It was a warm Spanish spring and Maya's tears evaporated almost immediately as they splashed on the hot asphalt that made up the empty streets of Madrid. She didn't know where she was running or what she was going to do, she just knew she couldn't be around Felipe a moment longer.
It had started, as falling outs often do, with a discussion about money. Coronavirus was hitting Spain hard, Felipe had chosen to revive an old grievance, that Maya's artistic dreams were trumping the need to constantly acquire capital. Maya never felt she had unrealistic dreams, she never wanted to be a millionaire or go to lavish parties where the deep and thoughtful spent the night indulging money launderers and tax dodgers.
Maya wanted a life where she could squeeze together a living seeing the beauty in the world.
For an art graduate what that meant was a day job as an admin at an art supply wholesaler, plenty of evening gigs teaching art, and occasionally she would be able to get away long enough to put together a painting or two of her own. These paintings tended to sit in a gallery unsold long enough to compel her to awkwardly drop the price and accept a measly handful of Euros for something she had spent hours on.
Felipe didn't get her focus, he had clearly seen her art as something she would grow out of, instead she grew out of him and left. But she left to a world that was closed, she couldn't go to a hotel or a friend's house, she had her handbag and the clothes on her back but what she needed was a plan. Eventually she held back the pain long enough to think clearly and a plan formed in her mind, her workplace would be empty, she had pretty much spent the night there once or twice before, she could hide out there long enough to find a place to live.
The key fob and alarm code still worked from when everyone was told to work from home. She walked through the ornate entranceway and pressed the lift for the third floor where her company was based. As she opened the door a waft of warm air washed over her body. Clearly the managers didn't see the point in leaving on the air conditioning when nobody was meant to be in the office. Maya opened the windows, she didn't want the office power bill snitching on her squatting. Once all the windows were open, she sat on the floor and allowed herself a moment to swim in the sadness and grief that overwhelmed her.
Maya cried for some time between five minutes and two hours, before getting to work making the office into the kind of place she could spend the night. One of her co-workers had a blanket for the cold winter months and her bosses office had a sofa for visitors. She snuggled herself in and prepared for a long and ugly night.
By the morning Maya was on the floor, the blanket discarded and her clothes drenched with sweat and tears. She took a moment to wonder what she had to do today and was surprised that the answer was nothing and everything. It was a Sunday, all her art classes were cancelled, her professional and personal lives on a total pause. So she focussed on getting dug in to spending the long haul at her workplace. The first concern was food, the staff fridge had been cleared out so it could be turned off, but the cupboards were filled with instant rice, cakes, biscuits and drinks. It wouldn't last long but she didn't immediately have to worry about shopping.
Next was making the office homely. Maya wandered the office amazed at how a change in perspective could make it come alive. Before the office was the site of a concession to the corporate world, her five day a week prison of capitalism was now her sanctuary away from an aggressive force of consumerist complicity that was supposed to be her home and family. It helped that as an art supplies store they had made it look the part, swirls of colours dancing around the open plan desks, running around the office before streaming towards a colourful mural in the style of Pablo Picasso. Maya wanted to do what she always did when she came across unexpected beauty, she wanted to paint it.
Maya 'borrowed' some art supplies from the demo storehouse they had in the office, a time honoured tradition among the artistic workers that peppered the staff rosters, and got to work on her painting. She fastidiously painted every office detail before splashing colour over the walls and doing everything in her power to breathe life and redemption into a building that had formerly filled her with such dread.
She took a step back from her painting and it just looked like her office. To her it may have been breathed life anew but to anybody else it would never get a second glance, there was no burst of freedom on the canvas just another factory of consumerism.
It was getting hot again and Maya regretted the black polyester trousers and long sleeve top she had been wearing when she left, but this gave her an idea. Nudity! artists have been using nudity to signify freedom forever. Maya noticed how the colours swirled around her painting and identified the perfect place for a naked person to sit. Of course Maya knew she wouldn't be able to get a life model in and she didn't want to be flying blind so she knew what she would have to do.
Looking around the office, Maya slowly undid the fly on her trousers, awkwardly shuffling on her seat to allow the fabric to escape and fall to the floor, pulling off her socks as she wiggled her feet out of the crumple of fabric. She lifted her top over her head and sat for a second in her comfortable underwear, feeling a deep sense of joy that she could re-conceptualise her office with her body. She unclipped her bra and felt the fabric loosen as her breasts pleaded to be free. She let out a shuddering breath as she pulled the bra away from her and placed it on her pile of clothes. Finally a little moan escaped her mouth as her knickers followed their path down her legs and were removed from her body.
Maya took a moment to relish the freedom she sought to celebrate. She stood up and wandered the office, her new kingdom of solitude. A tentative walk became a skip, a skip became a dance, soon Maya found herself laughing and singing as she celebrated the world she was crafting for herself. She propped her phone camera next to her easel and set a timer before bounding to the desk she had chosen and draping her naked body over her co-worker's keyboard, giggling at the clumsy imposition of office equipment.
Maya returned to her easel and sat down, seeing no need to put her clothes back on to complete her painting. She used the photo as a reference and began to paint her naked form onto the canvas. Maya had never appeared in one of her own paintings before, so she had never studied her body closely as she was now doing. She had never let it bother her that she was shorter than average, in fact her proportions matched the desk quite well, her tanned skin light enough to differentiate herself from the brown desk but dark enough to sweep her body away with the swirls of colour that formed a cyclone of imagination in the otherwise conservative office.
Her pussy was unshaven, a statement on how much she valued her relationship with Felipe, she made sure her bush proudly stood out away from the smooth curves made from her ample thighs draping over the desk. Her bottom, although more toned than she would have thought, still had enough give in it to make it a tricky contour as it unevenly squashed itself over the desk and keyboard. She almost let vanity take her hand to flatten her tummy, but if she was going to embrace freedom she knew she had to do so honestly and didn't shy away from painting the bulge of stomach that stuck out as she bent over backwards. Next she got to her breasts, she had always loved her breasts; C-cups not too big but not a surfboard, perfect for such a composition where gravity was clearly pulling them towards her head, but full and pert enough to impose themselves away from the body, areola that didn't dominate and nipples stiff enough to really stick out and draw the eye, no better way to convey her genuine excitement.
Once she had finished her outstretched arms she moved on to painting her face, the look of purest joy and exhilaration, it was vital that the canvas reflected it, every tooth in her beaming smile, the twinkle of fluorescent lights reflecting deepest satisfaction in her electric blue eyes. Finally her long draping bright purple hair, streaking with colour, as if joy was merging her with the office itself. It was mid afternoon by the time the painting was finished and Maya thought it was her best work yet, it was a shame she had no plans to sell it or even let another human being see it, although that didn't stop her hanging the picture in pride of place on the wall in her bedroom, the former boss' office.
Maya spent the rest of the evening relishing the ability to lounge around the office naked, she watched a movie on one of the computers, cooked herself some instant rice in a microwave and even placed a shopping order to get some toiletries, nice food, and wine in. As the sun went down she felt she had just had the perfect lazy Sunday.
The automatic alarm on her phone woke Maya up early Monday morning, she was meant to go to work today. A feeling of dread creeped over her, not just the usual Monday morning despondency, but the deep fear that her new outlook on her office would be lost to the renewed mundanity of her mandatory routine. The cupboards had cereal but no milk so Maya ended up pouring the contents of her bowl back into the cereal packet and settling for Nutella spread on some cheap Madeira cake she was sure nobody would miss.
Usually at this point Maya would have a shower, but there wasn't a shower in her office, she would have to go to work with two days worth of sweat on her, today was not going to be a good day. Maya let a scream of frustration echo her empty office and then tried to think of a way forward. She remembered that when they first refurbished the office they were offered a shower and turned it down, so it stood to reason one of the other offices in the building could have one. She couldn't get into any of the offices that were currently let out, but the former sportswear brand offices on the ground floor had still not found a new company to fill them and if anyone needed a shower it would be an office full of sporty people.
