#and SHE gets book will's realization that hannibal is the killer (the noticing the piece of art that tips him off)

[stevethehairington]

ALSO i did not realize that hannibal the tv series was based on ALL of the hannibal books. i thought it was just red dragon but it's NOT its ALL of them and i am living for this realization while reading these books bc i can see how the details from them all are being mixed and melded together to form the masterpiece that is hannibal tv and im LOVING that

[prurientpuddlejumper]

A Lipless Face That I Want to Marry, Ch. 1

Chapter 2 ->

Summary: Surviving being bitten and burned alive by the Red Dragon was the easy part. Frederick Chilton has a long road ahead before things will ever be close to normal again. But your fiancé is a fighter, and you’ll be with him the whole way. 

Sequel to A Punchable Face That I Want to Kiss

CW: hospitals, surgery, major injury recovery. Sorry for the silly title, this will, in fact, be an angst-fest. 

2,368 words

He seemed fine that first day—as fine as anyone could be after surviving what he had. His skin was red and cracked from being set on fire, and both his lips had been violently torn off—but they had found him in time. He was in the hospital recovering. Talking. You were able to speak with him, and reassure him that you still wanted to marry him, however long his recovery would take. Lips or no lips. You loved him.

You thought that meant he was going to be fine. The Red Dragon didn’t kill him.

But it wasn’t that simple.

His kidney started failing. Dehydration. He needed a massive amount of IV fluids to replace what he had lost and save him, but that volume of fluid had consequences. It made his body swell up to the point that you couldn’t recognize him—to the point that his airway was swollen closed and he couldn’t breathe on his own. And his single, struggling kidney might fail anyway.

Just a day ago he was talking to you, laughing as you teased him, telling you that you didn’t have to stay with him, and crying when you said you would. You had yelled at him for being such an idiot.

When you walked in the next morning, he was gone.

Overnight, he was like a cadaver, lying unconscious with ventilator and feeding tubes stuffed down his throat. Why did you yell at him?

You were so helpless. There was nothing you could do to make any sort of difference, not even encourage him with tender words or a joke. He couldn’t hear you. He was gone. Every snarky, sassy, smug, self-important, dramatic, gossipy remark was gone—silenced—leaving you with a body and no idea when or if he would wake up. All you could do was watch as he swelled, and hope that the fluids did their job saving his life before they killed him. All you could do was be grateful for every breath, every stubborn heartbeat, and pray they didn’t stop.

A doctor told you his chances of waking up would be slim for a healthy person. With ninety percent of his skin destroyed, bacteria could easily enter his bloodstream, and he could rapidly die of sepsis. The complication of his previous organ damage—especially the kidney Abel Gideon removed—made his probability of recovering next to zero.

“You don’t know what he’s lived through,” you seethed. “He did not survive three different serial killers just to die now. So you are not going to treat him like a lost cause, or…” You tried to think of what he would say, “Or I will sue this hospital for malpractice! That is the renowned psychiatrist and bestselling author Dr. Frederick Chilton, and you will not give up on him.”

Blustering didn’t suit you. And haughty threats couldn’t bring his swelling down. The doctors were doing everything they could, but the internal pressure became too much for him to breathe, even with the assistance of a ventilator and oxygen tubes in his nose. They carted him away to the operating room to cut more holes in him.

All you could do was watch.

“It will cause additional scarring,” a very kind nurse with curly hair explained to you as you blinked vacantly in a waiting room, trying not to break down, “but it should allow his chest to expand and save his life.”

You nodded, arms wrapped around your chest. He wouldn’t even notice a few more in the highway map of scars that his body had become. So long as he survived. You were supposed to get married. You just wanted him to wake up.

  ***

Frederick Chilton awoke in a bare and lonely hospital room.

A nurse came in to check on him after a few minutes of blinking groggily and trying to get his bearings through the static fuzz clouding his mind. She explained what had happened, reviewed the medications he was on, showed him the button to press to call for help, and handed him a remote control. No visitors to announce. No one waiting in the lobby all night, haggard with worry, for him to regain consciousness. No flowers crowding the bedside table.

The small television attached to the far wall, which he could barely see or hear, was less than useless, and the morphine drip prevented him from being able to focus enough to read a book. So he lay in bed, alone, in silence save for the tedious beep of the heart monitor.

It was so dull, he was grateful for having been unconscious for the last thirty hours, which was how long it took for the surgeons to get all the organs back inside of him that Abel Gideon took out, determining which ones were viable to go back, and which would go septic and kill him. Like a jigsaw puzzle. Humpty Dumpty, and not all of the pieces could be put together again.

Days passed, and his only visitor was a police officer there on a formality to take his statement.

He would have thought being disemboweled would make a man more popular. Of course it didn’t. This spared him his pride, at the least—he couldn’t tolerate visitors seeing him pale and clammy-skinned, whimpering with pain in a miserable little hospital gown��and for that he was grateful of his churlish nature, which pushed everyone well past arm’s length.

And yet, he wished they would at least try. He wanted people clamoring at his recovery room door so that he could send them away.

He would never be subjected to the indignity of being seen so weak—and yet, what he wouldn’t give to walk in to his office on his first day back and have all of his employees treat him softly, like he was some fragile thing, and not the tyrant they despised. To have them ask if he was all right.

Why didn’t he have more visitors? More flowers? More cards?

He was not well-liked, but he was distinguished. That warranted somebody stopping by with condolences. It was just that there was so little in his bare hospital room to distract him from the pain.

As the anesthetic wore off, a throbbing soreness radiated out from his abdomen, growing sharper with time. It was agonizing. With every breath, the contracting of his diaphragm and the expanding of his lungs and ribs tormented the stitches in his skin and the abused organs inside. He was either pumped full of so much morphine he couldn’t stay awake, or was clear-headed and wishing they would pump him full of more drugs so he could not be.

His mother sent a card, and so did the staff of the Baltimore State Hospital For The Criminally Insane. Both had flowers on the front, watercolor roses, and flowing script font in gold, and both meant equally little.

Perfunctory.

The one from the hospital had been insisted upon by the administrator, who had forced the staff to sign it. Each message was generic and impersonal, like they’d been taken from a standardized get-well form letter—although a few were kind enough to make him close his eyes and pretend they were genuinely meant for him. “We miss you, and wish you a speedy recovery!” His heart turned to think one of his employees really missed him and looked forward to him returning. He found the name signed under the message. He had no idea who it was, but he was certain he had never spoken to them.

The one from his mother had most likely been picked out by a maid, presented to her to mark her signature, and then mailed by said maid. It served mainly as a reminder that she hadn’t bothered to visit in person.

Both stung more to receive than if he had no cards at all—written proof that the only way anyone cared for him was as a formality.

There was a third card, however. The only one sent by someone who wasn’t socially obligated to.

You.

Unlike the others, it was completely unexpected. Jack Crawford, Alana Bloom, or Hannibal Lecter he would have understood, but you were last person he expected to hear from.

It wasn’t even a real card, but printed at home on plain, flimsy printer paper with a cartoon dog wearing a cone-collar that said “Sorry you’re feeling ruff” on the cover. The inside had a short, hand-written message: Glad you didn’t die.

Childish. Cheap. He should have been insulted. The whole thing was obviously intended to convey how little you cared. But he kept the damned thing long after he’d thrown the other two in the trash. He wished you would come visit so he could tell you how tacky you were to your face. Perhaps it was best that you didn’t—he would have wanted to buy himself flowers to fill the room with first, so it wouldn’t seem as if you were the only one who cared, or that your tasteless little gesture was anything of significance to him.

He was Dr. Frederick Chilton. It was important for you to know that he didn’t need you at all.

  ***

Frederick’s eyes moved behind closed lids. The swollen purple lids began to twitch, then slowly creep open. The room was hazy and bright with colors streaking at odd geometric angles away from the lights that produced them.

All he could make out were flowers. Dozens of them, hundreds, surrounding him in a resplendent cloud cloud of white and lavender. Either he fell asleep outside in the garden, or he had died and somehow gotten into heaven.

“No, you’re alive, Frederick,” you said from somewhere close. He must have been whispering to himself out loud. Your voice was wavering with powerful sobs that you shoved down to force it to sound soft and patient, but he could hear the laughter in it, too. “You’ve been out for awhile, but you’re doing really well. You just had a successful surgery. They finished debriding your burns and installing temporary grafts so you don’t go septic. Oh, and they were able to get a skin sample! It’s already in the lab so they can start growing you some of your own new skin.”

“Where…?” he blinked a few times, and tried to move before realizing he couldn’t. His body was heavier than lead and a dull ache like paper being torn pulsed beneath his skin at odd intervals. He went to lick his lips, but they weren’t there. His tongue hit empty air above his teeth, and then nothing until it encountered a gauze bandage and a plastic tube going into his nose.

That brought everything crashing back, and he groaned at reality, missing the previous few moments of anesthetic fog when the Red Dragon was just a dream.

You sat beside his hospital bed, on the side of his good eye, watching over him with a hopeful smile, rambling on about how happy you were that he was awake. There was a blue hospital blanket folded over the arm of the chair, and your hair was a mess—he wondered how long you’d been there. Every inch of surface space that wasn’t needed for medical purposes was covered in roses.

“You bought out Holland’s entire stock of flower exports.”

The way the words scraped sluggishly and humorlessly from his hoarse throat, his eyelids drooping lifelessly, made it sound like a reproach—but you laughed. You always laughed at his jokes. 

“They’re all fake,” you admitted. “Hospital rules—you’re an infection risk.”

He wanted to flash you a charming smile, but he couldn’t. He did not know if his face would ever be able to produce a smile again, or how many agonizing surgeries it would take before it could. You wanted to squeeze his hand and kiss him softly, over and over, but you couldn’t. It would be weeks before you could casually touch his skin without the risk of it ripping off. At least now that he was wrapped head to toe in thick gauze, you could reach out and gently rest your hand on top of his. It stung bitterly, but he didn’t show it—he didn’t want you to take your hand away. The pressure was comforting, and your engagement ring sparkled on your finger. 

“I am… glad to see you. These places can be so dull.” He met your gaze, hoping his one functional eye could shoulder the entire burden of body language in conveying his gratitude. He felt so defeated. Hollowed out. He stared up at the plain white ceiling. His words were often callous; it was physical passion which had brought you together in the first place, and without it, he feared he may begin to push you away like everyone else.

“Frederick,” you smiled, but your eyes looked like they might cry. “I’m glad to see you, too. Really glad. I don’t know who was there looking out for you the last few times you were in the hospital, but I wanted to make sure you know how loved you are this time. I’m going to be here every single day with books, and podcasts, fake flowers, and anything you want that I’m allowed to sneak in, until we can go home together.”

He didn’t want to say something trite like, “I couldn’t do this without you.”

He could.

He had before. But he didn’t want to. He never wanted to again. You had wormed so deeply into his heart and given his world color and meaning he had never known, even in his darkest moments. You made the biggest things seem unimportant, and the smallest things monumentally significant. He could never tell you how important you were to him, what it meant to not be alone.

The heart monitor betrayed the warm fluttering in his chest as the slow, steady beeping rapidly increased. You glanced up at the machine with concern, then back down to him, a sly grin spreading across your cheeks. Prideful embarrassment was written clearly all over his face, even with only part of his face left.

You wished more than ever that you could kiss him.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb

(WARNING: This review contains SPOILERS.)

The very first villain I’m going to cover on this series is one I find infinitely interesting, yet often overlooked by people who enjoy the film he appears in: Jame Gumb, more famously known as Buffalo Bill. In all honesty, it is not hard to see why Buffalo Bill is overlooked; he’s in the same movie as Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of the all-time classic cinematic monster Hannibal Lecter, which even the most fascinating characters would have a hard time escaping the shadow of. However, I think Gumb is a disturbing enough antagonist that he stands out in his own right. 

Actor: While I don’t think I could possibly say he is an actor who manages to achieve the lofty heights of Hopkins, Ted Levine is an absolutely fantastic actor who always manages to inject his characters with a sort of unsettling air; just look at his brief appearance in Shutter Island if you need proof of this. Levine’s skills are put to good use here, as he manages to make Gumb truly unnerving and even realistic as far as disturbed serial killers go.

Motivations/Goals: Clarice Starling, and by extension the audience, spend the movie trying to piece together the clues Lecter gives out to determine Gumb’s true endgame, and eventually the realization comes crashing down on everyone’s heads: Buffalo Bill is attempting to fashion a suit out of women’s skin so that he can ‘become a woman.’ It should be noted that this was in part inspired by the real life killer Ed Gein, who also wished to fashion a woman suit; other aspects of Gumb come from the killers Ted Bundy and Gary Heidnik, but the Gein bit is the most infamous and contentious, as it leads into the controversy Bill has surrounding him, as some viewers have perceived his portrayal to be transphobic. It is easy to see how some could come to that conclusion, especially as the movie leaves out a lot of the (nowadays outdated) explanation of how trans people are not inherently violent and that Gumb is merely projecting issues and deluding himself into believing he is trans as some sort of warped justification for his actions, with the book even pointing out he was rejected for gender reasignment surgery. The movie only has a brief line in regards to this, which sadly exacerbates the issue. Considering that Gumb was inspired by real life killers and their motivations, I do have to say I don’t necessarily find his portrayal all that offensive, though of course I cannot speak for everyone on the issue, and if you do find his character tasteless it is rather hard to blame you. Still, there is at least an attempt to stress that Gumb is not trans, though moreso in the book than the film, which is a rather unfortunate side effect of the transition from book to film. I think in some ways the neutered explanation does hurt Bill’s motivations a bit, if only because it has led to him being labelled as a transphobic caricature over the years when this is definitely not the case.

Personality: Gumb’s personality is rather effeminate in some regards, which does fit into his delusions as laid out in the movie, though things make a bit more sense if you’ve also read the book. The movie cuts a lot of interesting backstory for time, which is a real shame considering it fleshed Gumb’s motivations and such out a lot more; let’s just say Gumb has mommy issues that would make even Norman Bates blush. Aside from that, though, Gumb is also noticeably a bit conflicted on what he does; his interactions with Catherine while she begs for her life show him nearly on the verge of tears, and he is constantly trying to dehumanize her by calling her “it.” Unlike the book, there doesn’t seem to be too much indication that Gumb is doing this for the thrill, and this is more a horrible, grueling task he feels he needs to do so that he may be complete. Years of systematic abuse will do that to a person, I suppose.

Death: After stalking Clarice Starling through his blackened basement while wearing night vision goggles, the tables are turned on Bill and the hunter becomes the hunted as Clarice unloads her gun into him. It’s a rather fitting death; as he preyed on women at their most vulnerable, it only makes sense that a woman strip him of all his power in one fell swoop as he appears to be in control.

Best Moment: It’s really hard to think of Buffalo Bill and not think of the infamous scene where he dances about to “Goodbye Horses” while wearing his skin suit.

Best Quote: If there’s one thing Buffalo Bill has plenty of to the point he’s comparable to Lecter, it’s great and memorable quotes. Of course, considering what his best scene is, it’s hard to say there’s anything that tops “Would you fuck me? I’d fuck me. I’d fuck me so hard.”

Final Thoughts & Score: Buffalo Bill is horrendously underrated as a villain, though clearly there are some out there who appreciate him (Seth Green for example, who based Chris Griffin’s voice in Family Guy off of Buffalo Bill’s). While some aspects of the character do seem a bit iffy on first glance, I think that a combination of explanation, background, and critical thinking all help to lessen what could have easily been an offensive character and instead make him one of the creepiest and most chilling serial killers in cinema. Buffalo Bill gets an 8/10. The reason I don’t give him a higher rating despite being a personal favorite is that, while I am fully aware of the extra explanation of the character that makes him less offensive, the movie does not make it quite as clear as the book and a lot of it needs to be inferred, which has likely led to a lot of the confusion over the years towards him, which is at least somewhat unwarranted.