𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑. paul lahote ✓

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑

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THE UNFORTUNATE TALE
OF AUGUSTINE DUBOIS

NESTLED ALONG THE SAG RIVER, NEXT TO THE BEAUFORT SEA, WAS THE SMALL TOWNSHIP OF PRUDHOE BAY.

Prudhoe Bay was as North as one could get in Alaska, and with a staggering number of merely four hundred people —an amount that only seemed to deplete— it was enough to drive anyone insane.

Ernest Dubois had packed up his new wife and their life in Achorage, moving them to the Bay where he was to be sent for work. The oil rigs needed a spare pump technician, and Ernest was one of the more qualified technicians in the state.

It was only a matter of months before Mason Dubois was born, followed by Augustine Dubois a few years after. When Augustine was three and her brother was seven, and when her father's death really set in with the arrival of a replacement technician, June Dubois packed up her family and left the Bay behind. 

And no, she hadn't made them return to Anchorage.

With a population of thirty two thousand, Fairbanks was the largest city in the interior region of Alaska. It was no Prudhoe Bay, but the very promise of that was alluring. The settlement money that was issued to them following her husband's death was enough to get them a small bungalow outside of the city's core, in a quiet neighbourhood that was just a social class short from being a suburb.

It had a small yard and a creaky old front porch that came with its own welcome mat, something that June had tossed away during the next garbage collection day with something akin to a sneer.

June Dubois had never been the kind of parent you'd seek out to gleefully tell them that your tooth fell out or that you aced your spelling bee, but she had gotten worse after the death of her husband.

Really, Augustine had never remembered a time where her mother wasn't this cold, angry woman who did nothing but spend the remainder of the settlement money on cheap liquor. The children were sent out to work as soon as the money ran out, working odd jobs to keep the lights on while their mother sat upon her throne at forty four Cedar Drive.

The Dubois children were as thick as thieves because of their shared resentment towards their mother. When June was busy doing whatever she did, it was Mason who stepped up during parent-teacher conferences once he was sixteen, and it was also Mason who tried to take the brunt of the abuse at home.

But, June Dubois was not above picking favourites, and Mason in all of his eldest son glory got that spot. So, no matter how much he tried, it was always Augustine with the bruises and shallow scrapes on her hands from picking up broken glass while he couldn't do anything but watch. If he tried to help, they were reminded of the consequences of doing so by the matching scars they had on their backs.

It was a hell house, one that only worsened as soon as Mason went away for college. The source of June's only, albeit minimal, affection was ripped from her with just a single note from the boy, stating his departure.

Augustine could remember feeling betrayed, remembered the way she called his phone again and again until it was clear that he would not answer. He had left her there, in Fairbanks, for some school down south, but as much as she tried, and God did she try, she'd never blame him.