Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills Ch. 05

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

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

"Can I drive Danielle's car?" Cornelius asked.

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

"Oh goody!" exclaimed Cornelius.

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

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

"I need to pee too," said Gavin.

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

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

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

Gavin cowered slightly at his girlfriend's father's intrusion into his personal space. "Um, grass trees."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hello?" he called out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't you dare jump that counter!" snapped Roseanne.

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

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

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

"We need to stop this!" said Cornelius.

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

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

"Dad, move away from her, she's dangerous," said Cornelius.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll just duck in there," said Erica shyly.

"Go on, you'll be fine," Gavin said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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