I Am The Lion: A Riveting Psychological Thriller

by Rachelle Lauro

  What was it doing over there?

  Of course, I started with the obvious. Me. Maybe I had rushed out of my office and pushed the chair a little too hard, causing it to roll too far from my desk. I thought back on my evening last night, then I shook my head. No, I didn’t think so.

  It was so benign though. A chair put out of place. Did I really need to stand here and think about it?

  It was this kind of wrinkle in my reality that drove me to pills in the first place. I longed for the bitter taste of Xanax on my tongue, for the lightness of being, for the falling away of chains. But I’d given all that up. The pills, that is. Deep breaths, I told myself. Deep breaths.

  So I pushed the chair back into place and sat down. Then I discovered something else. I know the layers of crap on my desk better than anyone. Next to that, sat a scented candle (lemon verbena) on an enameled plate that Mom had given me.

  There were piles of paper, notes, a manuscript, empty mugs, some pictures, and Gone With The Wind—closed. I had left it open. I’d left it open to the scene where Scarlet shoots the dirty Yank. It was too early in the season to start my annual read, but I wanted to study how Margaret Mitchell had described her depth of emotions.

  I distinctly remember thinking about Ms. Mitchell and mourning her untimely death. Then I put the book down, reverently, and had gone up to bed. So why in the world was I staring down at a closed book? Had someone been snooping around my desk?

  A shadow fell in my periphery. I glanced up, heart galloping, pulling me back to the stalker days. Back to when we lived in that cheap rental. I’d just taken some sleeping pills and, lying in bed, drugged, I could hear his footsteps outside my flimsy single pane bedroom window. Gawd. Between the sedative and the adrenaline, I’d practically had a coronary.

  But he’s in jail now. He’s gone. We moved out of that house. We moved into this new one.

  So that’s all over, I told myself, feeling a little better. The shadows aren’t moving. Someone is definitely rifling through my things, but at least it’s not the stalker.

  I was straightening up my desk, looking for anything else amiss, when I heard the telltale beeping of the Bobcat loader, reversing in the backyard. I went to the sliding glass door and looked outside.

  The lion roared, a loud agonized sound that sent chills across my skin. Even underfed, he was still a lithe creature made of solid bone, muscle, and sinew. His powerful jaws could easily crunch through bones, and his glowering yellow eyes missed nothing.

  Tuesdays were feeding days. It had taken this intelligent animal only three weeks to determine which day was feeding day. Today was Tuesday. Long before the sun had risen in earnest, roars drifted to my ears. Now, with food in sight, the lion spun on his haunches and anxiously paced the fence line.

  "Come and get it!" Dillon cried, maneuvering the loader to a beheaded horse carcass laying in the bed of his pickup truck.

  Dillon scooped up the body, inched the bucket tantalizingly over the rim of the enclosure, and killed the engine. He climbed out, laughing, while Virginia folded her arms and watched the lion jump and swipe the air, trying to desperately hook a claw into some food. After an over-enthusiastic jump, the lion landed on his back.

  Exhausted and underfed, he got up and waited on his haunches, staring up at the corpse, panting.

  I went outside. "Hey!" I cried, "Are you going to feed him or what? He’s hungry!"

  "Yeah, yeah," Dillon called back, waving his hand at me.

  Then he picked up a long metal pole and poked it through the metal fencing, stirring the tip at the lion. The lion backed away, eyes narrowed into furious slits, snarling. Suddenly, he launched himself at the fence, which bent alarmingly, as Dillon stumbled backward.

  "Fucker," I heard Dillon mutter as he climbed to his feet. "See if you're going to get your breakfast now."

  My heartbeat rose. "Hey!" I cried, hands shaking. "Give him the food!"

  "Oh, give him the food already," I heard Virginia say. They talked for a few seconds longer, both staring at the starving animal, while Virginia rubbed Dillon’s shoulders, until he climbed back into the tractor, started it up, and dumped the carcass inside.

  I watched the lion reduce the mounds of muscle down to a ragged skeleton. Soon he would slip into a food coma. Maybe then I could work up the courage to visit him, when he was satiated and least likely to pounce.

  Lions were sleek, lithe, and arrogantly lazy creatures. They had a lick of white accent fur under their bright amber eyes that were rimmed with dark golden lashes. They were awesome. They were beautiful. And they terrified me. I sighed. Yet another fear to overcome.

  Next week, I thought, turning to go inside. Maybe next week.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The following day, Virginia walked into my office and stopped casually beside my desk, in clear view of both monitors, no doubt to check the progress of the omnibus. "Rebecca" was quickly becoming my guilty pleasure, one that inspired far more words than the adventures of my undead friends.

  In an effort to avoid unwanted lectures on the urgencies of the sequel, Virginia's favorite topic these days, I worked on "Rebecca" in secret.

  Of course, I could just tell her to mind her own business and resolutely shut the door, but that would result in long days of solitude whereby Virginia would sulk and refuse to talk to me.

  To make life copacetic, usually I quickly and smoothly pulled up an old draft of After The End, which I had renamed "Rhenn and Friends" and kept it open in the background, so when she stopped by for a quick chat, she could easily see my inspiring progress.

  Today, however, I'd fallen down a rabbit hole and was in the middle of topping up four thousand words of sun drenched Monte Carlo, luxurious hotel terraces, sparkling waters, mysterious men, and the magic of falling in love.

  Amelia and I were both on the journey together, exploring the first thrill of love, with Maxim's lips brushing against our own, and his husky voice in our ears. It was a heady scene that I never wanted to end.

  Unfortunately for me, lost in the spell, I'd forgotten to minimize the document and bring forth the dummy. It was too late now. Virginia's all-seeing eyes had probably seen the title of the document already, which was clearly not "Rhenn and Friends."

  If I minimized it now, she’d notice. I continued typing, hoping a number written on a pink sticky would lure her attention away from my illicit activities.

  She leaned in closer. "Ben-ja-min," she read out, followed by his number.

  It worked.

  "Who's that?" she asked. "A new character that Rhenn slays?"

  "It's a boy," I said.

  "A boy."

  I stopped typing. "It's FedEx Man, okay?"

  "Mister FedEx Man?" she cried, snapping up the hallowed sticky and walking away with it.

  "Yes, Mister FedEx Man!" I jumped up and plucked the note from her grasping fingers. "You know, a fellow member of the human race?"

  "And he gave you his number?"

  I nodded. "He asked me out. On a zombie date."

  I had to smile, thinking of dressing up in rags and fake blood for our supposed future date. Virginia broke into desperate giggles as I settled back into my chair, pinky sticky safely restored to the side of my monitor. I started typing again, trying to ignore her, hoping she'd go away.

  "Sounds positively deadly," she said, returning to my side. "Are you actually going to go?"

  "Yes." I wasn't sure.

  "Have you called him yet?"

  She got me there. "No," I mumbled. "Not yet. I meant to call this afternoon, after I'm done working."

  "Mmhm," she said dubiously, leaning in. "So, how’s the book coming along?"

  I stopped, fingers poised over the keyboard, gaze steadfastly focused on my document that read "Amelia Meets Maxim" on the top grey bar.

  This defining moment could go several ways: mostly terrible if I blurted out the obvious truth, or maybe neutral with a convenient lie.

  I looked at the pink sticky with Benjamin's n
umber written on it. I'd overcome my fear, opened the door and met Ben, thus I'd been rewarded with a date. Stupidly, I carried over the same logic to Virginia. Perhaps facing my fear of telling her about my work in progress and hopes of writing under my own name would result in the happily ever after she always talked so much about.

  "I'm working on a modern remake of Rebecca."

  "Who?"

  "Rebecca. It's a classic."

  She straightened. ”Who cares about classics?"

  Maybe not.

  "I care about classics," I said, annoyed. "Besides, classics get remade all the time. Jane Eyre is on permanent repeat. And non-classics alike. Freaky Friday, anyone?"

  "People want to read about vampires. People want to read about Rhenn Larson."

  I sighed. "Lots of people read about lots of different things, Jinny. Can you just leave me alone please? I'm working."

  But she stood there, rooted to the carpet. I stopped, minimized the document, and looked up at her. Fresh on my high from answering the door, I plowed on. "Listen, I've been thinking a lot about this. About After The End. I did say that it was really meant to be a stand-alone. I planned from the very beginning. And—and I know I said I would continue . . . but it’s just not working." I paused, trying to gauge her reaction. "I know Mom wanted us to keep the team together, but maybe she didn’t actually mean Amy Mathews. Maybe she meant us . . . like stay friends or something."

  Silence.

  "I really want to write for adults now, Jinny. I want to explore other things. You can be my publicist if you want, and David will just have to understand. He'll—"

  "But he won't understand!"

  "He'll just have to—"

  "He won't because we already signed the contract!"

  "We?!"

  "Yes, we. As in you and I. As in Amy Mathews. There are financial penalties and little things called breach of contract, things—"

  "I told you to wait to sign it!"

  "Well, I waited long enough. David called thirteen thousand times asking for the contract back."

  "I don't care if he flew to the moon looking for it! We are a team, Virginia. That means you talk to me first before you make major decisions, and I talk to you, like I'm trying to do now."

  But she did not reply, because she was secure in the machinations that she'd cast into play. She stood with her hands defiantly on her hips, exasperation written on her face. We both knew she'd laid a trap—a trap that stole away any choice I might have in the matter.

  "I want to write under my name," I said, despite the legal repercussions. "I am going to write under my own name."

  "Eugenia, you don't get it do you. You're nothing. No one cares about you and your hopes and dreams of writing under your own name. People only care about Rhenn Larson and Madeline Storm. You have this illusion of grandeur that just because you wrote After The End, publishers will fall head over heels to buy whatever long-winded stinking pile of crap classic that you type out. When are you going to get it through your thick skull?" She enunciated every word with swift jabs of her finger into my shoulder. "You. Are. A. Nobody."

  "Stop!" I cried, pushing her hand away.

  A strange ominous gleam lit into her eyes, a glittering rage that darkened her blue eyes. I recognized all the signs of a looming rage: the quickening of her breath, the tight thinning lips, a murderous scowl across her brow.

  She had a natural predatory nature that sniffed out weaknesses. If she chose, she could be stunningly brutal, with zero remorse. Except . . . except she'd never turned that rage on me. That is, until that day in the hospital, the day I referred to as Mom Time.

  Just talk about what happened, my therapist had advised me, what harm can it do?

  Short answer? A lot. After the Mom Time episode so long ago, my relationship with Virginia turned volatile. I couldn’t figure out why. I’d tried to talk to her about it, but got only sarcastic comments.

  After we’d lost Mom, I’d started going to a therapist to talk about things, to work through the grief, to get my head straight, to try and figure out why Virginia wouldn’t talk to me about what had happened that day. After four inconclusive sessions and Virginia’s persistent double-talk about the matter that drove me crazy, I stopped going. Sometimes I felt like the more we talked, the worse things got.

  "Ever since that day at the hospital, you’ve been so terrible to me," I said.

  "Not this again," she said, this time keeping her finger holstered.

  "Something happened that day, Jinny. Why won’t you tell me?"

  "You're a nobody," she repeated, at last, avoiding my question yet again.

  "I am somebody, Virginia," I said quietly, heart beating fast. "I'm Eugenia Ward."

  She looked at me with bloodshot eyes, a result of her precipitous mood, and said quietly, "Then be that somebody after you're done being Amy."

  She turned and walked away.

  "Fine!" I called as the door slammed shut, suddenly remembering her snooping. "And stay away from my desk while I’m at it!"

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Virginia, never one to let an argument slow her down, kept pressing me on book details. She wanted to know how much progress I was making, if I’d discovered any new characters, and new plot points that she could mine for forthcoming interviews.

  "I have to keep the fans interested," she told me after I warned her on the dangers of touting a book that hasn’t even been written. So many things change between Once Upon A Time and The End. Whole characters can get wiped out of the book. But she didn’t care. And I was powerless to stop her. "I have to fan the flames of Amy’s admiration."

  You mean yours? I thought, but knew better than to say it out loud.

  "You stick to your job, and I’ll stick to mine," she told me after I inquired about her upcoming interview and what she planned on revealing.

  "I have a right to know, Jinny," I replied.

  "The only thing you need to know is that I’m hustling to keep Amy relevant, while you dink around with book number two, trying to figure out if you even feel like writing it. So you’ll have to forgive me if I resort to a little . . . fabrication."

  "Fabrication? You mean lies?"

  "I mean story telling. You know, the stuff you’re supposed to be doing? I can’t keep hauling Amy around like an animated corpse. You’re going to have to deliver sooner or later." She went on chopping the onions. "I mean, don’t you feel a little self-indulgent? Maybe a little selfish? This isn’t about you anymore. It’s about our fans. Our publisher. It’s about us. It’s about the team."

  The team. I didn’t reply. A malodor of guilt drifted over me. I did feel bad. That was Mom’s single dying wish. Keep the team together. And Virginia was hustling. It helped that she was a born hustler, but I couldn’t deny her willingness to break a sweat.

  But this Amy Mathews thing was starting to feel like conjoined twins, with two sets of legs walking in opposite directions. I’d read an article about conjoined twins who declined separation, and went on to marry two different men. Must have been awkward, I thought. Almost as awkward as Amy Mathews. At least Amy was making a decent living. Okay, a really nice living. At least I didn’t have to witness Virginia’s private moments. I guess things could be a lot worse.

  So I got busy. She had a point. What else was I going to do? She’d signed a legally binding contract. So I wrote, and I walked. And I walked, and I wrote. And prolific piles of poop spewed from my fingertips. I fluffed up the quality, so Virginia would get off my back, but secretly I began to worry. My heart wasn’t in the grave anymore, like it had been when I wrote the book in the first place. My tone was changing. I was changing. I could only hope the fans wouldn’t notice.

  A few nights later, I heard the TV blaring loudly in the living room. Virginia must be spending some quality time with Dickhead, which meant that the TV would be occupied all evening long. So I decided to warm up a bean burrito and watch a documentary on my computer. I'd spent more time in my office cave than usual,
trying to avoid Virginia, trying to get going with Rhenn and Friends.

  In the meantime, the hot Monte Carlo sun continued to lure me into the world of Amelia and Maxim. She’d fallen hopelessly in love by now and was about to embark on a wild, chilling ride to the moorlands of England.

  Rhenn and his friends were in various phases of not so dead, an apt metaphor for how I felt when I had written After The End. I was not dead, but I was not alive. And to embark on a second and third book of vampirism would mean a long journey into the dark land of the undead, with blood as their only sustenance, the hunt for it being the primary plot device.

  I loved Rhenn, but when I had buried him at the end of After The End, I never intended to disturb him from his eternal rest. I never planned to rise him up and breathe new life into his shriveled appendages. But that was what the reader demanded, apparently. That is what Virginia demanded.

  I watched the microwave count down, while my recent "conversations" with Virginia roiled around in my head like bad gas. Virginia and I were like the tide, sometimes we were in, sometimes we were out. Sometimes we were very close. Sometimes, we were as distant as galaxies. But we shared a common memory bank of horrible childhood experiences, half of which she'd blocked out, the other half I had. Sometimes, we jogged each other’s memories.

  15 . . . 14 . . . 13 . . .

  We'd found common ground in reminiscing about our childhood (Virginia called it our child-hell.) I'd told Virginia all about the piss drinking story; she knew that I'd been mercilessly bullied all through school. But we were sisters. We were bound by blood. And that stuff is pretty messy.

  During the few years that we’d attended the same school, she'd stuck up for me. After Monica and friends witnessed Virginia’s awesome brutality, they largely left me alone. But then Mom enrolled Virginia into a vocational school, and I'd been left to face the jeering masses alone.