Adult usage only. May produce NSFW content.
As newlyweds struggling to make a start in life, Lucas and Mila Cruz are astonished to learn that Mila’s late grandmother has left them the entirety of her estate on the condition that they stay at her personal villa for seven nights. It’s a strange demand, but how can they refuse?
The will had been read.
The papers had been signed.
Mila and Lucas Cruz stood at the entrance to the new estate - THEIR new estate -in complete, stunned silence.
The property stretched out for what felt like miles in every direction - row after row of meticulously trimmed topiaries stood guard along gravel paths and around walls and columns of sandstone that shone golden in the morning light.
Lucas permitted himself a quiet whistle.
“Yeah,” Mila agreed.
“And you really didn’t know her very well?” Lucas asked.
Mila shook her head. “Barely knew she existed. Wasn’t expecting anything, really. Definitely not THIS.”
Lucas nodded, the silence broken only by the sound of distant birdsong.
At almost a hundred years old, Teresa De León had been the matriarch of Mila’s side of the family, now very widely dispersed around the world. Mila herself had fallen out of touch with the vast majority of her extended family overseas, until she received a summons to the reading of her grandmother’s will.
“Should we go in?” Mila said eventually.
Lucas shook himself awake. “Yeah. Yeah. I’ll leave the luggage here for now and just bring the keys.”
They left their second-hand car parked by the fountain, looking for all the world like a chicken nugget on a wedding cake. Something to be done about that in a week’s time perhaps, but for now the incongruity would just have to stand.
“How big is it?” Lucas asked as they trod the gravel path.
“Big,” said Mila, almost spinning as she walked trying to catch sight of everything at once. “The executor gave me a number but, I mean… just look at the place.”
“I’m looking,” Lucas agreed. “Big.”
A pair of dark wooden double doors greeted them at the end of the path, flanked …
Everyone in a relationship gets asked the question eventually.
“Would you still love me if I was a worm?”
Lee rolled over in bed to find himself nose to nose with Tania, his girlfriend of almost a year.
Tania looked back at him without a hint of guile in her expression.
Lee sighed and closed his eyes. He had been expecting this question. Dreading it, even. By all accounts, the only “right” way to answer was basically to lie.
“What?” He said, buying time.
Tania averted her eyes in feigned nonchalance.
“I dunno, I just feel like if I was born as a worm, you wouldn’t like me.”
Lee spent some time carefully assembling a truthful answer.
“Tania, if you had been born as a worm, it would have been very difficult for you to use the equipment at the gym where we met. Furthermore, I would suggest that we would have struggled to bake together, sing together, go drinking together and… well, all the other ways we enjoy each other’s company together, and that would certainly put a strain on the relationship.”
Tania had turned back to look at him as he spoke, though it was impossible to tell from her expression if he was making a strong case or not.
“On the other hand,” he continued, trying for humour. “I’ve seen plenty of worms while gardening and while I’m sure they’re all just as charming, intelligent and thoughtful as you are, I can promise you that I’m not about to run away with any of them.”
Tania looked at him for a little longer before rolling away onto her back and staring at the ceiling.
While Lee had been expecting to be memed at some point during their relationship, he had not been expecting such an apparently serious response.
“What if,” Tania eventually said. “You woke up …
Everyone goes a little bit crazy when they're alone
Anita tried to make the best of her circumstances. She really did.
She had more than enough food and toiletries to last the four week hard lockdown. Government cheques meant that her immediate bills were taken care of. She could do anything. She did everything. And in less than ten days she was completely burned out.
Waking up with “French for Idiots” plastered to her face, Anita threw it onto the pile of discarded books in disgust. Her everything was still sore from jumping into every type of workout routine at once, and she had given up on several attempts to write, draw or paint over the past week and a half.
Logging onto her socials, she found that her friends were having mixed results with their own endeavours. Everyone had advice to give of course, if only because it was an opportunity to pretend their own lives weren’t falling apart, and Anita was inclined to take the vast majority of it with a pound of salt.
Something obvious someone suggested - so obvious that she had forgotten to try it at all - was meditation. That was perfect, wasn’t it? It was doing something by doing nothing. If she could get meditating down, she’d be set for the rest of lockdown as long as she remembered to eat.
The soundtrack recommendations that came with the suggestion she bookmarked for later, choosing instead to focus on the basics for her first attempt.
Setting an alarm for two hours in case she fell asleep, Anita settled into a comfortable sitting position on some cushions.
Eyes closed.
Breathe deeply.
Concentrate on your sensations.
Be mindful of your body.
Be mindful of your thoughts.
Be mindful of your breathing.
The alarm went off.
Anita snapped back to alertness with a sudden shock, her …