Henry chanced a look into his mirror, supposedly checking out the flow of traffic, but in reality flagellating himself with another stolen glance at the occupants of the back seat. Aubrey Lister sat back on the leather like a king reclining on his throne, his face a picture of self-assured crapulence as he draped one arm over the shoulder of his favourite pet, the other lost beneath the fabric of her tight denim skirt.
Carla, who had been gazing out of the smoked window with the interest of a child a moment before, reacted to the attentions of his fingers with immediate effect. She began to wriggle in her seat, grinding her buttocks into the upholstery and reaching under her tube top to massage her own breasts. She moaned as she pulled her tail up towards her chest, making a show of trying to crawl into his lap in a desperate attempt to bring herself as close to him as possible.
These outings into the bustling traffic had become one of Lister's favourite pastimes in recent months. They would ride around whatever location they found themselves in, with the mermaid concealed in the back seat so that he could revel in the act of enjoying her in a public place while preserving the secrecy of his beloved pet.
Often he allowed her to lower the windows, looking out onto the landscape passing by as if she were an ordinary woman, thrilled at the fact no one could see her scales and fins as they drove by. The illusion was aided by the fact he had come to be aroused by the act of dressing her in conventional clothes as far as her form would allow, reminded of the fact that she had once done so in her former life before he gained possession of her totally. He garbed her in evening gowns, business suits, summer dresses and even a the regalia of a bride before her took her, thrilled by the fact that he had deprived her of the life in which she could have worn them by her own choosing.
But his favourite by far were the outfits that he imagined she would have worn had she been a prostitute of some kind. He was inspired by the women he saw in the most chauvinistic music videos of the time, where the women seemed to be there for little more than display and arousal no matter if they were in the background or the supposed artist themselves.
By these standards, the combination of a denim skirt that was barely able to cover her groin and an aquamarine top that strained to accommodate her breasts was relatively tame. But topped off with excessive jewellery and her hair done in thick ringlets, she could have been mistaken for a common trollop were it not for the sight of her tail.
Henry tore his gaze away and tried to keep his attention on the road.
He had grown used to the driving while all manner of things went on behind him, but today he was faced with the additional problem of a stop on the way. Lister occasionally fitted a business call into his rides and in those circumstances he left his driver in the company of the mermaid while he took care of the matter at hand.
When he was left alone with her like that, Henry felt as though she bored holes in the back of his head with her eyes, penetrating his skull with her accusatory stare.
But he was not about to disobey his orders, and so he took a deep breath and pulled the limousine off the road and into the gloom of a subterranean parking garage as he had been told. As the car came to a halt, he heard Lister whisper something to Carla before he stepped out of the door. The sound of a battery-operated toy filled the air and informed him that whatever had been said was less than clean in nature. Probably an instruction for the mermaid to keep herself prepared for his return or something equally as lascivious in nature.
Perfect, he thought, now I have to sit here and listen to that as well.
It came as a surprise to him that the sound of the vibrating toy ceased only a few seconds after Lister had left the limousine and was far enough away to be out of earshot. The silence that was left in its absence seemed heavier than ever, and Henry could hear his own breathing as though it were as loud as a jet engine.
"Henry?"
Of all the things he could have imagined to break the silence, the instantly familiar voice shocked him utterly. He froze in his seat, unable to turn his head or even glance up at the mirror, afraid that he was moments away from being judged for the sins he had burdened himself with for years now.
"Henry," she was closer now, almost up to the hatch between the two halves of the limousine. "Please don't freak out...I know this is weird, for the both of us. But I need to talk to you...I need your help."
With a gargantuan effort, he turned in his seat and looked into her face as she clung onto the rim of the hatch with both webbed hands.
He could not have put it into words, but there was something different in her eyes and her expression, a depth of emotion that had seemed to be lost when she was transformed from a human being into a mermaid. For the first time he could remember, Henry was able to perceive the same woman she had been in the surgically tweaked face of the mermaid she had become.
"I'm sorry," it was short and pathetic as well as a thousand miles away from the intensity of the guilt he was feeling, but under the circumstances it was all he could manage right there and then.
"I don't need you to be sorry," Carla shook her head, "I need you to help me get away."
"From him?"
"Who else?"
"He'll kill us both," Henry turned his head away from her as she started to pull herself though the hatch, breasts struggling to make it through the small space.
"I don't know about you," her voice was strained as she pulled her tail through after her and fell onto the seat beside his, "but I look at myself as I am right now and I can't help thinking that I'm already dead as long as I stay put."