This was paradise, or at least the closest Jo had ever come to paradise. She really meant that too. She had seen so many so called “paradises” through her time, but none were quite as perfect as this one. There was just something special about the idyllic splendour of it all. The ease between the others that lived in the retreat above and the natives that lived in the village down below.

She had spent a lot of time in the village hanging out with the locals and she loved them. They were a happy people always willing to help no matter what.

“Samuel” Jo called out to her personal assistant.

As she lay on the sun lounger drenched in the warm rays a pair of colourful birds flew over chirping a happy song. They were odd birds, always in pairs and always singing, they had no fear of predators. Often you would see them in the trees eating the sweet fruit. If you could whistle just right, and Jo could because she had been taught by the natives, the birds would throw some fruit down to you.

Everything was in harmony here.

“Samuel” Jo called again, this wasn’t like him. He was normally so diligent.

“Who are you hollering for?” Sarah had rolled over to look at Jo, peering over her sunglasses as she did so.

“Samuel, my assistant.”

“You named him, how cute.” Sarah practically squealed as she rolled back on to her front, kicking her legs up into the air.

“I found it weird that he didn’t have a name.”

Sarah simply shrugged.

“Have you seen him this morning? Normally he comes straight away when I call”

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“Not this morning, no.”

“That’s a cryptically weird answer.”

Sarah rolled all the way over on to her back, lifting her knees up. “I saw him last night, I called him to my room but he failed to pleasure me, so I sent him away”

“You did what?” Jo was actually shocked by this, she had always thought that Sarah had contempt for the locals.

“You haven’t yet? Trust me normally the natives are very good. I assumed that his tardiness in coming to me was because he was with you.”

“No. Of course not… I didn’t… he would do that?” In fact Jo had been feeling a tad horny recently but had been resolving that herself. However, this felt a bit like prostitution and a lot more like sexual slavery, something she was fundamentally against, having personally experienced it first hand in previous life.

“So that was last night, where is he this morning?” Jo asked.

“Well later on I went for a stroll around the grounds and I found him in a corridor eating our food.”

“So?”

“That’s our food not his.” Sarah gave Jo a side glace

“We have plenty. This land is the most fertile I have ever seen. If he was hungry what was the problem with sharing a little?”

“That’s beside the point, he should have known his place. Besides that was his third strike, all in one evening as well. If I hadn’t punished him then all of them” Sarah gave a dismissive point to the village “would start to think they ran the place.”

“Punished?”

“Yes, it was delightful. You see the natives here have a very particular view of the afterlife. If they do good and are helpful they will go there but if they are bad they will not. Instead they will simply disappear, poof, nothing. Now Samuel as you called him, believed that he would get to the afterlife for being such a helpfully chap. So, I castrated him and burnt his testicles in front of him before killing him. Now’s he will go to the afterlife as neither man or woman. The look in his eyes.”

Horror poured icily over Jo.

“Daddy is lucky that no one else was up here, I was so worked up I could have culled the whole village. I think that is daddy’s biggest fear. ‘Now Sarah, you need to control yourself, I can’t send hunting parties into the forests every week to replenish the stock’” Sarah howled out with laughter at her own impression.

“Don’t look so serious, you’ll age your face. Look I lent you “Samuel” he was mine to do what I please with. I will lend you another if you want, you can even give him a name. I promise I won’t laugh”

Jo stood up and Sarah vanished from existence. She had to burn paradise down again.