The lecture being held at the university's main academic hall sounded intriguing enough, and any freshman students would garner extra credit for attending. The guest speaker was renowned with a reputation for making even the driest subjects interesting, so that was a bonus, right there.

Something else that was already interesting was the arrival of some of the students in the foyer outside the auditorium. It's been said that there's no such thing as coincidence, but if that's the case it would be difficult to explain all six of Herbie's newly-gay chickens arriving for the lecture at exactly (or nearly) the same time. And all of them wearing their bib overalls.

Jamie and Acker came in first, walking very close together. Jamie had on a white polo shirt under his bibs and wore white deck shoes with no socks. Acker was a bit bolder in that he wore no shirt under his overalls, only a red bandana tied around his neck. The bandana matched his red canvas hi-tops. Jamie nudged his boyfriend as they entered the foyer. "Hey, look who's here."

Coming across the foyer from the opposite side entrance was Carson and Rickie. Carson wore a wife beater beneath his bibs, Rickie had on a striped shirt. Carson wore his pant legs rolled up above the ankle and had sandals on his feet. Rickie wore running shoes. "What kind of a coincidence is this!", Carson said, shaking Jamie's hand. "Guess you guys are gunning for the extra credit for lecture attendance, too." The boys nodded. Then Rickie snapped his fingers rapidly to gain their attention.

"Looks like we're not the only ones."

In walked Coffee and Bryce from the rear entrance, also both in their overalls, but with nearly identical red and blue plaid shirts and tan work boots. They entered holding hands, laughing together, oblivious of the other four boys already there.

"Yo! Bry! Coffee!", Carson hollered. The duo looked over and saw them all standing there. With bright smiles and a wave from Coffee, they came over to complete the group.

"How wild is this, huh?", Bry observed. "All of us guys being here at the same time for the same lecture."

Acker was eyeing the group of them suspiciously. "Um, that's not the only coincidence, either, in case you haven't noticed."

Bry looked at him askance. "What else?"

"Am I the only one who noticed that we're all wearing overalls?", Acker said, a little exasperated.

The group looked at one another, the light beginning to dawn. "Not only that", Carson added, "but we're wearing the overalls. We're all in the overalls that Herbie gave us as part of that hypnosis experiment thing. And now we're all wearing them on our own."

"If it is on our own", Jamie said cryptically. "Anyone starting to wonder if maybe we'd been influenced to do this? Dress ourselves up like country chickens?"

"You mean country boys", Acker corrected him quickly.

"Right, right", Jamie conceded, shaking his head. "That's what I meant. Boys. Not chickens."

The creepy factor had just gone up about ten notches for all of them. Rickie attempted to break the tension. "Hey, at least we're not all wearing straw hats too, right?"

Coffee and Bry removed their back packs in one swift movement and unzipped them to reveal their hats readily on hand. Carson jerked a thumb back toward the rear parking lot. "Ours are in the car."

Jamie sighed. "I almost walked out of the house wearing mine. Acker had to yank it off my head."

Acker slipped his arm around Jamie's shoulder's. "If not for the fact that I prefer to wear the hat and nothing else, I might not have thought to take my own hat off, much less Jami--"

Rickie interrupted, partly because he'd already gotten too much information on Acker's home life. "Hang on a minute. Nobody here is wearing socks, are they?" He looked at the rest of the boys. Slowly, all of them shook their heads. Carson looked down at his bare toes, visible through his open sandals. "We're all ready to kick off our shoes and go barefoot any minute, aren't we?", Rickie asked, unnecessarily. It was becoming obvious to all of them that something was not right.

Jamie spoke softly, but his words carried considerable volume. "What's being done to us?" Again, they all exchanged looks. Bry squeezed Coffee's hand tighter. "What is it that we've agreed to in being part of this experiment?"

A small group of kids passed the six boys as they made their way into the main auditorium. The girls in the group stared and giggled. One of the passing boys smirked, and drawled out a verse from the old song Thank God I'm A Country Boy, adding a cartoonish twang to his voice. "Lafe on the farm is kinda laid ba-aack--!"

"We need to get to the bottom of this", Jamie said. "But I'm not so sure we can do it here." Another cluster of students passed by, staring and making snide comments.

"Agreed", Carson said.

Rickie jerked his head toward a back hallway that led to a backstage tech area. "Guys. Back this way." Once in the hallway, the six country boys were more or less obscured from the view of passersby. "This should provide us with a modicum of privacy, at least for a little while."

"So what's happening to us?", Acker asked no one in particular. "We're all wearing our hypnosis session costumes, apparently not caring who sees them, for the most part. We're going barefoot--"

"Or more", Jamie added.

"--or more", Acker agreed. "What else is happening to us? Are any of you doing something that you never did, or maybe wouldn't have done, prior to the sessions with Herbie?"

The boys all looked at one another nervously. They knew what the biggest change in them had been, and it certainly was not wearing hillbilly costumes. But no one present was ready to admit what that change was. Carson cleared his throat.

"Well...there has been one thing that's, um...maybe a little unusual", he started.

"Oh, I don't know if it's all that important", Rickie said quickly.

"No, what is it?", Jamie asked, eager to hear someone say it, if only so that neither he or Acker would have to say it first.

"Whatever changes are happening to us", Coffee said, "isn't this the perfect place to find out? At this lecture? We don't have to all sit together, so we won't look like the farmboy brigade or anything. But we could find the answers we need right here. We can compare notes and discuss particulars later, can't we?"

"Good call, Coff", Bryce said, beaming. He lifted up Coffee's hand and kissed it. They had been holding hands since they first entered the auditorium, and had yet to let go. Jamie just realized that he hadn't even noticed.

"Hey, wait a minute", Jamie said. "Are you guys, like--together now?"

"Oh, yeah", Coffee smiled. "This beautiful bumpkin is my boyfriend now. Aren't you, honey?"

Bry leaned down and kissed Coffee on the lips. "You betcha, farm boy."

"Dudes! That is so cool!", Carson gushed. "Congratulations!"

"Guys, that really is awesome news", Jamie said. And then he put his arm around Acker's shoulders. Acker fit his arm around Jamie's waist and drew him close. Acker rested his head against Jamie's, taking in the scent of his hair.

"Ohh, man, Jamie, what is that in your hair? Smells fantaaaasstic."

Jamie smiled, squirming a little under Acker's attention. "Just strawberry shampoo. hey, stop it."

"Can't. You smell too good, Jamie. You're delicious." Acker began to rub his nose against Jamie's temple, kissing him intermittently.

Carson let out a low breath. He noticed that he was sweating a little. "Guys, is it hot in here?"

Rickie placed a palm against Carson's chest, running his fingers across the bare skin of his pecs exposed by the wife beater. "You're always hot, chicken boy. Really, you are so...fucking...hot--!" Rickie leaned in and kissed Carson's chest.

"Oh, oh, oh. Rickie. Don't do that, man. You know I'm fucking helpless when you do the chest-kissing thing. Ohhhhh, yeahhh--!" Carson threw his head back and took in a deep breath, riding the sensation of his boyfriend's attention.

Coffee and Bry had gone from holding hands to being in one another's arms. "Looks like we're not the only happy couple here", Coffee said.

"Looks like", Bry agreed. Then the two were all over each another, hands running along the edge of their bib straps, chests pressed bib to bib, lips locked with tongues probing each other's mouth.

"Let's get out of here", Jamie said, his hand reaching up to stroke Acker's face.

"Not enough room in my dorm room", Coffee gasped in between kisses.

"Or at the frat", Carson said, his hands running through Rickie's hair as his boyfriend kissed his chest, neck, and face.

"I have an apartment", Jamie offered.

"Let's go", Acker said.

The sextet--now with stress on the sex--made their way off, arm-in-arm, to Jamie's apartment. All thoughts of investigating their strange transformation forgotten in the heat of, well, being in heat. At the end of the hallway, Herbie stood holding his handheld heat projecting device, which was now drained. He let out a slow breath. "That was close."

He pocketed his handheld device, burning his hands on it only once while slipping into its hot pad envelope. Herbie made a note to rework the handheld's casing to make it easier to hang on to after use. A bit overheated or no, it did it's job. As did Herbie, who'd uttered no less than six "chick-chick-chick"s this time around to ensure his boys would be sufficiently distracted. Inwardly he smiled, and made his way back out of the side hallway and toward the main foyer. There a girl with outlandishly long brown hair was seated on the rug in front of the soda machine, touching up her lipstick.

"You find your friends?", she asked as Herbie passed.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. Yes, I did. Thanks."

"Soon as you asked if I'd seen any fellas all wearing bib overalls, I knew just who you meant. Kinda hard to miss all together like that, aren't they?"

Herbie nodded. "Yeah, I guess they are. Not sure how they got by me."

"So what's up with the farmer pants thing they got goin' on?"

"That? Oh, I think they belong to some sort of club."

The girl had already lost interest, watching herself puckering and unpuckering her lips in her compact mirror. "That's cool. Say, you know how long this lecture thing is supposed to last? I'm waiting for my friend who's supposed to go to it for class. But she just kinda steps in, hangs around long enough for attendance and to get the gist of what's going on, then skips out."

Herbie nodded, tuning her ramblings out. He opened the door to the auditorium just slightly, enough to peer inside. The gust speaker was already in full swing, having only just gotten started. He already had slides up and there were at least two easels with charts and graphs visible from where Herbie was standing.

"And this is a prime example", the speaker said in a strong, stentorian voice, "of ethical practices of a hypnotherapist, or rather, complete lack thereof. It was 1955, and the young heiress had been seeing the therapist for only a few sessions before he suggested she try hypnosis. Not two months later, the young lady was insisting she was in love with him and prepared to elope." He clicked his remote to project a new slide with photos of the parties involved.

"Luckily, her family intervened and it was discovered that the therapist had already had the impressionable heiress sign over all of her monetary assets to him in the event of here death. He had already booked a honeymoon in a tropical locale, and later confessed to disposing of the young lady in a cliff diving accident or through some other exotic means to abscond with her money." There were a variety of gasps from around the room as the next slide showed a newspaper clipping of the nefarious hypnotherapist being carted off.

"While this is a rather extreme example, it sets the stage beautifully for our talk this afternoon about the potential abuses of hypnotherapy since it's introduction many years ago. Whether your major field of study lies in Psychology, Criminal Law, or Ethics, I've no doubt you'll find this information most informative--"

Herbie closed the door and stepped away from the auditorium. Yes, it was most definitely a close call. He had no wish for his freshman chickens to sit in on that lecture.

"Well? They gonna take long?", the lipstick girl asked, still sitting on the floor, cross-legged. Now she was brushing her hair.

"Looks like it'll be a while", Herbie informed her.

"Damn! And we were gonna go to the mall! I need new shoes." Then she looked at Herbie as he made his way toward the exit. "So what are they talking about in there anyway?"

"Oh, nothing all that interesting. Nothing you'd want to know about--unless you happen to be in that field of study, anyway." With that, Herbie slipped out before the slightly vapid coed could think to ask what field of study that was.

Herbie and Vic sat together in the classroom where their adventure had started. Sitting together being a relative description, since Herbie sat confidently back in a desk and Vic leaned forward, his shoulders slumped with his arms resting on his thighs.

Herbie was reviewing his videotaped hypnosis sessions on the class's VCR. He twirled the remote control blithely in one hand as he watched the former six straight freshmen, now three gay couples, put into a deep trance then reduced from respectful college students into clucking poultry. He continually rewound the tape to admire his handiwork again. He was on his sixth viewing. Atop the desk beside him was a variety of black and white 8x10 photos featuring the six young chickens. The stills captured poses ranging from innocuous to humiliating to erotic. The stack was well-thumbed.

Vic was dressed as he had been told to dress by his new master, Herbie. Vic was clad only in faded drop-seat denim bib overalls. He was barefoot and shirtless, the only other item of clothing on him was a bird's nest straw hat atop his head. He looked like a hillbilly bumpkin. Admittedly, the outfit showed off his wonderfully taut physique, his defined arms and toned chest. But his eyes looked dead and defeated.

Vic sighed as Herbie watched the video again and again. Reaching up and removing his straw hat. Vic reached over to set it in the seat of the desk to his left, atop the back pack which held his shirt and shoes which he would put back on after parting company with Herbie. With Herbie's permission, of course.

Herbie glanced over at Vic just as he was about to let go of his straw hat as he set it down. Herbie cleared his throat loudly. Vic looked over at him, a bit startled, and saw Herbie incline his head forward a bit, his eyes focused intently on the straw hat. Vic realized he had made a big no-no. He wasn't told he could remove his straw hat.

Quickly, Vic put the hat back on his head, lowering his head a bit in supplication. "I'm sorry, sir."

Herbie grinned. "You're forgiven." Then, readjusting himself in his seat, he added, "This time."

The two sat in silence for a bit longer, then Vic got up the nerve to ask what he'd been meaning to ask for days. He looked up, pushing his hat back on his head. "Um, Herb, I've been meaning to ask you--"

Herbie shot him a venomous stare. "How's that??"

Vic flinched a little. Rapidly, he rephrased. "My apologies. Master Herbie, sir, I was wondering if it would be okay to ask you a question. Sir. If it's alright with you."

Herbie smiled, satisfied with the reworded groveling. "Why of course you can ask me a question, Vic buddy. Anything I can do to help one of my boys."

Vic swallowed, biting his tongue to hold back the remarks he so badly wanted to say. Instead, he said, "Thank-you, sir. I was just wondering, if maybe you could tell me...why are you doing this?"

"Because seeing the tapes of these boys going chicken turns me on."

"Not the tapes. I mean, all of it. Why turn innocent freshmen boys into...well, you know."

"Chickens?"

"Gays."

Herbie sat in silence for a moment, his smile gone. Then he pointed the remote at the VCR and jabbed the pause button. He tossed the remote atop his stack of photos and turned to face Vic. "Okay, you wanna know why? You really wanna know?" Vic, still trying to be cautious, nodded slowly.

Herbie sat staring at him for another moment. Then, "How long have you known you were gay, Vic?"

Vic was suddenly more flustered than he'd been even when he awoke from a trance state in a leather biker bar. "What? I never said I was--how did you--wh-what makes you think I'm gay?"

Herbie just stared at him hard. "You know, hillbilly, I can take your voice away for a helluva lot longer than a few minutes. I wonder how your grandkids would feel about a grandpa who bucks and clucks?"

Vic blanched, and looked down at his bare feet, curling and uncurling his toes. Herbie leaned over and rested his elbows on Vic's desktop. Softly, he said, "I've known you were gay since we first met our freshmen year. It's one of the things that attracted me to you. That, and the fact that you're so damn cute. I know it and you know it."

Still looking at his feet, feeling terribly vulnerable, Vic mumbled back, "I--honestly, I haven't thought much about it. I've been, y'know, so caught up in my studies and working toward my degree and all that I haven't really taken the time to explore my true feel--"

Herbie poked Vic's neck with his index finger and Vic let out a loud, harsh squawk. "B-KAWWK!! Buk-buk-buk-BUH-KaawwkK!" Vic jerked away, then looked with horror at Herbie, who still held up his index finger, only now he waggled it back and forth in a sign of playful admonishment. Ah-ah-ahhh.

Vic let out a deep breath, and looked his master in the eye. He whispered, "I've known for sure I was gay since the seventh grade." He swallowed again, hard, staring at Herbie.

Herbie sat back in his chair. He continued as if nothing had just happened, as if Vic had simply answered the question honestly from the beginning. "I knew there was something different about me since I was in the first grade at only five years old. It wasn't until the sixth grade that I started to figure out what it was."

Herbie turned back toward the screen, looking at the video picture held motionless before him. Speaking as if to no one, Herbie continued. "I grew up watching all the normal kids. All the straight kids with their straight lives, doing whatever they wanted, having whomever they wanted. Never having to constantly keep their guard up, or keep their feelings a secret."

Herbie chewed his lower lip. "And all those beautiful, handsome boys were all around me. I could look but never touch. The football players, the drama club actors, the debaters, the brainiacs, all of them having at least a handful of gorgeous guys in their midst, none of whom I could ever approach." Herbie turned back to look at Vic, who sat as still as the paused video frame. "I finally met a gay guy when I was in my junior year of high school. It was at the student film festival. I was an usher. He was in his last year of college, his little brother had a film in the competition. And this college guy picked up on who I was--on what I was--right away. And you know what he said that made me?" Vic shook his head slowly, eyes wide in anticipation. "Chicken. That was what they called young inexperienced gay kids, he told me. Chicken. I was a fucking chicken."

Herbie turned back to the screen, which had lost it's frozen image and reverted to a flat blue screen. The reflected color gave Herbie's features a ghostly quality, as he addressed the empty room. "And even though I'd never heard the term before, I knew this guy was right. I was a chicken. Afraid of who I was, of what I felt, of anyone finding out about it." Herbie let an angry breath out of his nostrils, seething.

"And I looked at all those beautiful boys. And I ached for them. And I wanted to take them and change them to be more like me. To make them a bunch of chickens. In every sense of the word. Now tell me you've never felt that way. Tell me you didn't ever want to put the unattainable within reach, through whatever means."

"Yeah, but I would never--"

Herbie shot Vic another angry look.

Vic felt a hefty weight on his chest as his heart grew heavy and he slumped in his chair. He knew it was true. More than once he'd longed for a straight boy and hid his feelings away out of fear and cowardice. Lowering his chin, Vic looked up at Herbie. Feeling more exposed than he ever had before, he answered his master.

"Yes, sir. I'm a chicken, too."

"I know you are, Vic. And thanks to me you'll stay that way. Now be quiet while I watch my vid."

And Herbie jabbed the remote at the blue screen, bringing back the moving images of humiliated hypnotized freshmen boys. Vic spent the remainder of their time together sitting in silence, staring down at his overalls, his bare arms, his bare feet, feeling the comical hat resting on his head. As humiliated as he was, he had the unshakable feeling that for the first time in his life he was being true to himself.