Felis Leo

Chapter I: The Lion Sleeps Tonight

"Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles."

-Mark Twain

On the backside of a mountain, deep in the forests of Colorado, stood a cottage. The vintage structure hid away in the woods, about a mile up the slope from a beautiful, rushing river whose sound echoed through the valley. The cottage had a beautiful front porch complete with a porch-swing and various pots of hanging flowers adding pops of color to the scenery. Behind the open screen door was a living room with walls filled with picture frames. The cherrywood squares held photographs of a backyard wedding, a pregnant woman, children, grandchildren. Photos of graduations and soccer games, family pets, and lots of laughter. The kitchen of the cottage smelled of pie. A rifle rested beside the front door. Gentle music filled the home, providing a tune which an elderly man and woman slowly danced to in the living room.

The man and woman who owned the cottage held wrinkled hands as they slow danced around the living room, foreheads pressed together, green eyes and brown eyes locked with one another. The woman's salt-and-pepper hair draped over her shoulders. And the man with a bad hip refused a cane out of stubbornness. Their smiles were that of peace - relief. The type of relief that came from decades-long stress finally being released.

On the front porch, gazing at them through a window stood a second woman. She had waist-long black curls, pale skin, smelled of cinnamon, and had shimmering brown eyes. She wore a black pant-suit, a pair of black heels, red lipstick on her lips, and a bright green amulet around her neck.

And in the driveway of the cottage sat a 1967 Chevy Impala, right beside a rust-red truck.

As the old man and woman danced together, the woman on the porch raised her wrist, and twisted it, which caused the man's neck to twist to the side violently with a crack. His body fell to the ground, causing more of his old bones to splinter with the collision.

"DEAN," The old woman cried out, screaming for him. She dropped her weak knees to the ground beside him, touching his face, then quickly turned to look at the woman in the window. "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, YOU WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO COME BACK, YOU CAN'T COME BACK," The woman screeched, her voice cracking in and out as she yelled.

The woman in the window simply gazed on, watching the old lady try and shake the old man back to consciousness. In the driveway, a creature stood between the cars, also watching. The beast stood six-feet tall at the shoulders, with the skull and jaws of a lion. A scraggly mane plastered against the skull, drooping over the shoulders and neck. Its body had decayed to nothing more than a bulky skeleton with pieces of rotting muscle scattered about, and blood vessels pumping with blank ink stretched over it. Its feline eyes glowed golden, and at the end of his finger-bones were claws, inches long.

He knelt down onto all fours and roared with the sound halfway between growl and scream. The sound which indicated it was time to wake up.

So she did.

In a motel in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Ellie sat up straight in bed, screaming out Dean's name. Her eyes refocused slowly, adjusting to the room around her until she recognized the boundary between sleeping and waking. The tension briefly left her body until she stretched out a hand to the left of her, reaching out for him, but all she found were the cold sheets on the empty, opposite side of the bed.

Then she remembered.

The weight of grief settled back into her soul with a heaviness that prompted her to lay back down, but she found herself in a damp spot of cold sweats and quickly sat back up again. It had been the third nightmare she had had like that this week: El returning and killing Dean in some way or another. All of which she awoke from by crying out for him, and all of which took her several seconds to realize that no matter how much she dreamt of him, Dean would not be in bed beside her.