Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills Ch. 04

"What friends?" asked Cornelius.

"On the TV screen there!" said the vampire, pointing at the television, the TV presenters doing likewise.

"Aah!" yelled Cornelius, who flinched in horror as he saw the robots that had come out of the TV and chased him back at the house that morning. "Stop talking to me, stop talking to me!"

"Your friends up there have a proposal," said the lawyer vampire. "They are willing to let you and your wife Danielle live, as long as you hand over your parents, sister and sister's boyfriend to the aliens and let them take them away to live on a spaceship."

"What?" yelled Cornelius.

"Oh, and the robots aren't going to kill you, but they do want to beat you up," said the vampire. "Not too much, you know a trip to hospital in an ambulance and a couple of days in a ward type beating up, but not an intensive care type beating up. I tried to negotiate on this, but I'm sorry, they insist on beating you up. They wouldn't budge on that point."

"No!" screamed Cornelius, rolling into the fetal position on the floor and clutching his head. "I don't want to get beaten up, and please don't take my family away and make them live on a space ship!"

"Cornelius, my advice as an attorney is that you take the proposal," said the vampire, thrusting towards Cornelius a contract and a fountain pen. "Sign it, and it will be the best outcome."

"What if I don't?" Cornelius screamed.

"I think it's best I let the robots tell you that," said the vampire.

Cornelius watched as the TV presenters pointed at the television, in which the robots watched the proceedings. "Execute him, execute him, execute him!" chanted the robots, their voices getting louder and louder with each second.

The four TV presenters joined in. "Sign the contract, sign the contract, sign the contract," they chanted, indicating the vampire and the document full of legalese he held out towards Cornelius, along with the fountain pen.

"No, no, no!" Cornelius screamed. "You can't make me, you can't make me!"

"Cornelius!" came another voice, a voice he recognized. It was his mother's voice and now she and the rest of the family were standing around him. Well cartoon versions of them, but as Cornelius was a cartoon too now, it didn't really matter.

"Cornelius, what's happening?" Danielle squatted down beside him and stroked his head. "What's wrong?"

"My head, my head, they're in my head!" wailed Cornelius. "Make them stop, make them stop talking to me and putting messages in my mind! Make the vampire, the robots and the TV people go away!"

"It's alright Cornelius, we'll get you out of here and back to the room to rest," said Faye.

"Is he alright, did you want us to call an ambulance?" asked the anxious restaurant manager. "He seems very unwell."

"No it's okay, my husband suffers really severe migraine headaches." Danielle lied perfectly, and Faye Hawkins joined in.

"Yes, it's been the same ever since he was a boy, they come on without warning. He'll be fine once he has his medication and lies down in a darkened room. Let's get you back now Cornelius."

Cornelius shook his head. "What if they get in my head again? What if they're in the lighthouse, and use it to put invisible rays in my head on the way back?"

"We won't let that happen," said Faye. "I've got an idea. Erica, go and get the empty chicken bucket from our table."

Erica dashed over and retrieved the requested item. It was full of chicken bones from legs and wings, so Erica simply tipped them onto the table, oblivious to the stares of other diners, and raced back with it. Erica handed the empty chicken bucket to her mother, who in turn put it over Cornelius's head.

"There you go, that will keep you safe on the way back, they won't be able to put rays into your brain wearing that," said Faye.

"Let's go back now," said Alistair, taking Cornelius by one arm and Danielle by the other to escort him out of the restaurant.

"My head hurts," Cornelius complained, his voice somewhat muffled by the chicken bucket that covered his head.

"You'll be okay soon," Faye assured her son.

"Okay, enjoy your tea, show's over, nothing to see here," growled Alistair as he and Danielle guided Cornelius from the restaurant and everyone looked at them.

Faye, Erica and Gavin followed them and they stepped out of the restaurant, passing the large chicken statue that stood outside. As Erica walked by her, the chicken statue laughed at her. "Your brother is such a freak Erica," it intoned.

Erica's petite little body went rigid, and the skinny bespectacled teenager stormed towards it. "You got something to say chicken?"

The chicken again laughed, enraging Erica more. "You think it's funny that vampires and robots are trying to put messages in my brother's head! Fuck you, chicken. You hear me, fuck you!"

"Yeah, like she said, don't laugh at my husband when he's sick," Danielle screeched, turning and confronting the chicken, which again laughed.

"It's not fucking funny you stupid chicken!" Erica screeched.

"Yeah, I'll fucking smash you!" yelled Danielle. "Then we'll see who's fucking laughing."

"Girls!" The voice of Faye Hawkins cut through the car park. "I don't like the chicken laughing at Cornelius any more than you do, but you need to let it go."

"Your mother is right Erica, let it go," said Gavin, guiding his fuming girlfriend away from the chicken statue.

"I hate that fucking chicken, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!" Erica screeched, pointing at it.

"I know you do, but you can't do anything about it now," said Gavin, taking Erica by the hand.

As the group walked through the car park, the rooster on the roof let joined its companion on the ground, by laughing at Cornelius and then letting out a loud cock-a-doodle-doo.

Danielle turned and looked up at it as it crowed again. "Yeah, laugh it up rooster," she shouted. "You're nothing but a really big chook, what the fuck would you know?"

The Hawkins family were completely unaware that this had been observed by another family who had pulled in, a very clean cut family whose car displayed Christian stickers. The father dressed in a shirt and trousers and the mother in a long skirt and blouse turned to their three kids -- two boys aged about 10 and 12 and a daughter aged about 14 -- as the group watched a tall young man wearing a homophobic black tee shirt and with a chicken bucket on his head was led from the car park by an severe looking bearded man and a fairly trashy blonde girl, a middle aged woman dressed in 1970s clothes and a young man trying to keep an angry and disruptive teenage girl who had been screeching at a chicken statue under control following behind.

The father said his daughter and sons, "You see kids, that's why we always say no to drugs."

"Your father is right," said the mother. "Faith in Our Lord is the way to live our lives."

The family went into the restaurant where things had settled down after the Cornelius meltdown earlier. The television was showing the last segment of the current affairs program before the telecast of a Rugby League game commenced, and if the scenes in the restaurant and the car park weren't enough to convince people that taking drugs was a bad idea, then watching this segment would.

It described a new and dangerous illegal drug, small yellow pills. It seemed to have originated in Melbourne, but had been coming up in other Australian cities too. What made this drug far more dangerous than other illicit drugs was the bizarre effect it had on people who took it. Those using it felt perfectly normal, but suffered bizarre hallucinations and extreme paranoia lasting days.

There was an interview with a Melbourne family whose teenage daughter and her friends had taken these drugs at a rave party and after acting weird and paranoid for several days, the group of girls had vanished. As it turned they had walked all the way from Lilydale in Melbourne's outer eastern suburbs through the Dandenong Ranges, across the metropolitan area and all the way to Geelong, a city some 80 kilometers west of Melbourne. They were found cowering under the Geelong Pier, convinced that a flickering streetlight in the car park was a UFO there to abduct them.

Another case was in Sydney, where a teenage boy who had taken the drug had been acting very oddly, then literally ran away from home. He was found by police over 80 kilometers way, still running at full speed, convinced that mobsters from the Mafia and bikie gangs were trying to kill him. A similar case was in Brisbane, where a young woman who had also used this drug was running around on the Story Bridge in a blind panic causing traffic chaos, terrified that ghosts were chasing her. Some boys in Canberra who had been using the drug attempted to swim across Lake Burley Griffin, believing the devils and poltergeists pursuing them could not extend their power across water.

While the drug users in these cases survived, not all were so lucky. One heartbroken family in Adelaide described the loss of their 18-year-old daughter, who swam out into the sea at Glenelg in a bid to get away from vampires, and drowned in the ocean, her body washed up in the Port Adelaide River days later. On the Gold Coast, a young guy had believed God had given him the power to fly and tested the theory by leaping off the top floor of a high rise in Surfers Paradise. As it turned out, he could not fly and gravity won out. Another case saw a young English backpacker travelling in Darwin jump off a boat to avoid a monster, and she was never seen again, presumably ending up as dinner for the many saltwater crocodiles that called the ocean waters of the Northern Territory home.

Back at the motel, the manager Tom had watched the current affairs show and was glad that he and his wife had taught their kids about the dangers of drugs when they were growing up. He was now looking forward to the football, but the commotion outside saw him look out the office window. It was the weirdos from Chalet 12 returning, and this time the strangest of the group -- the oldest son -- wore a cardboard bucket from a friend chicken shop over his head. Tom shook his head. Was he seeing things? Had he unwittingly taken this drug too, and now hallucinating? Given the events today, he had to wonder.

END OF CHAPTER 4 -- TO BE CONTINUED....