I Am The Lion: A Riveting Psychological Thriller

by Rachelle Lauro

  That day in the hospital changed everything though. Suddenly, she wasn’t so keen to take my side. Suddenly, I didn’t know whose side she was on.

  10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .

  I looked at my reflection on the microwave door. I watched my chin pucker, and my vision blur with tears, thinking about her words. She’d fought for me. Now, she called me a nobody.

  Ding!

  I was picking out a knife and fork from the silverware drawer, when I heard hushed voices drift in from the living room.

  "She wants to be somebody," Virginia said disdainfully. "And I told her, I said we have a contract. We have legally binding deadlines."

  "But she is somebody," Dickhead said. "She's Pewgenia, the Piss Drinker."

  Virginia giggled. "Sssh! Don't say that so loud! You're not supposed to know."

  Their voices dropped into low inaudible tones. I stood there, unmoving, while the poison dart of Virginia’s betrayal soared through the air and pierced me in the heart.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I spent the following few days trying to forget Dillon’s voice drifting in from the living room and Virginia's vicious giggling. It was excruciating to know that Virginia had shared my most humiliating secret. A secret that Dickhead could freely use against me. It was a painful reminder of my school days that I had tried so hard to forget, days that had destroyed so much of me.

  I lay in bed that night, staring up at the dark ceiling, while a painful lump formed in my throat, realizing that Virginia had resurrected the very thing I had tried so hard to bury. Why? I wondered. Why had she done that? Maybe she wanted to make herself look better in Dillon’s eyes. She hadn't been bullied. She didn’t drink Monica Schaffer’s piss.

  But as the days passed, the painful lump in my throat crystallized into hurt anger, which morphed again into cold, hard resentment. Resentment that stopped me from furtively hiding "Rebecca." Open burning resentment that would send Amy Mathews into early retirement.

  "What's the matter?" Virginia asked a few days later, walking into my office and plumping her wide behind down on the edge of my desk. "You haven't said a word to me in three days."

  "Do you mind?" I asked, glancing at her leisurely placed posterior.

  She removed herself from my desk and sat herself down on Wonder Couch. "What's gotten into you?"

  "What has gotten into me?" I asked, scoffing and looking away. Tears pricked my eyes, Dillon’s vicious whispering still fresh in my mind. "I heard you other night. Rather, I heard your shit for brains boyfriend." I looked up at her, blinking back the tears, chin trembling stupidly. "How could you?"

  "How could I what?" she asked, but her expression had suspiciously changed from anger to guilt, and she didn't offer up any typical outrage at my description of her boyfriend.

  "You know," I said with a cold voice, wiping away a tear with my fist. My throat ached; I swallowed hard against it. "You told him about—about Pewgenia." My voice cracked. "The Piss Drinker."

  Silence. Resounding silence.

  "Oh, Genie!" she cried. "Don't be so sensitive. It was just a joke!"

  "Jokes are typically meant to be funny."

  She reached for a book on my coffee table and leafed through it. "Only if everyone involved has a sense of humor."

  Suddenly, I was tired. Tired of being ridiculed. Tired of being told I needed a sense of humor while others tore me down mercilessly. Tired of being Pewgenia, the Piss Drinker.

  "There's nothing left for Rhenn," I said. "You can tell David whatever you want. The book is over."

  She got up from the couch and strode toward me. "What do you mean? There needs to be something left for Rhenn. There needs to be more books!"

  "It's not going to happen."

  "Eugenia!" she shouted, which sent a precipitous chill across the room. "You'd better think of something to write," she continued after a brief pause, struggling to calm her voice, "and you better think of it quick. This isn't write whatever you feel like comedy hour. This is serious business. David is counting on you. I am counting on you. Millions of our stupid little fans are counting on you."

  "All those stupid little fans pay our bills, Virginia. And if it wasn’t for them, Amy would be nothing. A nobody." That seemed to stop her monologue short. "And they aren't stupid. They're nice. I like them."

  "Plenty of professional authors manage to hit their deadlines. You just need more discipline. That's what it is." She started pacing. "You need to sit down, every day, and—"

  "Discipline? I'm the one who produced the entire ninety-thousand word book in the first place!"

  "—type-type-type." Virginia mimed, pretending to pound away on an invisible keyboard. "It's not that hard, Genie."

  "Oh, isn't it? Why don't you try then. Go on. Go 'type-type-type' out a best-selling novel. Or three!"

  "You listen to me, Eugenia, and you listen hard." She glowered at me, eye hot with anger. "When that deadline approaches, you better have something sellable to give to David."

  "Or else what? Agent Smith will cry into his soup?" I leaned back in my swivel chair, defiantly meeting her gaze. "Rhenn is dead. How's that for a joke."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Overnight, our three thousand square foot house seemed to double in size. After my version of a joke, Virginia disappeared. I heard her early in the morning, clattering around in the kitchen, and smelled the strong aroma of coffee drifting up to my bedroom. We usually ate breakfast together, but we strictly avoided each other now, an arrangement that suited me just fine.

  I listened for the sounds of her dishes rattling in the sink and the front door shutting, then I came downstairs. This put my usual schedule somewhat out of whack. I liked to be up by seven, coffeed by eight, and writing by nine. But my avoidance efforts meant that I eventually sat down, mentally prepared to write, by ten or so. And each day the minutes slipped even later.

  As the days wore on, I began to wonder who would break down first and toss a half-hearted apology over the trench. Not me, I assured myself every morning, locking eyes with my own reflection. She owed me a sincere and heartfelt apology.

  Definitely not the other way around.

  But as the days stretched into a whole week, the atmosphere around the house became stifling and lonely.

  Of course, I could write in my office uninterrupted, a nice upside to this new turn of events. In fact, I worked on "Rebecca" freely now. But somehow, even that lost its allure. The driving force that put words on the page had disappeared, and suddenly I understood why having affairs were so alluring. It wasn't about loving one another; it was about getting away with it.

  I drifted back to Rhenn and Madeline, my first loves, wondering what they had been up to, if anything, since I'd abandoned them last.

  As it turned out, there was a new character in the land of the undead. A shapeshifter named Falco emerged from the shadows, dark and silent, and immediately captured Madeline Storm's attention. Suddenly, I had a love triangle on my hands that enthralled me too.

  I wrote about three thousand words on this new development, trying to get a better feeling for how Falco came to be, and just exactly what forms he could take. As I progressed, I realized that maybe Falco was the secret to the series. Maybe Falco could drive Amy Mathews onto book two and three.

  It was a possibility. It was also a good solution to my sisterly stalemate. Lots of writers worked on two different manuscripts at the same time, didn't they? I didn’t know.

  I could surprise her with book two, I thought in a rush, polishing off a chapter dedicated to Falco. A new character was exactly what this series needed, not more from the same old folks. Falco's rise would disrupt the carefully balanced world that I had created.

  I smiled, thinking of Rhenn's hollow incisors growing long and thirsty with jealous rage. Maybe Falco could off the Cyclops character that had been bumbling around in my manuscript, too.

  That evening I hadn't even noticed that the sun had set, leaving me working under a single column of light.
My office was dark; the house unusually silent for a Friday night. I saved my document and closed it, feeling content and productive. Then I rose from my chair and flicked on the ceiling light.

  Virginia and Dillon usually 'pre-partied' at the house on Friday nights, drinking and growing louder by the minute, then abruptly abandoned their pursuits for a night on the town. But tonight, neither Virginia nor her boyfriend, always happy to make himself at home, were raiding the liquor supply.

  I walked out of my office and down the dimly lit hallway towards the kitchen. "Hello?" I called out preemptively, hoping I wouldn't catch them in a passionate clench somewhere in the dark depths of the living room.

  Nothing.

  I switched on the kitchen lights and saw a single shot glass sitting out on the counter, sitting next to the mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniels. Half-drunk bottles of hard liquor were standard fare in the Ward household, courtesy of Virginia's ever evolving philosophy on self-medication.

  "Do you ever watch what you drink?" I had asked Virginia one Sunday afternoon, after she'd spent the entire day comatose on the couch, nursing a nasty hangover, arm slung over her eyes, moaning about the light, the light! "I mean, because of your condition," I clarified.

  "Alcohol isn't the problem," she'd replied. "It's the doctors and all the pills they try to push—they're the problem. Doctors don't know anything anyway. They're just government sanctioned pill pushers. They don't know half as much as I do about my—about mood disorders, or whatever. They just prescribe whatever pharmaceutical company pays them the most. Besides, I'm not really convinced there's anything wrong with me. I watched this really interesting video on YouTube, you should watch it, it's by a doctor in Norway called Jorgensen or something like that.

  "Anyway, he says that all these so called disorders are just created by big pharma and pushed by these so-called doctors. For example, ADD was miraculously diagnosed right when Eli Lilly developed the cure for it." Here she used air quotes. "Adderall, by the way, is just a combination of amphetamines. As in crystal meth? This is your brain on drugs? Now, we have a whole generation of kids that are meth-heads thanks to our advanced medical knowledge."

  "Virginia, you have a chemical disorder. I read a bunch of peer-reviewed scientific papers that said alcohol was the key factor in—"

  "That's old stuff."

  "But it was all recently published."

  "You really ought to watch that YouTube video," she had said, patting around futilely. "Is my phone over there?"

  I had abandoned my efforts that day. It was clear to me that Virginia, along with her medical disorder, had acquired some sort of superhuman power of denial that simple logic could not overcome.

  "Hello?" I called out again for safety measures, picked up the bottle of Jack Daniels, and looked at the contents. It was two-thirds empty, the generous dent of which Virginia and Dillon had made last weekend. So Virginia had only a shot or two, I guessed from where the line of tawny liquid hit the label (I kept track). Not great, but not catastrophic.

  To slow her progress, I took the bottle, went to the sink, and dumped the rest down the drain. Then I walked over and stomped on the trash can pedal. The lid flew open. There lay another bottle of Jack Daniels—empty.

  Slowly, as if handling a snake, I reached down and grabbed it. I held two empty bottles of Jack Daniels, one in each hand. This meant that one of them was new. One was not.

  The house was deathly silent. A dark shadow crawled over me, a sinister whisper in my ear, saying: Virginia. Where is Virginia?

  The mind can play terrible tricks in moments of high alarm. I ran up the stairs, two by two, envisioning Virginia passed out in a gutter somewhere. Maybe she’d wandered out of the house and fumbled past the security gate in a drunken haze. It could be any gutter. And if she was with Dickhead, it could be any gutter in any part of town.

  I'd have to get in my car, I thought, systematically opening the doors along the hallway and looking inside, and drive around town looking for a drunk redhead.

  Maybe the police had apprehended her, and currently held her in a detox cell, waiting for a responsible adult (not Dillon) to claim her. A surge of hatred rose up my throat just thinking about him. I'm sure he's behind this, I thought, opening the last door that led to a spare bedroom, and finding it empty.

  But then all ill thoughts of Dillon stopped cold when I heard the driving sound of water running in the far bathroom—Virginia's bathroom. It was a heavy flow, gauging from the sound coming from the pipes, a heavy demanding flow that could quickly fill her Jacuzzi bathtub.

  It was also a sound, I suddenly realized, that had been on for some time. Yet it continued unabated, flowing free as if draining every last drop of water in Glenhaven. There were no telltale sounds of water splashing. It was eerily silent, except for the deep rumbling sound.

  At the end of the hallway lay Virginia's room. I would ask myself many times in the ensuing weeks, why hadn't I rushed there first? Something must have stayed my feet and slowed my tread. Somehow, I must have known what I'd find.

  I went to her room and opened the bedroom door, listening to the sound of rushing water growing louder. Her bathroom door was closed; a bright sliver of light glowed under the door.

  Water seeped out from under the bathroom door, spreading across the carpet in a dark semicircle. Slowly, I opened the door, heart pumping in my chest like a locomotive, praying to find the bathroom empty, knowing somehow it wouldn't be.

  I found her propped against the bathtub, wearing a purple bathrobe that gaped open, exposing one breast. Water pooled around her, wicking up the sleeves and waist.

  Hand prints marred the foggy bathroom mirrors as if insane people had tried to claw their way out from the other side.

  "Jinny?" I asked, going to her.

  But she did not move. I coughed, waving away the pungent smell of metabolized alcohol, slogged over to the overflowing faucet, and turned it off.

  I bent to her slumped over figure and pulled long strands of red hair from her pasty moist face. I could see her ribcage rising and falling in quick little jolts. "Jinny!" I cried, patting her pale cheeks. I tried to haul her upright and ease the compression on her neck, but I couldn't budge her solid weight.

  So I laid her down on the bathroom floor, her hair floating around her face like a halo of fire; her normally scowling face rendered peaceful.

  "Oh God. No, no, no." I pulled up her sleeve to check her pulse and froze. A flat razor lay in her crumpled hand. Tiny slit marks marred her palm. Frantically, I pulled up the sleeve, looking for the telltale bloody gash of a life thrown away.

  I found her wrist unharmed. I sagged with relief, but the sinister whisperings returned, urging me to lift the sleeve higher and see for myself . . .

  There, cut deep into the flesh of her forearm, lay the bloody homage she'd paid to our fictitious writer. She'd scrawled "AMY" in large block letters along the length of her forearm, some gouges deeper than others, weeping with dark red and pink rivulets of blood.

  She roused then, choking and coughing. Gently, I lifted her head and helped her take in a deep breath. She looked up at me, eyes red and swimming, and said with rotting breath, "Don't let us die . . . don't let Amy die."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It took us both about a week to collectively recover from Virginia's alcohol poisoning. After I'd found the cuts, she passed out again, coughing up sputum and bile. Somehow I'd dragged her downstairs, levered her into my car, and rushed her to the hospital, where they pumped her stomach.

  She'd stayed overnight at the hospital so doctors could monitor her recovery and take immediate action if she lost consciousness again, which she had on two occasions.

  I dozed on the armchair next to her bed with the emergency buzzer in my hand, listening to the soft reassuring beeps of her heart monitor.

  I'd gone into medical mode, a mode I knew all too well. I felt like I was back in the hospital days with Mom, driving her to the emergency room, answering all the nos
y questions that admission secretaries seemed to think they had a right to know. "What kind of infection?", "Has she had a bowel movement lately?"

  The following morning, the doctor stood at the foot of Virginia's bed, clipboard in hand, lecturing her about the dangers of hard boozing and how close she'd come to dying. "I haven't pumped that much alcohol out of someone’s stomach in a good long time," he told her. "You're lucky you survived."

  When he started talking about the effect that alcohol has on brain chemistry, especially for those suffering from mood disorders, she looked out of the window, clearly disinterested in the topic at hand.

  At least she survived, I thought, grateful for it. Under the hot urgencies of almost losing my sister, our petty disagreements faded away.

  Once home, she slept mostly, rising occasionally like a zombie dressed in a terrycloth bathrobe, and dug around in the pantry for some chips, or sat down in the living room.

  I emptied every bottle of alcohol we kept in the house. Dillon would just arrive with more, but at least he’d exercise some constraint due to the toll on his own wallet. But he hadn't stopped by since Virginia's episode, a welcome upside to the whole event.

  The eighth day dawned bright and warm. Virginia was making a good recovery. She’d sworn off booze for the foreseeable future. I could finally turn my thoughts back to writing, and perhaps even, calling Ben. The end of the month was fast approaching. If I didn’t call him soon, I’d miss the big date.

  During Virginia's hospital stay, I'd thought of some poignant scenes, and was anxious to flesh them out before Brain moved on to more fertile territory. My two lovebirds, Amelia and Maxim, had just slept together.

  Amelia had some trouble extracting herself from the clutches of her over-possessive boyfriend, a modern twist, to which Maxim valiantly resolved. Sigh.