164: What are you waiting for?
Sixty seconds to a minute, thirty-six-hundred to an hour, eighty-six-thousand and four-hundred to a day. The doctor marks the seconds by his own pulse, which is a steady and reassuring rhythm in his skull and torso. He has been here many days. He has been here long enough that the days have piled into years now.
He is not, strictly speaking, bored. He has extensive internal resources, and is quite capable of amusing himself regardless of his location. But his sense of the aesthetic chafes at his surroundings, and he would be pleased to move elsewhere. Somewhere with color. A line of greenery denoting a river, or the clean rinsed blue of an April sky, or the red of poppies and climbing roses. These would relieve the monotony of the concrete walls, the dull regularity of the bars.
But the doctor knows that nothing is forever. Nothing is immune to change. It is a basic scientific principle, that things grow and in turn decay. (Entropy.) And since things change, he can wait for that change. The bars and the cell are not forever.
He can wait-- for wind on his face, for open sky above him, for the liberty to pursue his interests and hobbies again. For books. For brisk walks down cobbled city streets. For fine dinners and the feel of a knife in his hand again. For the change, the first whisper, that will bring all these things in their turn.
He can wait.
In the meantime, as mentioned, he can amuse himself. The landscapes of his own mind supply the pleasures his cell lacks; he re-travels Venice, St. Petersburg, the Riviera...
And if at times opportunities present themselves, well. If at times a nurse is careless, if at times he is not restrained as thoroughly as he ought to be, if at times Chilton is foolish enough to place his skin within reach of the doctor's teeth--
--why, then, at least, he can add a bit of color to the cell.
____________
Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Silence of the Lambs, etc
335 words
He is not, strictly speaking, bored. He has extensive internal resources, and is quite capable of amusing himself regardless of his location. But his sense of the aesthetic chafes at his surroundings, and he would be pleased to move elsewhere. Somewhere with color. A line of greenery denoting a river, or the clean rinsed blue of an April sky, or the red of poppies and climbing roses. These would relieve the monotony of the concrete walls, the dull regularity of the bars.
But the doctor knows that nothing is forever. Nothing is immune to change. It is a basic scientific principle, that things grow and in turn decay. (Entropy.) And since things change, he can wait for that change. The bars and the cell are not forever.
He can wait-- for wind on his face, for open sky above him, for the liberty to pursue his interests and hobbies again. For books. For brisk walks down cobbled city streets. For fine dinners and the feel of a knife in his hand again. For the change, the first whisper, that will bring all these things in their turn.
He can wait.
In the meantime, as mentioned, he can amuse himself. The landscapes of his own mind supply the pleasures his cell lacks; he re-travels Venice, St. Petersburg, the Riviera...
And if at times opportunities present themselves, well. If at times a nurse is careless, if at times he is not restrained as thoroughly as he ought to be, if at times Chilton is foolish enough to place his skin within reach of the doctor's teeth--
--why, then, at least, he can add a bit of color to the cell.
____________
Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Silence of the Lambs, etc
335 words