INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER – The Hawkins family continue to run from evil monsters, ghosts, UFOs, zombies, demons and dangerous animals that pursue them out of Sydney’s Blue Mountains, and all the way down to Canberra. In Australia’s capital, Alistair decides that a change of attitude is required and the family needs to have fun, relax and treat their road trip like a holiday. But will this strategy work or is it doomed to failure?
Read Chapter 6 of this story series to find out. Please note that it contains very strong violence and erotic horror themes, plus scenes of female characters using the toilet and having their periods, which might not be to every readers’ taste. Otherwise please enjoy for trip to Australia in the late 1990s and reading about the latest crazy misadventures of the Hawkins family and rate and comment.
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Erica’s fear of the UFO with the bright red, green and white flashing lights got stronger as the craft flew closer, her apprehension matched by her father at the wheel and her mother who had awoken, and in the car following behind her brother, sister-in-law and boyfriend.
“The vampire is on that spaceship, he’s coming to get me, I just know it,” lamented Cornelius as he rocked back and forth in the passenger seat, his wife’s fingers tightly gripped on the steering wheel as she looked at the flying saucer as it flew over the Blue Mountains.
Just when everyone thought that their days on Earth were limited the UFO seemed to change course, and instead veered off and flew towards Sydney, everyone in both cars breathing collective sighs of relief as the alien craft went on its way.
“Keep a watch for more UFOs Erica,” warned Alistair.
“Yes Dad,” said Erica, the young girl keeping her eyes peeled for more alien spaceships through the long drive through the mountains, Faye now wide awake in the back doing the same and in the car behind Danielle, Gavin and Cornelius were 100 percent vigilant in keeping watch for the UFO in case it came back to get them, or another one turned up to replace it.
There were no UFOs but there was still plenty of danger at ground level from Australian native fauna, causing Alistair and Danielle no end of stress as they negotiated the tight, winding, tree-lined mountainous roads.
Kangaroos and wallabies always could be a danger to drivers on Australian country roads, but tonight these marsupials were out in great numbers, jumping in front of the cars and sometimes over them, on occasion doing somersaults and back-flips as though they were gymnasts.
They were joined by emus, which chased the cars on their long legs making ominous gulping noises. Despite normally being unable to fly, the demons or aliens whichever was behind this seemed to have granted these emus this ability tonight, and they took to the skies, the enormous birds swooping down on the four wheel drive and the following car like eagles swooping down from the skies to capture mice.
Koalas unless crossing the road did not normally present too many issues for motorists, but as Alistair’s headlights on full beam illuminated two koalas in a large blue gum tree these proved no natural marsupials. Often referred to as ‘koala bears’ despite not being bears, these koalas leaped down from their tree, grew to the size of polar bears and gave chase while roaring, persisting this for several kilometers until Alistair and Danielle increased their speeds to 150 kilometers per hour and left them behind in the darkness.
Then there were the carnivores. A pack of dingoes chased the cars, baring their teeth and growling, showing that they would happily tear apart the Hawkins family. They were helped by a group of Tasmanian devils, which should not have been on the Australian mainland outside of wildlife parks and zoos, but they were here tonight, emitting their piercing cries and growling as they chased the Hawkins family. Also joining the chase were a pack of supposedly extinct thylacines, just like the one Erica had seen roaming around the Domain in Sydney on Friday morning. The tiger-like animals roamed the roads, chasing both cars with the devils and the dingos.
Managing to avoid the possessed animals attempting to prevent them escaping, Alistair and Daniele continued to negotiate their way through the Blue Mountains, mainly sticking to the country roads and avoiding the major towns in the region like Penrith, Windsor and Richmond. They were now on the far western side of Sydney not far from St Marys and Mount Druitt, and Alistair turned onto the Hume Motorway to head south, Danielle following close behind.
Erica’s head began to nod approaching Campbelltown, but she snapped awake as she saw red and blue flashing lights in the distance further up the motorway. “Dad,” she said, pointing at the lights.
Alistair nodded knowingly. “It’s probably a random breath testing operation, or what looks like a random breath testing operation. In reality, the police are there planning to either capture us, or they’re going to put messages in our minds so that we drive straight to the aliens without resistance. We have to go another way.”
Putting on his indicator, Alistair took the approaching exit towards Campbelltown. Danielle, who along with Cornelius and Gavin had also seen the flashing blue and red lights, was relieved that the car in front had noticed the lights. The police were conspiring against them, and what looked like a simple traffic operation was without doubt a trap.
Driving through Campbelltown at night was very different to going there on a weekday. Most days of the week the satellite suburb in Sydney’s far south western suburbs was extremely busy, but in the early hours of Sunday morning as quiet as the grave. This helped the Hawkins family as they negotiated the roads here, before rejoining the Hume Motorway at a place beyond the place where the police had set up the trap to try and capture them for handover to the aliens.
On the Hume, a light drizzle began to fall. Obviously the Hawkins family could not have access to electronic devices on their journey in case they were used by the aliens or demons to control their minds, so had not heard that drizzle was forecast on Sunday for the south western suburbs of Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Southern Tablelands, the Monaro region, the Australian Capital Territory, the Snowy Mountains around Mount Kosciuszko and other coastal regions of Southern New South Wales.
Alistair and Danielle put on their windscreen wipers and continued to drive through the night, nothing eventful happening apart from Erica seeing the scary red eyes of some unknown creature lurking in the dark bushland. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to last. There came an ominous whirring noise and Faye looked out the window, seeing one of the same type of UFOs that chased them when they fled their house.
“Alistair, look!” she said, pointing at the spaceship.
“I see it Faye, don’t worry,” said Alistair.
The bright yellow UFO was flying low over the landscape just ahead of them shining a bright light at the ground, but fortuitously there was a turn off ahead which Alistair immediately took. Danielle, she and Cornelius and Gavin having also seen and heard the UFO, followed her father-in-law through the dark country road that led to the Belanglo State Forrest.
The forest was filled with rows of trees mainly European pine trees and conifers but some native species too. It had always been popular with hikers and trail bike riders, but had gained infamy in recent years when used as a place for serial killer Ivan Milat to murder and bury his victims, mainly young backpackers from overseas. While Milat was now serving a life prison sentence for the horrific killings, the area now unfortunately attracted ghouls and weirdos obsessed with Milat’s terrible crimes to the forest, especially by night. There were also thieves who dumped cars they had stolen out here, plus other people who did no end of illegal and weird things out in this remote location.
Hoping that there were no copycat serial killers lurking in the darkness between the pines planning to emulate their idol’s crimes as the Hawkins family had enough to worry about as it was without dealing with murderers, Erica looked at the night skies, the moon seen intermittently through the clouds, making the forest seem even more eerie in the dark hours of the early morning than it already was.
The silence of the forest punctuated by nocturnal bird calls was un-nerving, as was the sound of feral dogs howling and barking in the distance, frogs croaking and the sight of bats flying past illuminated by the light of the moon. More worrying was the whirring sound of the UFO as it drew closer. Danielle and Alistair turned off the engines and headlights of the cars, and everyone huddled down, their faces pressed down into their knees like they were in an emergency brace position on an aeroplane.
The whirring sound from the UFO got louder and indicated it was getting closer and Gavin stole a glance to see the lights of the approaching craft, and the young man had to fight the urge to get out of Danielle’s car and run into the pine forest. Fortunately he held his nerve, and the UFO turned away and flew in another direction, the eerie sound it was making getting fainter and fainter until it was gone.
Taking a peek outside everyone was relieved to see that the UFO had flown away and while keen to get out of the spooky Belanglo forests on a drizzly night with intermittent moonlight, they would have a delay — all six members of the group needed to pee.
For Alistair, Cornelius and Gavin this relatively easy, all they had to do was unzip their jeans, adjust their underpants and pee. For Faye, Erica and Danielle the job was more complicated, with each woman having to take a length of toilet paper, pull down her knickers and jeans and squat behind a tree to piss.
Cornelius stole a glance at his wife as she pissed, seeing her naked arse. He put his fingers to his mouth and wolf-whistled her. “Looking hot there, Danielle!” he called out.
Danielle gave her husband the ‘up-yours’ hand gesture. “Fuck off!” she called back.
With all three women done, Faye wiped her redhead pussy, Danielle her blonde pussy and Erica her brunette pussy, and after pulling up their knickers and jeans, walked back to the cars where the guys who were much better equipped for peeing in the bush were waiting for them, light drizzle falling.
“Anything wrong Alistair?” Faye asked, noticing her husband was staring intently into the pine plantation from which the women had emerged.
“Thought I saw something in there,” said Alistair. He looked more intently and retrieved the binoculars to get a better look, but this time nothing was apparent.
Alistair shook his head. “I must be imagining things,” he said turning to get back into the car.
Gavin was about to turn around when he also caught movement out of the corner of his eye between the tree trunks, plus a shadow in the moonlight.
“I saw it too, Mr. Hawkins,” said Gavin, pointing at the spot.
Alistair got the torch and shone it into the trees, where nothing was apparent, but then Danielle saw the same thing, something lurking behind a tree, then darting behind it, a shadow clear by the light of the moon.
“Come on Alistair, let’s get out of here, this place gives me the creeps,” said Faye, looking nervously at some bats flying by.
“Yeah Dad, the Belanglo is eerie enough in the day, much worse at night,” implored Erica, the howling and barking of wild dogs in the distance and the hooting of owls and the harsh early morning calls of some crows adding to her feeling that this was not a place they should be, especially by night. “That maniac killed all those people here a few years back.”
“I’ve heard a lot of other people have finished their days here too,” said Danielle. “You know, people who pissed off organized criminals and the like.”
Alistair was about to respond when there came more movement in the pines, followed by what sounded like footsteps on the dried pine needles on the forest floor. He reached into the four wheel drive and grabbed his shotgun. “Okay, who’s out there?” he snapped.
“I think we’re about to find out,” said Cornelius, pointing as further up the trail a series of bipedal creatures to the number of about 20 emerged from the vegetation. At first glance they looked like apes, or maybe some primitive early form of man, such as Neanderthals. But these creatures which sported hairy black fur stood far taller than any man or living ape species — some nine feet tall.
Not fearing the Hawkins family or the fact that Alistair was pointing a 12-guage shotgun at them, the creatures watched the humans with unblinking eyes, slowly edging forward.
“What are they?” Faye whispered, as she watched in horror as the strange man/ape hybrids again moved an inch or so towards them.
“I don’t know,” said Alistair.
“They must be yowies,” said Gavin, staring at the creatures. “You know, Australia’s answer to Bigfoot or the Yetis.”
“Terrifying is what I call them,” said Erica, the young girl nervously watching the ape-like monsters through her glasses.
Alistair kept a firm grip on his shotgun, knowing that firing the gun was a risk. It might scare the yowies away, but on the other hand it might antagonize them even more, and if they did attack the Hawkins family were totally outnumbered despite having guns and other weapons. And who knew how many other yowies lurked in the pine forest?
Cornelius unfortunately was not the sort of person who thought before acting, in fact he rarely thought about anything at all. So he reached into Danielle’s car, grabbed the rifle, and before anybody could stop him let go a warning shot over the yowies’ heads.
“Take that, you stupid fucking yowies!” he yelled out, giving them an obscene hand gesture.
The yowies were not afraid of the gunshot. In fact it had the opposite effect, and they became exceedingly angry. The nine feet apes roared at the Hawkins family, opening their mouths wide to show long, sharp, yellowed teeth. Then in a display of force typical of apes, the yowies beat their chests, making ‘ooo-ooo-ooo’ noises similar to agitated mandrills, chimpanzees or gorillas.
Alistair glared at Cornelius, his face going red. “You bloody idiot, look at what you have done!”
The yowies became increasingly agitated, and at a signal from the largest of the group that appeared to be the dominant male, they charged forward, other yowies emerging from the trees and joining the chase.
“Run!” yelled Alistair, the group wasting no time in jumping in the two cars, Alistair and Danielle racing away in a cloud of dust as the yowies chased them, the enraged apes pursuing them and pelting the cars with pine cones and other projectiles.
The yowies seemed to have the endurance of Olympic sprinters and marathon runners combined and it took some time for the two cars to lose them. They were now deeper in the Belanglo, and trying to find their way out when Erica looked out the back window of her parents’ car and saw to her horror that their problems were far from over.
“Dad!” she screamed, pointing out the window.
Alistair and Faye, and in the car behind them Danielle, Cornelius and Gavin looked in horror at was approaching. There was a tremendous thundering of hooves, and coming along the trail towards them was a group of horses. They were not brumbies — wild horses roaming free in the Australian bush — but sported riders, medieval knights in armor in most cases. Other horses were ridden by Australian colonial era bushrangers wearing head armor like Ned Kelly.
Hastily speeding down another track pursued by the knights and bushrangers, Alistair and Danielle soon had other problems to contend with. From the seemingly unending rows of pine trees came a pack of snarling, aggressive wolves that gave chase to both vehicles. The terrified occupants of the cars had no idea whether they were normal wolves or werewolves like the ones at Bondi on Friday, but they were clearly vicious and baying for blood.
Getting ahead of their canine and equine pursuers, the Hawkins family then saw black panthers high in the trees chasing them, and turning back ran into the angry yowies again, which were searching the forests for their quarry that had dared invade their territory and had the audacity to point a magic stick that went bang at them.
Finally though, Alistair and Danielle were able to find their way onto the exit road from Belanglo Forest, and escape the yowies, panthers, knights and bushrangers. At the exit Erica screamed as two skeletons emerged from the ground and threw themselves at the cars to block their escape but Alistair and Danielle floored the gas and sped out of the Belanglo, making for the Hume Highway at breakneck speed, the sounds of banshee-like wailing and howling wolves in the forest dying away.
Misty rain continued to fall as the cars continued down the Hume Highway and into the Southern Tablelands Region. As dawn was approaching, both cars needed to be refueled so Alistair and Danielle pulled into a roadhouse in Goulburn. An enormous Merino ram standing at over 50 feet tall that towered close to the service station would have convinced the Hawkins family that the demons and aliens were one step ahead of them and had placed the giant sheep there.
This time however none of the six were in any way disturbed by the giant sheep. It was a statue known as the ‘Big Merino’, a landmark and a major tourist attraction for Goulburn, containing a museum, gift shop and a lookout.
People in Goulburn, the largest city in the Southern Tablelands seemed to be early risers and there were quite a few vehicles at the roadhouse pumps. Alistair and Danielle pulled their cars into two bowsers, and Alistair and Gavin began to re-fuel the vehicles, Cornelius getting out to stretch his legs and looking at the outline of the giant ram against the night sky.
Danielle, Erica and Faye only gave the ram a cursory glance as they made for the ladies toilets, the uncomfortable feelings in their bladders and bowels making it impossible to put off the call of nature, and in Danielle’s vagina she could feel her tampon needed changing.
Erica was in two minds. She hadn’t liked having a shit in the bush in the Blue Mountains last night obviously preferring to sit down on a toilet when she moved her bowels, but what if the toilet demon was here lurking in the ladies loo, waiting to get her? The young girl reminded herself that her mother and sister-in-law would be there, so things wouldn’t be so scary, at least she wouldn’t be going to the toilet on her own.
Faye pushed open the external door and each of them went into the three stalls the lavatory contained. The cubicle doors closed, but within seconds opened again with Faye, Erica and Danielle emerging and asking in unison, “Have you got any toilet paper?” each woman finding her stall with an empty cardboard tube on the holder with no loo paper.
“Did you want me to go and get the toilet paper out of the car?” Erica asked.
Faye shook her head. “No, we’ll go into the shop and ask for some. Other women will need to use the toilets later so we’ll re-stock.”
“What’s wrong?” Cornelius yelled out across the service station forecourt as he saw his mother, sister and wife come back from the toilet so quickly. “Did the toilet demon try and get Erica again?”
Three young guys filling up a utility vehicle looked in amazement, as did a truck driver and also a farmer who was filling up a tractor at a nearby diesel pump. At his bowser Alistair looked over and sighed. He knew he should kick his son’s arse or at least shout at him for broadcasting the family’s personal business to everyone, but he was so tired that even he could not raise the strength to do so.
“There’s no loo paper if you’re so interested,” Erica shot back, herself tired and cranky through lack of sleep and the terrifying events of recent days.
Danielle strode ahead of them into the shop, pushing her messy blonde hair back from her face. With limited sleep and having driven through most of the night while dodging UFOs, yowies, wolves, knights, crazy Australian animals and black panthers she was not in a good mood, which was not helped by fluctuating female hormone levels caused by menstruation, and was the least impressed of the trio by finding the female toilets with no paper.
Inside there was a small queue with only one attendant, a skinny young guy with glasses who looked like a bit of a nerd. Feeling her poo pressing against the walls of her rectum, the bad-tempered Danielle wasn’t waiting in line and pushed to the front of the queue, ignoring the protests of the men who were waiting.
“Hey, there’s no toilet paper in the ladies toilets,” Danielle said. She indicated Faye and Erica. “We all need to take a shit, plus I have my period. Why is there no loo paper, didn’t you check and do your job properly? Can’t you see that’s not good enough?”
The shy and embarrassed young man blushed bright red. “I’m — um — sorry,” he stammered. “Would you like me to get you some more toilet paper?”
Danielle snorted in derision. “No, I would just like to stand here talking to you and shit in my knickers. Of course I want you to get me some more toilet paper.” The nervous young man did not move and stood there. Danielle snapped angrily, “Well come on, I don’t have all day.”
“Sorry,” the boy apologized, retrieving a six-pack of toilet paper and handing it to Danielle who snatched it from his hand without any thanks.
“Try being a woman and see what it’s like,” Danielle snapped at the guys who were waiting in line and not impressed by the rude young woman who had pushed in front of them.
“Problem solved, we have toilet paper,” said Danielle triumphantly, holding up the packet of toilet rolls.
“Maybe try and be just a little more tactful and polite next time?” Faye suggested. “You know, just show a little more of your charming and wonderful manners?”
Danielle shrugged arrogantly and when they returned to the female toilets, tore open the packet of loo paper, handing two rolls to Erica and two to Faye, keeping two for herself. Each woman went into a stall and closed and locked the door, the lock changing from the green vacant to red engaged setting. Danielle, Erica and Faye each put one toilet roll on the cistern and the second one on the roll holder, then in unison they pulled down their jeans and knickers to their ankles and sat down on the toilets, Danielle pulling her tampon soaked with her bright blue period blood out of her pussy and putting it in the female waste bin.
There was a fair bit of space under the stall doors and partitions, so if a voyeur had gone in there to perve on them he would have been able to look underneath and see that Faye was wearing yellow knickers, Erica white knickers with blue cartoon dolphins and Danielle lilac knickers with orange leg and waist elastic. If he looked over the top at them he would have seen their pussies, and proof that Faye was a natural redhead, Danielle a natural blonde and young Erica a natural brunette.
The tinkling sounds of the three women urinating in unison filled the bathroom first, then the more personal sounds of them pooing as they continued to sit on the toilets for the next five minutes or so, the sounds of them unwinding and using toilet paper also intermittently heard as they wiped their bottoms. In her stall, Erica looked down at her knickers covered in creamy snatch stains and was relieved that the toilet demon hadn’t found her.
Faye finished and flushed the toilet first, standing up to pull up her jeans and her knickers and exiting the toilet stall to wash her hands. Danielle was about 20 seconds behind her mother-in-law, and stood up off the toilet, pushing a fresh tampon up her pussy and flushing the toilet, joining Faye at the sink to wash her hands.
They waited for Erica to finish but the stall door remained closed and locked and a minute turned to two and then three, the only sound Erica advancing the toilet roll several times. “Hey kid, if you could try and finish up some time today it would be great,” said Danielle. “You fallen in or something?”
Erica was struggling to finish on the toilet, the teenager’s bowels not cooperating with her this morning and seeming to be going through twice as much toilet paper as she did usually. “I’ll be finished soon,” she called back.
Danielle laughed. “Erica, how it normally works is when three women go to the toilet then the one with her period is the one who keeps the others waiting. That isn’t happening this morning.”
“Danielle,” said Faye in a warning tone, before turning her attention to her teenage daughter. “Erica, can you please get some toilet paper and finish? We really need to get going.”
“Okay Mum,” said Erica. Having her mother and sister-in-law waiting outside the toilet for her to finish gave the young girl some sort of performance anxiety, but finally the teenager was able to finish having her poo and wipe her bottom.
Erica stood up off the toilet and flushed it, then emerged from the stall still adjusting her jeans and knickers after hastily pulling them up and washed her hands at the sink, drying her hands on a paper towel.
The three women emerged from the female lavatory and walked back to the cars. With three women having defecated in the female toilets it was obviously pretty smelly in there, but despite being outside Danielle could still detect the same odor around her sister-in-law.
“Erica, I don’t want to embarrass you but you really need to know, the smell’s followed you back from the toilet,” said Danielle.
Erica blushed. “Um no, it hasn’t…” the young girl protested.
“Yes it has,” Danielle asserted. “You did wipe your arse properly didn’t you?”
“Um yeah,” Erica said in a small voice, looking at her Mum hoping Faye would save her from embarrassment and tell Danielle to leave her alone.
To Erica’s dismay, Faye said, “I’m afraid Danielle’s right Erica. Can you go back into the loo and check your pants please?”
“I’ll um, go and see right now,” said Erica. The teenager was mortified at this, and also feared going back into the ladies loo on her own in case the toilet demon came and got her.
Her heart racing Erica went into the same stall she had vacated, pulled down her jeans and knickers and was horrified to see that Danielle had been right. Erica had messed up when wiping her bottom, and now the evidence of this, some smelly brown poo stains were evident on the back panel of her panties.
Squatting down over the loo, Erica got some toilet paper and wiped her bottom again, the teenager seeing brown stains on the toilet tissue as she cleaned herself up. It took three further lengths of toilet paper before one came away from Erica’s buttocks and anus with no poo smeared on it. The young girl flushed away the toilet paper and looked down at her dirty panties. There was no way she was going to pull them up in this state and sit around with feces in her underwear. The smell would be an issue, plus the risk of an infection in her urinary tract or getting thrush in her fanny. Plus she still felt all yuck around her rear end and really needed to wash her bottom.
Alone in the bathroom, Erica shuffled out of the stall with her jeans and her knickers around her ankles, the teenager half expecting the clown to be in the mirror to laugh at her for getting poo stains in her panties. To her extreme relief the clown was not there, and Erica wet down a paper towel, pulling up her knickers to her knees and squatting down to take care of her dirty panties problem.
Luckily, as Erica had only just been to the toilet her poo hadn’t dried and she was able to wash away her skid marks from her pretty teen panties pretty easily. They would still need to be changed at the first opportunity and sitting around with damp knickers wasn’t the best thing, but it was better than sitting around wearing dirty poo-stained knickers.
Disposing of the paper towel into the waste bin, Erica got three more and wet them down to wash her bottom. The teenager put them between the cheeks of her bum and was washing her anal area, removing the lingering poo smells, when to her horror the door of the ladies’ room opened.
Erica’s heart raced as she figured that the aliens had captured her family, and now had come for her too but the reality was also pretty bad. Into the bathroom stepped three women aged about in their 60s, all dressed in their ‘Sunday best’ clothes, up and about early this morning as they were rostered on to help set up their church for early morning services.
The three women stepped into the bathroom and noticed two things. One, the overwhelming smell of poo and secondly and more jarringly, a teenage girl at the sink with her knickers and jeans down, her pubic hair and vagina visible as she applied wet paper towels to her anal area.
The women stared at Erica and Erica stared at the women, her cheeks going red with embarrassment, both the cheeks on her pretty face and those on her teenage bottom.
“I’m, um, sorry, I just needed to you wash my bottom,” Erica said shyly getting another paper towel to dry her real end. The women seemed too stunned to move and Erica could only say, “Is it still raining outside?” as she dropped the paper towel and bent over to pick it up to dispose of it.
Her embarrassment levels already at ten, things went up to eleven when Erica bent over too fast, and before she could stop herself, farted loudly in front of the women. “Excuse me, I am so sorry, I couldn’t hold it,” said Erica in a small voice.
The three women gave her disapproving glares as they turned to go into the stalls and Erica pulled up her knickers, hearing one of the women making a comment about ‘proper upbringing’ to her friends. Pulling up her jeans and washing her hands at the sink again, Erica noticed her blushing face in the mirror.
Exiting the ladies loo, Erica lamented her current situation. If supernatural beings weren’t tormenting her when she went to the toilet, she was getting into embarrassing toilet situations in the real world too, like the ladies who walked in on her with her knickers down and washing her bottom, and that she had accidentally farted in front of them made it worse. Now they probably thought that she was solely responsible for the terrible toilet smell in the ladies room, when in fact she was only partially responsible.
Erica walked back to the car where everyone was waiting for her. Her father glared at her, not pleased how she had kept the whole family waiting. “So nice of you to join us, Erica,” he growled.
“Sorry Dad,” said Erica in her shy voice, the teenager putting her fingers in her mouth evident that she was afraid of incurring her father’s wrath.
The family had purchased energy bars and other supplies from the shop when paying for the fuel and Faye handed one to Erica, who thanked her mother and nibbled on it while plans where made as to where to go today.
“We’ll go to Canberra,” said Alistair.
Faye looked worried. “What if the aliens have arranged for the border between New South Wales and the ACT to be blocked? I mean, they’ve already blocked the borders to Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to stop us going interstate.”
Alistair nodded. “I did think of that, but the ACT is very small and landlocked, perhaps the aliens will just think it’s part of New South Wales and have overlooked it? Anyway, we just have to take a chance. Sydney will be covered by UFOs and there will be hundreds of aliens, ghosts, monsters, demons and zombies searching for us at ground level.”
“How about we stay here Dad?” Erica suggested. “It’s all pretty quiet in Goulburn.”
Alistair shook his head. “I see your point Erica, and I did think about that, but no. My reason is that there are a lot of historic buildings around Goulburn and what do you have in old buildings? Antiques. The aliens and demons will use the antiques to bring zombie humans and extinct animals forward through time to try and capture us, and we can’t risk that.”
“Your father’s right, Erica,” Faye asserted.
“Sorry, I didn’t think,” said Erica, fearing her father would be angry at her for saying something dumb and not thinking about the very real dangers of historic buildings and antiques.
“It’s okay, you weren’t to know,” said Alistair, not angry to the relief of his teenage daughter. “Now let’s hit the road before anything strange happens.”
While the stop in Goulburn hadn’t gone well especially for Erica given her toilet embarrassment, nothing supernatural had happened. However, as Alistair, Faye, Cornelius, Danielle, Erica and Gavin looked up at the ram, the concrete statue came to life before their eyes.
It turned, looked at the family, and emitted an ear-shattering ‘Baa!’ which was no doubt loud enough to be heard through the entire Tablelands and probably the Monaro and Southern Highlands regions too.
The Hawkins family wasted no time in making their escape, clearly the aliens had brought the ram to life as a warning they were still in their sights, and staying here was not an option. Alistair drove his four wheel drive away from the service station at speed, Faye in the passenger seat and Gavin and Erica in the back. Cornelius, for once thinking of somebody other than himself took the wheel of Danielle’s car, giving his tired wife a break from driving.
Both cars continued south along the Hume Highway before turning onto Federal Road, which would lead them to the Australian Capital Territory and the national capital of Canberra. Drizzle continued to fall on the journey and there were some large semi-trailer trucks on the road that slowed their journey, but fortunately nothing supernatural happened.
Everyone felt a bit apprehensive as the cars approached Canberra, wondering if the aliens would have arranged for the New South Wales border to be blocked, but to everyone’s relief there were no issues and the cars crossed into the ACT with no issues.
Cornelius expected his father to head straight for the center of Canberra but to his surprise he took a different route. “Where’s he going?” Cornelius mused to Danielle who shrugged her shoulders in response. He continued to follow Alistair’s four wheel drive through Canberra’s north eastern suburbs and to Mount Ainslie, where they drove to the lookout and stopped the cars.
Everyone got out and stood in the light misty morning rain, looking out across the Canberra suburbs towards the city. They were not alone, there were quite a few fitness fanatics out and about keen to stretch their legs on the steep slopes of Mount Ainslie despite the early hour and wet conditions, the morning air cool which was not unusual for Canberra outside of summer due to the high elevation and inland location of the bush capital.
Alistair was the first to speak. “Do you know what I think the problem is?”
Faye shook her head. “No.”
“We’ve been looking at this all wrong,” declared Alistair. “We’ve had to flee our home to escape the aliens yes, but we haven’t been enjoying ourselves. That’s what we need to do, we need to enjoy ourselves and we need to have fun, just like a family on holiday.”
Erica and Cornelius looked at each other. Even at the best of times their father was not exactly what one would describe as fun, so what was he talking about now?
Alistair continued. “If we have fun, we’ll show the aliens, demons, ghosts and monsters that we’re not afraid of them, and then they might stop chasing us and find somebody else to capture and take away in a flying saucer to outer space. So what do you say? Are we going to have a fun holiday from now on?”
The others weren’t sure what to think of this but nodded in agreement. “Yeah.”
“Alright then,” said Alistair, punching the air with great enthusiasm. He smiled at his kids and their partners. “So do you know what your Mum and I liked to do to have fun?”
The younger members of the group didn’t really want to know, but Alistair provided the answer before any of them did. “Sex, we like to have sex. So we’ll be going back into town, getting a hotel room and your mother and I are going to have sex. What do you say, Faye? How about it then?”
Faye blushed the same color of red as her hair, something her husband didn’t seem to notice. Alistair reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of condoms. “I bought these at the service station back in Goulburn, so now your Mum and I will be able to have all the fun we like without worrying about having a new baby in our fifties.”
Alistair opened the packet of condoms and tore off several, handing them to the astonished Cornelius who for once was speechless. “It’s not only your Mum and I who will be having sex, you will be getting a room too so you and Danielle can have sex too. You’re young and married, you want to have sex all the time. Just make sure you use one of these condoms.” He pointed at his daughter-in-law. “Yes, I know Danielle has her period but when has that ever stopped you screwing her before? Plus she’s one of ten kids with heaps of cousins, so she must be really fertile and can probably get pregnant even on her period.”
Not done, Alistair turned to Gavin and Erica. “Now Gavin, I know and you Erica like to have sex. And again why wouldn’t you? You’re both 18-years-old, you’re horny all the time.” He handed Gavin some condoms. “I’ll be booking a room for you too, and I’m counting you to get into my daughter’s panties and show her the time of her life. Are you with me there, young Gavin?”
Gavin managed to find his voice. “Um yes, Mr. Hawkins.”
“That’s my boy,” said Alistair, ruffling Gavin’s hair, something he had never done before. “You really have a great time with Erica, perhaps try a new sexual position with her? Or do 69 together, whatever you kids like to do nowadays to have fun. Just don’t forget the condom, okay? I don’t want to have a pregnant teenage daughter and a grandkid nine months from now.”
“Yes sir,” said Gavin.
“So, there’s a nice hotel down in the city, we’ll go there,” said Alistair. “And after we’ve all had sex and a bit of a rest, I’ll treat you to brunch. I was here for work a few months ago, there’s this all you can eat restaurant not far from the hotel. We’ll go there. And after that, we’ll go and see some tourist attractions — Parliament House, Lake Burley Griffin and the War Museum. Lots and lots of fun to prove to the aliens we’re not afraid of them. Well let’s go, not time to waste, I really want to get into your mother’s pants.”
“Alistair please,” the embarrassed Faye hissed, seeing that the runners were looking over at them.
Alistair laughed off his wife’s concerns and fondled his wife’s bum and panty lines through her jeans. “Yeah, you can’t wait, can you Faye?” he asked suggestively.
Everyone got back into their cars, and Gavin who was stunned by the change in demeanor of his father-in-law nervously cast a glance at the Canberra Radio Tower, which towered high on the summit of Mount Black. Had aliens or demons used the tower to put messages into Mr. Hawkins’ mind and that was why he was acting all cuckoo and inappropriate? Gavin hoped not, but how else to explain it? Still, this Mr. Hawkins was better than the angry Alistair Hawkins he was used to.
In the city, Alistair’s plans to get three rooms didn’t exactly go to plan. They stood in the front lobby of the hotel which seemed to be a family run affair. The young male clerk, very polite and professional, had advised them that check in time was 2pm, and that they would also need a credit card. Faye felt her apprehension growing given the clerk and the people working in the background were Indian. Her husband didn’t do well with people from other ethnic backgrounds — in fact he didn’t do well with most white people either — and she dreaded a scene like the one at the pie shop in the Blue Mountains yesterday afternoon.
To the astonishment of Faye and the others however, Alistair turned on the charm and was all smiles and nice and friendly. “We’re a non-credit card family, young man,” he said politely. “My own fault, I used to like race tracks and casinos too much, so now we’re cash only. And we’ve driven all the way up from Swan Hill overnight. I’m sure we can arrange something.”
“I’ll just get my Dad, he’s the manager,” said the clerk. He returned with an older Indian man, Alistair politely giving the man the same story.
“We’re both men of the world,” Alistair said to the hotel manager. He indicated Faye. “As you can see, I’m married to a very attractive lady. My son and daughter-in-law want some alone time like all young married couples do, and the two kids, they’re 18-years-old, got sex on the mind the whole time.”
Alistair then reached into his pocket and took out two fifty dollar notes, offering one to the manager, and the other to his son. “If I can’t convince you, perhaps these gentlemen will be able to do so?”
The manager and his son each took a fifty dollar bill and pocketed them. “Would you like rooms with a garden view, Mr. Green?” asked the manager as his son did the check in.
“Yes, thank you, that would be very nice,” said Alistair. The Hawkins family were signed into the hotel as the Green family of Swan Hill Victoria, located on the Murray River on the border, so their New South Wales number-plates would not rouse suspicion. The name Green, the Swan Hill address and contact telephone numbers were as false as the name of Brown and the Coolangatta address and phone number given at the chalets in Nelson Bay on Friday.
“Well thank you so much,” said Alistair. “You have a nice morning, I know we all will.” He turned to Cornelius and Gavin. “You have fun with the girls but remember, make sure you use the condoms I gave to you.”
The family went into the lift and the doors closed, the elevator taking them up to the floor where they were staying. The young male receptionist shook his head to clear it, more than a little weirded out by the strange family. He had noticed that the younger boy and girl had been holding hands in the lobby and as they went into the lift and it increased his sense of disquiet.
“Why do I get a bad feeling that the younger boy and girl are brother and sister?” he asked.
His father laughed. “My theory was cousins, it’s less disturbing. Oh and Patel, if you and your sister carry on like them, your mother and I will disown both of you.”
Patel laughed with his Dad, who went back into the office to complete some paperwork and his son went to serve some other guests, guests who were way more normal than that strange family from Victoria. The father had the television on in the background showing the Sunday morning news, but was more interested in his work. So he barely noticed a report about a bizarre shooting incident in the Blue Mountains late last night, or a second report about how a bakery owner had been traumatized by three lunatics — two male and one female – who came into the shop and abused her, accused her of witchcraft before threatening to come back and destroy the shop and burn her at the stake.
Nor did he pay much attention to another report about the strange events in Byron Bay on the New South Wales far north coast overnight, where a large group of teenage boys and girls had been running through the town in a frenzy banging on doors frantically telling residents there was a bushfire started by the Devil about to destroy the town and to get out now. The teenagers had been taken in for treatment but were in a really bad way, severely paranoid and delusional, and it was speculated that they had taken a dangerous new party drug — small bright yellow pills – at a music festival during the day, the same drug that had first been recorded in Melbourne and was now causing problems all over Australia and in New Zealand too.
*
Faye and Alistair Hawkins’ sex life had not been as good as it could have been for a long number of years now. When the kids were younger Alistair’s obsession with disciplining both of their sons through physical beatings and a strict program of negative reinforcement often meant he was too tired and preoccupied to pay his wife enough attention in the bedroom. Brendan’s serious drug and mental health problems and Cornelius being a complete maniac without assistance from drugs caused them no end of stress, and even when their sons were taken out of the equation, the perpetually angry Alistair was always getting into disagreements with his own dysfunctional family and with anyone else who crossed him which had an effect on Alistair and Faye in the bedroom.
But now, as soon as Alistair closed the door he was all over Faye, kissing and caressing her. Never even when they were younger and before the kids came along had Alistair made out with Faye in such a passionate way.
However, while the lips on Faye’s face did interest Alistair, he was far more interested in the lips on a way more private part of his wife’s body. The petite redhead felt her husband’s strong manly hands take down her jeans and then her panties, before putting his face between her legs. The musty, feminine smell of his wife’s pussy was a huge turn on for Mr. Hawkins, and he eagerly plunged his tongue into her vagina, Faye’s red pubic hair tickling his nose as he ate her out.
In the room next door, Cornelius and Danielle had wasted no time in getting down to business. The naked Cornelius watched as Danielle took off her knickers, then his wife reach between her legs and pull her tampon out of her pussy. It was still a bit odd seeing his wife’s feminine hygiene product saturated by blue rather than red menstrual blood but Cornelius wasn’t complaining.
After making out and foot fetishist Cornelius fooling around with Danielle’s feet, sucking on all of her ten toes and licking her soles and arches, Danielle got Cornelius to lie flat on his back and she slipped a condom onto her husband’s cock.
“Stay nice and still,” said Danielle, climbing on top of Cornelius and straddling him, before lowering her fanny down and sticking his dick up her cunt, the lubrication of her menses helping guide him up there. Allowing to Cornelius to stick one of his fingers up her bum while he played around with her arse, Cornelius feeling how hot and tight his wife was in her bowels as the walls of her rectum closed around his digit, she leaned forward and they made out again.
Then extricating his finger out of Danielle’s arsehole, Cornelius thrust up hard into his wife as she pushed her pussy down. Danielle rode her husband cowgirl style, her tits bouncing up and down, menstruating all over him as they fucked. It was now the later stages of Danielle’s period so her flow wasn’t as heavy as in the first couple of days of her monthlies, but nonetheless Cornelius could feel his wife’s menstrual blood on his groin as she bled all over him.
Next door to Danielle and Cornelius, youngest couple Gavin and Erica were a lot more reserved as they sat on the bed and awkwardly looked at each other, not sure what to do given Erica’s father’s bizarre behavior in the lobby.
“Um, ah, what should we do?” Gavin asked hesitantly.
Erica regarded him coyly through her glasses. “I think you should get into my pants and fuck me like my Dad told you to do.”
Gavin didn’t need any further prompting, and soon the young man was naked and off came Erica’s clothes, her bra and knickers last of all, the young couple making out and their fingers and hands exploring the most private areas of their bodies. They even tried some foot fetishism like Cornelius and Danielle, Gavin licking, kissing and caressing the toes, soles and arches of his teenage girlfriend’s cute little bare feet, Erica’s pussy tingling at the touch.
Gavin put on his condom while Erica got on the bed on all fours and thrust her cute teenage arse in the air. Getting behind her and coveting Erica’s vagina and arsehole, Gavin mounted Erica and pushed his cock up into the young girl’s tight teenage twat, Erica gasping and the toes on her bare feet clenching as he filled her.
In the three hotel rooms, Alistair was fucking Faye in the missionary position, Cornelius and Danielle were going hard at it cowgirl style, while Gavin was humping Erica doggy-style, his balls slapping against the teenager’s bare bottom.
Orgasm wasn’t far away for all three copulating couples. Faye’s redhead pussy, Danielle’s blonde pussy and young Erica’s brunette pussy sent their female orgasms from their clitorises through their vaginas and into their bowels, pussy juice and in Danielle’s case menstrual blood as well soaking their respective partners’ groins. At the same moment, Alistair, Cornelius and Gavin ejaculated deep inside Faye, Danielle and Erica, their condoms preventing their semen spraying up their birth canals and into their uteruses and fallopian tubes, and maybe finding something like a stray ova.
While all had enjoyed having sex, going into the bathroom was good too. It gave the group a chance to take care of some things, like brushing and flossing their teeth. Erica, Faye and Danielle each got a safety razor and shaved her armpits, then their legs. Alistair possessing a formidable full beard didn’t need to shave, but Gavin and Cornelius both were able to shave, both young men sporting something more than a five o’clock shadow.
Now it was time for a relaxing shower, which was refreshing and just as good as sex. In their bathroom Alistair and Faye showered together, a rare thing for the couple especially in recent years. Seeing his wife’s tits, red bush and bare bottom covered in suds and bubbles, soapy water running down her legs to her bare feet turned Alistair on, and soon Faye felt her husband’s fingers between her legs, fondling her fanny, her anus and the sensitive skin separating her vulva from her anus. Faye squirmed at her husband’s touch wondering what had gotten into Alistair this morning.
Cornelius always liked showering with Danielle while she was on her rags, and today was no exception, even though the blood that ran down her legs to her bare feet or dripped directly from her vagina onto the tiles of the shower floor was blue not red. So much so that he began to stand to attention and Danielle giggled, “Down boy!” as she washed her bottom.
Youngest couple Erica and Gavin kissed and caressed under their shower, Gavin unable to resist finger fucking Erica’s fanny, the young girl giggling and saying, “Stop it,” as she tried to wash her hairy teenage pussy.
Turning off the shower, Erica and Gavin stepped out and dried off. Erica noticed how dirty her jeans were, probably from all that thrashing around in the Belanglo in the early hours of the morning or when she had gone into the bush to take a crap in the Blue Mountains before the pygmy cannibals came at them. And she definitely needed fresh underwear, the white dolphin panties she had been wearing were very smelly.
First though, like Alistair had advised them earlier, they took a nap, the naked teenagers took an hour long nap on the bed, Gavin spooning Erica’s nubile nude body as they did so, Erica looking so cute fast asleep and emitting gentle female snores. In the next rooms, Alistair and Faye, and Cornelius and Danielle were also lying together naked on their beds sleeping, Danielle so tired she only just remembered to insert a tampon and prevent a mess.
Gavin and Erica awoke after an hour’s sleep, feeling most refreshed. Gavin put on some fresh underwear, jeans and a shirt and watched as Erica put on a pair of pink cotton knickers and then a pink bra. She then put on a pink tee-shirt, and a pink tracksuit, followed by socks and her sneakers, white with a pink trim. Erica then tied her hair back into loose pigtails, and coupled with her glasses, she looked so cute all dressed up in pink, Gavin feeling his groin reacting.
“What?” Erica giggled suggestively as her boyfriend approached her with that suggestive look on his face.
“Nothing, you just look so pretty in pink,” said Gavin, the young couple embracing and kissing, Gavin putting his hands on Erica’s bum and feeling the elastic of his girlfriend’s teen panties through her tracksuit pants, Erica’s clitoris reacting inside her knickers to her boyfriend’s touch.
Gavin would have been happy to pull down Erica’s tracksuit pants and knickers and fuck her again, but it was time to meet the others for brunch and accordingly, Danielle and Cornelius, Faye and Alistair met Gavin and Danielle in the hallway, the others all dressed for the day.
Faye took one look at Cornelius’s tee-shirt, and her petite body went rigid, her face darkening as she saw what tee-shirt her son was wearing. “Cornelius, you go and change your tee-shirt right now,” she said. “You are not wearing that to the restaurant or out in public, is that clear?”
Cornelius grunted his surly response. “What’s wrong with my shirt? It’s fucking clean.”
“I’ve told you before, that is the most sick and offensive tee-shirt I have ever seen,” asserted Faye, indicating her son’s black tee-shirt. The slogan read, ‘I LIKE AIDS, AIDS KILLS FAGS and I LIKE EBOLA, EBOLA KILLS BLACKS.’
“Neither your father nor I want to be seen in public with you wearing that shirt, and what if we meet any black or gay people?” said Faye. She looked at her husband for support, but not for the first time today she was surprised by her husband’s response.
Alistair looked at Cornelius’s shirt and laughed. “Let him wear it Faye, it’s creative.”
“Alistair!” snapped Faye.
Her husband laughed again, fondling Faye on her bum through her jeans. “Come on sweetheart, it’s a funny shirt. And I think we’ve been looking at parenting all wrong for years. We were disciplinarian, way too strict with the kids, it didn’t work. There’s a new parenting style called freedom of expression. I thought it was lefty bullshit at first, but now I’ve reconsidered it. Cornelius should be allowed to wear whatever he wants, whenever he wants, in front of whomever he wants.”
Cornelius was stunned by his Dad’s reaction but not complaining, and likewise Danielle, Erica and Gavin were shocked but stayed silent. Faye sighed in irritation, but was pretty hungry so said nothing more and simply went with the others down into the lobby and outside into the cool and wet Canberra Sunday morning.
The persistent cold drizzle caused the group to take their cars rather than walk, and Gavin drove Alistair’s four wheel drive with Erica in the passenger seat, the parents in the back, and Danielle drove behind, Cornelius in the passenger seat.
The restaurant was a family friendly restaurant, an all you can eat buffet, and it looked pretty busy this morning. Gavin and Danielle parked their cars and the hungry group headed inside, following another male patron who had gotten out of his own car and was walking in in front of them.
Walking was actually phrasing this incorrectly. The guy was a man about Alistair and Faye’s age, so obese that he could only waddle his enormous 200 kilogram body clad in a mu-mu like tee-shirt and enormous shorts into the restaurant, every step of his swollen feet clad in sneakers slow and painful. Notably while balding he had his untidy, greasy hair tied back into a pony-tail, which was somehow even more ridiculous than how fat he was. And as Erica got too close to the man, she noted that he was not a big fan of deodorant and recoiled as the smell of BO hit her nostrils.
“Reckon he comes here often?” Danielle giggled to the others under her breath. “What a fatso.”
Cornelius laughed. “I tell you one thing, if we don’t get to the buffet before Jabba the Hutt there, then we won’t get any food at all. P I G — pig!”
The fat man turned around and glared at them, his face ugly, a pig-like nose the most unattractive part of his countenance.
“Got some problem there?” Alistair asked the fat man.
“Keep out of my business,” growled the fat man, before resuming his spot in the line, clearly impatient to get in there and add to his obesity problem.
“How does he take a shit?” Cornelius whispered, Danielle going into fits of giggles. “You’d need a team of six guys and an elephant to wipe his arse.”
Again, the fat man turned around and glowered, then turned back looking at the front of the line with his pig-like eyes.
“So your mother and I had a lot of fun having sex this morning,” said Alistair casually to Cornelius and Erica.
“Alistair please!” hissed Faye, but Alistair was not about to listen, and turned to Cornelius.
“So son, did you fuck your wife this morning like I told you?” he asked.
“You bet Dad, I fucked her nice and hard!” said Cornelius proudly, indicating Danielle.
“That’s my boy!” said Alistair proudly, giving Cornelius a high five. He then turned to Gavin. “How about you? Did you get into my daughter’s knickers and screw her like I told you to?”
Gavin was blushing as was Erica, but Gavin managed to say, “Yes Sir.”
“That’s great!” said Alistair exchanging a high five with the embarrassed Gavin. “She’s always been a shy sort of girl my daughter, not much self-confidence and I can’t work out why not, but she’s very pretty and I’m sure you can help bring her out of her shell when you have sex with her.”
The fat man by the looks of disgust on his ugly pig face did not appear to like being around a family who discussed their sex lives in public, but it didn’t seem to dampen his appetite as he waddled up to the counter, the fat man getting cross and into a dispute with the young staff over some discount scheme for being a regular customer.
“Come on, come on, you are all completely incompetent!” the fat man snapped rudely when the computer failed to show the correct discount he thought he was entitled to. “I do not have all day!”
“Neither do we, how about you just pay and stop wasting everyone’s time and be more polite?” Danielle called out.
The fat man waved her off with a glare and an arrogant arm wave, before with things finally sorted out the glutton was escorted to his table, his rolls of fat wobbling in his shirt.
Now it was the Hawkins’ family turn to be served, and the staff looked at Cornelius’s tee-shirt clearly wary of somebody who would wear something like this in public, and who also had the crazy eyes. They were also wary of the father, having heard the menacing bearded man talking about inappropriate things and in general having the demeanor of a maniac. However, he was polite enough, certainly better than the fat man of whom they had come to dread the appearance of.
The family friendly restaurant had an area for kids with some indoor play equipment and a small mechanical roundabout of Australian animals including a kangaroo, emu, wombat, platypus and koala. They also had cardboard crown party hats for kids’ birthday and other parties, and as his father was paying for their brunch Cornelius reached over the counter without invitation putting it on his head.
“I’m a paper hat party kid!” he declared.
“Cornelius!” Faye warned, but Alistair shut her down.
“It’s just Cornelius being creative again, let him be to have fun.” He then turned to his daughter. “So Erica, would you like a party hat crown to wear too? I wouldn’t want you to feel left out, your brother having one and you not.”
When younger, the unhappy Erica when not being bullied at school would come home to her dismal domestic life, her authoritarian tyrant of a father ruling the house with an iron fist, and Cornelius doing everything in his power to drive their father even more insane. As a pre-teen and younger teenager Erica would go into escapism and watch family friendly American sitcoms that were popular in the late 1980s and very early 1990s. A lot of these shows featured bumbling and well-intentioned Dads who would without meaning to embarrass their kids, and Erica often wished her own Dad was like this. But now he actually was acting like this, it was more a case of be careful what you wish for.
“Um, no thanks, Dad,” said the blushing Erica.
“Maybe later then,” said Alistair, getting the receipt and waiting to be escorted to their table.
Cornelius however due to his hyperactive personality saw the kids’ roundabout and ran towards it, leaping on it and starting it up. “Look at me, look at me!” he shouted across the restaurant as he rode a carousel for kids aged under six, indicating his paper crown. “I’m a king, I’m a king! Woo-hoo, look at me, look at me I’m the king.”
Erica cringed. Normally this sort of stunt by her brother — and similar things had happened innumerable times in the past – would sent their father into a rage and she braced herself for the explosion. Alistair however did not respond. Other restaurant patrons did look at Cornelius of course, but not for long. Making direct eye contact with a young man with crazy eyes wearing a highly offensive black tee-shirt, a paper hat, yelling out across a restaurant and riding a roundabout for small children probably wasn’t a good idea, unless you wanted to get your head smacked in if he turned nasty.
Fortunately Cornelius’s hunger overcame his desire to get attention while playing silly buggers on a roundabout, so while still wearing his party hat crown he came and joined the rest of the family, who were seated to Faye’s disquiet next to the fat man’s table. She had a bad feeling about this.
The smell of bacon and other items on the buffet filled the restaurant, and Alistair said, “Well, I don’t know about you but I am famished.” The Hawkins family got their plates and headed for the buffet, Alistair keen to get some bacon.
But Alistair would be disappointed, as were the clearly frustrated patrons trying to get their food. The fat man had shoved his way into the line and taken all of the bacon out of the tray — over twenty rashers in all — and put them onto his plate, which was already piled high with fried eggs, sausages, bread and other food to the point of overflowing and waddling back to his table.
Most of the other patrons while some mumbled at this rudeness and gluttony. Alistair however was not the type of man to let this go, and marched up to the fat man’s table.
“What the hell is going on?” Alistair demanded, looking the fat man directly in the eye.
“Huh?” grunted the fat man. “What is this shit? I’m trying to eat my breakfast.”
“Yours and just about everyone else’s breakfasts too,” growled Alistair. “You pushed in and took all that bacon, left none for everyone else. And look at all that food. It’s all you can eat, not all you can carry.”
“How is that my problem or your concern?” retorted the fat man. “What I eat is your business, is it?”
Alistair was fuming now, and Faye, Erica and Gavin cringed. It hadn’t taken long for the angry Alistair to return, and now it looked like there would be a fist fight in the restaurant.
“It is my business,” roared Alistair. “I work my arse off all week and pay taxes which goes to health funding, and instead of helping kids with cancer it goes to keeping fat fucks like you alive when you have a heart attack after eating too much!”
“Yeah, what my Dad says,” yelled Cornelius, pointing at the fat man accusingly. While Cornelius was on the dole the social security did deduct some of his fortnightly unemployment benefits for income tax, and therefore Cornelius was an Australian taxpayer and entitled to have an opinion on such matters.
“There’s starving kids in Africa who don’t get any food, and you eat all this, you disgusting greedy pig!” yelled Danielle, keen to voice her opinion to everyone in the restaurant.
The fat man slammed his fists into the table and stood up, but before Alistair could react there came another voice, a male voice, that of the restaurant manager. “Excuse me Sir, what seems to be the problem?”
“This fat arsehole pushed in line and took all the fucking bacon!” roared Alistair. “Look at that!” he boomed, pointing at the fat man’s plate. “Disgusting!”
“Sir, if you could please lower your voice and tone down your language, the buffet will be re-stocked soon,” said the manager. “And please, can I suggest your party keep to your own table and not interact with this diner? We don’t want to have to ask you to leave this restaurant.”
Alistair, remembering that his family were in Canberra to have fun, did calm down. “Yes of course, sorry for the disturbance.” The restaurant manager went on his way, but noticed that the tall bearded man was glaring at the fat guy as he fed his face, the fat man returning the nasty looks in between feeding his fat face with increasing volumes of high calorie food washed down by unhealthy drinks. It would be best to keep an eye on this group, especially that son of theirs. It might have been better to move the fat man or the family, but with so many people and lack of tables, it unfortunately wasn’t an option for the manager today.
At a nearby table there was a large family group celebrating a birthday party, and one of little girls burst into tears and ran to her mother, having seen and heard Alistair shouting. “Mummy, Mummy, I’m scared of the man with the beard, he shouts and it frightens me. Please don’t let the man with the beard get me Mummy.”
“It’s okay sweetie, the man with the beard isn’t here to get you, he’s just here to have breakfast with his own family, he won’t hurt you,” said the mother, hiding her own apprehension about the strange bearded man and his even stranger adult son who was currently at the buffet, wearing a children’s party hat on his head and wearing a very offensive shirt.
The arrival of more bacon to the buffet brought more relief to Alistair, Cornelius and other diners who had been caught out by the fat man’s gluttony. “Well, this is nice, we’re all having fun, aren’t we?” asked Alistair as everyone sat down with the food taken from the buffet, which in total for six adults was less than the fat man was eating himself. “That’s what families do, they go out and have brunch together and have fun.”
Faye wasn’t having so much fun but didn’t contradict her husband. She could see despite Alistair’s cheerful demeanor that he was still very angry at the fat man, glaring and staring at him from time to time and that the fat man was glaring back when not eating. The fat guy had also waddled to the buffet to get some pastries to eat in between masticating his other food, so now would be consuming even more.
Then there was Cornelius, who after getting up to use the toilet deliberately walked as close to the fat man as he could to try and provoke trouble, then when returning from the toilet walked behind the fat man, his cheeks blown out to emulate the fat guy’s bloated face and holding his arms at his side to pretend to be fat, waddling like the obese man. This caused much hilarity to Danielle, whose husband’s antics caused her to collapse in laughter at the table, nearly wetting her pants.
Sitting next to Erica, Gavin ate his food and worried how Lisa was going. He recalled that she said she was going out to brunch with her boyfriend and their friends, and Gavin hoped that his big sister was enjoying herself. He feared that she might have been kidnapped by a UFO during the night and currently being held as bait to get him, and longed to call her on her mobile to ensure she was okay. But that would be impossible, the aliens or demons would trace the call and get both her and him, as well as the Hawkins family. Maybe they would even fly out to the cruise ship in which Mr. and Mrs. Baxter were spending the last day of their vacation and get them too. It was just too risky.
*
Hundreds of miles away back in Sydney, Lisa and Pete were enjoying themselves at brunch with their friends at a nice restaurant right on Manly Beach. The weather was overcast in Sydney, not raining like in Canberra, but some outer suburbs had experienced some light showers.
Lisa felt more relaxed as she sat at the outside table, the sights and sounds of the Pacific Ocean very relaxing, the smell of the sea air and the Norfolk Island Pines that grew around this area abundance very nice indeed.
Holding Pete’s hand, Lisa thought about Gavin and how he was going in the Blue Mountains camping with his friends. She hoped when he got back he was acting more normally and the weird behavior was just a one-off. She also thought about the strange way the Hawkins family had left their house, and wondered if Brendan had come out and closed the garage and the door to his brother’s car, or if Cornelius and Danielle had come back from the Gold Coast and done it. Oh well, it wasn’t her problem and if the Hawkins family were away interstate it might do Gavin some good to have a break from them. Erica was cute, but fuck were her brothers and father weird. Maybe this was rubbing off on Gavin?
*
Lisa would have been very concerned if she had known her younger brother was sitting in a restaurant in Canberra, having brunch with the Hawkins family who were supposed to be half in Adelaide and half in Queensland.
“We need to relax and have more fun, tell each other jokes,” said Alistair. “Cornelius, you’re a clown. How about you tell us a funny joke?”
Cornelius grinned. “What did the gay sperm whale do when it saw the submarine?”
Alistair shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“It sucked out all the seamen.” Cornelius laughed as did Danielle, and Alistair nearly convulsed, laughing uncontrollably with his mouth wide open, this filling the restaurant irritating other diners, not least the fat man while he was trying to eat his second huge plate of food.
“That’s a good one,” laughed Alistair. “Why did the homo pull out in front of another car and slam on his brakes?”
Danielle shook her head. “Dunno.”
“So he could have a rear-ender.” Alistair’s face went bright red as his raucous laughter at his own joke filled the restaurant, Cornelius and Danielle sounding like a pair of hyenas as they joined in.
“I’ve got one,” said Danielle. “What did the deaf, dumb, blind, retarded, and crippled spastic kid get for Christmas?”
Cornelius shook his head. “You’ve got me there.”
“Cancer.” Danielle and Cornelius again laughed like hyenas, and this time Alistair fell out of his seat, rolling on the restaurant floor, his face bright red and his mouth wide open as he convulsed with laughter, before climbing up into his seat.
Faye wasn’t so impressed, she could see everyone looking at their table and the fat man had stormed off, but this time not to the buffet but to the manager, probably to complain about them.
Erica also wasn’t laughing, but despite the jokes being so offensive, Gavin could not help but chuckle.
“Hey, it’s your turn young Gavin, tell us a joke,” said Alistair.
“Yeah, make sure it’s really funny,” prompted Danielle.
Gavin thought about a joke that might appeal to this audience. “Why are black people afraid of chainsaws?”
Fortunately before Gavin could deliver the joke’s punchline, the restaurant manager’s voice was heard. “Excuse me,” he said, the six members of the Hawkins family looking at him. “We’ve had some complaints about noise and offensive language at this table, so could you please tone it down? Thank you.”
The very busy manager went on his way, and Cornelius looked at the fat man who was squeezing himself into his chair. “Hey you, yeah you, you fat fuck,” said Cornelius aggressively. “You dobbed on us, didn’t you?”
“Talk to me again and I’ll have you thrown out,” growled the fat man. “I shouldn’t have to put up with people like you.”
“People like me?” Cornelius got out of his chair and walked over to confront the fat man. “What do you mean people like me, you fat piece of shit? What are you looking at my wife for? And now you’re looking at me. Don’t fucking look at me, don’t look at my wife and don’t look at anyone you fag, or I’ll be waiting for you outside in the fucking car park.”
The restaurant manager, now very stressed, ran over. “What’s going on now?” He wanted Cornelius gone along with the rest of them but kicking them out would no doubt result in an even bigger scene. “This is your last chance,” he warned them. “You cannot behave like that in here. Wrap it up, or you will be asked to leave, and the police will be called.”
Oblivious, Cornelius went back to the table and the fat man to the buffet, this time pushing in front of a group of kids to put a dozen pancakes on his plate, leaving the tray empty, before smothering the pancakes with ice-cream, cream, syrup and chocolate topping, bringing them back to his table to devour.
While the fat man was putting excessive volumes of food into his upper digestive system, Erica had a problem with her lower digestive system and needed to answer the call of nature. “I need to go to the toilet,” she said, getting up from the table and walking towards the toilets.
“Don’t fall in!” Cornelius called after his younger sister.
Erica pushed open the external door to the ladies’ room, the teenager understandably fearing the toilet demon might be in there waiting for her. She reminded herself that the toilet demon hadn’t gotten her when she used the toilet at the service station in Goulburn earlier in the morning and she had pissed in the toilet at the hotel room and all was fine, so fingers crossed.
Going into the stall, Erica checked for toilet paper then closed and locked the cubicle door, pulling down her pink tracksuit pants then her pink panties, the young girl sitting down on the toilet. Soon the sound of Erica having her piss was audible, then the sounds of her emptying her bowels. Sitting on the loo, Erica wondered what was wrong with her bowels, she had been pooping so much these last couple of days. She didn’t have diarrhea, but a real case of the ‘toilet bug’, which was unfortunate timing with a toilet demon on her tail, plus a clown that watched her on the toilet from a mirror and laughed at her.
The teenager looked down at her lowered knickers as she defecated, splashing sounds of her poo going into the toilet each time she had a bowel movement, young Erica proving on several occasions that pretty girls do fart. With smells from her rectum filling the bathroom Erica was glad to be on her own while she was pooing on the toilet. She was also glad that the restaurant provided their guests with nice soft absorbent toilet paper, and Erica used plenty to wipe her bottom the teenager not wanting to mess up her wiping like she had done earlier resulting in her soiling her panties and a smelly and very embarrassing situation for her.
Back at the table, Cornelius was amusing his wife by putting ice-cream in his mouth and pretending it was another substance entirely, making inappropriate comments about how it looked like her mouth after she performed fellatio upon him. Alistair was eating some desert, while Gavin picked at his food, still worrying that one of the many UFOs they had seen last night had gone to Sydney to abduct his sister. Faye looked at some of the tasteful, 1800s style paintings of animals dressed as people around the restaurant, the one closest to their table somewhat ironically a fox dressed in fox hunting gear. None of them noticed the fat guy at the next table get up and waddle to the toilets.
Erica had just done another poo and was reaching for the loo paper, when she heard the external door open and close. Her heart jumped. Was it the toilet demon? No, he was always down the sewer system. Next Erica heard footsteps outside her stall, but not the person enter a stall, nor do anything else one might expect in a bathroom. The footsteps stopped, then started up again as the person left the bathroom, again not doing anything normal.
Now finished on the loo, Erica wiped herself clean and stood up off the toilet, flushing it and pulling up her knickers and tracksuit pants. Washing her hands, Erica left the now very smelly bathroom to return to the table, but as she stepped out of the ladies loo to return to the table, she glanced behind her when a figure suddenly appeared. To Erica’s dismay it was the fat man, and this made her most concerned. Had he followed her to the toilet, was he the one who had come in there, and was he spying on her, getting his rocks off perving at her lowered knickers under the stall partition and listening to and smelling what she was doing while she was on the loo?
Obviously much faster than the fat man, Erica hurried back to the table. “Mum, Dad, Gavin, I think that fat guy followed me to the toilet,” she said, indicating the fat man who was loading up another plate full of pancakes on one site, some sort of gateaux on the other.
“He did what?” exclaimed Faye, outraged that her teenage daughter’s privacy in the bathroom was violated.
Gavin’s natural protective instincts towards Erica also came to the fore, and he watched the fat man returning to his table with another massive plate of sweets. “Fat fuck, I’m going to smash him.”
“Nobody spies on my daughter in the bathroom,” said the outraged Alistair, the equally outraged Cornelius and Danielle jumped to their feet, ready for vengeance.
“Excuse me, you might be interested in some things,” came another voice the family did not know and they turned around in astonishment. The painting of the fox was now blank, but the fox itself was in the restaurant, addressing them.
“That fat guy over there, he was spying on Erica,” the fox informed them. “He comes in here all the time, one because he’s a glutton and therefore so fat, but mostly because he likes to spy on children and underage teenage girls. Yes, Erica is 18 but he will spy on girls aged 18 or 19 if he can’t find younger girls to prey on. Plus Erica does look young. You might have noticed him looking at you while you were eating, but apart from Erica he was actually looking through you, at the young girls in that other group.”
The Hawkins family looked at the birthday group, and indeed there were plenty of young girls. The fat pedophile hadn’t been watching them. Aside from Erica he wasn’t interested in the Hawkins family at all, he was interested in the children and younger teenage girls at the table behind. It made perfect sense now.
The fox spoke again. “That man is an evil child molester and he needs to be stopped. When he’s not doing it here, he jets off to Asia and goes on sex tours for pedophiles. You can stop him, you need to stop him. I’ll leave it with you to decide what you’re going to do next to that nonce.”
With that, the fox vanished back into the painting and the Hawkins family turned and looked in outrage at the fat pedophile who sat stuffing his face, no doubt planning to target and molest more children and teenage girls as he did so, and betray the Hawkins family to their supernatural and extraterrestrial enemies.
All six of them strode towards the fat guy’s table. “Get lost,” the pedophile growled at them.
“You sick fuck, you followed me to the toilet to spy on me,” Erica yelled, silence falling across the restaurant.
“I didn’t do anything, fuck off, what are you on you stupid little bitch?” growled the fat man.
“You are a sick nonce, spying on my girlfriend,” yelled Gavin, standing over the child molester. “And you’ve been watching kids all morning, we’ve seen you. You pervert, you sick pervert!”
“You stay away from my daughter and from kids, you hear me?” snapped Faye, pointing at the fat man. “You are a child molester! Hey everyone, look at the child molester!”
The fat man was going red as a tomato. “You are all sick, I should call the police on you,” he shouted, trying to get out of his chair only for Gavin to push him back down.
“Nobody spies on my sister, you fucking sick pervert!” yelled Cornelius. He grabbed the fat man’s plate, and emptied the contents into his lap, pancakes and syrup going everywhere.
“If anyone should have the police called on them it’s you, you pedo!” screeched Danielle, throwing another drink at him.
“You are a sick, disgusting pedophile!” Alistair roared. “You are a dead man! You hear me, you nonce? You’re fucking dead.” With that, Alistair grabbed another plate of food and tipped it over the fat man, then threw hot coffee at him. Incandescent with rage, Alistair then took hold of the table and tipped it over onto the fat man while roaring incoherently, the almighty crash as the fat guy hit the floor and the table and its contents landed on top of him reverberating around the restaurant.
While Alistair grabbed a chair intending to hit the fat man with it, Cornelius noticed that staff had been going around emptying the dregs of people’s unfinished drinks — tea, coffee, soda, fruit juice, milk drinks and cold water — into a large bucket. Grabbing the bucket, Cornelius tipped the contents all over the fat man, who was saturated by the mess, steam practically rising off his fat body from the rage.
“Okay, get out all six of you, we’ve called the police, and they will be here soon,” said the restaurant manager to Alistair.
“We’re going, we wouldn’t want to stay here with this fucking child molester!” Alistair bellowed. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
He led the family out, shell-shocked staff and customers too stunned to do anything. Making for their cars, Cornelius who was still wearing his cardboard crown said, “I’ve got an idea,” and took out one of the marker pens. Going up to the fat guy’s car, he scrawled ‘Pedophile’ on the front bonnet, ‘Child Molester’ on the roof, ‘Nonce’ on the drivers’ side, ‘Pervert’ on the other side and ‘Rock Spider’ on the back of the car.
The Hawkins family, still shocked by the turn of events, raced away from the area, finding their way to a small park on an isolated part of Lake Burley Griffin. Normally there would be other people around, but with the weather having turned wet and rather cold, it was deserted this Sunday. There wasn’t much here anyway, a small car park, a couple of trees and a patch of grass and a small jetty over the lake.
“Can you believe that?” the shake Faye asked.
“I think he’s one of them, you know working for the aliens and demons,” said Alistair.
“You think so?” asked Gavin.
“Yeah, he’s not supernatural himself like a zombie, but he’s part of it,” said Alistair. “I think he sold his soul to the Devil, and he was given the job of trying to trap us this morning, maybe by the demons, or perhaps through one of their agents or even the aliens themselves? I just wish I knew for sure, then we can figure out what we need to do next.”
“I think we’re going to find out, Alistair,” said Faye. She pointed nervously at the car park, where the fat guy’s car came racing in; somehow he had followed and found them. The driver’s door opened and out stormed the fat man, still covered in the food and drinks tipped over him in the restaurant, clutching a tyre iron and wearing a furious expression on his face.
“Okay you freaks!” he called out, advancing upon the group. “You asked for trouble, and how you’ve got it. The restaurant people wanted me to wait for the cops, but I’d rather come down here and teach you a lesson myself.”
“Stay calm, stay back and let the pedophile approach,” said Alistair, casually opening the door of his four wheel drive as the enraged fat fuck stormed towards him brandishing the tyre iron.
Alistair watched as the fat man came at him and said, “You really should have brought a gun, like this one,” before pulling out his loaded double-barrel shotgun and pointing it at the fat man’s chest, who stopped short fear filling his fat face.
“Get on your knees pedophile like the dog that you are,” growled Alistair. “And drop your so-called weapon.”
The fat man dropped the tyre iron but was so transfixed by staring down the barrels of the 12-guage, the maniac holding it with his fingers on the trigger that he did not comply with the orders to get on his knees, until he felt metal on the back of his head.
“You heard him, get on your knees nonce,” came a female voice, the fat man turning his neck around to see the slutty blonde girl behind him, a rifle to the back of his head, which she cocked to indicate that it was loaded. Next to her was her maniac of a husband, unbelievably still wearing his party hat.
The fat man, fear going through every vein in his body did as he was directed. “Please, please,” he babbled. “If you let me go I won’t go to the police, I won’t tell anyone, I won’t press any charges…”
Alistair watched the fat man on the ground dispassionately, his distaste growing the more he groveled. Approaching him, Alistair smashed the shotgun into his ugly pig face, the fat man screaming in pain, this doubled when Danielle pistol whipped him with the rifle.
“Get up you weak bastard,” ordered Alistair.
The fat man struggled to his feet, only for Alistair to hit him with the shotgun again in the face.
“On second thoughts, stay on the ground where you belong,” snarled Alistair, standing over his captive with the gun trained at his head. “Get up again you fat pedo, and I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”
The fat man watched through narrow, piggish eyes, blood running down from one of the places where Alistair had hit him with the shotgun. Danielle continued to hold her rifle at his head. “Should we kill him now?” she asked casually.
Alistair shook his head. “No, not yet.” He turned to the fat man. “You are a glutton, you are a pedophile and you are a coward.”
“Please, please, I’m not a pedophile…” the fat man pleaded, but Alistair cut him off.
“Silence!” he bellowed. He turned to the others. “First we take our revenge for what he did to Erica at that restaurant, like this.”
Turning around, he kicked the fat man in the back, the man screaming in agony as Alistair was wearing boots, and kicked him hard. Cornelius was also wearing boots, which hurt just as hard as when he kicked the fat man in his blubber covered ribcage. Danielle was not wearing boots but sneakers, however it didn’t hurt any less when she kicked him as hard as she could in the groin.
The fat man writhed on the ground, rolling around in agony as Alistair kicked him in the arse, and another kick from Danielle landed on the back of his head. Alistair put the shotgun to one side and turned his captive over, punching him in the fat stomach and then the face, Cornelius coming in to punch him too, before grabbing the length of pipe from the car and belting him across the back with it, then bashing him across one of his shins.
“You want more of that fatso?” the frenzied Cornelius yelled, before smashing his other shin with the pipe.
“Stop your fucking whining you rock spider or I’ll pull the trigger and blow your fucking head off,” Danielle warned, slamming the rifle butt into the fat man’s mouth, splitting his lip and drawing blood.
“Help me get him to his feet,” Alistair ordered Cornelius, the two men doing just this and holding their captive by the arms. Alistair then turned to Gavin and indicated Erica. “This pervert followed your girlfriend into the toilet, he was in the restaurant looking for children to molest and God knows how many other times he’s gotten away with it. Come and take your revenge, teach the pedophile a lesson, it’s what a real man would do, to protect his girlfriend.”
Gavin had been standing with Faye and Erica. The three more placid members of the group, they had recognized that while they had to defend themselves against evil and the fat man was bad, they were not into violence, unlike Alistair, Danielle and Cornelius who had wasted no time beating up their captive.
However, Alistair’s words resonated with Gavin, and the young man found the need to protect Erica’s honor. As Alistair and Cornelius held the fat man and Danielle kept the rifle trained on him, Gavin came up to him. “Punch him in the stomach, punch him in the head. Punch him as many times as you can, hard as you like. Go on, do it!” urged Alistair.
With that kind of prompting, Gavin delivered five hard punches to the fat man’s stomach, hearing him groaning then punched him in the face once. “Knee him in the balls Gavin,” Danielle said, Gavin doing just this.
Having had his revenge, Gavin backed away and rejoined Erica and Faye, leaving Alistair, Cornelius and Danielle to deal with their captive, and they were not going to let up. Alistair punched the fat man hard in the back, then grabbed his pony tail, yanking it from his balding scalp with his scream of agony carrying in the wet, still air. Cornelius launched a frenzied attack on the fat man, punching him to the ground before Danielle likewise punched him repeatedly when he was down, the young couple spitting on him as they ceased their attack.
Erica, Faye and Gavin looked away. They had no sympathy for the fat man, he was a pedophile and conspiring with the evil forces against them but it was still pretty brutal to watch Alistair, Danielle and Cornelius inflict such violence.
The fat man writhed on the ground groaning in the fetal position, and Danielle asked, “Do we shoot him now?”
“Yeah, kill the pedo!” crowed Cornelius. “There’s a jerry can of petrol in the car and some matches, let’s cook him!”
“We need information first,” said Alistair. “He’s in on all this, remember?”
He turned to the fat man, training his gun upon him. “Now you tell me the truth, mother fucker. Who sent you to get us? Was it the demons, was it a vampire or was it the aliens. Tell me!”
“What are you babbling about you maniac?” said the fat man in a pained voice. “You’re mental, your whole family is mental.”
“Wrong answer nonce,” said Alistair. He delivered three hard kicks to the fat man’s stomach and ribs, their captive screaming in agony and writhing on the floor.
“We’ll try again,” said Alistair. “Who sent you? Who are you working for?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said the fat man, which unimpressed Alistair, who reached down, grabbed what remained of the pedophile’s ponytail and smashed his face into the asphalt, breaking his nose.
Cornelius looked into the car and noticed under the passenger seat the carving knife his mother had grabbed on the way out of the house on Friday, which had since been forgotten. He brandished it in front of the fat guy, the others noting the terror on his face.
“Nice and sharp this,” said Cornelius using it to shave some hair from his forearm.
Danielle stood over the fat man, her foot on his throat. “As you can see, my husband’s got a knife. What do you think he’s going to do with the knife?”
“If you don’t tell us what we want to know you’ll find out very soon,” promised Alistair. “This is your last chance, pedophile. Who sent you? Who are you working for? Is it the demons, is the aliens or is it a vampire?”
The fat man struggled to find his voice, lying in an attempt to have some chance of escaping these lunatics, and the other three who stood watching and blocking his chance of getting back to his car. “I’ll tell you, I’ll show you,” he gasped.
“Good we’re getting somewhere,” said Alistair. He glared at the fat man, he and Cornelius dragging him to his feet. “You’d better show us, and be quick about it.”
Dizzy, in complete agony in every part of his body and feeling sick, the fat man staggered around in a daze, not impressing Cornelius who ran up behind him and kicked him hard in his fat arse. “Come on nonce, we don’t have all fucking day to stand around waiting for you, lard-ass.”
Not sure which way was which, or even what was up and down, the fat man staggered away towards the lake, blood streaming from his wounds, the Hawkins family following as the fat man with agonizing steps walked onto the jetty. His 200 kilogram body swayed on the jetty close to the edge, clutching his chest before he lost his balance and fell into the lake.
The fat man’s fate was sealed as he hit his head on a pylon on his way down, and he was already unconscious as he landed face down with an almighty splash. Getting damp from the persistent drizzle, the Hawkins watched the fat pedophile floating face down, the water around him turning red.
“Is he dead?” Erica asked.
“I think he is now,” said Danielle. She pointed to a series of bubbles not far from the fat man, a pair of eyes on antennae emerging from the lake, similar to the eyed antennae seen on snails. What to emerge however was not some sort of snail, it was a hideous black creature with eyes on antennae, an enormous mouth and big arms with long talons. It opened its mouth and let out an ear-shattering roar, its open mouth showing its razor-sharp teeth.
“What the fuck is it?” the stunned Erica asked.
“It’s a bunyip,” said Gavin, everyone watching the monster in awe.
Fortunately the bunyip did not notice the Hawkins family, its attention was all on the fat man. With a blood-curdling scream it made for its prey, sinking its teeth into the fat man’s neck and ripping out his throat, killing him instantly, before taking a massive chunk out of his stomach and eating it.
The Hawkins family was too transfixed to look away, and it was clear that the bunyip despite its fearsome nature was very generous about sharing its prey. There came another loud roar, and from the waters of the lake emerged the long neck of a plesiosaur-like monster, similar to the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. The lake monster wasted no time in moving in to feed, it swam over on its flippers and ripped off the pedophile’s right leg, the sound of it crunching the bones audible.
More predators were soon in the lake keen to eat the fat man, and while these were Earth-bound predators they most definitely did not belong in a Canberra lake, miles inland. An Australian saltwater crocodile and an American alligator used death rolls to rip off and devour lumps of blubber from the fat man’s torso. They were joined in the feeding frenzy by two lesser known crocodilians — an Asian gharial with a long pointy snout and a South American caiman, these reptiles likewise ripping into the fat man with their sharp teeth and tearing off flesh with death rolls.
A fin speeding towards what remained of the carcass soon revealed itself to be a white pointer shark, which grabbed the fat man’s other leg. A school of deadly piranha fish were taking small bites out of the fat man’s internal organs, and what looked like an enormous eel grabbed one of the arms and took off with it. The bunyip took the fat man’s head and submerged with it still in its mouth, and the predators soon vanished underwater, the fat man completely consumed, the only sign he had been there red blood-filled lake water.
An evil laugh was heard, and the Hawkins family saw the same satanic cloven-hoofed figure that had appeared in the chalet in Nelson Bay upon the jetty, surrounded by fire and brandishing its pitchfork, setting back its horned head and laughing. It was flanked by two silent dark hooded figures which carried scythes, obviously grim reapers here to assist their boss the devil to take the soul of the fat pedophile back to Hell, to burn in damnation for eternity.
The appearance of a silver UFO in the distance was further evidence that staying here was not a good idea, and the family dashed for their cars and sped away, leaving behind the vandalized car of the now deceased fat man.
*
At Manly, Lisa’s brunch with her boyfriend and their circle of friends hadn’t been as dramatic as her brother’s brunch with the Hawkins family in Canberra. It had just gone noon and Lisa and Pete had returned to the Baxter house, and as Lisa opened the front door Pete fondled her arse, stroking her panty lines through the fabric of the long floral skirt she wore.
Lisa giggled. “Stop it.”
“You look so hot,” said Pete, running his hand through her long blonde hair.
“Come on, didn’t you get enough in bed this morning?” Lisa laughed.
Pete thought back to how they had fucked missionary position this morning, both of them reaching orgasm at the same moment and Pete watching Lisa cleaning his semen out of her pussy when they had a shower together afterwards. “No, never enough. Come on Lisa, your brother’s back later this afternoon, and your parents tomorrow so…”
“Yeah okay then, down boy,” Lisa giggled as they went inside, Pete’s hands all over Lisa as they went into the kitchen, only for the telephone to start ringing and break the moment.
“Let it go to answering machine,” Pete suggested, but Lisa shook her head.
“It might be my grandparents,” she said, picking up the receiver. “Hello.”
The caller was not one of Lisa and Gavin’s grandparents, but one of Gavin’s friends. “Hi Lisa? It’s Gino Rossi, I was wondering if Gavin is there please?”
The feeling of worry that had plagued Lisa yesterday returned in seconds. “Gino? Why are you calling Gavin?”
“Oh, just some of us were heading over to Paddington this afternoon to the markets, and we thought Gavin and Erica might like to come too. That’s if they’re not at work, or too busy studying.”
Lisa’s heart was pounding. “Gino, my brother is supposed to be with you. You were all going camping up the Colo River.”
Gino sounded puzzled. “Camping up the Colo? No, that’s two weeks from now. We’ve been here all weekend.”
Lisa’s face showed deep worry and Pete was concerned. “You okay?” he asked anxiously.
Lisa held up her hand and spoke to Gino again. “Gino, on Friday Gavin rang me at work and told me that he had mixed up the dates for the camping trip and it was this weekend. I even rang your house yesterday and spoke to your grandmother, she confirmed you had gone away camping with Gavin.”
“Oh, that’s my Nonna, she lives with us,” said Gavin. “Nonna has a bit of Alzheimer’s and gets confused. She’s not supposed to answer the phone, to leave it to Mum, Dad, me or my sister, but she does and when she talks to people as soon as they say something she agrees with them.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know about your Nonna,” said Lisa. “So, nobody went camping this weekend? Have you seen Gavin at all these past few days?”
“No on both counts,” said Gavin. “Lisa, are you okay? It sounds like something is wrong at your house.”
“Something is very wrong here,” said Lisa. “I haven’t seen or heard from Gavin since he called me lunchtime Friday to say he was going camping, but that was a lie. So where is he?”
“Have you spoken to Erica?” Gino suggested.
“No, Erica’s gone to Adelaide with her parents, her whole family are apparently away. Gino, can you do me a favor please? Can you please call around your friends, see if any of them have seen or spoken to Gavin since Friday and let me know? Here’s my mobile phone number.”
Gino wrote down the number, and trying to sound more confident than he actually felt said, “Don’t worry Lisa, I’m sure there’s a simple explanation. Get back to you soon.”
“Thanks Gino,” said Lisa, turning to Pete. “There’s something really strange going on here, we need to get back down to the Hawkins house and check what’s going on.”
Pete, who wasn’t overly sold on the idea that anything was wrong yesterday was now, the phone call from Gino had changed everything.
Lisa and Pete hurried out of the house and down the street to Number 9. The house was exactly the same as yesterday morning, the porch light still on, the door of Cornelius’s car still wide open, uncollected letters and junk mail hanging out of the letter box, the garage roller door up, Faye Hawkins’ hatchback parked in there but no sign of Alistair’s four wheel drive nor of Danielle Hawkins’ car.
Approaching the house Lisa and Pete knocked on the front door, rang the bell and called ‘Hello!’ but it went unanswered. Lisa and Pete went into the garage, where Erica’s bike, the lawnmower and other tools remained unsecured.
The silence was eerie, and Lisa looked at the door that led into the house. She tried the handle, which turned — obviously somebody had left it open. “I wouldn’t normally do this, but I have to find out what’s going on,” said Lisa, going into the house with Pete behind her.
Inside the house, the silence was so eerie it was almost loud. “Hello, anybody home?” Lisa called, this met with no response. “Brendan, Cornelius, Danielle?” Again, nothing. Just the same silence, punctuated by the sounds of a ticking clock, a dripping tap and a struggling refrigerator.
An eerie silence while un-nerving was no proof that anything was wrong, but a quick look around confirmed that there was something very disturbing going on. A toaster with ‘popped’ toast was switched on and sitting on the bench, an open jar of vegemite next to it. There was a bottle of orange juice left open near the sink, and the refrigerator door was open and some of the food had already started to spoil, such as a packet of cheese with a tiger brand mascot on the wrapping.
Soon things were getting even more disturbing. In Erica’s bedroom, the bed was not made, the wardrobe doors and drawers were open and somebody had rummaged through them, as though looking for things in a hurry. Notably, one of Erica’s sleep shirts was on the floor, along with a pair of the young girl’s white cotton panties with cartoon cats on the cover. Looking down at Erica’s knickers, Lisa could see the teenager’s female stains on the saddle, obviously Erica had been wearing them before she took them off.
Lisa and Pete soon noticed other out of place things around the abandoned house, such as Danielle’s mobile phone left behind. Why wouldn’t she have taken this if she and Cornelius went to the Gold Coast like they had claimed?
The dripping tap was coming from the main bathroom but otherwise there wasn’t anything wrong here, but in the living room there was plenty to see. There was a bowl of cereal on the coffee table, half eaten with the spoon still in it, with more cereal spilled on the couch. The TV set was on, but set to the VCR channel, and showing static snow, the flickering patterns adding to the disquiet of both Pete and Lisa as they continued to explore the Hawkins house.
The parents’ bedroom at the front of the house showed the same sort of disorder as Erica’s with the bed not made and the drawers flung open, as though somebody was either searching for something or packing in a hurry.
Lisa and Pete then walked to where the door that led to the granny flat and stopped short. In front as though guarding the entrance were a crocodile lilo and two sex dolls, the male doll dressed as a clown and the female doll as a witch, sitting in chairs one each side of the blow up crocodile.
“What the fuck?” asked Pete.
Lisa shook her head. “The clown costume, that’s Cornelius’s. I’ve seen him wearing it. And that’s Erica’s witch costume, I remember she wore it to a Halloween dance at she went to at school with Gavin last year. Why the fuck would anybody do this though?”
“Your brother’s girlfriend’s family are very strange,” said Pete.
“Yeah, but this strange?” Lisa could make no sense of this.
“Disgusting too,” said Pete, pointing down at the floor in disgust at a period pad that lay there face up, showing the wearer’s dark red monthly blood stains.
“Oh yuck,” said Lisa, but her eyes then fixated on something else on the floor.
It was another pair of knickers like Erica’s in her bedroom, but Lisa knew straight away that these white panties with red, blue and yellow flowers did not belong to Faye, Erica or Danielle Hawkins. “Those are mine,” said Lisa. “My panties.”
“Are you sure?” Pete asked.
“Yes, I wore them to work on Thursday,” said Lisa. “They’re definitely my knickers.”
“What would your knickers be doing here?” asked the puzzled Pete.
“Gavin must have brought them over here,” said Lisa. “How else?”
“But what would your brother be doing with your underwear? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nothing here makes any sense,” said Lisa. “Like in here.” They went into the bedroom used by Cornelius and Danielle where the bed was also unmade and it looked as though somebody had ransacked the drawers and wardrobe. But most disturbing were huge red bloodstains on the white sheets.
“We’re going to the police, this isn’t normal,” said Lisa. “I’m going to report Gavin missing.”
“Agreed, this place is Mary Celeste level weird,” agreed Pete.
The young couple, both disturbed and freaked in equal measures, were about to make for the side door to exit into the garage, when the ringing telephone shattered the silence of the abandoned house. Both jumped, and stared at the phone as it continued to ring.
“Should we answer it?” asked Pete.
“I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t touch it?” mused Lisa. “Let it go to the answering machine?”
The phone stopped ringing and the answering machine came on, the voice of Faye Hawkins thanking the person for their call and asking them to leave a message after the beep. Pete and Lisa listened as a woman’s voice filled the kitchen.
“Hi Faye, it’s Angela, I left you a message yesterday but didn’t hear back from you, hope you and Alistair and the kids are well. Anyway, please call me back, Charlie and I are going to Glenelg for lunch with the kids, so if you call me back after 3 o’clock Adelaide time — that’s 3.30 Eastern standard time, that would be best. Catch you soon, bye.”
Pete and Lisa looked at each other. “That’s Erica’s aunty in Adelaide, Faye’s sister. She doesn’t sound like a stroke victim to me, which is apparently the reason they went to South Australia. Except they obviously didn’t, so what’s going on?”
“I think we’d better let the police figure that out,” said Pete.
“I agree, let’s get down the police station,” said Lisa. Both of them hurried from the house, not sorry to be out of there, Lisa frantic to find out where the fuck her brother was.
*
Gavin at this moment was sitting in the back of Mr. Hawkins’ four wheel drive as it sped across the border and out of the Australian Capital Territory and back into New South Wales. After seeing the brutal death of the fat man in the lake, torn to pieces and eaten by monsters and predatory reptiles and fish followed by the devil and two grim reapers come to claim his soul and condemn him to eternal damnation in Hell there was no reason to stay in Canberra.
Racing back to the hotel, frantic to get their stuff as it contained personal information that could be used against them if it fell into the wrong hands, the Hawkins family went back to the lobby so fast that they did not even wait for the lifts but took the stairs.
The hotel manager and his son were astonished to see the odd family that had bribed them to stay here depart so quickly, but the father’s explanation — that his mother had been taken ill and died in the night and they had to cut short their trip and rush back to Swan Hill — convinced them, although not entirely.
The touristy things the group had planned around Canberra for the afternoon were all obviously cancelled. Dangerous monsters lurked in Lake Burley Griffin, the West Lake and the Molonglo River, UFO’s were in the area and there were demonic presences here too. They needed to get out of here and fast.
Driving through farming country and heading for the coastal town of Bateman’s Bay in the South Coast region of New South Wales, there was intermittent rain, sometimes drizzle, sometimes heavy other times the sun would briefly shine through the clouds.
Nobody had discussed the events back in Canberra — there had been no time in the haste to leave. But now as the cars stopped in farmland about halfway between the capital and the coast to allow Danielle to duck behind a tree for a piss and a tampon change.
When Danielle returned adjusting her knickers through her jeans the group then addressed the morning’s events back in Canberra. “So, what do you think happened back there, with the fat guy in the restaurant the fox warned us about?” Faye asked.
Alistair, who had now reverted back to the stern, gruff and grouchy Alistair rather than the Alistair who was trying to have fun back in Canberra, fortunately had a sage answer for his wife, kids and their partners.
“The fat man, he was a pedophile yes, and he was evil, but he was a stooge,” declared Alistair. “I think he sold his soul to evil a long time ago. The demons would have contacted him to do a simple job, to try and trap us so the aliens can capture us. But the Demons had a second agenda, they wanted him dead, perhaps he’d failed them at other tasks they set him in the past. I couldn’t say. When the fat guy fell into the lake, the demons sent the monsters to kill and eat him in front of us for two reasons. One to kill him, and two to send a message to scare us, to let us know what will happen to us too. So we need to be extra vigilant. Now let’s go.”
This made a lot of sense to the others, who were glad of Alistair’s sage assessment of the situation. Before they could get back into the cars however they caught movement in a field across the road, and looked at what was going on. There was a large windmill on the property, and around it danced a group of people dressed as witches, wizards and druids, all of them chanting in Latin. Also dancing around the windmill and chanting in Latin were two bears, one a grizzly bear and the other a polar bear.
In the field were what looked like cattle, but these were much larger than any cows or even buffalos and didn’t look like any bovine the group had seen. “You’re a bit of an expert on weird animals, do you know what they are?” Faye asked her daughter’s boyfriend.
Gavin looked at one of the strange animals as it made a lowing noise. “At a guess I’d say they’re aurochs, an old European cattle. They’ve been extinct probably as long as the dodo.”
Quite sure they didn’t want to hang around with dangerous looking bovines supposed to be extinct for over four centuries, dancing bears and weird people carrying out some sort of magic ritual in a field, everyone got back in the cars, Alistair and Danielle making haste for the coast.
*
In a Sydney police station for the local area where the Hawkins and Baxter family lived, Lisa Baxter was also pondering a mystery other than that of her missing brother, and this was how some people ever got into the New South Wales police. Lisa was already on edge, while waiting to be served her mobile phone rang and it was Gino, who had no good news for her. Nobody among their friends had seen either Gavin or Erica since last week, and not heard from them either.
Adding to Lisa’s disquiet was that the television was on in the waiting area, and there were news reports of people acting like maniacs, such as some drug-taking teenagers thinking that the Devil had set Byron Bay on fire and running around in the middle of the night warning people. Closer to home were bizarre reports about lunatics in the Blue Mountains firing a shotgun and rifle at a group of scouts doing a night tour on one of the trails, a third person having a chainsaw. Not surprisingly the kids in the scout group were traumatized, some needing hospital treatment for nervous shock.
When finally she was able to talk to an officer, the young constable — a Constable Jackson aged about 25 who looked like a dork and unfortunately acted like one too. He refused to file any sort of missing person’s report as he didn’t seem to understand that Gavin hadn’t gone camping as claimed, suggesting he was just late back and it wasn’t a police matter. He would not listen to Lisa’s assertions at the bizarre way the Hawkins family had left their house nor that the story about going to Adelaide was obviously a lie. He even had the gall to tell her she and her boyfriend shouldn’t have gone into the Hawkins’ family’s house without their permission. Her boyfriend backing her up on the claims didn’t help and Lisa and Pete were both severely frustrated at the obstructive young man.
“Constable Jackson, can I please speak with somebody more senior than you?” asked Lisa. “A sergeant or a detective perhaps?”
“Miss Baxter, if your brother still isn’t back tomorrow I suggest you call police general enquires…” began Constable Jackson, before another male voice was heard.
“Is everything okay out here, Constable?” A tall, good-looking police officer with red hair aged about 30 appeared from out of the back rooms.
“Sergeant Smith, I was just explaining to this young lady that she can’t…”
“Isn’t it about time for your afternoon break Constable?” asked Sergeant Smith. “How about you take it now, and I’ll assist this lady and gentleman.”
The constable departed and the sergeant offered his hand with a friendly smile, shaking hands with Lisa and Pete. “I’m Sergeant Darren Smith, pleased to meet you.”
“Lisa Baxter, Pete Jones, likewise,” said Lisa, returning the sergeant’s handshake.
“From what I overheard, I understand your brother is missing?” asked Sergeant Smith.
Lisa nodded. “Yes, Gavin, he’s my younger brother. Things have been really strange, I don’t know where to begin.”
Sergeant Smith gave the young woman a friendly smile. “How about we go into an interview room and we can talk about it?” Another uniformed constable, this time a pretty young woman with strawberry blonde hair came into the police station after returning from the toilet. “This is Constable Beth Walker, who will be sitting in with us.”
Soon and with the police having gotten Lisa and Pete two cups of tea, Lisa and Pete were sitting in the interview room with Sergeant Smith and Constable Walker describing the bizarre behavior of her brother before he vanished, and how the family of his girlfriend had vanished too, making up lies about going interstate.
Sergeant Smith was a mask of professionalism, but his composure slipped when Lisa mentioned the name ‘Cornelius Hawkins’ when discussing her brother’s girlfriend Erica Hawkins, also seemingly missing.
“Cornelius Hawkins?” The sergeant’s expression showed his distaste. “That Cornelius Hawkins? What am I saying, how many Cornelius Hawkins can there be?”
“Yes,” said Lisa. “You know of him?”
“He has met my acquaintance yes,” said Sergeant Smith tactfully. He didn’t disclose that he had been very close to charging Cornelius Hawkins with wasting police time last year after his antics in a park frightening old ladies, and it was only the Inspector finally deciding it wasn’t worth extra resources prosecuting a moron who was likely to get a slap on the wrist in a magistrates’ court anyway that stopped this. So Cornelius was given an official caution with which he blew his nose as he left the police station, and also was that week’s winner of the dickhead of the week competition that the police at this station had for morons who they had to deal with.
Sergeant Smith not for the first time fantasized about transferring Constable Jackson to a station out the back of Bourke as Lisa and Pete talked about the Hawkins family house and how it was left. How could any serving officer dismiss a report like this?
“We’ll get a missing persons’ report for your brother lodged right away,” said Sergeant Smith. “And Constable Walker and I will be going back with you to the house with forensics, to secure it and start the investigation. You did the right thing reporting this.”
As Lisa signed the missing person’s report for Gavin that Constable Walker had prepared, the reality of his hit her and she felt a lump in her throat and had to swallow hard to stop herself crying. Her little brother was officially a missing person. Her parents would be coming back tomorrow to such terrible news. What if Gavin was one of those people who just vanished from the face of the Earth never to be seen again? She could never live with herself, always wondering if she should have handled things differently.
Returning to the Hawkins house Lisa and Pete waited outside with a third officer while the police secured the property as a potential crime scene with the ‘police line — do not cross’ tape and the forensic officers began their work.
“This place is like the Marie Celeste,” said Beth Walker, the young constable unconsciously referencing Pete’s reaction to seeing inside the Hawkins house earlier as neither Lisa nor Pete had used this reference to the infamous ship when making their statements.
“I agree, it’s weird as anything I’ve seen,” said Sergeant Smith. A model of professionalism, he indulged in a few seconds of unprofessionalism as a forensics took photos of Lisa’s used panties left on the floor. He noticed creamy colored snatch stains on the white double cotton saddle, and could not help but think that these came from the vagina of the very attractive Lisa.
After the blow up dolls and crocodile were photographed and dusted for prints, Sergeant Smith like all officers at the scene wearing gloves knocked on the door leading to the granny flat, hoping to rouse this mysterious Brendan Hawkins, who according to Lisa Baxter never came outside. If indeed he was there, and with the rest of the family missing this was unlikely.
“Brendan Hawkins, this is Sergeant Darren Smith and Constable Beth Walker, New South Wales police. If you can hear us, open the door please, we need to talk to you.”
No answer to this, and other attempts to talk to him also failed. “We’re coming in Brendan,” warned Sergeant Smith, he and Constable Walker entering the granny flat, which was small but meticulously tidy.
“He’s not here, Sarge, he must have gone with them,” said Beth Walker, there being no sign of anyone in the granny flat, which was as silent as the rest of the house.
Sergeant Smith nodded. This Brendan Hawkins character had vanished as completely as the rest of the family and the sister’s boyfriend, and the police went back to continue looking over the property.
*
Brendan Hawkins of course was not with the rest of the family as they stood in a car park at Batemans Bay, looking out to sea through a late afternoon sun shower.
“I’m a bit worried about them using our car number plates to track us,” said Faye.
“I have been thinking about that too,” said Alistair. “But unless we steal the plates off other cars and switch them what are we supposed to do? And that’s too risky.”
“We could make up fake plates,” Danielle suggested. She pointed at another car with Victorian registration plates. “That has white plates with blue numbers and letters.” She then indicated another interstate vehicle, this one from Queensland. “And that Queensland one has white plates with maroon numbers and letters. We passed a shop on the way in that looked like it sells stationary. All we’d need is white cardboard and two markers, one maroon and one dark blue.”
“I can do it,” declared Cornelius. “I’m an artist.”
“Yeah a bullshit artist,” growled his father.
“Alistair, if he’s confident enough maybe let him try it,” Faye suggested. “We don’t have too many other options.”
“Yeah okay then, but remember, you fuck it up and I bust your arse,” Alistair warned Cornelius, as he and Danielle went back to town and quickly came back with the cardboard, some scissors, tape and two marker pens maroon and dark blue.
Looking at how the letter and number sequences worked on both the Victorian and Queensland car registration ran, Cornelius set to work.
“Make sure you have the numbers right for both plates front and back,” grumbled Alistair.
“As if Dad, I’m not retarded,” Cornelius shot back. Showing his artistic talent, soon there were two sets of false Victorian and Queensland registration plates done to perfection. Cutting them out and making sure nobody was watching, Cornelius and Danielle covered the yellow and black New South Wales plates on Danielle’s car with the blue and white Victorian plates, and then the New South Wales plates on the four wheel driver were covered by the false Queensland plates, all firmly secured with plenty of tape. It would not be enough to fool the police close up, but more than good enough for passing vehicles on the road.
“About time you served some purpose in life,” was Alistair’s only comment to his son.
The family ambled down onto the beach to stretch their legs after so much driving. Erica removed her sneakers and socks, and rolled up her tracksuit pants to her knees, the now barefoot young girl wading out into the ocean, the sand and saltwater getting between her teenage toes.
Erica’s enjoyment at a simple paddle at a beautiful beach at Batemans Bay was short lived. The teen looked down in the blue water as the waves rolled in, and saw several crabs. At least she thought they were crabs at first. These were not crabs, these things were weird, strange segmented bodies like a cross between an insect and a crustacean.
“Hey check these out,” said Erica, the others looking in amazement at the odd marine creatures that swam around her bare feet.
“What are they?” Cornelius asked.
Surprisingly, this time it was Danielle that answered, not Gavin. “They’re trilobites. I was covering for a biology teacher a few weeks back, the class were learning about them.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me they’ve been extinct hundreds of years too?” asked Alistair.
Danielle shook her head. “No. Millions of years. Many millions of years. The dinosaurs existed closer in time to us than they did to the trilobites.”
“You mean like those dinosaurs?” asked Gavin. He pointed along the beach, and everyone stopped short. Coming towards them were a variety of dinosaurs, a fierce tyrannosaurus, a long-bodied brontosaurus, a horned triceratops, a plated stegosaurus and a duck-billed dinosaur. Overhead flew four pterodactyls, and swimming in the ocean was a plesiosaurus, much like the one that had killed the fat guy in the lake back in Canberra.
Erica hastily stepped out of the sea, and coming the other way were other extinct animals these ones a bit more recent, from the Ice Age. There was a herd of wooly mammoths which trumpeted like modern elephants, and some wooly rhinos, two saber toothed cats stalking through the sand dunes.
“They’ve gone back even further it time to bring back extinct animals,” said the amazed Alistair, the presence of the trilobites and prehistoric beasts ensuring that the Hawkins family’s visit to Batemans Bay was a short one.
Sporting their false Victorian and Queensland number plates, the two cars crossed the Clyde River and went out of town, into the forests of the area to find a suitable hidden place to camp in the cars overnight.
*
Many miles north in Sydney, the police were doing an A1 job in launching the missing persons’ investigation. The extended Hawkins family were contacted, none of whom had heard from Alistair, Faye or the kids in recent days. It was quickly established with Faye’s family, both those in Sydney and the sister that had moved to Adelaide that the South Australian story was a complete fabrication, and her sister Angela was in perfect health, this evidenced by the phone call earlier captured on the answering machine. The Hawkins family were immediately listed as missing people too.
Lisa assisted by Pete frantically rang around family and friends both in Sydney and Wollongong to see if there was any contact with Gavin, which of course there was none. Lisa’s maternal grandparents immediately came to be with their granddaughter, her paternal grandparents said that they would make the drive up tonight too but it was decided in the end they would stay back for now. Nightfall was approaching, and it was a long drive. There was also a chance that Gavin might turn up in Wollongong to see family, and at this stage it might be better to stay south in case this did happen.
The police made contact with the domestic airlines, and it was confirmed that no passengers in the names of Gavin Baxter or Alistair, Faye, Brendan, Cornelius, Erica or Danielle Hawkins had flown under those names to Adelaide, the Gold Coast, or indeed any other destination around Australia. They could not have gone overseas.
To eliminate the possibility of driving or taking public transport to the Gold Coast, the police quickly rang all the theme parks in the area to see if they had interviewed a Cornelius Hawkins for a clown position over the weekend. None of them had, and had never heard of a Cornelius Hawkins.
The police got recent photos of Gavin and the Hawkins family except Brendan as no recent photographs of him could be found, and the media were informed. The police advised Lisa that there wasn’t much they could do so late on a Sunday evening with regards to news reports, but it would be on all channels from dawn tomorrow.
The sun set behind the Blue Mountains, the moon rose and darkness fell across Sydney, and Lisa sat with her grandparents and boyfriend, other relatives there to lend support, helping the police with their enquiries. She agonized about how to tell their parents, but in the end her grandparents decided it would be better to wait until tomorrow morning before the ship docked at Circular Quay.
There was nothing they could do so many miles out at sea, all it would do was cause unnecessary worry. In any case, Gavin had only been missing since Friday and he might turn up as early as tonight unharmed, wondering what all the fuss was about. Lots of missing people did.
*
Gavin at this moment was off a deserted track in the South Coast forest, listening to nocturnal bird calls, waiting for Erica to finish having a poo behind a large gum tree. The young girl emerged a few minutes later adjusting her knickers through her pink tracksuit pants, the teenager balancing a torch, shovel and roll of toilet paper in her hands.
“Everything okay?” asked Gavin.
“Yeah,” said Erica. She smiled thinly. “Although it might be better to stay away from that area for a while.”
Gavin laughed. “Warning noted.”
Erica looked down at noticed that she had a piece of toilet paper stuck to her shoe and bent down to remove the embarrassing evidence of her visit behind the tree. As she did so she looked upwards and stopped short in amazement.
“What’s wrong?” Gavin asked.
“Gavin, look at the sky! Oh my God!”
Gavin looked at the night sky and he could see the moon of course and the stars, but this was all wrong. There was no Southern Cross constellation nor other familiar stars visible, but in its place were the North Star Polaris, the Plough and the Lynx, all stars and constellations only visible in the Northern Hemisphere never the Southern Hemisphere.
“We’re seeing the Northern Hemisphere’s star systems,” said Gavin, his mouth agape.
“We need to tell the others,” said Erica.
The two teenagers hurried back to the makeshift camp through the forest. It was probably fortunate for Erica she didn’t know how close she came to standing on a sleeping tiger snake, nor Gavin knowing that the thing that tickled his arm when passed close to some vegetation and which he casually brushed away was in fact a scorpion.
Alistair, Faye, Cornelius and Danielle were standing outside their cars, not paying attention to the night sky until the youngest members of the group pointed it out. They all stared skywards, disbelieving that the sky had changed to show the stars of the Northern Hemisphere and not the Southern Hemisphere.
It wasn’t the only thing out of place. In a neat line were eight discs, all of different colors. There was a very small grey disc, a larger yellow one, a slightly smaller red one, then a row of four large discs respectively blue and orange, yellow, green and blue. At the other end was another very small yellow disc.
“That’s the planets,” said Gavin in amazement, the others getting the binoculars to look at the amazing sight of the other planets in perfect alignment. They were small of course, but all visible with the naked eye, definitely not the case for Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. With Jupiter and Saturn, it was possible to make out the red spot for Jupiter and the rings of Saturn with the aid of binoculars.
“Hey Danielle, I can see Uranus!” guffawed Cornelius, as he looked at the strange green planet and its blue neighbor Neptune through the binoculars.
“Ha, ha, ha, up yours Cornelius,” laughed Danielle, giving Cornelius the ‘up-yours hand’ gesture.
“What’s that blue streak up there?” Erica asked, indicating the blue light under the moon.
“That’s Halley’s Comet,” said Alistair, having seen the comet 12 years earlier when it flew past Earth during its 1986 visit, courtesy of a night job at a city hotel where he and the crew were able to observe Halley’s Comet from the roof.
Everyone took turns to look at the comet through binoculars, before Alistair declared solemnly, “It shows the sheer powers that are chasing us, being able to manipulate the stars and planets like that, as well as move a comet back in time. We need to be extra careful overnight. One person in each car stays awake for two hours to keep watch for danger while the others sleep, then we switch over. Any danger, then sound the alarm and we go. Gavin, you sleep with Danielle and Cornelius in their car, Erica, you’re with us.”
“Yes Mr. Hawkins,” said Gavin, going to Danielle’s car and taking first watch, while Danielle and Cornelius snored respectively in the back and front passenger seats. The young man looked out the car window, a shooting star visible in the strange sky, and Gavin could not believe he was looking at the planet Pluto with the naked eye. It was — should have been impossible — but there it was. Gavin was tired, but his worry about Lisa was keeping him awake for his watch. He hoped the demons, monsters, ghosts and aliens hadn’t come for her if they thought she knew too much.
*
In Sydney, Lisa was also looking at the night sky from the back patio of her parents’ house, but she could see the Southern Hemisphere sky, with the Southern Cross prominent. It had been a highly emotional and worrying day when events took a turn in the early afternoon, and Lisa’s view of the night sky began to blur as her eyes filled with tears.
Finally her attempts to stop herself crying failed, and she broke down in tears, her boyfriend and grandmother taking her inside and sitting her down in an armchair, getting her some tissues and attempting to comfort and reassure her as she sat sobbing. Floods of tears ran down her pretty face as she thought about her younger brother. Where was he? Who was he with? Would she ever see him again, or was Gavin gone forever? Lisa could barely bring herself to think about this possibility.
END OF CHAPTER 6 — TO BE CONCLUDED…..