Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills

INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER – On the second day of their road trip after fleeing Sydney, will the Hawkins family have better luck evading the aliens, ghosts, monsters and demons that are pursuing them? Will the evil forces stop putting messages into Cornelius’s head? Will the toilet demon find youngest daughter Erica? Will daughter-in-law Danielle continue having a blue period? Will Gavin’s sister Lisa be safe back in Sydney, or does she know too much? Will the family patriarch Alistair go completely insane this time, taking the matriarch Faye down into madness with him?

Read Chapter 5 of this story series to find out. As with the previous chapters, it contains strong themes and scenes of female using the toilet and having their periods. All characters engaging in sex are 18 or older, and are completely fictional, with similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional. Please enjoy your latest trip back to 1998 with the crazy Hawkins family and rate and comment.

*

Cornelius had fortunately recovered somewhat as Alistair and Danielle got him back inside the chalet and was now seeing the world in live action again not in animation, but he was still pretty strung out as his mother took the empty chicken bucket off his head.

“Please don’t let the vampire, the robots or the TV people come back and get me!” he pleaded, sitting on the couch and drawing his knees into his chest.

“I thought maybe we should leave but we’re tired and need to rest,” said Alistair. “We would be sitting ducks for the aliens out there on the road tonight and be in a UFO and up into outer space. So we’ll stay here, but we need to be careful.”

“What do you suggest?” Faye asked.

Alistair went outside to the cars and returned with the tin foil purchased earlier in the day and some sticky tape. “We’ll cover the windows with this, that way the aliens and demons won’t be able to use the lighthouse to send invisible rays in here to put messages in our heads.”

Setting to work, everyone soon had the windows of the chalet covered in tin foil. Alistair was pleased with the effort, he and Danielle going back out to the cars and returning with both guns concealed by blankets. Alistair tore a tiny hole in the tin foil at the front window, enough to look outside, while Faye sprinkled holy water around the chalet and said the Lord’s Prayer in each room.

“We need to be vigilant tonight,” Alistair said. “We also need to keep a watch on the cars, so we’ll have to take it in turns to keep watch during the night. Faye and I will keep watch first, then Gavin and Cornelius and then Danielle and Erica. Now give me a hand to push this couch against the door, stop anyone coming in.”

Everyone took hold of the couch, including Cornelius who was now recovering more after alien or supernatural forces messed with his mind back at the restaurant, and put it in front of the door to barricade it.

Faye and Alistair took first watch, Alistair holding his shotgun, while Faye took hold of the rifle. The younger members of the group all tried to get some sleep. As Danielle passed by having been to the toilet, now wearing a tee-shirt and panties, Faye could not help but notice that her daughter-in-law was now wearing a period pad, and she was not at all pleased.

“Danielle, I thought we agreed that you use tampons not pads,” she said crossly. “If werewolves come here to track us the first thing they will smell is your period.”

Danielle was huffy and indignant in her response. “Excuse me, but there’s no way I am wearing a tampon to sleep, I’m not getting toxic shock syndrome. Anyway, I’ll wear tampons outside where there might be werewolves. I don’t see any werewolves in here, do you?”

Alistair was clutching his shotgun as he and his wife kept watch while the others slept. Nothing happened of note. There was a hooting noise from outside, but when Alistair shone a torch light outside he saw that it was just an owl in a tree in the car park.

After three hours, it was time for Faye and Alistair to sleep and Gavin and Cornelius to take their shift at keeping watch. Alistair kept hold of the shotgun saying, “If anything strange happens, wake me up straight away.”

Cornelius reached for the rifle his mother was holding, but Faye pointedly handed the firearm to Gavin, something that clearly disappointed Cornelius. The two young men kept vigil throughout the late evening and into the early hours of Saturday morning, again with no issues, before handing over to the girls around 2 am.

Danielle sat on the couch holding the rifle with Erica beside her, the two girls checking outside intermittently through the gap in the foil to make sure there were no supernatural or other interferences with the cars, but things went fine. The early hours of the morning passed, and around 5 am the others woke up.

“Nothing happened?” Alistair asked.

Danielle shook her head. “No, quiet as the grave.”

“Well let’s hope it stays that way,” said Alistair.

“Do you think that they might have given up?” Faye asked anxiously.

“I would doubt it, we still need to be careful,” said Alistair. “The aliens and demons put a lot of effort into putting messages into Cornelius’s mind last night, they won’t give up so easily.”

“Talking about the restaurant, you’ve got grease all over your hair Cornelius, so you’ll need to wash it,” said Faye.

“Yeah, I’ll do it,” said Cornelius.

“Actually, I just need to go to the toilet first,” said Erica.

“Go ahead, I don’t want to be taking a shower while my sister’s on the dunny,” laughed Cornelius, clearly back to his old self after last night’s terrors.

Erica, who was wearing one of Gavin’s jumpers that was way too large for her petite young teenage body walked into the bathroom on her bare feet. The young girl turned on the light, closed and locked the door and put down the toilet seat after checking she had enough toilet paper.

This morning unlike yesterday evening, Erica had no apprehension about sitting on the toilet. Nothing bad had happened when she went to the loo yesterday evening, and during the night she had sat on the toilet to have a pee, and again no toilet demon to frighten her. So Erica lifted up the jumper to show her panties — Erica now wearing white bikini panties with blue cartoon dolphins after the teenager changed her underwear before bed — before pulling them down to her ankles and sitting her bare bottom down on the toilet.

The tinkling sound of the pretty teenage girl having a piss filled the bathroom as Erica urinated, then unwound some toilet paper and wiped her young pussy. Disposing of the saturated tissue into the bowl, Erica moved her bowels, a series of ‘plop, plop, plop’ noises in the bathroom audible. Erica looked down at her bare feet and lowered knickers as she defecated, and as the smell reached her nostrils she hoped Danielle would not come in here afterwards like she had done yesterday and tease her about the way she stank the toilet out.

Feeling some relief from her bowels, young Erica unwound a length of toilet paper and was using it to wipe her bottom when she heard it. The teenager went absolutely rigid on the toilet, breaking out in a cold sweat, fear filling every part of her body from the long light brown hair on her head to the toes on her pretty bare feet.

From deep inside the toilet pipes came the greeting, “Good morning, Erica.” The voice was unmistakable — a posh upper class British accent, just like yesterday morning. There was no mistaking it. The toilet demon had found her.

Fear again affected Erica’s bowels, causing the terrified teenager to pass wind followed by an avalanche of poo that came out of her rectum and went everywhere in the toilet.

“I’d know that vagina and anus anywhere,” said the demon with delight as Erica burst into tears and sat crying on the toilet. “Come now, don’t cry, what’s to cry about?”

“How did you find me?” Erica sobbed through her tears.

“Have you ever heard the expression you can run but you can’t hide?” asked the toilet demon. “I was always going to find you, it was just a matter of persistence. And now I have found you, and am I glad. So much nice smelly girl poo for me to eat.”

Another lump of poo slid from Erica’s anus and splashed into the bowl, the girl unable to stop herself from pooing. “That’s it, you keep right on pooing, that’s a good girl.”

As was the case yesterday morning, Erica was so frightened she could not find her voice and could only sit on the toilet crying in terror. This meant she could not call for help, and her fear only increased as she looked at the power-point next to the sink. As was the case yesterday the sockets came to life like an evil face, and the nasty, mocking voice of the power-point demon filled the bathroom.

“Crying again, are you?” it taunted her. “Don’t you have any other reaction, you stupid little cry baby? I am sick to death of listening to your stupid blubbering, and to make it worse I have to put up with the stench of your shit too, you disgusting little bitch. And can’t you close your legs? I don’t want to see your crack.”

“Never mind him, my cranky friend there isn’t a morning person,” said the toilet demon, his upper class voice coming up from between Erica’s legs. “It seems you need something to cheer you up. If you take a look in the mirror, I’m sure you’ll feel much happier.”

The terrified Erica leaned forward on the toilet to look at the mirror, and it was lucky she was sitting on the loo given the immediate and unfortunate effect on the poor girl’s bowels. In the mirror she could not see her own reflection as to be expected, but a clown.

A male clown, which wore white make-up with a bright red nose and lips, and a conical hat with pom-poms on his head. Erica looked at the clown, the clown looked at Erica before pointing at the young girl and laughing hysterically as Erica sobbed in terror.

“What’s wrong Erica?” came the voice of the toilet demon. “Don’t you like clowns? Too bad, he really likes you, especially watching you when you’re sitting on the loo.”

Outside of the bathroom, nobody else had any idea that both the power point and the toilet demon were harassing Erica again, and this time a clown was in the mirror laughing at her as she sat on the toilet with her knickers around her ankles, frozen in terror. The terrified and tearful teenager was growing more and more frightened with each second that passed as the toilet demon talked to her about her toilet habits, the power-point demon berated her and the clown laughed at her.

Like yesterday morning, Erica tried and failed to find her voice and each time failed, before finally she was able to scream, “Mum, help me!”

“Erica’s in trouble!” yelled Faye. “Erica, I’ll be right with you.”

She grabbed the keys and sprinted to the bathroom, while Alistair grabbed his shotgun and addressed Cornelius, Danielle and Gavin. “Stand by,” he said, sounding like a military man giving orders to his regiment. They complied with his direction, as an eerie moaning sound became audible outside, much like the wailing sounds of the spirits that had tried to ambush them at Ghosties Beach the previous afternoon.

Faye burst into the bathroom, and was immediately confronted by the sight of her terrified, tearful daughter on the toilet with her knickers around her ankles, sobbing helplessly. “Mum, the toilet demon’s come back,” Erica wailed.

“Oh good morning Mrs. Hawkins,” said the toilet demon, the posh English voice coming up from the toilet between Erica’s legs. “Just enjoying the sight, sounds and smells of your daughter’s shit, which is simply spiffing this morning.”

“You stupid woman, will you give that girl a fucking enema to clean her out so I don’t have to put up with the stench of her shit?” snapped the power-point demon, Faye watching as the sockets moved like an evil mouth and pair of eyes.

“There’s a clown too,” Erica said in a small voice, pointing weakly at the mirror as Faye turned around, her face contorting in shock and horror at sight of the clown that had been standing in the mirror watching and laughing at her teenage daughter while she was pooing on the toilet.

The clown pointed at Mrs. Hawkins and began its evil laughter again, and this time thanks to the bathroom door being slightly ajar, the others could hear it laughing too.

“Faye, what’s going on in there?” Alistair boomed.

“The demons have come back to get Erica, and now there’s a clown in the mirror,” Faye called back urgently. “I’ll take care of Erica, everyone else get ready to leave.”

Trying to ignore the clown convulsing in the mirror in fits of hysterical laughter, the carping criticisms of the power point and the toilet demon talking about its love of Erica’s feces in its upper class British accent, Faye got tissues and removed Erica’s glasses, wiping the tears from her sobbing daughter’s eyes and then more so she could blow her nose.

“Erica, we need to leave now, so you have to get some toilet paper and wipe your bottom,” said Faye.

Unfortunately, Erica was so frightened she just sat on the toilet frozen in terror, and without warning projectile vomited. With no warning, Faye had no chance to get Erica a container to vomit into, and so Erica’s sick splattered while fortunately missing her mother splattered all over the bathroom floor, the smell of Erica’s vomit mixing with her toilet smell causing an even greater stench in the bathroom.

The clown was even more amused by this, pointing and laughing and doubling over in mirth, but the power point demon was not nearly so amused or impressed.

“You disgusting, dirty little bitch!” it snapped angrily. “Vomiting over the floor like that!”

“Sorry,” lamented Erica.

“Erica, we need to go, you need to wipe yourself clean,” said Faye, unwinding some toilet tissue from the roll and holding it out to her daughter.

Erica sat frozen for a few seconds, and a flatulent noise followed by some splashing sounds in the toilet bowl indicated that her fear had affected her bowels again. However to the relief of Faye, who really didn’t want to clean smelly and messy feces from her teenage daughter’s anus, Erica took the toilet paper and used it to wipe her bottom.

“Good girl, you get some more toilet paper and finish,” said Faye encouragingly, as she got tissues to wipe Erica’s eyes again, and more tissues to wipe away the residual sick from Erica’s mouth, while Erica wiped her bottom. It took six lengths of loo paper before the seventh came away from Erica’s bum with no shit on it and clearly she was done.

Faye pulled Erica up off the toilet seat and flushed the lavatory. “Thank you so much Miss Hawkins, I shall meet your acquaintance again the next time you sit down on the toilet,” came the toilet demon’s voice as the swirl of water took Erica’s excrement and used toilet tissue to the sewers. “Now excuse me, its breakfast time!”

Erica was in such a distressed state that he didn’t think to pull up her undies and nearly tripped over her lowered panties, to the ever increasing hilarity of the clown. Faye had to pull her daughter’s knickers up for her, adjusting them around Erica’s hairy teenage pussy and her bare bottom then after putting Erica’s glasses back on her face, pulled her over to the sink so both mother and daughter could wash their hands.

This done, Faye hurried Erica out of the bathroom where Gavin attempted to console her, the others having their stuff ready to go.

Alistair had his shotgun in his hands. “Now where’s that fucking clown?” he roared, storming into the bathroom.

He didn’t have to look far. The clown was still in the bathroom mirror, and this time it pointed at and laughed hysterically at Alistair, enraging him even more.

“What’s so fucking funny clown, will it be so fucking funny when I blow your fucking head off?” he shouted, holding up the gun at the mirror and aiming it at the clown, which continued to point and laugh at him.

Alistair was about to pull the trigger, but before he could there came the voice of the toilet demon from the lavatory. “Oh you silly man!”

It distracted Alistair enough to prevent him from his attempts to blow the clown away. “Are you talking to me?” Alistair asked the invisible presence in the toilet.

“I most certainly am Sir,” said the demon. “You Mr. Hawkins are what we call a complete nincompoop. A half-wit, or a nit-wit if you like. The clown in the mirror, he is not of your world. You firing your shot gun won’t hurt him in the slightest. All it will do is create an almighty noise, a lot of damage and have the police called. And with you and your family on the run, I imagine that you would not want the police involved.”

While not wanting to admit it, Alistair knew the toilet demon was correct in what it was staying and accordingly lowered the gun. “The toilet demon is right,” conferred Faye, who came into the bathroom with Cornelius, Danielle and Gavin, who stared in amazement at the laughing clown in the mirror. Erica unsurprisingly did not want to go back into the bathroom, and remained outside the door.

“Bye-bye,” said the clown, giving them a wave before vanishing.

“We have to get out of here,” said Faye, hearing the moaning of ghosts and poltergeist-like rapping sounds outside.

Holding their bags, the family were about to make for the front door still barricaded by the couch and complete their escape from the chalet, when the television somehow managed to turn itself on despite being off at the power point.

Immediately, the four hosts of the children’s Saturday morning television block appeared on the screen, like they had done at the restaurant last night, despite the show not due to air for another hour or so. This time, they stayed in their live action form and within the TV, but all four pointed at Cornelius and said. “There’s somebody to see you Cornelius, he’s in the kitchen.”

Cornelius although terrified looked into the kitchen, and went white. “Oh shit he’s here, shit he’s coming!” he yelled in panic.

The rest of the family didn’t have long to wait until they saw what was causing Cornelius such angst. Around the corner stepped the vampire, and while last night he appeared to Cornelius as a cartoon, today he was 100% live action, and attired in a tuxedo, with a large black cape over his shoulders.

“Cornelius, I warned you last night that not taking the deal I attempted to broker with the robots would have serious consequences,” said the vampire solemnly. “What you have done has not impressed darker forces that surround you, as you can now see.”

The vampire pointed at a hallway closet the door of which was ajar. The interior of the closet was dark, darker than the darkest hour of the darkest night, and inside a substance that looked like dry ice melting began to drift out. Within the mist a figure began to appear, a red and black figure some seven feet tall, with goat-like horns on his head, a goatee beard, a tail with a forked end and cloven hoofs for feet. The figure, which carried a pitchfork, looked at them through the mist with bright red eyes, opened its mouth and began to laugh, an evil laugh that filled the chalet.

The devil like creature was not alone in laughing, the clown that had been laughing at Erica while she was using the toilet now materialized in the hallway mirror, pointing at the horrified Hawkins family and emitting its insane cackling. On the TV screen the children’s show hosts watched impassively, while the vampire stood watching the terrified family shaking his head and saying, “You see Cornelius, if you had only signed the contract last night all this would have been avoided.”

Alistair and Gavin frantically flung the couch out of the way, and everyone made good their escape, Alistair leaving the keys hanging in the front door lock. Throwing their stuff into the cars, the ghosts continuing their eerie wailing, everyone piled into the vehicles and Alistair and Danielle took off at great speed, their tires squealing as they raced out of the car park and hopefully leaving the devil, vampire, clown and the demons behind them.

They did not stop until they reached a small park some 10 kilometers away, where they pulled into the car park and got out, all needing to try and calm down after the horror of what they had seen. Danielle ran for the direction of the toilet block. “I’m going to the toilet. Seeing the devil scared the shit out of me, literally,” she said.

Danielle could not however get into the female toilet block, it was locked due to the early hour of the day and the frustrated young woman had to run back to the four wheel drive, grab a box of tissues and a flashlight and dash behind some banksia trees. Danielle got her knickers down and squatted with seconds to spare, before her poo came out of her anus with a massive, smelly rush, a result of the terrifying supernatural happenings of the morning. Danielle was finding it difficult to shit in the open, balancing holding the torch with getting tissues out of the box to wipe her vagina and anus, her period which was still coming out of her bright blue making everything so much messier.

At the cars, Erica was the one clearly most terrified by the morning’s events, the young girl weeping and her mother and boyfriend having to comfort her. Alistair paced up and down, clearly freaked. “We actually saw it, we saw the Devil himself,” he said. “Satan actually appeared before us. How are we supposed to fight something like that?”

Erica’s distress clearly grew as she heard the word ‘devil’ and Faye said, “Alistair, you might want to, you know, not say it aloud.” She indicated their distressed daughter.

Alistair nodded slightly, but Cornelius having recovered somewhat faster than the others could not resist some fun at his younger sister’s expense. He leaped up and putting two fingers to his forehead to emulate devil’s horns, put his face into Erica’s and roared, the young girl’s eyes going wide before she retched in terror, a small amount of watery vomit coming out of her mouth and onto the ground.

Alistair was furious, shoving Cornelius away and hitting him on the side of the face. “What is it with you? Are you a slow learner? Can’t you see how scared your sister is? Can’t you take anything seriously?”

“I was just trying to cheer her up,” complained Cornelius. “What is it with this family, can’t you take a fucking joke?”

“I’ll give you joke, you retard…” roared Alistair, again raising his fist, before Faye’s voice was heard.

“Cornelius, grow up and leave your sister alone,” she ordered. “And Alistair, I know how much he annoys you and he annoys me just as much, but we have to stick together. We can’t be fighting amongst ourselves.”

Alistair nodded grudgingly but said to Cornelius, “Where is that fucking wife of yours? How long does it take for her to wipe her arse? I’ll bloody take off without her if she doesn’t get her butt out here soon.”

Behind the banksias, the still squatting Danielle had encountered a scary experience, although this strictly of this world. Feeling a tickling sensation on the left cheek of her bare bottom, Danielle shone the light on her arse, and immediately saw a terrifying sight. Crawling across her backside was something black, with eight legs and a large red stripe on its abdomen, a sight to inspire fear in all Australians in the same situation as Danielle. Hoping not to feel its sharp fangs, Danielle hastily brushed away the highly venomous redback spider from her bum, feeling relief when it did not bite her, the arachnid scurrying away under some leaf litter.

Finishing having her shit, Danielle took the period pad she had been wearing overnight off her knickers and replaced it with a tampon, shoving it up her vagina and hoping that werewolves hadn’t picked up on the smell of her menses while she was squatting out here wearing a napkin.

Danielle folded up her dirty period pad and stood up, kicking some sand all over the poo and the shit-covered tissues she had used to wipe her bottom. Pulling up her knickers, Danielle returned to the group holding the box of tissues, disposing of her soiled sanitary pad into a bin and washing her hands at a tap.

With Danielle back, it was time to plan for the day. “Are we going to head further north?” Faye asked Alistair. “You know up to Coffs Harbour or Port Macquarie, or perhaps even further north up the coast to Grafton?”

Alistair shook his head. “No. They will think we’ll keep going north.”

“What about inland?” suggested Gavin. “To Bathurst, Orange, Tamworth or even Dubbo?”

Again Alistair shook his head. “No, we would be easy prey on those wide open country roads.”

“Well where then?” Danielle asked. “We can’t leave the state, the aliens will have blocked the borders, and if we go back to Sydney they’ll be waiting for us for sure.”

“We’ll head for the Blue Mountains,” said Alistair. “But we can’t go back through Newcastle, the aliens will be waiting for us to double back. We’ll need to drive through the Hunter Valley and keep to the backroads and off the Pacific Motorway, they’ll have traps waiting to capture us on the main road.”

“That’s a long drive Dad,” said Cornelius.

“Yes, but to stay safe and away from the aliens and demons we need to do it,” said Alistair firmly. “We’ll also need to switch drivers around fairly regularly between the two cars. We’ll hold up the stop sign before we pull in to do this. Got it?”

Danielle and Cornelius nodded. “Yes.”

Fleeing the chalet at Nelson Bay so quickly presented them with a bit of a problem. While the three guys had all had time to dress before they departed, Erica, Danielle and Faye were still in their nightwear, meaning the three women had to dress.

Danielle put on her bra, a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt as did Faye, with Erica still in such as state she needed a little bit of help from her Mum to put on a bra, tee-shirt, jeans, socks and sneakers.

While the women were getting dressed, everyone looked around the park. It was still dark, the first rays of the sun only just coming up in the east over the waves of the Pacific Ocean. While there was nothing supernatural in the park, there were things that were out of place among the birds that called this place home.

On the lake there were ducks, geese and black swans as to be expected, but there were also white swans. While there obviously were white swans in Australia, they did look out of place here. Pelicans and seagulls could also be seen which also was to be expected given how close they were to the coast, and also white ibises and egrets common to wetlands, but a large Jabiru stork seen standing on an island within the lake was definitely out of place with these birds living in the tropics of Northern Australia.

Also out of place but not so much as the Jabiru were a large number of chickens of various colors along with several roosters, which crowed loudly at the breaking dawn. Among the chickens pecking around the lake’s edge were a number of turkeys. While not impossible that people would dump unwanted poultry in a park, there seemed too many of them for this to be such a case.

To one side of the park stood a pine plantation, from inside which came the eerie hooting of owls, and some bats flew by in the moonlight heading for their homes. Cornelius shuddered at the sight. Were these just bats — Australian flying foxes found in and around Sydney — or was this a sign that the vampire was on his way? Cornelius had no way of knowing, and it terrified him.

“Um, you guys need to look at this,” said Danielle. She pointed at the lake, where a flock of flamingos waded through the shadows. Years earlier there had been flamingos found in Australian zoos, but these were now restricted to single figures and none of the birds were ever in the wilds of Australia.

“I think we’d better leave before anything else strange happens,” said Alistair, everyone getting into their cars and driving out of the park.

As daylight dawned over New South Wales, the family’s first stop was a small convenience store, where Faye purchased some fruit and more bottled water for the journey, and some toilet rolls and bottles of hand soap. “If we have to camp out in the cars, we’ll need these,” she said.

Faye also purchased a newspaper, and checked the deaths section. “Henry Cole really is dead,” she said to Alistair, showing him the name amongst the obituaries.

Alistair frowned. “I was thinking it was maybe a misunderstanding on Thursday, he was so lifelike. That proves the aliens — or more probably the demons — turned him into a zombie.”

“I just worry about Brendan, all alone back at the house, with a zombie Mr. Cole roaming the street and God only knows what else,” said Faye.

“Brendan should be fine in his little hidey-hole,” said Alistair. “If we had managed to drag him out and take him with us, do you think he could have stood everything that’s happened so far? We would be on a flying saucer and halfway across the Milky Way by now. He would just be a liability and a waste of time, always has been and always will be. Completely and utterly worthless and a total embarrassment to this family.”

Erica, by now feeling slightly better after the traumas of the day, thought about her father’s harsh words about her older brother. One time when aged about 11 Erica had asked her mother about her father’s seeming hatred for Brendan, and Faye had quite casually remarked, “Your father just never liked Brendan very much.” At the time Erica thought it odd, her mother dismissing her father disliking one of his children as though he disliked a particular type of food or beverage.

The stop to buy some supplies saw the first change of drivers for the day. Faye took the wheel of the four wheel drive, with Alistair in the passenger seat and Gavin and Erica in the back. Cornelius now drove Danielle’s car, following close behind as they set off on the journey towards the Blue Mountains.

In the back, Gavin also thought about the suburban street in Sydney his family and the Hawkins family called home. His parents were still out on their cruise so they were safe for now, it was Lisa he was worried about. He wished he could somehow see into their house now and what his older sister was doing at this precise moment, and check that she was okay and that aliens, demons, ghosts, zombies or monsters had not come for her.

*

As it happened, Gavin would probably have preferred not to see what his big sister Lisa was doing back in Sydney at that exact moment. She and Pete were in bed together at the Baxter house, making out together on Lisa’s bed. Lisa had taken off her oversized tee-shirt and was naked and barefoot wearing only a pair of white cotton panties, while Pete had already taken off his boxer shorts and was totally nude, his massive erection throbbing as Lisa masturbated him and teased his ball sack with her sensual fingers.

After Lisa took off her knickers, the panty saddle showing creamy female stains and Pete loving seeing the evidence that his girlfriend was a natural blonde, each went down on the other. Lisa sucked her boyfriend’s cock, her mouth going up the shaft and her tongue teasing the head of his penis. Then Lisa opened her legs to show off her snatch, Pete’s face going into her crotch and his tongue into her pussy.

The musty, feminine smells of Lisa’s fanny between her legs was like an aphrodisiac. With Lisa’s curls of blonde pubic hair tickling his nose, Pete wasted no time going down on his girlfriend with vigor, his tongue traversing her twat, licking the pussy juice from her fanny flaps, going deeper into her vagina and sometimes circling her clitoris, Lisa’s soft feminine moans a sign she liked this. Lisa spread her legs wider and Pete could see her anus.

While Lisa never permitted anything to go up her bum during sex — which was probably a good thing as Pete had been into the bathroom after Lisa had been sitting on the toilet having a poo on a number of occasions and the smell she left behind herself was always very unpleasant so it was best to keep that out of the bedroom — she was a pretty kinky chick, and liked the feel of Pete’s tongue or fingers on her anus. Pete wasn’t going to deprive his girlfriend of something she liked, so after licking the sensitive skin that separated Lisa’s vulva from her anus he licked the tight star-fish shaped opening to her rectum, loving licking Lisa somewhere so private, and Lisa wishing that there was toilet paper that felt as good as her boyfriend’s tongue when applied to her poop hole.

Taking Pete took his head out from between Lisa’s legs, Lisa got onto all fours and thrust her bare bottom in the air, Pete coveting her cunt as he got into position to mount and fuck her doggy style. With Lisa on the pill, they didn’t need to worry about condoms so when Pete pushed up Lisa’s wet pussy with his big erection, there was no danger of them having a baby in nine months’ time.

Normally Lisa enjoyed being fucked doggy-style, she could feel her boyfriend pumping her hard and his balls slapping against her bum. However today her mind was not really with it, she could not stop thinking about her younger brother — not in an erotic way of course — but that feeling that all was not well with Gavin, that her brother was in some sort of trouble and that the Hawkins family were in some way involved.

A sort of subconscious instinct to get sex over with as soon as possible and find out was happening with her brother seemed to affect her pussy. Within two minutes, Lisa’s orgasm spread from her clitoris through her vagina and into her rectum, the muscles of her anus tightening. Her fingers clenched the sheets on the bed, the toes on her pretty bare feet flexed and a squeal from Lisa’s mouth and a rush of pussy juice from her fanny indicated she had cum.

Pete, who had anticipated a longer fuck and shooting his load up Lisa’s birth canal and into her uterus, withdrew from her feeling most disappointed. “You came quickly,” he said, noting the distinct female smell of pussy in the bedroom courtesy of her orgasm.

“It’s a vagina, it has a mind of its own sometimes,” Lisa commented.

Pete smiled as he stroked Lisa’s pubes. “I think there’s something you can do to make me cum too.”

Lisa decided to play hard to get. “I can’t think what you mean.”

“How about a blow job?”

Lisa pretended to consider this. “Um yeah, I don’t know.”

Pete smiled and jumped off the bed, taking hold of Lisa’s soft toy frog and talking in a cartoon frog like voice. “Please Lisa, please, please give me a head job.”

Lisa smiled. “Well as you asked so nicely…”

Putting down the soft toy frog, Pete got back on the bed and lay down, tasting her own pussy in the process given Pete’s cock had recently come out of her vulva. Lisa got close to the bed, and with her arse thrust high in the air went down on Pete to suck his dick. The young man moaned in pleasure as Lisa gave him fellatio, and Lisa was always happy to give him a blow job.

After five minutes of fellatio, Lisa could feel Pete’s orgasm was near and she sucked him harder, Pete ejaculating sticky white semen everywhere in her mouth, Lisa swirling the sticky white substance around before swallowing it with vigor and she and Pete exchanging a deep French kiss.

Again like when they were having intercourse, Lisa enjoyed her blowing her boyfriend, but throughout the entire process kept worrying about Gavin. It was the same when the young couple took a shower together, something they really enjoyed. Pete and Lisa kissed naked under the shower, Pete stroking trails on Lisa’s soap-covered bare breasts and her nipples, and he enjoyed watching Lisa washing both her front bottom and her back bottom. He loved seeing the sights of Lisa’s blonde bush of pubic hair filled with suds and bubbles, and her washing her pussy. And when she turned around to wash her bum, he enjoyed seeing her bare bottom covered in soap and the way she reached between her butt cheeks to wash her anal area.

“So, I can’t wait until we’ve saved enough to afford our own place,” Pete said as they got out of the shower to dry off. “We can do this every day.”

The reason Lisa still lived at home and Pete rented a room from his older brother was to save on the costs of renting a house. They paid for their lodgings obviously, but this enabled them to save more for the deposit on their house in the future. Lisa was always keen on them getting their own house, but this morning all she could say as she dried between her legs was, “Yeah, I guess.”

“Are you sure you’re okay this morning, you seem distracted again,” said Pete.

Lisa put on her knickers and adjusted them around her bum and her box. “Yeah, just worried about Gavin again. I’ve just got that feeling that something weird is going on.”

“But Gavin’s explained why he’s gone away,” said Pete as Lisa put on her bra. “It’s not like you came home and he wasn’t here when he was supposed to be, and nobody else has seen or heard from him either.”

“There’s something funny about the Hawkins family too,” said Lisa.

Pete laughed. “It took you this long to work that out? That brother of Erica’s is bat-shit crazy.”

“Tell me about it, I went to school with him. Just for two years and he was a year above me, but that was enough. No, I don’t mean that. I mean it seems a bit too much of a coincidence. Erica and the parents rush off to Adelaide, and Cornelius and his wife take off for the Gold Coast the same time my brother starts acting oddly?” She put on a tight pink tee-shirt.

“Coincidences do happen,” said Pete, watching as Lisa put on tight blue jeans and adjusted them between her legs, the denim pushing Lisa’s white cotton panties up into her pussy.

Lisa looked anything but reassured as she put pink sandals that matched her tee-shirt onto her bare feet and Pete smiled as he put on a polo neck shirt, jeans and running shoes. “They only live up the road. How about we go up there and take a look around?”

Lisa nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

Lisa and Pete left the Baxter house and walked the short distance up the road to the Hawkins house. Lisa indicated Number 10. “You know the old guy who lived there died on Thursday?”

Pete shook his head. “No. He was the one that Cornelius and his Dad were always fighting with?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. He fell down dead of a heart attack among the oleanders apparently. Just another strange thing this week.”

“Like the lawn?” Pete looked in amazement at the front lawn of Number 9, and the state of the lawn, large circles in the grass. “What the fuck is that about?”

“Probably Cornelius, but why, I don’t know,” said Lisa.

“It looks like crop circles, you know like in the fields in England,” said Pete.

“That really doesn’t reassure me, Pete,” said Lisa, looking at the creepy circular patterns in the partially mowed grass.

Lisa and Pete looked up at the house. Everything seemed quiet, nothing was moving apart from a black cat that had climbed the jacaranda tree in the front garden. However, Lisa’s eyes picked up on three things that seemed wrong.

One, the rear door on Cornelius’s car was wide open. Two, the front porch light was turned on. Three, the roller door to the garage was wide open.

“Why would Cornelius leave his car door open?” Lisa mused.

“Maybe he forgot to close it?” Pete suggested. “Cornelius is a fruit loop. Or perhaps somebody else tried to break into the car?”

“Who would want to steal that piece of shit?” asked Lisa, indicating the awful vehicle as it sat on the front lawn, the defect sticker clear on the windscreen.

“Should I close the car door?” asked Pete.

Lisa shook her head. “No, if somebody steals it that would be a good thing. Plus if it rains and the inside of Cornelius’s car gets wet, that serves him right.” She looked at the porch light, and also took note of the mail box, where three envelopes delivered yesterday were uncollected. “They’ve left the porch light on, and the mail hasn’t been collected.”

Lisa then looked at the open garage. “That’s the mother’s car,” she said indicating the small hatchback that stood inside. The father’s four wheel drive isn’t here, and neither is Cornelius’s wife’s car.”

“Perhaps they drove them to the airport?” Pete suggested.

Again, Lisa shook her head. “Why would you pay all that money for airport parking when they could have called a taxi?”

“No chance they would have driven to their destinations?”

“I’d doubt it,” said Lisa. “Adelaide is way too far, and the Gold Coast is a long drive too all the way up the coast. Anyway, I remember that Gavin said that they had all flown out yesterday morning.”

“What’s with leaving the garage door open?” Pete mused, looking inside and seeing Erica’s bike, the lawnmower and various tools and equipment left unsecured. “This stuff could easily get stolen.”

“It’s weird, something’s wrong,” said Lisa nervously, looking through the garage herself.

Pete thought about it. “Isn’t there another Hawkins brother that lives here?”

Lisa nodded. “Yeah, Brendan. But he doesn’t come out. He lives in the granny flat, but you never see him. He got fucked up on drugs and ended up in the loony bin when he was younger.”

Pete laughed lightly. “I thought Cornelius was the crazy one? Did Gavin mention Brendan, did he say that he’d gone with the parents and Erica? Or maybe Cornelius and Danielle took him to the Gold Coast with them?”

“I would doubt it,” said Lisa.

“So if Brendan’s looking after the house, maybe he was the one who opened the garage door, turned on the light and went into his brother’s car?”

“Maybe,” said Lisa.

“Let’s go and check,” said Pete. He and Lisa went to the front door and rang the bell. Nobody answered this ring, nor the second, nor was there any response to their knocks on the door. They knocked again, still no answer.

“Brendan might not answer the door,” Lisa observed. “He’s scared of lots of things.”

“Another thought,” said Pete. “What if Cornelius and Danielle are already back?”

“Back? How do you figure that out?”

“The Gold Coast isn’t too far away,” said Pete. “Maybe they flew there yesterday for Cornelius’s job interview, few back early this morning or late last night on the red eye and now they’ve gone out, forgetting to close the garage, car doors and left the light on?”

“Well maybe,” said Lisa. “But would anyone go there for such a short time?”

“One of my friends at the office, he went on a holiday to the Gold Coast, but messed up his leave and had to be back at the office on Monday morning,” said Pete. “So he flew back on the first flight on Monday morning, and was in the office ready to go by 9am.”

“I guess it’s possible,” said Lisa. “Maybe we should close the garage door?”

“It’s got a remote, and we don’t have it,” said Pete. “We could close it manually, but maybe there’s something wrong with it and we’d just make the problem worse. In any case, I’m sure Brendan would close it, or Cornelius and Danielle if they’re already back.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Lisa.

“Gavin’s fine, having the time of his life with his mates at the Colo River,” said Pete.

“Again, I hope so,” said Lisa as they walked home, Lisa still feeling very ill-at-ease.

*

Another person who was wondering about Gavin’s whereabouts was Tom, the manager of the chalets back at Port Stephens where the Hawkins family had spent the night. Having had concerned guests reporting an almighty racket from Chalet 12 just before dawn followed by vehicles speeding out of the car park, he had gone to check things out.

He thought about the weird family from Queensland, how they had sprinkled holy water on their cars before praying around them, how who Tom assumed were a brother and sister holding hands and how the family had come back last night with the weird older son with the homophobic tee shirt wearing an empty bucket of chicken on his head. What insanity would he find here this morning?

Finding the chalet door ajar with the keys in the lock was just the tip of the iceberg. The mystified motel manager did not know what to be more shocked about when he went inside. The tin foil that covered the windows. The bucket of chicken that the son had been wearing on the floor. A used tampon filled with blood left in the bathroom bin. A pool of vomit in the bathroom. A toilet that while it had been flushed, still showed much evidence of what the last person to use it had done courtesy of stains on the porcelain and a piece of toilet paper that hadn’t gone down with everything else. Or the couch moved out of position, and now upside down. It made the drinks taken from the mini bar and not paid for fairly minor in comparison.

*

Gavin himself was at the moment driving Danielle’s car through the Hunter region farmland, Erica sitting beside him in the passenger seat. Alistair had insisted on a rotation of drivers so now Danielle was driving the four wheel drive, Cornelius in the passenger seat and Alistair and Faye in the back seat.

Erica shook her head. “That probably won’t go well, Dad and Cornelius in the same car isn’t a good combination.”

“Well, it’s pretty scary around here,” said Gavin. “Hopefully Cornelius will behave himself. I don’t want to have to stop here.”

“Yeah,” agreed Erica, looking nervously out of the car windows as the farmland went by.

While scenic, the sun sending rays of glorious rays of yellow autumn sunlight over the green vegetation of the Hunter Valley – things were without doubt scary. The occupants of both cars had seen UFOs — large circular alien spacecraft very bright in colors – floating on the breeze in the distance. These UFOs were moving slowly and were close to the horizon but being from outer space they could be here in seconds, or notify faster flying saucers of their location.

At ground level, things were just as scary. A horse stud up the road had not just horses and some donkeys but zebras too. And not just ordinary black and white zebras, zebras with strange brownish coats too, which Gavin was able to identify as quaggas, a type of zebra extinct since the late 1800s.

While the presence of the quaggas and zebras was un-nerving, some of the horses sported singular spiral horns on their heads, indicating that these equids were not horses at all but unicorns. And a number of the horses sported Pegasus-like wings, and flew above the farmland.

There were plenty of fields in which sheep and a smaller number of goats grazed, but among the sheep were those with fleece of pure gold, probably put there as a trap for the Hawkins family to come and investigate. And while the other creatures were purported to be goats, they were not goats at all. Their horns and beards proved they were demons, probably apostles of the devil that had appeared in the closet this morning.

An alpaca farm just along the way had the animals standing in a row close to the fence boot-scooting, everyone able to hear the country and western music as the two cars went by, the alpacas continuing their line dancing.

Most terrifying was a farm a few kilometers further up the road, which purported to be a dairy farm, but which was clearly not. In the fields were a large number of minotaurs of a variety of colors, some dark brown, some light brown, others black and white. The minotaurs were passing the time waiting for the chance to ambush the Hawkins by eating grass, and making un-nerving mooing noises.

Danielle and Gavin sped by, leaving the minotaurs behind them. Gavin shook his head, hoping that none of these fearsome bovine monsters had made their way to Sydney to get Lisa if the aliens and demons suspected her of knowing more than she did.

*

Lisa as chance would have it was looking at a bovine this very moment back in Sydney, but it was a cut-out of a cow in the dairy section of the supermarket where she was doing the Saturday morning grocery shopping with Pete.

Putting some skim milk into her trolley, Lisa and Pete went into an aisle where Pete disliked going — the aisle where the feminine hygiene products were kept. Pete looked alternately at the floor and ceiling as Lisa put a packet of sanitary pads, a box of tampons and some feminine wipes into the trolley, then went further down to look at the less scary toothpaste. At least that would be put on a toothbrush and into Lisa’s mouth, the other items obviously would be used to absorb and clean away the menstrual blood coming out of Lisa’s fanny the next time she was on her period.

For some odd reason, Lisa kept thinking that Gavin would be here working at the supermarket this morning, but obviously he was not. Lisa then heard a voice she knew. “Hi Lisa.”

She turned around and there was Bill, the tall, middle-aged bearded supermarket manager. He and Lisa knew each other well, when at high school she had been a checkout chick at this very supermarket and his big sister being a model employee helped Gavin get his own casual job here too.

“Hi Bill, how are you?” Lisa replied. She tried to sound casual as she asked, “You remember my boyfriend Pete?” What if Bill asked her where Gavin was and why he hadn’t reported for work?

“Hi, nice to see you again Pete,” said Bill, he and Pete shaking hands, before he turned back to Lisa. “I was just going to say, I hope Gavin feels better soon. He sounded so sick when he called in this morning.”

Lisa wasn’t going to give her younger brother away to his boss. “Yeah, he’s not too good, something he picked up. He’s resting in bed, hopefully he feels better soon. There’s been things going around.”

Bill nodded. “Yeah, anyway tell Gavin I said hi and to get well soon.”

“I will, thanks Bill,” said Lisa, as the supermarket manager went back to his work and Lisa and Pete finished the shopping, going through the checkouts, Pete embarrassed when something fell out of a bag and he instinctively picked it up, only to find it was Lisa’s sanitary napkins.

“See, I told you there was nothing to worry about,” said Pete as he and Lisa loaded the bags into the car and Pete drove home. “Your brother’s chucked a sickie to go camping with his mates, mystery solved.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” said Lisa doubtfully. “It’s not Gavin at all, and there’s no way he would have gotten a date wrong by two weeks. Plus what if Erica wants to call him from Adelaide?”

Pete smiled. “So Miss Marple, what are you going to investigate next?”

“I just want to check one thing when we get home, just to put my mind at rest,” said Lisa. Arriving back at the Baxter house, they unloaded and put away the groceries, before Lisa got out her mobile phone and Gavin’s listing of phone numbers.

Putting up the antenna on her phone, Lisa called the number of Gavin’s friend Gino. “Hello, is Gino there please?” she asked.

Pete, who was getting a glass of juice in the kitchen noticed that Lisa was talking loudly on the phone as possibly the person she was speaking to was hard of hearing. However, the conversation seemed to confirm things were okay, as Lisa looked relaxed as she said, “Well thank you Mrs. Rossi, you have a nice day.”

“So everything was fine,” said Lisa. “I spoke to Gino’s grandmother — she seems a bit hard of hearing — but she confirmed that Gino along with his friends which include my brother have gone away camping to the Colo River this weekend.”

“See, I told you everything would be fine,” said Pete, giving Lisa a hug.

“Yeah, I was worrying about nothing,” said Lisa.

Making the most of the glorious Sydney sunshine, Pete and Lisa put on some old clothes and went outside to do some gardening. With Mr. and Mrs. Baxter back from their cruise on Monday morning, Lisa didn’t want her parents coming back to a garden full of weeds, a task she and Gavin had both kept putting off while taking care of the house.

While Pete mowed the back lawn Lisa pruned a hedge, thinking about her brother. He was away with his mates having fun. Alistair, Faye and Erica Hawkins were thousands of miles away in South Australia. The odd way the Hawkins house was left was as Pete theorized due to one of the occupants — Brendan, Cornelius or Danielle Hawkins if indeed the latter pair had returned from Queensland early — leaving on the porch light or neglecting to close the garage roller door.

Lisa had no idea where Brendan, Cornelius or Danielle Hawkins were but her brother was fine, and that was the main thing. How the dysfunctional Hawkins carried on was not her concern. Lisa was about 95 percent sure that everything was fine, but as she and Pete continued their gardening during the morning, that 5 percent of doubt still persisted in her mind.

*

Gavin at the moment was sitting in the passenger seat of Danielle’s car as the group made their way on the long journey to the Blue Mountains using out of the way roads and avoiding potential traps on the Pacific Motorway which would have taken less time.

Danielle was driving her own car, and Erica driving her father’s car, Cornelius in the passenger seat of the four wheel drive, Alistair and Faye in the back seat. Danielle and Gavin just looked at each other, like ‘Um yeah, what are we supposed to talk about?’ and continued their drive in silence.

On these country roads, the enormous eucalyptus trees causing intermittent shadow and bright sunlight, there seemed to be a rally of classic and vintage cars in the area. But were the people in the car rally genuine, or were they zombies and the automobiles brought forward through time? There was a family in a pre-First World War motor car dressed in Edwardian era clothes, and they showed no reaction to the Hawkins family. The same was true of an older couple who drove a late 1920s or early 1930s British vintage car, they were dressed like this era and showed no reaction to the Hawkins family, and nor did a young couple who drove a 1940s vehicle, the guy driving dressed like a Second World War soldier, the girl wearing 1940s clothes. It was the same story for several groups of teenagers who were driving late 1950s and early 1960s American classic cars. They were dressed accordingly, but showed no reaction to their surroundings.

In the car in front, Danielle saw Faye hold the ‘Stop” sign out the back of the car, and Erica put on the indicator to turn into a nearby stopping bay, Danielle pulling in after her. Alistair was doing his swap drivers and cars thing again. “Danielle, you and Gavin swap positions in your car. Erica, you and Cornelius are in the back of the four wheel drive, and I’m driving.”

Cornelius was not at all happy about this. “Why does Erica get to drive the four wheel drive and I don’t?” he complained.

“Because you are a fucking dickhead, that’s why Cornelius,” roared Alistair. “Simple enough for you, you cretin or do I need to draw diagrams like slow learners need? Grow up!”

The sulky and mutinous Cornelius, mumbling and grumbling, was about to climb into the back of his parents’ car when the attention of all six of them was captured by the vehicle coming along the road. It was not one of the classic or vintage cars observed earlier, but a modern hatchback, and as the registration plate came into view they immediately knew which car it was.

“That’s my car that was stolen yesterday!” exclaimed Faye in amazement.

“Yeah, by those bloody Mexicans,” said Alistair.

Faye’s car stopped, and everyone could see the Mexicans still inside it, wearing their enormous sombreros. The Mexicans wound down the windows, laughing, waving at and taunting the Hawkins family. Alistair made a move to get his shot gun, but the Mexicans were too fast, racing away at great speed, the car vanishing around a bend.

“It was probably a trap anyway, to lure us to the aliens,” growled Alistair. “Come on lets go.”

With Faye in the passenger seat of the four wheel drive and Alistair driving, Erica was in the back seat behind their mother, Cornelius behind their father. Gavin drove the car behind, Danielle in the passenger seat this time.

“Your dad is going to regret not letting Cornelius drive,” said Danielle.

“How’s that?” asked Gavin, trying to keep up with Alistair who was driving above the speed limit.

“Watch the road ahead kid, and you’ll soon see,” said Danielle.

In the back of her father’s car, Erica was getting more and more apprehensive with each minute that passed. Cornelius was restless and bored, and that was a bad combination. But with Cornelius rebellious too after his father refused him permission to drive the four wheel drive, this was like pouring petrol on a bushfire.

At first Erica bore the brunt of her brother’s stupid antics, Cornelius making shadow puppets behind her head and moving her glasses on her face, as well as asking her inappropriate and highly personal questions about her periods and her toilet habits.

“Stop annoying your sister, Cornelius,” Faye warned.

Cornelius did as he was told, but soon found a new target to annoy — his father. And while Erica was a mousy and unassertive teenage girl, Alistair was not such an easy target. Soon Alistair was red, veins popping on his face and roaring with rage as Cornelius made shadow puppets behind his head and flicked his arms with his fingers, to which Cornelius laughed like a hyena and kept right on irritating the grouchy family patriarch.

Soon Faye was screeching with rage as she tried to control her son, and Erica cowered in her seat, fearful of what was going to happen next.

“Do that again and you’ll be getting your stupid face smashed in!” roared Alistair as Cornelius made another shadow puppet behind his neck.

Cornelius laughed harder and took off his seatbelt, leaning forward and putting his hands over his father’s eyes while he was driving. “Stop doing that!” bellowed Alistair as the four wheel drive veered dangerously on the road, getting close to the double white lines with a campervan coming the other way sounding its horn and flashing its lights, Faye having to reach across and grab the wheel to control the four wheel drive.

In the back seat, Erica felt close to pooing her panties as she wondered if she would finish her days in a car accident, her father’s car wrapped around a tree trunk. Out of her terror though, Erica found bravery and leaned forward punching Cornelius in the back, the shock of this causing her brother to let go and Alistair able to see again.

As red as an overripe tomato, Alistair pulled into a rest stop about 100 meters up the road, Gavin shocked at what was going on. “Told you he should have let my husband drive,” said Danielle.

Alistair turned off the engine, took off his seatbelt and slammed out of the car. He dragged his hysterically laughing son out of the seat, and delivered two hard punches to his stomach, Cornelius going to the ground but still laughing, Alistair kicking his son in the groin for good measure.

The long suffering Faye would often intervene when tensions between Alistair and Cornelius boiled over to the point of physical violence, but today took her time, sick to death of her son’s stupid and dangerous lunacy that could have had all of them killed.

“Don’t ever do that again Cornelius you fucking mongoloid!” roared Alistair, seeming just seconds away from a heart attack or stroke.

Erica breathed heavily in the back of the car, relieved that she hadn’t soiled herself, her mind going back a number of years to when Cornelius did this exact same thing to their father when he was driving. That day Alistair had dragged Cornelius from the car and belted him for it, then dragged Brendan out of the car and belted him too for spilling soft drink when the car went out of control, some of which had landed on Alistair.

While Cornelius got up from the ground assisted by Danielle, seemingly too amused to feel any pain from his Dad punching and kicking him, Alistair paced up and down, Faye trying to calm him down.

Erica got out of the four wheel drive and Gavin embraced her. “You okay?” he asked her.

Erica nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know what’s worse. Being in car with my brother, or the toilet demon scaring me while I was sitting on the loo.”

“Kids, how about you all travel in the car behind for the moment?” said Faye. “Your father needs a break from Cornelius for a while.”

“Can I drive Danielle’s car?” Cornelius asked.

“Whatever you want, just stay away from your father,” said Faye.

“Oh goody!” exclaimed Cornelius.

Danielle got her purse and a toilet roll. “Where are you going?” Alistair asked, whose face had changed from beetroot red to tomato red.”

“Piss, and tampon change,” said Danielle, indicating a large gum tree.

“I need to pee too,” said Gavin.

“Well don’t follow me kid, unless you get off on that sort of thing,” said Danielle, Gavin blushing.

“No, I mean I’ll duck off behind those grass trees,” said Gavin, indicating a clump of these Australian plants that grew nearby.

“Excuse me, what did you call them?’ Alistair’s attention was suddenly all on Gavin, the tall bearded man standing over him unblinking.

Gavin cowered slightly at his girlfriend’s father’s intrusion into his personal space. “Um, grass trees.”

“What is this crap?” growled Alistair. “They are black boys, always have been and always will be black boys. Fucking grass trees, what is this poofter politically correct crap? Are you a Nancy boy? It is black boys, fucking black boys! Erica, get a pair of your panties and one of your bras for your boyfriend to wear and Danielle, get him one of your sanitary pads to put on in case he gets his period. Fucking grass trees, tell me are you going to squat down to piss when you go behind there like a girl or a faggot, or stand up like a proper man?”

Alistair went on his way back to his car, grouching and grumbling.

“Sorry about my Dad,” said Erica, the young girl making sure her father was out of earshot before she apologized.

Gavin didn’t let it bother him, more than used to his girlfriend’s father, and brushed it off casually. “That’s okay.” He pointed at the black boys. “I’ll just duck behind the Xanthorrea Australis then.”

When Gavin and Danielle returned from their respective bathroom breaks, the two cars took off again. Faye relieved her severely stressed husband of his driving duties in the four wheel drive, while Cornelius drove Danielle’s car, his wife in the passenger seat and Gavin and Erica in the back seat.

Cornelius seemingly had learned nothing from earlier, and drove like a maniac. Gavin and Erica wanted this leg of the journey to end, especially as the time had now ticked well past noon. They had eaten some of the fruit Faye had purchased earlier, but with no breakfast all were famished.

In the four wheel drive, Alistair’s grumpiness was now also due to hunger rather than his slacker son. Seeing a sign advertising a bakery that promised ‘the best pies in the Blue Mountains’ about five kilometers ahead piqued his interest, and he held out the stop sign as his wife approached, Faye Hawkins pulling into the car park of the bakery and Cornelius pulling Danielle’s car in after her.

Everybody climbed out to stretch their legs. “So six meat pies with sauce then?” Alistair asked, before going into the bakery absolutely famished.

The doorbell tingled as Alistair strode inside, the smell of the pies and other pastries like pasties and sausage rolls made him hungrier still. There were no other customers and as Alistair looked around, nobody seemingly working there either.

“Hello?” he called out.

No answer. “Hello,” called out again, this time pressing the bell on the counter.

Still no answer, so Alistair became annoyed, pressing the bell three times.

This time there was a response, a woman’s voice with a broad Australian accent. “I’ll be out when I’m out, Sir.”

This failed to impress the hungry and increasingly angry Alistair, who responded by pressing the bell repeatedly and shouting, “I don’t have all fucking day, get out here and serve me so I can hand over my hard earned money for your over-priced meat pies.”

“I’m not serving you at all if you’re going to be so rude,” the woman shot back.

Alistair was bright red. “Hey, hey, hey!” he roared repeatedly, while smashing his open palm into the counter.

This time the woman emerged, a slight blonde woman with a plain face, her ugly, scowling countenance covered in way too much make up. Alistair could read her name tag — Roseanne.

“At last, some service!” snapped Alistair. “Get your arse over to the fucking counter bitch and get me six fucking meat pies with tomato sauce.” Roseanne did not move, just glared at Alistair, enraging him even more. “You heard me bitch, or are you deaf as well as stupid you ugly whore? Get your fucking stinking cunt over there to that pie warmer and you get me six fucking pies with sauce. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year, now you stupid bitch.”

“I think you are the rudest man I have ever met,” said Roseanne. “I’m not serving you at all. Get out of my shop, get out now or I’ll call the police.”

“You sell pies, I want to buy pies,” shouted Alistair. “Go and get them now, or do I have to serve my fucking self!” He made a move towards the counter.

“Don’t you dare jump that counter!” snapped Roseanne.

“You going to stop me or what you worthless piece of shit?” roared Alistair.

Outside, Faye could hear all the shouting and sighed. “I don’t think we’re getting any lunch here,” she said to Gavin and Erica, who could also hear that the woman who ran the shop and Alistair had immediately had a personality clash.

Cornelius and Danielle could also hear all the shouting as Alistair and the bakery lady yelled at each other, but unlike Faye, Erica and Gavin they had seen something worrying, a black panther on the roof of the bakery, which then jumped down and slunk away into the trees. This proved 100 percent that the woman was a witch, and that even if they were served food, it would be enchanted.

“We need to stop this!” said Cornelius.

Danielle nodded. “Yeah.” She turned to the others. “Wait here so you’re safe, we’ll get Alistair out of there. This isn’t a pie shop, this is a witch’s house and she’s planning to catch us and give us to the aliens.”

Cornelius noticed that there was a small tree branch on the ground whose twigs could be broken off into the shape of a cross, and Danielle jumped into the four wheel drive and retrieved the bottle of holy water. The pair of them marched into the shop, Cornelius holding the cross shaped stick in front of him like a crucifix. Alistair and Roseanne continued their shouting match not noticing the newcomers.

“Dad, move away from her, she’s dangerous,” said Cornelius.

“Don’t know about dangerous, but she’s fucking rude and incompetent at running a fucking business,” growled Alistair.

“No, she’s a witch,” said Danielle. “We saw a big black cat on the roof; that proves it. If we eat any of her food it will be enchanted. We’ll fall asleep and the aliens will come and take us away from Earth and make us live in a space ship.”

“What are you all babbling about?” Roseanne demanded. “All three of you are completely mad, get out right now. I’m going to the police.”

“We need to make sure she hasn’t put some sort of preliminary spell on you already,” said Danielle, taking the holy water and sprinkling some of it over Alistair. “That should cleanse you of her evil black magic!” declared Danielle.

“Get out of my shop you trouble-makers,” yelled Roseanne. “And don’t ever come back here.”

“Let’s get the fuck out of this hole and away from the witch,” said Cornelius. “When this is all over and the aliens and demons are gone, we’ll come back and destroy this place, and get her burned at the stake.”

He, Danielle and Cornelius backed out of the shop, not wanting to turn their backs on the dangerous witch. Cornelius held out his makeshift crucifix and Danielle her bottle of holy water, both of them pointing at Roseanne and chanting ‘Witch, witch, witch…” repeatedly until they were outside and safe from the wicked witch.

The group then got back into their respective vehicles, Alistair driving the four wheel drive and Faye in the passenger seat, Erica and Gavin in the back, while Danielle drove her car with Cornelius in the passenger seat. Watching both cars drive away so fast that they laid rubber, the shell-shocked Roseanne stood speechless about the utter insanity that had just taken place and could only regret her decision not to install security cameras as she hadn’t had time to record the registration of either vehicle driven by those lunatics.

Alistair sped fast through the Blue Mountains to get as far away from the witch as possible, Danielle likewise speeding to keep up. Still, given the back roads they were taking and the roundabout way they were driving to avoid tracking UFOs it was getting on towards three in the afternoon when they reached the town of Katoomba. Both vehicles were re-fueled and this time to everyone’s relief they were able to get some sandwiches and other refreshments from a café thankfully not run by a woman who practiced witchcraft and who had tried fortunately without success to cast a spell on Alistair.

“How about we go and look at the Three Sisters?” Faye suggested. “After such a stressful day it might help us relax?”

This seemed quite a good idea and everyone drove out to the lookout at Echo Point, enjoying the spectacular views of the world famous Three Sisters rock formations across the tree-filled Jamison Valley. An eagle soaring high above the tree tops added to the beauty of the scenery that the Hawkins family observed with the binoculars purchased at Gosford the previous day.

Gavin admired the eagle through the binoculars and then he saw a second bird of prey above the eucalypts. His face however darkened when he saw it was not an eagle — nor a hawk or falcon — but rather a vulture. And there were no vultures in Australia.

Feeling pangs of worry, Gavin said, “Look at this,” and handed the binoculars to Alistair.

Alistair’s face darkened as he saw more vultures and also condors, these birds belonging firmly in South America not Australia.

However, the vultures and condors were only the tip of the iceberg. At ground level, an amazing procession of wild animals was making its way through the Jamison Valley forests. They were not Australian animals, most were from Africa. There were lions, hyenas, wildebeest, zebras, hippos, both black and white rhinos, water buffalos, ostriches, cheetahs, leopards, baboons, giraffes, a variety of antelopes, warthogs and elephants which trumpeted loudly.

Also in the procession were wild animals from Asia — tigers, komodo dragons, camels, pandas and Asian elephants — and the Americas with bison, cougars, a variety of different species of bears and jaguars marching with their African and Asian counterparts.

The extraordinary display was magnificent but to the Hawkins family, all of whom watched open-mouthed it inspired fear. The animals were making their way through the heavy vegetation of the Jamieson Valley right for them, and this could only lead to trouble.

“Let’s go,” said Alistair, the group turning to leave but their escape would be hindered by another extraordinary happening, this time in the lookout car park. This was a popular tourist spot and the tour operators would frequently have coach stops here either on the way out for the day or in the late afternoon before the tours returned to Sydney.

Today was no exception and three coaches pulled in. However, these were not normal tourist buses but old fashioned looking buses, definitely pre-dating 1950s. The bus doors opened on all three and out came the tourists — except these were not ordinary tourists.

The Hawkins family could only watch bewildered as the car park filled with people who wore clothes years out of date. Many wore clothes — long dresses and hats for the women and suits and hats for the men — from the Victorian era and Australian colonial times. Most of the men sported beards, long outdated moustaches or mutton chop whiskers. Others wore more Edwardian clothes, much like the passengers on the Titanic had worn when they observed it yesterday, one guy looking resplendent in a top hat and suit. A group of sailors and soldiers were wearing uniforms that suggested around the First World War and about the most modern dressed ‘tourists’ the Hawkins family could observe were a group of young women with bobbed hair dressed like 1920s flappers, their boyfriends wearing suits typical of this decade too.

The new arrivals continued pouring out of the buses into the car park, but seemingly did not seem to notice the Hawkins family nor their modern day clothes or cars. Suspecting that the new arrivals were zombies, this was confirmed when a family of four passed by them.

This family looked like they were from circa 1910, the father sporting a moustache and wearing a suit with a bowler hat. His wife wore a long cream dress and a smart hat, her hair scraped back in a tight bun. They had two children a son aged about seven and a daughter aged about five, the little boy wearing a sailor suit and the little girl a frilly frock, her hair in ribbons. The boy carried with him a teddy bear, the little girl a large doll.

As the Hawkins family watched this Edwardian era family, they at first seemed more interested in the magnificent views of the Three Sisters and the valley. However, the family abruptly turned back to face the Hawkins group, who all stumbled back with shock and terror at the sight in front of them.

None of the family had proper eyes, just black spaces in their eye sockets. The mother, the father, the son and daughter stood looking at them with non-existent eyes. Even the teddy bear and doll had black sockets for eyes, and stared at the Hawkins family as much as the family.

Then both children put the bear and the doll down on the pavement, and the two toys walked with the family towards the lookout, approaching a man in a flat cheese-cutter hat and overalls and a girl dressed in a long skirt with a blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a straw hat on her head, who were taking photographs using an old fashioned box-shaped camera in which the photographer covered his head with a piece of fabric when taking the shot in front of the Jamison Valley with the magnificent scenery behind them. The family along with the doll and teddy bear waited patiently for their turn, the flapper girls and their boyfriends currently having their photos taken.

None of the Hawkins family could tell if the zombie tourists could see the out of place animals in the valley below and they weren’t about to stick around and ask. They made good their escape and drove deeper through the forests of Blue Gums deeper into the Blue Mountains. It was now getting very late in the afternoon, the sun starting to set in the west and soon it would be nightfall.

“I don’t think we should find a place to stay tonight,” said Faye. “It’s probably too risky. That place at Nelson Bay looked nice but it turned out to be haunted.”

“We’ll find a place to camp in the forest,” said Alistair. “Some place where there’s plenty of trees to cover us. That way in the aliens send a UFO to look for us during the night they won’t be able to spot us from above so easily.”

It was dusk before they found such a place deep in the windy roads high up in the Blue Mountains near a small stream, and pulled off the road and set up to camp for the night, everybody to sleep in their cars. Erica had been worried enough about having to pee behind the dumpster in Newcastle the previous afternoon, now she had to get a roll of toilet paper, a shovel and the torch and go and have a poo in the bush.

Erica wished the place where they had stopped for the night had a toilet. Then she thought about how the toilet demon had terrorized her that morning as she sat on the toilet at the chalet this morning, how the power point demon had returned at the same time to chastise her and there was clown in the mirror laughing at her while she was on the loo.

“You’ll be okay,” said Gavin, squeezing his nervous girlfriend’s hand. “I’ll be close by, far enough away so you have some privacy but close enough so I’ll be there if you need me.”

“Okay then,” said Erica, walking through the forest with her loo paper, shovel and her torch, before they found a suitable place that provided the young girl plenty of cover to do her business, this part of the track having plenty of large ferns.

“I’ll just duck in there,” said Erica shyly.

“Go on, you’ll be fine,” Gavin said.

Erica was most cautious as she went into the bush. As well as being on the alert for demonic, ghostly and alien interferences, there were plenty of nasties in the Australian bush. Biting and stinging ants and wasps. Deadly funnel web spiders. And of course a variety of highly venomous snakes.

Shining the flashlight around, Erica saw no dangerous insects, arachnids or reptiles, so the teenager dug a small hole, unfastened her jeans then pulled her knickers down around her ankles, squatting behind the trunk of an enormous blue gum.

The young girl felt her bladder empty and her pussy getting wet as she urinated, and struggling to handle the torch at the same time, got some toilet paper to dry her damp vulva. Then relaxing the muscles in her anus, Erica moved her bowels, the teenager apprehensive as her poo came oozing out of her bottom that while Gavin could not see what she was doing, he might be able to hear or smell her.

Getting more toilet paper, Erica wiped her bum, which wasn’t comfortable out here squatting in the bush with her jeans and panties down. The one thing that Erica was grateful for was that she wasn’t menstruating at the moment. Things were messy enough when she was sitting on a toilet when on her period.

As Erica finished having her poo and was wiping her bottom clean by the light of the torch, she heard a noise above her in the tree and froze in horror. Was it the toilet demon? Another type of demon? Maybe a ghost, or an alien? Her heart racing, Erica stood up and pulled up her knickers and then her jeans. She looked up into the branches illuminated in the moonlight and saw a small figure moving around. Feeling herself sweating, Erica shone the light into the branches of the blue gum, and she sighed in relief. It wasn’t anything supernatural, it was a koala, the cute marsupial moving around to get more gum leaves to consume.

Filling in the hole and covering her excrement and dirty toilet paper, Erica collected her loo paper and the shovel and made her way through the vegetation and back out onto the path, the light of her torch illuminating her boyfriend. “Feeling better, Erica?” Gavin asked.

“Much better, thanks,” said Erica. The young girl smiled shyly. “Although there was a koala up the gum tree watching me while I was having a poo.”

“Well, it beats the toilet demon or that creepy clown watching you,” said Gavin.

“You’re telling me,” said Erica, the teenager pulling her panties out of her bum crack through her jeans, the young girl having gotten a wedgie after pulling up her knickers.

Both on edge, Gavin and Erica jumped when they caught movement in a tree, and were relieved when it was just a possum. A rat ran across their paths and into the ferns.

Returning to the cars, everyone retired fully clothed. The Blue Mountains air was cold at night, plus they needed to be on alert to leave if the aliens came for them during the night. It wasn’t comfortable, but Alistair in the driver’s seat, Faye in the passenger seat and Erica and Gavin in the back seat easily fell asleep in the four wheel drive. It was the same story in Danielle’s car, where she and Cornelius also fell asleep within minutes of closing their eyes. Everyone was tired from the long drive down from Port Stephens, not to mention the traumas of the day.