“Lion” Natascha Maciejewski

He sat staring at me, always staring. A look so intense it was unbroken by words, actions, or
even breathing, it seemed. Those green eyes bored into my soul, reading the words inside
my heart with such careless ease I had no choice but to surrender, dizzy and breathless
under the power of his gaze.

When his girlfriend came into the room, he would look away, picking up his cigarettes, Rizla,
and ever-bulging bag of weed, and roll another joint with professional fingers. His nails were
bitten down to the quick and his dark arms were covered in scars, war wounds from 25
years living his life.

When he spoke, his girlfriend jumped. “Get me a beer”, he would demand, and with her
back turned he stole more of my soul with those eyes. He would pass me the joint, touching
my fingers for just a little too long. “Turn up the music”, he told her, and his leg would brush
against mine under the table. He passed me his beer and told me to drink but I shook my
head. He squeezed my legs tightly with his “if you love me, you will drink”, he whispered,
and so I drank.

Sending his girlfriend to the shop for more beer and cigarettes, we were alone in the flat
together. He kissed me hard on the mouth, his tongue tasting mine. He bit my lip and
grabbed my arm with such force it later displayed five distinctly round bruises, coloured in
blue and purple and green. He spoke words that made me blush and ache somewhere deep
inside.

Everything would be different when I was 16, he told me, he would leave his girlfriend, and
we could be together. I did not believe him, but my heart didn’t listen to anything my head
had to say. It was those eyes, you see, they paralysed any instinct to flee like an anaesthetic
drip, drip, dripping into my veins.

He went to prison after a racist bar fight where he pulled a knife, cutting through soft belly
flesh, hospitalising his victim for weeks, and I remained drugged. Other women came out of
the woodwork - three new pregnancies, and I remained drugged. On Day Release, he went
to his girlfriend’s house and they spent hours in bed together, and still I remained drugged.

But he came to me on the day of his release carrying all his worldly belongings – two Tesco’s
bags full of clothes, one bag full of letters - letters from all those other women, secret late
night reading which I tortured myself with all too willingly.

He quickly became obsessive and controlling, waiting for me outside the school gates at
lunchtime, at home time, always watching. He forced his way into a friend’s party and held
him against the wall by his throat just for talking to me; he threatened strangers in the
street just for looking at me.
He did eventually leave all those other women for me and then he phoned my house and
spoke to my mother, telling her I was his, that we loved each other, that it was our destiny
to be together, that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

That was when the drip came loose. I started to move my fingers and toes, slowly at first,
then faster, muscles gaining strength, legs working, heart and lungs straining, and I fled. We
moved house to escape his relentless pursuit, we called the police when he managed to
track me down, and we changed phone numbers 3 times, until gradually, it stopped and I
was free.

I didn’t see him for 10 years. Then one day there he was, sitting on a bench with three other
men, drinking cheap beer in the afternoon. I turned my head and started to walk past, but
something stopped me. I stood in front of him and said his name – “Robert”. He looked up,
shock and recognition etched across his face. He looked older, his dreadlocks reached all the
way down his back, he had picked up a few more scars, but those green eyes were just the
same.

His friends left us alone to talk. He said his name was “Lion” now; he had fully embraced the
Rastafarian way. He campaigned for human rights, for eco conservation, and against animal
cruelty. He had spent time in a Buddhist Temple and studied psychology. He had travelled
across Europe in these various guises, and now he worked with the homeless.

He told me he had changed, that he now understood why the love of so many women was
never enough, that it was his mother’s love he was searching for all along. He told me he
had loved me deeply, that I was the only one to walk away, the only one he couldn’t have.

We spoke for hours, until the sun hung low in the sky and the air cooled around us. I stood
to leave but he wanted me to stay. I was careful not to look into those eyes for too long,
because with every glance I sensed that creeping paralysis waiting to consume me again. He
kissed me on the mouth; I pulled back and walked away, leaving him standing alone in the
street. I did not look back.