DORA

Pandora arrives at Glen Hartwell, and starts opening her box of tricks

Friday, September 5, 2025, 4:30 PM
Marty Hayter was driving his family on a two-day camping holiday over the Father’s Day Weekend, in the family’s brand new all-electric, lemon and grey Volkswagen Buzz. They were going camping in the forest, just outside LePage Township in the Victorian countryside.

“What do you think of the new van, kids?” asked Marty, grinning moronically.

“It’s weird looking,” said Trisha, a sixteen-year-old Goth girl with purple-and-black striped hair, fashionably thin, and hoping to become a model.

“Well, I’ll admit it’s no Kombi Van,” said Marty, a thirty-nine-year-old Certified Practicing Accountant, short, chubby, and prematurely grey.

“What the heck is a Kombi Van?” asked Morgan, a twelve-year-old, strawberry blonde, who took after her father in height and weight.

“Only the coolest van ever,” insisted Marty. “All the groovy people used to drive them in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.”

“What’s groovy?” asked Trisha and Morgan in unison.

“Answer that one, smarty pants,” teased Noël Hayter, three years her husband’s junior. Noël was a tall, raven-haired, and model-thin.

“Pretty much the same as ginchy,” said Marty, making Noël giggle, and the two girls stare at him.

“In English, please, Dad,” said Trisha.

“It means excellent, chill, or super cool,” said Noël, to save her husband from any more embarrassment.

“Then why didn’t he say that?” demanded Morgan.

“It’s all those hipster movies from the 1950s and surfer films from the 1960s that he watches,” explained Noël, “they’ve led him astray on the subject of what’s hot and what’s not.”

“Oh,” said Trisha, “so are we gonna stop somewhere first to get some fish and chips for our tea?”

“Nope, I’ve brought the Webber with me,” said Marty, smiling idiotically again.

“Oh, no!” Trisha and Morgan said in unison.

“What’s wrong?” asked Noël. “The Webber cooks meat great.”

“Yes, if all we want are steak sangers,” said Morgan. “But we like some veggies with our meat.”

“They’re an odd pair,” said Noël, “most kids, you need to use a plunger to get veggies down their throats.”

“Don’t worry, girls, the Webber can do baked potatoes, and baked pumpkin too,” assured Marty.

“Baked, yuck!” said Morgan.

“We like our taters and pumpkin boiled, then mashed, or roasted, not baked,” explained Trisha.

“That’s funny,” said Marty, “I could have sworn someone else in this family liked baked potatoes and pumpkin.”

“Yes, I do,” said Noël.

“Then, if mother and father both like baked food, how come neither of the girls does?” asked Marty as they approached a large clearing a couple of kilometres from LePage.

“Because we both have good taste,” insisted Trisha.

“So, you’re saying your dad and I both have bad taste?” asked Noël.

“Remembering before you answer,” said Marty, “that Christmas is only a few months away, and that Morgan’s birthday is in November, and yours, Trisha, is three weeks after Christmas.”

“Well, no, not bad taste exactly,” said Morgan.

“More, that being older, I mean more mature,” said Trisha, “you both have more mature taste than we do.”

“That’s it,” said Morgan, a little too hastily, thinking, ‘Looks like we’re gonna have to eat baked potatoes and pumpkin, if we want any prezzies this year!’

“A little disingenuous, but you got your way out of it,” teased Marty.

“What does disingenuous mean?” asked Morgan.

“Like Florey, when he received a Nobel Prize for his work on penicillin. Mid speech, he suddenly said, ‘What if we had first tested it on guinea pigs, and they had all died?’ In fact, Florey knew that’s exactly what had happened. But by saying, ‘what if’ he was implying that that hadn’t happened.’

“Oh,” said Trisha.

Half an hour later, they had parked, Marty had set up the marquee attached to the side of the van, and had plenty of meat and vegetables cooking on the gas-fuelled barbecue.

Seeing the amount of vegetables baking, Trisha whispered to Morgan, “Something tells me we’re gonna have to eat baked potatoes and pumpkin.”

“We are if we don’t want to miss out on Chrissy and birthday Prezzies,” whispered back Morgan.


Over at the Yellow House in Rochester Road, Merridale, they were also settling down, ready for tea. Seated on yellow kitchen chairs, in the yellow-painted kitchen, Sheila sniffed deeply and then asked:

“So what gourmet delicacies do you have for us tonight, Mrs. M.?”

At thirty-six, Sheila, a Goth chick with black-and-orange striped, shoulder-length hair was the Chief Constable of the local police.

“A tender lamb roast with roast potatoes, pumpkin, and carrots, then a choice of half a dozen steamed vegetables, all smothered in lamb gravy,” said Deidre Morton, a sixty-something, short, chubby brunette and cordon bleu-trained chef.

“Yum, yum,” said Terri Scott. Also thirty-six, Terri was a beautiful blonde, the Senior Sergeant of the area, and was engaged to be married to Colin soon.

“Hopefully with plenty of rum or brandy in the gravy?” asked Tommy Turner, a short, dumpy retiree and forcibly reforming alcoholic.

“No, there is no alcohol in the gravy,” said Natasha Lipzing, who had helped Deidre to prepare the meal. The tall, grey-haired woman, at seventy-one, had lived for more than half of her life at the Yellow House.

“Pity, I wouldn’t have minded some brandy in the gravy,” said Leo Laxman, a tall, black Jamaican, working as a nurse at the local hospital.

“You’re as bad as Tommy,” said Freddy Kingston, a tall, stout, balding retiree, who secretly would have liked a little brandy in the gravy also.

“No one’s as bad as Tommy,” corrected Colin Klein. A tall, red-haired Englishman, Colin had worked as a big-name London crime reporter for thirty years before coming to Australia to research a book and staying.

“Insult me all you like, as long as I get my tot of rum with my dinner.”

“Ooh, that would be nice,” said Terri.

“Sounds great to me,” agreed Leo.

“Three tots of rum coming right up,” said Deidre.

“Is there any point in asking whose rum it is?” demanded Tommy.

“No!” said Deidre, Terri, and Leo together.

“I thought so!” said Tommy, making everyone else laugh.


They had almost finished their barbecued meal when the little blonde girl, looking nine or ten, stepped out from behind a large lemon-scented gum tree.

“Hey, who’s the squirt?” asked Morgan, pointing toward the girl.

Looking around, as the girl slowly walked toward them, Marty asked, “Are you lost, honey?”

“If you’re hungry, we have plenty of food,” volunteered Noël.

“Yeah, you can have my baked potatoes and pumpkin,” offered Trisha.

“Mine too,” Morgan hastened to add.

“That’s very generous of you, girls,” said Marty, “but I cooked plenty; there’s no reason for you two to go without.”

“Hurray,” said Trisha, sounding anything but celebratory.

Ignoring the offers of food, the little girl said, “My name is Dora.”

“That’s a pretty name,” said Noël.

“Like Dora the Explorer,” said Morgan, a big animation fan.

“It’s short for Pandora,” said the blonde girl.

“Like the chick in the fairy tale?” Trisha asked.

“Oh, it’s not a fairy tale,” said Dora in a quiet, yet insistent way. She held up an engraved, golden box, perhaps 10% larger than a Rubik’s cube: “Look what I’ve got.”

“What is that, honey?” asked Noël, as the little girl continued walking slowly toward them.

“My God, it looks like gold!” said Marty. And indeed the object shone a deep golden hue.

“It once contained all the evil in the known universe,” said Dora sleepily, “but then I let most of it out.”

“That was careless of you,” said a worried-sounding Noël.

“Oh no, I did it on purpose,” assured Dora, “I love hearing people screaming, begging for mercy; seeing the murder, mayhem, madness afflicted upon the whole world. Without me, there would have been no Caligula, no Catherine the Great, no Adolf Hitler, no Donald Trump.”

“That’s ...” began Noël, not knowing how to continue.

“Nutsy cuckoo, nutsy cuckoo,” Morgan whispered to Trisha.

The blonde girl gave the strawberry blonde a hard look, then looked back at the adults and said, “Would you like to see?”

“Not if you have all the evil in the universe in there,” said Marty, starting to agree with his youngest daughter.

“Oh, no, I let most of it out thousands of years ago,” Dora assured them. “There’s only a little evil left now.” So saying she opened the lid of the golden box, and out poured foul-smelling, green smoke.

“Ooh, who let go?” teased Trisha.

“What the Hell is going on?” asked Marty, as the green smoke started to take on a vaguely human form before materialising into a creature two and a half metres tall (about nine feet), with long shaggy brown hair, looking like a cross between a gigantic goat and a bear, with small, but deadly looking horns, and two great incisors protruding down over its bottom lip.

“What the Hell is that thing?” asked a terrified Noël.

“It’s had many names down the æons,” said Dora, “but the Hindus call it a Rakshasa.”

“I think I’ve heard of that ...” said Marty.

“It appeared in an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker,” said Trisha, like many Goths, a diehard horror fan. At first thrilled, her delight turned to screams of terror as the Rakshasa raced across to grab Marty and twist his head around backwards, killing the CPA.

Screaming in terror, Trisha grabbed Morgan and almost carried her stunned sister across to the VW Buzz. She pulled Morgan through the marquee, into the rear of the van, then slammed shut and locked the door, thinking, ‘Please don’t let it be able to get in here! Please don’t let it be able to get in here!’ over and over again, until both girls fainted from shock.

“Martin!” shrieked Noël. She raced across and started hitting at the Rakshasa with both hands; however, the creature grabbed her hands and threw her across its left shoulder, and then started running deeper into the forest.

“I love this bit,” said Dora, grinning as she raced after the Rakshasa and its conquest.

After perhaps a kilometre, the Rakshasa stopped, glanced down at the raven-haired woman almost hungrily.

“What are you planning to do, eat me?” demanded Noël.

“By the time that he’s finished, you’ll wish that he had eaten you,” said Dora.

Snorting in excitement, the Rakshasa looked Noël up and down, and then used its bear-like claws to rip her clothing away, making the ravenette scream in terror. Then, almost lovingly, the creature ran a paw across Noël's breasts, careful not to claw her as it enjoyed their softness. Then, unable to contain itself any longer, the beast forced Noël onto her back upon the thick carpet of dried pine needles and gum leaves that blanketed the forest floor. Then, holding her arms above her head with one hand, the Rakshasa hurriedly spread her model-thin thighs wide apart, lay between them, and began battering at her tightly clenched labia with the thick glands of its massive, hairy penis.

“No! For God’s sake, just kill me!” shrieked Noël, thinking that the beast would never manage to open her fear-clenched vagina.

Then the creature leant down and started licking her vulva, forcing Noël to respond despite herself, then climbing aboard her again, with a single, mighty thrust of its hips, the monster managed to send the entire length of its oversized organ into the raven-haired woman’s body.

“Aaaaaaaaah!” shrieked Noël before fainting, to stay unconscious through the remainder of her ravishment.

“Damn! I hate it when they faint before he’s finished!” said the little blonde, who was thousands of years old, despite looking only nine or ten.

The Rakshasa lowed like a moose from excitement as it began thrusting its organ in and out of the prone woman’s body at a frantic pace, as though he had never done this before, whereas he had ravaged thousands of women down the centuries at Pandora’s behest.

So furiously did the creature thrust in and out of the unconscious woman that on occasions, he lifted her lower body away from the forest floor, as though unable to withdraw from her passageway. But eventually ripping and rending its way in and out, it managed to tear her apart enough to have easy access to her vaginal passage.

“Rip her! Rip her! Rip her apart!” shrieked Dora excitedly, as though barracking for a football or hockey team. “Rip her to shreds!”

Although still unconscious, Noël Hayter started to moan and cry out until finally, she died from the damage done to her vagina and insides.

On the brink of climax, the Rakshasa did not stop, did not even realise that the ravenette had died, as it continued ravishing her corpse, until roaring its moose-like bellow again, as it finally ejaculated deep into the remains of Noël.

Then panting from release and continuing excitement, the monster looked up at Dora’s blonde form and started excitedly toward her.

After thousands of years, the ‘girl’ was not afraid, having mastered the art of controlling the evil that she released from her box on occasions. Smiling almost lasciviously at the Rakshasa, Dora opened the lid of the golden box, making the monster’s lust turn instantly to terror, as it started to back away, not wanting to be confined within the tiny box again.

Then Dora started whistling an eerie, haunting refrain, and, despite itself, the Rakshasa started forward again slowly. When it was perhaps a metre away, the creature began to transform into smelly, green smoke again, which rapidly vanished into the golden box.

“Whistle while you work,” said Dora, slamming the box closed. Then, as she walked away, she continued to whistle one tune after another.


Inside the Volkswagen Buzz, Trisha and Morgan lay unconscious for nearly forty-five minutes before coming to.

“Has it gone yet?” asked Trisha, but Morgan only stared at her, too terrified to be able to speak. “Has it gone yet?” repeated Trisha.

Then, realising that her sister was not going to answer, the Goth teen hesitantly climbed into the front seat of the Buzz, then took a spare set of keys from the glove compartment to start the VW to drive back to LePage. She had seen her father’s head turned backwards, had heard the cracking of his neck bones, and knew that he was beyond help, and had not seen what had happened to her mother, so had no recourse but to save Morgan and herself.


At the Yellow House, they had finished eating and were in the lounge room trying to decide what to watch on TV.

“Who wants to watch one of my ‘The World’s Stupidest Stuntman’ DVDs?” asked Sheila Bennett.

“Me!” cried Tommy Turner, sticking up his right hand, as though at school.

“Looks like you’ve been outvoted, Sheils,” said Colin Klein.

“Not necessarily, I seem to recall that we have a deal that on Saturdays Tommy and I can watch ‘The World’s Stupidest Stuntman’, even if no one else wants to.”

“That may be true,” said Leo Laxman, “but today is only Friday.”

“Oh damn, these seven-day weeks!” cried Sheila. “I’ve been saying for years that they should kick out Wednesday. A six-day week would make much more sense.”

“Sorry, mad Goth chick,” said Freddy Kingston, “but they can’t screw up the calendar, just so that you can watch ‘The World’s Stupidest Stuntman’

“What can we watch then?” asked Natasha Lipzing: “Are there any nice, juicy murder mysteries on TV?”

Looking at the TV section of the paper, Deidre said, “As a matter of fact, yes, they’re showing Humphrey Bogart in ‘The Maltese Falcon’.”

“Yes!” cried Natasha.

“Oh, no!” cried Sheila.

“Booor-riiing!” shouted Tommy.

“Well, we have to find something we can all agree on,” said Terri. She stood up to take the TV page from Deidre, and then stopped as her mobile phone shrilled. Taking the phone out, she connected and said, “Yes?”

After a couple of minutes, Terri disconnected again and then said, “That was Tilly Lombstrom at the hospital. She says Trisha and Morgan Hayter just drove into the emergency entranceway, Morgan is catatonic, but Trisha says a little girl released a Rakshasa that snapped Marty’s neck, killing him.”

“Okay, let’s go,” said Sheila, “anything will be an improvement over watching the Maltese Falcon.”

“I like the Maltese Falcon,” said Deidre and Natasha in unison.

“So do I,” admitted Colin as they started to leave, “but it seems that I won’t get to watch it tonight.”


At the hospital, they found Tilly Lombstrom and Topaz Moseley attending to the Hayter sisters.

“We’ve sedated Morgan,” said Tilly, a tall, attractive fifty-something brunette, and a surgeon at the hospital, “since she wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything anyway.”

“But we’ve left Trisha awake so you can talk to her,” said Topaz, a gorgeous platinum blonde nurse in her early thirties.

Sitting beside the Goth girl’s bed, Terri said, “We don’t want to rush you, honey, but we need to know what happened?”

Hesitantly at first, Trisha told them exactly what had happened.

“And the Rakshasa came from inside this small golden box that she carried?” asked Colin.

“Yes, in a horrid, smelly green gas, like fart clouds in Canadian animation.”

“Sounds like the Canadians are fifty years behind the rest of the British world,” said Colin, “the UK was laughing at fart jokes back in the 1970s.”

“Australia too,” said Sheila, “but now we’ve moved on to any toilet humour, women driver jokes, and poof jokes.”

“Wow, you Aussies really do have sophisticated humour now,” teased Colin, making Trish laugh despite herself,

“Hey, we stick to the basics,” said Sheila, “none of that la-de-da Monty Python humour for us.”

They continued to talk to Trisha for another ten minutes, until Tilly insisted upon sedating her.


As they returned to Terri’s police-blue Lexus, Sheila said, “If I catch this Dora the Explorer Wannabe, I’ll smash her in the face!” She slammed her right fist into her left hand for emphasis.

“Sheils, you do know today is the 5th Annual Day of Charity?” asked Colin.

“What that bitch did to the Hayter family wasn’t very charitable!”

“You make a good point, mad Goth chick.”

“Besides,” said Terri as they climbed into the Lexus, “Trisha said this Dora claimed that she wasn’t really a child, but was a couple of thousand years old.”

“So it’s all right to smash her in the face?”

“You have my blessing, Sheils. But first we need to get in touch with our indigenous mate, and get Louie Pascall to bring his Bell Huey with floodlights, so we can hunt for Noël, in case she’s still alive.”


Half an hour later, Terri and the others were standing in the grounds of the Gooladoo Aboriginal Tribe, a few kilometres outside Harpertown. Beside them was a tall, thin, grey-haired Elder of the tribe, Bulam-Bulam, a close friend of the police, plus a pro-rata Aboriginal tracker for them. Also standing around their vehicles were a number of other local police officers: Paul Bell, Drew Braidwood, Stanlee Dempsey, Jessie Baker, Donald Esk, Wendy Pearson, Suzette Cummings, and Alice Walker, as well as two part-time policewomen: Hilly Hindmarsh and Greta Goddard.

Yawning, Suzette, a short, attractive trainee with long raven hair, asked, “How much longer do we have to wait?”

“Until Louie ...” began Terri, stopping as they heard the whir-whir-whir of Louie’s Bell Huey approaching. “Sounds like him now.”

A short time later, Terri, Colin, Sheila, and Suzette crammed into the helicopter, while the others started out in Land Rovers, Jeeps, or Range Rovers.

Seeing Stanlee’s rusted-out Land Rover, Sheila shouted, “Stan, you really need to trade in that old wreck for a nice new Jeep.”

“How dare you, Sheils?” said Stanlee, a tall, strongly built man with short dark brown hair. “The Rust Bucket is a classic!”

“A classic?” asked the Goth chick.

“That’s a fancy way of saying a dilapidated old ruin,” explained Colin.

“Oh, so Drew and Paul are classic cops then.”

Hearing her, Drew, a tall, lanky blond man retiring in a few months, called out, “If you weren’t a muscle babe, we’d beat you up for that, marm.”

“Hey, he called me a babe,” boasted Sheila as they finally lifted off.

“Yeah, but he’s having his cataracts removed soon,” teased Terri, making everyone except Sheila laugh.

“How dare you, Chief?”


Ironically, it was Stanlee Dempsey in the Rust Bucket, as most people called his Rover, who located the site where the Hayters had planned to camp, not long before midnight. As the chopper landed with Terri and the others, Stanlee boasted, “What do you say about the Rust Bucket now?”

Looking perplexed, Sheila asked, “How do I answer that? Either I’ve got to compliment the Rust Bucket, or say it was Stanlee’s good policing that found it?”

“Has the idea of complimenting your fellow officers never occurred to you, Sheils?” asked Colin.

Doing her best to look puzzled, Sheila teased, “No!”

“Well, here’s poor Marty,” said Paul Bell, a tall, thin, raven-haired man retiring from the force just before Christmas. He walked across to the corpse and said, “Yeech, his head is on backwards.”

“Which is a pretty good indication that he’s dead,” said Sheila. Nonetheless, she went across to check his pulse, “yep, dead as a doornail.”

“Okay, well, let’s find Noël, blokes, and sheilas,” said Terri. First, however, she phoned for an ambulance for Marty Hayter, giving them her GPS coordinates.

Having been hunting around while the others talked, Bulam-Bulam said, “There are large man-animal-like tracks heading this way. Very deep, as though it was carrying something, or somebody.”

“Well spotted, mate,” said Terri, “let’s follow them.”


It was nearly 1:00 AM by the time that they located Noël Hayter’s semen-and-blood splattered corpse.

“Double yeech!” said Wendy Pearson, a forty-six-year-old honey blonde, who looked more like a model than a policewoman.

“Poor Noël,” said Colin, “at least Shelley Seville survived being raped by a Rakshasa.” [See my story, ‘Rakshasa’.]

“Yeah, but she had to have a helluva lot of stitches in her privates,” reminded Sheila.

“Still, she survived,” said Terri, taking out her mobile to ring for another ambulance to collect the corpse.

When the ambulances finally arrived, Terri announced, “Okay, blokes and sheilas, time for bed so we can start Rakshasa hunting tomorrow morning.”

“And anyone owning a rifle or shotgun, bring it with you,” added Colin as they prepared to depart.


By 8:00 o’clock the next morning, the cops had gathered at Bulam-Bulam’s grocery shop in Chappell Street, Harpertown to await the arrival of Louie Pascall and his Bell Huey.

“Who wants to bet he forgets to turn up?” teased Jessie Baker, a huge ox of a man, with rusty red hair.

“I doubt it,” said Terri, “we pay him $375 a day to rent his chopper.”

“Hey, that’s more than we get,” complained Suzette Cummings.

“Yes, but he’s a specialist with a Bell Huey,” pointed out Colin.

“And since none of you lot own a chopper, you’re out of luck,” teased Sheila.

“Thanks,” said Suzette, Don, Stanlee, and Drew in unison.

“Just telling it like it is,” teased Sheila, as they finally heard the whir-whir-whir of rotors approaching.

“Guess you’ll have to sit on the bonnet of the Rust Bucket, old-timer,” said Stanlee to Bulam-Bulam.

“Just be careful not to sneeze or it might disintegrate under you into a massive pile of dust particles,” teased Wendy Pearson before climbing into another car.

“Thanks for the encouragement,” said the Aboriginal tracker, looking as though he feared that the Rust Bucket really was that close to collapsing.


Over in nearby Merridale, the Murchinson family was taking advantage of Victoria’s unseasonably sunny September to have a picnic breakfast beside the Yannan River.

“Dis wooks like a dued spot,” said four-year-old Alexandra ‘Alex’, a raven-haired beauty like her mother Samantha ‘Sam’.

“Looks great to me,” agreed Sam, well and truly ready to sit down.

“Me too,” said Thomasina ‘Tommy’, a tall strawberry blonde tomboy of twelve.

“Me three,” said Dashiell ‘Dash’, a nine-year-old ash blond like his father, whose pot belly almost matched his dad’s, although caused by overeating, not over drinking like his father.

“Looks like I’ve been outvoted,” teased Leonardo ‘Leo’, who, at thirty-eight, with a great beer belly, was only too happy to rest for a while.

Knowing he was being disingenuous, Sam teased, “We could always walk on for a couple of more kilometres, if you’d like, honey.”

“No, no, I don’t want to tire out the kids.”

“We’re already tired out,” said Alex, Dash, and Tommy together, getting their father off the hook.

“Guess we’ll have to settle for here,” teased back Leo, helping to lay out a large throw rug, the top half crocheted like the Australian national flag, the bottom half in the green and gold flying kangaroo flag used at sporting events.

“Guess we will,” agreed Sam with a giggle as they started to lay out plates of salad, egg-salad sandwiches, and cold flapjacks filled with raspberry jam and cream, and a bowl of Rice Crispies for Alex, who refused to eat anything else for breakfast.

“Tank you,” said Alex, taking her bowl of Rice Crispies, milk, and brown sugar, to start eating with a large teaspoon.

“Three cream-filled flapjacks for me, please,” said Dash hopefully.

“Start with one and see how full you are after that,” suggested Sam, to the boy’s dismay, handing him a single pancake on a plastic plate.


Outside LePage, Terri and the police were following Dora’s footprints deeper into the forest, unaware that she had doubled back, so that they were now heading in the wrong direction.

“Unless she kept walking all night long, we should catch up with the murderous little bitch well before lunchtime,” said Sheila, overconfidently as it turned out.

“Let’s hope so,” agreed Terri, less confidently.


“One flapjack’ll never be enough,” complained Dash, between mouthfuls.

“You can have another one when you finish that one,” offered Leo.

“You know we really should put him on a diet,” teased Tommy, making Dash cough and almost choke on his pancake.

When he had recovered, he said, “As Garfield the Cat says, ‘Diet is just die with a T after it’!’

“Now he’s quoting a cartoon cat as an excuse to get out of losing weight,” teased Tommy.

“It’s just puppy fat,” insisted Dash.

“Keep telling yourself that, Fatboy!”

“Thomasina, apologise to your brother at once!” insisted Sam.

Knowing that her mother only called her Thomasina when she was really angry at her, reluctantly, Tommy said, “I’m sorry, Dash. But you’ll have a heart attack if you get much bigger.”

“Is that true?” asked Dash as he took a second flap-jack from Sam.

“It certainly is,” said Sam, “that’s why Uncle Danny had a heart attack.”

“I thought that was from him having too much caffeine from drinking twelve mugs of coffee a day from the age of fourteen?”

“Yes ...” admitted Sam, “but also from overeating.”

“So as long as I stick to Coke, I’ll be all right?”

“No, cola has more caffeine in it than coffee does,” pointed out Tommy gleefully.

“Trust her to know that ... all right, I’ll only drink decaf Coke from now on.”

They were still eating breakfast when they heard the sound of whistling coming from the forest nearby.

“What’s dat?” asked young Alex.

“Whistling,” Leo said, “sounds like ‘Whistle While You Work’ from the animated version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

Apart from Dash, who was onto his fourth pancake with cream and jam, they all stopped eating and looked around in the direction of the whistling. After a few moments, a short blonde girl, looking no more than ten, stepped into the clearing, carrying a small golden box with her.

“Hello, honey, are you lost?” asked Sam.

“No, I like walking through the forest,” said the girl, “my name is Dora.”

“Hello, Dora,” Leo said, “what is that you’re carrying?”

“It’s my box of tricks,” said Dora, grinning wickedly.

“Like an X-Box?” asked Dash, who loved gaming almost as much as eating.

“No, it used to contain all of the evils in the universe, but I released most of them thousands of years ago, that’s why the world is so evil.”

“Dat was careless of you,” said Alex.

“Oh, no, I did it on purpose. I love spreading chaos, mayhem, and murder.” As the Murchinsons stared at her, wondering if she was insane, Dora continued, “But there are still some evils left in it ... would you like to see?”

“No, thanks,” said Leo and Sam together.

“Well, tough,” said Dora, sounding offended by their refusal. She opened the lid of the golden box, and noxious, green fumes spewed out, until starting to solidify into a tall, hairy, man-like, goat-like, wolf-like creature.

“What the heck is that?” asked a terrified Dash, staring at the creature which stood upright like a man, but with hind quarters like a goat, and a long protruding snout like that of a wolf.

“It doesn’t really have a name,” said Dora, “I just call it the Man-Goat-Wolf thing.” Then, when the Murchinson family stayed seated, staring at the creature in terror, “You should really be running by now ... its favourite food is human beings, especially chubby blond boys!”

It was only when the shaggy creature growled wolf-like at them that the Murchinsons tried to stand up to run away. Too late for Leo, who the creature raced across to, and started snapping at.

“Get off me, get off me!” shrieked Leo, trying to beat the creature away, only to have the beast rip off his right hand, allowing hot blood to spurt from the stump.

“Get off me!” shrieked Leo one last time, before fainting from blood loss as well as shock.

“Mummy!” shrieked Alex.

“Run back to town, kids,” ordered Sam. Then, when they hesitated, “Tommy, as the oldest, get your brother and sister away from here.”

At her mother’s words, Thomasina grabbed up a startled Alex and half-led, half-dragged Dashiell toward the forest.

Seeing the children fleeing, Dora looked unhappy, but thought, ‘Oh well, as long as the Man-Goat-Wolf thing eats the two adults, that should be all right.”

“Get the fuck away from my husband!” shouted Sam, who was not usually a swearer. Picking up a fallen branch from a blue gum tree, the ravenette ran screaming toward the monster and started whacking it about the head and shoulders, startling both the Man-Goat-Wolf and Dora.

“Stop that at once!” ordered the petite blonde, not used to people standing up against the evils that she unleashed from her golden box. “Stop that!”

Ignoring the evil ‘girl’, Sam continued to assault the creature, which had been enjoying a meal of Leo’s face and brain, until being startled by the unexpected attack from the dark-haired woman.

Growling in terror, the beast broke away from its intended meal and ran a few metres away.

“Come back here, you coward!” ordered Dora. “Rape the bitch to death, and then eat her breasts and buttocks!”

But as Sam continued to wave the tree limb menacingly, for the first time in centuries, the creature seemed afraid.

“Rape her to death!” ordered Dora, livid by the monster’s cowardice. “I command you to rape her to death!”

Cowered by its mistress, the creature stepped forward again, but then, as Sam shrieked at it, waving the tree limb, the beast backed away again.

“Rape her to death!” ordered Dora again, her face glowing red from anger. “Rape the bitch to death, damn you!”

Instead, the creature sneaked around toward Dora.

Realising what it intended, the blonde slammed shut the lid of the golden box, saying, “Oh no, you don’t get back into the box, until you obey me, and rape the bitch to death!”

Whimpering like a whipped puppy, the Man-Goat-Wolf thing looked pleadingly at the evil ‘girl’.

“No!” she insisted.

Shrieking in rage and near insanity, Sam Murchinson raised the tree limb and raced straight at the blonde girl.

Shrieking in terror, Dora almost dropped the golden box as she turned and fled into the forest, with the still whimpering monster running after her, desperate to get back into the imagined safety of the box.

Sam chased after the fleeing pair in rage for a minute or so, then stopped and shouted, “And stay away, you bastards!”

Then she fainted from shock and terror onto the thick carpet of pine needles and gum leaves covering the forest floor.


Terri and the others were almost ready to stop for lunch when Terri got a phone call from Jesus Costello (pronounced Hee-Zeus), a tall, stockily-built man in his fifties, administrator and chief surgeon at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital. She talked on her phone for a few minutes, and then said:

“That was Jesus. He says it’s happened again.”

“A Rakshasa attack?” asked Colin.

“No, this time the witnesses, Alex, Tommy, and Dash Murchinson, described it as a Man-Goat-Wolf thing. But it did come out of the little bitch’s golden box in a cloud of stinky green smoke like before.”

“What about Leo and Sam?” asked Sheila.

“It definitely killed Leo,” said Terri, “but then Sam ordered Tommy to take Alex and Dash back to town, so they don’t know what happened to her.”

“Did they say where it happened?’ asked Alice Walker. An attractive, forty-seven-year-old brunette in late 2025, Alice was an amateur weight-lifter and gym mate of Sheila, Derek, and Cheryl.

“Outside Merridale, Jesus managed to track down the location from the GPS of Sam's mobile, so two air ambulance choppers are on the way, as are we.”


Twenty minutes or so later, they had reached the site of the latest attack.

“Yeech,” said Suzette Cummings, looking at the faceless, almost brainless corpse of Leonardo Murchinson.

“I’m definitely gonna punch that little bitch in the face when we finally catch up with her,” said Sheila, and this time no one contradicted her.

“Well, we’d better start looking for Samantha,” said Terri, seconds before there was a loud moaning and thrashing from the forest not far away.

“Come to Sheila, so I can punch you in the face,” said the Goth chick under her breath, not caring whether it was Dora or the Man-Goat-Wolf thing.

Instead, it was Samantha Murchinson who staggered out of the forest.

“Sam!” cried Wendy Pearson, racing across to help the raven-haired woman.

“It killed my Leo!” cried Samantha, before fainting again.


An hour later, Terri, Colin, Wendy, and Sheila were at the Glen Hartwell Hospital watching as Tilly Lombstrom and Topaz Moseley attended to Samantha Murchinson.

“I doubt she’ll be able to tell you anything today,” said Tilly.

“She keeps waking, screaming, ‘It killed my Leo’, then fainting again,” explained Topaz.


Lawrie, Morrie, and Tory Marsden were enjoying a blokes' camping weekend, a kilometre or so outside Lenoak Township, mainly because their wives had flat out refused to go camping with them.

“I can’t believe that the girls refused to come camping with us,” said Lawrence ‘Lawrie’, a tall, thirty-eight-year-old, muscular man with short brown hair, as they struggled to set up the six-person tent.

“Women are always afraid of nature,” said Morris ‘Morrie’, tall and muscular, aged thirty-six, with long raven hair, tied in a ponytail, “spiders and snakes, and all that type of jazz.”

“My Dorrie is afraid of anything natural,” said Victor ‘Tory’, a short, but powerful thirty-five-year-old, with crew-cut ash blond hair, “I’m surprised she doesn’t wear a chastity belt; she refers to sex as Original Sin, or ‘All that Nastiness’.

“The same with my Flory,” said Lawrie, “I always know when it’s Christmas, or my birthday, because she lets me have sex with her on those days.”

“Same with my Horty,” said Morrie, “on my birthday, she lies on her back, closes her eyes tightly, clenches her fists, and says, ‘All right, do whatever you have to do’. She reminds me of the joke where the French bloke is arrested for necrophilia, and in his defence, he says, ‘I didn’t know she was dead ... I thought she was just English.”

The three men laughed riotously, and then Tory said, “The Frenchman should have said, ‘I thought she was Dorrie Marsden’.”

“Or ‘Horty Marsden’,” said Morrie, making the three men roar with laughter again, “Horty by name, haughty by nature.”

“That is so true,” said Tory, “he could have named Dorrie, Flory, or Horty in his defence, and he would have got off for sure.”

“That’s the problem with our wives,” said Morrie, making them all roar with laughter again, “none of us can get off.”

“They should never have taken away man’s God-given conjugal rights,” insisted Lawrie, suddenly serious.

“Yeah, bloody women’s libbers,” said Morrie.

“I blame the bloody Labor Party,” said Tory, who had always voted for the Liberal-National Party coalition, long before conjugal rights were abolished, “they’re the ones who started the so-called Affirmative Action Gestapo, and the Department of Women’s Affairs.”

“I wouldn’t mind so much,” teased Morrie, “if they were having their affairs with me!” Again, the three men roared with laughter.

“Or me,” said Tory and Lawrie in unison.

“Ah, thank the Lord for the Free Love Sex Lounge in LePage,” said Lawrie.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” lied Tory, “I’ve never cheated on my missus.”

“Oh yeah, then how come I almost collided with you a few weeks ago, when I was coming out of the sex lounge, and you were going in?” said Morrie, and the three men roared with laughter again,

“I got lost and went in to ask for directions,”

“Yeah, what’d they say, ‘Second storey, third bedroom on the right’?” asked Morrie, and the three men roared again.

The three men were laughing so hard that they didn’t hear the whistling as the small blonde walked out of the forest.

“What’s so funny?” asked Dora, holding her golden box.

“Nothing we can repeat to someone as young as you,” said Lawrie, hoping that she had not overheard them.

“I’m older than I look,” said Dora, “thousands of years older.”

The three men roared with laughter again, then Tory said, “And I’m the King of Siam.”

“There’s no such place as Siam anymore,” said the blonde girl, “it’s been called Thailand since 1949. Well, actually, it became Thailand in 1939, and then they changed it back to Siam, before it permanently became Thailand again in 1949.”

“I wouldn’t know,” teased Morrie, “Geology was never my strongest subject.”

“Nor biology, from what you were saying before,” teased Tory, making the three men roar with laughter again.

“Maybe I can help you with that,” said Dora, ignoring their laughter. “I call this lady, She-Medusa.”

She opened the lid of the golden box she carried, and out poured the smelly, green smoke, making the three men cough. Then, after a moment, the smoke began to solidify, and in its place stood something midway between Medusa and She-Hulk. A huge, muscle-bound emerald green woman, with snakes for hair and breasts that made Dolly Parton look flat-chested, dressed only in a yellow stringkini.

“To quote the Big Bopper,” said Tory, a lifelong ‘50s rock fan, “Oh baby, that’s what I like!”

“Do you three handsome men want to play with me?” said She-Medusa, in a throaty Liv Maessen-style voice.

“Yes!” shouted the three men at once, charging toward the sexy woman, not concerned by her emerald green hue, or her snakes for hair.

Quickly removing her stringkini to stand naked in all her buxom splendour, She-Medusa said, “Shouldn’t you three get undressed before we start playing?”

Hurrying to comply, both Lawrie and Tory fell over onto the thick carpet of dried pine needles and gum leaves that covered the forest floor, making She-Medusa giggle, and Morrie roar with laughter.

“This is the first time they’ve ever seen a woman naked,” teased Morrie.

“Is not,” denied Tory, “I saw my wife naked on our wedding night ... twelve years ago.”

“I knew there was a reason why he didn’t have any kids,” teased Lawrie.

Giggling, She-Medusa said, “Allow me to help you.” Walking across, she grabbed Tory’s trouser cuffs and yanked them hard enough to rip his trousers away and also drag him nearly a metre along the forest floor.

Impressed, Tory said, “To quote Johnny O’Keefe, ‘I love a real tough chick’.”

Giggling, She-Medusa went down on her hands and knees, pulled down Tory’s Jockey shorts, then took his genitals, testicles as well as penis into her mouth and began sucking hard enough to make the blond man gasp,

“Hey, wait for us,” said Lawrie, as he and Morrie finally struggled out of their clothing to race across to join in the fun.

Raising the green woman’s left leg high into the air, Morrie hurriedly penetrated her vagina, while Lawrie spread the cheeks of her perfect bubble-butt and slammed mercilessly into her anus, making the green woman gasp in shock.

“Sorry,” apologised Lawrie; however, he did not slow down his thrusting as he continued to sodomise the green woman at a frantic pace.

Soon, She-Medusa was jerking about wildly as though having a fit as all three men fucked her furiously through different orifices.

“Now I know why women have three holes in their bodies,” joked Tory, “so that they can pleasure three men at the same time.”

The green woman giggled as best she could, as though amused, then bit down with all of her strength and chewed away Tory’s genitals, which she swallowed down with one great gulp.

“Delicious,” said She-Medusa, as blood spurted from the cavity where Tory’s manhood and gonads had recently been.

At first, the blond man did not realise what had happened as his crotch was suddenly flooded with heat. But then as blood continued to flood from his body, he looked down, saw what had been done to him and started screaming and rolling about wildly upon the dried pine needles and gum leaves.

Dora giggled, then said, “Rolling around won’t bring your manhood back.”

Although Tory was shrieking like a barn owl, his brothers were too overcome by the sensation of fucking the beautiful green woman, that they did not realise that anything was wrong.

“What have you done to me? What have you done to me?” shrieked Tory.

“What I’ve done to hundreds of men down the centuries,” said She-Medusa, in her husky, Live Maessen voice, which now sounded threatening rather than sensual, “I have turned you into a woman.”

“You should be pleased,” teased Dora, “millions of men around the world pay fortunes to be turned into women. She-Medusa did it for you at no cost.”

“But I don’t want to be turned into a woman!” shrieked Tory before passing out from trauma and blood loss, rolling over onto his stomach, allowing his blood to stain the pine needles and gum leaves red.

“Aboriginal legend says that Australia’s red sand deserts came about after blood was spilt in the desert, turning the yellow sands red,” said Dora dreamily, “I wonder whether his blood will turn the forest floor around Lenoak red?”

Shrieking their pleasure, Morrie and Lawrie started to ejaculate into She-Medusa’s vaginal and anal openings.

“Jesus, she was a tight fuck,” said Lawrie, almost passing out from delight.

“That’s because a woman’s anus and vagina are so close together that filling them both at once makes them both contract and tighten,” explained Dora.

As Lawrie and Morrie lay on their backs, panting from exhaustion, She-Medusa crawled across and took Lawrie’s genitals in her mouth.

“When was the last time that a woman took your cock into her mouth, straight from her arsehole?” teased Dora.

“Well ... never,” admitted Lawrie, “Flory says only sluts suck off men.”

“She could be right,” said Dora, giggling.

She-Medusa giggled, as best she could with her mouth full, then bit down hard, chewing away Lawrie’s penis and testicles to swallow them down in one hungry gulf.

“I haven’t been fucked this well, or fed this well in a century or more,” teased the green woman, as Lawrie began screaming in shock and agony, while his lifeblood fountained out to help stain the forest floor red.

“I was right,” teased Dora, “their blood will turn the forest floor around Lenoak red, the way Australia’s red sand deserts were created in Koori legend.”

“Help me! Help me! Help me!” shouted Lawrie Marsden before rolling over and dying face down on the forest floor.

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?” demanded Morrie, starting to stand. However, the green woman was strong enough to hold him down, while she swallowed his genitals, then bit down hard and swallowed, turning him into a eunuch, like his two brothers.

Soon Morrie was screaming too, until he started spasming from shock and blood loss, ending up also falling face down on the forest floor, allowing his blood to stain the pine needles and gum leaves red.

Dora admired her handiwork for a moment, but then sighed in frustration and said, “It is a beautiful shade of red they produced ... but I had hoped to see the entire forest floor turned red, like the sandy deserts Australia is famous for.”

“This was so wonderful,” enthused She-Medusa, “I can’t wait to fuck more Australian men, and then devour their genitals.”

Then Dora started whistling her retrieval tune.

“No, no, not yet!” pleaded the green woman, “I haven’t had my fill ... of sex, or castration.” She tried backing away from the blonde girl, but as Dora opened the lid of the golden box and kept whistling, She-Medusa was dragged inexorably forward, like iron filings in the pull of a magnet.

“No, not yet!” shrieked She-Medusa one last time, before vaporising into the smelly green smoke, which whooshed into the golden box as though it were a tiny vacuum cleaner.

“Sorry, but it’s time to move on,” said Dora, before starting to whistle “Whistle While You Work’, as she started back into the forest, pleased with her latest efforts – even though it was really She-Medusa who had done all the work.


At the Glen Hartwell Hospital, Samantha Murchinson had finally recovered enough to give Terri and the others a halting account of what had happened after the children had run away.

“Good on you,” said Sheila, hearing how Sam had scared away the Man-Goat-Wolf and Dora.

“I wasn’t thinking what I was doing. I guess I just freaked out and threw caution and sanity to the wind.”

“It’s a pity you couldn’t catch up with them to give that little bitch a good thrashing,” said Wendy Pearson, “but good work, Sam.”

“So what do we do next?” asked Colin Klein.

“I think it’s time to see our witchy friend,” said Terri.

“Magnolia McCready,” said Sheila, Colin, and Wendy in Unison.


1/21 Calhoun Street was the right-hand half of a subdivided yellow weatherboard house. It contained a lounge room, a small bedroom, a kitchen, and a small shower room-cum-toilet cubicle. Inside, Magnolia McCready, a tall, attractive redhead with electric-blue eyes, handed around cups of Darjeeling tea.

"So what can I do for you this time?" asked the Wiccan, nibbling a mint chocolate biscuit, watched closely by her large, fluffy white tomcat, Timmikins.

They quickly told her what had been happening over the last couple of days, although still unaware of the castration and deaths of the Marsden brothers.

“Sounds as though you’re dealing with Pandora and her golden box of all the world’s evils,” said Magnolia.

“But I thought Pandora was an innocent young girl, given the box and warned not to open it,” asked Terri, “but her curiosity got the better of her, so she opened the box, unleashed all the evils in the world, and never forgave herself?”

“Yeah, that’s how the book goes,” said Sheila, “I had to read the damned thing to my niece, Ellonnie, don’t laugh, that’s a real name, when she was little; constantly, until she grew tired of it, long after I did.”

“I didn’t know you had a niece?” asked Terri.

“I didn’t know you could read,” teased Colin.

“Ha, ha, it is to laugh,” said Sheila, “she’s my brother Cedric’s youngest. You remember him from that Padfoot business.” [See my story, ‘Padfoot’.]

“Yes,” teased Colin, “but with a name like Cedric, we all assumed that he was gay.”

“Don’t say that in front of him; he’d beat us all up.”

“Anyway,’ said Magnolia, sounding bored, “that is the sanitised version of the legend. Some ancient versions say that Pandora was an evil little bitch, who deliberately unleashed all the known evils onto the world. Others say that she releases them one at a time to do her bidding, murder, rape, carnage, then whistles to call them back into the box, which is small, but 24-carat gold.”

“If it’s small, how do all the evils in the universe fit into it?” asked Terri.

“Presumably it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside, like the Tardis,” said Sheila.

“Sheils, you really do watch way too much Doctor Who,” teased Colin.

“Way, way too much,” said Terri.

“I keep telling you ... it’s not possible to watch too much Doctor Who.”

“So, returning to the sane world,” said Terri, “how do we stop Pandora?”

“Some legends say that if you whistle the same tune that she uses to recall the evils she has unleashed, then you can force her to enter the golden box, then seal it in concrete, or lock it deep underground to stop her from escaping,” answered Magnolia.

“Do the legends helpfully tell us what tune has to be whistled?” asked Colin.

“I can whistle ‘The Bridge Over the River Kwai,’” said Sheila, “also ‘Sweat Pea.’”

“I doubt that either of those will be of any use,” said Terri.

“Unfortunately, none of the legends mention the tune,” said Magnolia apologetically, “you will need to hear her whistle it first, then get the box from her, and whistle it back at her to call her into the box.”

“Any one of which could get us maimed, murdered, or raped,” said Colin.

“I’m afraid so,” admitted Magnolia.

“We could always record it on our phones,” suggested Sheila, “then we could just play it back to her.”

“Which still means we have to be dangerously close to the little psycho bitch when she calls back one of her evils,” pointed out Terri.

“Oh, yeah,” said the Goth chick.

“And if she’s calling it back, that means we have to let her slaughter someone else,” pointed out Colin.

“Well, I didn’t say my plan was perfect,” admitted Sheila.

“So, assuming that we’re not going to stand back while the psycho bitch slaughters someone else, how exactly do we stop her?” asked Wendy Pearson.

“I’m thinking that we could put out a fake quarantine notice to keep everyone indoors, and then we could masquerade as picnickers,” said Terri.

“And with no one else to kill, psycho bitch would have to come after us,” said Colin.

“Not another fake quarantine alert,” said Sheila, “we’ve done those to death over the last couple of years! Couldn’t we just say a coven of mad killer vampires has moved into the forest?”

“Sheils, we want to scare people into staying indoors, not scare them into emigrating to Queensland or New South Wales.”

“Actually, honey,” said Colin, “you emigrate from somewhere and immigrate to somewhere; so we don’t want to scare people into immigrating to Queensland or New South Wales.”

“Thanks, babe, for correcting me in front of everyone,” said Terri with a frustrated sigh. “That’s the problem, being engaged to someone who was a reporter for thirty years, he has picked up lots of knowledge, and can be a real smartarse at times ... no offence, babe.”

“I’m glad you said ‘no offence’, babe,” teased Colin.


They were in Terri’s Lexus, on the way back to Morcambe Street in Lenoak, when Terri’s phone started shrilling.

Terri spoke on the phone for a few minutes, then disconnected, and said, “They’ve found the castrated corpses of the three Marsden brothers in the forest not far from here.”


“Yeech!” said Wendy fifteen minutes later as they watched while Jesus Costello and Tilly Lombstrom examined the three corpses.

“Now do I have permission to punch psycho bitch in the face if we ever catch her?” asked Sheila Bennett.

“You can take that as a given,” said Terri.

“That means yes,” explained Colin.

“Hey, she’s right,” teased Wendy, “he really does know lots of stuff.”

After the doctors had finished examining the three corpses, Terri and the others walked over to them.

“So, apart from the castrations, anything out of the ordinary?” asked Terri.

“Based on stains in the blood,” said Jesus, “it looks as though all three men ejaculated just before having their genitals chewed off.”

“Chewed off?” asked Wendy, looking sick.

“So some chick, or chicks, gave them each a blow,” said Sheila, “then took the concept of swallowing to a new extreme.”

“Sheils!” said Terri, Colin, Jesus, and Tilly together, as Wendy raced into the forest to throw up.

“What?’ demanded the Goth chick.

“Okay, I need another fake quarantine alert sent out to get everyone to stay indoors for the next few days,” said Terri.

“Another one?” asked Tilly and Jesus in unison.

“Yes,” then to Sheila and Colin, “anyone would think I ask for a fake quarantine alert every week!”

“Instead of every other week,” teased Colin, making Sheila and Tilly laugh.

“All right,” said Jesus, sounding frustrated.

“It’s either that, or let psycho bitch keep killing and castrating people.”

“Point taken,” said Jesus with a frustrated sigh, “I’ll spread the alert to the local TV and radio stations, and newspapers.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Wendy Pearson, finally returning from the forest, still looking pale-faced.

“Now we need to get two couples, dressed in civvies to sit around somewhere in the forest over the next couple of days looking like we’re picnicking, while everyone else hides, ready to pounce on psycho bitch if and when she arrives,” said Terri. “Colin and I can make up one pair ...” She looked at Colin, who nodded his agreement, “so who else could we get?”

“What about Wendy or Alice, with Paul Bell or Drew Braidwood?” asked Colin.

“Come on,” said Wendy, “Paul and Drew are nice blokes, but they’re far too old to be coupled with me or Alice ... if we want psycho bitch to believe it.”

“All right,” said Terri, considering for a moment, “then Alice can play my older sister, and Paul can be our dad.”

After she finished laughing, Wendy said, “Paul will love that.”

“So what about me?” asked Sheila.

“You can go climb a gum tree,” said Terri.

“There’s no need to be rude, Chief!” said Sheila, sounding hurt.

“No, I mean literally. You and Wendy, Don, Stanlee, Jessie, and Hilly can hide up gum trees at the edge of whatever clearing we choose, then if psycho bitch comes along, you jump down onto her, grab the golden box off her, and hold the lid closed, so that nothing can escape.”

“But what about punching her in the face?” asked the Goth chick.

“Holding the lid of the box closed is more important.”

“Can I at least kick her in the K.U.N.T.?”

“Let’s just keep it simple for now.”


That night and the next morning, all the newspapers, radio, and TV stations carried the quarantine order, so Terri and the others were out in the forest by 8:00 AM, setting up a red, white, and blue Western Bulldogs throw rug, complete with two wicker picnic baskets.

“Okay, Sheils, and company, start climbing,” said Terri.

“Go climb a gum tree,” muttered Sheila, as she started to climb a large blue gum tree. She was perhaps five metres up the tree when she suddenly squealed and said, “A spider, there’s a massive spider up here.”

“Sheils, I’ve seen you take on a mad, killer bull, a weremoose, and three vampire chicks,” said Terri. [See my stories, ‘Catoblepas’, ‘The Moose Man’, and ‘Vamps’.] “So how come you squeal like a schoolgirl after her first kiss from a boy if you see a daddy longlegs?”

“Eight legs,” shouted the Goth chick, as though that explained her fear, “they’ve got eight legs.”

“She’s right, eight legs,” agreed Suzette Cummings from not far away.

“And this is no daddy longlegs, it’s huge, it’s furry,” insisted Sheils. She peered tentatively around the side of the blue gum tree and saw a bleary-eyed Koala sleeping there, “and it’s a cola.” Smacking it on the backside, she said, “Get a move on, Cola.”

Startled, the Koala raced eight or ten metres higher up the tree, allowing Sheila to take its previous place in the crook of a branch.

“So what have we got in the picnic baskets?” asked Paul Bell.

“Well, Dad,” teased Terri, “the one on the left has sandwiches, some hard-boiled eggs, flasks of coffee, tea, and milk, as well as some Scotch Finger Biscuits. The one on the right has our handguns, six boxes of shells, handcuffs, and a few stun grenades for if we manage to catch psycho bitch.”

“I’ll skip the shells and grenades for now,” teased back Paul, “but I could do with some tea and a couple of Scotch Fingers.”

“Coming right up, Dad.”

“If she weren’t my boss, I’d beat her up,” teased Paul.

“I could use a couple of Scotch Fingers too,” called down Sheila.

“It would look a bit suspicious if we started throwing bikkies up a tree,” pointed out Alice Walker.

“It’s bad enough Terri tells me to go climb a gum tree,” muttered Sheila.

“So, how long do you think we’ll have to wait?” asked Paul.

“At the rate at which psycho bitch has been killing people, the last two days, she should be here any time now,” posited Colin, a little too hopefully.


By lunch time on the third day, they were all starting to think that the fake quarantine had failed. There had been no more attacks upon people by Dora and her monsters, but there had also been no indication that she was ever going to arrive at the place that they had selected in the forest, less than a kilometre from the Morcambe Street Police Station.

“So, who says after lunch, we try a new location?” suggested Alice Walker, while eating a cheese and tomato sandwich.

“Might as well,” conceded Terri with a sigh, stopping as they heard whistling in the forest not far away. “‘Whistle While You Work’, unless I’m mistaken.”

“Which was the theme psycho bitch whistled while departing the murder sites,” whispered Colin.

Terri reached for her mobile phone to alert the others, as the blonde figure of Dora walked into the clearing, carrying her golden box.

“Hello, my name’s Dora,” said Pandora, shrieking in terror as Sheila Bennett dropped on her from five metres up the blue gum tree.

As the golden box flew out of Pandora’s hands and tumbled across the forest floor, Sheila managed to give Dora one hard kick between the legs before racing after the box. As she reached for the golden box, the lid started to open, and a long, green talon hand reached out.

“Alice, I’m gonna need your help!” cried Sheila, struggling to push the lid closed, despite her great strength as a bodybuilder.

“Coming,” shouted Alice. She raced into the forest, and, despite the best efforts of the taloned beast to escape, between them, the two bodybuilding women managed to slam the lid and hold it closed. “Wow, whatever’s in there, it certainly wants to get out.”

“Yeah, well, the power chicks ain’t letting it,” boasted Sheila as Paul Bell raced across to cuff Dora’s hands and feet, while Terri and Colin raced across to Sheila and Alice.

“You managed to get it, thank God,” said Terri.

“And best of all,” said Sheila, “I managed to give psycho bitch one hard kick in the K.U.N.T. for what she did to Morrie Marsden and the others.”

“Well, that’s the important thing,” said Colin, making everyone except Dora laugh. “Ah, come on psycho bitch, where’s your sense of humour?”

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia