Chapter Text
Hannibal could say with surety that, despite his particular diet, the thought of consuming a person whole has never quite crossed his mind.
Now, however, as he stared in utter captivation at the squirming, writhing being he had trapped within his fist, there was but a single, hedonistic place his contemplations turned to.
-
Will knew immediately that he’d screwed up in coming here.
There wasn’t any obvious reason, no, nothing overt, but the chill in the air, the lack of any life from the smallest ant to the unwanted rodent, the preternatural silence of the place as a whole…
Will should’ve turned back as soon as he’d stepped in. Maybe he might’ve, if that'd been a choice.
It wasn’t though - not for him. To start from the beginning, to say he’d been exiled would be a friendly way to put it. Hell, he’d been on thin ice ever since his Dad died nearly two years ago; he was honestly surprised the community had let him stay as long as they did.
They hadn’t been a big group - their kind couldn’t be, with the risk it’d carry - with just over a dozen amongst them spread out amidst the walls of Old Miss Betty’s house. They’d mostly been older, around Will's Dad’s age, with only a couple close to Will. Who happened to be an actual couple. Which was... great.
That wasn’t what made him the outcast of the group, though - not that alone, at least.
Will was just… different. He was reclusive, and quiet, and he avoided physical contact from everyone but his father (who always seemed to know exactly when what types of touch would be appreciated - a firm clap on the shoulder, a gentle nudge to the side, the rare, soft hug). He started to go almost strictly on solo scavenges as soon as he was capable enough to do so (by his father’s stern standards, which meant at around fifteen), despite the community frowning on excursions out of the walls and into the open expansiveness of the home not being taken in at least pairs.
More than any of that, though, was the fact that Will saw too much. Not in the most literal sense of the word exactly, but definitely something close to it.
He guessed the best way to describe it is that he saw past the whole idea of there being ‘more to a person than meets the eye.’ Mostly because he always saw that 'more' part when he met someone’s gaze. A single look at Susan told Will she’d been hoarding more than her fair share of food in one of the less traversed areas of the house. A glance at Roth told Will that the guy had sprained his ankle but was putting on a brave face for his partner, Beck, and so on and so forth, though unfortunately not always about things that were so mundane or benign.
By the time Will was old enough to think - or know how - to hide his 'gift,' it was too late.
That too, he could see in their eyes.
They thought he was a freak of nature (more so than their entire species was already, in a way). To them, he was a blight on their kind, with his unnatural ability to rip all of their secrets straight from their minds.
They put a mask over their dislike in front of his Dad, though.
Will knew the man saw through it anyway.
It was why he didn’t push Will to socialize with the others as much as he might’ve, otherwise. Not until the very end, at least. Not until those last few, agonizing days.
“Will,” he said, his breath more of a wheeze. He reached out a trembling hand to grasp Will’s wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. “Things’ll be different, with me gone,” he rasped gravely, his dark eyes unwavering as they met Will’s own blues.
Will had tried for a chuckle. He failed. “You’re telling me,” he said anyways, even knowing the joke would fall flat.
His Dad didn’t bother trying to explain himself; he knew Will knew. That the community would close off to him as soon as Franklin Graham was dead and gone, all his respect and achievements taken with him and leaving an unwanted, unneeded Will behind.
“Will,” his Dad repeated, his teeth gritted against the pain in his chest - from an illness unknown and incurable for their kind - “You need to try,” he stressed, fingers digging into the tendons of Will’s wrist.
Will swallowed dryly. He nodded, shifting his arm to grasp his father’s wrist in turn. “I will,” he promised.
And he did. Try, that is.
That was probably the only reason he’d lasted there as long as he did, the other members of the community lurking around like sharks trying to catch the scent of blood to finally corner their prey.
But Will did his best to be a ‘good boy.’ He stayed quiet but not too quiet and he stayed out of the way as much as he could without seeming avoidant. He offered to work with others - which sometimes worked but more often than not just meant that he could at least say he tried and they’d refused him - and he kept his gaze away from other’s eyes so he couldn’t see the secrets in them or the fear they had of him doing just that.
So he lasted a year and some change.
Until that young couple - Anne and Kris - had a baby, and Will was summarily kicked out.
He’d almost call it anticlimactic, but only in presentation.
Simply put, he was given an ultimatum (But no explanation. They all knew there was no need for one): either he left his home of twenty-three years while they watched, or they killed him right then and there. He could see in some of their glinting eyes that there was an option they preferred.
The former was barely less of a death sentence than the latter, but Will would rather let death find him out in the unknown than at the hands of the people who’d hated him for his very existence for the vast majority of his life.
...Maybe that’d been stupid of him, to not take the easy way out.
But he was here now, in the house one over from Old Miss Betty’s and the only one that was reachable at all, for him.
Even getting to this place had taken an entire day’s journey in just the trek alone - doubly so with everything else factored into it.
Even though he didn’t have to lug anything around with him except for a single fishing hook and a pocketful of breadcrumbs, there was more than enough to worry about in his surrounding environment.
Having lived in the same house for over two decades didn’t mean he’d never seen the outside, as much as he’d never actually explored it. No, there’d been plenty of windows in the home, and, on the rare occasion, he’d risked exploring to the outer walls to get a peak outside and feel the foreign sensation of fresh air in his lungs.
This was all to say that Will was well aware of the dangers. Like the cats.
Yeah, the cats.
He wasn’t sure how many, exactly, but there had to be at least half a dozen. He was pretty sure they were ‘neighborhood’ cats and not exactly strays, but that didn’t change much in the grand scheme of things. Cats were cats, and Will was the perfect size for prey.
So, he’d had to be careful.
He didn’t stay out in the open, and he found as secure of spots as possible whenever he began to tire, not willing to risk having to outrun one of the predators when he was already low on fuel. Every time he caught even the slightest hint of one of the felines being around, he'd mute his breaths down to near nothing, hunkering down in place if he was upwind or racing for nearby cover if he was down.
Even with all his caution, he’d had a couple of close calls in the form of other creatures.
One in the shape of a bird - a crow, the damn intelligent, winged bastard - that’d nearly gouged his arm with its sharp beak, leaving a thin scratch along his bicep instead that’d throbbed and beaded blood but thankfully scabbed with little issue after his escape.
Next was a fucking cockroach. He hated the things with a passion. They were ugly, fast, and vicious. Will had barely avoided getting chewed on by the thing’s disgusting, protruded mandibles before he’d gotten his hook jabbed through the unprotected spot beneath its head, piercing it through. It’d twitched and jolted for hours after that, and Will had to finally resort to bludgeoning it with a nearby sharp pebble until it finally went still so that he could safely retrieve his hook.
So here Will was now, in the home of a stranger with no way of turning back but dread filling him at the thought of moving forwards.
As if hearing his thoughts, a loud crash of thunder had him flinching, and it was immediately followed by the sound of pounding rain pelting itself against the house's tiled roof in angry, unforgiving sheets of raindrops that'd each be nearly the size of his head.
Will swallowed an exhale.
For now, it looked like he was stuck here either way.
