CLOWN FLU
The circus would not be coming to town. Not if Councillor Millet had anything to do with it. No, no, dear me, no. The very thought. Darley was a small, sensible town populated by people with small, sensible minds. People like Councillor Geoffrey Millet himself. People who understood that civic pride was inextricably linked with a sense of decorum, safe and comforting, like the hand of a dead giant upon the town, crushing out anything as toxic as frivolity. There would be no circus coming there, certainly not.
Of course, there were always foolish folk who didn’t understand that. In the council chamber, the small group of opposition councillors would try their damndest to undermine the dignity of Darley, putting forward silly ideas for things they said would be “fun,” carnival days and the like. But they were not sensible people. Several of them didn’t wear ties, and Councillor Millet had suspicions that some might even be women.
Not that Councillor Millet had anything against women, of course. They were pleasant enough company providing they knew their place. Why, he’d even had one for a wife for some years, but she’d forgotten that it is the wife’s duty to obey and succour the husband in return for security and they had divorced over what their lawyers had agreed to call “mutual incompatibility.” He hadn’t argued, and gracefully accepted a half share of the estate in the settlement, which seemed fair to him although she’d brought two thirds of the value to it in the first place. It was obviously wrong for women to have more wealth than men, so this was just nature’s way of rebalancing matters.
In similar vein, “fun” was a something used to distract children, not something for adults to waste their time over. He had, therefore, been horrified when the local rugby club had put in for a permit to allow a circus onto their grounds. That was disgraceful enough in itself, but apparently the circus not only wished to sully the minds of Darley’s youth with vile flippancy, but planned a “mature” performance for adult audiences. This probably meant swearing and innuendo, Councillor Millet concluded, and he dug his heels in fiercely against issuing any licenses to such a portable pit of depravity. He might have expected his fellow party councillors to follow his lead, as they so usually did, but on this occasion he was surprised to find there was dissent in the ranks. Some of the less sound, more wishy-washy of his colleagues did not seem to realise the vast existential threat a tent full of weirdoes represented to the moral sanctity of Darley, six times winner of “Most Serious Place in England.” His outrage can be imagined when, at an informal showing of hands prior to the official vote on the following week, the vote for denying the license succeeded by only one vote, his own.
Still, he concluded, that was how “first pass the post” democracy worked; a razor thin majority was still a majority. The circus would not be coming to town and that was the long and the short and the tall of it. That was what he told himself and others, but he was still troubled by the narrowness of the vote. All it took was for one more councillor to have a wobble and vote the wrong way, or not turn up at the meeting and give it to the “Ayes.” The opposition was so handily outnumbered, they never won anything, and he had long since learned how to filter their disruptive whining from his consciousness. That they might win a vote was anathema to him, and he fumed that some of his colleagues had been unaccountably unreliable on this matter. When he had spoken to them privately, they’d seemed embarrassed and vague in their reasons, and more than one had had the temerity to suggest that “fun” was not only not necessarily a bad thing, but might actually be good. He’d see about getting them deselected after this was all over. In the meantime, he’d just have to make sure the line held and that everybody on the “Nay” side actually turned up for the vote. Nobody had better fall ill, that was all.
Now it was Sunday morning and Councillor Millet was enjoying his traditional extra hour of lounging around in his dressing gown before getting dressed. Exactly one extra hour; it didn’t do to get lax with relaxation. He stood with his tea and looked out of his lounge window, back across the garden, over a band of rough public land that was occasionally peopled by dogwalkers and horse riders, and—beyond that—the rugby grounds, nestled at the base of low wooded hills. One of the ne’er-do-wells in the opposition had accused him of voting from his own interest, given he would have clear sight of the circus tent if the permit was issued. While it was true he had no desire to be greeted by such a thing corrupting his view, his concerns were for the town, never himself. No, no, dear me, no.
His tea cup froze en route to his lip. There was somebody out on the common land. Somebody brightly dressed, somebody—he could barely believe the barefaced temerity of it—cavorting. On a Sunday morning. In bright clothes. It was ungodly, he felt sure. He put down his tea, pulled the belt of his dressing gown tight as if girding himself for war, and went to the back door, intending to berate this mysterious cavortist for their probable blasphemy.
On opening the door, however, he was baffled to discover the dancer had gone. That made no sense; there was nowhere they could have hidden with such brief opportunity. Could it have been his imagination. No, of course not, he reassured himself. He didn’t have one. Could he have been mistaken? Could he (and the thought filled him with dread) be falling ill and subject to the caprices of a malfunctioning brain? No, surely not. He felt fine, if a little foolish, there on his backdoor step in his dressing gown, pyjamas, and slippers.
Further thought was curtailed by the sound of the front doorbell. Baffled at who could be calling on him at such a time, he gave the empty common another quick look, and went back into the house. He could see through the glass panelling in the front door as he approached that whoever had been there had gone, but not without a trace for there, on the mat, lay an envelope.
An envelope on a Sunday. That was unnatural enough, but this was not at all the kind of envelope Councillor Millet could ever recall seeing on his very sober mat. This envelope was large, and it was colourful, a vibrant red. He went to the window and looked out, but there was no sign of whoever had delivered it. It was all very curious, and he didn’t like curious matters. Curiosity was for cats and small children. He looked down at the envelope. It was unstamped and addressed simply and with damnable impertinence to “Geoff Millet.” Even his parents didn’t presume to call him “Geoff.” This was really too much. Who would dare? Well, there was only one way to find out.
He took the envelope into the lounge and examined its back as he took the paper knife from the mantelpiece. There was a seal of sorts; a pink heart containing a red cross. His lip curled. How trite. How cute. A moment’s work with the knife and the envelope was slitted open. He knew it would contain a card—the rigidity of the envelope made that a certainty—but the card itself baffled him. The picture on the front was a water painting of the sort that used to decorate boxes of chocolates intended for the feebly romantic, all slightly blurred with strong daubs of white for highlights. The image was a portrait of a young woman painted up as clown, of all things: white skin, diamonds around her eyes, very red lips, and a fake red nose, shiny as a ping-pong ball. She was not, however dressed like any clown he’d ever seen before. Rather, she wore a salaciously cut dress of some bright red shiny material, and it wasn’t until he noticed the cap of the same material on her head that he realised she was dressed as some absurd parody of a nurse. The angle of the painting was close to her and angled down so that it took some small effort on Councillor Millet’s part to ignore her cleavage. Cartoonish tears stood at the edges of her eyes, glittering like crystal, and her expression was of exaggerated sadness. It didn’t seem at all sincere to him. All in all, the picture reminded him of those ridiculous pictures that show up undamaged after house fires. Cursed, indeed. There was a message printed onto the card’s front, too.
Get Well Soon!
What was this nonsense? Who had shown the damn nerve to send him this ridiculous card with its bizarre illustration (he found himself looking into that cleavage again. With an effort, he removed his attention from there)? He flipped the card open and found a handwritten message in red ink against a pale pink field.
Sorry to hear you’ve come down with a bad case of clown flu, Geoff. Hope it clears up soon.
No signature. So that was it. One of the foolish little intellects in the council’s opposition group had gone to the trouble of having this thing printed and sent to him in what he could only assume was an ill-judged attempt to shame him into changing his vote. Never! This only hardened his opposition.
His growing rage was short circuited by an odd sensory interruption. He suddenly became aware of a scent, not a subtle one either, but nor was it unpleasant. He couldn’t place it for a long moment, and while he wondered what it was, he realised it was rising from the card. His fingertips were dusted by a fine pink powder, and he thought it might be a drying powder used in the printing process. But perhaps not, because when he raised his fingers to his nose and inhaled, he realised that was where the scent was coming from. Bubble-gum, he finally identified it as. The pink powder smelled of bubble-gum. Why, he hadn’t smelled that since he was a boy.
He stood there for perhaps a minute or two, absent-mindedly inhaling the bubble-gum scent from his fingertips, brushing off more from the card, and inhaling again. He might have stood there a long time had there not been a knock at the door. The backdoor.
This was not an impossibility, but it was an extreme unlikelihood. The garden was enclosed, only its downhill slope allowing the councillor his precious view over the wall that surrounded it. It wasn’t impossible for somebody to clamber over the wall, but it was hardly seemly, and Darley was a very seemly place. Through the textured glass of the door, he got a momentary impression of something bright red, but then whoever was there stepped back. Putting the odd “Get Well” card aside and shaking off the bubble-gum flavoured reverie into which he’d sunk, he went to see who was playing silly beggars in his back garden.
Nobody. That was who, and that really was impossible, unless he’d been mistaken about hearing a knock at the door. But, no, he’d heard it clear as a bell. He’d seen somebody through the glass. Yet the garden was empty, and it would have been a remarkable acrobat who could reach the wall and vault over it in the time it took him to look out.
Was he… an awful thought occurred to him… was he hallucinating? No, surely not. Hallucinations were for the weak minded. He would never see something that was not there.
This was a conclusion that did not stand him in good stead when he closed the back door and turned to find himself facing a young lady in an impractical red nurse’s uniform and clown make-up. If Councillor Millet jumped a little at this discovery, he was within his rights to do so.
“We’re very concerned about you, Geoff,” said the clown nurse, frowning and nodding her head in time to her words in the condescending manner of kindergarten teachers talking to an especially stupid infant.
He was shocked and he was surprised, and that made him feel stupid, so he did the thing he usually did when he felt stupid, and that was to become angry to distract himself and others from it. “How did you get in here?” he demanded.
“Through the door,” she said and pointed. To be specific, she pointed at the window, which had certainly been closed and locked but now was just as certainly unlocked and open.
“That’s a window,” he said vaguely, trying to understand how a nice reliable window like that could just spread its portal wide for any passing clown nurse.
“Is it, though?” she said very seriously. “Is it, though, Geoff?”
“Yes! Yes, it is definitely a window, and stop calling me ‘Geoff’! I’m Mr Millet to you, and… oh, this is absurd. This is trespass, young lady, and I am calling the police.”
He strode to his study to use the landline. On arriving, he found the cordless handset had been replaced by a rubber chicken. “How…” he breathed, staring at the vulcanised poultry in disbelief. “How is that possible?”
“You’re having a fraught morning, I can tell.” The clown was leaning against the doorframe, one leg drawn up coquettishly, boot on the wood, her uniform reflecting the light in slick rivulets. What was it made out of, anyway? Latex? PVC? She’d been sent by his political enemies, that much was certain. They were trying to compromise him. There’d be a photographer from the local rag lurking outside, waiting to snap a picture if he threw her out of the front door. He blanched; what if they could see her through the windows? Reflexively he went and drew the curtains.
“Oooh, cosy,” giggled the girl. Then she became serious, albeit mockingly so. “And very wise. We have to keep you nice and comfy. You’re coming down with a nasty case of clown flu, after all.”
“What are you prattling about, woman?” he said as he tried to devise a way to covertly get her off his property. “I’m perfectly all right.”
“Well, duh,” she said. “I’ve only just got here.” She reached down and picked up a doctor’s bag in all but size, being about the size of a small handbag. Somehow she extracted a hefty tome from it. She blew the dust off it and the cloud surrounded Councillor Millet. It smelled of bubble-gum. He suddenly felt distant and unfocussed. “Now, let’s see.” She leafed through the book, which he saw was entitled Clown Related Pathologies. “Here we are. Influenza Corydon, commonly known as ‘Clown Flu.’ Symptoms… Oh, dear. Oh, dearie, dearie me. Woolly headedness. Is your head all woolly, rooby, dear?”
“Ruby?” He was having trouble focussing. What light there was in the curtain-dimmed study seemed smeared and glittering. It glittered off her dress. He caught himself staring and redirected his gaze to her face with difficulty.
“Because you won’t let me call you ‘Geoff.’ So I’m calling you a rube. The world is split into two populations, you see. Circus folk and rubes. That’s the only difference that really matters. And you, darling, are a rube. Sorry. Now, attend.” She tapped the book and he tried to concentrate. “Are you feeling woolly headed?”
If he tried really hard, if he concentrated to his limit, he could find a path through the distraction, the liquid light, the scent of bubble-gum. “I’m fine,” he said, more as a statement of intent than fact.
“Well, that won’t do,” she said, and reached into her bag. She produced a little pink bottle, unscrewed the top, strode up to him, lightly took a grip of the hair at the back of his skull with her black nitrile-gloved hand, and held the bottle to his nose. Surprise made him inhale, and the world was suddenly full of pink bubble-gum. “That’s better,” he distantly heard her say. “Much better. You’ll never get all your symptoms if you don’t do what Nurse Dina says.”
“unh…” he said, and even that took an effort.
“Muuch, muuch better.” Her voice had become a croon. “Nursey knows best. You don’t know much, but you know that, don’t you?” He made another noise that, if not a definite positive, did not sound so very negative either. “Now, let’s see what else the book says, shall we?” The grip left his scalp and he was left slowly rocking on the spot like a drunk in a doorway. “Hmmm.” The sound of turning pages. “Says here that patients exhibit unusual levels of compliance. Do you feel compliant, my baby?”
Somewhere inside Councillor Millet’s mind a very angry voice was shouting that he was most certainly not feeling compliant and that he also did not appreciate being infantilised by such disgustingly patronising terms. It was hard to make out that voice, though, as it was being drowned in a sea of pink candyfloss that smelled of bubble-gum. The gloved grip again, the bottle at his nose again, the command again. “Breathe in.” And he breathed in and the inner voice became nothing but aggrieved mumbling somewhere in the boring parts of his subconsciousness.
“There. You seem deliciously compliant. Very obliging. Most obedient. Submissive, even. And isn’t that a nice feeling, hmmm?”
He slurred something that was close to “Yes.”
“Yes, that’s right. Look at me.”
He hadn’t even realised his eyes had shut and he opened them with a small start of surprise. He was less surprised that his study had become a magical place full of bright colours and shimmering lights, and nowhere did the lights shimmer more alluring than across the shiny body of Nurse Dina. “That’s a good patient,” she said in a low voice. “That’s a very good patient. Look into Nursey’s eyes now.” He did, and they glistered and compelled with strange light. “My, my, so dilated, aren’t you? Good, good. So many symptoms. You’re doing so well.”
Part of Millet’s mind registered confusion that a nurse would be creating symptoms instead of working to eliminate them, but there was so much confusion in there already, he hardly noticed that extra little bit. Anyway, perhaps clown medicine is the other way around, he thought, and it was a mark of how confused he was that this logic satisfied him.
“I wonder what other parts of you are dilated?” she said. She smirked as she said it, but he hardly noticed, so absorbed by the play of light on her glossy lips was he. “We’ll find out when we take your temperature.”
He watched as she took up her doctor’s bag once more, reached in and slowly withdrew a thermometer. It was far too long to have possibly fitted into the bag, but somehow it did, and he watched foolishly as she slowly, slowly produced a thermometer some half a meter long from the bag. It was also clearly a prop, some sort of baton with smoothly rounded ends painted white with a scale and red line marked onto it.
“Bend over, my darling, compliant baby,” she said, squirting some gel onto the thermometer. She rubbed the gel along the length, making a dirty, arousing, wet sound. “You love to do what Nurse tells you to, don’t you?”
He wasn’t sure, but found himself bent over his desk anyway. A cotton wool pad appeared on the desktop beneath his face. “Breathe,” she told him, so he breathed.
He was barely aware of his dressing gown being lifted, his pyjama bottoms being pulled to his ankles, of his buttocks being spread, but he felt the cool wetness of more of the lube being smeared between them and he moaned. “That’s it,” whispered Nurse Dina. “Good patient. Compliant patient. Such a good subject. The next symptom is a high temperature, so let’s see if we can make you hot, hmmm?”
He felt the thermometer placed firmly against his anus and, as was the case in so much else for him now, he couldn’t resist as it was slowly screwed into him centimetre by unyielding centimetre. It filled him, and he wasn’t sure if he liked the sensation at first. But then he remembered that Nurse always knows best, and relaxed, and as he relaxed, he began to find pleasure in being penetrated deep… deeper… deepest.
“Oh, so open for me, aren’t you?” said the clown nurse. “So very open in so many ways.”
He breathed bubble-gum pink air and no longer knew how to answer. Part of his mind still entertained the idea that the clown girl might not be a real nurse, but that was just silly, the newly pink parts of his mind told him. After all, she wore a nurse’s uniform, she had a bag full of medicines and apparatus, and she was currently taking his temperature with a fake thermometer big enough to club a seal. She was plainly a medical professional.
He had never realised that having his temperature taken could feel so good. The thermometer had some nubs or something on it, and it kept rubbing against something nice inside as nurse slowly thrust it in and out of him. He felt himself growing so hard, and that felt good, too.
The thrusting stopped. He heard her open her wondrous medical clown bag again. “I don’t think we’ll need them, but I’m going to take a few blackmail photographs of you now. You look such fun, my baby, with my nice big thermometer sticking out of your horny bum-bum, and your cock all stiff and hard and drippy, and your face all dumb and empty. Even if we never have to use these pictures, I’d like them for myself because they make me happy. You were a bad patient until I came along, you know. All grumpy and telling people not to have fun. You feel bad you were like that, don’t you?”
Nostrils full of clown medicinal fumes, he couldn’t say anything but nod his head. He had disappointed Nursey. He felt awful.
“But now you’ve been treated, you feel so much better. Don’t think of these pictures as blackmail. Not unless that makes your dickie throb, of course. No, think of them as insurance against you turning back into a bad patient with no lovely, lovely symptoms. Insurance is good, isn’t it? Nice and prudent, and I know you love prudency. So, you’re okay with me taking some fun pics of you being a good patient for me, aren’t you? That’s just common sense. You’re fine with it.”
“Yes,” he managed to say.
“Good boy. That’s my sweet baby,” she murmured as she put the camera to her eye and started taking pictures. He looked over and saw it was an old fashioned concertina camera with a little fluffy toy birdy dangling over the lens on a spring. The camera was at least twice as big as the doctor’s bag. It was absurd. Everything was absurd. His life to that day had been absurd. Why had he never seen it until now? Everything was so silly. He couldn’t help but giggle.
“That’s it,” she coaxed him. Click, click, click. “Thaaat’s it. Be fun for Nursey.” Strange lights glimmered in the flash bulb’s reflector and he slipped deeper and deeper into fluffy soft pinkness.
Be fun for Nursey…
Be fun for Nursey…
He wanted to be fun for Nursey. He grinned like the simpleton the pink mist had made of him and waggled his horny bum-bum to make the thermometer waggle like a cartoon dog’s tail. She lowered the camera and smiled at him; a fond smile of the kind usually reserved for slightly stupid Labradors after they’ve walked into a doorframe.
“Now then.” She put down the camera and came over to crouch by the desk, rest her forearms on its surface, and her chin upon the uppermost of those. She tilted her head and watched him breathe in fluffy pink oblivion for a few seconds.
“Don’t get… get too close…” he tried to warn her. “Medicine…”
“Oh, my baby. You’re concerned for your Nursey. Such a good patient. But it’s okay. That special medicine only works on rubes. Who can say why? Maybe circus people aren’t human people at all, but aliens come to Earth to conquer it with custard pies and sparkly leotards. Maybe we’re fairy folk come from beyond the misted vales to wander the mortal world. Or maybe I took a prophylactic antidote beforehand.” She sighed. “So many possibilities.” She lifted her head from its rest and looked under the desk. “Oh, my, my, my. What a naughty drippy dick you have. Throb, throb, throb.” She took it in her gloved hand and he gasped at her touch. “Want to know what the last symptom is, dear patient?” She began to stroke him agonisingly slowly, the remnants of the lubricant streaking his tight shaft. “Cummies,” she said absently, as she tormented him. “Oodles and oodles of cummies. Not yet, though. When I say. Nursey always knows best.”
He tried to say “Nursey always knows best,” but it came out as a discordant, strangled groan.
“I was going to let you spurt on the floor like the no-fun rube you were, but Nursey can see you’re full of fun for her now. Lovely, lovely delicious fun. Here’s a fun thing about cummies. Tell me, my baby, what’s going on in your head right now?”
“Pink…” he managed to say. “Pink… mist…”
“Pink mist. Very good. The pink mist makes you fun, you know. But, when Nursey leaves, the pinkiness in your brain might fade away over time, and then you’d be no fun anymore. Wouldn’t that be terrible?” He nodded. That would be terrible. “But here’s the fun thing. When a boy does cummies, big powerful spurty-spurts for Nursey, his brain does a little fit and goes super blank just for a second. And that’s super good, because it only takes a second for the pink mist to settle into the boring whiteness of a super blank mind and dye it fun pink forever and ever and probably ever. So, you become fun forever and ever and probably ever, and by fun, I mean Nursey’s obedient, submissive, compliant little slave.”
Spluttering, the small part of his mind that wasn’t yet hopelessly compromised rose from the pink ocean and splashed around on the surface bellowing warnings. “She’s going to enslave you, you idiot! She’s brainwashing you! Resist! Resist!”
“noooooooo…” he managed to protest with all the vigour and conviction of a sadly deflating whoopee cushion.
“Oh, there we go. There it is. I just knew you had to have a little teeny-tiny bit of un-fun left in you, and there it is! So sweet! I love this moment, you have no idea.” She swung out of his view beneath the desk. He tried to move, to stagger up, to get away, but his body was full of pink clown medicine and he could barely move a finger. “I’ll tell you that something now, my baby. The voice of experience this is, so pay attention.” He felt the thermometer move inside him; she’d taken a grip of it. Very unexpectedly, it began to buzz and he groaned helplessly, needfully. Her other hand gripped his painfully hard cock by the base. “We are well past the point where you have any choice.”
Her mouth closed over him.
Fireworks went off in his head, rockets and Catherine wheels, and he could hear them whoosh and purr and crackle so loudly there were no thoughts left at all, he could only smell the scent of burnt gunpowder and frothing bubble-gum and grease paint, only see the lights strung from pole to pole and the glowing canvas of a big top by night, only hear a steam calliope playing and the roar of a crowd that might have been the furnace roar of his mind disintegrating. The Circus had come to Milletville and they hadn’t bothered to ask for a permit.
He was not consciously aware of how expertly Nurse Dina worked the buzzing thermometer against his prostate, of how she milked him with her hand, or tortured him with her mouth, lips, and tongue. All sensation was an inchoate siren howl to him. His eyes rolled back in his head. He couldn’t remember words. He was barely human anymore. She was setting fire to every nerve ending and whatever he was or had been was now totally in flux. He had no choice, no choice at all. Nurse Dina was right. But then…
Nursey always knows best.
When Nurse Dina was satisfied his persona was now hopelessly liquidised in him, she finished him as perfunctorily as stamping a file Closed. One last grind of the vibrating wand against his ruthlessly sensitised prostate, one last twisting wring of his spit-polished cock, a whisper of “Give it up, my baby. Give it up now,” one last viperish flicker of her tongue across the drooling eye, and he was cumming.
Of course he had orgasmed before in his life, but it had seemed bohemian and undisciplined so he had given up on it (much to his wife’s irritation, although she later found any number of less proper gentlemen who liked being bohemian and undisciplined in her bed). Self-consciousness had always robbed the moment of any true pleasure, so concerned was he in the indignity of it all. But now he had never cared about himself so little, his ego reduced to a pink-hued slurry. Now he came hard enough to compensate for his every previous lacklustre performance. He came so hard his back arched, his teeth ground, a long animal grunt issued from his throat as the last of Geoffrey Millet’s un-fun exploded in jetting strings into Nurse Dina’s controlling mouth, where she tasted the contents of a man’s soul with quiet relish before swallowing it to join those of all the assorted other Geoffrey Millets who had thought to confound The Circus in its long travels.
There was a small outrage at the council vote the following Tuesday. Geoffrey Millet threw in his decisive vote to issue the visiting circus its permit. He laughed, said people deserved some fun in their lives, and that the citizens of Darley had been starved of it for too long. His colleagues, the ones who hadn’t also mysteriously shifted their voting intentions, were appalled. Whatever had got into Councillor Millet? Why, he wasn’t even wearing a tie.
“Call me Geoff,” said Councillor Millet.