Chapter 1: Early Start
Sandra and Eric found themselves driving their pick-up down a winding country road that was flanked on either side by hilly farms populated, alternately, by horses, sheep, and cows. After they had woken up, showered, etc. at 5:00 AM that morning, they each began packing their bags for a weeklong vacation, without ever having spoken a word about where they were going or why. A few times, momentarily, each of them would reflect on when they made the decision to pack and leave the city today. In each case, they seemed to vaguely remember a conversation about needing to get away, but this was a very organized couple and it was curious that there was no indication of a trip on their calendar or in their respective day-planners.
Neither of them liked to appear foolish to one another, so they were both too shy to raise questions about their destination or even when the conversation in which they planned the trip took place. They merely packed in silence, loaded up their truck, and then they hopped in, with Eric taking the wheel and Sandra riding shotgun. They left Toronto and drove west into the rural farmland area between that huge metropolis and the smaller city of Kitchener-Waterloo.
It was a pleasant drive to take on a morning in mid-July, broken up here and there by small towns that were reminiscent of some long past era, in which the main street of small towns was still at the center of most people's lives, before urbanization, shopping malls, and home entertainment systems lured nearly everyone away. After driving for about 2 hours, Eric turned down a less-traveled gravel road and the landscape quickly became densely forested, interrupted only occasionally by single-family dwellings.
They didn't travel far down this isolated road before they lost the Toronto radio station they were listening to and Sandra remarked that they had lost cell phone service. They were still tired from waking up very early, for a Saturday, so they just shrugged and were content to take in the beauty of nature. They had barely said a word to one another as they drove; as mentioned, they were both shy to admit to one another that they had somehow forgotten the details about their destination. Suspense about where they would ultimately end up had somewhat of a suppressing effect on their conversation.
Eric and Sandra were both successful lawyers at the same firm. They had met there as interns and had quickly earned the respect of their colleagues and one another. They eventually fell in love and were married after they were each offered permanent jobs with the firm in their mid-20s. Their separate careers went very well over subsequent years. By now, they were a fairly wealthy couple in their mid-30s. All of their career focus meant that they never got around to having any children. What extra time they had, they devoted to keeping their relationship strong and exercising to stay fit, and they devoted considerable energy to charitable causes. Consequently, their appearance had hardly changed over the course of their marriage. Sandra was a 5 foot-4 inch, 105-pound, dark-haired beauty with sharp green eyes and a wicked smile. Her hair was cut very short in a pixie style and people frequently remarked that she bore a striking resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. Eric was 5 feet-9 inches tall and was slim, but not at all skinny. His weight never fluctuated very far from 160 pounds. His brown hair was not long, but it was long enough to be loosely curly and a bit messy-looking in a pleasant sort of a way. People could not quite agree as to what celebrity he looked like, but some suggested a resemblance to Ed Norton and others identified him as very much like Kevin Spacey with more hair. Most of the time, the two of them possessed an unusually relaxed attitude and a constant smirk in response to everything that was either wonderful about the world or everything that was absurd about the world. The remainder of the time, they were vicious and ill-tempered advocates for their personal conceptions of justice, which tended toward the liberal side of the political continuum.
Now, after driving about 90 minutes down this functionally abandoned gravel road, this happily married couple passed through an iron gate and gradually approached a large and luxurious white-pillared mansion at the end of a mile-long driveway. It was clearly a large estate, with well-manicured grounds, including clumps of trees and flowers here and there amongst larger open areas covered in recently-cut grass. As they stopped directly at the front of the building's entrance, an older couple walked down the steps that led from the front door toward the truck. Their expression was friendly and welcoming and Sandra lowered her window.
She said, "Hello.", and exclaimed, "What a beautiful place you have here!"
The older man on the other side of her window replied, "Thank-you! Welcome to our little resort! We hope you enjoy your stay."
With only slightly nervous hesitation, Sandra responded, "I'm sure we will. I guess our plan is to spend the next seven days here. " The basis for this comment was the amount of clothes she brought along for the trip, rather than any explicit knowledge of their reservation.
Clarifying, the woman said, "Yes, you must be Eric and Sandra. We do, indeed, have you as staying with us for seven days, and we very much hope you will find it to be an exciting and rejuvenating week. You must be tired from driving all morning. Let's arrange a spot for your truck and get you settled."
The older gentleman added, "Yes, please come on out of the truck and bring your bags." The older couple backed away as Sandra climbed down from the pick-up and Eric stepped out from the driver's side and retrieved their bags from the back seat. He continued, "You can put those bags just here at the base of the steps." He then extended his hand to Eric and said, "We are the managers of this resort, my name is Charlie and this is my wife, Mabel."
Eric and Sandra exchanged handshakes with the couple and then stepped back to look around and take in the impressive building and its natural setting, which hosted numerous birds of varying sizes and several squirrels going about their business. There were no other people within view. Just then, a cute little woman in her early 20s, who had long, straight blonde hair and was a couple of inches shorter than Sandra, swung open the door and bounced down the front steps, grinning broadly. Sandra and Eric's eyes met briefly and they smirked at one another with slightly-raised eyebrows; an unspoken reaction to noticing the material of the girl's almost comically short, vertical red-and-white striped, ruffled skirt flopping up and down, providing the four of them brief glimpses of the triangle of smooth black fabric underneath. The girl wore shiny red shoes with a silver buckle and lacy white stockings that stopped at mid-thigh, three inches below the bottom of her skirt when it wasn't bouncing up above her waist. Around the top of each stocking, there was a row of little red bows. Her breasts were held down tightly by a red, bikini-style top, such that there was nothing to obscure view of her flat and firm abdomen and what appeared to be a small sparkly diamond attached to a hoop piercing through the upper edge of her belly button.
The girl rushed up to Sandra and hugged her tightly as she announced, "Hi, Sandra! I'm so glad you guys could make it! You're so early! More time to play, I guess!" Then, she released Sandra and wrapped her arms tightly around Eric's waist, pressing her left ear against his chest and mashing her larger-than-expected breasts hard against his stomach. She held her embrace for about 30 seconds, generating a surprised look on Eric's face and just the hint of a blush as he could feel the start of an erection pressing against the girl's thigh. After she let go, the girl took a step back and grinned at them both with her hands on her hips.
She blurted, "My name is Carly! I'm here to park your truck! I love it by the way. It's so big! And it's red, so I match!" Sandra and Eric laughed, cheerfully, and Eric promptly handed Carly the keys. Carly quickly scurried around the front of the vehicle, opened the door on the driver's side, and scrambled up into the seat. Meanwhile, Eric reflected on how sad it was that he couldn't watch her climb into the truck from his angle on the passenger's side. Incidentally, Sandra had precisely the same thought. She had never been with any women in her life; not even when she lived in the dorms at university. Nevertheless, she enjoyed feasting her eyes on beautiful women approximately as much as she enjoyed visually inspecting sexy men. Consequently, both Eric and Sandra hoped that they would get to ogle Carly again before it came time for them to make the return trip back to Toronto. With what was apparently a permanent grin on her face, Carly took a moment to adjust the seat, started the engine, and drove perkily back down the long driveway away from the mansion.
Charlie piped up, "Hah! There goes Carly! She's our valet."
In a kindly voice, Mabel then suggested, "Sandra, why don't you come on inside to the lobby, so that we can get your credit card information. Eric, do you mind waiting here for someone to carry these bags and show you to your cottage? Someone will escort Sandra along, once we are done with her in the lobby. By then, we will be all ready to deliver a nice lunch for you both." Eric nodded in response and, with that, Charlie and Mabel accompanied Sandra into the house, leaving Eric alone at the bottom of the ten or so broad, white concrete steps that led up to the front door.
Once inside, the older couple each shook Sandra's hand and Charlie said, "Please do enjoy your stay, once again. We will leave you now in very competent hands."
The couple then walked away through a door off to the right, holding each other's hands as they went. Sandra glanced around the place and found herself at the threshold of an extraordinarily large room with cream-coloured marble floors and a high, ornately-sculpted white dome ceiling. A fair distance ahead, there were two huge curved, red-carpeted staircases, one of which projected up and to the left about three regular stories and the other staircase, to the right, was a mirror image of the first. The red carpet joined just beyond the base of the staircases on the lobby floor and then bisected the cavernous room right up to the front door where Sandra was standing. She noticed that her mouth was wide open in an uncontrollable reaction to the awe of these extravagant surroundings. She swiftly closed it, pursing her lips and trying to regain her coolness. Just a little distance beyond the door and to the right of the carpet where Sandra was standing, there was a long desk with computing terminals; evidently that was the front desk.
To the left was a collection of several seating areas, with cushioned black chairs and couches of varying sizes, including a number of surprisingly long sectional-type ones arranged in the shape of a horseshoe. Scattered amongst the furniture for sitting on were glass tables of varying sizes, covered with silver and red coasters and, of all things, large red and black ashtrays. Sandra reflected on her assumption that smoking had been eliminated from all resort lobbies, everywhere, by now. There were five impressively large flat-screen televisions distributed about the huge wall to Sandra's left. Other than Sandra, the room was completely empty. She looked up at the clock on the wall and noticed it was just about 10:00 AM; it was puzzling that there were no guests around yet and she couldn't see anyone behind the front desk.
