Ch. 9— The Car of Disguise

    Scamp and the puppy with the patch happily giggled before Scamp turned to ask them a question.
    “My name’s Scamp, and she’s Angel. Do wewe know where we are?” Scamp asked.
    “No,” the puppy on the left stated. “We’re on a foreign trip, but well… can wewe keep a secret?”
    “I promise,” Scamp told them. Angel looked at him worriedly, remembering the last time Scamp promised to keep a secret.
    “Well, we’re running away,” the puppy on the right told him.
    “Same with us!” Scamp declared happily. “My name’s Scamp, and she’s Angel. We’re running away because of our, uh…bad parents.”
    Angel looked at Scamp skeptically, before saying, “They’re disgusting… at least they’re not my parents.”
    “I’m Lucky,” the puppy on the right stated. “He’s Patch, and she’s Penny. And we’re running away from our parents who want to send us to these dog shows.”
    “My sisters are also entering,” Scamp stated. “I see why’d wewe want to run away. It’s a bunch of frilly stuff.”
    “Do wewe know the streets well?” Patch asked Scamp with great interest.
    “Well, uh…yeah!” Scamp stated happily.
    “Yeah right tenderfoot,” Angel told Scamp doubtfully. “I do though. I was a former mitaani, mtaa dog,” Angel told them proudly.
    Patch, Penny, and Lucky looked impressed. “Do wewe know of a hideout place?” Patch asked.
    “Well, no, not near here,” Angel admitted. “And it might not do us any good. His dad was also a mitaani, mtaa dog, so he can find us quickly.”
    “Oh, shucks,” Patch told them sadly.
“I want to return nyumbani to watch television!” Lucky wailed.
    “You’re already out, so you’d just spill on us,” Patch stated mistrustfully, although Penny looked only halfheartedly in agreement.
    “Well, we better get away from here,” Patch told Scamp. “We only just escaped… my parents are still nearby.”
    “Oh, that’s bad,” Scamp stated frustratedly. “Mine are looking for us too. We have to hide.”
    Scamp cleared his throat, before saying, “Hey! I know a place where we can go!”
    Angel looked curiously at Scamp, and Lucky asked, “Well, where?”
    “It’s an old railroad,” Scamp explained.
    “Oh, cool!” Patch explained. “It sounds like fun!”
    “Yeah, it’s abandoned!” Scamp exclaimed. “We went there to find…”
    Angel, however walked up to Scamp. “No, Scamp, we can’t!”
    “Come on, why not?” Scamp asked.
    “The railroad is far away from all the houses, and we won’t be able to find a family,” Angel explained.
    “We don’t need a family,” Scamp told Angel. “We can manage on our own, right Patch?”
    Patch nodded in agreement, but Penny and Lucky’s expressions clearly didn’t agree with that.
    “Is there any other place?” Lucky asked
But before Patch au Scamp could reply, a blinding light blinded all of them.
    “What’s going on?” Penny asked, scared.
    “Jim Dear must have gotten a car,” Scamp added nervously.
    “Maybe it’s a new family!” Angel exclaimed happily.
    The others were preparing to run away but Angel refused to move. Penny and Lucky soon joined her, leaving a frustrated Patch and Scamp to have no choice than to stay with them.
    Scamp was half-right. A small, red car was standing in front of the group of puppies, all huddled together nervously. The car light turned off, and inside, a woman with fat cheeks, well-tanned skin, and long red hair stuck her head out of the window.
    “Well, well, well!” she stated happily as she opened the door of the car. “Look at all those puppies! And my, such wonderful coats!” She was wearing a loose pink dress, and was quite rotund.
    “Is she a bit familiar?” Penny asked, confused.
    “But… no…” Patch told her firmly. “She doesn’t look like that…”
    Scamp and Angel had no idea of what they were talking about. Angel was looking simply delighted. “This is our chance,” Angel stated excitedly. “We can find a family now!”
She was hurriedly pawing up at the woman and giving her puppy eyes, as Scamp was biting on her tail and trying and failing to drag her backward.
“Wait a minute!” Scamp declared. “We don’t even know if she has strict rules au not!”
“She can take us into the neighborhoods,” Angel told him bluntly. “And I want a family no matter what, even if they do have rules.”
“Well, fine!” Scamp pouted. “If you’re going to act like that, I don’t want any family!”
    “Well,” the woman stated happily in a relatively, deep low voice. “Such wonderful puppies. All right, I’ll take wewe in,” she stated, smiling. She picked up Patch, Lucky and Penny, Scamp, and Angel, and threw them into the back kiti, kiti cha of the car. She then left to a restroom on the other side of the street.
“Rats,” Patch complained. “We’ve been caught already. She’s probably going to take us back to our parents.”
The woman ran back in a couple of minutes, looking much skinnier from a distance, and her cheeks, contrary from being chubby, looked almost skeletal, though they couldn’t really see her in the dim light that was left, and was carrying something. When she re-entered the car and locked it up tightly, she threw down a bag of stuffing and a red wig.
“Vengeance is sweet,” the woman up front drawled in a cackle, her low voice vanished. “And with the same tactic wewe used on me,” she stated as she turned on the car and began to drive at breakneck speed.
“What does she mean?” Angel asked.
“I don’t know… well, at least it’s soft back here,” Lucky told the others.
    “What’s this?” Scamp asked, chewing on something. “It feels like… fur…”
    “Fur?” Patch asked, and the mtoto wa mbwa looked over the seat. So did Penny and Lucky. Scamp and Angel looked confused. But as the car began to songesha and passed under a headlight, they noticed that a large, fur, manyoya kanzu, koti was covering the seat. Patch, Penny, and Lucky looked terrified, and gasped.
    “What?” Angel asked.
    The three of them were quiet for a bit, before Penny stated nervously, in a stutter, “It’s Cruella!”