dig dug dog
3rd Level Red Feather
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2001
- Messages
- 1,678
- Points
- 38
I haven't contributed a story for a while. It's good to be back in the saddle. As those of you who have read my stuff in the past could guess, there is a lot of emphasis here on what is going on inside the ticklee's head. And a major resistance theme. The tickling is mainly M/F: feet-ribs-ears-and other upper body, including underarms. All feedback is very welcome.
dig dug dog
The Tickle Reflex
Kat took a deep breath as she watched Tim’s back. The young, good-looking man was sitting on her legs, facing her feet, and any moment now he would begin to tickle her with the intention of making her laugh, that is, laugh in spite of her own resolve to remain unaffected. Kat glanced around the room and saw six of their friends, including Paul’s girlfriend, Jan, watching the action with various levels of interest.
“Good luck, Kat,” Jan said with a slight giggle.
“I told you, it’s just a matter of mental control,” Kat answered.
Tim twisted around momentarily to look Kat in the eye. “You can still back out. No harm, no foul.”
In her mind Kat quickly reviewed the previous 20 minutes which had brought her to this somewhat odd situation: During the weekly poker game conducted by this group of college friends, Paul had started poking his girlfriend in the side after she won a particularly big hand. After Jan let out a few high-pitched yelps, Paul suddenly got up, jokingly thumped his broad chest, and wrestled the small, blonde girl to the floor, skillfully attacking her ribs and waistline. Immediately Jan dissolved into fits of laughter and in-between her loud tittering begged for her boyfriend to stop the assault. But the pleading seemed to fall on deaf or uncaring ears.
As Jan thrashed around, Anna, a newer member of the group, whispered to Kat, ‘Oh my God, if anyone ever did that to me, I would just die. I am SO ticklish all over.’ Lindsay, one of Kat's oldest friends, apparently heard Anna and added. ‘Yeah. I could never be a spy. If I was caught, all they would have to do is tickle the information out of me.’
But Kat felt much differently than her friends. The sight of Jan writhing helplessly on the floor as recurring waves of laughter poured out of her fully-open mouth made the second-year psychology major feel uncomfortable. There was something disturbing about how easily Paul could melt his girlfriend into a pool of giggling hysteria. ‘Oh come on you guys, you can’t let yourself be controlled by what is basically an old habit. Just look at how people—especially the male of the species—take advantage of the ticklish. But it’s a learned response, like all kinds of other responses. You can train yourself not to laugh and squirm. I’ve been studying these kinds of reflex behaviors for a couple years now.’ Kat raised her voice to be heard over a particularly loud spasm of Jan’s squealing. ‘Really, it’s not that difficult.’
Paul stopped tickling Jan and looked up at Kat. ‘Are you saying that you’re not ticklish, Kat?’
Kat thought for a moment about her recent course in Reflex Psychology. As in almost all her classes, she had gotten a strong A. ‘I’m saying that people can retrain responses that aren’t necessary to their immediate survival. If there are many people in the world who aren’t ticklish, other people can learn not to react to tickling either. Being ticklish isn’t like needing to breath, it’s more like the fear of falling that babies have. But we grow up and learn to climb.’
‘OK, OK, so you’re not ticklish.’ Anna said. ‘You’re really lucky.’ From his position on the floor, Paul reached over and squeezed Anna’s thigh, just above her knee. The Asian girl nearly jumped out of her chair.
‘No, that’s not what I said,’ Kat protested. Again, she paused in thought and then said, ‘I suppose you could say I’m “ticklish,” it’s been a while, actually, but people have tickled me in the past…my dad, a boyfriend here and there…oh, my first-cousin, Candy, used to love to tickle everyone in sight when we were all teenagers. I’m not as ticklish as Jan here, but….’
Tim, a tall boy with blue eyes and sandy hair, who studied at another college in town interrupted. ‘She’s saying she can control it. Even though the tickling might…tickle…she won’t react in a ticklish way—is that right, Kat?’
‘Well,’ Kat began, “something like that…’
‘Oh, I want in on that action,’ Paul said. 20 bucks says you’ll break. You’ll laugh for sure. I’ve never seen a college girl who isn’t ticklish as all hell.’ He dug his hand into Jan’s rib cage again to punctuate his point, and she obliged with a loud set of guffaws.
Jackson pulled out his wallet and threw down a $20 bill. ‘I’m in too.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Kat said, ‘I don’t have money to bet all of you. I was just making a point, a scientific point, about human behavior.’
‘Forget the money,’ Tim inserted. ‘Like Kat says, this is science. I volunteer to help with the study. Do you want to show us how this business of relearning reflex responses works, Kat? Or were you just talking theoretically?’
Kat looked at the faces surrounding her. Paul chuckled as he continued to play with Jan’s stomach. Lindsay shook her head “no” as if afraid for Kat to even try this. Then Jackson snuck up on Anna and goosed her from behind. She took off in a mad, panicky dash for the kitchen.
‘Anna get back here,’ Kat said. The attractive, dark-eyed brunette certainly didn’t want to back down from this challenge; she wanted to teach these boys and her girlfriends a lesson about female dignity. She knew a lot about body and mind. How hard could it be to keep from laughing if she really concentrated and applied what she knew? To the group she said, ‘It’s a matter of mental discipline. Listen, gentlemen, women aren’t toys for your amusement. With some willpower, we can resist your silly little attacks…’
Kat came back to the present moment. Tim’s question about backing out was still hanging in the air. The conditions for the ‘experiment’ had been set by the whole group: Only seven minutes of tickling; Kat would be fully clothed except for her face, neck, arms, and feet; any tickling of other areas would take place over what she was wearing. The hardest part for the group to agree on was which reactions would mean that Kat had failed to resist. Finally, they decided that she could try to move away from the tickling and squirm around as much as she wanted as long as she didn’t laugh. A person might squirm, they reasoned, because the tickling hurt or was just physically uncomfortable. But laughing meant she was definitely being tickled and reacting to that. Kat could say anything she wanted, but if she laughed out loud, she lost. Tim would do the tickling and the boy announced that he would start with Kat’s feet. This made the girl relax just a bit. As Kat remembered it, her upper body was more sensitive than her feet.
“Go ahead,” Kat told the boy sitting on her legs. A girl named Gwen started timing the ‘experiment.’
Kat prepared herself for the first touch. She tried to relax because she remembered reading that ticklishness during massage was connected to tension in the body. She summoned up images of quiet summers at the beach. She also thought of a few sad times in her past to help create a somber mood. Then she felt Tim’s finger gently touch the center of her right foot. From her calm mental spot on the beach Kat noticed that the boy just put his finger there and held it. There was no tickling yet…nor for the next 10 seconds. Kat tried to stay focused and not to wonder why the tickling hadn’t started, but her anticipation slowly grew, along with the attention she was paying to the bottom of her foot. He’d have to start tickling very soon, wouldn’t he? Now? No. Now?
Then it came. A slow circle of movement within Kat’s arch. She felt Tim’s short nail and part of his fingertip moving smoothly across her sole. Unfortunately, right away Kat realized that—well, there was no other word for it—it tickled. She felt an urge to pull her foot away from Tim’s hand. She resisted that impulse, but as Tim’s finger moved up near the base of her toes Kat’s foot twitched involuntarily. The boy noticed this and repeated the route under her toes which had caused the twitch. And he got the same response out of Kat. ‘Damn,’ she thought. ‘I wish I could control that.’ Kat concentrated hard on keeping her foot still, but once more when Tim’s finger grazed along the soft area above the ball, her foot jumped slightly, like a reflex. And then again.
“One minute,” Gwen said.
“Looks like I found a sensitive spot. Does it…tickle?”
Kat didn’t say a word. She didn’t like the way Tim gave the work ‘tickle’ a kind of taunting emphasis, but she thought it best not to speak right now.
“Well, let’s just see if this foot is ticklish,” Tim added.
Kat felt Tim’s other hand come down firmly on her right ankle, further holding it in place. Then he began in earnest to tickle in and around her toes. The sensation of needing to move her foot was now much more insistent. But Kat didn’t want to show weakness. She breathed deeply, thought sad thoughts, but when Tim started running his fingers lightly over the top of her slim foot, she couldn’t resist trying to tug her leg away from these touches.
But she couldn’t. Kat immediately realized that Tim’s hold on her legs was too strong. She was basically trapped. And she was being tickled. Right now Tim could do whatever he wanted to her foot. In fact, just then he started to get a bit rougher with Kat’s sole, pressing firmly, but not too firmly, into her high arch and scraping her heel. Kat wished the guy would press a little harder.
“Two minutes,” Gwen said.
“Five more minutes of this,” Kat thought and swallowed. Suddenly, she could feel the corners of her mouth begin to curve upward. She tried hard to retract them, but despite herself Kat was now smiling a kind of forced smile, with her lips still pressed tightly shut.
But at the same time something was happening in Kat’s stomach which she didn’t like at all. Something was down there that felt both strong and silly. Dancing around in the pit of her belly, it was an impish sensation that seemed to have a mind of its own, because when she told it to settle down and get serious, it only got sillier, funnier, and danced faster. In her head, Kat scolded the thing: ‘I’m in charge! There is NOTHING funny here…control… nothing here to LAUGH at! Cannot, MUST not….’
But the imp wanted out, it dreamed to pry open Kat’s throat, drain her lungs, flap her tongue and roar. Kat knew it had to do with the boy touching the bottom of her foot: He was attacking her sensitive soles! No, actually, he wasn’t. He’s a friend, a nice guy, he’d never really hurt her. Would he? No, of course not. But all this touching, what is he up to? What does he want from me?! It’s some kind of joke. On me. And it won’t STOP. Can’t free my foot. He’s got my foot.
“Three minutes.”
Kat summoned everything within her to keep from laughing as Tim tickled both feet simultaneously. She wanted desperately to show her friends that tickling could be resisted, at least for a few minutes, enough time to put off most ticklers. ‘I’m a woman, not Pavlov’s dog,’ she repeated to herself. Her head was moving slightly from side to side, a few small beads of sweat forming on her forehead. “See,” she said firmly and directly to Tim’s back, “I’m not laughing.”
“I’m glad you said so, Kat.” Tim replied. “And you’re right, which isn’t surprising, since you’re a very smart girl. But you know, I read once that the more intelligent a person is, the more ticklish she is!” And a moment later he quickly turned himself around, sat on Kat’s waist, and plunged both hands into her rib cage. Kat’s eyes flew wide open and she started bouncing on the floor. Slowly, but irresistibly, her lips parted; you could see her white, even teeth as she smiled as broadly as a girl could smile without laughing.
‘Ohmygod,’ Kat thought, shocked at the immediate effect this new attack was having on her, but maintaining an almost scientific interest in her situation. ‘No, not this. Not the ribs. Go back to my feet. If he keeps this up, I’ll…laugh.’ Kat was squirming very fiercely now. ‘He’s got my body. He wants me to laugh. I so want to laugh. But I can’t. Must be strong, need to control. But he just won’t stop. And I’m...ticklish. No, not on my ribs. He's got to stop. No, no, I see now, he’s going to MAKE me laugh. Stop, I can’t...not my fault. Please! Don’t make me. No, don’t…it tickles.’
Kat began to laugh. It was a clipped, chirping sound at first, like a young bird waking at dawn, but rapidly it grew in depth and volume. “Ha, ha…haaa, haaaaaa… HAAAAAAAAA!!!”
Now Kat was all throat, all voice. She went limp as pent up pressure from every part of her body was released in intense, shrieking giggles, alternating with rougher belly laughs that seemed to shake the furniture of the tiny apartment. But Tim didn’t let up when Kat got a second wind and began to grab at his large hands. His fingers continued to flex and probe around Kat’s sides as the girl tried in vain to block his touches. If anything, Tim tickled harder and faster as Kat twisted left, then right in an effort to buck the boy off, using her now-unrestrained legs to push against the floor. Under the force of his manipulations loud snorts of laughter burst from Kat’s nose and mouth over and over.
“Four minutes,” Gwen said nervously, glancing over at Anna and Lindsay. The latter was covering her eyes. Paul and Jackson gave each other high-fives, but were glued to Kat’s well-toned form writhing and twisting in front of them.
Briefly, Kat and Tim made eye-contact. Tim smiled and his hands slowly made their way further up her body.
“No. Noooo!!! Kat yelled, and wrapped her arms tightly over her chest. The idea of Tim tickling her underarms was suddenly very threatening. ‘Now he knows just how ticklish I am,’ Kat realized.
For a moment Tim looked over Kat’s defensive position and pretended to look stumped. Then he reached up and began to lightly tickle Kat’s neck and under her chin. But Kat seemed to get a gleam of hope or triumph in her eyes.
“Doesn’t that tickle?”
Of her own free will, Kat smiled and shook her head ‘no.’ It was a small moral victory in what had proved to be an otherwise embarrassing defeat.
“No problem. What about your…ears?” Tim began to softly trace the fine curves of Kat’s ears, inside and out. As he did, Kat’s easy smile slowly faded—and then gradually reappeared in a broader, stiffer, more anxious version. The girl squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t believe it. She started to shift and squirm. She felt a compelling need to escape. Her ears were ticklish! Kat felt his every touch, like tiny spiders teasing her nerve endings. This was incredibly hard to handle without fighting back. She wanted to slap his hands, crush them, but knew that if she reached up the boy would go for her underarms. Kat shook her head around, but Tim followed her closely and kept up the subtle torture. The tension was building again in Kat’s gut. There was nowhere to go, no way to stop him. And the strangest part was that he wasn’t really doing anything! He was barely touching her, just a few soft, oh-so-tender, teasing strokes…and she couldn’t stand it any longer.
She giggled, without choice, really. “No! Doooon’t! NOHOHOHOHOHOHO!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just stoooooop. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Pleeeeaaaassee!! Heeeee, hehehehehehe HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE.” Finally, Kat couldn’t help herself. She reflexively grabbed at her ears to end the tickling. As predicted, when the girl raised her arms, Tim quickly slipped his hands under them.
“Five minutes.”
“OK, Kat,” Tim said off-handedly. “Are you ready to control your reactions?” Just then Jackson reached down and ran his finger along the bottom of Kat’s foot. She jerked and said “Hey! No fair!”
“Cut it out, you guys,” Tim warned. “I don’t have much time left. Now Kat, I have to tell you that what I’m about to do might tickle a little.”
Kat flashed him a sardonic grin. A moment later she deliberately pulled back her arms and laced her fingers behind her head, fully exposing her underarms. This time it would be different, she resolved. This time she wouldn’t laugh no matter how badly it tickled. She closed her eyes, bit her lip and scrunched up her forehead. She took several long, deep breaths. She imagined herself in conversation with Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, and B. F. Skinner.
Tim lightly tickled Kat’s forearms, near the elbow, moving very, very slowly toward her trunk. Kat knew that once again the boy was trying to arouse her anxiety. She understood that Tim wanted her to anticipate the approach of his wriggling fingers toward her underarms, to experience in her mind the sensitive, unwelcome incursion before it even reached the tender flesh there. Kat tried to stay focused in the present, to accept the sensations, not feel threatened. Nothing could hurt her, she told herself; there was no real danger here creeping gently, teasingly along her smooth skin. But the further Tim came down her arms, the more his fingers set off alarm bells in Kat’s brain. Her breathing quickened. When he was about two inches from Kat’s underarms on both sides, she began to feel small waves of uncertainty. This guy was about to probe her armpits. Suddenly, Kat remembered a doctor’s appointment she had many years back when the doctor was checking the lymph nodes in her underarms. She remembered how it felt ticklish to her and how she wanted to pull her arm away. The doctor apparently sensed her discomfort because she actually asked if it tickled. Kat recalled lying and saying ‘no.’
Then Tim reached her underarms. The tickling was softer than she had expected, but also deeper.
“Six minutes,” Gwen said and everyone tensed slightly knowing that only one minute remained to the test.
Kat felt urgent signals rushing up from her armpits, but it was hard to make out their meaning: was it pain, an itch? It didn’t really hurt, but she definitely wanted it to stop. She needed it to stop. Now. Her underarms were being tickled. But she had something else to worry about. That funny feeling had returned to her stomach and out of nowhere her lips were curling upward again. Kat cursed her weakness. She knew that if she didn’t do something fast, soon she would be smiling, then stupidly grinning, then her mouth would open wide and everyone would get loud evidence of her loss of self-control. This boy would be making her laugh. Not because she was in the mood to laugh, not because she was happy, but because HE wanted to hear her laughter, and he could force it out of her any time he wished with only his fingertips.
Kat wrestled desperately with the smile attempting to take over her face. She pulled at her hair and kicked her legs. ‘Nolaughingnolaughingnolaughing,’ she repeated inside. Less than a minute more, she thought. She could handle it. Probably 45 seconds now.
Tim glanced at his watch and slowly, carefully moved his hands a bit lower down Kat’s body until his fingers were at the point where her underarms merged with the sides of her breasts. He started to tickle the girl right there with quick, firm pressure.
The second he touched her in that spot, Kat knew she was finished. All that had gone before was as nothing by comparison. It was as if Tim had pressed some secret button on her body labeled: ‘Now Go Berserk.’ In one instant she felt her every muscle collapse, but at the same time she was wildly squirming and flailing like never in her life. But it was her own pounding, unstoppable laughter that struck Kat the most in that small corner of her mind still able to think. There was no possible resistance this time. She was laughing from the core of her being, laughing harder than she had ever seen any person laugh. To her it felt like as long as Tim kept pressing on that one spot, she would laugh. No matter what she herself wanted or needed to do, she would laugh, as loud and as hard as her strength permitted. Some ancient instinct had been triggered inside her and she helplessly, involuntarily followed its commands. ‘This is tickling,’ Kat thought.
“Seven minutes,” Gwen said a little breathlessly. “Time’s up!”
Immediately, Tim got up and went back to his seat at the poker table. Jackson sat there staring silently. Paul wiped his forehead. Lindsay went down to the floor to check on Kat. Anna was fidgeting with her cell phone.
“Are you OK?” Lindsay said.
“Yeah, yeah…I’m fine. That was…wow. I can’t believe it. I never would have thought….” Kat looked over at Tim who was shuffling the deck of cards. He seemed taller to her than he did before.
Obviously relieved, Lindsay said, “I guess you’re pretty ticklish, Kat. You should have seen yourself! You were like a wild woman. And I thought I was ticklish…”
Kat smiled. “Did you say something about being a spy, Lindsay?” She sat up and started to move slowly toward her old friend, hands extended.
“What do you mean? Oh, no, I just meant…Kat…Kat, wait a minute, what are you doing?”
“It's just tickling, dear. I'm sure you can control yourself.”
A moment later Kat’s fingers were playing down Lindsay’s sides. The red-head exploded with laughter.
dig dug dog
The Tickle Reflex
Kat took a deep breath as she watched Tim’s back. The young, good-looking man was sitting on her legs, facing her feet, and any moment now he would begin to tickle her with the intention of making her laugh, that is, laugh in spite of her own resolve to remain unaffected. Kat glanced around the room and saw six of their friends, including Paul’s girlfriend, Jan, watching the action with various levels of interest.
“Good luck, Kat,” Jan said with a slight giggle.
“I told you, it’s just a matter of mental control,” Kat answered.
Tim twisted around momentarily to look Kat in the eye. “You can still back out. No harm, no foul.”
In her mind Kat quickly reviewed the previous 20 minutes which had brought her to this somewhat odd situation: During the weekly poker game conducted by this group of college friends, Paul had started poking his girlfriend in the side after she won a particularly big hand. After Jan let out a few high-pitched yelps, Paul suddenly got up, jokingly thumped his broad chest, and wrestled the small, blonde girl to the floor, skillfully attacking her ribs and waistline. Immediately Jan dissolved into fits of laughter and in-between her loud tittering begged for her boyfriend to stop the assault. But the pleading seemed to fall on deaf or uncaring ears.
As Jan thrashed around, Anna, a newer member of the group, whispered to Kat, ‘Oh my God, if anyone ever did that to me, I would just die. I am SO ticklish all over.’ Lindsay, one of Kat's oldest friends, apparently heard Anna and added. ‘Yeah. I could never be a spy. If I was caught, all they would have to do is tickle the information out of me.’
But Kat felt much differently than her friends. The sight of Jan writhing helplessly on the floor as recurring waves of laughter poured out of her fully-open mouth made the second-year psychology major feel uncomfortable. There was something disturbing about how easily Paul could melt his girlfriend into a pool of giggling hysteria. ‘Oh come on you guys, you can’t let yourself be controlled by what is basically an old habit. Just look at how people—especially the male of the species—take advantage of the ticklish. But it’s a learned response, like all kinds of other responses. You can train yourself not to laugh and squirm. I’ve been studying these kinds of reflex behaviors for a couple years now.’ Kat raised her voice to be heard over a particularly loud spasm of Jan’s squealing. ‘Really, it’s not that difficult.’
Paul stopped tickling Jan and looked up at Kat. ‘Are you saying that you’re not ticklish, Kat?’
Kat thought for a moment about her recent course in Reflex Psychology. As in almost all her classes, she had gotten a strong A. ‘I’m saying that people can retrain responses that aren’t necessary to their immediate survival. If there are many people in the world who aren’t ticklish, other people can learn not to react to tickling either. Being ticklish isn’t like needing to breath, it’s more like the fear of falling that babies have. But we grow up and learn to climb.’
‘OK, OK, so you’re not ticklish.’ Anna said. ‘You’re really lucky.’ From his position on the floor, Paul reached over and squeezed Anna’s thigh, just above her knee. The Asian girl nearly jumped out of her chair.
‘No, that’s not what I said,’ Kat protested. Again, she paused in thought and then said, ‘I suppose you could say I’m “ticklish,” it’s been a while, actually, but people have tickled me in the past…my dad, a boyfriend here and there…oh, my first-cousin, Candy, used to love to tickle everyone in sight when we were all teenagers. I’m not as ticklish as Jan here, but….’
Tim, a tall boy with blue eyes and sandy hair, who studied at another college in town interrupted. ‘She’s saying she can control it. Even though the tickling might…tickle…she won’t react in a ticklish way—is that right, Kat?’
‘Well,’ Kat began, “something like that…’
‘Oh, I want in on that action,’ Paul said. 20 bucks says you’ll break. You’ll laugh for sure. I’ve never seen a college girl who isn’t ticklish as all hell.’ He dug his hand into Jan’s rib cage again to punctuate his point, and she obliged with a loud set of guffaws.
Jackson pulled out his wallet and threw down a $20 bill. ‘I’m in too.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Kat said, ‘I don’t have money to bet all of you. I was just making a point, a scientific point, about human behavior.’
‘Forget the money,’ Tim inserted. ‘Like Kat says, this is science. I volunteer to help with the study. Do you want to show us how this business of relearning reflex responses works, Kat? Or were you just talking theoretically?’
Kat looked at the faces surrounding her. Paul chuckled as he continued to play with Jan’s stomach. Lindsay shook her head “no” as if afraid for Kat to even try this. Then Jackson snuck up on Anna and goosed her from behind. She took off in a mad, panicky dash for the kitchen.
‘Anna get back here,’ Kat said. The attractive, dark-eyed brunette certainly didn’t want to back down from this challenge; she wanted to teach these boys and her girlfriends a lesson about female dignity. She knew a lot about body and mind. How hard could it be to keep from laughing if she really concentrated and applied what she knew? To the group she said, ‘It’s a matter of mental discipline. Listen, gentlemen, women aren’t toys for your amusement. With some willpower, we can resist your silly little attacks…’
Kat came back to the present moment. Tim’s question about backing out was still hanging in the air. The conditions for the ‘experiment’ had been set by the whole group: Only seven minutes of tickling; Kat would be fully clothed except for her face, neck, arms, and feet; any tickling of other areas would take place over what she was wearing. The hardest part for the group to agree on was which reactions would mean that Kat had failed to resist. Finally, they decided that she could try to move away from the tickling and squirm around as much as she wanted as long as she didn’t laugh. A person might squirm, they reasoned, because the tickling hurt or was just physically uncomfortable. But laughing meant she was definitely being tickled and reacting to that. Kat could say anything she wanted, but if she laughed out loud, she lost. Tim would do the tickling and the boy announced that he would start with Kat’s feet. This made the girl relax just a bit. As Kat remembered it, her upper body was more sensitive than her feet.
“Go ahead,” Kat told the boy sitting on her legs. A girl named Gwen started timing the ‘experiment.’
Kat prepared herself for the first touch. She tried to relax because she remembered reading that ticklishness during massage was connected to tension in the body. She summoned up images of quiet summers at the beach. She also thought of a few sad times in her past to help create a somber mood. Then she felt Tim’s finger gently touch the center of her right foot. From her calm mental spot on the beach Kat noticed that the boy just put his finger there and held it. There was no tickling yet…nor for the next 10 seconds. Kat tried to stay focused and not to wonder why the tickling hadn’t started, but her anticipation slowly grew, along with the attention she was paying to the bottom of her foot. He’d have to start tickling very soon, wouldn’t he? Now? No. Now?
Then it came. A slow circle of movement within Kat’s arch. She felt Tim’s short nail and part of his fingertip moving smoothly across her sole. Unfortunately, right away Kat realized that—well, there was no other word for it—it tickled. She felt an urge to pull her foot away from Tim’s hand. She resisted that impulse, but as Tim’s finger moved up near the base of her toes Kat’s foot twitched involuntarily. The boy noticed this and repeated the route under her toes which had caused the twitch. And he got the same response out of Kat. ‘Damn,’ she thought. ‘I wish I could control that.’ Kat concentrated hard on keeping her foot still, but once more when Tim’s finger grazed along the soft area above the ball, her foot jumped slightly, like a reflex. And then again.
“One minute,” Gwen said.
“Looks like I found a sensitive spot. Does it…tickle?”
Kat didn’t say a word. She didn’t like the way Tim gave the work ‘tickle’ a kind of taunting emphasis, but she thought it best not to speak right now.
“Well, let’s just see if this foot is ticklish,” Tim added.
Kat felt Tim’s other hand come down firmly on her right ankle, further holding it in place. Then he began in earnest to tickle in and around her toes. The sensation of needing to move her foot was now much more insistent. But Kat didn’t want to show weakness. She breathed deeply, thought sad thoughts, but when Tim started running his fingers lightly over the top of her slim foot, she couldn’t resist trying to tug her leg away from these touches.
But she couldn’t. Kat immediately realized that Tim’s hold on her legs was too strong. She was basically trapped. And she was being tickled. Right now Tim could do whatever he wanted to her foot. In fact, just then he started to get a bit rougher with Kat’s sole, pressing firmly, but not too firmly, into her high arch and scraping her heel. Kat wished the guy would press a little harder.
“Two minutes,” Gwen said.
“Five more minutes of this,” Kat thought and swallowed. Suddenly, she could feel the corners of her mouth begin to curve upward. She tried hard to retract them, but despite herself Kat was now smiling a kind of forced smile, with her lips still pressed tightly shut.
But at the same time something was happening in Kat’s stomach which she didn’t like at all. Something was down there that felt both strong and silly. Dancing around in the pit of her belly, it was an impish sensation that seemed to have a mind of its own, because when she told it to settle down and get serious, it only got sillier, funnier, and danced faster. In her head, Kat scolded the thing: ‘I’m in charge! There is NOTHING funny here…control… nothing here to LAUGH at! Cannot, MUST not….’
But the imp wanted out, it dreamed to pry open Kat’s throat, drain her lungs, flap her tongue and roar. Kat knew it had to do with the boy touching the bottom of her foot: He was attacking her sensitive soles! No, actually, he wasn’t. He’s a friend, a nice guy, he’d never really hurt her. Would he? No, of course not. But all this touching, what is he up to? What does he want from me?! It’s some kind of joke. On me. And it won’t STOP. Can’t free my foot. He’s got my foot.
“Three minutes.”
Kat summoned everything within her to keep from laughing as Tim tickled both feet simultaneously. She wanted desperately to show her friends that tickling could be resisted, at least for a few minutes, enough time to put off most ticklers. ‘I’m a woman, not Pavlov’s dog,’ she repeated to herself. Her head was moving slightly from side to side, a few small beads of sweat forming on her forehead. “See,” she said firmly and directly to Tim’s back, “I’m not laughing.”
“I’m glad you said so, Kat.” Tim replied. “And you’re right, which isn’t surprising, since you’re a very smart girl. But you know, I read once that the more intelligent a person is, the more ticklish she is!” And a moment later he quickly turned himself around, sat on Kat’s waist, and plunged both hands into her rib cage. Kat’s eyes flew wide open and she started bouncing on the floor. Slowly, but irresistibly, her lips parted; you could see her white, even teeth as she smiled as broadly as a girl could smile without laughing.
‘Ohmygod,’ Kat thought, shocked at the immediate effect this new attack was having on her, but maintaining an almost scientific interest in her situation. ‘No, not this. Not the ribs. Go back to my feet. If he keeps this up, I’ll…laugh.’ Kat was squirming very fiercely now. ‘He’s got my body. He wants me to laugh. I so want to laugh. But I can’t. Must be strong, need to control. But he just won’t stop. And I’m...ticklish. No, not on my ribs. He's got to stop. No, no, I see now, he’s going to MAKE me laugh. Stop, I can’t...not my fault. Please! Don’t make me. No, don’t…it tickles.’
Kat began to laugh. It was a clipped, chirping sound at first, like a young bird waking at dawn, but rapidly it grew in depth and volume. “Ha, ha…haaa, haaaaaa… HAAAAAAAAA!!!”
Now Kat was all throat, all voice. She went limp as pent up pressure from every part of her body was released in intense, shrieking giggles, alternating with rougher belly laughs that seemed to shake the furniture of the tiny apartment. But Tim didn’t let up when Kat got a second wind and began to grab at his large hands. His fingers continued to flex and probe around Kat’s sides as the girl tried in vain to block his touches. If anything, Tim tickled harder and faster as Kat twisted left, then right in an effort to buck the boy off, using her now-unrestrained legs to push against the floor. Under the force of his manipulations loud snorts of laughter burst from Kat’s nose and mouth over and over.
“Four minutes,” Gwen said nervously, glancing over at Anna and Lindsay. The latter was covering her eyes. Paul and Jackson gave each other high-fives, but were glued to Kat’s well-toned form writhing and twisting in front of them.
Briefly, Kat and Tim made eye-contact. Tim smiled and his hands slowly made their way further up her body.
“No. Noooo!!! Kat yelled, and wrapped her arms tightly over her chest. The idea of Tim tickling her underarms was suddenly very threatening. ‘Now he knows just how ticklish I am,’ Kat realized.
For a moment Tim looked over Kat’s defensive position and pretended to look stumped. Then he reached up and began to lightly tickle Kat’s neck and under her chin. But Kat seemed to get a gleam of hope or triumph in her eyes.
“Doesn’t that tickle?”
Of her own free will, Kat smiled and shook her head ‘no.’ It was a small moral victory in what had proved to be an otherwise embarrassing defeat.
“No problem. What about your…ears?” Tim began to softly trace the fine curves of Kat’s ears, inside and out. As he did, Kat’s easy smile slowly faded—and then gradually reappeared in a broader, stiffer, more anxious version. The girl squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t believe it. She started to shift and squirm. She felt a compelling need to escape. Her ears were ticklish! Kat felt his every touch, like tiny spiders teasing her nerve endings. This was incredibly hard to handle without fighting back. She wanted to slap his hands, crush them, but knew that if she reached up the boy would go for her underarms. Kat shook her head around, but Tim followed her closely and kept up the subtle torture. The tension was building again in Kat’s gut. There was nowhere to go, no way to stop him. And the strangest part was that he wasn’t really doing anything! He was barely touching her, just a few soft, oh-so-tender, teasing strokes…and she couldn’t stand it any longer.
She giggled, without choice, really. “No! Doooon’t! NOHOHOHOHOHOHO!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just stoooooop. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Pleeeeaaaassee!! Heeeee, hehehehehehe HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE.” Finally, Kat couldn’t help herself. She reflexively grabbed at her ears to end the tickling. As predicted, when the girl raised her arms, Tim quickly slipped his hands under them.
“Five minutes.”
“OK, Kat,” Tim said off-handedly. “Are you ready to control your reactions?” Just then Jackson reached down and ran his finger along the bottom of Kat’s foot. She jerked and said “Hey! No fair!”
“Cut it out, you guys,” Tim warned. “I don’t have much time left. Now Kat, I have to tell you that what I’m about to do might tickle a little.”
Kat flashed him a sardonic grin. A moment later she deliberately pulled back her arms and laced her fingers behind her head, fully exposing her underarms. This time it would be different, she resolved. This time she wouldn’t laugh no matter how badly it tickled. She closed her eyes, bit her lip and scrunched up her forehead. She took several long, deep breaths. She imagined herself in conversation with Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, and B. F. Skinner.
Tim lightly tickled Kat’s forearms, near the elbow, moving very, very slowly toward her trunk. Kat knew that once again the boy was trying to arouse her anxiety. She understood that Tim wanted her to anticipate the approach of his wriggling fingers toward her underarms, to experience in her mind the sensitive, unwelcome incursion before it even reached the tender flesh there. Kat tried to stay focused in the present, to accept the sensations, not feel threatened. Nothing could hurt her, she told herself; there was no real danger here creeping gently, teasingly along her smooth skin. But the further Tim came down her arms, the more his fingers set off alarm bells in Kat’s brain. Her breathing quickened. When he was about two inches from Kat’s underarms on both sides, she began to feel small waves of uncertainty. This guy was about to probe her armpits. Suddenly, Kat remembered a doctor’s appointment she had many years back when the doctor was checking the lymph nodes in her underarms. She remembered how it felt ticklish to her and how she wanted to pull her arm away. The doctor apparently sensed her discomfort because she actually asked if it tickled. Kat recalled lying and saying ‘no.’
Then Tim reached her underarms. The tickling was softer than she had expected, but also deeper.
“Six minutes,” Gwen said and everyone tensed slightly knowing that only one minute remained to the test.
Kat felt urgent signals rushing up from her armpits, but it was hard to make out their meaning: was it pain, an itch? It didn’t really hurt, but she definitely wanted it to stop. She needed it to stop. Now. Her underarms were being tickled. But she had something else to worry about. That funny feeling had returned to her stomach and out of nowhere her lips were curling upward again. Kat cursed her weakness. She knew that if she didn’t do something fast, soon she would be smiling, then stupidly grinning, then her mouth would open wide and everyone would get loud evidence of her loss of self-control. This boy would be making her laugh. Not because she was in the mood to laugh, not because she was happy, but because HE wanted to hear her laughter, and he could force it out of her any time he wished with only his fingertips.
Kat wrestled desperately with the smile attempting to take over her face. She pulled at her hair and kicked her legs. ‘Nolaughingnolaughingnolaughing,’ she repeated inside. Less than a minute more, she thought. She could handle it. Probably 45 seconds now.
Tim glanced at his watch and slowly, carefully moved his hands a bit lower down Kat’s body until his fingers were at the point where her underarms merged with the sides of her breasts. He started to tickle the girl right there with quick, firm pressure.
The second he touched her in that spot, Kat knew she was finished. All that had gone before was as nothing by comparison. It was as if Tim had pressed some secret button on her body labeled: ‘Now Go Berserk.’ In one instant she felt her every muscle collapse, but at the same time she was wildly squirming and flailing like never in her life. But it was her own pounding, unstoppable laughter that struck Kat the most in that small corner of her mind still able to think. There was no possible resistance this time. She was laughing from the core of her being, laughing harder than she had ever seen any person laugh. To her it felt like as long as Tim kept pressing on that one spot, she would laugh. No matter what she herself wanted or needed to do, she would laugh, as loud and as hard as her strength permitted. Some ancient instinct had been triggered inside her and she helplessly, involuntarily followed its commands. ‘This is tickling,’ Kat thought.
“Seven minutes,” Gwen said a little breathlessly. “Time’s up!”
Immediately, Tim got up and went back to his seat at the poker table. Jackson sat there staring silently. Paul wiped his forehead. Lindsay went down to the floor to check on Kat. Anna was fidgeting with her cell phone.
“Are you OK?” Lindsay said.
“Yeah, yeah…I’m fine. That was…wow. I can’t believe it. I never would have thought….” Kat looked over at Tim who was shuffling the deck of cards. He seemed taller to her than he did before.
Obviously relieved, Lindsay said, “I guess you’re pretty ticklish, Kat. You should have seen yourself! You were like a wild woman. And I thought I was ticklish…”
Kat smiled. “Did you say something about being a spy, Lindsay?” She sat up and started to move slowly toward her old friend, hands extended.
“What do you mean? Oh, no, I just meant…Kat…Kat, wait a minute, what are you doing?”
“It's just tickling, dear. I'm sure you can control yourself.”
A moment later Kat’s fingers were playing down Lindsay’s sides. The red-head exploded with laughter.
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Thank you for posting this, it is so wonderful to see another story from you. 
Agree, "brilliantly written." M/F too...
