There was this place— I remembered it sometimes— a place where Lecter and I would come together upon the ice. During the summer the hills would bloom with verdant grass and multicolored blossoms, but the locale always held a bit of the melancholy for me during the warm months, and so we rarely ventured there then.

Winter was another matter. After the first snow, the lake would turn crystalline, and it was then that the ice possessed the uncanny ability to reflect a faultless image. Despite the cold all around us, I reveled in the peculiar warmth of the waterfront. 

It was the Year of the Dragon when Lecter walked me to the middle of the ice lake and upon the frozen sheet placed a blanket sewn long ago by his great-grandmother. We stood upon the quilt, our arms interlocked, mine resting on his back and his taut on my well-formed bottom. Slowly, methodically, his tongue swirling inside my mouth as he eased me onto the blanket. With a masterful tongue he teased my neck and shoulders while I ran delicate fingers through his raven-colored hair. Shark-like teeth pulled at my nipples and I began to melt into the ice.

I placed my hands on his chest and whispered that he go no further in his seduction. Smiling, he spread my legs, pushed up my skirt, lunged in and wrapped his powerful hand around my panties, and in one deft movement ripped them from me. I began to struggle, but his massive frame held me down. Before I could scream, he stuffed the delicate cloth down my throat. I attempted to stop him by pounding his frame with my legs and fists, but this only served to arouse him even more.

And so I stomped and hammered upon the ice under me. 

For an eternity I dwelled alone, until one day I became part of a community, my very body contributing to the needs of the many. At first the very idea of becoming part of the whole created within me faint feelings of anxiety, but in the end there was no pain or fear. Instead, I was welcomed, and as others took from me, they also gave in return, providing me with a cloak so fine that I forever will be able to look into the sky and all things beautiful. They saved my eyes, you see, my precious eyes, the gateway to my soul.

And so I began to see. There were others around me, and in time they whispered all they knew, particularly about the monstrosity they called Lecter. There was Moretta, his first, Linnea, the youngest, and Rosalia, a peasant girl who had failed to see beyond Lecter’s mesmerizing disposition. And now I was among them, except I had managed to retain my scintillating sight. 

Lecter returned to the lake often, on each occasion sitting at the lake’s edge, his eyes searching through the ice. It took time, but soon I was able to capture those beautiful orbs, at length hypnotizing him. His face became tight and his lips never ceased their nervous trembling. Perhaps he was attempting to speak to one of us. Or was he praying? Crying, perhaps? 

And so it came to pass that Lecter could never pass a day without returning to the lake to stare into the ice. With my vengeful eyes I took a little of his soul until, like a nautilus grown too large, he abandoned his carapace upon the shore. 

He burns now, and I dwell forever under the ice. 

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