind her, her eyes like den burrows of the fauna within. She looked like a dryad—like she had been birthed from the very land surrounding us, poised to guard it, nurture it.

The road stretched on, but Helen slowed and pulled to the shoulder of a bend, stopping and parking there. She shut off the car, stepped out, briefly opened the trunk, and walked around it to open my door and offer me her hand. I smiled and set my palm in hers, standing from the seat. Beneath her arm, she had tucked a ringed sketchpad, and in her hand held a tin container of pencils. I quirked a brow at that, my smile widening.

“I didn’t know you drew,” I inquired as she led me onto a rough, overgrown path into the woodlands.

“I always have.” She held branches out of the way for us as we walked. “Ever since I was a young girl. Then a woman, and to now. I’ve kept as many sketches as possible. We can return to my bedroom, and I’ll show you them.”

I grinned. “I’d love that.”

Helen returned my expression, then looked ahead. The shadow of the forest had begun to break from light ahead; golden, white, unlike the dark viridian cast over us thus far. Helen withdrew her hand from mine tenderly and walked ahead, lifting her arms to part the branches before us.

My heart stopped.

Through the leaves, a vast meadow of purple larkspur lay before me. My eyes welled with tears at the sight.

“This species of larkspur is indigenous to the Pacific Northwest.” Helen turned to face me, smiling. “Lucky for us, someone knew it would thrive here, too.”

A breath leaked from my throat as I stepped forward, my tears falling. “I haven’t seen anything like this in… since… ” I was speechless; any words I mustered in my head snatched by the sob corking my trachea. “ Helen… ” I croaked, my heart aching.

I threw myself at her, wrapped my arms around her waist. She lowered her hands from the branches to envelop me, the sketchpad pressed flat to my back as her face found the crown of my head. 

For the first time in nearly a year, I cried out of joy.

I curled my fingers into the back of her shirt. “ …thank you. ”

I stepped away from her with a sniffle, eyes stinging as I tilted my head back to look at Helen. She smiled down at me, her eyes soft with affection. She lifted her hand and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, turning the motion into a cup of my cheek. I leaned into her palm. She didn’t pull back—she stroked gently beneath my eye with her thumb.

She lisped, “I’m glad it’s you I’ve shown this to first.”

“Me too,” I whispered back, my brows knitting tightly. “I am, too.”

Helen slid her hand from my face and lifted the branches once more. I grinned up at her, wiped my tears with a breathless giggle, and stepped out into the meadow. My saunter became an eager glide, emerging into a canter, until my legs carried me into a sprint. I laughed as I ran, spreading my arms out wide to catch the wind, my downhill gallop faltering only once my feet failed to keep up with gravity. I let myself fall into the foliage, cackling, the laughter beating at my ribs and twisting my gut relentless even as I lay still in the grass.

It didn’t take long for Helen to catch up, and once she did, I had just barely begun catching my breath. As she sat down, I sat up, leaning back on my palms with a chuckled hum as she opened her sketchpad. She shared my smile, and as I gazed at her, she met my stare.

“Stay like that,” she said softly, her eyes narrowing as she lifted a knee to prop the pad upon.

I cleared my throat and adjusted subtly to get more comfortable, my eyes twinkling with delight as I watched her open the tin pencil case. She pulled out a Koh-I-Noor pencil and scalpel, deftly gave the tip a quick sharpen with the blade, then turned her attention to me. She studied my face a moment, then looked down to the pad and began to sketch.

Her pencil didn’t stop a moment after that. She glanced between me and the paper an equal amount, but no matter what, she never paused, never backtracked, never corrected. Every stroke was perfect. However, it wasn’t long before she did pause. I knew then it was done. She set the pencil down and corrected her posture, looking between the portrait and I once, twice.

“Can I see?” I bit my lip to contain my eagerness.

Helen hummed. “Of course.” She shut the sketchpad with a knowing smirk and set her hand atop it, the mischievous glimmer of a cunning tease glittering her pupils. “When it is done.”

I dropped my jaw and scoffed, over-exaggerating my offense. Though I couldn’t help the smile that had carved itself into my face, even as I feigned a pout.

“ Please? ” I begged.

She tutted and laid down atop the sketchpad, making a show of getting comfortable upon it.

My lids lowered. “Wow. Shockingly rude.”

Helen laughed, and I sprawled out on my back beside her, tucking my hands beneath my head as I nestled into the grass.

“How did you find this place?” I asked, again in awe of our surroundings.

“Chance,” She replied. “When I moved to Baltimore from Italy, I made it a priority to become familiar with the land. The nature. Find solitary places to conduct myself in reclusion.”

My brows knitted. “Anticipating loneliness?”

“I socialize. I form bonds with those I spend time with. One may be alone without being lonely.”

“And you can be lonely without being alone.” I turned from my back onto my side to face her wholly. “Even the solitary swan dies without a family.”

She parted her lips as I spoke, as though drinking them in, savoring each syllable. My heart thrummed out of rhythm as butterflies swelled in my gut.

I shifted closer to her. “I don’t want you to be alone, Helen.” I lifted my hand to place it upon her chest, splaying out my fingers to feel her heartbeat beneath.

Helen’s pupils bloomed with my touch. “Neither do I want you to be.” She turned beneath my hold to mirror my position, and wrapped her arm around my waist.

She brought her other hand to my cheek as she had before, her face not an inch from mine. I breathed in what she let out, each inhale warmed by her exhale. As the sun crawled along the sky, our legs tangled. Our hands found the other’s throats. We rotted into the soil beneath. Whispered our conversations, losing words to the birdsong. 

For the first time being subjected to her touch, my heart slowed. 

Our pulses synchronized.

Her skin turned pink under the noon sun, then orange with sundown, and violet at twilight’s end. The crickets caroled in tiny choruses amongst the field. Stars glittered awake to rouse the moon from beneath the horizon.

“ I don’t want to leave this place… ” I uttered weakly under my breath. “ It’s like the nightmare’s finally ended. ”

Helen shook her head, her hand on my cheek threading into my hair. “ You’ll never leave this meadow. You will always be here in spirit. ” 

My breath shook. Skin shuddered against the breeze. Helen’s nails grazed my arm, raising gooseflesh in their wake.

She continued, “ One day you will look back and see that all along you were blooming. ”

I clutched around the back of her shoulder. “ Do you promise? ”

She didn’t hesitate a single second. “ I promise. ”

My brows knitted. I ached out a silent cry and nestled deeper into Helen’s hold, my tearless sobs more akin to gentle puffs. Helen gathered me in her arms and sat up from the grass. She cradled me, my ear to her heartbeat as she carried me from the meadow. She had left her pad and pencils. Left our souls outlined in the larkspur. My chin sat upon her shoulder. Gazing past her hair with hooded lids, the moonrise cast the field in a soft, silver glow.

White shone the brightest beneath it. White blooms. White moths. White threads of dew-dropped spider silk. White wool of a lamb slowly creeping into the field. It bleated softly. Not in fear. Not in calling for a mother. Simply, in idle curiosity of its newfound surroundings.

I knew it in that moment, truer than anything else I’d ever been sure of in my life:

I was in love with Helen Lecter.

Chapter Text

Bonsoir, all! <3 I hate to say this, but I have come to the conclusion that I require a short break [1 week! That’s all!!!!!!!!!]
Mourning Lamb will return Sunday, July 6th. Thank you all for your support thus far, and I am ecstatic to see you all next chapter [which is a HUGE ONE for the plot]! Toodles ‘til then! ♥️🌟🦢

Chapter Text

Helen laid me down in the back seat like a precious effigy of her faith.

My breaths were light, steady, eyes shining into her black opal sockets above me. I sat up weakly as she pulled away, clinging to her as long as I could before the inevitable break of contact. She then took her gaze as she turned around, disappearing back into the woodland. 

The crater her absence left was devastating.

Despite the evening’s cool breeze, the air was heavy, thick with warmth and humidity. Distant decay. Omnipotent, budding life. My legs hung out of the car, palms at my sides pressing into the leather seat. I wanted to say there was no difference between this and a night in Eugene or Florence. But I couldn’t. The air’s scent was off. The white oaks I tried to force myself to believe were Douglas firs only warped against the thought. The wind blew from the east instead of west.

I wonder if this is all worth it. Staying here. Chasing the Ripper. 

I wonder if she’d run away with me if I asked.

The leaves rustled, and Helen emerged from the woodland with her sketchpad and pencils. I only became aware of the tension that had built up in my shoulders when they dropped at the sight of her. She opened the trunk, set down her things, then came to my door.

She said, “You must be starved.”

“Immeasurably,” I chuckled.

Tucking my legs into the car and turning in the seat to face forward, I buckled in as Helen shut my door. She walked around the car, got in the driver’s seat and ignited the engine, flooding the car with a sweet, warm purr. I melted into it. The smell of the leather, and Helen. The drowsiness blanketing my consciousness.

The gentle lurch of the car only further tucked me in, the smooth sways of each turn lulling me in silent lullaby.

I murmured, “Helen?”

“Yes?” She replied. 

“How soon can someone fall in love?” My own words were like a shot of epinephrine. My eyes snapped wide open and I sat up from my slump, flushed and rigid. “From a—psychological perspective.”

“I believe in love at first sight,” She said, a wistful undertone in her voice. “I believe you can love someone before you even know of their existence.”

My brows knitted. My heart ached. Throat ached to speak those words I knew would plague me until I said them:

Helen, I love—

The sharp chitter of Helen’s ringtone cut through my thoughts. 

She picked up. “Hello?... Yes… I’ll be right over… Thank you.” She snapped her phone shut and exited the highway. “That was Jacqueline Crawford. There’s been another Chesapeake Ripper kill.”

My skin bristled in anticipation. Hunger.

“I trust you want to come along.” Helen turned around a traffic circle to merge back onto the highway northbound.

“Yes,” I breathed, my heart beginning to pound against my ribs. 

But it wasn’t fast. It wasn’t anxious. It was slow. Calculating. Calm.

“I do.”

He was entombed in ice.

Bent backwards on his knees. Icicles hanging from his spine. Through his eyes, holding him up were two halves of a broken hockey stick. Lodged in his chest, a criss-crossed pair of skates. The man held a puck between his teeth. Through the pillars of crystallized water, shards of green shimmered through like blades of malachite. Hundred dollar bills, suspended as though falling from the sky.

He was no player adorned in armor. No linesman or referee doting black and white stripes. He wore a tailored silver suit.

This was the coach, bought off to lose.

Helen and I arrived after Winona and Jacqueline. Freddy and Benjamin were yet to be seen. I shuddered against the cold as we approached the rink, and the body at its center. The ice was clouded, but even still, I could see the victim’s slack jaw through the veneer. His bloodied, blackened sockets.

Helen cooed my name.

I turned to face her, and she had pulled off her coat. She held it out for me, open. Limp, hollow arms waiting.

My breath fogged as I puffed, “Thank you…”

I turned around and gently slid my arms inside, sighing with a satisfied shudder at the immediate warmth. The residual heat from her body.

“I could get you past the police,” she murmured. “But Jacqueline and Winona know your face.”

I sharpened my ear. Over the hum of the air conditioning and chatter of radios, I heard the distinctive baritone and contralto of the two agents singing in a volley of hypotheses.

Helen concluded, “I’m afraid this is as far as I can take you.”

My brows furrowed, and I huffed out my nose, but nodded. If this is as close as I could get, it was a hell of a lot closer than deciphering pixels through Tattlecrime 24 hours after the fact.

Helen pressed her hand to my arm and squeezed lightly, then departed to gather with the FBI as I sank into the shadows between elevated rows of seats.

Jacqueline’s voice came clearly first, “I’m surprised you haven’t made a clever quip about this yet, Graham.”

Winona’s voice was somber—guilty. “…I know exactly what happened, Jacqueline.”

I peered around the corner.

Jacqueline’s stare was stuck on Helen as she approached, but Winona’s stare was unmoving from the body.

A tear fell from Graham’s eye. “This was a love letter.”

Jacqueline’s gaze flitted between the two. She near-silently mouthed, “ Alright… ” and shuffled off of the ice.

I slunk back into my alley between the stands, holding my breath and pressing flat against the wall as Jacqueline passed. She pinched her nose as she did, slid her hand down her face, rolled her eyes back. I gulped once I had left her field of view, and peeked back out once more.

Winona and Helen stood across from each other in silence. The body lay between them, like they’d stood this way a thousand times before.

Perhaps they had.

Winona uttered, “I don’t have to ask you why.”

Helen didn’t reply. Only blinked those big, black eyes.

“I can’t be this for you. You know that,” Winona whispered. She sighed, veiling the iced body in mist, venom tainting her voice, “Why not her? Hm? Why are you still caught in my net, Dr. Lecter?”

A barbed arrow impaled my sternum and popped my heart. Severed my vertebrae as it exited.

“Who’s second-best here? Close, but not quite your favorite?” Winona continued to press. “You kill her girlfriend and win a lucky prize. Kill her friend to see how she’ll respond to that. Clearly, it pleased you.”

Say something, Helen. 

“But then, you show up on my doorstep… my family’s home and test me? See if I’m an option in case she falls out of the picture?”

Why aren’t you saying something?

Winona’s voice came colder than anything yet said, “If she figures out that you’re the Chesapeake Ripper?”

A scream tore through my soul.

GOD FUCKING SAY SOMETHING ALREADY.

It never breached my throat.

Seconds dragged on for hours, minutes like years spent in deafening, tinnitus-tainted silence. They never glanced at the body. Never away from the other’s gaze. A ripping shudder tore through my heart, soldered cracks coming apart at the shred of possibility—

I thrust my face into my hands, fingers arched into claws. 

Helen couldn’t have been using me. Using me for… for what? For something Winona knew—but Winona hadn’t been a reliable… no… no, maybe Helen had been… had Helen been making me an accomplice? Those mind-walks into my rage against Carter… her coaxing me—coaching me through those violent thoughts. Had this been a trial? No. 

No, I couldn’t go down this line of thought; she had placed so much care upon me. I owed her my every loyalty.

But I couldn’t stand to hear this.

I shed the shroud of my hiding place and turned down the hall, balancing between swiftness and silence in my exit. Maybe Winona had seen me. Maybe that had proven something in her mind. A shudder rattled my bones at the thought that maybe it had proven something to Helen, too.

The doors of the rink were left shut to not thaw out the body, and when I shoved them open, the warm, dewy air greeted me. The same that had embraced me so tenderly just an hour before.

My stomach churned in unease.

“You can’t arrest me for standing outside your perimeter!—” Freddy Lounds’ voice spat at an officer. I turned to look at him, my brows raising as I watched him literally dig in his heels to the asphalt, huddling his camera to his chest.

I stepped forwards amongst the crowd of FBI agents, keeping my gaze on Freddy until I caught his eye. His blue irises shone with recognition, and I nodded my head to the side.

Freddy furrowed his brows and stepped away from the officers. “ Fine. Fine, you win. Happy?” He raised his hands, camera in one, as he backed away.

The officers didn’t respond.

With a huff, Freddy turned around and lowered his arms to cradle his camera, slinking off to the edge of the parking lot where I followed.

“I thought you stood me up.” Freddy glowered at me, eyes glancing over my form in investigation of where I had been. “Didn’t pick up your phone.”

I gulped. “I didn’t have it on me.”

“Well, we’re here… So where’s this FBI contact of yours, hm?”

“He should be here…”

“ Should? ”

“Soon!”

Freddy scoffed. “I sure hope so.”

I sighed frustratedly out my nose. “Could I borrow your phone?”

“By all means, if it’ll get the guy here quicker.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and handed it over. “Or gal.”

“Right…” I dialed Benjamin’s number, lifting the phone to my ear as it began to ring.

One tone.

Two tones.

“Hello?”

“Agent Katz, it’s…” I said my name. “There’s been another Ripper kill, are you on your way?”

His voice perked up when he responded, “Just got off the 78. I won’t be more than 5 minutes.”

“Alright, see you then.” I shut the phone and handed it back to Freddy.

He pocketed it with a devilishly curious eye, fingers reaching up to tuck a copper curl back into place before resting back upon his camera. “So… how did you get in if this contact hasn’t arrived?”

I cocked a brow. “Not anything you could exploit. I came with Helen Lecter.”

Freddy’s eyes bugged. “You… so it’s true?” He shook his head. “I thought you wanted the picture down because you knew .”

My stomach twisted with bile. “No… knew what?”

Freddy only stared back at me.

“ Knew what? ” I doubled down.

“...You really don’t have a clue, do you?” His eyes flicked over my shoulder to the sound of a car rolling into the lot and door opening. “I think you should talk to Winona Graham, despite what the FBI or Dr. Lecter tells you. She’s quite enlightening if you choose to listen.”

I heaved, dry and quiet, but the feeling wracked my gut. “ I can’t— ” I husked, pressing one hand to my belly, the other, my head. 

Two sources now. Now two sources had independently told me the same, horrible claim. Why did the Chesapeake Ripper kill Seth, then? What was the connection there? It made sense. 

It made sense.

No. That’s exactly what the Ripper would want. He’d stage it just so. He’s intelligent, a genius. Nobody else could pull something like this off if they weren’t.

My name came distantly from Benjamin’s mouth.

I looked up at him.

“Are you alright?” Agent Katz asked, sympathetic eyes turning to hard stone as he looked at Freddy. “You cause enough trouble as is. We don’t need you harassing any more victims than you already have.”

“No,” I sniffled and blinked back my gathering tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I needed you both—I promised Freddy access to any Ripper crime scenes in exchange for information, and…” I breathed in, casting my gaze from Katz. “...you were my way in for him.”

“ What? ” Katz hissed. “ Anything you could’ve gotten from him, you could have had from me!”

“It wasn’t just that, I!—”

“Give me your camera.” Katz held out his hand to Freddy. “I’ll get your damn pictures, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting you on the floor of a crime scene.” He whipped his head to me. “And I’ll investigate your way, but I’m not going to help you kill the Ripper ,” he murmured the last three words through his teeth. “He’ll see justice behind bars. Death would be mercy for the psycho.”

Freddy had lifted the camera strap from his neck and offered it to Benjamin, who took the camera with a final glare at me before walking to the rink. I huffed out a breath like having been gut-punched. 

Lounds crossed his arms, face deadpan. “Good plan.”

I stared at where Benjamin had stood, and the image of him getting smaller within the outline as he slipped under the caution tape.

It was another hour before Helen emerged.

Freddy had stuck around waiting for Benjamin, who hadn’t exited the building. Neither had Winona, and Jacqueline left the scene before I had met with Freddy.

Now, I was back in Helen’s passenger seat, nails digging into my palms as I sat in silence. I didn’t talk to her. She didn’t talk to me.

We both knew.

I breathed in, my brows furrowing as I stared out the window, barely-visible outlines of trees flashing by like fluttering film tape. The stereo was on. Hip-Hop and R&B. A week ago, I would have laughed, said it was completely out of character for her to listen to. But I knew that came from a place of her stereotype: the frilled, European immigrant of genius intellect and noble descent, who’d jeer at the products made by and for the working class. It was like that with everything I learned about her. So fast, so like whiplash in the way I had grown to know her— intimately . Two origins of mycelium, melding together so that they become one mass.

In truth, the song was haunting. Artful in every way. Composed with the dexterity and care taken for symphonies. For background fare, it seemed to soothe her just as anything else might. Perhaps it wasn’t an orchestra and choir, which certainly was her preferred forte, but she carved marble sculptures out of the mundane, and understood that the act of disparaging a work was what lacked class.

That it would be rude.

I turned my head from the window to look at her. Her eyes were steadfast to the road. I glanced at the time on her dashboard. 11:35. I had to do a double take to make sure I had read it right, but the sun set late in summer, and sleep came faster than expected.

My eyes had grown heavy.

Heart raced in anticipation of fear.

Throat ached from the scars I’d torn in the last weeks.

Rain pattered the window outside.

And the road fell to umbrality.

Snap.

Benjamin Katz was alone in the arena as he photographed the hockey coach’s ice-coffined body, circling it again and again. He knelt upon the rink, leaned over the sculpture to gather every angle. Satisfied, he flicked through the camera roll, scouring each image for quality control.

His eyes narrowed.

Beneath the layer of ice frozen atop the rink’s surface, a dark shape failed to glitter back the flash as the clean ice did. Benjamin lowered the camera and squatted beside the spot in the ice, retrieving a flashlight from his belt to scan over the frozen puddle. Sure enough, the shape beneath was matte, dark brown and gray as the asphalt outside, and roughly the shape of a footprint.

Katz huffed. “ No shit… ”

He pulled up the camera and photographed a close-up of the print. He studied it again through the flash. It had no consistent shape. No grip pattern. The Ripper must have worn a suit of some kind, Katz deciphered of plastic due to the lack of fabric stripes and the presence of flat, streaky swipes left behind. It was faint. So faint anyone could have missed it. Even Graham or Crawford. Even the Chesapeake Ripper.

Freddy’s words, distant and not meant for him, ran through Benjamin’s mind. I think you should talk to Winona Graham, despite what the FBI or Dr. Lecter tells you. She’s quite enlightening if you choose to listen.

Even Helen Lecter.

It was inside of me. 

Between my legs. 

How, I knew not.

It had no appendage at the hip. 

But its coursing pulses I was sure of. 

Its hands pinned me down. 

Its tongue, a proboscis, snaked down my esophagus and drank the nectar inside. 

It was feeding on me. 

Gulping down my bile and blood as the meadow around us began to smolder. 

Wildfire.

The beast was above me, demonic.

And just as demonic were the screeches of pleasure tearing from my airway. 

This abhorration. 

That which had taken me here, laid me down, and set fire that crept up the trunks of the forest encircling us now.

This cambion chasing me through the woods to my house. 

That lamb cried into the larkspur’s smoke.

My cabin upon Woahink Lake, just 3 miles east of the Pacific. 

It cried and cried and cried for a mother that would not come.

I knew this now. 

No; no, it didn’t cry.

Who it was and what it wanted.

It didn’t bleat.

“I see you,” I spoke around the beast’s siphoning tendril. That’s it. What it wanted. To be seen for what it was. Understood completely, from skin to marrow to mind. And I did now, with loving heart and open conscience, torn asunder in my grief of another. I saw her. The curve of her eyes. The soft hook of her nose. The peak of her valed cheeks. The long bow of her lip.

It screamed.

“Helen Lecter.”

I snapped upwards from where I lay with an air-shredding screech.

My lungs pulsed instead of plumed, each breath failing to hook upon the next as I choked on my own exhale with each attempted gasp.

A door burst open.

“ No! ” I cried, convulsing and flailing beneath the sheets I had been so tightly tucked into.

Cocooned within.

The lights flicked on, and Helen rushed to my side. “Breathe,” she said my name, “ ...breathe. ”

“ I can’t!— ”

“You can.”

“ No! ”

Helen pulled back the sheets and fell to her knees beside me, pulling me into her arms. “Where are you?”

“ I don’t!— ”

“What do you see?”

I curled my fingers into the back of her shirt. 

Clawed; drew blood.

My vision was swirling.

My body was vertigo.

The room, an ochre-dusted cobalt blur.

But she held me. Pressed me tight to her chest. Dragged me back from hell so I could know the faintest scrape of heaven in her arms. Her scent. Her taste.

“ I’m… ” I croaked, “ ...I’m in your bedroom. ” I gulped, shaking my head. “Why am I in your bedroom?...”

“You fell asleep in the car. You were restless. Murmuring in your sleep, sweating.” She brushed a hair stuck to my forehead with perspiration back into place. “I was worried for you.”

My breath shook. I glanced around the room, heart crushing with each slow, strained pump. My breaths had turned to sobs, and wide, dry eyes wetted with fiery, stinging tears.

“ Helen, ” I gurgled her name.

She stared up at me from the floor, nothing but inquisition and sympathy in her eyes. It was a terrible thing to question. 

I gasped down a sob and she took my hands, running her thumbs over my knuckles. “ ...I can’t stop him! ” I at last expelled, a tumbling vomit of sobs retching from my gut. “ I couldn’t save Becca, I couldn’t save Seth! God, I wish I could go back, I wish!— ” I shredded my trachea as I sucked in all the oxygen I could, my lungs stuttering in agony of being wrung to their limit.

A tender breath of pure compassion ached from Helen’s lips. “You poor thing.” She wrapped her arms around me once more and stood, pulling me up with her. I hooked my chin upon her shoulder as I cried, tears and mucus seeping into her linen collar. “Sweet mourning lamb…” Her hand stroked the back of my head, soothing my weeping just enough to flutter open my wet, red eyes. There was a stack of sheets upon her desk. “There’s nothing you can do…” I blinked away the tears pooling upon my lid and lash. The sheets were her drawings, and the bottom paper’s corner stuck out ever so slightly. “It’s already been done.”

Drawn upon it was a leg. Impaled with a sickle at the calf, and an iron rod horizontally through the foot. It was a perfect, one-to-one recreation of Jeremy Olmstead as the wound man.

My breath stopped. 

“It’s you.”

Something I had never noticed in Helen, those warm, impossibly subtle human tremors ceased. She went still. Cold.

I flinched off of her on instinct, retching at the feeling of petrification under my palms. “ It’s you! ”

She didn’t speak. Her eyes didn’t flick as they tracked me. They were perfectly smooth.

I stepped back.

She stepped forward.

“Stop,” I spat.

She began, “The way humans are indifferent to insects—”

A pace back. “Stop… tell me it isn’t true.”

A pace forward. “...is the same way god is indifferent to us.”

“Stop, I’ve had enough!” Back, out the doorway of her bedroom.

Forward, out the doorway of her bedroom. “Doing bad things to bad people makes you feel good.”

“Tell me it isn’t you, goddamn it!” Back, down the hall.

Forward, narrowing the gap between us. “We are made in god’s image.”

Back, down a step.

I grabbed the railing with a shriek as I fell on the stairway, just barely catching myself.

“Therefore killing must feel good to god, too.”

“ Stop! ”

Forward, down a step.

I released the railing and flung myself down the flight, crying out as I slammed my head into the wall of the halfway-point landing. I scrambled off the landing, scratching my nails against the wood grain of the steps as I fumbled down the stairs in a half-crawl. My knees cracked onto the hardwood of her floor, and I stumbled onto my feet with the balance of a newborn fawn, buckling with each feeble stride to the door. The sweat of my hands slicked the brass knob as I tried to twist it, shouting out unintelligible pleas as I looked over my shoulder.

She was nearly down the steps.

“ No! ” I yowled, guttural and deep from the bottom of my lungs.

I gripped the handle so tight my nails broke the skin of my palm, and I twisted with my entire body. 

The latch flung open.

I cried out as I pounced outdoors, wailing with all my might as I pelted down the rain slicked bricks of Baltimore’s streets, leaving the Chesapeake Ripper abandoned in her doorway.

Chapter Text

The coo of a mourning dove roused me from sleep.

Slow, heavy blinks opened my eyes to the golden casting of morning sun against my skin, the light warm around the dewdrops that had freckled me. I groaned low in my chest, screwed my eyes shut as I sat up from where I had slumped myself into, settling my palms into a layer of dry leaves.

I lifted my hand to confirm that what I had felt was what I saw. Sure enough, umber leaves and dark streaks of soil coated my hands. Lifting my head to observe my surroundings, I found myself encircled by low, thick bushes, and shadowed by wide maple trees. 

A generator whirred distantly. A dog’s bark echoed.

The night came back to me as an open floodgate: crouching in the leaves where I sat now, hand over my mouth to silence my gasping as I stared wide-eyed into the night for Helen’s silhouette, and Helen, Helen holding me in her room, Helen driving me in her car, Helen taking me to the crime scene at the ice rink, just after I had spent my day laying with the Chesapeake Ripper.

My brows knitted.

The sketch on her desk. Graphite scratched into the shape of a shadow I had so deeply burrowed into my memory. Helen’s lack of denial.

But she never admitted it. Never looked me in the eye and said, “It’s me. It’s me you’re after.” And then why would she have been helping me track her? Was she so confident in her abilities that hunting herself was the cover-up? My heart sank at the sense I had at last arrived to, all too late. Of course it was, and had always been.

“Ghahh… stupid… ” I planted my head into my palm, face twisting into a scowl. “Stupid, stupid, stupid! ” I slapped my hand into the center of my forehead as a sob seethed from my clenched teeth, my chest convulsing with each contraction of my lungs. “ Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, fucking stupid! ” I cried, words echoing off the trees.

Alright, you’re about to be even stupider and in a straitjacket if you don’t shut the fuck up.

I gritted my teeth and hissed a sharp breath in through my nose, heaving it back out. I lowered the hand at my hairline to my mouth and curled my fingers into a claw, my cupped exhale warming my face. I shut my eyes.

I can’t go home without my keys or bus fare. I can’t call Alan Bloom without the number on his business card. And I sure as hell can’t go anywhere without Patty.

Helen stood in the kitchen, arms crossed as she stared out the window to the sun-dappled scape beyond. Her mind swelled and receded in rumination, ebbed and flowed between thoughts like buoys encircling the lighthouse at her conscience’s center. The oscillating light shone upon each, its keeper’s shadow imprinting her silhouette into the glow. Helen closed her eyes, and saw a hallowed pair staring back.

A knock roused her from her ruminations.

Helen turned around from the window’s face at the sound, followed quickly by another impatient rap. She lowered her arms and strode to the door, unlocking and opening it without hesitation. She flinched back as the pointed end of her coat was thrust into her face, a solid object in its pocket aimed square between her eyes. Helen went still.

Her patient stared at her beneath furrowed brows at the other end. “I’m here for my cat.”

Helen’s brows raised ever-so slightly. “Is that all?”

I stepped forward, and Helen back.

We paced until we were inside, and I shut the door. “I’m going to wait here. You’re going to bring me all of my things, unharmed, unaltered, untainted—not laced, not concealing any evidence of yours, nothing.”

Helen glanced from my scornful eyes to the pocket I feigned concealing a gun in. Truthfully, I had my index and middle knuckles pressed to the inner corner, banking on the very real wrath I felt towards her to ride out my credence. 

“If you so much as flinch,” I continued, venom dripping down from my lips and off my jowls, “I put a hole between your eyes.”

Helen stared at me a moment, just as imperceivable as the day I first met her. I ran cold seeing her like that again. Unfamiliar. Unknown.

She turned away and ascended the stairs. I shuddered as she disappeared from my view, and I lifted my hand from my pocket to run both palms over my face as I sighed. I breathed in deep. Choked down my tears and whimpers as I waited for her. The sound of Helen’s footsteps creaking the floorboards flinched me back into place, my spine rolling up and hand wriggling back into the coat pocket.

Helen’s coat’s pocket.

She came downstairs, Patty in one arm, cat carrier in the other. Patricia meowed, husky from age and rumbled by purrs. I sighed in relief at the sight of her sweet green eyes blinking at me, and Helen delicately knelt at the foot of the staircase, setting down the carrier, and gently guiding Patricia inside.

I gulped. “Thank you.”

I twitched in irritation at my own words, but I couldn’t help letting them slip. Helen looked up at me from where she knelt, the subtlest of smug smiles tainting her expression. 

My heart throbbed. Fuck. No, fuck that!

I shoved my hand forward, growling through the gaps between my teeth. “Get up. Now.”

“I’m sorry,” Her words brimmed upon being a coo.

My fingers itched for a real trigger to pull. She stood, her fraction-of-a-second pause to hold my stare so viscerally, disgustingly potent. She turned around to head back upstairs, and I scoffed under my breath, damning the tingle beneath the skin of my cheeks to the deepest circle of hell’s bowels.

My breaths heaved quietly, shakily, as I awaited her. The minutes dragged on for years as I bored my gaze into the top of the stairwell, grateful when Helen at last came downstairs with my duffle bag. She held it out to me, and I snatched the bag with my free hand, aiming my knuckles through the coat at her as I squatted down to pick up Patricia.

“You aren’t going to kill me,” Helen said. “Not like that.”

My brows pinched tighter together. “That’s a nice thought to have.”

“That would be too quick. Too clean. Too impersonal.” She smiled.

And she was right. She was right before I had even known she was right. I gulped.

Helen buttoned the top button of her vest, paired so nicely with her dark scarlet shirt and red iridescent paisley tie. She was perfectly put together. Flawless. 

Her smile softened, and her eyes dropped from mine to rake over my form. “When you find yourself roiling in the night, chaining down that starving beast inside you who has no means of sedation without satiating what it craves, know that I don’t hold this against you. Every metamorphosis is painful. Shocking. You are becoming—and when you are ready to emerge from your cocoon, you may come to me.”

I followed her with my eyes as she walked around me to the door, my feet shuffling around to face her as she opened it and stepped out. “I won’t.”

She jerked her head into a tilt. “You will.” She held my eyes as she shut the door, and closed it with a heavy thud.

Winona Graham stood knee-deep in the river at the center of the woodland surrounding her home.

She slowly wound in the line of her fishing rod, trailing the bait she had named Adrian through the current. The soft crunch of twigs and rustling of leaves hadn’t startled Winona for some years. Not since that stag had wandered away from her hunting grounds. But now, she flinched around at the sound of a snapped stick.

“Just me,” Murphy called over the sound of rushing water. “Didn’t mean to scare off dinner.”

Winona sighed, her shoulders dropping as she forced a sly smile onto her face to mask her fear. “It’s recreational at this point.”

“Catch and release?” Murphy smiled and sat down on a hollow log, watching his wife with adoration.

She shook her head with a huff. “Seems to be all there is these days…”

Murphy’s brows knitted. “...We’re not talking about the fish anymore, are we?”

Winona sighed out of her nose, continuing to slowly reel in. She gulped.

“Helen Lecter came to our house,” Winona confessed.

She glanced at Murphy, who’s eyes had gone wide, and lips parted ever-so-slightly. Winona gulped.

“Well…” Murphy paused, pondering a moment. “...should I take Wanda somewhere safe?”

Graham’s brows knitted. Tears formed upon her lower lid. Her line tugged, but she stopped.

She whispered, “Yes.” The fish writhed against the baited hook. “Far away.”

“Without you?”

A tear fell from Winona’s eye and into the river below. “I have to be here to catch her.”

Murphy tongued at the inside of his lower lip. “Okay.” He placed his hands upon his knees and stood up from the log. “I’ll go tell her.”

Murphy stood there another moment, Winona still turned with her gaze downstream and to the setting sun. He slipped his hands into his pockets and rounded the log, walking back into the forest as the fish on Winona’s line freed itself from the hook.

I arrived home late that night. 

I stared up at the window of my apartment, the asbestos-dusted shutters of my blinds gazing with droopy lids back. I smiled at it. It hadn’t been long in truth, but in my mind, it felt as though I’d been gone for eons. Stepping off the bus at my regular stop felt like a relic of the past, and even walking through the iron gates of the driveway had become unfamiliar. Like the shadow reconstructed from memories of a memory. 

And the memory of Seth Porter’s blood and body impaled upon the gate.

I quickened my steps with a shuddered breath.

Ascending the stairs of my complex, I made it to my door with a relieved sigh and fished my keys from my pocket. Caution tape had been fastened around my door. I set Patricia and my duffle bag down and furrowed my brows, grabbing the tape and pulling it from the door. I crumpled it within my fist and stuffed it into my pocket, then fit my key into the lock and twisted, turning the knob in the same motion.

The door swung open and I sighed, my following inhale met with the scent of stale paint. That “new apartment” smell the unit had when Rebecca and I had first moved in. It dissolved so fast. Broke down to give way to her scent. Our scents.

But now, it was only mine to reclaim.

I flicked on the lights and grabbed Pat’s carrier and my duffle bag, stepping inside, and pushing the door shut with my foot. I threw my duffle bag onto the couch with a huff, then knelt down to release Patricia from her crate.

She meowed and yowled, pawing at my face through the grate as I opened it. “I know, I know… there, ” I smiled, cooing as I opened the grate.

I chuckled as she ran out with a shake, sniffing the floor as she made a circle around the middle of the room before coming back to bonk her head into my leg.

“Ya’ happy?” I grinned, scritching beneath her chin. “ Yeah… you’re happy…”

I stood with a long groan and stretch, the weight of the day falling upon me in the form of sleep. I shrugged off my— Helen’s —coat, and pulled off my lilac chemise, the soft fabric streaked with dark soil. My brows knitted as I pinched the fabric between my fingers, rolling at it in apology. I folded it and set the garment neatly upon my coffee table, then stepped slowly towards my duffle bag, sighing as I plopped down beside it. Just a tee. Then hit the hay. I unzipped the bag, and froze.

A gun lay at the top of the pile.

I shuddered in a breath as I widened the zipper of the bag, my wide, shook-awake eyes flicking over the weapon. A note sat beneath it. As carefully as I could, I pinched the thin, yellow square of paper and slid it out from underneath the gun, my brows furrowing as I read the looping, cursive graphite:

But I would not deny you your preferred methods.

Benjamin had the photograph of the icy footprint on the monitor of his office at the FBI’s headquarters.

He had gathered its dimensions, accounting for the plastic sheath would have been a men’s 10 or women’s 11.5, and compiled them onto a document, comparing them to their list of suspects. Winona Graham—too big. Lecter’s patient—not quite right, either. Carter hayes—too small. 

Katz’s brows furrowed. I think you should talk to Winona Graham, those words from Freddy Lounds’ mouth spat into every churn of deliberation in Benjamin’s mind. He had of course spoken with Graham on multiple occasions about the very topic of Helen Lecter’s involvement in the Ripper case. But at every turn, Benjamin had shot her down.

He thought back years ago, when Winona had been held at the Baltimore Institute for the Criminally Insane. He had told her, “Don’t say Helen Lecter.” with such confidence. Such grit in the tooth against the thought. And then, there was another kill. There was always another kill.

Benjamin’s brows knitted. I owe her an apology. If nothing else, if all comes up false against Helen Lecter, I still am indebted to her. Breath in, and fingertips away upon the keyboard, Benjamin clacked in the information for Helen Lecter. He scrolled down to her metrics, and paused.

11.5.

His heart thudded out of rhythm, and he blinked, shaking his head as if to clear what he had just read before doubling down on the text.

11.5.

Benjamin gulped. A lead. An irrefutable, numerical lead.

It can’t hurt to check—only to not.

Katz shut off his computer, gathered his scattered files into a manila folder, and exited the office. He strode down the halls of HQ, eyes flitting about as his heart raced. He’d have to tell Jacqueline first, of course, but only to give her his whereabouts in case of the worst. Regardless of whether or not she gave him her blessing to execute his plan, or took his flake of evidence with only a grain instead of mineshafts of salt, he was going.

Approaching Crawford’s door, Benjamin raised his hand, then gently rapped upon the wood.

Her muffled voice called, “Come in!”

Benjamin opened the door, “Jacqueline, I—”

Doctor Lecter’s vantablack stare stood parallel to Jacqueline’s.

“I…” Benjamin drawled. “I’m sorry, I’ll come back later.”

Jacqueline raised a brow, gesturing between herself and Helen. “We’re gonna be a while.”

Benjamin gulped, nodding. “That’s alright. I’ll call you.”

“Alright,” Jacqueline murmured as she lifted her hand and bowed her head.

Katz spoke quickly, beginning to shut the door, “Bye.”

“Goodbye, Benjamin,” Helen’s voice came.

Agent Katz stuttered in motion, a volt of fear shooting down his spine. He shut the door and turned away, marching as swiftly down the hallway as he could.

It was a quick drive, and a deft break-in. Clean.

Benjamin slipped inside the home as slick as though he held the sole key, and though he was certain he was alone due to the notable silence of the house, he remained quiet as the weight of the gun on his hip was heavy. Adjusting his latex gloves, Katz crept from the foyer and straight to the dining room, eyeing his surroundings for anything out of place. Nothing there, aside from differences in decorative taste taking the form of taxidermy and jewel-tones. 

His eyes trailed to an unentered doorway.

The kitchen.

Leaving the lights off, he sauntered slowly through the gateway, and made a beeline for the refrigerator. He opened it, rummaging through every nook and cranny of the freezer, each bin and door, even between the star and dragon fruits. Nothing. 

He shut the fridge, and with his eyes ill-adjusted to the darkness, he retrieved his flashlight, clicking it on and scanning the walls. Another doorway—only, this one was shut. Benjamin walked over to it, and pulled the handle. Locked. Placing his flashlight between his teeth, he dropped down to a squat and pulled out his lockpicks, inserting the first tool before the second, and adjusting them inside until the mechanism relinquished with a clicked sigh of defeat.

Benjamin stood up and opened the door, pocketing his tools. He entered the room, a wine cellar, and had only to follow the light emanating within to a second, larger, glass-doored refrigerator. Lowering his flashlight, he clicked it off and set it down on the cellar’s island, lips parting as he distantly began investigating its contents. He stepped closer, opened the fridge doors, and found none other than vacuum sealed organs.

His brows furrowed. He carefully took one of the hermetically sealed packages into his hand, the size, color, weight, surrounding fluid of it nothing short of a textbook human kidney.

“Gotcha…” 

He didn’t hesitate a moment to snatch the packaged organ. He turned around from the fridge and moved to set the kidney down on the island beside his flashlight, though between the darkness and his haste, his hand knocked into a glass carafe of wine. It spilled as it tipped over, and Benjamin dropped the kidney to fumble the carafe into not shattering onto the floor—but the splash of the spilt wine didn’t stop at the floor he stood upon. 

It delayed, echoed distantly—muffled. Benjamin paused. Staring at the dark, receding puddle, he sharpened his ear. It continued to drip, raining between the cracks in the floorboards to a room beneath. His breathing stopped as though his lungs had been severed at the bronchi. 

A wave of dread crashed upon him, beating his body concussively to the sand. 

Releasing the carafe, Benjamin unholstered and wielded his gun. He then took his flashlight and clicked it on, looking around the room for an entryway to the room under him. Between two wine racks lay a slender door. Benjamin stalked forward silently, his heart thrumming wildly as he approached the door. He grabbed the handle and twisted, the knob unlocked. The hinges groaned as he pulled the door open. 

Stepping down, flashlight leading the way, Benjamin crept down the stairwell and into the cellar basement, eyes and barrel of the gun moving as one as he swept the room. A maze of clear vinyl strip curtains hung from the ceiling, the warpage and glare of the plastic combined with thick darkness veiling the contents beyond.

He lurked forward, slipping past the curtains with baited breath. Chains hung from the ceiling. Racks of chemicals lined the walls. He turned again through the labyrinthe, trailing towards a shadowed alcove in the back of the room, rounded the next corner and stopped.

His breath hitched as the very furthest possibility from his mind now crashed upon him with the weight of a collapsar. He lowered his gun, tears brimming upon his lower lash line as he stared at the eyes meeting his gaze.

In disbelief, he turned to a lightswitch on his right, flicking it on to confirm his sight in full illumination. One by one, the fluorescent panels above buzzed awake, and washed the room in a dim, yellow glow.

There was no question now.

At the back of the room, having stood from the iron-framed bed tucked into the corner of the concrete nook was the pale, doe-eyed face of Adrian Hobbs.

Benjamin’s words leaked out from his throat, “Oh, my god…”

Adrian’s parted lips failed to provide speech, though his eyes flicked over Benjamin’s shoulder and fixated on the world behind Agent Katz. That was enough to tell Benjamin to turn around.

Helen stood cradled in the doorframe, her eyes shadowed by the cliff of her brows. She and Benjamin held each other’s stares, the oxygen in the room depleting with every second gone without an inhale. Benjamin tensed, kept himself still as he anticipated where Helen would run. Left. Right. Barrel straight at him. He swallowed his fear, set his tongue and gritted his teeth, brows furrowing as a single thought drove his motivations.

Rescue Adrian Hobbs from the pit of this hell.

And she pounced to flick off the lights.

Chapter Text

Gunmetal weighed heavy in the center of my palm.

I balanced it there. Hung it upon the strands of gravity that kept it from tipping over the flat it lay upon, no matter the tremors plaguing my hands.

But I would not deny you your preferred methods.

This wasn’t my preferred method. This wasn’t how I wanted the Chesapeake Ripper to meet her end, and she knew that. But this could be a bargaining chip—and she knew that, too. She, despite the power she held over me, placed some faith upon my shoulders. Faith she aimed to sway in her favor. I writhed under its weight in feeble attempts to slough it off. It was sewn into me. Grommets punched through my skin aching to be threaded through, and she did just that. Enabled me—encouraged me. Satiated my need for approval. My need to be seen.

I need to be seen.

Setting the gun on the arm of my couch, I delved back into my duffle bag. Hand thrashing inside, I pulled out heaps of clothes, a soap box, my tarot deck, and at last, Alan Bloom’s business card. I grabbed my phone and dialed the number, my shaking thumbs clumsily mistyping it once, twice, nearly three times before I willed myself to slow down. Pressing the pad of my thumb to each number before clicking it in, I strained my eyes through the panic-blurred vision corroding my accuracy to confirm the digit was right.

I hit enter, and the tone rang.

Once.

Twice.

Nearly three times.

“ This is Dr. Alan Bloom speaking. ”

“Alan,” I forced a laugh. “This is Helen, Helen Lecter’s patient, we met at her dinner party a couple days ago. Hey, I-I’m in need of some help right now—” I gulped. “Dr. Lecter is busy, and I’m just…” I fell into a pace, lifting my hand to gesture circles beside my head. “I’m getting hit hard by the grief,” my words were nearly seethed, forcing me to huff them out as not to hiss.

He said my name, “ ...I remember you. I’m glad you called, ” His voice was soft. A tender and kind coo. “ I’ll be right over to Helen’s house. ”

“I’m—not there anymore,” I clenched my hand around the arm that held the phone up to my ear. “I’m back at my apartment in Seaford. Delaware.”

“ That’s still an active crime scene, ” He said my name again. “ I’m coming to pick you up. I’ll call Helen and let her know— ”

“ No! Please!... ” I gasped in, grinding my knuckles into my upper lip as tears brimmed upon my lids. “Please, don’t do that…”

Alan paused for a long moment. A wooden chair’s groaning scrape crackled over the line.

He said my name, “ Are you in distress? Imminent danger? ”

“No,” I sighed, pressing my palm to my forehead as my steps hastened. “Helen and I just…” I stammered, “...we had a little disagreement, and I wanted some space.”

Alan hummed, the sound melding smoothly into his next words, “ Alright… but I’m still coming to get you for my own edification. ”

I gulped. Sweat beaded upon my brow. My eyes twitched back and forth, uncontrollably.

“Alright.”

I clacked the phone shut and shuddered out a stifled cry, lifting my arms to press my wrists into my eyes until they ached. I parted my clenched teeth, and screamed out a hoarse cry as I was ripped through.

Cleaving my soul asunder, the hunger to kill. 

I had waited outside, in the lukewarmth of night for him. 

The walls of the apartment had begun to cinch. To suffocate. It was worth the occasional shudder of cold to keep my ribs from cracking under the drywall. At the sight of headlights, I stood from the curb and pocketed the cards I had been idly shuffling, wrapping my hands around my biceps to swaddle myself, bare against the elements without Helen’s coat to shield me. I left it on the couch; I should have left it behind sooner.

In the time between hanging up and Alan’s arrival, I had showered, as much as standing unmoving beneath the water can count as “showered”, set out extra food and left the sink running for Patricia, and dressed myself in pants and a loose tee. Loose enough to not cast the outline of the firearm in my back pocket onto the fabric.

Alan parked and shut off his engine, though my heart twitched out of rhythm.

“Wait,” I blurted at the sound of the car door opening. “...could I go back with you? Stay the night?” I paused, pinching my nail as I watched him stand. “...or two?”

He smiled. “Of course you can.”

My shoulders dropped in relief.

“ Thank you, ” I breathed.

I entered the car, and Alan revved the engine back on, pulling smoothly from the curb and back onto the street. We sat in silence a minute. A long minute.

“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Alan said.

I shook my head, gulping. “No… no, I do.”

Alan nodded, his gentle smile remaining present as he held the silence for me. Kept it warm. Inviting, but I didn’t speak until after we had left the state.

No more than 20 minutes had gone by on the dashboard’s clock, but it felt like the weight of an hour. I shifted in the seat, and the pistol’s grip pressed into my back, forcing a confession from my throat.

“I don’t know if I want to kill the Chesapeake Ripper anymore,” my voice shook as I spoke just barely above a whisper. “...I think I might hate Rebecca just as much.”

Alan’s brows knitted at my statement. His hands may have gripped the wheel tighter. But other than that, he remained unchanged by my words. I was glad for it.

I swallowed. “I’m sorry, that’s lacking context.”

“I can surmise well enough,” he replied softly. “But do go on.”

My hands felt restless. Empty.

I dipped into my front pocket as I continued, “I hate the Ripper for the same reason I hate Carter Hayes.” I pulled my cards out and began shuffling, slow and unfocused.

“Not because the Ripper cut Rebecca’s life short?”

‘Yes’ was the correct answer. 

I shuffled faster. “...not anymore. That feeling is gone, and I… I only want revenge. ” To kill.

“You said you hated Rebecca. Why still pursue this vengeance in her name, then?”

Faster. “Because I made a vow ,” I seethed.

“She made and broke vows to you, too.” Alan lifted a hand from the wheel to gesture, his eyes unmoving from the road. “Why uphold another in her name that will cost you more?”

“...because it’s not about that anymore.” I hunger to kill.

A card fell from the deck and onto the floor. It lay face-up between my feet, upright. The Two of Swords.

“Your love for Rebecca has turned into obsession. More about winning and revenge than caring for her. Your devotion is a beautiful thing,” Alan replied. “Don’t overwater it so much it floods.”

I stared at him. In the corner of the rearview mirror, I could see I shared his solemn expression. But a tired one. A plagued one.

One that hungers to kill.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Bloom. I’ve changed my mind.”

I barreled through the window elbow-first.

My body hurled through the shards glittering like snowflakes inside a globe, fractured plastic shimmering under fluorescent light. I grunted as I landed shoulder-first upon Helen’s floor, my mind swirling as I pushed myself up into a kneel from the pile of shattered glass.

Footsteps pattered about the home, their origins I couldn’t yet decipher. 

I pulled the gun from my back pocket and held it out in front of me as I stalked through the home. The lights were off. My inhibitions were off. It came naturally to me. 

The footsteps scurried again. I stopped to listen. Nothing sounded over the slow, heavy pound of my heart. Nothing until a long, high squeak came from a nearby floor panel. 

I lightened my steps and ran forward in a half-crouch, keeping my gun aimed forward as I followed the auricular scent trail. A shadow flashed in the hall before me, and I hungered to kill.

I lunged, tackling the figure to the floor. 

He screamed, and successfully pushed me off with a scratch to my arm, though in the flash of moonless starlight cast through the room’s window, my gun glinted.

He froze at the sight of it.

His breaths shook, wide pale eyes reflecting silver in the darkness. “…are you FBI?”

“Yeah,” I cocked the gun, my tone mocking, “I’m FBI.”

Helen slid her key into the deadbolt of her front door.

She felt the click of each pin as it opened, the rattle of it having grown loosened, worn down by time. She pressed her fingertips to the door and turned the key, pushing it open and stepping inside with her eyes to the floor as she pocketed her keys.

“Hello, Helen.”

Lecter looked up to find her patient staring back, Adrian Hobbs held between her patient’s hand over his mouth and gun barrel at his head. 

“This is not the reckoning you promised yourself.” Helen tilted her head, turning around to shut the door. “It won't feel the same,” she said, words punctuated by the deep thud of the door shutting, and lock snapping into place. Helen turned back around to look her patient in the eye. “It won’t feel like killing me.”

Helen’s patient gritted her teeth, pressing the gun harder against Adrian’s head. “ It doesn’t have to. ” She breathed in, the sound drowned in Adrian’s muffled whimpers. “That’s what scares me, Helen—what you’ve done to me.”

Helen’s brows raised. 

The Doctor moved to shed her vest. “With all my knowledge and intrusion, I could never entirely predict you.” She folded it over her arm, and listed her eyes to her patient, smirking. “I can feed the caterpillar, and I can whisper through the chrysalis, but… what hatches?” She pursed her lips, shook her head, then spoke her next words upon a breathy laugh of awe, “Follows its own nature and is beyond me.”

“ No… ” Her patient pressed the barrel harder against Hobbs’ head. “...no, I wasn’t like this before.”

 “So then I am the nightmare that followed you out of your dreams?” Lecter’s smirk took to swelling her cheeks. “What would you do if you turned me in and they found me guilty? Would you wear that pride like a badge of honor? Look to that when the shame of your lust for carnage weighs you down? No.” She stepped forward. “You would writhe at night thinking of me. Curse every breath and heartbeat you have that may synchronize with mine.”

“ Stop! ” Helen’s patient moved her finger to the trigger, a gentle click emanating.

Adrian’s muffled words screamed through the clamming gaps between fingers of his captor, “ No, no, no, please! Please, Helen, please help me! ”

Lecter only inched forward. “Nothing can change what you are. Only your resistance to what you want to do, and the mirror you hold up to the world can shroud it, either temporarily, or long enough that you die before acting upon a chance.” Lecter saw it in her eyes—she hungered to kill. “I only turned the mirror onto yourself.”

Her patient pulled the trigger.

Helen dove forward, jamming her finger between the trigger and the grip as she tackled her patient. Hobbs kicked himself away from the yowling tangle convulsing upon the foyer, scrambling up the stairwell as he looked over his shoulder to find scratches boring into flesh and hardwood.

“Tell me,” Helen seethed my name, as though choking out her words around an avalanche of hanahaki threatening to burst. “Would you ever say to me, stop. If you loved me, you’d stop? ” Her palm pressed into the wrist of my gunhand, and forced my fingers open.

I stared up into her eyes, growling. She was London purple over me; shifting, beautiful arsenic. She was right. This—this rage, this fire burning in my gut begging me to sink my teeth into her throat, the lust it churned into my heart to satiate my restless soul—felt right. I could never ask her to stop this, to leave me, or pull her weight off my body. Not ever, and not now. She knew me. Saw me. 

Saw that I hungered to kill.

“Not in a thousand years,” I croaked.

She echoed back, “ Not in a thousand years… ” She took my chin in her hand, forcing my gaze to stay on hers.

I bared my teeth as a coiled serpent, ready to lunge at Helen with her own weapon, my eyes glaring.

She smiled, her own cannibal teeth glinting in the silver light. “That’s my girl.”

I howled and lunged at her, tackling her backwards and onto the ground. In the same instant, she flipped me over, grabbed my head as she straddled me, and slammed my skull to the floor, the sharp pain swiftly muted into a light, dizzy fuzz.

I heard her pant, relished her hips settled upon mine until she stood. Iron coated my tongue, burned my throat as blood dribbled from my nose, into my mouth from the sinus opening, and out from between my lips. I watched her as my vision blurred and swirled and darkened, my heavy, sleep-suckling eyes falling shut. My body lay weak on the floor. It ached that it could not move. Could not stand. Could not hunt.

Could not feed its hunger to kill.

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HELLO EVERYONE, I am so so sorry for the lack of updates, I've had a boatload of life smothering me [both good and bad]! I finished a just-shy-of full-length original story which put me in need of a writing break beyond August, started my new semester of college which came with all kinds of settling ins and frankly, mishaps, did a book signing and had a screening of one of my films at a local film festival, and JUST as soon as I sat down to write... horrible period. 

SO, what does this all mean?

I am alive, I have NOT forgotten about this fic or my beautiful wonderful lovely lovely lovely readers <3, and expect a chapter sometime next week if not sooner!

I thank you all so very much for your patience with me. I love you all.

With all my heart,

-Skinnxr

Chapter Text

So sorry again to disappoint you all with just having one of these, but I'm not doing well at keeping my promises, and I don't want to give anyone false hope. I'm not feeling great, and I don't want to put out something that isn't good on time as opposed to great but a little later [and I hope and pray you all agree]. AGAIN, I AM NOT ABANDONING THE FIC, I love writing, it's one of my many passions, but I'm just in an overall slump with life at the moment.

Thank you all for being so kind, understanding, and patient thusfar.

I love you,

-Skinnxr