The Wellington Alternate by Oliver Dace

Author:Oliver Dace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver Dace
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

25

THE AZHDARSTICK LANDING

Eastbourne

The next time that Merinette shared the same space with her aunt was inside her yellow MINI Countryman car.

She should have been at school by the time they had left the grinding traffic jam of the state highway and entered the two-kilometre-long road of a nearby coastal town called Petone. She might have been inside the library, sorting out her school notes or adding various edits to her upcoming essays. At the very least, by the time the clock on the dashboard struck eight a.m., Merinette would have started her three-minute climb up the steep hill towards St. Mary’s College.

That had been her routine for the past five years. There were exceptions for sure. A sick day here. A family event in another. It was all good and reasonable, but Merinette preferred none at best because if she wanted to prove to her family that she was more than her aunt’s successor, those excuses must be kept to a minimum.

So far, so good.

Well … not until Josefina rammed her mouth about what had happened at the carpark. Bitch, Merinette spat. Things wouldn’t have gone to shit if Josefina had done what she was told. All that girl needed to do was to watch over Merinette as she drank the Raison. Josefina could bugger off once it was accomplished. That was all. How hard would it be? Merinette’s arm would have healed. Her hand would have been freed and, even if things went to shit, Josefina could have shut her mouth as Merinette gave an excuse about how the two of them had stumbled on a colony of Word-Eaters.

So, there she was, standing outside of Burden’s gate which was located at the outskirts of a small coastal hamlet called Eastbourne. School was kilometres away. It was barely a blimp from the other side of the Wellington Harbour. Any chance to walk inside the hall of St. Mary’s College was as slim as the metal fence that separated the little villa from the gravel path that led to the Pencarrow Lighthouse.

Merinette rattled the fence when she caught her aunt walking from a nearby shop.

Two paper bags hung over Mandy’s right arm. Her bright yellow jacket was slung on her left shoulder with her long chestnut hair sprawled over it. “Ready for some family bonding?” she asked. Her sing-song tune was a stark contrast from the monotonous almost-growling pitch tone that she had displayed last night. “It has been a while since we took a trip together. Let alone for a contract,” she added.

Merinette corrected, “the Spring-Winters.”

“True, but you hardly carried your weight back there. Made the little island that Timothy was sitting on crash, remember?”

“I was distracted –”

“Or inefficient,” Mandy interrupted before she ruffled her niece’s hair. “We need a little handicap to keep us going in life. I apologise if I went a wee bit overboard last night. Don’t take it too personally, Meri. Mistakes happens and we need to learn from it. Being part-Fiction should have been enough

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