Arcadia Acres

The Deal

The first thing they teach you in business school is profit margin. It’s not enough to have a lot of revenue, is the thing. It’s a mistake a lot of young businesspeople make, Arthur’s teacher warned him. You think it’s all just about making a lot of money, but it’s not. It’s about cash flow. The income has to outweigh the expenses. Otherwise, no matter how much you’re raking in, you’re still in the hole.

Arcadia Acres has a significant income stream. Every kid in town wants to have their birthday there, between the enormous climbing and ball pit area, the arcade machines, pinball, skeeball, and air hockey tables, not to mention the minigolf section. It’s the hip hangout place for kids and even their parents. But the crown jewel, the real draw for crowds of all ages, is the live music.

Anybody could have an arcade. Arthur Maverick has put several others in town out of business. His secret is atmosphere.

The building he’d bought for Arcadia Acres had come with a stage, and initially Arthur had rented it out as a venue for performances. But he’d quickly come to realize that he was missing a real branding opportunity. It was one thing for bands to come and go. It was another for Arcadia Acres to have its own band. And so, the Max Mavericks were born.

If the performers wear suits, it’s easy enough to swap out a singer here, a bassist there, let the drummer take a sick day, without sacrificing name brand recognition. The lead singer will always be bad boy Max Jackrabbit, regardless of who’s actually performing the song. The drummer is always Shelton Tortoise, the guitarist Ronny Radrat. Buzzy Fuzz is the bee on bass and the keyboardist is an extravagantly-dressed bear called Teddy Libearacci. Bring the family. Collect the trading cards. It was an ideal solution, he’d thought.

Except that it isn’t. The thing is, it turns out, that musicians are incredibly expensive. Arthur has been through several iterations of band members and the entire band as a whole at this point. They complained that the stage lights made it sweltering in the costumes. They complained that, even though the costumes only covered the back of their hands and left their fingers free, it made it difficult to actually play the instruments. Always, always they want more money.

And that is where the crux of Arthur’s problem lies. His establishment has become known for its musical performances. There are plenty of people who come just for that. But five musicians’ salaries are more than he can afford and keep the place afloat. He’s been over the books again and again; it’s just not feasible.

He’s drinking at the local bar, trying to come up with solutions—can he get away with lower-quality food? Where do prisons source their meat?—when he is approached by a stranger.

Later on, when he tries to remember the man’s face, he will be unable to. The impression the man leaves is one of sleekness, sharp edges, elegant business attire. Arthur remembers that he was wearing a black suit and a sharp, short black hat with a red band and a wide brim. He remembers the man had a briefcase. He remembers the man had the solution to all his problems.

“I hear you’re having some money troubles,” the man says. His voice is deep and smooth as honey. “I have a business proposition for you.”

Arthur is skeptical, but lets the man buy him another drink. The idea the man proposes seems too good to be true. He takes several pieces of paper out of his slim black briefcase. On them are drawings of the band members, more or less matching the appearances of the costumes Arthur had custom-made. There’s just one difference.

“They’re called animatronics,” the man explains. “Machines. They don’t need pay, they require only minimum maintenance, and they come pre-loaded with over four hundred songs. An investment in the future of your company. Never pay another freeloading, diva musician again. What do you think?”

Arthur snorts. “Sounds amazing, but how am I supposed to afford them? If the business was just starting out, maybe I could make that kind of investment, but now-”

“Oh, no need for that,” says the man. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we do a free trial, hmm? I’ll let you use them for a month or two, and you can lay off your costly artists during that time to give yourself a little financial breathing room. If you like the way it’s going after that, then you can buy. If not, just hire your help back and return the machines to me. No harm, no foul. What do you have to lose?”

Arthur’s skepticism remains, but it’s hard to argue with a free trial. He signs some papers and shakes the man’s hand; he’s wearing some kind of thin black leather glove, but his hand still feels surprisingly warm in Arthur’s.

The next day, the animatronic characters appear in the back room of Arcadia Acres. There’s no sign of anyone having dropped them off, just five surprisingly life-like characters and an instruction manual. Arthur sets them up and turns them on.

By the end of the day, Arthur’s ready to call all his musicians and tell them to take a hike. The animatronics are astounding. Their ability to mimic the human actors is uncanny; one would hardly know they weren’t people in mascot costumes, except that if anything they look more like the cartoon animals they are supposed to represent. The sound quality of their performance matches the live players on their best days, and they even wink at the kids and do occasional little flourishes on stage.

It’s not a hard decision. No matter how expensive the machines are upfront, there’s no way they’re not worth the salaries of five people. Maybe Arthur can make some kind of payment plan agreement. He lets the characters do all the work and focuses on the rest of his business.

Two months come and go, and Arthur sees no sign of the man who sold him the machines. Concerned, he gets out the contract he signed and goes over it again to verify the length of the free trial and to see if there’s any way to contact the stranger.

The trial period is indeed listed as two months, after which, the contract says, “payment will be due if the machines are kept.” The amount of the payment is nowhere on the documents. Nor, indeed, is there any information about how to make payments or to whom to address them. Not even a phone number or email address for the man. Arthur is baffled. What else can he do but wait for the stranger to show his face?

Time rolls on. Another day passes. Nearly a week. No sign of his strange benefactor.

And then, Arthur discovers the price. It’s a day like any other. He’s out on the floor of the arcade, checking that everything is in order, responding to some questions from a concerned parent about the safety standards of the venue.

As he stands there, one of the screaming young patrons tears past him, apparently playing tag with another young boy. He darts behind Arthur, small hands grabbing at the leg of his pants, and peers out at his friend.

Instantly, Arthur’s entire body fills with lust. His skin feels like fire. His cock is hard in seconds. He stops speaking to the concerned mother mid-sentence. Never before has he felt so entirely overwhelmed with a desire to touch, to take. He stares dumbly down at the young boy hanging onto him, his mind brimming with images of stripping the boy bare, right here right now, and forcing him down onto the colorful linoleum, penetrating him with wild abandon.

“Sir? Are you alright?”

Arthur’s attention is wrenched back to the parent. “A-ah? He manages. “Oh, yes, I- I’m so sorry, something has just occurred to me that I’ve forgotten. I have to go take care of it. Excuse me.” He makes a panicked exit, hurriedly returning to the arcade’s large surveillance-room-slash-business-office, just off the backstage.

Once there he locks the door behind him and waits for his racing heart to come back down. It does no such thing; he feels it throbbing in his chest, forcing hot blood throughout his body. He feels light-headed.

He glances over at a wall of security camera monitors. Everywhere he can see children playing, enjoying themselves. Rough-housing in the ball pit. Jeering at each other over games. Laughing together over slices of pizza. He can feel himself drooling. He’s so hard he can’t stand it.

Feeling only barely tethered to his own body, Arthur makes his way to the security chair and sits in front of the monitors. He’s been meaning to hire a proper security guard to watch these so he doesn’t have to do it all himself, but right now he’s glad he didn’t. He grabs a tissue from a nearby box and just looks and looks and looks, feasting his eyes.

He barely has to stroke himself before he comes. The sight of so much young flesh is overwhelming. It’s more than he can take. For a brief moment after he climaxes his mind feels marginally more sane. But it doesn’t last. He barely has to look at the security feed for more than a minute or two before he feels the lust returning to fog his brain. Some part of him is horrified, but what little voice it has is drowned out by the roar of hot blood surging through his body.

He can’t do this. He knows he can’t. He has to control himself. All he wants to do is run back out onto the floor, grab the nearest child, feel the soft flesh in his hands, plunge his cock into-

He’s hard again. He bites his lip. He can’t act on this. What is wrong with him? Somehow he knows, he knows it’s connected to the deal he made. He can’t explain why, but he’s as certain of this as he is of the stiffness of his dick, of the strength of his desire.

He barely makes it through the rest of the afternoon. He doesn’t dare venture out of the back room, so he makes do with the security footage. He traces the lovely round lines of young cheeks on the monitors with his fingertips; pert, bouncy bottoms, shapely thighs. He wants them so badly. His cock screams with need.

He jacks off more than he’s ever done in his life. He barely manages to catch his breath after rubbing one out before growing hard again. He finds some hand lotion in a desk drawer, but even with that he’s raw and sore by the time the arcade closes for the night.

Desperate, Arthur makes his way back to the bar that evening, hoping against hope he’ll find some way to contact the man who sold him the animatronics.

The man is, of course, nowhere to be found. He asks around, but not only does no one know who the man is, no one seems to even remember having seen him. They look at Arthur like he’s crazy; who is he talking about? What man?

And so Arthur is left alone with a decision. He sits in the back room of his business the next morning, and thinks about what he should do.

He has a choice. He can feel, he knows, that this is somehow connected to the deal he made. He can try ripping up the contract. Get rid of the animatronics, hire back the musicians. That might end his suffering. It might stop him from doing something awful.

He gets up and walks to the backstage area. The deactivated characters are all standing there neatly in a row, glass eyes vacant as they wait to be brought back to life for their next performance. The unseeing gazes look through him, seeming to ask a question, weighing his soul. He could smash them up right now. He should.

Instead, he walks back to the storage closet and opens it. Inside are the old costumes from the human performers that he has not yet thrown away. He reaches for the Max Jack costume. He only has an hour or so before the arcade opens.

The morning crowd buzzes with noisy excitement. It’s a Saturday; there are three birthdays scheduled before noon. And it seems that between the live musical performances, Max Jackrabbit has decided to wander around the show floor giving out gifts.

He has a small basket of toys and trinkets. Just the little things that would only cost a few tickets from the arcade machines—sticky hands, plastic frogs, and the like. As bemused parents look on, Arthur in the Max Jack suit approaches the occasional lucky child and holds up a hand full of blue paper strips.

“Go on,” he encourages. “Pick one.”

The child will draw the paper strip out of Max’s clenched hand and then, based on the color that appears at the bottom, Max will give them a little prize out of his basket. Arthur pats their heads afterward, ruffles their hair, wonders what it would look like matted down with his cum.

He’s seeking out something in particular, and after a few minutes he finds it: a young boy who looks isolated; no particular adults looking his way.

He crouches down beside the boy, offering his fist of paper strips: “Here,” he says, “pick one.”

The boy draws out a piece of paper.

“Wow!” says Arthur, looking at the same red dot that’s at the bottom of all the other paper strips. “You picked the special one! You get to choose a grand prize from the big box! What’s your name, kid?”

“Toby,” says the boy.

“Nice to meet you Toby,” says Arthur with feeling. “Come along with me!”

He leads the boy through the crowd. Toby is no taller than Arthur’s waist, his blond hair messy and tousled. He’s wearing a striped shirt with the faded remnants of a few stains, and small blue shorts that he’s nearly grown out of. They hug his little ass tightly, straining the fabric. Arthur swallows.

He and the boy make their way to the door marked “personnel only.” Arthur opens the door and gestures for the child to enter. The boy bounds in enthusiastically and Arthur shuts the door behind them, locking it.

He has set up a large box with the sign “Grand Prizes” over it along the edge of one wall. Toby bounds over to it, immediately leaning over the edge of the deep container to reach down for one of the stuffed toys at the bottom.

Arthur must act quickly. He sweeps up behind the boy and grabs him at the bent waist, quickly yanking down the child’s pants and underwear.

He’s already hard and well-lubed. He is, in fact, nude within the confines of the mascot suit. Furthermore, thanks to some hasty modifications he made to the costume that morning, he doesn’t even have to remove it to do what he so desperately wants. His cock emerges from the partial flap he cut into the fabric, like that of an animal.

Within seconds his hands are on the boy’s naked bottom, holding his cheeks apart as he slides his cock cleanly up the boy’s ass. Toby cries out, but Arthur ignores it; his entire being is suffused with bliss. Ecstasy surges through him as his penis sinks deeper and deeper into the boy’s hole. The child’s pained cries are barely registered as background noise under the overwhelming pleasure.

Arthur is grateful now for the way the mascot costume covers only the back of the hands; his exposed palms and fingers slide greedily up and down the boy’s sides, feeling the softness of his skin, reveling in the decadence. He slips them down to the boy’s thighs, kneading them to feel the give of the flesh before grabbing them and harshly yanking Toby backwards, fully impaling him on Arthur’s cock.

He fucks the boy so hard and quick he nearly blacks out, so worked up he comes up Toby’s ass after only a handful of thrusts. Gasping for breath, Arthur pulls out his softening cock, not letting go of his grip on the boy. He pets the boy’s hair while he recovers, listening to the pitiful mewling sniffles he produces.

The sound turns him on. He doesn’t know how he could possibly be ready to go again so soon, but he feels himself growing aroused once more. He pulls the boy off the edge of the box and turns him around, plunging his re-awakening cock into the boy’s mouth to finish hardening. It seems to choke the boy as it continues to grow, the stiffening flesh forcing its way down the child’s throat. Arthur begins thrusting again immediately, breathless with joy.

It takes longer to come in the boy’s mouth, but that’s not saying much. Arthur fucks his face with shaky thrusts, holding his head steady with a grip in the boy’s hair. He’s very aware that if he takes too long, the boy will be missed. But whatever demonic energy is fueling his lust drives him onward, through another orgasm into the wet warmth of the boy’s mouth and back for a second time to plunge into Toby’s ass. The abused hole squelches in protest as Arthur’s leaking cum is splashed aside to make way for the returning rod of flesh that burrows its way happily into the boy’s body like a jackrabbit into a hillside warren.

More wild, uncontrolled thrusts, desperately hard and deep, forcing himself up Toby’s ass as far as he can on the apex of each movement. When he comes in the boy for the third time, it’s barely been five minutes. Arthur is sweating and shaking.

He pulls the boy’s pants back up, ignoring the way the frothy mess begins to leak into his underwear, and pats him absently on the head. He hands the child a stuffed animal and shuffles him out the door, back into the arcade proper. With Toby gone, Arthur shuts himself once more into the back room and locks it behind him. He breathes hard, trying desperately to recover.

It does, thank god, seem as though his lust is sated for a moment. He can think clearly, thoughts other than going back and immediately seeking out a second child to reprise this performance. But a low simmer in the back of his mind tells him it will only be a matter of time before the urge returns. The price, it seems, is ongoing.

Arthur looks over to the backstage area as the animatronic characters’ eyes come to life with a soft whirr, preparing to go out for their show. It’s probably only his imagination, but for a moment he swears that Max Jackrabbit’s glass eyes swivel to look at him.

Whatever else can be said about them, these machines have certainly saved Arthur’s business. And as for the fire that even now waits in his blood, biding its time for a chance to return? Well, all goods and services have their price. Arthur finds himself surprisingly willing to pay.