I Unintentionally Became Her Kitten

Chapter 61: The Track

Tye presented me with a firearm. It was shiny and black and the same model, I thought, as the one in the Mercai.

“It's really simple,” he informed me. “Just point and shoot. Most people will back off if they see a weapon in your hand.”

I took it from him. The metal was cool against my skin and I didn't really know what to say.

He then also presented me with a holster. It was not the same simple sleeve as the one he'd given me before. Alisha came down the stairs then, texting on her phone as she walked.

I got distracted. She had put her hair up in a messy bun again and while she didn't look where she was walking, she continued to have that gait that made people turn their heads.

Tye cleared his throat, snapping me back to the deadly weapon in my hand and the holster in his.

I hurried to take it from him and experimentally slid the gun in, feeling it click in there like a puzzle piece.

“That holsters made for a waistband,” he informed me as Alisha reached us and stood by as she finished her message.

I turned the holster this way and that, seeing a clip on one side I figured was supposed to clip into my pants

I went to finagle it on and flinched as Alisha ran her hand down my back before putting her phone down and turning her attention to me.

My face went hot as she took the weapon from me and once again gave my waistband a tug.

“It goes in your pants, Kitten,” she instructed and I felt the cool material slide against my lower back until the clip slid over the hem of my pants.

And then she pulled my shirt over it just as before.

I could say this holster was far more comfortable than the previous. The gun didn't slide around when I moved and it made me feel able to leave my hands free without adjusting it.

Tye observed me as I relaxed, getting used to the feeling of it pressing against my back.

“There are other carrying options,” he said. “But behind your back is the least noticable which is usually what people in our situation want. But if it proves too uncomfortable we can show you other options.”

I shook my head. “This feels fine… for now at least.”

I wanted to look in a mirror and be sure the boxy shape wasn't noticable, but if it was I was sure Alisha and Tye would tell me.

“Are you ready to go?” Alisha asked.

Tye nodded. I held her hand briefly as we made driving plans before setting off for this place they called the track.

Alisha and Matteo took the Mercai, while Tye drove me in his souped up Hon-yoda.

I sat in the back, staring out the window as we passed by rural neighborhoods. I realized quickly we weren't going to the city, we were going to another rural area.

I wondered what the track was. Was it an exercise track? A driving track? A horse track? I supposed, since Alisha offered the Mercai, a sporty car, that it must be a driving track but it felt like I would've heard of a driving track nearby. It wasn't exactly like they were common.

We turned off the highway to enter an even more wooded area. The trees were dense and the road turned from paved asphalt to gravel.

I was second guessing driving track until there was a part in the trees ahead and just on the other side the gravel turned to pavement again and the Hon-yoda jostled as it made the transition.

This was most definitely a driving track. The pavement extended quite a ways in both directions and there was an evident loop around between two other partings in the trees. There was also a mechanics garage, though it was deserted and empty of any cars.

“You know how to drive right?” Tye asked me.

“Yes, but… I haven't in over a year.”

“This is the kind of place to practice.”

I had to agree. The track, and that was exactly what it was, was free of any obstacles to run into or over. There was no speed limit, no cops, no pedestrians or assholes in jacked up pickups. Just a road wide enough to hog and a thick tree line to hide any activities from prying eyes.

Tye slowed to a stop and the Mercai pulled up next to us. He rolled down his window so Alisha could talk to him.

“We'll take care of doing a sweep if you want to take her around a couple times,” she told him.

“Sure,” he agreed.

The car parked and the doors unlocked as he rolled the window back up.

“You'll want to be in the front for this,” he told me.

I nodded and got out to walk to the front and opened that door, buckling myself in properly and tried to feel settled on the seat.

The Mercai slid away from us and Tye shifted back into drive. I tried not to feel weird about this but it was weird being in the front with him. I could see his legs moving on the foot pedals and his hands on the wheel and being this close in general just wasn't a thing we normally did.

I looked out the window as the car started to move again. He pulled down the lane, speeding up liberally until we were almost at the end and then he slowed to turn the car around.

He looked over, a movement I saw in my peripheral vision.

“You might get sick looking in that direction.”

“Huh?” I asked and shifted to look forward. He  nodded and then pressed his foot down.

The car screeched a second and then lurched forward, making my stomach flip around inside me.

I swallowed down the brief burst of nausea as I was pressed back by momentum. The Hon-yoda roared, shaking and creaking as the speed climbed.

I smiled as the feeling wasn't unlike a roller coaster. And then I frowned because fast cars were boy things and I didn't like boy things. And then I smiled again because it didn't matter right now. I didn't have to become a race car driver to appreciate speed.

The speedometer climbed past a hundred-twenty as we started to hit the halfway point of the long stretch. I saw the Mercai parked now in front of the mechanic's garage. And Alisha standing in the doorway, surveying the room inside. She wouldn't see me staring at her. The breeze was tugging  on her skirt and the loose strands of hair from her bun and I wished I could simply capture this exact moment as the speedometer topped out at a hundred-sixty before Tye pulled his foot away so the car could coast. We approached the parting in the trees but we were still moving quite fast as the car drove between them. It was apparent Tye knew this road well as he let the car skid through a turn, which also threw my stomach against my ribcage. The back road was all wooded. The sunlight dappled the road and the dead leaves lining both sides blew around behind us. There was a twisting, turning bit that made my stomach go nauseous again followed by a long straight Tye accelerated across. Then the hair pin turn that slammed my stomach even harder against my ribs as he let the entire back end of the car swing wildly behind us. The fun faded fast as my head spun and up ahead was the parting in the trees again and then we were back to the wide track.

The car slowed, going from a roar to a purr.

“Is that fun?” Tye asked happily and then stopped upon seeing my face. “Shit, I forgot.”

The car came to a gentle stop and he turned the engine off.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded, gingerly as my heart continued to beat shallowly and the cold sweat was gradually fading into normal sweat.

“We don't have to do that again,” he said.

“Thank you,” I managed.

Alisha waited, leaning her weight against the Mercai’s hood, phone in hand. Tye backed into the garage and got out, telling me it was fine for me to stay waiting inside as he went around to the back tires and investigated them.

I twiddled my thumbs, knowing trying to read anything on my phone would make me more sick. Instead I leaned my head out the window. A ‘90s song was playing quietly on the radio and a cool breeze was blowing. With it, I could feel summer starting to turn into fall. Soon the nights would be cold and I'd be even more grateful to be off the street.

The mood would not last long. Tye finished his inspection of the back tires and instead leaned against the hood, mirroring Alisha quite well. Matteo was lurking behind the Mercai watching over Alisha with his usual stoicism. They were just waiting. And the subject of this gathering finally drove up in a shiny silver Lynx. 

Tye picked his weight up and gave me a brief glance before hitting a button that made the garage door slowly descend. He ducked underneath it into the sunlight as Alisha was getting situated and the Lynx’s door opened, a professional driver or bodyguard stepped out and opened the back door for Angela. I didn't get to see her face, only her legs as she stepped out onto the pavement and Alisha and her closed their distance to chat.

And then the door rattled shut, leaving me in the dark.

The radio kept playing, the keys were still in the ignition. Heat built up in the small space and eventually I opened the car door just to find the air just as warm on the other side.

Surely this wouldn't take too long. I heard the Mercai’s engine roaring, the tires skidded and screeched a few times. I even heard Angela laughing briefly.

And then there was nothing.

The silence was much worse than anything else.

Tye came into the garage to get a jug of some chemical that looked like bleach but had a different label on it. We made eye contact but he said nothing as he took that and grabbed a hose from off the wall as well and dragged it around the long way, through the office space on the side.

I gathered the garage door would not be opening until things were settled.

Several more songs played on the radio. I worried about draining the battery and finally reached over to turn the key to fully off. There was discussion on the other side of the garage door but it was too muffled for me to make anything out. 

Tye came around a second time with a lunch cooler in hand that he put in his trunk along with the now empty chemical bottle. This time, he went to the door controls and opened it. A powerful chemical smell rolled in along with some brown frothy water that he saw and hurriedly grabbed a squeegee off the wall to push back outside, onto the smooth parts of the cement out there and into a dip that forced it to drain the other way, out into the grass.

There wasn't really evidence of murder on the other side. Alisha had blood on the front of her dress, and her hands had gloves on though it didn't stop the blood smearing up her forearms.

But there were just two large crates, like my family used to put Christmas decorations in. They were opaque. Matteo had the hose and was currently spraying the remainder of the dirty water off the pavement so it sank into the grass instead. 

Alisha sighed, ringing her hands before glancing back at the open door and scowling, snapping some order at Tye, who blinked and looked at his own car. He asked her an innocent question and she just shook her head and grabbed something out of the Mercai's trunk, a change of clothes, I realized and came into the garage with me.

She gave me a reassuring smile, which was less reassuring since up close I could see the details of the blood smears. I still returned it, not entirely sure what the proper etiquette was. She disappeared into another door next to the one for the office. I saw bathroom tile and a small sink in there before the door shut.

Tye and Matteo finished a thorough rinsing of the pavement and the chemical smell faded. Alisha came out of the bathroom clean and her old dress in a plastic bag she tossed in the trunk with that lunch cooler I suspected held an organ or something equally unpleasant.

They packed things up. The totes went in the back of the Lynx and Matteo took it on himself to drive that vehicle as Tye finished gathering the hose into loops that could be rehung on the garage's back wall. The squeegee was rinsed briefly from there, the water running straight and clear to a drain in the floor and he leaned it back against the wall where he had grabbed it from.

Alisha came over to my open window.

I could still smell blood and chemicals on her skin. She had gotten cleaned up but this was the kind of thing that didn't wash off simply.

She patted my head. “Are you okay, Kitten?”

“Yes.” I reached up to take her hand and kissed her fingers, ignoring how strong the smell was on them.

“We'll head back to the house, okay?” she told me. “And then we can spend the rest of the day together. Just the two of us.”

I nodded. There was softness in her voice that didn't usually show.

Her fingers combed through my hair again… and then again as Tye finished the last of the pick up.

He approached and somewhere in that exchanged look was a communication and Alisha opened my door.

I got out, following her to the Mercai. It was still shiny.

“I can drive,” I told her softly.

She nodded. I didn't expect her to accept the offer, but this was good. I opened the driver side door, finding it unlocked.

My foot was a hair short for the pedal. I reached down, fumbling for the lever under the front of the seat as Alisha got in the passenger side. The smell followed her.

She watched as I continued to find nothing but smooth plastic.

“It's on the side, Kitten,” she said finally. I changed my search area and found the set of buttons and levers there. Each made the seat move slightly differently with a gentle buzz of electricity and it took a few tries to find the forward one. I only needed half an inch maybe. And then I adjusted the mirrors and buckled the seatbelt and went to turn the key to find my hand wave through empty air.

I looked, and saw a push-to-start there. 

Alisha was silently watching me through this process. I hit the button, felt the car gently wake up beneath me, and then put my hand on the center shifter.

It slid smoothly from park to drive, the doors locked and I could simply go. Tye's car inched out of the garage before he got out to shut the door behind him.

“Should I wait?” I asked Alisha.

She shook her head. “I can give you directions,” she said.

I nodded and started to pull toward the exit. It felt weird to drive again, especially in this car with a large high quality touch screen display that had all of the non-driving functions on it. I didn't mess with that. The speedometer was digital as well, listing my speed in plain numbers. This was so backwards from what I knew a reliable car to be but nothing about how the Mercai drove felt cheap or questionable, even after taking its abuse today. 

I had thought I knew what driving nice cars felt like, but I realized now those were laughably cheap. Sure they'd been lighter and could speed up faster but they also rattled like tin-cans when buffeted by their own slip-stream. The Mercai simply went and it did not rattle. It glided with purpose and dedication to its end goal and it would not be thwarted by wind or rough roads.

This was a car that no one could understand until they were in the driver's seat. 

Alisha’s hand crept over to the center console area and I took it as I got used to the accelerating and braking of the Mercai, bringing her home in her very expensive car.