"Feast of the Damned: Hannibal Lecter vs. Anton Chigurh"

"Banquet of the Damned: Hannibal Lecter vs. Anton Chigurh"

The air in Budapest's exclusive Gourmet Noir hung heavy with the scent of seared foie gras and something darker. Twelve tables stood draped in linen so white it hurt the eyes. At table seven, Hannibal Lecter's knife moved through his tournedos Rossini with metronomic precision when the door burst open. Anton Chigurh entered like a bad omen, his boots tracking desert dust across the Persian rug, the outline of his suppressed shotgun distorting his trench coat's drape.

Hannibal didn't look up until the coin hit the table beside him - a 1958 quarter spinning with unnatural persistence. "How provincial," he remarked, swirling his '47 Cheval Blanc. "Do you flip for the soup course as well?" Chigurh slid into the chair opposite, his eyes reflecting candlelight like dull nickels. When the waiter approached, Anton ordered two raw eggs and a glass of well liquor without glancing at the menu.

The first exchange came when Chigurh's coin landed heads-up with a definitive clink. "You operate on people," he stated. Hannibal dabbed his lips, leaving the napkin pristine. "And you operate on... what exactly? Used car prices?" The scalpel-sharp boning knife in his hand began tracing the grain of the oak table.

Their debate turned to mortality over the cheese course. Hannibal spoke of the Baroque complexity in a human liver's lobes; Chigurh explained entropy using the pattern of bullet holes in a road sign. When the sommelier nervously offered the wine list, Anton put a round through the '61 Pétrus. "House red will do," he said as burgundy pooled around the broken bottleneck.

The violence erupted during dessert. Chigurh flipped his quarter at the pastry chef - it never came down. Hannibal's fish knife pinned it mid-air to the mahogany paneling. Silverware became projectiles: steak knives embedding in the grand piano's soundboard, oyster forks finding home in waiters' vests. Hannibal used a champagne saber to decapitate a chandelier; Chigurh repurposed its crystals as shotgun slugs.

Forensics would later note the peculiar crime scene:

1. A perfect Fibonacci spiral of shell casings around Hannibal's abandoned chair
2. The quarter surgically implanted in a crème brûlée's caramelized surface
3. A napkin folded into a human face, its mouth stuffed with piano wire

That same night, across continents:

• A Dallas oil executive was found degloved and stuffed with truffles
• Marseille police discovered a butcher's freezer containing only a coin-operated payphone, receiver off the hook

The restaurant burned to its foundations. Firefighters reported hearing a duet - Bach's Goldberg Variations played on piano and shotgun - until the roof collapsed.

In the ashes, investigators found:

• One intact place setting
• A single bullet, unfired
• The complete works of Ovid reduced to a single page (Book XV: The Nature of Change)

Their philosophies clashed to the end:

Hannibal: "Presentation is everything."
Chigurh: "Everything is nothing."

The mirror above the charred bar bore one final message, written in what might have been lipstick or blood:

Reservations recommended.

The end?
What do you think?
Keep a knife under your pillow tonight...