CHAPTER 1
“Help me!” I screamed as I ran down the hallway. The monster from the green lagoon had broken into my house and was drinking my coffee. I didn’t even know the monster from the green lagoon was real, let alone under-caffeinated.
I put down my mug, looking for something I could fight a monster with, like that ugly lamp I pretended to love that my grandmother had given me one Christmas.
Then I caught my reflection in the mirror once more and stopped screaming. It was me. I was the monster. Well, I suppose that’s true of everyone who has not had enough coffee.
I had decided to pamper myself, so a French Green Clay mask covered my face and twenty-four heated rollers sat resplendent in my hair. I know the electric rollers were a kind of 1980s thing to do, but the humidity at the Gold Coast made my hair hang limp and flat. I winced at my reflection once more, and then walked back to the living room where a glass of chardonnay was waiting to welcome me.
Coffee was not going to be enough.
I stretched out on the sofa, uttered a sigh of contentment, and reached for my wine. Just as I did so, a grunt startled me. I sat upright. Persnickle, my wombat, was standing on the old sofa against one of the front windows, making a deep growling sound at whatever he could see outside. I abandoned my wine and hurried to the window.
A bunch of runners all dressed in orange were running along the road that ran past my house. For some reason, Persnickle particularly hated the colour orange unless it was in the form of carrots. He could not abide anything orange. Before I could stop him, he launched himself right through the flyscreen of the front door and bounced down the footpath. I tore after him, my bathrobe flapping in the wind. I thought he would stop at the front gate, but he crashed right through the wood and took off after the runners.
I had no choice but to follow him. “Persnickle! Persnickle!” I screamed. He was chasing the runners. Goodness knows what he would do if he caught one. I knew they were from the Netherlands, and had recently booked the entire nearby East Bucklebury Spa Resort and Colonics Centre, a resort which doled out nothing but raw juices and colonics. It didn’t sound like my idea of fun. Still, it obviously did something for running ability because Persnickle wasn’t gaining on the runners.
A large bus pulled up beside me. The driver waved as the occupants leant out and took photos of me. “Stop!” I yelled at them, waving my fist. That only seemed to send them into a further flurry. It looked as if every passenger had either a smartphone or a proper camera. I took a deep breath and tried to run faster. My breath was coming in ragged bursts and my throat was on fire.
Finally, Persnickle overtook a straggler. The hapless man fell to the ground, one orange shoe cast aside. He was yelling something, presumably in Dutch, and I figured it wasn’t complimentary. Persnickle wasted no time devouring his shoe. The bus came to a stop beside me, and the occupants all filed out. I soon realised they, too, were speaking in Dutch, so they must have been the non-running sector of the resort party.
One of the women hurried over to me. She was accompanied by a man who appeared terrified. “Green reptile woman, the wild animal is eating the shoe,” she said in broken English.
“He’s not a wild animal; he’s my pet.” I told her.
She clutched her throat. “You speak well!” she said. “You speak well for a wild Australian woman from the outback.”
I realised I must have looked a fright, with my furry dog slippers, my flapping bathrobe, my bright green face and my hair in rollers. Then again, why would people from the outback wear electric rollers? I thought that a flaw in her argument. I was about to point that out when the driver pulled her back inside the bus. The bus drove away, the occupants hanging out the windows taking photos of me.
I realised I didn’t have Persnickle’s leash, so I took off my bathrobe cord and looped it around his neck. “Come with me, you naughty wombat,” I scolded him. “I’m going to have to pay for that shoe and fair enough, too. Running shoes aren’t cheap.”
Persnickle merely grunted by way of response and little bits of orange fabric fell out the sides of his mouth.
“You know, I’m going to have to take you to the vet,” I told him. “He’s going to need to check you out. There could be poison or some sort of nasty glue in those shoes.”
Persnickle’s eyes filled with fear at the mention of the word vet. “Serves you right,” I added.
After I dragged Persnickle back home, I locked him in the living room while I took off my face mask. It had gone rock hard and deep crevices had formed in my face.
I took one of the rollers out of my hair, and then let out a scream. My hair came with the roller. I removed the other rollers as fast as I could, and to my dismay they had snapped off most of my hair.
My remaining hair, the little that was left, was standing upright as if I had put my hand in an electric socket. There was no way I could fix this. It was all I could do not to burst into tears. Most of my hair was missing. What a day this had been! I sure hoped it was going to get better. One thing was certain—I couldn’t go out in public with my hair like this.
I would have to buy a wig, but I didn’t know where to buy one in person. Even if I did, I couldn’t leave the house in my current state. To make matters worse, an online delivery would take days to get here. It was then I remembered that just before I left Melbourne, I had gone to a fancy dress party dressed as Morticia Addams. Surely I still had that costume.
I hurried to one of the spare rooms, and as luck would have it, the wig was in the last box I unpacked. It was a nice, full-length, black wig. I threw it over my damaged head of hair and hurried back to the bathroom to look in the mirror. It wasn’t quite my style, but it was certainly an improvement. I took off the wig and scrubbed all the green slime off my face. I quickly threw on some make-up and some clothes and put the black wig on again. It wasn’t too bad. It actually looked like real hair and not a wig, although I didn’t look anything like my usual self.
I walked back out to get Persnickle’s car harness and his leash, but he ran behind the sofa when he saw me. “You come out right now,” I scolded him. “This is all your fault. If you hadn’t chased those people dressed in orange, this would never have happened. You’re a very naughty wombat.”
After a bit of wrestling and several carrot treats, I managed to catch Persnickle. I thought about calling the vet clinic to make an appointment, but I figured they would tell me to come another day, and for all I knew, it could be important.
I had never noticed a vet clinic in town, but once Persnickle was secured in the car, I did a quick search on my iPhone. It turned out there was only one vet in town, a Dr Chase Evans. Given that it only took five minutes to drive from one end of town to the other, I didn’t have much trouble finding his place, but it was the end of a swampy road in quite an isolated position. I would have thought the vet clinic would be in the middle of town.
There were no cars in the parking area, and I was afraid everyone had left for the day despite the fact it was only three in the afternoon. Still, strange things happen in the country. Persnickle had obviously been there before, because he was quite reluctant to get out of the car and even a carrot would not tempt him. After a lot of grunting, I managed to strong-arm him out of the car. I dragged him to the door and to my relief, it wasn’t locked. “Hello, is anyone here?” I called out.
No one was in the waiting room, and there was no bell on the desk, although the door did sound an alarm as I walked in, but no one came to my aid. I wondered if all the staff were in surgery.
I cleared my throat loudly, and then cleared it again. I noticed the door at the end of the corridor was ajar and it did not have the word ‘Surgery’ written on it like two of the other doors. I tentatively walked down the short corridor and knocked on the open door.
The room was large and well decorated, and smelt of wet dogs. Large, framed photographs of various animals hung on the wood-panelled walls. The only sound was the bone-chilling screech of black cockatoos in the skies above.
Still, something wasn’t right.
“Do you have an appointment?”
I gasped as a man loomed in front of me. He floated towards me, his feet not touching the ground.
