DOPPELGÄNGER

A Doppelganger is causing chaos around Glen Hartwell

Angela 'Angie' Neumann was on her way home from shopping on the 9th of June 2025, in Boothy Street, Glen Hartwell, in the Victorian countryside. Her chestnut coloured shopping Jeep was laden, and she was struggling even to get it moving along the concrete footpath.
"Oh boy, I can't wait to get home, put this lot away, then have a nice long Radox bath."
She was slowly pushing her overladen Jeep down the street when she came to Lorenzo's Cafe and Wine Bar. As she passed, she saw a couple having a passionate kiss while waiting for their order.
"Oh, that is so sweet, young love," thought Angie.
Needing a rest anyway, she stopped and watched, smiling at them.
Until the man turned around, and she saw that it was her husband, Archie!
Archie stared right through her, as though not recognising the raven-haired woman as his wife.
That rotten bastard doesn't even recognise me, thought Angie, livid with rage.
Reaching into her shopping Jeep, she lifted out a heavy bottle of claret, intending to storm into Lorenzo's to smash it upon her cheating husband's head. Then commonsense kicked in:
No, too many witnesses! she thought. I'll wait until the rat fink comes home, then I'll whack him good! He won't know what hit him! Of course, it's a waste of a good bottle of claret ... but then he's a waste of a husband.
It never occurred to the ravenette that Archie wouldn't come home, thinking, I bet that floozy can't even cook, let alone clean house properly.

Over in Calhoun Street, Eunice, George, and Archie Neumann were building up a sweat, digging holes in the verges and planting wattles, and sweet-smelling lemon-scented gum trees.
"I hope the people in Glen Hartwell appreciate what we're doing for them," said Eunice Grayson, a tall Amazonian, forty-eight-year-old, brunette who wore her hair in a ponytail
"I doubt it," said her fiancé and foreman, George DuBois, a tall, strongly built man of fifty-two, with balding brown hair.
"They just keep complaining that the trees are obstacles," said Archie, a thirty-two-year-old redheaded man who was thin but very strong. "And to prove their point, they accidentally, on purpose, keep backing their cars into them and uprooting our hard work.
"Yeah, bastards!" said Eunice, "most of them have never done an honest day's work in their lives."
"Accountants, and other poncy slackers," said George.
"Exactly," agreed Archie.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia