Goodfellow and Mills

After Joshua dropped him off at his studio, Danny fed Curry, put on a pot of coffee, changed his clothes, and slipped gently back into his routine. The Tunnel of Love, the night in the barn, giggling and snorting in the shower with Josh... He should have been exhausted today, but instead he felt strangely energized, as though he had just finished a strenuous cardio workout at the gym. Not so far from the truth, he thought with a chuckle.

He paged through the photos from yesterday's visit to the carnival. He had not used the camera inside the Tunnel of Love -- which was probably just as well -- but he had a good crop of images from the midway. A few dozen pictures would satisfy the terms of his commission from the city.

Josh had work to catch up on at the farm, so for today Danny was going to risk the carnival on his own. What else could happen? he thought with amusement. Could it possibly get any weirder?

Danny went to lunch at Allie Fairweather's diner, planning to go from there to the fairgrounds. He hopped up onto a stool at the counter and placed his order with Michael, Allie's son, a breathtakingly beautiful nineteen-year-old with as much personality as a basket of wet laundry.

"Anything else?"

"No, thank you, Michael. Where's your mother today?"

The boy shrugged. "Out somewhere, I guess."

"Ah. Thanks."

Danny sipped his iced tea and watched Michael's hard little backside as the boy slouched away to place the food order. Such a waste, he thought with a grin.

A bony hand gripped his shoulder. "Danny, Danny, Danny. I thought you were above ogling Michael Fairweather."

Danny turned to face the newcomer. "Hayden! I thought you were in Miami or somewhere doing a book tour."

The novelist folded his lanky six-three frame onto the stool next to Danny's. "I was. Six cities in two weeks. I'm too fucking old for this." He ordered lunch from the sullen archangel behind the counter. "There was some confusion about scheduling on the last two dates so I had the opportunity to call it off and come home early."

"The price of fame. I saw a writeup somewhere of one of the stops."

"I hope it wasn't the Atlanta Herald-Star piece. They barely mentioned my recent books, just went on and one about my various sexual misadventures. They stopped short of calling me an old pervert, but only just."

"If the shoe fit..."

"Et tu, Brute? Anyway, it probably won't hurt sales. Old perverts are big business these days."

Hayden was tall and looked even taller due to his lanky, leggy build. His bony head was mostly mouth and ears, and his short, woolly hair was more salt than pepper. He was Danny's oldest and closest friend in Bancroft, as well as an occasional bedmate.

"You've got a bit of a glow," Hayden commented, munching on crackers from the tiny packets in a bowl on the counter, sprinkling crumbs everywhere. "May I ask who's responsible?" Danny blushed and Hayden chortled. "Oh, my. Tell me, tell me."

"It's not that big a thing. I spent last night in a hay loft with Joshua Bridges."

Hayden's grin was almost wider than his face. "The farm boy? I'm good friends with his mother. Those twins are -- " He made an extravagant gesture of kissing his fingertips. "Such as shame that one of them went to the dark side, although I do love his wife Toni. So you and Josh Bridges, huh? You like him, I can tell. I mean, aside from his obvious charms. In a hay loft, no less! How very Jane Russell of you."

"Hayden, I wish you'd either shut up or go back on tour."

The novelist laughed and patted Danny on the back. "All right, all right. I won't push. He is a lovely man, though, and smarter than he lets on. He's a lot like his mother. I approve."

"He's got me in a bit of a muddle," Danny admitted. "I'm not used to getting so involved with a guy."

"Do you think he's relationship material?"

Danny grimaced. "He might be, but I'm sure as hell not. You know that."

"I don't know 'bout that. Stranger things have happened than you falling for a hot cowboy."

Their food arrived and conversation drifted into more neutral territory.

"Have you heard about the carnival?" Danny asked.

"Max told me something about it when he picked me up at the airport." Max was Hayden's assistant, a mysterious little man born somewhere in Central Asia and reputed to have unusual sexual proclivities, as well as an uncanny ability to know just about everything about everybody in Bancroft at all times, without ever leaving the Hayden's house. "Have you been to see it?"

Danny grinned around his sandwich. "I'm taking pictures every day for a commission from the Mayor's office." He gulped down the food in his mouth and grabbed Hayden's elbow. "I'm on my way there after this. Come with me! Either I'm losing my mind or there's something weird about this carnival."

"Really! You interest me strangely. What's it called, this extravaganza?"

"Goodfellow and Mills."

Hayden's eyes widened. "Goodfellow? No shit?"

"Yes, why? You've heard of them?"

"No. Just the name. Have you forgotten your Shakespeare? 'Either I mistake your shape and making quite,/Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite/Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are you not he/That frights the maidens of the villagery...' It's the other name for Puck, the mischievous little fairy who plays tricks on everybody with a love potion, making all sorts of hot and sweaty mayhem."

"Hmph. I had forgotten about him. Midsummer Night's Dream."

"Exactly."

"Quite a coincidence," Danny added, thinking back over the last couple of days.

"You don't say." Hayden's grin was a foot wide. "Eat your lunch, Danny Boy. We're going to the fair."

Business was brisk along the midway, and the air was full of the smells of frying, of burnt sugar, of animals, and of human sweat. Children yelled and squealed and giggled, adults chatted in loud, jovial voices, bells rang and barkers called out their well-rehearsed speeches. Hayden seemed to know everyone, and their progress along the midway was slow.

"Over there," Hayden said after a time, pointing. "There nobody over there. What's that? I didn't bring my glasses."

"'Hall of Mirrors', the sign says."

Hayden nodded. "Let's check it out. I'm feeling a little claustrophobic in this crowd."

The barker for the Hall of Mirrors was a young man no more than four and a half feet tall, with curly black hair, a snub nose, and the mouth of Michelangelo's David. He was dressed in rough green leggings and a leather vest that hung open over a lean, muscular chest. He was standing on a kind of pedestal behind a podium.

"Welcome, gentlemen! Step up to the Hall of Mirrors, where you'll see truth and lies at the same time."

"That's quite an assertion," Hayden said, his face alight with mischief.

"And it's both true and deceptive, just like the images in a mirror. Step inside and see for yourself, sir."

As Hayden paid for two tickets, Danny held up his camera. "May I take a couple of pictures of you? I'm the city's photographer."

"We know all about you, Mr. Brandenburg. Probably more than you know about yourself." The barker struck a pose. "I love having my picture made. Should I take off my clothes first?"

Hayden chortled. "Well, if that's an option -- "

"Shut up, Hayden." To the barker, he said, "No, that won't be necessary."

The barker shrugged with a grin of complicity at Hayden. "Oh, well. You're missing my best feature. Snap away."

Danny took several images as the young barker posed and preened atop his pedestal, then thanked him.

"My pleasure, gents." He pulled back a curtain made of long strings of mirrored disks, like coins. "Step right in."

"Didn't you see the package in those tights? You're getting awfully prudish in your old age," Hayden observed as they passed along a dim hallway hung with blue curtains.

"Only compared to you, you old pervert."

Hayden laughed. "I've missed you. Next time I do one of these trips, you should come with me."

"I'd never survive."

"But think of the fun we'd have during your final hours."

After a sudden dogleg turn, they entered the hall of mirrors. This was what might be expected, a circular room whose walls were paneled with mirrors, nine feet tall and three wide, surrounding the visitors with not only their own images, but reflections, reflections of reflections, and so on, extending into infinity. Overhead and underfoot were more mirrored surfaces, adding to the illusion of endless depths.

"Whoa," Hayden said. "These jeans make my ass look flat."

"You have no ass. The jeans are not the issue."

"Bastard."

The two men, one tall and brown, one short and pale, stood looking around, turning and turning as their images shimmered around them.

"It's disorienting," Danny observed.

"Isn't it, though? I'm not sure where I am in the infinite progression."

"It's like seeing millions of me -- and you, too, of course -- all lined up in rows extending forever in every direction. A trillion Danny Brandenburgs, and marching in lockstep."

There was a strange glitch out there in the infinity of images and Danny blinked. "What was that?"

"What? Oh! What the hell?" The two men stared as a ripple swept through one series of reflections, an occurrence not matched in any other reflections.

"There! It did it again!" Danny cried out. A million Dannys raised their arm and pointed, but somewhere in that multitude a subset of the reflections simply stared back at him, not pointing.

Hayden lifted a middle finger and a million Hayden's returned the gesture, but one group simply turned to look away.

Hayden turned slowly, mimicking the gesture, and a small group of Haydens flipped him the bird. The effect was moving closer, affecting reflections closer to the originals.

Danny swore, and Hayden chuckled, as a series of images of Danny suddenly changed. In place of the jeans and tropical shirt he was wearing, the reflected images were nude.

"Nice effect," Hayden chortled. A moment later he pointed silently as a group of his own reflections lost their clothes, but then he frowned. "What the hell?"

A change rippled through one set of images to reflect a naked Hayden Lodge, maybe twenty years of age instead of his current sixty. Danny's reflection became an old man, his arms and legs thin, his shoulders and chest frail, his belly soft, then became a teen, with streaky hair and narrow hips. A ripple passed through the reflections, and a new Danny appeared.

"Shit, no."

The boy in the mirror was not Danny Brandenburg of Bancroft, mature and confident, but Danny Colville of Jackson, Mississippi, a skinny, long-haired teen consumed by rage and misery. A million copies of him glared out at the flesh and blood original, and Hayden gripped Danny's arm.

Now the changes were even more radical. The two figures were interacting in the reflections, their poses, their condition, their relation to each other becoming sexual, the effect moving closer and closer.

"Why am I not surprised?" Hayden murmured as a sequence of new images flickered into existence, images of him sodomizing Danny. That scene rippled in and out of view, and then another appeared showing Hayden kneeling at Danny's feet, his face buried in his crotch. The aberrant reflections were coming closer and closer, occurring not only in the far reaches of the infinity of reflections, but right in front of the two astounded originals.

Danny watched, clutching Hayden's elbow, as his reflected image bent down to allow Hayden's reflection to push his hard brown cock into his ass.

"I think it's reading our minds," Hayden said. "I was thinking how much fun it would be to do just that thing."

Danny turned and looked at his friend and laughed. "This is why I put up with you," he said. After only a moment's hesitation, he dropped to a squat and unfastened Hayden's jeans, pushing them down until Hayden could step out of them, leaving his ample dick flopping.

"Was it reading our minds, or seeing the future?" he asked. He grasped Hayden's cock and licked it, root to tip and back again, then wrapped his lips around it and swallowed it down until his nose was pressing into Hayden's wiry pubic hair.

The reflections in the mirror mostly showed Danny squatting on the mirrored surface unbuttoning his shirt as he mouthed Hayden's hard brown cock. Most of Hayden's reflections portrayed him toeing off his shoes and pulling his t-shirt off over his head while Danny sucked him. Among all of these, however, were still other views, of other Dannys and other Haydens, indulging in other acts.

Danny rose to his feet, wiping his mouth and chin, leaving Hayden's cock rock hard and dripping with spit. He stripped off his own clothes and turned his back on his friend.

"Welcome home," he said, pressing his ass against Hayden's spit-slicked cock.

As the novelist guided his cock into position and began to press it against the resistance of that tight little ring of muscle, Danny wondered what would happen if other customers wandered in. What would they see in the reflections?

Hayden penetrated, and Danny moaned and stopped thinking about anything else.

Hayden fucked Danny, laughing, as all around them an infinite number of Dannys and Haydens of all ages coupled and uncoupled. Danny arched his back so that Hayden could nuzzle his neck, still chortling.

"It's all so bizarre," Hayden panted against the back of Danny's ear, finding a rhythm, his cock plunging in and out of Danny's skinny backside. "I can't quite take it seriously. It's like watching amateur porn."

"Wait until I tell you about the Tunnel of Love."

"Tell me later," Hayden advised him. "I'm watching a million me's fuck a million you's in a million different ways. This memory will be my favorite jerk-off fantasy when I'm old and feeble and fantasy is all I have left."

Danny grunted and shifted his stance, pulling his buttcheeks apart. "You seem to have grown since last time we did this."

"It has been a while. Absence makes the dick grow fonder, or something to that effect."

Surrounded by themselves, repeated to infinity, Hayden and Danny thrashed and romped. Hayden grabbed Danny's dick and began stroking him, and Danny moaned and squirmed, the muscles of his ass squeezing and biting against the rigid intruder.

In the mirrors, sequences of reflections convulsed as those version of the two men reached their climaxes, a wave of orgasms there, then another over there.

"Jeez," Hayden hissed, panting. "I like doing it in a group sometimes, but this is ridiculous."

Danny laughed breathlessly, his body rocking back and forth with the growing force of Hayden's efforts. "Makes you feel like a star."

Hayden chuckled, the sound transmitting itself as a vibration through his dick and into Danny's ass as he flexed his hips. "And what about you? How do you feel watching my big black dick riding up your skinny ass?"

"Like I'm gonna pop at any moment."

The banter faded as Hayden's attention turned inward and his thrusts became rough, uneven. Danny reached back, grabbing at his friend's narrow hips, his ass gripping the big cock as Hayden grunted, his whole body twitching one time as his dick releasing a flood of warm, thick fluid into Danny's entrails. He reached around and gripped Danny's dick in a sweaty hand and started stroking it. Danny's eyes rolled up and his cum spattered across the mirrored floor.

When Danny's vision cleared, he looked up at the reflected images and saw only himself, bent down, his hands braced on his knees, and behind him Hayden, his eyes closed, still gently working his cock in and out of Danny's backside. All the images showed what was actually happening in the room. There were no renegades, no rogue reflections. Their clothes were piled at the edge of the room.

Hayden eased himself out of Danny and stood for a moment catching his breath, his dick sagging, still glossy and wet.

"Holy crap," Hayden said.

"I'm glad to see you, too," Danny replied, chuckling.

"What just happened?"

"Welcome to the Goodfellow and Mills Carnival."

Hayden nodded, grinning, and starting looking around for his pants. "They've definitely got something special here."

They dressed, pulling themselves together as best they could, speaking in low tones, almost as though they were in church.

When they left the Hall of Mirrors the barker greeted them.

"A lot to see, yes?" His face was a study in mischief and delight.

Hayden glanced over at Danny and they both laughed. The barker grinned at them, and Danny knew that he was perfectly aware of everything that had happened. He can probably even smell it on us, he thought.

Hayden returned the barker's grin.

"I will, of course, be visiting the fair again tomorrow," he declared.