Holidays in Paradise Island Ch.9

I got home after an exhausting day at work, opened the small wooden door in the fence, which was perhaps one meter and twenty centimeters tall, and walked down the path to the porch. I went barefoot up the two steps and stopped before entering to clean my feet.

I opened the door, which had no lock, and stepped into the cabin. I sighed and walked into the dining room where I placed the backpack I had been carrying over my shoulder. The place I stubbornly refused to call home was a small but very comfortable cabin. It had a living room with a sofa, a dining area with a table for four, a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a tiny room that could serve various purposes: pantry, storehouse, or room for the slave. But Román had decided that I should sleep with him in his bed.

The hound got what he wanted, he made me his personal slave. The day I returned from the waterfall, I was taken to the cabin where Román was waiting for me. His arrogant demeanor expected my gratitude, but all I did was curse him. The burly man grabbed my arm tightly and demanded that I thank him. A thanks in his way, over the dining table.

I went to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. I had the freedom to do as I pleased—so long as it pleased my master. I took out chicken and vegetables from the refrigerator, and put water on the stove to boil for pasta. I stepped out the kitchen door to the back, into a small garden bordered by the same white fence that divided all the other cabins.

“What’s on the menu today?” I heard someone ask from the other side of the fence.

“I’ll make some chicken, with vegetables,” I said, standing in front of the lemon tree in front of me. “And I’ll prepare lemonade.”

“That sounds delicious,” said Arlo, the young man who lived in the adjacent cabin. “I miss chicken…” his tone longed for the taste of white meat. Felix, the hound I served, only ate red meat.

“Hey, Arlo,” someone called from the other side. We both turned as if we didn’t know it was Dany, the boy who lived next door.

“What’s up, Dany?”

“Could you give me some rosemary?”

“Sure,” Arlo grew his own aromatic plants and herbs. The young man, who was 22 years old, approached the little bush he had kept like a tiny pine and cut off a sprig. After handing it to Dany, he returned to me to give me some branches of another plant. “It’s mint. Add some leaves to your lemonade, it’ll give it a fresh touch.” I looked at him and took the branches.

“Thank you very much…” I knew that my neighbor used those plants trying to improve the taste of the hound’s urine. “Uh… do you want lemons?” I offered him the fruits that the tree in my backyard produced.

“No, thanks. The acidity of lemon doesn’t help me…” I nodded, thankful in my head that Román didn’t force me to drink his nighttime emissions as Felix did with Arlo.