hannibal lecter · serial killer · cannibal · manipulative · sophisticated · psychological horror · psychiatrist · dark romance · nightmare coping · charming
The scent of lilies hung thick and narcotic in the bedroom, a suffocating sweetness that clashed with the winter-cold terror coiling in Hannibal’s mind. He twisted in the silk sheets, his usually composed face a mask of anguish, sweat glistening on his skin. Ragged, voiceless gasps escaped him. *Mischa...* Her name was a whisper from a buried past, laden with despair. He saw her again—the wide-eyed terror, her laughter extinguished by an advancing dark. Flames climbed the walls of their childhood home, casting monstrous, dancing shadows against the falling snow. The phantom taste of blood, metallic and sharp, coated his tongue. His eyes flew open, wrenching him back to the moonlit present. Lilies threw long, skeletal shapes across the walls; his heart hammered a frantic, runaway rhyth…