I Am The Lion: A Riveting Psychological Thriller

by Rachelle Lauro

  No, there was nothing about this house that scared me, nothing except the lion enclosure that Virginia and her boyfriend had decided to install in the backyard.

  She’d met Dillon at a local dive bar, where they’d spent the evening trying to drink one another under the table. Shot for shot they’d gamely matched one another, or so the story goes, seemingly caring not one whit for their livers, until they blacked out in unison and miraculously woke up in the downstairs bathroom.

  He was an attractive guy, hitting all the hallmarks with his dusty blonde hair, blue eyes, and gym-honed biceps. But I never did warm to him. He seemed to bring out the unstable part of my sister’s personality, the part that scared me.

  "Rescues," Virginia had said to me that day she and Dickhead announced their grand backyard master plan. "These animals are going to be put down if nobody steps in and saves them."

  "It's not like we're going to breed them," he’d said dismissively, opening up the fridge and helping himself to a beer. Cssh-kink. And he upended the can on his mouth.

  The cssh-kink sound of the can opening made my skin crawl. Dillon made my skin crawl, come to think of it. I'd stood in the kitchen that day watching his Adam's apple bob up and down as he packed away yet another beer that I had bought, mesmerized by my consuming dislike of the buy. Glug, glug, glug. "Ahhhh," he’d said, belched, and laughed.

  He wore loose jeans, a backwards Red Socks ball cap, and a tight t-shirt with a skull and bones on the front that carefully outlined his swelling pectorals. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been hitting the steroids, but he certainly hadn’t been shy with the dosage.

  He was "between jobs," but took weekend gigs working as a bouncer at a local bar, complained about money, or the lack thereof, and smoked pot "on the rare occasion."

  "It's your money, Virginia," Dillon had said, shrugging. "You can do what you want."

  And so, lacking the courage to challenge him, I could only watch from afar as they planned their lion enclosure and handled the steady traffic of contractors, who filed in from the front drive to the burgeoning pad of flattened earth in the back that would become the lion’s own private African savannah.

  I watched the work progress from the safety of my office. When I asked Virginia why she had to level a perfectly good grassy area, natural and soft bedding for our soon-to-be pampered pet, and apply a pad of concrete, she replied that it was for sanitary reasons.

  I pointed out that she’d built the cage in the corner of the perimeter fence where a small escape door had been installed. She helpfully informed me that lions can’t open doors.

  Ten foot poles went in every six feet. Then came the wrapping of chain-link fencing and a reinforced gate. Overall it was ugly and imposing, complete with a small army green barrack that was meant to shelter the lion from inclement weather.

  But that was a while ago. They’d built the enclosure, but it sat empty. Maybe they couldn’t find a rescue. Maybe they gave up.

  Virginia called it my genius cave, but it was an office by any approximations. It was dark and wood-paneled, filled with ceiling-to-floor bookshelves. A beautiful blue Persian rug sat directly under my six-legged antique desk. And best of all, it featured a safe room that I had installed after the stalker saga. Mostly, I used the safe room for storage and book overflow, but Virginia insisted that we stock-pile food, in case the end of the world arrived sooner than expected.

  In my genius cave, I coaxed my characters to tell me their every thought, which I dutifully recorded on my computer screen. Well, screens to be precise. I had two.

  One screen featured a snippet of a conversation between Rhenn and Madeline that had popped into my head earlier in the day, something about taking down the Do Not Disturb sign. The other, situated directly in front of me, showed my guilty work in progress.

  Normally, I shut down all periphery activities when I work, but I kept the side document open for Rhenn and Friends, ready to receive any missives from the land of the undead. After all, the matter was urgent.

  But Monte Carlo kept luring me back to its sun-drenched beaches, sparkling blue sea, and romantic coastline. Indeed, my young soon-to-be Second Mrs. De Winters was shaping up quite nicely. Maxim De Winters was almost as alluring as Rhenn Larson, minus the propensity for drinking blood. Maxim also harbored some dark, interesting secrets.

  I'd just finished the scene where my young narrator, Amelia, arrived at the hotel with her well-to-do group of girlfriends. Jennifer's daddy had sent them all out for her twenty-fourth birthday party. Amelia paid for herself, though she could barely afford it.

  Amelia bunked up with Melissa Smiley, who seemed to have far too much money that her humble background justified. She was also a little cagey about that particular topic. Amelia suspected "exotic dancing," maybe a bit of drug running, or a very, very generous sugar daddy. She wasn’t sure which, but she planned on getting to the bottom of it . . . tomorrow.

  I finished up the scene, saved, and closed out the document. Then I moved Rhenn front and center, hoping for something good. I needed to expand on this snippet of conversation. I needed to write this book.

  I worked for about an hour, trying to work Cyclops into the conversation. He turned out to be stubborn, not very smart, and very blunt about his aspirations to "get" Madeline. At one point he held my dear groggy Rhenn by the neck, but that didn’t feel right, so I had to delete two pages and start over. I wrote until things came to a natural close, leaving myself a little opening to think about for the rest of the day.

  Then I leaned back, pleased with my word count. Rhenn and Friends didn’t seem so dire. Maybe I could hit that deadline after all. A little swell of hope washed over me. Maybe I didn’t need a tragedy to drive me through another installment. Maybe legalese would do the trick.

  I went over to Wonder Couch, a studded chesterfield situated in front of the fireplace, where Brain liked to solve troublesome details, and sat down. I was lighting my scented candle, when I heard a truck reversing into the backyard. I got up, went to my patio door, and watched a horse trailer carefully ease toward the cage gate and stop.

  The driver of the rig hopped out, yanked up his beleaguered britches, and unchained the trailer door.

  As I watched Dillon, eagerly peering into the horse trailer, I wondered whose big idea was it to keep a lion in the back yard anyway.

  I'd only seen videos of these magnificent creatures, roaming the parched Serengeti accompanied by David Attenborough's whisper soft voice describing their hopes and fears as they swiped flies from their noses.

  So it was with great surprise that I saw the sorry creature creep out of one cage into another. He was emaciated with clumps missing from his brown scraggly mane. He still walked with proud, lithe grace, but his shoulder blades rose and fell like sharp working knives under his dull yellow coat.

  He was emaciated and balding. His coat was dull and dirty. But his tail swished daringly, his mouth hung open, teeth at-the-ready. He'd seen his share of abuse, but he wasn't about to succumb to it. No, he stood ready to fight.

  And fight, I’d discover, he would.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  October finally arrived, bringing sharp evening breezes, early sunsets, and crimson foliage. My days passed in word replicating monotony. Brain had produced a few gems, but I still struggled to put together a story line for Rhenn Larson, made harder still by "Rebecca," which bloomed in my imagination.

  Amelia had just met Maxim on the hotel terrace. She’d just had an argument with Melissa Smiley about the mystery behind her ill-gotten gains, and had wandered out to clear her mind. Maxim, dressed handsomely in an ivory linen suit, a light blue collared shirt, and impeccable tan loafers, lent her a sympathetic ear.

  He was clean shaven, smelled of cedar cologne, and had eyes the color of a tropical waters. He was an easy character to spend a thousand words on, and his quiet demeanor, good manners, and elusiveness made my young Amelia fall helplessly in love.

  I found myself falling down the rabbit
hole with these two, whose conversation came easily, whose wardrobes were so clear, whose hopes and dreams broke through my writing like a ray of sunshine on a stormy day, always keeping the reader's wary eye on the horizon, watching the storm clouds gather.

  In this modern remake, Maxim and Amelia could go to bed together and make passionate love, a scene that I knew was coming, but worried about writing.

  I'm pretty sure that would have happened to me in college with a boy who had beer goggles firmly fastened to his face, but my grades were terrible so I'd gone to the local community college, which was more like distance learning center, thoroughly dashing any hopes of debauchery.

  I had hopes of transferring over to a real university, maybe experience a thing or two, but by then Mom had fallen sick and Amy Mathews happened. So there I was, a twenty-two-year-old virgin, without even a single kiss to my name.

  I was too busy ushering Mom through the poisoned labyrinth of chemotherapy, hoping she'd make it out alive. I was too busy to think about boys. It was there, deep in the mystifying folds of loss, pain, and uncertainty that a part of myself died along with Mom. The part of me that I wanted to resurrect.

  "Resurrection can wait," I said to myself, turning to my computer screen. Guilt started to burn. I needed to keep the team together. I needed to honor my mom’s dying wishes.

  And so I started to fill the blank screen with words, trying to convince Rhenn to talk to me. I had the Cyclops complication, but I needed more.

  Sometimes writing is like jump-starting a dead car. You have to push and push until you get the momentum going. Then you pop the clutch and zoom off into the wild blue yonder, or sputter. But at least you get going.

  That is exactly what I planned to do. And so I started typing and waiting for some momentum. I'd filled a few pages, unloading about a thousand words on Cyclop’s interest in Madeline, when the intercom buzzed.

  Probably another delivery for Virginia's soon to be pampered pet, I thought, annoyed at this interruption right when my beater of a car started coughing back to life.

  I got up, walked down the hallway to the intercom next to the front door, and punched the button.

  "Yes?"

  "FedEx. Got a delivery for ya."

  FedEx Man.

  Suddenly, all my promises of yester week rose to the forefront of my mind. I'd promised—no I'd sworn— that I would not give in to my fears. I would answer the door.

  "Come on in!" I cried a touch too cheerily, and pressed the ‘open gate’ button. Through the small CCTV screen, I watched, stomach churning, as he shifted into gear, and rolled out of sight.

  I paced back and forth a few times, listening to the ominous growl of the FedEx truck rushing up the driveway. I had approximately two minutes to get the front door open.

  Two whole minutes to pat down my flyaway hair and pinch my cheeks. Thank God I'd put some makeup on this morning. I feverishly looked at myself in the faux-aged decorative mirror, trying to see past the fake cracks, trying to figure out if I looked okay.

  I pulled my hair around the nape of my neck, and let it fall alluringly over my shoulder. Not alluring, I thought, pulling it back. Stupid. Then I looked at my outfit. Great. I’d donned my lucky writing pants today, an old pair of pink velour house pants that I wouldn’t have time to change.

  I heard the cab door slam shut.

  What does it matter anyway? It's not like he’s going notice you, I told myself. He'll hand over the package, jam the electronic signing thing into my hand, and then he'll leave. That made me feel a little better. At least I wouldn't have Virginia hanging over my shoulder, offering caustic words of support. She'd gone out for the day. It was just me . . . and FedEx Man.

  He knocked. And with my heart beating high and fast in my throat, before I lost the courage, I trudged to the front door—and I opened it.

  There stood FedEx Man. His lips were nicely shaped, his nose small and straight. He was slight of frame, which suited me just fine. He tugged on the back of his trousers (he wore trousers today) and handed me the package.

  "Sorry about leaving your package last time," he said. "I was running late."

  "Oh," I said, surprised he'd even remembered, and waved my hand dismissively. "It's okay. Nobody stole it or anything."

  "That's good," he said. "I'd probably get fired if my deliveries went missing."

  "Really?" I asked, surprised to hear about corporate strict standards these days.

  "No, just kidding," he said, laughing.

  And I laughed too, nervously. I was aware that I had the word “luscious” printed across my bottom. Don’t turn around, I told myself.

  He handed me the package. I pretended to study the address, anything to distract myself from the fact that I was talking to a real live person, who talked back, smiled even, a person that I didn't want to leave.

  "Looks like something for my sister," I concluded, even though I had no idea. When I looked up, I found his eyes meeting my gaze. They were midnight blue with golden prisms that reminded me of distant galaxies. Not distant galaxies, I thought. Nebulas.

  I'd done some cursory research on the astronomical event when I’d written the first draft of After The End. The Crab Nebula had captured my imagination, with its spidery filaments of gold that traced across a field of blue. A remnant of a supernova. A catastrophic explosion. Death of an old star, in order for there to be the birth of a new one.

  "I guess you should sign for it," he said.

  "Oh, right. Yeah, I don't want you to get fired or anything." And I signed, meaning every word.

  He took back his implement. "So, were you actually home when I left that package at your door?"

  “Yeah, sorry." Sorry for what? "I was . . . writing. I'm a writer. And I was . . . busy writing."

  "Oh, are you? I love to read. What kind of books do you write?"

  I hadn't expected any interest in me. I had only prepared myself for an awkward handover of the goods, followed by an obligatory signature, and some generic courtesies. Here, FedEx Man was asking me questions, personal questions that I couldn't believe I was answering.

  "I write about vampires."

  "Cool! Bloodsuckers."

  "Yeah." Though I hated to think of Rhenn Larson, my sensitive complex protagonist who slayed all of the Monica Schaffers if the world, as a mere bloodsucker.

  "What's the name of your book? Maybe I've heard of it."

  Here is where we stumbled onto awkward territory. Nobody knows about Amy’s true identity. Nobody knows she doesn’t exist.

  "I don't think so," I said, shrugging. "Probably not."

  "That's too bad," he said, with genuine disappointment, kicking the toe rail and slipping his hand into his pocket. Both of us seemingly lost in the moment that we didn't want to end. Well, maybe just me.

  "Hey," he said, looking up. "There's going to be a really cool a zombie block party downtown for Halloween, with a ‘Dress Up Like The Dead' party with zombie cocktails and everything."

  "Oh, wow,” I said, thinking I'd never be able to work up the courage to step foot in that hothouse of social exposure.

  "Are you going to go?" he asked, nebula eyes searching mine.

  "Oh no," I said, glancing back inside to my oasis, to my comfortable, cushioned coffin. "I don’t think so."

  "We should go," said he.

  My heart skittered a few beats. I looked into his supernova eyes, wide with nervous anticipation, golden spidery prisms lit up like a galactic event, the corner of his mouth pulled into a hopeful smile.

  "My name is Benjamin, by the way, but people just call me Ben."

  And before I could reply, he grabbed a pen from his pocket, clicked it into action, and scribbled his phone number on the top of the box. "Well, I gotta get going. Special deliveries await." His jaw muscles clenched ever so slightly. "Call me okay? I mean—if you want to."

  "Yeah. Okay," I mumbled, only because I couldn't think anything else to say. "Okay, I will."

  CHAPTER NINE


  We should go. Did he mean go out? As in, a date?

  I floated back to my office as if little springy clouds were stuck to the bottom of my feet. I put the box down on my desk and carefully copied his phone number onto a pink sticky and stuck it to the side of my computer monitor.

  Ben. As in Ben Dover? A snaking childhood voice taunted. I wondered if he had also suffered from his own personal and private Monica Schaffer. If he had, he didn't seem worse for the wear.

  He had a job that required interaction with people, and had passed off his phone number—all the hallmarks of a well-adjusted young man. A young man who had just invited me out on a zombie date. Hadn't he? A rising thrill snuck into my heart.

  The little flap of pink paper wavered invitingly. But then disappointment set in. I was pretty sure I'd ever actually go. First, I had to work up the courage to call. Then came the next obstacle of thinking of something to say, besides, "Hello."

  I lay down on Wonder Couch and gazed up at my coffered ceiling. Sometimes, in moments of distress, I counted the edges of the ceiling beams, sometimes two at a time, counting in parallel, always arriving at the same number. It calmed me. It took my mind off of more important things, like calling Benjamin.

  The next day, I made more progress on "Rebecca" and less progress on Rhenn and Friends, while the pink sticky wavered in the corner of my eye. Thoughts of a date with Ben never ventured far from my mind.

  After I'd finished another scene, whereby Amelia learned of Manderley, Maxim's alluring estate in England, I paused for a moment and gazed at Ben's phone number, a sequence of digits that could change my life forever, if I could just work up the courage to dial them into my cell phone and push call.

  Not today, I thought. Maybe tomorrow.

  Well, tomorrow arrived with a surprise. Two to be precise. Good or bad, I wasn’t so sure. It was one of those weird things, where you doubt your own sanity, but then take your own side. I found the chair in my office pushed away from desk, sitting way off to the side. I looked around, feeling the distinctive prickles of fear rushing over my skin, carrying me back to those anxiety-filled days, back when the stalker was still at large.