I make my way down the road and duck into the brush off the side of what I can now tell is a driveway, when the woods give way to a large clearing with a modest, well maintained cabin at the center. The driveway widens into a gravel roundabout in front of the cabin where there’s an older model pickup parked. There are lights on in the cabin, but I can’t see any movement within from this vantage point.
Skirting the edges of the clearing, I notice a large pole barn set back from the house, butting up against the woods on the far side of the clearing. As I get closer, I hear the doors being dragged shut and locked on the far side of the building. Deciding that must be where the car is being kept, I risk getting a little closer still. As I draw level with the front corner of the barn, I see a woman step out from behind it and sink back into the shadows offered by the brush and trees.
A woman? Holy shit. Could I have been dense enough to not think my thief could be a woman? Jesus Christ, it never even crossed my mind. I have the sudden urge to call my mother and sister and maybe donate to a women’s shelter or something.
I snap out of my mental spiral when I notice the woman pull her shirt over her head.
What the fuck?!
Unsure what the hell she’s doing and refusing to lose sight of her because apparently, she’s my fuckin white whale, I watch her like a fuckin creeper from my spot just inside the tree line. When she reaches for the button of her jeans, I lose my footing on a rock and stumble forward a step as she slides her tight jeans down her legs and steps out of them.
The woman must hear the racket I make and turns towards the sound of my fumbling in the bushes. My breath catches in my throat and I nearly choke on my tongue when she turns towards me and I catch sight of her eyes. My brain short circuits and I’m drawn in by those eyes, which even in the night's dark are glowing a bright ice blue. Yes, glowing. She is standing naked now, her pale skin glowing in the moonlight along with her eyes. Before I have a chance to pick my jaw up off the ground she goes ahead and shocks me yet again.
I must be going insane.
Yep, that’s it. It’s been entirely too long since I’ve seen a naked woman that wasn’t on a screen, so long in fact that my mind must have short circuited and is now making me see things. Because there is no way on this green earth that the woman with the glowing skin and shocking eyes just turned into… a cat? No. The creature letting out a giant yawn and stretching where the woman had just been standing is much larger than your standard barn cat. Wracking my brain for what kind of big cats are native to this area I come up blank on anything that could explain what I’m seeing.
The massive cat before me is larger than a bobcat, but not as big as a mountain lion. At least I think so. It has a crisp white coat with a smattering of dark gray and black spots and its long fluffy tail is striped and tipped with black.
The cat gives one last stretch before looking over its shoulder towards my hiding spot one more time. Those eyes. Jesus Christ, that same glowing blue as the woman’s had been. I’m definitely going insane. I finally did it, I drove myself off the deep end following this stupid case and now I’ve cracked and think a beautiful naked woman turned into a giant freaking cat. The cat takes off into the woods at a full sprint, and before my mind can catch up to what my body is doing, I dash across the clearing and tear into the brush after the creature.
I don’t understand what I hope to gain by chasing her… it… them… her?
Crashing through the underbrush and weaving between the trees, I realize I’m at a serious disadvantage as I struggle to keep the cat in my sights. The lithe figure darts effortlessly through the maze of trunks, disappearing into the shadows and offering only the barest glimpse of pearl white fur glowing in the moonlight as it darts between the trees. Thank god it’s a cloudless night, or I’d have landed flat on my face a hundred times over by now.
I get the sense that she knows I am chasing her and, honestly, how could she not with the ruckus I am making as I tear through the brush with no concern for stealth. Once again it hits me, how reckless I’ve been about this entire thing. Why the hell am I chasing her? Why does it feel like every ounce of my training has fled my brain and left me a bumbling idiot chasing after what amounts to a ghost or, hell, maybe it’s more like Big Foot? At least some people believed in ghosts. No one would ever fucking believe me if I said I was chasing after a woman who turned into a giant cat.
As soon
