Everything here is vegan...

[cook_the_rude]

Dr. Hannibal Lecter is sitting at a table not far from the observation window, eating grilled portobello mushrooms with a cilantro quinoa salad and a spicy green sauce.

On his serving platter, there is enough for him to share with anybody who might be interested in what a cannibal makes of vegan food. Or is clueless and just likes Dr. Lecter's cooking.

Comments

[herr_bookman]

Autor floats by on his flying carpet, looking over the good doctor's food with a skeptical eye. "What, no people today? Ah, I forgot, you don't eat people in the bar, right?"

[cook_the_rude]

"I wanted to try vegan food, for once," Dr. Lecter says, mildly.

[herr_bookman]

"What's vegan food?" Autor asks, folding his legs underneath himself. "I've never heard of the term."

[cook_the_rude]

"Involving no animal products at all," Dr. Lecter says. "No milk or dairy products, no eggs. There's even debate whether honey is vegan or not."

[herr_bookman]

Autor raises a brow. "What's wrong with animal products? And why did you want to try it?"

[cook_the_rude]

"There are two arguments for it," Dr. Lecter says. "One, that all animal products are made using animals that are ultimately killed and eaten, and thus cause suffering. Two, that producing any food whatsoever with a detour up the food chain uses many times the amount of natural resources, and thus is much less sustainable."

Beat, while he eats a piece of tomato from his salad. "I quite like the concept."

[herr_bookman]

"That sounds like the reason I'm a vegetarian," Autor muses, shaking his head. "But you eat people. That's not sustainable and causes suffering. Your liking the concept of veganism doesn't make sense."

[cook_the_rude]

"There being so many rude people is the least sustainable thing on earth," Hannibal says. "I'm ridding the world of problems, one osso bucco at a time."

[herr_bookman]

"Oh, give me a break," Autor says, scoffing. "That's awful. You're not some avenging angel, Dr. Lecter. People aren't problems, even the rude."

[cook_the_rude]

"Of course people as a whole are problems," Dr. Lecter says. "You might say they're an auto-immune inflammation our pitiable planet acquired."

[herr_bookman]

"No, they're not," Autor insists, furrowing his brow. "We're going to have to agree to disagree on this, because I can't see a way to convince you and you're not going to convince me."

[cook_the_rude]

"In your time," Dr. Lecter says, "they weren't generally perceived as the problem that they actually are."

Beat.

"But you're laying the groundwork, even in the early 1910s and before that."

[herr_bookman]

"So people magically become problems in your time?" Autor says, squinting at him. "What changed the perception of them?"

[sunbaked_baker]

The look on the girl's face as she enters the bar makes it clear that the little stack of very young children's books she carries is somehow massively disappointing to her. Disappointment that verges on dislike. She isn't going to read these to her little brother.

Having looked up when she noticed she wasn't in her room - maybe the Milliways library will have better stories - Rae offers a smile for the man enjoying his lunch at the nearby table. "Hello, Dr. Lecter."

[cook_the_rude]

"Hello, Rae," Dr. Lecter says. "Not your kind of books?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"Not at all," she agrees, whole-heartedly, coming over with the little books all illustrated in the same illustration style. "A regular at the coffeehouse gave them to me so I could read them to Kenny. They're fairy tales and nursery rhymes, but... they've all been changed. They're all wrong."

[cook_the_rude]

Dr. Lecter looks at them, and tilts his head in wonderment.

"How offensively inoffensive," he says. "Very wrong. Whoever did these never heard of Bruno Bettelheim."

[sunbaked_baker]

Little Red Riding Hood TAMES the Big Bad Wolf!

Goldilocks cleans house for the three bears!

Humpty Dumpty asks to be boiled so he won't break!

It's atrocious.

"I've never heard of him either. Did he... do something like this?"

[cook_the_rude]

"He wrote a book about why children need fairy tales to develop well-rounded personalities, and why the tales need to be a bit gruesome and rough," Dr. Lecter says. "This flies in the face of everything that makes sense."

He picks up one of the books with two fingers and apparent disgust, like a dead dragonfly a cat brought in.

[sunbaked_baker]

"It does!" she agrees, emphatically. It is terribly frustrating. "If Jack isn't in danger from the giant, or if Little Red Riding Hood is in no danger from the wolf, or if the three bears would've been Goldilock's friends anyway, or if Puss in Boots can't use his cleverness to make his master rich, or if there's no danger for the soldier trying to find where the twelve princesses go at night, there's no... no point."

Kenny won't be seeing these books, ever.

"If he wanted to write stories clean of everything that makes them interesting, he should just... do it. The people who want that can read them. But he shouldn't call them fairy tales as though they're the same thing."

[cook_the_rude]

"There is no point to the stories at all, this way," Dr. Lecter says. "No motivation."

[sunbaked_baker]

"I know she meant well when she gave them to me, but..." and Rae feels guilty admitting it, "I'm not reading these to Kenny. I've been memorizing my favorite stories already so I can tell them to him."

But not these.

[cook_the_rude]

"Who is that regular?" Dr. Lecter asks.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Miss Fisher," Rae answers. "I think she used to be a elementary school teacher, because she always asks me how school's going, if she's at the coffeehouse when I'm there. She's nice."

Just has unfortunate taste in children's books.

[cook_the_rude]

"Not very sensible for an elementary school teacher," Dr. Lecter says, shaking his head. "I'd have thought she'd have seen more of the world, doing that job."