Maddie's Curse

Vera sighs as she examines the sprawling subway map on the brick wall. She pushes down on her blue crescent moon hair clip in her black hair.

Vera realizes that she loves driving. A rental vehicle gives her broad choice for direction, freedom of speed, and utter privacy. A subway train, on the other hand, is stuffy. It's like waiting in one of Town's submarine pods, waiting to arrive at a port, but with all the quality of life of a can of sardines.

She sighs, skims again her assignment briefing notes on her Town-issued tablet, and boards the gray line. It's better for the environment, anyway, and the roads in this city are gummed up.

Some minutes later, she walks out behind a small mob of passengers and then walks into a quiet, deserted stretch of the subway tunnels.

The cat-girl lived somewhere here, somehow.

The field researcher walks along the decommissioned rail after the faint flash of the coin, watching her back every dozen steps. As usual, she's trespassing. The potential lead, however, is too great to pass.

As she approaches the bend, Vera reaches into her white sash over her white, dressy shirt and primes the trigger to her taser. She inhales sharply, leaning on the tunnel wall, and she then snaps herself around the corner.

The field researcher stares into the deep of the tunnel, and she shivers. She removes her tablet and her taser from her sash, one into each hand, and she shines her tablet's flashlight feature into the expanse to little effect. Still, she presses forward along the trail of coins. She's not afraid of the dark.

Her wrist struggles with a strength that should come as surprising to the stranger. She steps around in a tight circle, and she searches for a face in this void.

"Let me go. Let me go right now! Who are you?"

She then flicks her tablet flashlight in the direction of the arm. She frowns at what she sees, and she says with her more standard deliberation, "I won't hurt you. I've come here simply to meet you. I knew those coins would lead to something..."

She feels the grip on her wrist tighten in response to her struggling as sharp nails dig into her skin.

As the light flashes onto the face of her aggressor, she sees a dark haired young woman wearing a red bandana peering back at her, although her attention is quickly drawn to the two cat ears atop her head. This was definitely the person she was looking for.

"Hmm... I'd love to chat! Although I think you should drop the taser, you probably won't be needing it."

Vera is fascinated, too, by the cat-like eyes of the woman. Magical beings such as this one would always seem to come up in her routine assignments. Maybe she has an advantage in the form of night vision?

"That taser is merely for self-defense. What's your name?"

She stares at the cat girl blankly, and sometimes anxiously. And eventually she concedes to letting go of the taser, letting it clack against a metal beam. A blue spark, in that moment, bridges from the tip of the weapon into the metal beam.

"Me? I'm Maddie! Nice to meet you, office lady. Do you have a name too?"

Then, distracted by the taser arcing blue electricity across the pipe, Maddie looks down with wide eyes.

"That taser looks really fun, you should let me play around with it sometime!"

"I'm Vera. I'm not an office lady; I'm a field researcher."

She sighs, and she shakes her head. "Please, let go of me, Maddie. And let's go somewhere else. I can't see anything. Why are you here, anyway?"

"Meh. I was bored and wanted to hang out in the tunnels a bit. I like watching the trains go by. Then I saw your prowling around and thought it'd be funny to lure you in."

Maddie cocks her head and looks at Vera quizzically.

"Why are you in the subway system looking for a catgirl if you're a 'field researcher'? Aren't you supposed to be in the countryside researching fields?"

"Well, thank you for catching my attention."

She rolls her eyes. She then tries to walk with Maddie, blindly, dismissing her taser. She could get it later.

"I understand that you're not interested in letting go of me? Okay. Let us out of here. And please, a 'field researcher' where I'm from refers to an agent that is sent out on assignments for information gathering, especially through extensive investigations. You've been—causing interest in this city."

Maddie, realizing that Vera probably isn't trying to do anything to harm her at this point, lets go of Vera's arm. Beginning to walk further into the tunnel, Maddie gestures for Vera to follow.

"Ehehehe. I'm glad to hear people are enjoying my mischief. It's quite fun, you should really try it sometime! Yeah, I can lead us out of here. But not the way you came; let's walk in the dark for a bit. It'll be fun!"

Vera sidesteps from Maddie with this opportunity, creating space. She stops to glance back at her taser nearby, but she shakes her head and continues on with her.

"I'm more interested in protocol, Maddie, if I can help it. I'll follow you in the dark, though, okay."

Vera clutches her tablet against her shirt, and she bites her lip.

"Why do you conduct 'mischief', if I may inquire? Is it really just for fun? I'm not sure, for example, stealing should fall under that umbrella."

"Why? 'Cause it's fun. And there's not much else for me to do. What am I supposed to do, sit at a desk for 8 hours a day until I die? I'd much rather do whatever I want. Also, what you would call 'stealing', I would call 'liberating food trapped in the Flormart.' If the food didn't want me to have it, then why is it so easy to grab?"

Maddie chuckles, continuing to walk down the tunnel. There's no sign of another end, only pitch darkness. Although Maddie seems perfectly fine walking with no light as Vera follows along with her tablet's flashlight.

"But you wouldn't understand. You wouldn't get the joys of tomfoolery unless you tried it."

"There's a difference between individual freedom and repeating minor crime. Fortunately, I'm willing to help you understand the difference."

The image of typing into her notes "finds committing petty crime entertaining" dissatisfies Vera. Town had the understanding this catgirl likely had some greater motive and, in any case, wanted Vera to get to the source. She could perhaps guide Maddie away from repeating her 'misbehavior'?

"Let me present you a hypothetical. Suppose you own a small business, and suppose I'm a customer in your small business. If I confiscated your merchandise and claimed something like, 'they seemed lonely,' how would you feel?"

"Owning a small business sounds really boring, I don't think I would do that. Instead, let me ask you this: How would you feel if you were hungry and saw a really tasty looking rotisserie chicken? Why should you have to stay hungry? Just eat it, you need the food to keep living after all."

Maddie pulls out a bag of chips and begins crunching on them as she continues walking.

"Not like I have money to buy it anyways. I can't believe you want me to starve already, we just met!"

"I don't want you to starve, Maddie. I'm humane. Furthermore, I'm sorry you don't have money."

The sound of the munching is accompanied by Vera then tapping her tablet screen for her notes application. Vera wishes economic disparity wasn't, in her exploration, such a huge watermark of the world's culture and issues.

"Okay. Maddie, tell me about your background. In what kind of community were you raised? What are your other day-to-day tasks today?"

"Wow. You really ask a lot of questions; I purposefully cause trouble and I'm somehow less annoying than you are. Sure, here's the short of it. I don't really remember much of my parents. That was a long time ago. I do remember wandering off one day and finding a stray cat. I tried to pet it, and it bit me. It kinda hurt but I was fine."

Maddie stops dead in her tracks, and spins around to face Vera. She flashes a big grin, her fangs visible in the light from Vera's tablet. She then begins stepping towards Vera.

"You know, I guess I could show you what happened. I think it'll be helpful for your 'document' or whatever you're writing about me."

She rubs her forehead.

"I get called annoying often. Anyway... That's unfortunate. Why are you—looking at me like that? Maddie?"

Vera steps backwards as Maddie approaches her, and then she flashes panic as she thumbs through her device for the emergency notification service.

"Show me what? W-What does a stray cat have to do with anything? What are you doing?"

Vera suddenly bolts in a wide arch around the catgirl.

Try as Vera might, Maddie, unsurprisingly, has the reflexes of a cat. She pounces directly at the other woman, knocking her to the ground. As Vera had been attempting to arc around Maddie, she had been between Maddie and the pit where the tracks are. As the catgirl collides with her, they both fall down into the pit, the tablet falling to the ground with the camera facing the floor, snuffing out what little light was in the room.

"Ehehehe. You're actually a lot like a rotisserie chicken, in the way that I want to take a nibble of both. Except unlike one, you're right in front of me."

In the dark, dazed from being knocked down onto the tracks, Vera cannot tell what's happening until she feels a stinging pain in her left shoulder. She then hears the sound of Maddie giggling once again.

"Don't worry, you'll be fine. I just really felt like making you shut up and this seemed like a great way to do it."

Vera gets a curse word in before she impacts the floor of the pit. Gravel has been piling up here for some time, and Vera groans out in pain even before the different sensation of the bite. She breathes thin, and she pushes Maddie off of her side and struggles to her feet. She lifts her tablet, and its tough screen is cracked.

"What is your issue? I can understand an insult, and I can almost even understand attacking me, but biting too? Where is your self-control? How does this show me anything about you?"

So much for making her shut up. Vera's voice drips with venom but tapers with, again, fear. She barely walks on.

"Hey, cats bite and scratch people all the time. You don't need to be so mad over it. And honestly, I think this will teach you much more about my situation than any explanation I could come up with."

Maddie quietly walks up to Vera, a bandage in her hand, probably pulled from the pouch on her belt.

"Hold still. I won't bite you again, promise. I'm just going to stop the bleeding. I wanted a nibble, not a dead body."

The field researcher stops moving and folds her arms. She's tense and silent for the duration of Maddie's first aid.

She then continues forward, and she mumbles, "Yeah, this has taught me cat people are prone to being more cat than human." She says, louder, "I still don't understand what you mean by this educating me about you. Are you using sarcasm?"

Vera places the broken tablet into her sash. The flashlight had turned off, as did the screen lighting. She sighs.

"Please don't hurt me anymore, then. I'll cooperate. Please."

"I don't plan on hurting you anymore. I don't really like hurting people, in all honesty. Come, the end of this old tunnel is quite close."

Maddie leads the way, taking Vera's hand to guide her through the darkness. After a while longer of walking, it exits to an old abandoned station, in a quiet portion of the city. Surprisingly, it's quite overgrown, with golden light streaming in through numerous holes in the ceiling. A rusted old subway car lies on the tracks, immobile for who knows how long.

"This is my house! Come on, you look like you need to sit down."

As Maddie is walking through the station, she spots a child looking at them, a young boy no older than 10.

"Shouldn't you be going home soon, Jacob? It's getting late, you don't want to worry your mother!"

Although he looks disappointed at being told to leave, he begrudgingly complies, waving goodbye to Maddie and heading off out of sight.

"Sorry about that. I sometimes play with the local kids to keep them company."

Maddie chuckles.

"They say their parents never believe them when they tell them about a cat who's also a person."

Maddie leads Vera to the old subway, pushing open a door whose hinges were clearly attached to the frame with duct tape and effort. Inside, a surprisingly cozy space awaits. An old mattress lies in the corner, with a table and a pair of mismatched chairs set at it.

"Here, have a seat or lie down. You can pick whatever."

She is much quieter, again. Maddie telling her to shut up, along with her impossible reaction time and speed, bobs at the top of Vera's mind. And she mulls over what questions she could have been asking, what way to clarify anything about the last several minutes...

Her eyes brighten at the exotic and well-lit scene, however. It's something out of an urban fantasy novel—a secret grove buried at the heart of a metropolis. Of course, it's also full of grime and mold and bugs and, really, the thought anyone could consider this a home begs questions about the health of her captor.

She watches the kid run away, and she says, "I have a lot of questions, Maddie."

The mattress is inviting, even being her messy captor's bed. Vera's legs are sore. So, reluctantly, Vera lowers onto the mattress and rolls up the bottom of her white, utilitarian pants, checking herself for gashes with the granite. She can only find bruises here, and she'd refuse to show any more of her leg than this around Maddie.

She lowers her knee. "Thank you for showing me your home. If my tablet still worked, I'd be writing everything I see. For my job. Thanks for that."

"I've never actually bitten someone like that before. I usually know it's a very bad idea... but this time I just felt like I had to. Like a compulsion."

Maddie pulls out a couple of mugs from a box, filling them with water. She then carefully plugs a microwave into a shoddily crafted array of AA batteries, careful not to electrocute herself. She puts the mugs in, and, miraculously, the microwave hums as it warms up the water. She takes them out, adding a couple packets of hot chocolate powder from a brand new box of hot chocolate mix.

"Here, have something warm to drink. You probably are starting to feel a little bit woozy now."

Vera's head has been starting to ache mildly, not that she hit it very hard when she fell.

"The percentage of you that is cat took over your human reasoning, I'm sure."

Vera shuts one of her eyes as Maddie fiddles with the unregulated power unit with the microwave. She exhales only after the microwave turns back off, and she extends her hand for the mug of hot chocolate. She then stares into the drink. It is clean to her surprise—even with the powder having spread throughout, the water has no foul odor or color.

"I can confirm I feel strange. There's something you're not telling me. There is always something people don't tell me. Furthermore, I hope you have not lied to me yet. People also lie to me. Would you let me leave tomorrow, if I asked?"

She rubs her forehead.

"Well, now we run into the tricky issue that you know where I live, and whoever you work for that sent you to 'research' me will probably send more people after me. So I'm really not sure how to go about this."

Maddie gulps down half of her mug of hot chocolate in one continuous sip.

"You should sleep now, you'll probably feel better in the morning."

Vera is still woozy and also aching from her bruises and whatever has happened.

"I promise you I'm peaceful and that I'm the only person you'd be seeing from where I'm from."

Well, unless Vera doesn't indicate that she's alive for a while. There's a possibility, then, that the Field Research Department would send a couple of her coworkers. She sips from her hot chocolate beverage. It's fine.

"I understand you're still worried, however. Therefore—okay—I guess I'll be your prisoner. That is, likely, what you're implying. Maybe I will bore you soon enough."

Her assignments never seem to go to plan. She sighs and places the mug aside, and she lies on her back.

"Well, make yourself comfortable for now. I'm going to go shopping once you're asleep, do you want me to get you anything?"

Maddie turns around, carefully unplugging the batteries from the microwave, and then sits down on the ladder-back chair, looking out one of the cracked but still solid windows of the train car.

Vera reaches into her sash again and removes about thirty dollars. She waves them above her head.

"A delicious meal, please. Like a burger, or a nice steak, or shrimp scampi. Pay with this."

Maddie might get the idea to steal from her wallet, but assignment funds have been stolen before, and it's better than stealing from stores in Vera's name.

Maddie snatches the money from her, stuffing it into a pouch.

"Steak sounds good. Let me go check if the grill is working; it's been a while since I got to have something that good. Usually the meat section has a lot of people around and it's hard to get a steak."

Maddie disappears out the door. As Vera is lying down trying to rest, she hears the sound of muffled clattering from outside and then hears a sound somewhere between a woman yelping and a cat meowing in surprise. Then, a string of curses. A few minutes later, Maddie reappears at the door.

"Yeah, the grill's working fine. I'll be back in like an hour. Try to sleep a bit. I'll wake you up when the food is ready."

Maddie wanting to share the meal is unexpected to the field researcher. Town, she supposes, is odder in how its meals are highly individualized compared to the rest of the world—even odd for a petty thief, apparently. She huffs when Maddie returns.

"Okay. I won't be any help for grilling. I skipped the culinary electives. Did you burn yourself? Come back, please."

Vera finds herself falling asleep soon, which conflicts with her plan to at least snoop through the cat girl's possessions or even to run away to guaranteed safety. Oh well...