Uninvited fiction, Silence Of The Lambs (Clarice/Lecter)
"Uninvited" (the Clarice/Lecter vid) is proceeding nicely.
I'm an inveterate re-reader -- I like to go through books very quickly and leave myself with things to catch on the second or third or (etc) go-through -- come to think of it, a lot like the way I watch vids. Connected to this, whenever I bump over something that makes me think of a particular line or scene from a book, I pretty much grab it and re-read straight off, because I want to taste that piece again, and as soon as I re-read that bit, I want to read another bit in the book that the first bit reminds me of, and then I recall something from the sequel, and...
Anyway, I've been compelled to re-read Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal since starting on the vid. I'm a big fan of both books, for very different reasons, but after this latest round of immersion in the Lecter works, I've been feeling the urge to write a sequel-in-tone as well as a sequel-in-plot to Silence -- something that's more about Clarice, with Lecter still in the background. I do like Hannibal -- the novel -- but it doesn't capture the heat of Silence for me, which is all in how the tension builds between Lecter and Clarice without a single touch.
(Well, actually, my urge is more to *read* something like this, but I suspect I'd have to write it to be able do that, since I don't think Thomas Harris is going to do it for me anytime soon.)
So now I'm mulling ideas -- Clarice maybe five years after Silence, but having gotten into Behavioral Science and on the trail of a new serial killer, with Lecter still on the loose, sending her the occasional letter or untraceable call just for kicks. Somehow they start communicating more regularly in connection with the case. She's too busy to notice she's lonely and too focused on processing the letters for the information they give to notice that they satisfy her in dangerous ways; he's too self-satisfied with pulling on her strings to notice that he is thinking about her for her own sake instead of his amusement.
And then after some of this, there's a call: he's busy amusing himself, rummaging through her head, and by accident he hits her at an angle on a sore spot he didn't know about...
---
He heard her breath catch, just the smallest hitch, and understood at once two things: he had wounded her, and she had not expected it. It took another moment for him to realize that he was sorry. He said nothing, carefully laid down the receiver, walked back inside with the wind at his back, the sheer balcony curtains briefly shrouding him before he moved past them into the dark room.
A thousand miles away, Clarice Starling sat unmoving on her couch, the receiver loosely held in her lap making the steady, low beeping of a phone left off the hook. She had recognized her own injury first, but she was pretty sure that if she thought about it for just a little she would know why he had hung up the phone.
She shied away from the knowledge. Instead of thinking, she stripped her bed and bundled the white sheets down to the basement laundry, soaked them in bleach and ran them through the washer, over and over, until it was time to shower and dress and go to work. Her hands were red all day.
---
And of course this is a disaster for both of them, and they both realize it, but they keep making the calls...
---
She lay in bed now when she talked to him, with the lights off and the receiver tight against her face so his voice came almost clear enough that she could almost imagine he was in the room with her, or maybe just on the other side of a pane of thick glass. She wondered without asking if he was doing the same. Early on she spent time being glad that Ardelia had always been scrupulous about avoiding her half of the duplex during the calls; now she saved her attention for more pressing pain.
---
She opened the small wooden box: it held a single, bright-skinned clementine, firm and cool to the touch. That night, on the phone, he asked her to eat it. It was ripe enough to peel with her fingers, dripping juice on the clean sheets while she pulled apart the sections; a burst of strong, sweet flavor without acid that lingered on the tongue. She imagined him with a basket of them, picked from the same tree, saved to eat one after another as long as they lasted, so he could know the taste of her mouth.
---
Okay, way past time to go to bed now. I swear, no more caffeine after noon from now on.
I'm an inveterate re-reader -- I like to go through books very quickly and leave myself with things to catch on the second or third or (etc) go-through -- come to think of it, a lot like the way I watch vids. Connected to this, whenever I bump over something that makes me think of a particular line or scene from a book, I pretty much grab it and re-read straight off, because I want to taste that piece again, and as soon as I re-read that bit, I want to read another bit in the book that the first bit reminds me of, and then I recall something from the sequel, and...
Anyway, I've been compelled to re-read Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal since starting on the vid. I'm a big fan of both books, for very different reasons, but after this latest round of immersion in the Lecter works, I've been feeling the urge to write a sequel-in-tone as well as a sequel-in-plot to Silence -- something that's more about Clarice, with Lecter still in the background. I do like Hannibal -- the novel -- but it doesn't capture the heat of Silence for me, which is all in how the tension builds between Lecter and Clarice without a single touch.
(Well, actually, my urge is more to *read* something like this, but I suspect I'd have to write it to be able do that, since I don't think Thomas Harris is going to do it for me anytime soon.)
So now I'm mulling ideas -- Clarice maybe five years after Silence, but having gotten into Behavioral Science and on the trail of a new serial killer, with Lecter still on the loose, sending her the occasional letter or untraceable call just for kicks. Somehow they start communicating more regularly in connection with the case. She's too busy to notice she's lonely and too focused on processing the letters for the information they give to notice that they satisfy her in dangerous ways; he's too self-satisfied with pulling on her strings to notice that he is thinking about her for her own sake instead of his amusement.
And then after some of this, there's a call: he's busy amusing himself, rummaging through her head, and by accident he hits her at an angle on a sore spot he didn't know about...
---
He heard her breath catch, just the smallest hitch, and understood at once two things: he had wounded her, and she had not expected it. It took another moment for him to realize that he was sorry. He said nothing, carefully laid down the receiver, walked back inside with the wind at his back, the sheer balcony curtains briefly shrouding him before he moved past them into the dark room.
A thousand miles away, Clarice Starling sat unmoving on her couch, the receiver loosely held in her lap making the steady, low beeping of a phone left off the hook. She had recognized her own injury first, but she was pretty sure that if she thought about it for just a little she would know why he had hung up the phone.
She shied away from the knowledge. Instead of thinking, she stripped her bed and bundled the white sheets down to the basement laundry, soaked them in bleach and ran them through the washer, over and over, until it was time to shower and dress and go to work. Her hands were red all day.
---
And of course this is a disaster for both of them, and they both realize it, but they keep making the calls...
---
She lay in bed now when she talked to him, with the lights off and the receiver tight against her face so his voice came almost clear enough that she could almost imagine he was in the room with her, or maybe just on the other side of a pane of thick glass. She wondered without asking if he was doing the same. Early on she spent time being glad that Ardelia had always been scrupulous about avoiding her half of the duplex during the calls; now she saved her attention for more pressing pain.
---
She opened the small wooden box: it held a single, bright-skinned clementine, firm and cool to the touch. That night, on the phone, he asked her to eat it. It was ripe enough to peel with her fingers, dripping juice on the clean sheets while she pulled apart the sections; a burst of strong, sweet flavor without acid that lingered on the tongue. She imagined him with a basket of them, picked from the same tree, saved to eat one after another as long as they lasted, so he could know the taste of her mouth.
---
Okay, way past time to go to bed now. I swear, no more caffeine after noon from now on.