The sun rises on another normal day at the home of Mr. Akhilesh’s home, or what he likes to be called, Aakils. He groggily opens his eyes and looks outside of the tall glass window of his bedroom. Aakils describes himself as a very dashing, wise, educated, and most importantly, humble snail. But he isn’t just an ordinary snail; he controls the flow of time and events that occur on Earth. Because this job has such great responsibilities he has always stayed inside his little grandfather clock that he calls home and has become a sour snail.

Aakils wasn’t always like this, he used to be outgoing and charismatic until one event that changed his life forever. It all started when he met another snail, her name, Elizabeth. They both had powers of time control and met during one of the biggest moments in history, World War II. Both of them spent a lot of time together and Aakil may have fallen in love with her. But, their ideas of resolution conflicted and Aakils knew he had to take action before the world could end. No one knows what he did, but he put Earth over his love and has never been the same since. He has never forgiven himself since that day and is constantly reminded of it by this large gash on his face.

It was the time, February 2020, a month before the large spread of covid-19 and Aakils had been working hard to find a way to prevent it from happening. He was so caught up in his work that he never cleaned up as he used the excuse “i’ll just use it again anyways what’s the big deal?” It got so bad that he used all of the cups in his house and they covered his whole desk. Aakils looked around his room and sighed knowing he’s going to have to call a maid to clean all of this up. After hanging up on the 3rd cleaning service that day, he struck gold when he heard someone could come in about 10 minutes.

Knock Knock! Aakils swiftly cocked his head towards the door and hurriedly creeped over to open it. Hello! Sorry if my house is a little messy I- Aakils stopped dead in his sentence  as he took his time to fully admire this maid. She laughed awkwardly and said, It’s my job to do the cleaning anyways which took him out of his trance. He let her in and just stood there whole she began to clean. She looked up from washing the kitchen and said Usually the client goes out and you know, parties?.. Oh yeah, sorry, Aakils coughed and left the home for the first time in a while.

He creeped down the streets and tried getting fresh air but all he could think about was that maid who he didn’t even know the name of. But oh how beautiful her shell looked, and the way she talked and laughed was so mesmerizing. Aakils snapped himself out of this trance and warned himself not to fall in love again. After an hour of wandering the streets, he returned home to find it all tidied up with no trace of that beautiful snail. He sighed and plumped down on his rolling chair, he spun on it in deep thought until a white card caught his eye. He creeped over to his desk to find that she left her contact on the card saying, “if you need another clean up 😉 – Liza” He started jumping for joy, she was actually interested in him. And so he hurriedly began to text her.

The two lovebirds went from late night texting to open dates and Aakils hadn’t registered it yet but she had a profound impact on him. But the more he spent with her, the more it reminded him of Elizabeth, his first true love. The more it healed him to spend time with his new lady snail, the more it hurt him on the inside to see Elizabeth in everything they did. It tore him apart, not knowing if he should move on or end what they had. In the end he had to put his job over her and broke the news. She looked at him with tears in her eyes and said I guess this is it, Al. Sorry I mean Aakils! That stopped Aakils dead in his tracks, the last time he ever heard that was from Elizabeth. All of their memories came flooding back, pain, joy, hurt, love, he wanted it all. Aakils knew that this meant Liza was the one for him.

He turned around to call her back, but it was too late, she had gone as quickly as she came.