Planetary Transit Ch. 04

I started out at the house where the party had been, back in the summer when all this had started, and headed toward the woods.  It was the most direct route to my parents' house on the other side of town and I'd walked this way a hundred times, during the day and at night.

I left the road and entered the treeline.  Most of the trees had lost their leaves so it looked different from the summer, but this was my old stomping-ground so I'd have been able to find my way with my eyes closed.

"Ow!"

OK maybe not; I tripped over a fallen branch and nearly fell flat on my face.  After regaining my composure I took a good look around.  Nothing seemed out of place, it was all just as I'd remembered - or at least as I'd expect, given the time of year. 

I carried on in the direction of my folks' place not really sure what I was looking for, rather just hoping that I'd know when I saw it.

I reached the clearing where my memory of that evening ended.  Where I'd seen the Blue Light in the sky, and then woken up in bed.

Another good look around, and... nothing.  It was just the woods, same as it ever was.  I started to feel stupid, what was I expecting to find exactly?  A crashed UFO?  A folder full of secret government plans?

Maybe I should come back later, around the same time as before.  I completed the walk to the house anyway, just in case something triggered a memory, but I drew a blank.

OK, I decided I'd go back and do it again around midnight.  It was already late afternoon and damn, I needed to check in on my work, so let myself back into the house and fired up the laptop.

A cup of coffee and an hour later I switched off.  The simulation was still running but then initial results looked good, despite one surprise blip in the numbers.

I was getting hungry so decided to head to the only bar in town, which meant cutting back through the woods.  They did a pretty good burger to go with the beer, and it'd put me on the right side of town for the late night walk if I hung out there all evening.  

It was already nearly dark by the time I reached Murphy's, but since it was a Monday night there were plenty of tables free.  That's not to say the place was empty; a group of six or seven hung around the pool table and a few tables were occupied by couples.

I'd brought a book to read, in case there was nothing else to occupy me after my food, which I set down on the bar while I ordered.

I knew the barman from old.  'Slim' was his nickname, a hilarious take on his eighteen-something stone frame.  It never seemed to bother him, so the name had stuck for as long as I could remember.  Read: for as long as I'd been drinking in the place, whether legally or not.

"What can I get ya old man?" Slim had recognised me despite having not been in for over two years, the 'old man' was a reference to something that was said that time I'd been caught drinking under-age.

"The burger and beer special please good sir."  I can't even remember where the 'good sir' thing came from, but it was how my group of friends always used to order at the bar.

He smiled, having got the reference, took my money and said, "I'll bring it over," as he gestured to the free tables.

I picked a table near the window and placed my book and phone down with the beer in front of me.

I picked the phone up.  I'd messaged Sam to say I was going back to my hometown for a few days.  She asked me to send her a pic when I got there so I framed a shot of the bar, capturing the actual bar and pool table and sent it along with, "Fine dining tonight! X"

It only took ten minutes for my food to arrive, Slim placed it neatly in front of me along with a bottle of ketchup.

"Yo Slim!  Slim!  Any chance of some service here?"

We both glanced over to the bar where one of the pool players was now stood.  I recognised him from school: Steve Whitford.  

"That guy's such a dick," Slim said as he headed back to the bar.

While I ate the burger I thought back to my school days.  Steve Whitford had been a dick back then too.

He was that guy.  Good at sports so teachers let him get away with stuff that he shouldn't, one of the 'popular kids' that always thought they were a cut above everyone else.  So of course then one of the first in our year to have sex, with one of the popular girls, and then thought that made him better-still than everyone else.

There was a rumour, again among the popular girls, that he had a massive cock.  But when he split up with Sophie Moir she told everyone it was tiny.  No, she actually said he was shit in bed, which took away from his street cred a little.

I took my plate back to the bar and ordered another beer.  Decided to sit at the bar with my book for a while, but it remained untouched while I drank and continued my train of thought.

My small group of friends were geeks.  Hey, some of us went on to become award winning special effects artists and field leading scientists while Steve Whitford didn't even leave his home town.  Which felt like poetic justice given the way he'd picked on us back then.  Who's the loser now, Steve?  I'll bet he still lived with his parents!

Wow.  I had no idea I still had such strong feelings about him.  It was a long time ago but I was clearly still pissed off about how he flaunted his popularity to bully us.

I put it to the back of my mind, decided to read for a while.  It occurred to me that on a Monday the bar might close early, too early for my second walk home through the woods.  I quickly checked Murphy's Facebook page and found I'd be able to stay 'til eleven thirty.  That'd be fine.

A few more beers, a few more chapters of my book.  Would you be surprised to discover I'm a sci-fi fan?

I noticed the pool table crowd start to dissipate around 10 o'clock, until finally Steve Whitford was the last man standing.  In fact, besides myself and Steve the only other patrons of the bar weren't  a single couple sat at one of the window tables.

"Hey, bookworm, wanna game of pool?"

I literally did a double-take, checking whether he was addressing someone else who'd walked in through the door.  But no, he was talking to me.

"Sorry?"

"Do you wanna play some pool?"

I could see by the way he was looking that he didn't even recognise me.  Yeah that'd be about right, probably wasn't and isn't aware of the kids who's lives he made a misery.  Why would he be, seeing as they meant nothing to him?

"Thanks, no, I'm good." I replied.

He shrugged and walked off.

'Bookworm.'  What a dick.

Eleven thirty arrived and I set off for the woods again.  Close enough to midnight?

I'd had four or five beers so I didn't notice the cold too much as I walked.  The temperature, the fallen leaves, there were so many differences between then and now.  The most significant one was that I saw no Blue Light, and made it home without incident.

I was a little drunk and tired so I set my alarm for 8am, thankful that tomorrow's conference team were base a little further west, and went to bed in my childhood bedroom.

****************

The alarm on my phone slowly faded in the theme tune to The Sopranos and I roused even slower.

Got my nine o'clock conference, need to spend a good few hours on work, probably more since I took some time out yesterday, then... ooh, hello vulva!

I grinned as I sat upright in bed, my hands went to my chest to touch my boobs under my shirt then back between my legs as I lay back down.

I just couldn't help myself, it felt so good when I stroked it.  I ran a finger along the delicate lips from bottom to top, where I reached my clit and started to make little circles around it.  Ah, I could spend all day...

No!  Shit!  Conference at nine, that's less than an hour away!

I leapt out of bed and threw on the nearest clothing before heading downstairs.  Stopping only to start the coffee machine I went to my laptop and switched it on.

Coffee in hand, I reviewed the completed simulation data.  The startup sequence was fully simulated; there were some small variances but, apart from that one anomaly I'd seen yesterday, everything looked exactly as expected.  The anomaly wasn't in any key system anyway.  All systems were go!

Prepared for the conference, I relaxed a little though was still a little wary about taking the call as Kelly.

I practiced lowering my voice, making it more like the Karl that everyone was used to hearing.

"Hello.  Helloooooo. Hi."  I thought I'd try a few of the technical phrases I knew I'd be using during the meeting.  "The electron-volt limit isn't as high as we thought.  The... concurrent synchronisation... shit.  I'm never gonna pull this off."

But 9 o'clock was fast approaching and I had no choice.

****************

When I finally closed my laptop it was with an audible sigh or relief.  I'd started the call with my camera disabled, saying I'd caught some winter bug throat infection.  Made my voice all wierd, I threw in some coughs here and there to hopefully legitimise the ruse.

"There's no way anyone's gonna buy this," I thought.  But everyone was so caught up with the project, how close we were to flicking the switch, that the focus couldn't have been on anything else.

The only person who was less than 100% was me.  Right at the end of the call when Mike, the big boss paused and said, "...that'd be OK right Karl?" I just bluffed and agreed with a vague affirmative.   It was only later when I read the meeting notes email I found I'd agreed to going onsite to the Indian facility if they needed to tweak things on the big day.

But immediately after the call I was relieved, I'd gotten through it without raising any suspicion.  Not for the first time I smiled to myself at the idea that anyone could suspect exactly what was going on in my life right now!

I sat back in my chair and pondered exactly what was going on.  I'd come back to 'the scene of the crime' hoping to get some answers.  A trip through the woods had gleaned exactly nothing, I was no more the wiser about what had happened the night I saw the Blue Light.

What the fuck was I even doing here?  Had I seriously expected to find anything?  I supposed I had no other leads to follow so had nothing to lose... but really, I'd been clutching at straws.

I picked up my phone, it unlocked straight onto Facebook and the Murphy's bar page I'd looked up last night. Well at least I'd gotten a decent burger while I was here. 

I started to feel hopeless.

Murphy's had posted about the monthly Tuesday night pool competition.  Like a lot of bars, on their quietest nights they had some kind of event like a pub quiz, cheap food deals, or in this case a pool tournament - hoping to bring the locals in to increase beer sales.

And the first comment on the post?  Steve fucking Whitford.  "Reigning champion, try your luck you losers!"

What an absolute prick.  He hasn't changed, people like him never do.  I thought back to all the times that this asshole humiliated me and my friends and thought it high time he was humiliated in the same way.

Well I wasn't that good a pool player so the chances of whooping his ass at eight-ball were slim.

Hmm.  I did have one advantage now though.  Something I didn't have back in the day.

***************

I'd spent the rest of the day doing what I believe is called "preening".  I'd spent a good while watching YouTube videos on how to apply makeup.  Several attempts, then makeup removals, then repeat.  Just mascara and eye liner, I'd got it pretty much down, at least to the basic level.  But, not wanting to blow my own trumpet, Kelly was pretty fucking cute so even with basic-level makeup I looked damn special.

So I took a bath in the afternoon, used my regular wet razor to shave my armpits of the downy hair that was present.  What was the deal with that exactly? was I basically 'reborn' every time I changed?  Or would changes that I'd made to myself persist to the next transit?

I ran a hand over my mound of pubic hair and gently caressed my submerged lips.  I marvelled at the fact that I'd accepted the absence of my penis so easily.  Sure I freaked out a little that first time that I reached between my legs, but since then?  The two subsequent times I'd transitioned, when I'd woken up and felt between my legs it had brought a huge smile to my face.  I loved it.  Was that wierd?  The boobs, the body shape, absence of body hair, the vagina itself: God was I loosing my manhood, because I'd lost my 'manhood'?

I laughed out loud at the word play.  

I ran my fingers through my rough pubic hair, recalling how good Sam's shaved region had looked and felt on my tounge wondered what two shaven cunts would feel like, rubbing together.

Without a second thought I started applying my razor, carefully of course, removing almost all of the hair.  I'd decided to try a Brazilian strip instead of going for the full-shave.  It didn't take long, and to say I was pleased with the result would be an understatement.  My mouth watered at the sight, God I wished I could go down on it!

I started at the next best thing, and began to stroke and caress that beautiful looking pussy.  The smooth skin felt exquisite beneath my fingers, but I found that the bath water tended to wash away my natural lubrication as I rubbed so decided to stop.  Of course as a guy, like most others, I learned the hard way not to cum in the bath tub.  It makes quite the mess!  Maybe I just had echos of the one occasion I'd done it still in my head, and that made me averse to bath tub masturbation.

I looked down again at my girly genitals.  "Like a whisp of cotton-candy framing a papercut," as my favourite comedian had put it.  And perfect for what I had planned for tonight.

****************

I walked into Murphy's around 8pm and it's fair to say that several heads turned in my direction.

I was wearing the shortest skirt that I owned, a pleated purple A-line along with a rather goth crop top which exposed my midriff.  I'd reapplied my makeup after my bath and was still pleased with the result.

There were around forty people in the bar, roughly a third were female and most of those were with a boyfriend or husband.  Regardless, during the following ten minutes while standing at the bar I caught pretty much every single guy in the place looking me up and down.  It was quite a weird feeling!  As a guy that just didn't happen.  As a cute girl though... well it was flattering.

I'd ordered my beer and went over the the pool table and added my name to the sign up sheet on the wall for tonight's competition.  My name was eighth on the list, I just wrote 'Kelly' with no surname.  It did feel a bit strange, I'd said 'my' name several times before but hadn't ever written it.

Steve's name was at the top of the list.  If I can just maintain a level of confidence then this will be so fun, I thought to myself.

The competition would start soon so I hung around the pool table.  Several guys tried to start conversations with me, I kept it polite but didn't engage with any of them enough to keep the conversation going.  I was waiting for Steve.

My plan was to humiliate him.  Plain and simple.  Not necessarily in front of anyone, which would have been good but I hadn't yet thought of a means to that end, but to lead him on and then reject him really, really hard. As-in completely destroy his confidence, which as (if I'm being completely honest) the hottest girl in the place I was probably the only one who could.

I wasn't sure how far I could go.  The more I strung him along, the harder the fall would be.  But the longer I took the later in the evening it would be, so there'd be less scope for other people to witness it.  I really would have liked people to see his humiliation, but again if I did it too early he'd have had less to lose so it wouldn't affect him as much.

So I was playing it by ear.  I looked around the bar and decided I actually was the hottest girl here, by quite a margin.  This made me smile, which in turn (incidentally) made several guys smile back at me.  God, the attention!

Steve arrived right before the games started.  There were still only eight names so it'd be four games, winners play in two semi games then those winners in the final.  Steve drew to play in the first game so I watched.

I noticed him watching me too, while he played.  His eyes were all over me in a pretty lecherous way.  Perfect.

He won and went to the bar to get a drink while my game started.  I'm not the best player in the world but my opponent, a scruffy guy in his late thirties who I think worked at the garage, was worse.  I felt eyes on my ass from all directions when I bent over to take my shots, and since I wasn't wearing a bra my crop top revealed quite a lot when I leaned forward too.

My game only took ten minutes and when I won I sat at a table next to where Steve was sat talking to a guy I didn't recognise.  There were a few tables in a row along a long bench which spanned the entire wall, our tables were at the end furthest from the bar.  I saw he'd placed a vape on the table I front of him so made a point of getting mine out and putting it on my table, so that once I'd finished my drink I could make a show of picking it up and walking toward the out-back smoking area.

It was chilly outside, and since I'd left my coat inside I got goosebumps.  I looked down at my t-shirt and saw my nipples were hard, prominent though the fabric.  There was one guy at the other side of the smoking area talking on his phone.  And then:

"You're quite a player," Steve's voice said followed by the sound of a vape.being inhaled.  I turned to look at him.

"Seems you're quite a player too,'" I said with a smile.  I watched his eyes drop to my chest and then back up.

"Pretty cold, ain't it?"

I made a point of looking down at my chest too and then back to him.  I knew what he was getting at.

"Oh those?  That's pretty standard.  Even in the summer.  You should see them!" Another smile.

Someone else came outside and wanted to talk to Steve, interrupting the conversation, which was good as I was worried I might go too fast too soon.

I made sure that I could quietly disappear back inside while he talked, so he wouldn't notice me going.  I went to the bar for another beer.  The guy I stood next to offered to buy it for me but I politely declined.  Back at my table I watched the current game, then saw Steve returning.  Clearly my nipples had had an effect on the fella, he could barely take his eyes of me as he sat down.

The game ended and the guy sat with Steve stood up, seemed he was the next player.  I noticed Steve slide along the bench towards me so that he was still sat at his table but as close to me as he could be.

"One more game then it's the next round," he said conversationally.  "Think the first one is me on you." He smiled as he said it.

I grinned. "I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

He leaned a little towards me, "Why, would you?"

I leaned a little towards him and in a low voice said, "Nah, I always prefer to be on top."  I looked him in the eyes briefly then turned my attention fully back to the pool table.  I was quite enjoying being the flirt!

He stood and turned to me, "Can I buy you a drink?"

It wasn't rhe first offer I'd received but for the first time I said, "Sure, a Bud please."

I smiled to myself as he walked off to the bar.  Absolutely 100% hooked him.  Now it's a question of how far I go, how long I wait.

I accepted the bottle from him with a short smile when he returned.  The final first round game was just ending, we were up next.  We both took swigs of beer then stood to claim our cues.

"You wanna break?" he asked from the other side of the table.

I replied "Want me to toss you for it?"