-a few days later-

- "Phuket Island is great, I dunno what you're talking about." I said, rolling my eyes.

- "There are far better places in Thailand, I've already been to it anyway."

- "I don't give a damn, I haven't. The videos are just breathtaking." I objected.

- "Fine!” she huffed. "I guess we have the time." She paused for a second. "I guess a tour on elephant back and then snorkeling would be cool."

We were in my truck, I was driving back home. We'd spent the day jogging and then having lunch outside after a quick shower. We were on our way back home. Quite honestly we had no idea what to do with the rest of the day.

- "Isn't that unethical or something? Elephant riding? I once read that they don't treat the elephants humanely, also something about human weight or the ride stressing out or hurting the elephant, especially if it's more than one person."

- "The first part is kinda true, you have to be careful which business you support, not all of them treat elephants horribly. The second part is bullshit, female elephants support the weight of a male on their backs during mating. A human is literally nothing for them."

- "That's a good point." I replied looking in the rearview mirror. "Hey by the way, think I can trust Carissa with my car?"

I'd mentioned this to Claudia before. I was going to rent my car on Turo, and I wanted Carissa to handle that part. My dad was going on vacation with my stepmom too, so they weren't an option.

- "Yeah it should be fine. I dunno why you wanna bother with this in the first place though, it doesn't sound like it be worth it."

- "Well, I won't be using the car anyway. But I'm also planning on upgrading my truck next year, and I been thinking instead of selling it I could rent it on Turo and that should cover financing for the new model. Other than the down payment, I would be paying nothing out of pocket for the new truck if this works."

- "But what if they wreck it?"

- "Turo has its own insurance so there'll be no risk of increasing my premium due to multiple claims. Plus they'll appraise the damage based on dealership repair quotes, but obviously I have my own garage and body shop and I have people working there anyway so I'll actually pocket most of the repair check." I grinned.

- "I dunno man, it sounds like a lot of trouble to go through for 2 grands a month at most." She shrugged. "Anyways, you can talk to her about it, I probably won't need her services after we come back."

- "So we clearly need her right now, but you're gonna fire her when you're back?"

- "Probably, I mean I'm not sure yet. We've talked about this before."

I'll have a lot of time to talk her out of it, I thought. She's stubborn, better distribute the workload on multiple days.. or weeks.

- "Do you have a crush on my housekeeper or something? I swear the way you defend her is so weird." Her tone was mostly sarcastic, but I could sense curiosity in her voice too.

- "Well she's hot alright." I tried playing along. "She's a hot BBW gym girl isn't she?"

- "Great! I'll do you a favor and let her go back to being an onlyfans model. Make sure to subscribe."

- "Shut up Claudia. She's a hard-working single mom trying to make ends meet and you know it."

- "Yeah, I'll pretend that I believe this is why you're defending her so valiantly."

- "I don't give 2 rat butts what you believe." I shot back. "I have the right to crush on people so I don't see why I would hide that if it were true." Honestly yeah, why hide it? Maybe I didn't want my submissive nature and foot fetish to become public knowledge.

- "Yeah I wasn't under the illusion that it was a rat's butt that had your attention.. more like a cow's butt." She smirked.

- "Get reckt Claudia."

Her attention was back to her phone all of a sudden as we arrived back at her place, and I parked the car outside.

Claudia greeted us with a smile, she seemed pretty excited that day. If only I knew why. As I said before, she's usually calm and confident and very methodical. They say however, I still remember her nervous smile, she was sweating more than usual too.

It was zero hour for her, but we were pretty clueless and completely oblivious to what she was doing. In our defense, she didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I mean yeah it wasn't her habit to always serve us coffee without being asked to but she'd done it many times before that fateful day. And how were we supposed to guess what was about to happen? At most I thought she was trying to suck up to Claudia or something. If only I knew that we were going to be the ones doing the sucking up soon.

I still remember her smile and the look of curiosity in her eyes after we finished our coffee. I guess maybe the only suspicious thing she did was offering to stay the night in case we needed her, but even that wasn't very unusual. Like it wouldn't have been the first time she did it, but usually it was Claudia or her father who asked her to do it.

Mostly her father...

Claudia raised her eyebrows and simply told her that it isn't necessary. Carissa left, I guess she was thinking herself that she could just come back for us later. She had the keys and security codes, shouldn't be a problem for her.

I don't remember when the effects of the stuff she spiked our coffee with kicked in, this was a few months ago.. damn, I can't believe it's already been so long. Maybe I adjusted to life in captivity much better than poor Claudia. Anyway, my best guess is about an hour after we finished our coffee we started feeling it. At first it was a feeling it warmth all over, we were sweating despite the air-conditioning. Then came the ringing sensation, mostly in the arms and legs. Next, a few symptoms that I can only describe as anti-cholinergic followed: dry mouth, tachycardia, palpitations, cramps, and an upset stomach. None of it had a completely sudden onset, this was over the course of several hours. Looking back, I'm not sure why we didn't try to seek medical help immediately. Ironically, we didn't even expect it to have anything to do with Carissa or the coffee, we thought it was working out and building a sweat and then going into a cold room, and taking a cold shower. We even thought maybe it's whatever we had for lunch.

Eventually, we started thinking about calling an ambulance as the symptoms were getting unbearable, it was about 12 am or so, but we didn't have the time or energy to do it. I remember Claudia blacked out first, and as I rushed to check on her her body literally felt hot to the touch. Before I could reach my cellphone, the world went black for me too, and I fainted.

Little did I know, this was the beginning of a brave new world for both of us.