Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills

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

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

*

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

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

Gavin shook his head. "I didn't hear anything, slept right through."

"You're lucky," said Erica, yawning through lack of sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't you speak to her that way," said Gavin.

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

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

"You'd better watch what you say," Gavin said.

"Threatening me, that's another mention for you Mr. Baxter," said Cole.

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

"I really hate that guy," fumed Gavin.

"Me too, he's so creepy and nasty," said Erica.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Two sausages there, boys?" Cornelius laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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