EROTICA / ANTHOLOGY SERIES / MARRIAGE 2.0 / SEASON 3

Marriage 2.0: Lucy & Josh #16

Lucy and Josh experiment with turning the tables — seeing how it will be if Lucy is the one who takes the pill…

Welcome to Marriage 2.0 — the modern relationship, upgraded. New to the series? Start with the Introduction >>

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Josh was nervous as Hell. Sitting on the couch in the living room, he was waiting for Lucy to finish recording a video message to herself in the bedroom.

It was Saturday night, and instead of going out with his friends, as he usually would on this night of the week, he was home with his wife.

And she was planning on taking one of his little green pills tonight.

Was this a step too far? Sitting there massaging his clammy palms, he thought about everything they were doing wrong. The medication had been prescribed to him, not Lucy. They hadn’t consulted any medical professional concerning what they were planning. They knew the effects of this medication could be unpredictable.

Josh felt his insides quivering as he waited for his wife. What would the pill do to her?

Maybe she’d become a female version of Tyler. Strong-willed, sexually ravenous, confident beyond a standard measure. But while a dominant male had been right up Lucy’s street, it was a different matter the other way around. Would Josh be able to keep up with an enhanced Lucy?

‘It’s done.’

He turned to see Lucy quietly waltzing down the stairs to join him in the living room. She was dressed relatively plainly in a pale blue shirt and jeans — but nevertheless, she looked good. Under the influence of one of Josh’s pills, she could decide to put on sexier threads, but maybe she’d just want to get naked.

Lucy had thought they should both dress fairly casually for this first experiment. That creating a comfortable atmosphere for this trial might be better than trying to presuppose what Lucy’s alter ego might want.

‘You’re happy with it?’ he asked her as she handed the iPhone to him.

She nodded. ‘I think I was fairly clear about what’s going on.’

‘You think she’ll be okay?’

Here it was, and they were already referring to Lucy’s alter ego as ‘she.’ Seeing her as a different person, in the same way, they saw Josh’s alter ego — Tyler — as a different person.

‘She’s still me,’ Lucy pointed out, pulling her husband to her for a gentle kiss. ‘Even if she’s really different, she’s still me. I’m sure she’ll be fine.’

She gave him a little squeeze. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right with all this?’

He smiled. ‘I’m not taking the medication tonight.’

’No,’ she said, ‘but you’re the one who will have to deal with a woman who doesn’t know you and doesn’t know you’re her husband.’

‘Yes,’ he nodded, a mild tremor shivering through his body.

Lucy had nailed the leading cause of his current bout of anxiety.

‘It’s going to be like a first date for you,’ she said.

He flashed his eyes, acknowledging that she was right in her analysis of how he felt.

She grinned. ‘Are you going to sleep with her on the first date?’

Josh chuckled. ‘I think that’s going to be up to her, don’t you?’ Then he added, ‘Are you going to be okay if I did sleep with her on the first date?’

Lucy shrugged. ‘She’s me, isn’t she?’

She pressed herself against him, and to his surprise, he felt her hand pushing against his semi-hard cock through his pants.

‘Will you take pictures for me if you do?’ she whispered into his ear. ‘Maybe some video?’

His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. This was a surprise.

‘Uh… you sure?’

She smiled, shrugged. ‘I’m curious. I want to know what happens.’

He nodded. ‘It’s not fair if you get jealous, you know?’

She laughed. ‘I promise I won’t be mad at you, whatever happens.’

They were ready. They both sat on the couch, pausing for what seemed like ages before Lucy finally gave him a little smile, Josh gave her a little nod, and she slipped the pill into her mouth.

‘Some people say it can take an hour or so to work properly,’ he said.

Lucy finished her glass of water and replied, ‘It doesn’t take you that long, does it? With you, it’s like… you take it… and then you…’

She dropped the glass. Josh leaned forward and nearly caught it. At least he batted it down onto the couch so it didn’t smash on the floor.

Lucy slumped in her seat.

For a few moments, Josh started wondering if the pill would do nothing more to her than put her to sleep for the rest of the night.

But, after a while, she gently stirred, her eyes flickering as she began to move her arms — and stretch into a full yawn.

Then she opened her eyes wide and totally freaked out.

It was fifteen minutes before he could get her to even watch the video clip Lucy had just made to explain everything to her.

And even then, she said, ‘How am I supposed to believe that’s real?’

‘It is real. I swear.’

‘For what that’s worth. I don’t even know who you are.’

He sighed. This wasn’t the way this was supposed to go. Lucy wasn’t supposed to take the pill and then, when she woke up, start screaming in absolute terror. She wasn’t supposed to accuse him of attacking her because she had no idea who he was or how she came to be here.

Tyler had just woken up and accepted that Lucy was his wife and that he was allowed to have sex with her. Then he’d just gone along with the whole thing and slept with her until they were both exhausted.

Men were different, huh.

At least he had persuaded her not to call the cops. It had taken quite some persuasion, though.

He’d shown her hundreds of photos on his phone — thousands, maybe. Giving the phone to her so she could flick through the proof that they were husband and wife. That they had two college-age children together.

After a while, she’d calmed down, no longer seeing Josh as an immediate threat.

‘Why would you do this?’ she said to him. ‘Why would you take a pill that wipes your memory like this?’

Josh shrugged. ‘It’s only temporary. It’s just… a kind of game,’ he said.

‘A game? Fricking weird game, if you ask me.’

And, of course, because she was like this, all the sexual desire had been pretty well expunged from Josh’s entire body.

‘The pills are mine — ’ he said, trying to explain a different way.

But then she interrupted him, saying, ‘I don’t believe it. What did you do — spike my drink? You in a habit of — ‘

He said, ‘You wanted to try one of my pills.’

‘Uh… no, I didn’t,’ she insisted. ‘I do not remember asking to try one of your creepy rape pills.’

‘Well, no. But you’ve lost your memory…’

Not-Lucy said, ‘Look. Why don’t you let me out of here… and I promise not to tell anyone you spiked my drink.’

Josh furrowed his brow. He couldn’t help it. It really hadn’t sounded like something Lucy would say. He asked her, You’d really promise not to tell anyone if someone had spiked your drink?’

Lucy’s innocent expression segued back into her suspicious one. ‘Well, okay. I guess I would have to tell someone. I mean… Jesus, you spike people’s drinks…’

He said, ‘You were the one who took the pill. I didn’t make you.’

She raised her eyebrows, indicating that she couldn’t believe a word he said because she couldn’t remember a thing to corroborate it.

He sighed. ‘Okay… I mean, I’m not keeping you here against your will. You can go any time you like… but where would you want to go? I mean… this is your home.’

She looked all around. ‘I don’t think I’d ever buy a rug like that,’ she said. Then she gawped at the TV, adding, ‘And how much fricking money did you waste on that massive TV? Jesus.’

‘They’re all that big,’ he said. ‘That’s a small one.’

Then, he asked her, ‘How much do you remember about yourself?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m Lucy Benson,’ she said. ‘I’m 21 years old, and I go to Brown — ’

She stopped. ‘I’m not telling you another thing, weirdo.’

Josh was completely taken aback. ‘You think you’re in college?’

She looked at him quizzically. Then, she noticed the mirror in the hallway by the front door. She stood up and went to look at herself. But when she did, she screamed in terror once again — and this time, ran upstairs to lock herself in the bathroom.

‘Was I in a coma?’ she said, at last, when she finally emerged from the bathroom just less than an hour after she’d sealed herself in there to sob her heart out.

‘No,’ he said, his heart wrenched by his wife’s anguish, even if it was misplaced. ‘I’m telling you — you just took one of these pills. If you’d just calm down… I’m sure the medication will wear off completely by the morning…’

‘Did I have a horrible accident?’ she asked. ‘Was I in hospital…?’

She burst into tears. ‘I feel like I’ve lost 20 years of my life…’

‘You haven’t,’ he insisted. ‘In the morning, it’ll all be okay…’

‘I don’t even know my own children,’ she wailed.

Josh sighed.

Thinking, so how come Tyler took it all so easily, and just got on with fucking Lucy? Did he think he was still in college, too? Lucy had never mentioned him having any concerns about losing two decades of his life, of believing someone had spiked his drink, of thinking he was in imminent peril. Lucy had simply seduced him, and Tyler had allowed himself to be seduced.

He said to Not-Lucy, ‘Look… do you want to watch TV or something? And then when you’re ready, you could get some sleep…’

She looked at him sharply. ‘So you can molest me while I sleep?’

He shook his head, sighed again. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘What would make you feel safe? Our guest bedroom has a lock on the door — you could lock yourself in, and nobody could get in there. And then when you wake up in the morning…’

Well, thank the Lord that Sandra had been so self-conscious about herself growing up that she’d demanded a foolproof lock on her bedroom door. It took a while to prove to Not-Lucy that the lock genuinely could not be opened from the outside once she had sealed herself in there, but at last, there was some peace and quiet.

He heard various exclamations as Not-Lucy watched certain things on their streaming services, after a gap in her cultural memory of more than 20 years.

‘Are you serious?’

And, ‘What the hell are all these new Star Wars movies?’

And, ‘the fricking Patriots won how many Super Bowls?’

Well, at least she had something to distract herself until she finally fell asleep.

But Josh did not get to have sex with his beautiful wife’s alter ego.

She didn’t come out of the guest bedroom all evening, so Josh went to be alone. He felt nervous, as nervous as he’d ever been.

What if his wife didn’t snap out of it in the morning? What if the pill had left her permanently brain-damaged? What if she never recovered her memories from the past two decades?

He tried to watch TV in bed but ended up researching his medication on Google, attempting to find any information as to whether the drug could inflict permanent harm to someone. Other than suffering long-lasting psychological harm, it seemed there were no confirmed reports of long-term physical effects. Well, that offered a little relief.

He still had a troubled sleep, though a quiet stroll past the locked guest bedroom door at just after midnight suggested that at least Not-Lucy had finally drifted off to sleep.

He felt a little foolish that they had assumed Lucy would take that pill and just be instantly transformed into the same kind of sex god as Tyler.

And before sleep finally found him that night, Josh had come to the decision that it might not be a good idea for either of them to take those pills. That maybe their Marriage 2.0 adventure should come to an end.

Marriage 2.0 continues with Lucy & Josh #17, available from Saturday, March 2.

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