INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER – How would you like to take a trip back in time to 1998, go to Sydney Australia and meet the Hawkins family? Well, the first two options are appealing but in real life you probably wouldn’t want to meet the crazy and dysfunctional Hawkins family.
The father Alistair is an authoritarian, bigoted tyrant; the long-suffering mother Faye is completely stressed out; paranoid eldest son Brendan hides in his room and never comes out for fear of UFOs; mousy youngest daughter Erica tries to keep the peace; and then there’s middle son Cornelius, a stupid and sadistic psychopath who makes it his life’s work to wreak havoc both at home and in the community. Adding to the chaos is Danielle, Cornelius’s sluttish and trouble-making wife, while Erica’s sensible boyfriend Gavin is a frequent visitor to the Hawkins house.
With Cornelius constantly staging one crazy stunt after another and driving his angry father insane, whatever is going to happen next? Have fun meeting the Hawkins family and be very thankful they are not your family or your neighbours. Please note that this story series contains strong themes, language and violence, as well as scenes involving female characters using the toilet and having their periods, which may not be to every readers’ taste. All characters and events are fictional, with any similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional. Please enjoy, rate and comment, and look for more chapters as they appear.
*
“Are you related to Cornelius Hawkins?”
As soon as this question was delivered to Erica Hawkins in her first class on her first day of high school in 1992 by a stern, strict, middle-aged male mathematics teacher who wore an expression of horror upon his scowling face, the Year 7 student knew that things were not going to be easy for her in secondary school.
When Erica confirmed that she was indeed the younger sister of Cornelius Hawkins, the teacher indicated for her to get up, then ordered her to switch seats with a boy who had been sitting in the desk immediately in front of the teacher’s desk.
The young girl meekly complied with her teacher’s directions, who then stood over Erica and said, “Miss Hawkins, this is your desk and whenever you are in my mathematics class, you will sit here and nowhere else. And if you think you can act like that maniac Cornelius, or put in zero effort in class like that other brother of yours Brendan then you have another thing coming Missy. I will be watching you like a hawk, and if I catch you talking out of turn, creating any disruption, slacking off, cheating or generally acting like the little madam you clearly are, you will be right where you belong, in detention. Is that clear, Miss Hawkins?”
“Yes Sir,” Erica said in her soft, timid voice, many of the class members giggling before the teacher bellowed at them to be silent.
One kid who was not laughing was the boy sitting in the desk behind Erica, Gavin Baxter, a tall, slim, athletic boy with dark brown hair and blue eyes. He hadn’t met Erica Hawkins nor any of the other kids in his new Sydney high school yet. Gavin’s family — consisting of Gavin, his older sister Lisa and their parents Neil and Sandra — had only two weeks ago moved to Sydney when Mr. Baxter got a promotion at work. So the family had sold their house in the city of Wollongong, located about two hours south of Sydney and moved to Sydney’s northern suburbs.
Gavin of course was nervous about starting high school in a new place where he knew nobody, but even back in Wollongong he would have been nervous. It didn’t have a good reputation, and there were stories going around that on the first day of school all the Year 7 boys would be grabbed by gangs of Year 11 and 12 students who would inflict various sadistic acts of bullying, such as flushing their heads in the toilets.
So far, Gavin had avoided getting his head flushed down the toilet on his first day of high school, but seeing what had happened to Erica made him apprehensive about what the rest of the teachers were like. And why had this teacher singled Erica out for this treatment? Erica didn’t look the type to cause trouble, in fact the opposite. She was a petite girl, clad in an ill-fitting girls’ summer school dress, her long light brown hair back in a pony-tail. Her brown eyes were covered by glasses and her mouth was a mess of metal dental braces. Erica’s general demeanor was like that of a little church mouse, and she looked nervous and skittish, far removed from a trouble-maker.
During the rest of the day, the same pattern was repeated, Erica being asked by teachers if she was related to Cornelius Hawkins, and when it was established she was his younger sister she was made to sit at the front of the class where she could be closely supervised. Gavin was puzzled and becoming more and more interested in this girl, so when the final bell rang he introduced himself.
“Hi, I’m Gavin,” he said, shaking her hand.
Erica looked at the ceiling nervously, returned the handshake and responded shyly. “I’m Erica.”
On the bus on the way home, Gavin had two sets of feelings. One was the feelings of a developing crush, accentuated by sitting next to Erica on the bus. The second was curiosity. What was this Cornelius like? Surely Erica’s older brother couldn’t be that bad? And what was the deal with the other brother, Brendan?
The bus pulled into the stop in the street where Gavin lived, and as he went to depart to his delight Erica got off too. “You live on this street too?” Gavin asked.
Erica nodded. “Yeah, just across the road.” She pointed at the house with the street number 9, an average looking brick and tile house like many seen in suburban Sydney, and indeed the other cities and towns around Australia. It was much like the house that Gavin lived in with his parents and sister, only the Hawkins house had a granny flat attached to one side, a feature absent from the Baxter house.
“It’s a nice house,” said Gavin politely. “We live a bit further up, at number 24. We only moved in a few weeks ago.”
“I thought I hadn’t seen you around before,” said Erica, the girl looking around herself nervously. “Well, I’d better be going.”
With that, Erica turned on her heel and headed inside, opening her backpack to remove the front door keys. Gavin, while a little perturbed that Erica had shot off so quickly, turned and walked to his parents’ house, the unmistakable feelings of a crush sweeping through his body as he thought about his petite, nervous, mousy little classmate and as it turned out, his neighbor too. What did the future hold?
*
Erica and Gavin stepped off the bus, holding hands and making for the Hawkins house at Number 9. It was now 1998, and six years had now gone by since they first met on their first day of high school. They were now both aged 18 turning 19 in a few months’ time, and had finished high school at the end of 1997, taking their HSC exams. Now Erica and Gavin were both first year university students in nursing degrees, while holding down part time jobs. Erica worked at a sandwich shop and Gavin at a supermarket, and they were a classic example of teenage sweethearts, two young people who had found the right person at an early age and very much in love.
It was autumn in Sydney, but the weather in the New South Wales capital was tending towards summer this particular Wednesday, a warm and sunny day and therefore Erica wore a light, short-sleeved blouse and a short blue floral skirt on her petite form, white sandals on her feet. Erica’s glasses, a feature from early childhood were still on her face, but the dental braces from her early adolescence were long gone.
Gavin admired his pretty girlfriend as they held hands and walked across the street, feeling so lucky to have Erica in his life and as his girlfriend. Likewise, Erica admired her handsome boyfriend, Gavin’s nice fit body wearing a short-sleeved tee-shirt, jeans and trainers. He was a great boyfriend in every way; intelligent, loving and supportive.
As Erica stopped and checked the mail, she looked at the car parked to one side of the driveway. “So, Mum and Dad are at work, Cornelius’s car isn’t there so he must be out somewhere, but Danielle’s home. Who do you think will be first to greet us? Danielle or Brendan?”
Gavin pretended to consider this. “I think maybe Danielle?” he smiled.
“Are you absolutely sure about that?” Erica asked.
“Yes, pretty sure,” said Gavin. “I haven’t seen Brendan in person since, I don’t know when.”
“I haven’t seen him since just before Christmas last year,” said Erica.
“Are you sure he’s okay?” asked Gavin. “If he never leaves the granny flat, what happens if he gets sick or something?”
“Oh, he’s there alright,” said Erica. “I hear him moving around, using the vacuum cleaner and dust buster, sometimes having a shower. Other times I’ll pass by and see the curtains twitching. And once a week, Brendan leaves a laundry bag of clothes and his bed linen for Mum to wash, and a list of supplies he needs for the week. We get them and leave them outside the door, and when we next look they’re gone.”
Gavin nodded, used to the strange situation with Erica’s eldest brother. He then said, “So where did Cornelius go today?”
“A job interview from what I heard he and Mum talking about,” said Erica. “But I don’t think he’ll get it. Cornelius doesn’t want a job anyway, he’s already got a full career path planned as a professional dole bludger.”
“He needs money to get his car fixed,” said Gavin. “I noticed the cops put a defect sticker on it.”
Erica shrugged. “Cornelius doesn’t give a shit about that. And calling that heap of junk Cornelius drives around in a car is being very generous in the extreme. The cops gave him a long list of defects that need fixing and fined him for driving an un-roadworthy vehicle, and he couldn’t care less.”
“So what’s going to happen about the car?” Gavin asked.
Again, Erica shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ll leave it to my brother to sort out. I think the best thing they can do is chuck the car in the crusher, preferably with Cornelius still inside it.”
Gavin laughed. “You said it Erica, not me. Actually though, I think Danielle would have more to worry about if she got stopped by the police in her car.” He and Erica looked at Danielle’s car, a more recent V6 car from about 1993 or 1994. It was in far better shape than Cornelius’s car, not that that was difficult, but there was just something about it. Gavin thought back to when two of he and Erica’s friends who were very much into cars saw the vehicle and looked at it more thoroughly.
“Tony and Gino are right, that used to be two cars,” said Gavin.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t put it past Danielle to buy a rebirth,” said Erica.
“Did she ever say where she got the car?”
Erica shook her head. “No, she was very tight-lipped, said some bloke from Gosford her brother knows sold it to her. She’ll probably act all innocent if the police ever find out about it and start asking questions, but she would have known. She’s not known as ‘Dodgy Danielle’ for nothing. Plus she’s married to Cornelius, which says a lot.”
Gavin and Erica were nearly at the front door, and Gavin paused. “Are you sure your Dad’s not home?”
Erica laughed lightly. “No, he’s definitely at work, he was grumbling about it all morning before he left. You can relax, he’s not going to come out and get you.”
Gavin shook his head. “He still doesn’t like me. I mean, your Mum lets me call her Faye rather than Mrs. Hawkins, but with your Dad it’s always Mr. Hawkins or Sir, never Alistair. And the way he looks at me, it’s like one false move and he’ll kill me.”
“I wouldn’t take it personally, he’s always like that,” said Erica. “Plus Cornelius drives him nuts, as you well know.”
“I still have nightmares about the first time I met your father,” said Gavin. His mind took him back to 1992, and where he and Erica had caught the bus home after school. He and Erica were just saying goodbye, when from inside the Hawkins house there came a male voice shouting as loudly as Gavin had ever heard.
“You are nothing but a mooching, manipulative and evil old bag!” roared the man before there came a loud bang, presumably from whoever was shouting slamming his hand against something.
Erica looked afraid, putting her fingers in her mouth, something that Gavin had noticed was a habit if she was nervous. “That’s my Dad.”
“And you are nothing but a useless disappointment Alistair, just like your brother and just like your two sisters,” screeched an elderly lady from inside the house, her voice something like a cockatoo. “Your late father and I should have dropped all of you at the orphanage and replaced you with black kids, they would probably have been better kids than you.”
Erica looked even more nervous. “And that’s my Granny, Dad’s mother.”
“And I almost wish I was fucking black because if I was then you couldn’t be my mother!” roared her son in response before the front door slammed open and out stormed a very tall, muscular man with a black beard and a furious expression on his countenance complaining about the ‘stupid old witch.’ His expression grew even more furious as he noticed his pre-teen daughter talking to a boy he did not know. If a saltwater crocodile had emerged from the house and ran at him, Gavin could not be more terrified.
“Where are those brothers of yours?” Mr. Hawkins had demanded of his nervous daughter, who cowered in his presence.
“I don’t know, Dad,” Erica had stammered.
“Congratulations Erica, that makes you even more stupid and useless than I thought,” said Mr. Hawkins, before he turned his attention to Gavin. “Who are you?”
“That’s Gavin, my friend from school,” Erica had stammered.
Alistair Hawkins had seemed most unimpressed. “You get your skinny little arse inside the house and to your room right now Erica, and you’re grounded,” he had said to his daughter before addressing Gavin. “And as for you, piss off kid and don’t ever let me see you hanging around my daughter again.”
Gavin had felt terrified as he walked down the street to his own house. Erica was having a hard time of it at school, kids shunning and rejecting her as a ‘space cadet’, the ‘weird girl’ from the fucked up family and subjecting her to terrible physical, verbal and psychological bullying on a daily basis. The bullies were both male and female, and students older, the same age and younger. Erica was teased, threatened, ridiculed, terrorized, pranked, punched, slapped, shoved, kicked, tripped, had her hair pulled, had water and food thrown at her, got thrown into a wheelie bin, had her locker vandalized with offensive graffiti, had the strap of her bra snapped against her back and was harassed even when she went to the toilet or had her period, other kids taking her supply of pads out of her bag and teasing her.
Through all this Gavin was Erica’s one true friend, they always had lunch together and rode the bus to and from school, and he was the only kid in her classes who would come to her defense against her tormentors, often ending up in fights with boys. Gavin would stand up for Erica where he could, such as putting a stop to other kids taking Erica’s books and homework and throwing them around and playing keep-off with her glasses or lunch. Unfortunately he couldn’t do much for Erica when she was bullied by other girls in the female change rooms or the girls’ toilets.
Given Erica was having such a rough time at high school, Gavin hoped her home life was happier but having met her older brother Cornelius he doubted it. Born in 1975, four years before Erica who like Gavin was born in 1979, Cornelius at this stage was in Year 11. At times Gavin found it hard to believe that Cornelius actually existed and that he was allowed to live in the community, but obviously he was real and not subject to any mental health orders.
Gavin had never met anyone quite like Cornelius, he was just a lunatic; a complete and absolute fruit loop, driving teachers and other students insane with his antics. He was of no help to his younger sister in her struggles with bullies, and in fact would just humiliate her more, like teasing her about having a boyfriend when she and Gavin were together. He would also embarrass her in other ways, such as when Erica was away sick from school one day Cornelius thought it would be a good idea to tell everyone that the reason Erica was unable to come to school was because she had diarrhea, something the poor girl obviously didn’t want everyone to know but thanks to her brother, everyone did.
One might have thought that Cornelius might have been a target for bullies too given his weirdness, but because of his height — he stood well over six feet tall — and that he was an insane nutcase who definitely had the crazy eyes, other kids were afraid of him. On one occasion some bad tempered fat boy in Year 9 did stand up to Cornelius, but ended up wishing he hadn’t as the kid ended up in a bush full of bees, stung over 20 times and having to be carted off to the hospital in an ambulance.
The school sent the ambulance bill to Cornelius’s parents, and Gavin hated to think what would happen when Alistair Hawkins found out about it. The next day Cornelius attended high school with a massive black eye, and the vague and somewhat unconvincing explanation that he had ‘walked into a door’.
As for Gavin, he found himself in Alistair Hawkins’ bad books numerous times over his friendship with Erica, and on one occasion Alistair had turned up at his parents’ house and barged in there like a rhinoceros, ranting and raving and carrying on about how he wanted Mr. and Mrs. Baxter to ban their no-good son from hanging around his daughter.
Always very diplomatic, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter actually managed to get Mr. Hawkins calmed down and convince him that his daughter having a male friend wasn’t a bad thing, and that Gavin was a good kid. Mr. Hawkins wasn’t very happy about the situation and while never liking Gavin despite the boy’s best efforts eventually grudgingly accepted Gavin as a friend of his daughter, and as the two kids got older and reached their mid-teens, as her boyfriend.
Entering the house, Gavin thought about things that had changed and things that hadn’t changed since he first met Erica. One obvious thing was the occupancy of the granny flat. Previously, it had served its literal purpose of what a granny flat was for — a home for granny, in this case Erica’s paternal grandmother who moved in after she was widowed.
Gavin’s first impression of the woman was correct. Granny Hawkins was not a nice old lady, and the way she and her long-dead husband addressed her two adult sons and daughters — mainly calling them useless, hopeless and disappointments — showed why Alistair, his brother and sisters were such bad tempered and disagreeable people. The four siblings shipped Granny off into care when she finally went round the bend, and now she was living out her final days in a nursing home out near Manly, drooling into a polystyrene cup while confined to a wheelchair, watching cars go up and down the road all day, pointing and grinning at any automobiles she liked the look of.
Now the curtains of the granny flat were fully drawn and the windows closed. It was like that all the time, summer, spring, autumn or winter, in wet, mild, cold, hot and humid weather or whether it was still or windy. And the occupant who now occupied the granny flat — Erica’s oldest brother Brendan — would not have it any other way.
Brendan, born in 1974 and tall like Cornelius and Alistair, unlike many oldest children was not assertive and high-achieving. He tried his best as a boy, but was not academic, pretty ordinary at sports, wasn’t into outdoor activities like camping or fishing, nor did he have any musical or artistic ability. Shy, introverted and unassertive, Brendan was a source of great disappointment to his father.
And having learned no end of bad parenting skills from his own domineering parents, Alistair Hawkins had no hesitation of telling his eldest son what an abject failure and disappointment he was, how he was never good enough in the past, not good enough now and would never ever amount to anything in the future, and how the world would be a better place if he never existed in the first place. He would yell at Brendan for not having any friends, then tell his son that if he was his age he wouldn’t want to be his friend either, and nor would any other kids. He even said that he wished that he had a spastic, a retard or a mongoloid instead of Brendan for an eldest son, that a freak like that could not cause him any more embarrassment than Brendan had done.
Alistair would also openly question his oldest son’s sexual tendencies. During an outing to Cronulla Beach with Faye’s brother who was married with three girls, Alistair constantly criticized Brendan for struggling at beach cricket, hiking or fishing when his three female cousins along with Erica had no problem with these activities. Alistair said that Brendan was a homosexual, and spent a great deal of time telling family members, neighbors, relatives, friends, work colleagues and indeed anyone who would listen about how his eldest son was a poofter who was nothing but a failure and a complete and abject embarrassment to the family.
One tactic Alistair Hawkins had tried in an attempt toughen up his eldest son was by forcing him to watch videos of terrifying horror movies obviously not suitable for children, usually late at night, Alistair watching the movies with Brendan to make sure he saw all of it. And if Brendan cried or protested that he did not want to watch the scary movie, Alistair would threaten his son with a close encounter with an object he feared even more — Alistair’s belt. He made good on the threat on more than a few occasions.
Eventually the down-trodden Brendan did find some friends in the later years of high school, but these boys and girls were not the type of friends one would ever want one’s own teenager to even know, much less socialize with. These were kids who were most interested in putting artificial substances into their bodies, and soon Brendan was smoking marijuana and taking magic mushrooms, LSD, narcotics, speed, and other methyl amphetamines. And with Brendan’s drug use spiraling out of control leading to him flunking out of high school, Brendan’s fantasy world and reality soon combined to create a perfect storm of delusion and paranoia in his own mind.
Thanks mainly to his father terrifying him when younger by forcing him to watch horror films, Brendan had major fears about monsters, both yowies coming out of the Blue Mountains and bunyips emerging from Sydney Harbor or the waters of the Parramatta River to take him back to their lairs and eat him. Brendan believed that dinosaurs were not extinct as claimed, and that a tyrannosaurus, plesiosaur or a pterodactyl could easily end his days. He was convinced that ghosts, poltergeists and demons occupied the walls and roof space of the house and were talking to him, passing on messages from the Devil himself. Brendan also thought that UFOs hovered overhead with the said occupants of the flying saucers — aliens — plotting to abduct him and take him to another galaxy. Seeing the lights of planes and helicopters added fuel to these fantasies. Brendan’s delusions led him to believe that the police, government, armed services and fire brigade held regular meetings to conspire against him, and not surprisingly all of this landed him in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital.
After a long stint in the psych ward which included detox and drug rehab Brendan eventually improved and he was released into his parents’ care, but he was far from perfect and not likely to improve much further. While not as paranoid as before, Brendan was still too terrified of the devil, demons, dinosaurs, monsters, ghosts and flying saucers to venture outside. Therefore he spent his entire life concealed in the granny flat, behind a closed and locked door, the curtains down, the windows closed tight. His parents collected a disability pension for him which helped pay for his up-keep.
Erica often wished that Cornelius like their older brother would stay behind locked doors and windows too but this was not a wish about to come true. Cornelius never seemed to worry about anything. As a child and younger teenager Erica had seen her oldest brother Brendan cowering before their angry father many times. Erica spent much of her childhood and early teenage years hiding either under her bed or in her closet crying, either when her parents were having one of their frequent arguments or when Alistair dished out the discipline to his sons with his belt. He had three levels of punishment for his sons, the standard belting when he was annoyed with them, the end with the buckle when he was even more angered and when he was white-hot with rage Alistair would wrap the belt around his fist and punch Brendan and Cornelius with it.
None of this seemed to bother Cornelius, who would just antagonize their father even more when Alistair was angry with him, frequently by calling him Alistair. Or he would be passive aggressive, take the beating from his Dad and simply plan out the next stunt to drive his father insane. And Alistair Hawkins was always angry with Cornelius, it was just a matter of whether he was furious or incandescent with rage.
One thing about Cornelius was that he was always found a way to surprise his parents and while at school his teachers and other authority figures. Aged 15 and on a school trip into the city to see the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and other tourist attractions Cornelius had been forced to read and sign a list of acceptable behaviors that he was supposed to follow. This was understandable given he had been banned from school trips from some time after a series of problems on excursions in the past. This included Cornelius leaping onto railway tracks and playing chicken with a train, getting kicked out of Taronga Zoo for feeding a hot dog to some crocodiles, and running away from another school trip to the Blue Mountains, Cornelius making his own way back to Sydney by hiding on the back of a truck, ‘truck surfing’ as the vehicle traveled at great speed on the freeway. Cornelius being Cornelius, he did the exact opposite.
After jumping into the waters of Circular Quay, a drenched and hyperactive Cornelius swan ashore then ran off towards Darling Harbor, laughing like a maniac. The teachers thought he would make for home, and the long-suffering Faye Hawkins received a call from the school to warn her. But Cornelius did not turn up at home, back at school, at the local shopping center or video games arcade, nowhere he would be expected to be. Several days later and by now officially listed as a missing person, Cornelius was finally located on the Gold Coast, hanging out in Surfers Paradise and as usual acting like a total jack-ass and making an absolute nuisance of himself, much to the astonishment of his parents after getting the call from the Gold Coast police.
Just how Cornelius got all the way to Queensland was never revealed not even by the boy himself, but the reality was that he was there and a furious Mr. Hawkins had to get on a plane to Brisbane, catch a bus down to the Gold Coast and return his son to Sydney, the high cost of short notice airline tickets making Alistair even angrier. At least when Cornelius got kicked off a school camp in Canberra when he was aged 12 — again to the outrage of his father – it was only a day’s drive there and back to collect him and bring him back.
But Cornelius’s little journey to Queensland as a teenager was nothing compared to the surprise he pulled three years ago. And as Erica opened the front door and went inside the house, this surprise was lying on the living room couch watching television.
“Hey Erica, Gavin, how was your day at university?” called Danielle.
“Oh, not bad thanks Danielle,” Erica answered her brother’s wife as she went into the living room.
“Yeah, hi Danielle,” said Gavin.
The entry of Danielle into the Hawkins family in 1995 had indeed been a shock to put it mildly. Cornelius then aged 20 was not living at home at this stage — he was living with some of his loser mates as his father (accurately) termed them and not on good terms with his parents – and was not the sort of person to update his family on every little detail, or indeed big details of his life. So when Cornelius turned up unannounced in his wreck of a car and got out with a slim and attractive blonde girl who they had never seen before, everyone wondered what was going on.
Then to the shock of everyone, Cornelius had announced when they entered the house holding hands, “Mum, Dad, Erica, this is my wife Danielle.”
When the shock of this wore off slightly, it was time to get to know the newcomer. Like Cornelius, Danielle had been born in 1975 and was then aged 19 and studying to be a high school teacher. She wasn’t from Sydney originally, but the city of Newcastle in the Hunter region north of Sydney and was part of a large family with a number of siblings. Obviously Danielle had some intelligence, she had gotten into university to study teaching and clearly she wasn’t some bimbo. Would marriage turn Cornelius from an idiotic and insane slacker and into a more responsible young man? Would Danielle be like another daughter to Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins and a loving big sister to Erica? The answers to these questions were soon answered as a resounding no.
At best, Danielle was an enabler of Cornelius’s bad behavior and at worst she openly encouraged her husband to act in even more irresponsible and idiotic ways. That Danielle and Cornelius had married at a registry office just two weeks after meeting was a red flag, that she had chosen to marry a moron like Cornelius in the first place another and it was quickly clear that Danielle was a very bad addition to an already dysfunctional family.
On the first day that Cornelius had introduced his new bride to the family, they had gone out to dinner at an Italian restaurant near Bondi Beach, with the exception of Brendan as he was confined to the loony bin at the time. Cornelius’s antics in the restaurant — throwing spaghetti around, eating with his fingers and generally making a disruptive nuisance of himself with other diners and staff — led to the Hawkins family getting kicked out. But rather than being horrified by her husband’s shockingly bad behavior, which Cornelius defended as ‘live performance art’, Danielle thought it was funny, especially given how angry it made her new father-in-law.
Danielle, a girl of an average height of five feet five inches, sat up on the couch, attired in a pink tee-shirt that swelled at the front thanks to her C-cup breasts and black stirrup-pant leggings, the stirrups tight around the arches of her bare feet. She pushed her blonde hair back from her forehead. Danielle’s hair was about the length of a short bob, but a complete mess today as it was all of the time.
Never one to mince his words, Alistair Hawkins had once disparagingly asked Danielle if she cut her own hair in the dark using safety scissors. His daughter-in-law’s somewhat huffy response was that it was deliberately styled that way at a salon and she thought it was ‘cool’. Mr. Hawkins, who thought that very few things in life were cool anyway, said that if she paid a hairdresser any amount of money to style her hair that way then she must be retarded just like her husband.
Erica was glad Danielle did not cut her own hair. Brendan cut his own hair, but that was because he was too scared to come out of his tiny flat and into the outdoors, something that visiting a barber would have entailed. Two crazy people cutting their own hair in the house would be too much.
“You didn’t get a teaching assignment today?” Erica asked Danielle.
Danielle shrugged her shoulders. “Nuh. But I don’t give a fuck, I taught all last week all the way out in Mount Druitt and on Monday and Tuesday I had to go to some other school way down near Kingsgrove to teach the dumb class that don’t know shit from clay. Fuck, I might as well have been trying to teach the spastic class, those retards might have been able to learn more than the kids I was supervising. No wonder their fucking teachers get sick all the fucking time.”
While Danielle was indeed now a qualified high school teacher, she had never had a permanent teaching position, doing only relief work. Erica thought that being a relief teacher would be one of the worst jobs imaginable given how kids tended to act up when their normal teacher was away. Cornelius in particular was disruptive at the best of the times when he was a boy, but when there was a relief teacher he was often made to sit outside the deputy principal’s office or in time out all day to prevent him from sending the substitute teacher insane in just one day at school.
With Danielle being a relief teacher, this meant days where she did not work, and she hardly was productive on such days. Cornelius obviously did not have full time work either — he complained that jobs were not creative enough for his superior and artistic mind — but did make some money as a party clown on weekends, much to his father’s displeasure. Sometimes Cornelius would dress up in his clown costume even when he did not have a booking, just to anger Mr. Hawkins.
Cornelius and Danielle’s employment situation were one reason they were back living at his parents’ house, and as Erica looked at the table he saw another main reason. Danielle had fixed herself lunch during the day — vegetables with gravy by the look of it — but her plate and cutlery had sat unwashed on the table for hours, spills and stains on the table top. She had been drinking soft drink during the day, but had been too lazy to clean up some she had spilled on the table. An empty energy bar wrapper was discarded on the floor.
When first married, Danielle and Cornelius had rented a house but were evicted after six months for failing to pay rent and keep the house to an acceptable standard. Their second tenancy went the same way, only this time they were kicked out after three months, again for failing to pay rent, keep the house tidy and illegal subletting to some of their dodgy friends.
Lacking referees for a third rental, Cornelius and Danielle pulled a major con trick on an inexperienced ‘Mum and Dad’ investor couple who thought that purchasing a second house would help fund their retirement income. Cornelius and Danielle showed up for the interview with Danielle wearing a maternity blouse and overalls, a cushion underneath to make it look like she was about seven months pregnant. A sob story about how they had nowhere to go with a baby due caused the couple to drop their guard — and allow Cornelius and Danielle into the house with no reference checks.
Soon, there were the same problems. Rent was not paid, the property was not kept to an acceptable standard, the same freeloading friends were staying there with dogs, cats and birds in breach of the lease and there were complaints from neighbors about the behavior of the occupants. But it was Cornelius’s painting — undertaken on his own initiative – that caused the most issue.
As a boy, Cornelius had shown at least one talent — art, specifically painting. Erica had to admit that Cornelius had talent — he could have become one of Australia’s leading artists and even win the Archibald Prize had he set his mind to it. It didn’t impress Mr. Hawkins — he didn’t like art of any description — but the talent of Cornelius was there. But with Cornelius being Cornelius, he used his artistic talent to create chaos, throwing paint, clay and other supplies around the room, and creating inappropriate, bizarre and disturbing images that drove the high school art teacher — a humorless and strict French-Canadian woman — to a nervous breakdown and caused Cornelius to get banned from the only class he was good at.
At the rental house, had Cornelius decided to paint the cream walls of the lounge room cream or given the back gate another coat of mission brown it would have been a breach of the lease, but not so bad. Cornelius however had more extravagant plans for the house. In the main entrance as soon as one stepped in through the front door, one could find a life sized mural of Danielle painted by her husband. Like with all of Cornelius’s artworks, it was an excellent but created to shock rather than draw admiration. The painting was not of Danielle tastefully clothed, but of her squatting down completely naked, her legs spread wide apart showing off the fact that she was a natural blonde and had a large, wide-set vagina with prominent light pink pussy flaps, and a darker pink anus.
The confronting nude painting of Danielle that greeted visitors to the house was not the only one like it. In the kitchen was another nude painting of Danielle, this one a rear view of Danielle bending over with her bare bottom thrust high in the air, her pussy visible between her legs.
And in the smallest room in the house on the opposite wall to the toilet was another painting of Danielle. This time she was fully clothed, but with her skirt hitched up and her knickers around her ankles as she sat on the toilet. If one sat on the toilet in this house one would be staring at the painting of Danielle on the toilet the whole time.
The ongoing problems at the house led to the eviction of Cornelius, Danielle and the hangers-on, only this time the media got involved. A nightly current affairs show turned up outside the tenancy tribunal, and while Cornelius was normally an appalling shameless attention seeker, suddenly he became camera-shy when confronted by the film crew and reporters and about to end up on national television.
Like many conmen, charlatans, crooks, perverts and nuisance neighbors who had been shamed Australia-wide on the show for many years, Cornelius took to his heels, the film crew getting plenty of footage of him running away from the cameras before he dived into Danielle’s waiting car, Danielle giving the film crew an obscene hand gesture and a spray of foul-mouthed abuse as she sped away and nearly running into an old lady in the process.
Now on a database of bad tenants and having been on national television, Cornelius and Danielle had nowhere to go but back to the house of the most-unimpressed and unwelcoming Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins and set up home in Cornelius’s old bedroom. Cornelius and Danielle were supposed to pay rent and contribute to the housework, but their rent was months behind which did not seem to bother them and the only thing both contributed to the house was chaos. The first of two differences between this and their previous failed tenancies was the absence of the hangers-on, who were too afraid of Cornelius’s father to visit this house and make a nuisance of themselves.
The second and more significant difference was that they were not going to get thrown out despite the despair and anger of Alistair and Faye Hawkins. While Cornelius annoyed and stressed his mother no end, not least by his choice of wife, out of a misguided sense of family loyalty she was not going to throw her son and daughter-in-law out.
As for Mr. Hawkins, Erica had found the ideal word that described her father — misanthropic. While hating many things in life with black people, Asians, the handicapped, homosexuals, his two sons, and his daughter-in-law topping a very long list, Mr. Hawkins seemed to have a perverse love of things going wrong for him because then he could get angry and be a grouch. It even extended to things that Alistair liked. Mr. Hawkins was a big fan of Rugby League, but Erica had noted that her father seemed happier when the team he supported was defeated or when New South Wales lost to Queensland in State of Origin so then he could feel bad about it. So therefore Cornelius and Danielle were going nowhere — and they both knew it.
“So, what have you been doing today?” Erica asked conversationally.
Her sister-in-law shrugged. “Oh, just chilling, watching TV and menstruating.”
Danielle allowed her legs to open and she sat in rather an un-ladylike position. Erica and Gavin could see Danielle’s panty lines through her leggings, but more significantly in her crotch was a rectangular shape caused by the maxi-pad she wore in her knickers. Erica knew that Danielle was currently having her period as she was hardly discrete about such matters, but her eyes went wide at seeing the shape of Danielle’s napkin between her legs, and Gavin’s eyes looked like they might pop out of his skull.
The young man began to blush and stammer. “Isn’t it um, nice — lovely weather — in um ah, Sydney today?” he stammered, trying not to look at the outline Danielle’s menstrual pad between her legs but unable to prevent his gaze going to this area.
Danielle could see that she was making Erica flustered, but the look on her face showed amusement and the girl casually allowed her legs to open more so the fabric of her stirrup pants became even tighter, and the shape of her period pad more visible. She did not speak, but took her can of soft drink and had a swig, belching loudly without excusing herself.
“We um, really need to go and study,” said Erica, scurrying from the living room, leading her shell-shocked boyfriend away from her sister-in-law.
Danielle giggled at his discomfort as they departed. “Hey Gavin, if you want to be a nurse you’d better overcome your phobia of periods, one day you’ll have to help a female patient with blood coming out of her vagina.” She laughed again, before reaching between her legs and adjusting her panty pad through her leggings and undies.
*
Faye Hawkins was the next member of the family to arrive home. Slim and petite like Erica, Faye stood barely five feet in height with shoulder-length red hair. Faye retained the good looks of her younger years despite having reached the age of 50 and the stresses of two crazy sons and a crazy husband.
While Gavin obviously had never voiced the opinion aloud to Erica nor anyone else, he had often speculated how Faye put up with her bad-tempered bigot of a husband. True Alistair had been a handsome guy in his earlier years and like his wife retained his good looks at the age of 52, but Faye was an intelligent woman and surely must have had some clue before she married Alistair what sort of a tyrant he would be like?
Faye opened the front door of the house and entered, immediately seeing Danielle lounging around on the living room couch, dirty plate, cutlery and empty soft drink cans on the table. The petite redhead looked disapprovingly at her daughter-in-law as she lounged on the couch, not bothered about cleaning up after herself.
“Danielle, if you aren’t working can you clean up after yourself, please?” Faye pointed at the table.
Danielle shrugged, opened up her legs and scratched her crotch through her leggings around the shape of her pad. “I can,” her daughter-in-law said in her typical passive-aggressive response.
House-proud Faye shook her head, then grabbed the items that Danielle clearly had no intention of clearing up and took them into the kitchen, her petite figure clearly shaking with frustration as she threw the cans into the recycling and prepared to wash the plate and cutlery, as well as clean up the mess Danielle had made in the kitchen preparing her lunch hours earlier.
Erica and Gavin entered the kitchen to get glasses of water.
“Hi Faye, how are you?” Gavin asked.
“Hi Mum, how was your day at work?” Erica asked.
Faye gave her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend a friendly smile. “Oh, not bad Erica and Gavin. I wish I was still there, not coming home to her.” The petite redhead glared in the direction of the living room, where Danielle continued to lounge around on the couch watching television. “Your brother has a lot to answer for, and I don’t mean Brendan. How about you? How was university?”
“Pretty good,” said Erica, with the three of them talking for a few minutes before Erica and Gavin returned to their university assignment and Faye made a start on dinner.
On their way back to Erica’s room, the two teenagers passed the closed door that led to the granny flat, and could hear the faint sound of Brendan moving around, possibly rearranging some things.
“See, he’s definitely okay and up and about,” Erica said.
With Faye working in the kitchen, Danielle watching television, Erica and Gavin studying and Brendan doing whatever he did all day in the granny flat, things were pretty quiet — for now. But it wasn’t to last. Outside, a very badly maintained vehicle was driving up the street towards Number 9, just as the resident of Number 10 was walking to his own house.
The owner of Number 10 was a retired public servant named Henry Cole, who lived alone in his meticulously tidy property and spent most of his days writing letters to the editor of the newspaper and making complaints to various organizations. Mr. Cole was not on the Christmas card list of the Hawkins family, nor were the Hawkins family on the Christmas card list of Mr. Cole.
Cornelius Hawkins in particular was a cause of stress to Mr. Cole, given the disruption and mayhem he caused in the otherwise quiet suburban street. And Cornelius was not appreciative of Mr. Cole’s complaints about him to the local council and the police, such as one last week when he rang the cops to complain that Cornelius had been playing the same song — a certain early 1960s one hit wonder about a bird that liked a water sport that originated in Hawaii — at full volume on the stereo all day. So much so, that as Cornelius observed his enemy walking up the road oblivious to his presence, he decided to even the score.
Putting his foot on the accelerator, Cornelius sped forward then he pressed down on his horn as he drew level with his adversary. The loud beep caused Mr. Cole to jump about six feet in the air as Cornelius sped by, roaring at the elderly gentleman out of the window like a lion.
Cornelius laughed like a maniac as Mr. Cole flailed backwards in shock then shook his fist at him, pulling his car to a halt next to his wife’s car, the gears screeching as Cornelius put his foot on the worn clutch to change down to second, the brakes also squealing as Cornelius slammed his feet down hard on the brake and clutch to stop the vehicle. It sat idling, the engine un-tuned for years and a muffler with a large hole in it, the exhaust pipe emitting copious amounts of carbon monoxide and other pollutants. Then came an almighty noise like a gunshot, as Cornelius’s car back-fired which it often did, before Cornelius turned off the engine.
In the kitchen, Erica and Gavin had stopped studying and were helping Faye with dinner, chopping up some vegetables.
“So would you like to stay for dinner, Gavin?” Faye asked. “Your parents are still on their cruise, so I imagine it’s probably a while since you have had a home-cooked meal.”
Gavin nodded. “Yes, thank you Faye. Lisa and I aren’t any good at cooking, so we’ve been eating takeaway and microwave dinners mostly.” He then thought about Alistair, and how the patriarch of the Hawkins family was always glaring at him when Gavin stopped in for dinner like some polar bear who had found Gavin in his den. “That’s if your husband doesn’t mind…”
“Don’t worry about Alistair, you know it’s just his way,” said Faye, cringing as she and the two teenagers heard all the commotion of Cornelius pulling in outside, then slamming car door closed. Erica wondered how her brother even got it to go sometimes. While she had her license, Erica didn’t have a car and once had borrowed her brother’s car to run an errand. She swore never again, as she got stuck in a major intersection trying to change gears, getting beeped and yelled at by angry drivers. She also pondered what chaos Cornelius would bring to the Hawkins family house tonight.
Her wait wasn’t a long one. Soon, the tall, lanky, dark haired figure of Cornelius was inside the house, dressed in a filthy black tee-shirt that featured a terrifying image of the devil on it, equally dirty jeans and boots. He made a bee-line for the living room, where Danielle was lying and soon he was on top of her, the couple making out, Cornelius’s right hand going to his wife’s crotch, fondling her period pad through her leggings and her knickers.
“Erica, could you please go an ask Cornelius to come in here? I want to talk to him before your father gets home,” Faye asked.
“Sure Mum,” said Erica. She walked into the living room, where Danielle was lying with her legs wide apart showing off the shape of her maxi pad, Cornelius’s attention firmly on her bare feet. Cornelius was fondling both of Danielle’s feet in his hands, his face at her left foot kissing and licking her soles and arches, sucking her toes in his mouth.
Erica was not shocked, or even surprised. Cornelius made no secret of the fact that he was a foot fetishist, in fact he bragged about it and often made creepy and inappropriate comments about his wife’s bare feet. This type of thing happened all the time in the house, and out in public too. The sexually shameless Danielle for her part would often over-share about the pleasurable effects that her husband’s attention to her feet had upon her vagina.
As Erica stood awkwardly in the doorway, not knowing what to say, Danielle noticed her first and tapped her husband on the shoulder. “Um Cornelius,” she said.
Cornelius sighed deeply and with great reluctance removed his face and hand’s from Danielle’s bare feet. He turned around regarding his sister with unblinking brown eyes that always made Erica feel ill at ease. Cornelius had the crazy eyes that was for sure. And it was appropriate because Cornelius was a complete basket case.
Cornelius spoke in a patronizing voice to his younger sister. “Erica, you know there’s grown up people doing grown up things in here don’t you? Why don’t you go outside and play like a good little girl? Run along now.”
Danielle’s reply was friendlier than that of her husband. “Erica, is everything okay?”
“Cornelius, Mum wants to talk to you in the kitchen,” said Erica.
Erica expected Cornelius to do or say something stupid or weird in response, but this time he went into the kitchen without complaint or comment, while Erica and Gavin made themselves scarce, not wanting to get involved.
“You wished to engage me in conversation this afternoon Mother?” he asked.
Faye looked at what her son was wearing and sighed. “How did the job interview go today, Cornelius?”
Erica and Gavin could over-hear the conversation in the kitchen. It was rare for Cornelius to even score a job interview, usually his effort was so poor in applying for the minimum number of jobs required to get unemployment benefits that his applications probably went straight into the bins of prospective employers.
Cornelius shrugged. “I don’t think that they liked me all that much. Oh well, their loss not mine.”
“And you don’t think that the clothes you wore might have had something to do with it?” Faye indicated her son’s offensive tee-shirt with the demonic image, knowing that the reason her slacker son had worn this shirt was to make sure his chances of getting the job were zero.
“I don’t think I would have liked to have worked there anyway, they were boring,” said Cornelius. “Jobs are boring — I’m too creative for jobs.”
“Cornelius, why did you waste your time and their time going to the interview if you didn’t want the job anyway?” the exasperated Faye asked.
“The bureaucrats at the job center made me go,” said Cornelius. “Anyway, I have a job. And I earn money.”
“Cornelius, a couple of bookings a month as a party clown is not my idea of a job,” said Faye. “And it is not your father’s idea of a job either.”
Cornelius did not reply, as the sound of another vehicle — this one driven by Mr. Hawkins was heard in the driveway. The door to the garage opened and he drove in, and the way the car door slammed indicated that the patriarch of the family was in a foul mood tonight.
Cornelius’s face brightened, his crazy eyes took on a gleam and he announced with delight, “Daddy’s home!”
“Cornelius, I think it would be best that you make yourself scarce and don’t talk to your father right now,” said Faye.
“Don’t talk to Dad, got it Mum,” said Cornelius. He made his way out of the kitchen and to the messy bedroom he and Danielle shared, Faye knowing from the expression on her son’s face that while he was doing as he was told for now, that he clearly was thinking up some new plans to annoy his father sooner rather than later.
Annoying Mr. Hawkins this evening however was not a difficult task. The tall, bearded, middle aged man entered the house from the garage in a terrible temper. Erica and Mrs. Hawkins knew it would be this way. Alistair was an engineer who specialized in lifts, and was the foreman of a team that serviced elevators all around Sydney, and one of the main contracts of the company Mr. Hawkins worked for was repairing and maintaining the lifts at high-rise public housing flats.
The flats had been built in the 1960s, when a major project in New South Wales was to purge inner suburbs such as Surry Hills and Redfern of their run down tenements and slum terrace houses, replacing them with high rise tower blocks. This had worked well enough in the early years, but now more than 30 years later many of these towers were plagued by drug use, social problems and maintenance issues. The lifts were always breaking down and getting vandalized, so the team was always going out there to fix this shit that the human shit that occupied these tax-payer funded dwellings fucked up.
Alistair Hawkins and his team had today been working at some public housing towers in Sydney’s inner southern suburbs. In one of the lifts some filthy cunt had jerked themselves off, ejaculating all over the wall and spraying some of the semen over the lift buttons. A pool of vomit was in front of another lift which Mr. Hawkins and his men had to clear up, and other garbage and used syringes were tossed on the ground along with a puddle of piss in another. Worse, far worse in one of the other lifts somebody had not only taken a shit, but smeared their excrement all over the elevator walls.
When Mr. Hawkins was concentrating on his team getting their work done, some fat bitch with her spastic adult son drooling in his wheelchair and going ‘blub-blub-blub’ had come up to him and officiously asking how long it was going to take to fix the lifts. Mr. Hawkins felt like taking the fat land whale and the retard to the top of the towers and chucking them off so they would not be draining his tax dollars any more.
Seeing other types of people he hated throughout the day — blacks, junkies and faggots — made Mr. Hawkins angrier with each minute that passed. Even when the day’s work finished with the elevators repaired and serviced — until the worthless bludgers who lived at this shit heap broke or vandalized them again sooner rather than later — the day didn’t get any better.
Some fucking dickhead had caused an accident on the north-bound side of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, so Alistair Hawkins had to wait while it was cleared. Although Alistair had spectacular views of the Harbor and Opera House while he was stuck in banked up traffic on the bridge, being from Sydney he had seen them many times so they did not soothe his bad temper.
Even when the traffic was finally cleared and Mr. Hawkins was able to go on his way, his humor did not improve as he thought about going home to where his slacker son Cornelius and his son’s dirty slut bitch of a wife Danielle were waiting for him. Alistair’s mood darkened further as he pulled into the driveway and saw the pile of crap Cornelius drove around in.
Opening the garage door with the remote, Mr. Hawkins drove his four wheel drive inside alongside his wife’s car and slammed out of the vehicle, storming inside with more slamming of doors. Entering through the garage door meant he did not encounter Danielle in the living room, and he made his way to the kitchen where his wife was working on dinner with one thing on his mind – beer.
Faye looked through the kitchen door to see her husband standing there with a face like a thunderstorm about to explode, and knew this would be the case. Every time he had to work at the housing commission flats it was always the same, and the busy traffic didn’t help.
“Hi Alistair, I heard about the accident and traffic jam in the Harbor Bridge,” said Faye. It wasn’t worth asking how her husband’s day was. Her husband had the demeanor of a water buffalo, clearly he had had a very bad day.
“Yeah, some fucking idiot fucked up,” growled Alistair as he went to the fridge, not bothering to ask his wife how her own day was. “What’s for my fucking dinner?”
Alistair could have seen what was for his dinner if he had looked, but not wanting to provoke the angry water buffalo that was going into the fridge looking for his beer Faye simply said, “Stew and vegetables.”
With a beer in his hand and knowing he would soon be eating his favorite dinner — Mr. Hawkins favorite meal was stew and he would eat it 365 days a year if he could — Alistair relaxed a bit.
“Good,” he said, taking his beer and heading for the small front lounge room, turning on the television and sinking into an armchair, watching the news and opening his can of beer, taking a mouthful of the cold frothy amber fluid.
Beer always helped Alistair relax — well relax as much as possible with the antics of a crazy son like Cornelius — and tonight was no different. When Alistair was diagnosed with a heart problem a few years earlier, his doctor advised him that he should drink less beer and undertake a pastime such as yoga or Pilates to help him relax. But asking Alistair to give up beer was like asking him to give up water, and the suggestion of doing Pilates or yoga — activities that he disparaged as being for poofters — just made him angrier and more stressed, so beer won out.
The sports segment was on the TV news, and there was a report on the upcoming Sydney Olympics for the year 2000, now just under two and a half years away. “Stupid fucking Olympics, all we’ll get is more fucking foreigners in the fucking country and it will be a fucking financial disaster,” growled the mean-spirited Alistair, taking another sip of his beer.
Alistair Hawkins was so absorbed in the television and drinking his beer that he did not notice that another person had entered the room, the tall lanky form of his son Cornelius. Cornelius walked quietly, sneaking up on his father while holding two objects in his hands. In his left hand was a pin, while in his right hand was a balloon.
The balloon was from one of the large supply that Cornelius had as part of his clown act, and was not inflated only with air, but water — very cold water. Cornelius looked at his target, knowing full well that his father had heart problems. He also knew that the reaction of his bad-tempered and humorless Dad would be similar to that of a grizzly bear, a gorilla or a hippopotamus if one was to play the same prank upon one of these animals. All of this made the intended prank even funnier to Cornelius.
Waiting until his father had the beer can at his mouth and was taking a large gulp, Cornelius jumped forward, held the water balloon over his father’s head and burst it with the pin.
BANG!
The water balloon exploded, showering Alistair with cold water. The loud explosion and sudden cold shower caused Alistair to leap out of his chair from shock while spraying beer everywhere, swallowing some of the lager the wrong way and causing him to cough and choke violently, his erratic heart rate going through the roof.
Still choking on the beer, his face bright red, Mr. Hawkins was in such a state of shock he tripped over the table, bruising his shin in the process and went sprawling on the floor, coughing violently, soaked with beer and cold water, feeling sick from the impact to his shin and having heart palpitations from the shock. Cornelius, still clad in the demonic tee-shirt and filthy jeans he wore to his job interview — stood pointing at his father while emitting crazy, hyena-like shrieks of laughter.
The racket caused Faye, Danielle, Gavin and Erica to go running into the lounge room. Any normal family would have been shocked by the scene but the Hawkins family were not a normal family. Danielle smirked at the latest chaos her husband was responsible for, Faye looked even more stressed than usual, Gavin looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here while Erica cringed and waited for her father to explode.
“Cornelius, why did you do that after what I told you earlier?” stormed Faye.
“Mother, you said not to speak to Father the moment he came into the house after work,” said Cornelius. “You never said that I was not to approach Father from behind with a balloon filled partly with carbon dioxide and water and burst it while he was drinking beer. You need to be more specific.”
“Don’t you ever do that again Cornelius!” bellowed Alistair, still bright red and writhing on the floor from heart problems and shock. Faye, Gavin and Erica knelt down next to the angry Alistair. Faye wondered if this would be the time she would be putting into place the first aid procedures she had undertaken a course in should her husband have a heart attack, and Erica and Gavin pondered if they would be attempting to save a life so early into their nursing training.
“It is not funny, Cornelius, grow up!” yelled Faye as her son stood pointing and laughing at his father, getting Alistair angrier and angrier.
When it became apparent that Alistair Hawkins wasn’t going to have a heart attack and require an ambulance and first aid, Erica, Gavin and Danielle left the lounge room and the subsequent row between Cornelius and his parents continued for close to 15 minutes thereafter.
*
A dinner of stew and vegetables and washed down with lots of cold beer — this time without some fucking moron bursting a balloon behind him — did calm the angry Alistair down somewhat, but it did not improve his mood having to share his dinner table with Cornelius mostly, but also Danielle and to a lesser degree Gavin. The grumpy patriarch of the Hawkins family sat at the head of the table wearing a sour and angry expression, still fuming about his bad day at work and Cornelius’s balloon prank.
“Where’s that wife of yours?” growled Alistair as he noticed that Danielle was not at the table with everyone else.
As if on cue, the laundry toilet was heard flushing in the background. “Does that answer your question, Father?” asked Cornelius.
The sounds of Danielle opening the toilet door and washing her hands was heard next, then in she came, adjusting her knickers through her leggings.
“Sorry I took so long in the toilet, I needed to take a shit,” Danielle offered. It amused Cornelius who gained much pleasure in life from lavatory humor, but not with any of the others, who were not an appreciative audience of lavatory humor.
Danielle elaborated further about her recent session on the toilet. “Fuck, I went through so much toilet paper I probably killed half a tree, and just for your information do not go in there for at least half an hour. Phew! Talk about having the period shits.”
“For God’s sake,” growled Alistair.
Faye turned to Danielle, keen to put a stop to this nonsense before she put everyone off their dinner. “Danielle, that is enough, we do not want to hear any more about it.”
“What, how I went to the toilet on my period and took a massive, smelly shit?” laughed Danielle. “Come on, what’s the big deal? I’m menstruating, last week Erica was menstruating and the week before that, you were the one menstruating Faye. Week before that, period free week so all the boys could relax, nobody in the house with blood coming out of her vagina, surfing the crimson tide.”
“Yes, but we do not talk about it, especially not at the dinner table, is that clear Danielle?” said Faye.
Danielle smirked, and Alistair turned his attention to his daughter’s boyfriend. “You look like you’re enjoying your dinner there, Gavin?” he said.
Gavin looked at Alistair’s piercing eyes and facial expression that held a clear warning of, ‘One false step, and I’ll fucking smash you.’
Swallowing nervously, Gavin said, “Um, yes Mr. Hawkins, your wife is a very good cook.”
“Good, good,” said Alistair, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “It makes me so happy, my daughter’s boyfriend sitting in my house, at my dinner table, eating my food for free.”
Cornelius laughed his crazy laugh. “Well its better than Gavin eating out your daughter in your house for free!”
“What?!” thundered Alistair, leaping to his feet and turning bright red, Cornelius also leaping out of his chair, pointing and laughing at him, while Erica went bright red, Gavin squeezing her hand under the table to try and relax her.
“You should have seen your fucking face Dad,” laughed Cornelius.
The petite Faye Hawkins got to her feet, trying to act as mediator between her much taller husband and son. “Alistair, Cornelius will you both please just calm down, sit down and relax? Can’t we have one meal together as a family, just one without World War Three breaking out?”
Alistair and Cornelius continued to glare at each other, but after a few seconds they sat down and resumed eating. The nervous Gavin found himself earning the glare of Alistair, the man clearly angered by the thought of Gavin performing oral sex upon his teenage daughter.
All was quiet for a few uncomfortable minutes, until Alistair spoke again. “So, has anybody heard the loony moving about in his flat? I haven’t heard him in days.”
“I heard Brendan earlier, it sounded like he was moving something,” Erica volunteered.
“So he is alive then?” said Alistair. “I thought Brendan might have gone back to the loony bin where he belongs or even better finally topped himself, which would be a good thing if I didn’t have to deal with his stinking corpse in my house.”
“Alistair please, that’s an awful thing to say,” protested Faye.
Alistair ignored his wife’s pleas. “I suppose it would be too much to ask for him to emerge from his hidey-hole and go out to The Gap and chuck himself off? A flying saucer might get him.”
Cornelius guffawed at the comment, and his father glowered at him. “What the fuck are you laughing at you fucking moron? I’ll tell you one thing you worthless little shit, if you want to commit suicide by jumping off The Gap, then just let me know and I’ll pay for a limousine to drive you out to Watson’s Bay to do it. Then I might finally be happy.”
Cornelius continued to snigger, but Faye was unimpressed. “Alistair, enough, I don’t want to hear any more talk about suicide, is that clear?”
As usual, Erica kept quiet and stayed out of it, used to her father making shocking comments like this. She never recalled his father saying one positive thing to Brendan at any stage of his life. As for Cornelius, the only time Erica recalled their father saying anything close to positive about his middle son was years ago when the family went to Manly beach one day in the spring, and Brendan and Cornelius went too near a magpie nest high up in one of the many Norfolk Island pines. The aggressive and territorial black and white birds swooped down, chasing both Brendan and Cornelius.
When Brendan had begun crying after a magpie landed a hard peck to his face, it had enraged his father, Alistair Hawkins bellowing at his eldest son to ‘stop being a sissy and cut out the stupid crying or I’ll give you something to really cry about’ before indicating Cornelius and saying that ‘I don’t see Cornelius crying, do you? Why can’t you be tougher like your brother?’ So with that, Alistair had given Cornelius his one and only piece of praise in life. He then made good on his promise of giving Brendan something to cry about, belting his son in front of everyone at the beach and calling him a ‘great poof’.
Erica herself mainly kept off her father’s radar. For one thing, Alistair Hawkins was more focused on providing negative attention to his older sons, so paid Erica little attention. If she had vanished without trace as a child, it probably would have taken her father a month to realize his daughter was missing. And any attempt by Erica to win praise from her father never went well.
While Erica struggled at sports as a badly bullied, nervous and socially awkward girl in her early years of high school, she improved as she got older, and won a bronze medallion for her efforts in an interschool athletics carnival in Year 11. All Alistair had to say was, ‘So, you’re only third best then?’ and ‘Must have been pretty poor opposition.’ When Erica scored 95 percent in a maths exam, her father asked, ‘Where did you lose the 5 percent?’
More recently when Erica was accepted into nursing at university along with Gavin, Faye couldn’t have been prouder but Alistair had said, ‘Too bad you’re not smart enough to be a doctor’, before making some disparaging comment about male nurses being ‘poofter’ to Gavin. So Erica never sought further praise from her Dad.
Alistair shrugged and drank another gulp of beer. “Well, I guess I’m not going to be happy that way, but perhaps I could be slightly less unhappy. How’s looking for another place to live going?” He glared pointedly at both Cornelius and Danielle.
Neither his son nor his daughter-in-law answered him, and Alistair said, “I hear Perth is really nice. How about moving to Western Australia?”
“You would miss us too much Father,” said Cornelius.
“No I would not, the only better thing would be if you were dead then I wouldn’t have to see you again ever,” said Alistair. “The only thing I would miss is the rent you pay me. Oh that’s right, you two haven’t paid rent in months. Nor do you do any fucking work around the house to make up for it. I told you to mow the fucking lawn three days ago Cornelius, so why the fuck hasn’t it been done?”
“I bet you I do mow the lawn,” Cornelius said.
“I bet you don’t,” growled Alistair.
“Alistair I shall mow the lawn in the anti-meridian of tomorrow,” Cornelius assured his father.
Alistair slammed his fist into the dinner table. “Do not call me fucking Alistair, Cornelius!” he bellowed.
“Father, I called you Alistair, not ‘Fucking Alistair’ if you recall correctly,” said Cornelius.
“Whatever, and don’t fucking lie, I know that you won’t mow the lawn,” grumbled Alistair.
“Mr. Hawkins, I’ve got a bit of time between class and work tomorrow, how about I mow your lawn?” suggested Gavin, wanting to put an end to this argument and hoping to maybe impress his girlfriend’s father.
“No you won’t,” growled Alistair. “This cretin is supposed to do it, let’s see if he gets off his lazy arse and does it.”
“Maybe Gavin should mow the lawn like he suggested?” said Cornelius. “After all, he’s got plenty of experience with tending to the grass that grows on Erica’s wicket.”
“What did you say?” bellowed Alistair, again going scarlet and getting to his feet, while Cornelius laughed as did Danielle and Erica blushed with humiliation.
“Alistair, think of your heart condition,” urged Faye, again trying to stop her husband having a heart attack. She then looked at Cornelius. “You keep it shut Cornelius, and will you mow the lawn like your father and I have told you to do so many times in the past?”
“Mother and Father, the lawn will be mowed tomorrow, by me,” Cornelius said.
“Yeah, I’ll probably see a pig flying by rather than seeing you mow the bloody lawn,” grumbled Alistair, sitting down in his chair. He again glared at Cornelius. “It’s a pity I didn’t take you and Brendan up to the Northern Territory when you were babies. Brendan, I would have left him outside in Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974 and let Cyclone Tracy do the rest. And as for you Cornelius, I would have left you in your carrier out near Ayers Rock. But that would have been a waste of time, even a hungry dingo probably wouldn’t be desperate enough to eat you.”
Danielle spoke up, as usual opening her mouth to cause trouble. “Alistair, you’re supposed to call it Uluru, the proper Aboriginal word.”
Mr. Hawkins looked like he was about to suffer a stroke, and he went the color of a cooked lobster, his face contorted with rage. “Ayers Rock!” Alistair again smashed his fist into the table, crockery and cutlery rattling.
Erica tried to finish her stew and vegetables and hoped that yet another war didn’t break out at the dinner table. Danielle’s statement to provoke her racist and intolerant father-in-law had done its job, but she was hardly one to speak, she was as big a racist herself, if her comments and jokes were anything to go by. As for Cornelius, he made similar jokes and some of his artwork could at best be described as ‘racially insensitive’.
Cornelius himself ate some more stew, and looked at his wife as Danielle stuffed her mouth with vegetables, chewing some broccoli, peas and carrots with her mouth open, before devouring some cabbage with the same lack of table manners.
“Fuck Danielle, I have to share a bed with you tonight after eating all that green stuff,” he laughed.
Danielle laughed. “Be afraid Cornelius, be very afraid. The only things that should be more scared than you right now are my knickers, my period pad and the toilet.”
“Danielle, what did I say earlier?” snapped Faye, her daughter-in-law giving her an arrogant shoulder shrug in response.
“It happens, you must know about it, you’ve been having periods since about 1959 except when you were pregnant with your kids,” said Danielle. She then turned to Erica. “How about you, Erica? Don’t you just hate it when you fart on your period, and it goes along your pad and up your pussy-hole and out your fanny flaps, bubbling in all the blood?”
Erica blushed and looked shyly at the ceiling, not at all comfortable with this conversation, and Danielle smirked in smug satisfaction at the discomfort of her shy sister-in-law.
“I’ll probably regret this later, but if you like vegetables have mine,” said Cornelius, scooping all the vegetables from his plate of which he had eaten none onto his wife’s plate. “Vegetables are fucked, I fucking hate them.”
“Cornelius!” warned his mother.
“This stew is like dog food anyway, it tastes like crap,” Cornelius added.
“Cornelius, if you don’t want to eat the food I prepared after working all day, then make your own dinner in the future,” said Faye sternly.
“And if you want to call the food dog food, how about you leave the table and eat it like a dog on the floor where you belong,” growled Alistair.
“You want me to eat like a dog, I’ll go and eat like a fucking dog,” said Cornelius.
“Good, go and eat on the fucking floor,” said Alistair.
“Nobody is eating on the floor like a dog, Cornelius, least of all you,” said Faye.
“I am going to eat on the fucking floor like a dog,” said Cornelius defiantly, standing up with his plate in his hand.
“Go on Cornelius, do it,” trouble-maker Danielle urged her husband.
Cornelius moved away from the table, set his plate down on the floor then got down on all fours like a dog. Putting his face down into the stew, Cornelius began to eat the stew with his mouth, growling and barking. “Look at Cornelius, Cornelius is a dog, woof, woof, woof!” he called out, his mouth full of food, stew all over his face.
“I wish you were a dog, then I could have you put down,” growled Alistair, drinking even more beer.
Danielle thought this funny, but Erica simply looked away from the embarrassing scene, wishing she was somewhere else. She also wished this was a one off, but similar things had happened all the time, either at home or out in public where everyone could see. One of her older brothers was 23-years-old and married and was eating on the floor while pretending to be a dog, while her other brother was a paranoid junkie who cowered in his bedroom too terrified to venture out because of demons, ghosts, monsters and aliens.
Erica sometimes wondered if his family situation was real. Perhaps they were really just characters in a sitcom, and Erica as the youngest kid in the family not let in on the secret? Were there hidden cameras all over the house televising the lives of the Hawkins family not only to Australia, but the rest of the world too?
Cornelius thankfully kept out of his father’s way the rest of the evening, spooning and making out with Danielle on the living room couch while watching television, practically dry-humping his wife. Erica and Gavin had cleaned up after dinner to give the highly stressed Mrs. Hawkins, and now Gavin was calling it a night.
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow, Erica?” Gavin asked.
“See you then,” said Erica. “And I’m really sorry about…”
“Hey, it’s okay, don’t mention it,” said Gavin, more than used to Erica’s completely crazy brother, her trouble-making sister-in-law and her stentorian father.
The young couple embraced and exchanged a kiss, unfortunately just as Cornelius was passing by. “Woo-hoo!” he yelled out, wolf-whistling his sister and her boyfriend. “Kissy, kissy, kissy!”
Both blushing, Erica and Gavin pulled out of their embrace and Gavin left, walking the short distance up the street to his parents’ house. Often in the past Gavin had thought and once suggested now they were both 18 and out of high school, maybe he and Erica could move out together, maybe to a shared house with other university students, just to get Erica away from the nightmare she called home.
But Erica did not want to leave home, not because she loved living there, but because she worried about her mother. Along with Erica, Faye was the only sane member of the Hawkins family. But if Erica was gone, it would leave Faye alone in the house with an insane tyrant of a husband, two completely crazy adult sons and a sluttish and disrespectful daughter-in-law, then maybe Faye Hawkins would go around the bend too. Gavin could see his girlfriend’s point, but it didn’t stop him worrying about her.
Inside the very normal Baxter house, Gavin’s older sister Lisa, a tall, slim and attractive girl with long blonde hair this evening tied back in pony-tail was watching TV, her bare feet on the coffee table.
“So, how was dinner at Erica’s house?” Lisa asked.
All Gavin could do was shake his head. “Dinner? I didn’t go to dinner. I was in a stage play about conflict resolution in families.”
“That good, hey?” Lisa was well used to the crazy antics of the Hawkins family. She had been in the year below Cornelius at high school, and like her brother couldn’t believe he was actually real.
“Yeah,” said Gavin, sitting down to watch TV with his sister.
*
At the Hawkins house, Faye Hawkins took a shower in the ensuite bathroom, the attractive middle-aged woman standing under the shower washing her vagina, the color of Faye’s pubic hair now filled with suds and bubbles showing she was a natural redhead.
Erica had a longer wait to use the shower in the bathroom she shared with Cornelius and Danielle. First Danielle was taking a shower, her menstruating sister-in-law taking forever, Danielle washing the blonde hair that grew around her pussy and her vagina, menstrual blood running down her legs and to her bare feet and the shower floor or her period dripping directly from her vulva onto the tiles.
With her mother using the other bathroom and the granny flat bathroom obviously not an option Erica had to wait, but needed to go to the toilet and in the time she was on the loo Danielle finished in the bathroom, and Cornelius went in there to take a bath. Frustrated, Erica waited in her bedroom as her brother seemed to be keen to set some sort of world record for the longest time taken to have a bath.
Finally though, she heard Cornelius open the bathroom door and with a sigh of relief, the young girl collected her oversize tee-shirt and fresh pink cotton panties to wear to bed. Erica was walking towards the bathroom, when she nearly wet herself thanks to her father’s booming voice.
“Cornelius, what the hell do you think you are doing?!”
Erica saw her furious father standing outside the open bathroom door looking like he was about to have a stroke, Alistair’s face contorted with rage. Glancing over her father’s shoulder, Erica soon saw what the problem was. Cornelius, now wearing a pair of boxer shorts ahead of going to bed, had failed to drain the water from the tub. Cornelius was now bent over the tub face down, drinking his own bathwater through a straw, a look of enjoyment on his face.
All Erica could do was sigh. Cornelius enjoyed drinking his own bathwater, he did it all the time and spent a lot of time bragging about how much he enjoyed it, much to Erica’s embarrassment. At one time Cornelius had attempted to bottle his own bathwater so he could consume it later, but Alistair and Faye had put a stop to this insane plan.
Alistair did more than sigh. “Cornelius, how many fucking times have I told you not to do that?” His voice thundered through the house.
Cornelius stopped drinking his bathwater. “But it tastes good.”
“I don’t care if it tastes good, you disgusting little shit! Get away from that fucking bath and don’t ever let me catch you drinking your own bathwater again, Cornelius.”
Alistair stormed into the bathroom, dragged Cornelius away from the bath, shoved him into the wall and pulled out the plug to drain the water from the tub.
“So you don’t want me drinking my own bathwater?” Cornelius asked his father.
“No!” roared Alistair.
“Well, can I drink your bathwater then Dad?” Cornelius asked.
“No!” bellowed Alistair, slamming his hand down on the bathroom vanity. “Get out of here Cornelius, and I don’t want to see you again tonight, you fucking stupid cretin!”
Cornelius stood up and pointed at the shape of his penis and balls in his boxer shorts. “Fine, I’ll go to bed, Danielle said she was going to suck my dick.”
“That figures, it’s about all that cock-sucking, slut bitch wife of yours is good for,” growled Alistair, watching as his son went on his way, Cornelius scratching his balls through his boxer shorts.
Alistair passed by Erica as she went into the bathroom. “Goodnight Dad,” she said to her father, but Alistair just grunted a response to his teenage daughter and went on his way, grumbling and mumbling under his breath. Erica wasn’t surprised, her father often failed to notice she was even there.
Having closed and locked the bathroom door, Erica undressed and as the young girl removed her bra, it showed she had B-cup breasts the same as her mother, one size down from her C-cup sister-in-law Danielle. Pulling down her white knickers and stepping out of them, Erica’s feminine mound showed a nice triangle of light brown pubic hair, matching the long hair on her head, and at the back two firm, peach-shaped cheeks of her bare bottom.
Under the shower Erica was washing her genitals and anus with plenty of soap and water, and as she touched her tight teenage vagina she thought about Cornelius boasting that Danielle was going to give him a blow job. It was a disturbing thought that in the bedroom adjacent to hers Danielle was probably going down and giving her brother fellatio, but on the other hand it was probably a good way to keep that brother of hers quiet and under control. Hopefully it would put a stop to his antics for today at least.
Erica rinsed her female area between her legs, then turned off the shower, drying off and putting on her oversized tee-shirt and clean knickers, before going to bed. The young girl took off her glasses, slid her pretty bare feet under the covers and in the darkness and with something that was rare in the Hawkins house — peace and quiet — she soon fell asleep.
One of the reasons that it was so quiet was that Danielle was busy giving Cornelius a head job, Danielle’s face down in her husband’s groin, her panty-covered arse with the shape and wings of her napkin clearly visible thrust high in the air.
Danielle sucked and teased harder with her tongue, massaged her husband’s balls and was soon rewarded when Cornelius blew his load in her mouth. Sticky white semen went everywhere in Danielle’s mouth, his wife drinking his cum with great enjoyment.
In bed later that evening, Erica was in the REM stage of sleep, the young woman dreaming about mowing the lawn of all things. Her dream became more vivid and realistic, Erica imagining herself starting the lawnmower and mowing the grass in the front garden.
The young woman stirred in her sleep, waking from her dream her eyes opening and Erica seeing that the time on her clock radio was 12.01 AM. Despite waking from her dream, Erica could still hear the noise of the lawnmower, and half asleep thought it would clear, but it did not. The sound of the lawnmower was 100 percent real.
Outside, the noise got louder and now neighborhood dogs were barking too. Erica could then hear people moving around inside the house, and her father’s angry bellowing.
“What the fuck is going on out there?” Alistair Hawkins roared.
Now fully awake, Erica got out of bed and saw her parents striding towards the front door, Faye wearing a night-dress and Alistair wearing a white wife-beater vest and boxer shorts, brandishing a cricket bat and his face full of fury. Erica could see through the living room windows that the security lights at the front of the house were all turned on, illuminating the entire front garden and half the street too. Danielle, barefoot and wearing an over-sized tee-shirt over panties, joined her in-laws.
The only two people were missing were Brendan of course, and Cornelius. Erica knew Brendan was hiding in his flat as usual, but given the racket going on outside in the middle of the night, she would have bet a fair bit of money that Cornelius was responsible for it. It wouldn’t be the first time, and if it pissed off the neighbors it wouldn’t be the first time they received a visit from the police or from the council the next day responding to noise complaints.
“Alistair, be careful,” warned Faye, but her furious husband was not about to listen.
“I bet I know who is out there, and when I get out there I’m going to break this bat over his arse, Faye!”
Alistair flung open the front door and strode onto the front porch. “Cornelius, what the fuck are you doing?” he bellowed, Erica wondering if people in Parramatta, Penrith or Campbelltown could hear her furious father.
Erica cringed as she stood on the porch between her mother and sister-in-law, noting that her brother was wearing his clown costume — a baggy suit of multi-colors, over-sized red shoes, garish make-up with a big red nose plus a conical hat with different colored pom-poms — as he mowed the lawn, creating an almighty racket.
“Cornelius!” shouted Alistair as his son failed to hear him over the sound of the lawnmower, which Cornelius had going at full speed.
Going redder and redder, Alistair strode out onto the lawn and dragged clown-costume wearing Cornelius away from the lawnmower, which took off on its own before tipping over on its side, the rollers and blades still going, the noise continuing.
“Dad, you said to mow the lawn tomorrow, so now it’s tomorrow and I’m mowing the lawn,” laughed Cornelius, as his father scowled at him. “I’m just doing what I was told. Aren’t you pleased?”
“I’ll give you pleased you piece of shit, I’m going to tan your arse!” roared Alistair.
He brandished the cricket bat, and Cornelius pointed at his father and laughed, antagonizing Alistair even more.
“Go Cornelius!” yelled Danielle from the porch, copping a glare from her fuming mother-in-law. Cornelius took to his heels, not hindered at all by wearing clown shoes, and Alistair chased him, taking strikes with the cricket bat at his son’s head, Cornelius showing much agility in dodging and weaving to avoid his father.
Erica should not have been used to scenes like this — her father chasing her brother dressed as a clown for mowing the lawn in the middle of the night — but this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Two weeks ago Alistair Hawkins had arrived home from work and was outraged to see that Cornelius had hung not only a large rainbow gay-pride flag from the front of the house, but a large painting of Alistair naked, holding hands with and admiring the penis and testicles of an equally naked young black man. Incandescent with rage, Alistair had chased Cornelius around the garden brandishing a rake as Cornelius made monkey noises, and when Cornelius ran away up the road his father had leaped in the car and pursued him, before Alistair returned and burned both the gay pride flag and the homosexual themed painting in the front yard.
Looking down the side of the house, Erica could see that Brendan had turned on the lights in his granny flat courtesy of a small sliver of light visible through the heavy curtains, and some neighbors had come out of their houses as the yelling and lawnmower noises continued but others stayed inside, clearly not wanting to risk getting involved with the latest crazy goings on at Number 9. If Erica had lived in another house in this street, she wouldn’t have come out either.
“Come here, you fucking stupid bastard!” boomed Alistair, as Cornelius climbed the large jacaranda tree in the front garden. “Just wait until I get my hands on you!”
“Come and get me, Dad!” Cornelius taunted.
“I’ll get you out of that fucking tree!” yelled Alistair. He stormed over to the front hose and unwound it, before turning it on full blast and taking it out to the jacaranda. There he directed the hose at Cornelius, spraying his son with cold water.
“You like that cold water, you want some more, I’ll give you more you fucking moron!” roared Alistair, drenching Cornelius with the hose. “And when you come down here I’ll fucking smash the shit out of you!”
“Alistair, calm down!” urged Faye from the doorstep, her husband temporarily taking the hose off their son and going over to the lawnmower, turning it off and righting it, before being distracted by the flash of a camera.
The fuming Alistair turned to see Mr. Cole from across the street taking another photograph of him. He had been so busy chasing Cornelius and then spraying him with the hose that he hadn’t noticed Cole taking photographs of both he and his clown-costume clad son as well as the lawnmower running in the middle of the night.
“Get that fucking camera out of my face Cole, or I’ll shove it up your arse!” yelled Alistair.
“Don’t threaten me Hawkins, I’m just getting more and more evidence for the police and council of what I have to put up with you and your crazy family, especially that son of yours!” retorted Mr. Cole. He snapped another photo of the menacing Alistair approaching, the flash antagonizing Alistair even more.
“You might want to save the film in your camera, otherwise you won’t have enough when you’re hanging around the park taking pictures of little girls in the playground as usual,” growled Alistair.
“That is slander, I can have you in court for that!” retorted Cole indignantly.
“You just try it and you see what happens,” snarled Alistair. He noticed that Cole was now standing on his property. “Get out of my fucking garden!”
Alistair grabbed the garden hose intending to spray Mr. Cole with it, but Faye pulled on her husband’s arm. “Alistair, you’re angry right now, think before you act,” she urged.
“You should listen to your wife,” said Mr. Cole in his patronizing way. “If you had put the hose on me I would be right on the phone to the cops and had you charged with assault.”
“I’ll give you assault, you jumped-up little…” Alistair began, reaching for the cricket bat, before Faye grabbed it preventing her angry husband from doing something he would later regret.
Mr. Cole departed, and was hit on the head by an empty jacaranda seed pod on his way, courtesy of Cornelius high up in the tree. “That’s going in my official complaint too!” he promised the Hawkins family as he went on his way.
As other neighbors went back indoors, Mr. Hawkins grabbed his lawnmower and returned it in the garage, then turned off the outside lights that illuminated the Hawkins front garden brighter than the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House at New Year’s Eve. “And you can stay outside the rest of the night Cornelius, don’t expect to be let back inside,” he warned his son, who remained in the tree.
“I’d rather stay up the tree,” declared Cornelius. “That’s the last time I ever mow the lawn Dad, if that’s how you thank me.”
Alistair again went red and made a move towards the jacaranda, but Faye stopped him. “Alistair, let it go, we need to go back to bed we have work in the morning.”
“I wish he had a job, then he might see what it’s like,” growled Alistair. He turned back towards the tree. “Get a fucking job, Cornelius!” he bellowed, his voice again setting off neighboring dogs.
Danielle seemed amused by the chaos her husband had caused in the middle of the night, but Erica was not. The young girl tossed and turned back in bed, wondering if the police would turn up to speak to her father and brother. Erica thought about how she didn’t have to worry about the neighbors from hell moving in next door, her family were the neighbors from hell. Well not her and her mother, but definitely her father and Cornelius and to a lesser extent Danielle. Whatever was going to happen next? Erica hated to think about it.
END OF CHAPTER 1 — TO BE CONTINUED…