Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills

INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER – After a day of making an absolute nuisance of himself around Sydney, unemployed slacker Cornelius takes things way too far with one of his practical jokes. So does he do the right thing afterwards? Because Cornelius is a sociopath, of course he doesn’t, and this leads to him buying the magic pills. But are the magic pills as good as they are said to be?

Find out by reading Chapter 2 of this story series about the crazy and dysfunctional Hawkins family; please enjoy and rate and comment. The story series contains drug use, violence, frequent course language and scenes of female characters using the toilet and having their periods, so reader discretion is advised. All characters and events are fictional, with similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional.

*

“I probably shouldn’t ask, but what was Cornelius doing up the jacaranda tree dressed as a clown at five o’clock this morning?” Gavin asked as he met Erica at her front door, and the two of them walked hand-in-hand across the road to catch the bus to university. “I saw him when I went running.”

Erica sighed. “I’m amazed you didn’t hear it all the way from your house. That brother of mine dressed up as a clown and started mowing the lawn at midnight, just to piss off Dad.”

Gavin shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything, slept right through.”

“You’re lucky,” said Erica, yawning through lack of sleep.

“It explains why your lawn is in such a mess,” said Gavin, indicating the partially mowed grass. “Was your Dad really mad?”

“Remember that time a few weeks ago when he chased Cornelius with the car? That mad, and then some. He chased him with a cricket bat, then put the hose on Cornelius and banned him from the house for the rest of the night.” Erica again yawned.

“You look so tired, Erica,” said Gavin, putting his arm around Erica.

“Yeah, living in the same house as my brother will do that to you,” said Erica. She looked very concerned. “One of these days either Cornelius is going to cause Dad to die from a heart attack or stroke, Dad is going to completely lose it and wind up murdering Cornelius or Mum is going to go crazy too.”

Like when she was a younger and upset by her tumultuous home life and by the relentless bullying she was suffering at high school, Erica put her fingers in her mouth.

“Hey, it’s okay,” said Gavin, putting his arms around Erica and embracing her tightly, the teenage lovers exchanging a kiss.

“Do you both mind?” came an irritated male voice behind them.

Erica and Gavin stopped kissing and got out of their embrace, turning around to see the fussy form of Mr. Cole standing at his letterbox, the man looking like he had sucked on raw lemons and limes.

“Do you have some sort of problem, Mr. Cole?” asked Gavin.

“If it isn’t bad that I have to put up with the rest of the Hawkins family especially the rat-bag son who wakes up half the street at midnight, now I have the daughter acting like a cheap little call-girl in front of my house too,” Cole said indignantly.

“Don’t you speak to her that way,” said Gavin.

“Mr. Cole, I understand you were upset by my brother and father last night…” Erica began, but Cole brusquely cut her off.

“Congratulations Miss Hawkins, you and your boyfriend have added your names to my latest official complaint about your family, with your shameless display of immorality in front of my house. Now excuse me, I have better things to deal with than a worthless little floozy like you.”

“You’d better watch what you say,” Gavin said.

“Threatening me, that’s another mention for you Mr. Baxter,” said Cole.

“Leave him Gavin, he’s not worth it, and if we don’t hurry we’ll miss our bus,” said Erica.

“I really hate that guy,” fumed Gavin.

“Me too, he’s so creepy and nasty,” said Erica.

Gavin laughed. “It figures why he has oleanders growing all around his property, he’s as bitter and poisonous as they are. He probably picks the leaves and flowers and eats them for his tea.”

Erica gave a thin smile. “At least if he’s eating the oleanders he’s not coming into the sandwich shop. One time he came in while I was rostered on, demanding to have Vegemite in his sandwich. I told him we don’t have Vegemite, we’ve never had Vegemite, but still he kept on about it, complaining and carrying on and demanding to speak to the manager. Never mind the queue of customers a mile long behind him trying to get their lunch that we had to serve too.”

Gavin nodded. “It was a similar thing in the supermarket, he tried to pay for his groceries with a cheque. When I told him that the store policy had changed the year before and we no longer accepted cheques, he wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept insisting that I accept it, asking to speak to the manager. And of course with a long line of customers waiting.”

“I thought Dad was going to smash Mr. Cole’s head in last night,” said Erica. “Luckily Mum stepped in and stopped Dad before he did anything he might regret.”

“Was your Dad still in a bad mood this morning after what Cornelius did?”

“Yeah.” Erica nodded. “Although when he let Cornelius back inside the house this morning I thought war would break out again. But Dad must have been tired, all he did was order Cornelius to go and look for a job today and that was it.”

“I saw Cornelius heading off in his car earlier,” said Gavin as the bus pulled into the stop and he and Erica boarded. He added sarcastically, “I’m sure he’s going to look for job today like your Dad said.”

Erica laughed and shook her head. “I think Cornelius wakes up in a cold sweat from nightmares in which he is forced to take a job.”

*

With Erica now on her way to university along with Gavin, the Hawkins house was quiet with all occupants out, aside of course from Brendan who remained in the granny flat and did not dare leave it for fear of UFOs. Alistair Hawkins had driven off in his four wheel drive into the city, he and his team servicing lifts in apartments in The Rocks, Woolloomooloo and Kings Cross.

Faye had gotten into her small hatchback and driven to her office job in Chatswood, while Danielle had a two day relief teaching assignment at a high school in the Canterbury area, so had left early for the long drive to Sydney’s western suburbs.

And Cornelius? While his younger sister and her boyfriend were riding the bus to their classes and his parents and wife were at work, Cornelius today dressed in filthy trainers, jeans and black tee-shirt with ‘Go And Kill Yourself’ emblazoned on it was driving over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, his bald tires with tread close to the metal having little traction on the asphalt, the engine making an almighty racket and the exhaust pipe belching so much black smoke that he would probably have been responsible for half of the New South Wales air pollution for the day.

Cornelius’s vehicle travelled in the outside lane of the Harbour Bridge, at a grand speed of 20 kilometers per hour in morning traffic, the queue of cars, trucks and buses behind him highly amusing, as was the reaction of furious drivers who sped past, beeping their horns and giving him obscene hand gestures, Cornelius reducing his speed to 15 kilometers per hour in the hope of angering even more people..

Laughing all the way across the bridge, Cornelius found an opportunity for more fun in the CBD, when forced to stop at a zebra crossing with many people going by. There was an Asian lady with two small kids, a group of schoolgirls, a businessman with a brief-case, a blind woman with a guide dog and an old man using a walking frame.

With all of them on the crossing, Cornelius pressed down on the horn, causing all of them to jump in fright at the loud beep, the old man nearly falling over on his walking frame from shock. Collapsing in fits of hyena-like laughter made even funnier by the glares of the pedestrians with the obvious exception of the blind lady, Cornelius carried on his journey.

His destination today was the trendy inner-city suburb of Newtown, about four kilometers west of the Sydney CBD. The tight streets of the old-style urban area were busy, and not much parking. Ahead of Cornelius was a line of cars, with one free right at the end, a larger blue disabled parking bay. Just ahead another car had its indicator on to back into the bay, the car bearing a disabled sticker and a wheelchair could be seen on the roof.

As the vehicle began to slowly edge backwards to reverse park in the bay, Cornelius with a deft maneuver shot his car in there and brought it to a stop, getting out and feeling more satisfied. The paraplegic man driving the other car was furious. He beeped his horn and backed up to confront the clearly able-bodied young man who had taken his spot.

“Hey you,” he called out to Cornelius, who ignored him. “Hey you over there, yeah you! Would you like my disability? No? Then get that heap of shit out of my bay, you lazy fucking arsehole.”

Cornelius continued to ignore the disabled man, who grew angrier still. “Hey cunt, I’m talking to you, fuck you.”

This time Cornelius turned and addressed the man. “Can a cripple like you really fuck somebody?”

“What did you just call me?” spat the man. “Come over here and say that you fucking dickhead.”

“Jesus, you handicapped people really need to get a life, and a sense of humor,” observed Cornelius before he went on his way, laughing, waving and blowing kisses to the disabled man who continued to rant and rave, Cornelius most pleased that he now had nowhere at all to park especially when an older couple whose car did indeed carry a disabled sticker pulled into another handicapped bay across the road.

Cornelius was on the lookout for a public lavatory and spotted one across the road. “Fuck, I need to chuck a piss!” he shared with an Asian couple who were looking in concern at his suicide tee-shirt.

Ambling across the road, the toilet block, there were three different toilets; a men’s, a women’s and a disabled toilet. Rather than go into the men’s toilet, Cornelius went into the disabled toilet and closed and locked the door. The seat of course was down, and Cornelius did not bother to lift it. Freeing his dick from his jeans and underpants, Cornelius pointed it not into the toilet but rather at the toilet seat, pissing all over it. Of course very little of the urine ended up in the toilet, most of it wound up over the seat and the floor.

Putting his cock back in his pants, Cornelius left the toilet and passed the ladies’ loo. Thanks to the open panes of glass, Cornelius was able to hear one of the occupants of one of the stalls pass gas loudly into the toilet, her wind echoing in the bowl. The sound of the girls in the bathroom giggling and talking about the monster fart one of them had done was audible.

Always amused by flatulence, Cornelius loitered outside the toilet block, waiting for the female occupants to finish. He could hear them unwinding toilet paper from the roll holders in their stalls, then three toilets flushed, taps run and three attractive young women emerged.

Not a subtle person, Cornelius decided on a direct approach to find out which of the three girls had farted so loudly when she was on the toilet. “Oh my God, I’ve never heard anyone fart as loud as one of you three girls did before!” he exclaimed, his voice probably loud enough to be heard by people in Bathurst. “Who was it, and what have you been eating?”

While the girls had giggled about one of them having a flatulence problem while they were using the toilets, they were anything but amused by this very strange young man hanging around the toilets asking them about it.

“Piss off you weirdo, or we’ll call the police,” said one girl, she and her friends hurrying away.

Cornelius would have preferred to continue loitering around the toilet to see what would happen when a disabled person went into their lavatory to find the toilet covered in piss and them unable to do anything about it, but this probably wasn’t going to happen, and Cornelius had other things to see and do on his excursion to Newtown.

A short way along, Cornelius saw three women walking a dog, the dog squatting down and taking a shit on a small patch of grass. Watching a dog having a dump was amusing to Cornelius, and when the dog finished and the lady who was walking it looked through her handbag for a doggy waste bag to clean up her dog’s excrement, he decided to make things even funnier.

Cornelius stood with his back to the dog shit, then lowered his arse down over it, contorting his face to make it look like he was straining while defecating, making flatulent noises with his mouth while laughing. The women with the dog and the people passing by however were not so impressed or amused by Cornelius’s antics, some crossing the road to get away from him.

Moving away from the dog shit, Cornelius made his way to his next destination, a couple of rubbish dumpsters. Cornelius, who had a plastic garbage bag folded into his back pocket, dived into one of the enormous bins like an ibis, rifling through the trash looking for cans and other items that he could recycle for extra money. On some occasions, he also found other interesting items he could scavenge, such as pornographic magazines.

Today, Cornelius was successful in his efforts and when he had finished his dumpster diving, had not only a garbage bag full of empty drink cans but an inflatable crocodile lilo and two blow up sex dolls, one male and one female. Cornelius wasn’t sure exactly what he would do with them, maybe use them to freak out his Dad in a practical joke, but carried them back to his car along with the bag of cans. His Dad would probably go off his head again if he saw the cans, having previously banned Cornelius from bringing garbage back to the house after his scavenging expeditions, but Cornelius didn’t give a shit.

In the disabled bay where he was parked, Cornelius could see council parking inspectors doing their rounds so increased his pace, getting into his car and driving away at speed and avoiding a fine for parking in a handicapped space.

All that dumpster diving and rummaging through rubbish had made Cornelius hungry, and it was getting close to noon. Cornelius drove to a fast food restaurant, and stood in the busy lunchtime queue behind two clearly gay young men, who ordered two hot dogs.

“Two sausages there, boys?” Cornelius laughed.

The two gay young men turned around. “Excuse me?” the first one asked.

“Do you have some sort of problem?” enquired the second.

“No, no problem,” said Cornelius. He watched as the two gays turned their backs to get their order, then pretended to sneeze loudly. “Ah, ah — faggot!”

The two young men glared at him as they went on their way.

“Bye homosexuals, have a nice day eating your sausages!” Cornelius called while waving, before going up to the counter. The staff were clearly wary of him, but given that they wanted to avoid a likely scene if they refused him service and asked him to leave the restaurant, they served him his order of a hamburger, large fries and cola, hoping he would leave without making a fuss, which for once in his life Cornelius did.

Cornelius ate his lunch in his car, as the noise and activity of bustling Newtown went on around him, planes either taking off from or landing at the nearby airport. Heading for home, Cornelius was driving back across the Harbour Bridge, this time at the correct speed limit and in the center lane when he noticed the packaging and empty drink container from his lunch, and thought he probably should have disposed of them back in Newtown.

Not to worry, there was an easy solution. Cornelius simply opened up his window and chucked the fast food containers and cup right out the side and onto the road, a van beeping as the lid of the soft drink cup came off and melting ice cubes went all over the windscreen.

Noticing but not caring Cornelius drove into the northern suburbs heading for his parents’ house, only stopping briefly at a delicatessen to buy a carton of chocolate flavored milk. Nearing home, Cornelius looked at the skies over Sydney.

Today was typical weather for a coastal sub-tropical city like Sydney in the autumn. It was a fine and sunny morning but now clouding over, with rain coming in for the late afternoon and a likely thunderstorm tonight. Cornelius wished it was raining now, as he spied the much hated Mr. Cole from across the street walking down the road that led to the street where he and the Hawkins family lived.

He was on the other side of the road from where Cornelius’s car was driving so Cornelius couldn’t emulate the prank last night of beeping his horn at him, but then an idea entered his mind and he turned into the street, parking on the lawn of his parents’ house.

Henry Cole did not notice Cornelius’s car as it drove by him, but as he turned into his own street and walked to his house he noticed the vehicle at the Hawkins house and glared disapprovingly at it through his glasses, hoping the owner was nowhere nearby. Mr. Cole had spent the morning running errands. These included lodging the latest official complaint about the Hawkins family with authorities, drawing out pension money at the bank with his passbook and getting his prescription filled at the pharmacy, Mr. Cole a Type 2 diabetic bordering on Type 1, and also suffering high blood pressure and angina, all conditions that required regular medication.

Pausing to check his mail and extricating a water bill, Mr. Cole had no idea just how close Cornelius actually was to him, a matter of a few feet, his much younger adversary lurking in the cover of the oleanders that grew around the front fence.

While hiding in the bushes waiting, Cornelius looked at the two things that would enable him to play the best ever prank on Mr. Cole to date. One was the carton of chocolate flavored milk, which Cornelius had opened, but not to drink. At school, there was a practice known as ‘choc-milking’, which involved tossing a full, opened carton of chocolate milk at another student, very popular with the boys. Now Mr. Cole would get to experience the joys of being choc-milked for himself.

The second thing Cornelius had was a small tape recorder on which was a cassette of vicious dogs barking and growling. Cornelius kept it in his car at all times, and it was just great for practical jokes. He had pranked his wife with it, but Danielle had PMS when he had done it so wasn’t very impressed. Cornelius had also pranked his parents with it, leaping out at them in a darkened room, but they weren’t impressed either, Alistair punching Cornelius in the head for it.

Best of all was the reaction when he used it on Erica, his nervous younger sister screaming and leaping about six feet in the air and presumably needed two things afterwards, a roll of toilet paper and some clean knickers. Erica had always been cannon fodder for some of Cornelius’s jokes, such as the time in high school where in English Cornelius’s class had to write about a problem and how they would attempt to solve it.

Cornelius had written about his concerns about his sister, how he had noticed her hiding food and disposing of it later, making herself vomit either in the bathroom or down the back yard and had laxatives hidden in her bedroom. Given skinny Erica’s willow-like frame and nervous, high-strung personality, by that afternoon she found herself in the office having a meeting with the school psychologist, guidance officer, deputy female principal and Mrs. Hawkins to address her eating disorder. It had taken a long time for the mortified Erica and her mother to convince the authorities that Cornelius’s claims were lies made up to get attention and that she was not an anorexic or bulimic.

Smirking at this recollection, Cornelius got into position as Mr. Cole drew level, then leaped out of the bushes, playing the tape recorder of the barking, snarling dogs at full volume. Cole went rigid and spun around in shock, before Cornelius let fly with the carton of chocolate milk.

“Choc-milked!” Cornelius called out in triumph as the brown milk splashed all over Mr. Cole’s face, glasses and shirt, and while laughing uncontrollably waited for the pissed-off neighbor to go apeshit at him.

Mr. Cole however did no such thing. Cornelius of course could not feel what was happening in Cole’s chest, the burning stabbing pain from his heart going through his chest and through his body. All Cornelius could see was the chocolate-milk covered man clutching at his chest and making a series of funny faces, before he collapsed backwards, hitting his head on the concrete driveway and convulsing on the ground, the convulsions becoming less violent as a bright white light filled Cole’s every remaining sense followed by blackness, an eternal silent blackness.

Cornelius stood over Cole’s body, looking down at him as he drew his last breath. He knelt down and felt Cole’s pulse, nothing there and the elderly man was not breathing. He was dead. Continuing to stare down at the lifeless body of Mr. Cole, Cornelius looked around to see if there were any witnesses.

Nobody was around, so Cornelius grabbed Mr. Cole’s dead body by the ankles and dragged it off the pathway and onto the lawn, where he was concealed by the oleander bushes. Turning Mr. Cole over, Cornelius saw the shape of the man’s wallet in his back pocket which was soon extricated.

Cornelius’s crazy eyes bulged in delight at what lay inside, over 500 dollars in cash. There was a crisp green 100 dollar bill, several yellow 50s, red and orange 20s, blue 10s and pink and purple 5s. Taking all of the money, Cornelius stuffed it in his pocket then returned the dead man’s now empty wallet back to his own pocket.

Turning Cole onto his back, the man’s lifeless eyes staring at Cornelius through his glasses, Cornelius noticed that Mr. Cole had pissed himself, a huge wet stain at the front of his beige trousers as his bladder emptied post mortem. Laughing at the sight and also needing a piss, Cornelius pulled down his fly and extricated his dick, pissing all over Mr. Cole’s groin, laughing all the more.

Then shaking himself dry and zipping up his jeans, Cornelius casually walked out of Mr. Cole’s front garden leaving the owner dead on the front lawn, strolled across the street, got into his car and drove away into the increasingly humid and overcast Sydney afternoon.

*

Thanks to the cover of the oleanders, neither Erica nor Gavin noticed the deceased owner of Number 10 lying lifeless on the lawn as they walked by half an hour later. Their schedule at university today enabled them to be able to work an afternoon shift at their jobs.

“Cornelius still isn’t back,” said Erica, noting the absence of her brother’s car from the front lawn. “He must be going around collecting junk or whatever else he does all day.”

“I thought your Dad banned him from bringing trash back to the house?” Gavin asked as he and Erica went into her bedroom.

“How do you explain Danielle living here then?” Erica quipped with atypical cattiness, before Gavin was treated to the sight of Erica undressing to change into her work uniform.

Off came Erica’s blouse, long floral skirt and sandals and she stood barefoot in her bra and knickers, a white bra and white bikini-style panties with pretty pink and purple flowers on them. Gavin had to fight hard to avoid getting an erection at seeing Erica in her underwear, and even when she dressed in her sandwich shop uniform it was still a hard job.

The problem was that Erica looked so cute in her uniform, consisting of a blue tee-shirt, black trousers, black sneakers and a blue peaked cap, and when she tied her hair back in loose pigtails, this along with her glasses and cap made her look cuter than ever.

Gavin was able to keep it under control as they walked the short way up the street to his house, for him to change into his own supermarket uniform. Gavin tried to control himself by looking at a postcard that had arrived to him and Lisa from his parents’ cruise, from Christchurch in New Zealand but it was a losing battle.

Soon he and Erica were making out on Gavin’s bed, Gavin with a full-blown erection in his undies and the double cotton saddle of Erica’s teen panties getting very damp. “We’d better stop, we don’t want to be late for work,” said Erica even though she didn’t want to stop.

“We’ve got plenty of time, plus with Mum and Dad on holidays, I can run us to work in Mum’s car,” Gavin assured his girlfriend. “Plus I think we need to study human biology more…”

The two horny teenagers continued making out, Erica freeing Gavin’s erection from his pants and playing with it, sometimes jerking off her boyfriend with nice hard strokes her other hand teasing his balls, other times going down and sucking his dick, her tongue working him to new levels of delight.

“I’m going to get a sticky surprise in my mouth if I keep doing that, aren’t I?” Erica asked, taking her boyfriend’s dick out of her mouth and looking at him through her glasses with a coy, innocent expression on her pretty face.

“I think so,” said Gavin.

“Well we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?” With that, Erica stood up, pulled down her own pants and then her panties, Gavin’s cock throbbing at the sight of his girlfriend’s fuzzy triangle of light brown pubic hair over her feminine mound.

With her trousers and knickers down around her ankles, Erica turned around and bent over her boyfriend’s bed, the young girl thrusting her cute teenage arse high in the air. Gavin stared at Erica’s bare bottom, her pretty pink vagina and just further up from her pussy the tight star-fish shape of the teenager’s anus.

Going over, Gavin put his face between Erica’s legs, the musty feminine smell of tight teenage pussy entering his nostrils and driving him crazy with desire. The young man looked down at Erica’s knickers, perving on her cunt stains on the saddle from the young girl’s vagina self-cleansing during the day, before putting his mouth into Erica’s box.

Erica squealed in pleasure as Gavin ate her out, his tongue sometimes traversing her tight teenage twat licking at her labia, circling her clitoris, going up her pussy hole and other times licking the sensitive skin that separated her vulva from her anus. With sticky pussy juice over his handsome face and a very turned on girlfriend, Gavin took his face out from between her legs, pulled his own trousers and undies fully down and put a condom on his dick.

Once more Erica squealed in delight as Gavin mounted her then entered her from behind, pushing his cock up her tight young cunt to fuck her over the bed, the teenager feeling her boyfriend start humping her, the smell of the young girl’s aroused vagina quickly becoming evident. With both teens so turned on and doing it in their favorite kinky position — Erica bent over something fully clothed in her work uniform but with her pants and her knickers down — orgasm wasn’t far off.

Gavin felt his orgasm go through his body, his balls sending semen shooting up through his cock. He came deep inside Erica, ejaculating in the condom with the contraceptive stopping the sperm swimming up Erica’s birth canal and into her uterus, some possibly finding an ova in her fallopian tubes leaving Erica knocked up and Gavin with a lot of explaining to do to her angry father as to why he had a pregnant teenage daughter.

Erica’s own orgasm was intense, the young girl’s teenage toes clenching the cotton socks in her shoes, her nipples tingling in her bra as her clitoris released a wave of pleasure that went through her pussy and into her back passage, the muscles in Erica’s anus and rectum clenching, the teenager crying out as she felt the orgasm go right up her bowels.

The teenager’s vagina released a wave of pussy juice over her boyfriend’s groin as she cried out, before they separated, and still getting their breaths back from the intense short fuck, kissed with their pants still around their ankles.

Reality was now calling, and the teenagers had to go to work. Erica removed the condom from her boyfriend’s cock, licking away the rest of the residual semen from his penis with her soft pink tongue. As he pulled up his own pants, Gavin watched wide-eyed as Erica took a handful of tissues from the box, scrunched them up, and applied them to her pussy, the tissues emerging from the young girl’s hairy fanny sticky and damp with orgasmic feminine wetness.

With a dryer vagina, Erica pulled up her knickers adjusting them around her buttocks and her box, and then her pants, fastening them up. Gavin and Erica then removed all evidence of their fun, throwing out the tissues and the condom and wrapper in the wheelie bin. Locking up the house, Gavin and Erica climbed into his mother’s car, Gavin driving them to work for their shifts at the shopping center, the teens relaxing by listening to new tunes by the Spice Girls, All Saints, The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC on the car radio on the way there.

For the next few hours, customers at the sandwich shop had no idea that the skinny, somewhat mousy attendant with glasses, pigtails and the cute peaked cap had recently been fucked by her boyfriend. Likewise, those served by the handsome and polite young man at the supermarket were clueless that he had recently fucked his pretty girlfriend over the bed while she had her pants and her knickers around her ankles.

*

Cornelius’s crappy car stood out in the suburban street in Sydney where his family lived, but it looked in the right place where it was parked now. This was in the driveway of an old house that was not in one of the best areas of Sydney. The corrugated iron roof was rusted, paint flaked off the weatherboards, weeds and overgrown vegetation grew everywhere in the garden and even in the gutters, and one of the supports of a front pergola had fallen down.

Before arriving, Cornelius had gone to a phone box to confirm it was okay to go to the house in question. Given the all clear, he had arrived at the tumbledown property and gone to the front door, the door opened by a skinny young guy with lots of tattoos and untidy brown hair wearing a wife-beater vest and football shorts, who ushered him inside and closed the door.

“Hey Cornelius, long time no see buddy,” said the young man, he and Cornelius shaking hands in the equally dilapidated inside of the house.

“Hey Justin, yeah, it’s been a few weeks,” said Cornelius. “How’s business?”

“Yeah, not bad,” said Justin. He admired Cornelius’s ‘Go and Kill Yourself’ tee-shirt. “Cool shirt, mate.”

“Thanks mate,” said Cornelius. “Sorry I haven’t stopped by in a while, I’ve been a bit short of cash and my Dad’s been busting my balls.”

“I’m scared of your Dad,” said Justin.

“Dad’s a fucking dickhead,” grunted Cornelius, he and Justin going into the living room where a young woman with long and untidy blonde hair, bare feet, a black blouse that showed much of her tits and a short black mini-skirt lounged on the couch. She stared into space, a completely vacant expression on her face.

“You remember my cousin Imogen from Wagga?” Justin asked.

“Yeah, hi Imogen,” said Cornelius, a greeting that the spaced-out young woman ignored.

“Say hello Imogen,” Justin prompted his cousin.

“Hello Imogen,” Imogen replied still staring ahead blankly, to which Justin shook his head.

“Would you believe she was school spelling bee champion when she was nine?” Justin laughed. “It’s all been downhill since then.”

“I like Blue Heaven ice-cream with white chocolate topping,” Imogen put in completely at random, staring like a zombie.

“Yes Imogen, of course you do,” said Justin. He turned to Cornelius. “How’s Danielle doing?”

“Yeah okay, got her rags though,” said Cornelius.

“Oh that’s fucked,” said Justin. “Imogen had it last week, got a fucking tampon stuck up her fanny and guess who had to get it out? Me. Her cousin. It was worse than that time she took too much speed at a concert, and not only did I have to pull her knickers down and sit her on the toilet to take a shit, but I had to get some toilet paper and wipe her stinky arse for her because she was too stoned to do it herself. If we were Tasmanian it would have been fine, but we’re obviously not in Tasmania.”

“Oh gross,” said Cornelius, laughing at the story. “What happened next?”

“Went down the shops and got her some pads, I’m not doing that tampon shit again,” said Justin.

“Have I got my period again?” the stoned Imogen asked.

“No, you’re fine, how about you watch TV and don’t worry your pretty little head too much?” asked Justin. He switched on the TV, and a cartoon for small children about unicorns came on.

“I like unicorns, I had a pet unicorn when I was a girl,” said Imogen.

“That’s right you did, Imogen,” said Justin. “Now how about you watch the nice unicorns while Cornelius and I talk business?”

As Imogen stared at the screen, Justin said to Cornelius, “So, I bet Danielle would like a little something to cheer her up given it’s her time of the month? What would you like? A few cuttings from a pot plant? Or some special mushrooms from deep in a magical forest?”

“Well, money’s no object,” said Cornelius. He reached into his pocket and showed Justin some of the notes he had stolen from Mr. Cole’s dead body earlier.

“Whoa, that’s a lot of cash Cornelius!” exclaimed Justin. “Thought you were skint?”

“I inherited it, this bloke sort of died and I got some money,” said Cornelius in a classic display of lying by omission. “So how about some grass and some mushrooms?”

“Yeah, right away,” said Justin. He opened a drawer containing zip-lock bags of marijuana and magic mushrooms when another man entered the room, a skinny shirtless man wearing only a pair of tracksuit pants, his face having the same stoned, spaced-out expression as Imogen.

“Oh, g’day Cornelius,” said the young man in a croaky voice clearly affected by marijuana use, scratching his balls through his pants.

“Yeah, g’day Mitch,” said Cornelius.

“You buying some mushrooms? They’re real good,” endorsed Mitch as he lit up another joint. “Good pot too, felt like I was floating on a cloud.”

“Who’s floating?” Imogen called out.

“Nobody Imogen, you just watch the pretty unicorns and relax,” said Justin. He shook his head and said in a soft voice. “Space cadet.” He then turned his attention back to Cornelius and Mitch and spoke in his normal voice. “Now where we? Mushrooms and grass…” He then paused. “Unless, no maybe not.”

“What?” Cornelius asked.

“Nah, nothing, forget I spoke,” said Justin.

“No, what is it?” Cornelius prompted.

“Well, I had this gear come in, up from Melbourne,” said Justin. He opened another drawer, and took out a bag of small yellow tablets.

“What’s that?” Cornelius asked. “E?”

“How about LSD?” asked Mitch. He looked again. “I’ve never seen yellow pills like that before.”

“QXZ?” the clueless Imogen suggested from the couch.

Justin shook his head. “No, something different. It is fucking amazing from what I’ve been told. The Citizen Kane of drugs. I probably shouldn’t be selling it to you, once you’ve had it you’ll probably never want to go back to grass and mushrooms and I’m going to lose sales.”

“I’ll take six,” said Cornelius.

“Well today’s your lucky day because it’s six for the price of five,” said Justin. He put six yellow pills into a small plastic bag and handed it to Cornelius, who handed him the cash stolen from the deceased Mr. Cole at the same time.

“Thanks mate, Danielle and I are going to have fun with these,” said Cornelius.

“Only one at a time, these are pretty strong from what I got told,” said Justin. “And don’t give one to your brother Brendan.”

Cornelius laughed. “No way mate. I couldn’t even get in there anyway. Brendan hasn’t been out of his little flat in nearly two years. I haven’t even seen him this year.”

“I mean it Cornelius, some people shouldn’t take drugs and your brother is top of the list,” said Justin.

Outside the dark Sydney clouds released the first rain of the day, the sound on the roof clear. Imogen looked up at the sounds. “Is it raining?”

“And my cousin is another person who shouldn’t be doing drugs,” Justin sighed. “Yes Imogen, it’s raining outside.”

“I thought it was raining when I was on the toilet this morning,” Imogen volunteered, as she sat with her legs open showing her frilly pink knickers to Justin, Mitch and Cornelius. “But it turned out to be the sounds of me peeing.”

“That’s fascinating, Imogen,” said Justin sarcastically, before turning to Cornelius. “Well I hope Danielle likes these pills.”

“I think she will,” said Cornelius. “At least I hope she does. Happy wife, happy life so they say.”

“True,” agreed Justin.

Mitch had gone and sat next to Imogen, sucking on his joint and sharing the marijuana cigarette with her. “Why has that horse got a horn on its head?” he asked, watching the cartoon with Imogen.

Imogen looked around the lounge room. “I didn’t see any horse in here.”

The rain was getting heavier outside. “I’d better be going mate,” Cornelius said. “Catch you later.”

“Yeah, catch you later, you and Danielle have fun,” said Justin.

“We will,” said Cornelius. He turned to Mitch and Imogen. “See you later.”

“Catch you, Cornelius,” said Mitch.

“I like Blue Heaven ice-cream with white chocolate topping,” Imogen said.

Cornelius left the house and returned to his parents’ house, thinking about the new drugs he had scored and how much fun he and Danielle were going to have. And they weren’t the only ones. His Dad, Mum, younger sister and sister’s boyfriend were going to have fun too, only they didn’t know it yet. And it was all thanks to him being in the right place in the right time when Mr. Cole died. Cornelius wondered if anyone had found his body yet, or if he was still lying out in the rain getting drenched.

The second scenario amused Cornelius and he laughed all the way home, where he immediately saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles at Number 10, neighbors out in the rain watching what was going on with the police and paramedics at the now late Mr. Cole’s place.

Not showing any interest at all, Cornelius drove by and went inside, carrying a small shopping bag containing the proceeds of a brief stop-off at a small supermarket on his way home. These were a six pack of mud chocolate cupcakes and a tube of frosting.

*

When Faye Hawkins returned to the house later in the afternoon, consistent rain falling across Sydney, she was horrified to see the emergency vehicles across the road from her house and the flashing lights. Had Alistair come home earlier than expected from work, found Cornelius pulling some inane stunt and finally killed him? Had Cornelius played a practical joke on his father that had backfired causing Alistair to fall down dead? Or had Brendan listened to the voices one too many times and committed suicide?

Through the heavy rain Faye saw that the emergency services were not at her house, but rather at the house of Henry Cole. The front yard was taped off with the ‘Police Line — Do Not Cross’ tape and Faye was in time to see staff from the NSW Coroner’s Office carrying a body bag out to their van.

Turning into her own house, Faye noticed that Danielle’s car was under the carport and Cornelius’s pile of crap was on the lawn as usual, but Alistair was not home from work yet. As Faye got out of her car, she saw Gavin stop his mother’s car on the lawn, and he and Erica climbed out, both of them looking across the road at the body being taken away.

“Mum, what happened?” Erica asked.

Faye shook her head. “I don’t know Erica, I only just got home myself.”

The front door opened and out came Cornelius and Danielle, Danielle still dressed in the long floral skirt and blouse she had worn to work, Cornelius still in the jeans and black ‘Go Kill Yourself’ tee-shirt.