Hannah Davis returns in "A TICKLISH MATRICULATION": revised & extensively expanded

Hannah Davis returns in "A TICKLISH MATRICULATION": revised & extensively expanded

*Before unveiling the third misadventure of Professor Hannah Davis, please allow me to present a considerably expanded, markedly revised version of her second appearance, which introduced more of the Vellication Irregulars. If only they’d approve MY application for
membership…

*The following revised all femme tickle fest is copyright 2002 by the author.

*This story is intended only for readers 18 years and older, as it contains some sexual content (Talk about your red flags!). All of the characters herein are 18 years and older, as well, even if not one of them acts like it.

*While I enjoy spinning prose fantasies, I do not encourage the actual merciless tickling of teachers. Nor do I recommend that teachers resort to tickling when dealing with colleagues or students. Nonetheless, I sure wish that I’d tickled Ms. W. when I had the chance, and vice versa. Ah, regrets…the curse of advancing age…


A TICKLISH MATRICULATION

a sequel to SABBATICKLE
featuring the return of Professor Hannah Davis
and introducing the Vellication Irregulars

by Tee Hee Lawrence


Set on a card table, amidst brushes, feathers, electric toothbrushes, a cordless shoe polisher, and a special pair of silk gloves, the Japanese lamp, a little white tower of rice paper and wire, provided the only light in the basement. Seated nearby in a recliner set before a padded pillar, Hannah twirled a little red feather (of the sort that might be found in a floridly colored toy Indian headdress) between the thumb and forefinger of one hand. In the dim surroundings, she could barely perceive the others whispering and giggling in anticipation of the evening’s fun. All were waiting for the signs from upstairs that their special guests had arrived.

With her craved retribution imminent, Hannah’s tummy was serving as a racetrack for a hundred butterflies. To divert herself from their fluttering, the lanky Professor thought back over the weeks of her recent short sabbatical, to the day she met Clarice and Nikki. Their calamitous visit to her home prompted her to seek out some erstwhile comrades in laughter, five of whom were whispering and giggling in the shadows nearby.

Hannah Davis was an associate Professor of American History who had recently enjoyed a fall sabbatical from teaching at a prestigious college in a storied New England town. She was a respected scholar and a popular instructor whose reserve her students vainly tried to compromise with laughter. Hannah—tall, trim, taut, “unattached” in her mid-thirties, with long, lush auburn hair, a pleasing visage with a strong nose, high cheekbones, a wide, sensual mouth with an alluring slight overbite, and compelling smoky eyes behind wide, dark-framed eyeglasses—had suffused her fall days with research and writing while in virtual solitude.

One November afternoon, however, her regimen was interrupted by the appearance of two young women: blond Clarice and dark Nikki, who appeared to have lost their way. They claimed to be aspiring students, who sold designer shoes door-to-door, and they beguiled Hannah into trying on their stock in her living room. Before long, bound barefoot to her recliner, Hannah was at length mercilessly tickled by the mischievous pair, whose sole stated aim was to video record their reputedly reserved victim’s helpless hysterical laughter, and thus win a bet.

They’d done more, however, than depart with a camcorder full of Hannah, stripped of
almost all reserve and dignity, laughing truly, madly, and deeply. They’d tickled her supremely
sensitive feet until she’d soaked her sweatshirt with tears and perspiration and haplessly wet her
jeans. They’d tickled her into such a state of sexual arousal that she was only able to avert
a telltale recorded climax by sheer force of will. The same Southern stubbornness only barely saved her from appeasing the ticklers by betraying the existence of and her role in a certain campus social club, from which she was lately estranged. The two hellions’ tickle video not only threatened her career as a respected professor and eminent historian, but could compromise the low profile of the club as well.

In the weeks after their torturous intrusion, Hannah struggled to remain focussed on her work, which included plans for a new course on the women’s rights movement. However, the urge for vengeance against her tickling tormentors had taken seed before they were out the door. Ornate revenge fantasies sprouted and rapidly grew in her imagination, overwhelming her academic discipline. She’d be plotting a timeline for passage of the19th Amendment to the Constitution, when thoughts of what she would do to a helplessly bound Clarice and Nikki stampeded over her work like a gaggle of school kids upon the wet cement of a new sidewalk.

In one particularly persistent scenario, she would be seated in her office at her desk, over which the prankish pair were bound, suspended from the ceiling, so that their feet hovered within easy reach at eye level. While Hannah proceeded through her office hours, answering correspondences, downloading articles, even meeting with her students, she would periodically stroke Clarice’s plump bare feet and Nikki’s sleek, nylon-covered tootsies--heedless of their laughter-choked entreaties for her to stop. Occasionally, a helpful colleague or fawning student would offer her a feather duster or hairbrush to vary the casually administered, protracted torment. Clarice’s round, apple-cheeked face was red and tear-streaked as she screamed with utterly helpless, high-pitched laughter. Nikki had squeezed her eyes shut and was shaking her head “no” repeatedly, as her open mouth, stretched in a pearly grin, emitted breathy bursts
of nigh silent hysteria. Of course, this was even before Hannah brought the electric toothbrush out of her desk drawer…

Hannah realized that she wouldn’t finish the work necessary for the course—which debuted shortly in the winter term--unless she acted on her fantasies for payback against the prankish pair. As the year-end holidays approached, she decided to seek help from that group of simpatico friends she’d ignored for too long. Yes, this was a job for… the Vellication Irregulars!

******

Who would have guessed that the serious, scholarly Hannah Davis was a founding member, and, indeed, for years, a driving force, of the Vellication Irregulars? The group loved to talk, fantasize, and engage each other in unbridled, playful tickling—an exercise combining the high intellectual aspirations, combustible erotic tensions, and low comedy that only a small college town atmosphere could engender.
The Professor Davis who so frustrated undergrads on campus trying to get her giggling at their jokes and horseplay was the same Hannah who had discreetly delighted in exploiting her fellow Irregulars’ ticklishness. In her rich, slow Southern contralto, the sober scholar quoted Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth and cited explicit details of a midwife’s routine in, say, 1880 Charleston by day. Amidst the Irregulars, however, her laughter, reaching a giddy high pitch, bubbled like the Mississippi in spring flood stage. Some of the most hilarious Irregular pranks (e.g., turning-the-tables on a notorious toe-teasing pedicurist in a nearby burg—a tale best told on another occasion) had been cleverly hatched by none other than the “serious” Professor Davis.

The previous spring, however, Hannah gradually drifted away from the Irregulars. Perhaps it was a consequence of the irrevocable departure overseas of her last lover, often an eager partner in wild Irregular play. The resultant void found Hannah pursuing increased, almost overwhelming responsibilities in the History Department and a nigh-punitive regimen of research and writing. Her monkish devotion to her articles and papers reached an apotheosis during her sabbatical following the summer term. She had then stopped being an Irregular altogether, rarely even answering phone calls and correspondences from her ticklesome comrades. Their ever more passionate entreaties to her, trumpeting their craving of her laughter and tickling facility, did not move her to join them.

So, it was feeling a bit the Prodigal that Hannah called Rachel Klamour, asking to come before a meeting of the Irregulars’ Girrlzz Squad. (While the Irregulars were a predominantly male group, what the men jokingly called the Sapphic Squad was a committee of the most active women members. Hannah had been an avid Squad member before she had drifted away from Irregular doings.) Rachel was unabashedly delighted to hear from Hannah, and encouraged her to come to the Squad’s next meeting, which would be in her basement (as it was Rachel’s turn as Chair) one evening during Christmas break. Hannah agreed, and found she could work more efficiently knowing the die was cast.

Came that chilly evening, with the taste of snow in the air, Hannah, feeling a tad shy, knocked upon Rachel’s front door, which bore in a corner of its tiny window a small octagonal yellow sticker stating, “Warning: Poetry Under Construction.” Rachel, a modestly built fifty-three-year-old with lively violet eyes and short sandy hair with silver highlights, was smiling broadly as she welcomed her in. She led her downstairs to join five vibrant women sitting in a warm, neatly finished basement lit by a number of rice paper lamps.
This familiar, friendly den was complete with plush carpeting, a motley collection of worn but comfortable furniture, a ping pong table, a VCR, a DVD player, a large screen TV, a stereo deck, myriad examples of Rachel’s painting and sculpture—most “in progress”--and who knew how many books on shelves lining the walls. Prominently decorating the room were innumerable feathers, of all sizes and textures. As Hannah quickly surveyed them, she felt a nervous shiver of ticklishness pass through her right down to her toes, wiggling in their gray woolen socks and moccasins.

Spectacular Native American feathered headdresses hung on the walls. Many vessels-- most prominently a large fruit bowl (with a smiley face painted on it) resting upon a coffee table-- were filled with plumes of every conceivable color. Various feather dusters blossomed from crystal and ceramic vases. And, several magnificent foot-tall white plumes, their silken blades edged a light brown, rested in a series of cut crystal inkwells lined across a polished antique writing desk.

The women all jumped up to enthusiastically greet her. They drew her—with an admirably restrained minimum of playful tickles—to sit in their tight circle of comfy chairs. After graciously accepting their effusions of pleasure at her return, Hannah recounted her activities during her fall sabbatical, detailing scholarly articles she’d written, and outlining the syllabus of the course she was preparing. However, she could tell from their polite silence that these women had not gathered for shoptalk. They seemed to know a matter most relevant to the Squad’s mission motivated her appearance. Thus, she took a measured breath, kicked off her moccasins, and plunged into an animated and painstaking account of the tickle torment that Clarice and Nikki had visited upon her a few weeks earlier. Concluding, she then offered the meeting a modest proposal . . .

“…Needless to say, Ah would like to identify those young ladies, catch them unaware….”

“—And give as good as you got. Mmm! A delicious prospect,” purred native Muscovite Alexandra “Sacha” Petrovna, a pert Mathematics adjunct in her mid-20s, with long, peroxide blond bangs and wide, dark eyes, “even if I can only imagine what you went through.” She giggled. “Really, Hannah, how did they—What is the word… English is so delightful…bamboozle--I only learned that one yesterday—bamboozle you so?”

“Believe me, Sacha,” assured Hannah, “these kids ran a thoughtful, disciplined operation.” She had the rapt attention of all as she continued. “They may be sadistic little monsters, relishing every giggle they extracted from me, but they were nothing if not methodical. They knew Ah would accept their claim of getting lost while seeking a customer amidst the maze of twisty roads on Crane Hill. They credibly projected the appearance of teens working their way to college, correctly assuming that would disarm me. They quickly realized that the recliner was the perfect place to trap me for their purposes. They bound me to it with accomplished skill and speed, as if they’d been practicin’ for weeks.” The listeners exchanged
knowing glances, which she attributed to agreement with her observation.

She concluded, “They’d filled a bag with every conceivable ticklin’ tool known to man. And mah poor, helpless bare feet were at…their…mercy!” As she said the last word, Hannah reached over to the ottoman where the Russian had carelessly crossed her ankles, and the historian rapidly played her fingertips down the mathematician’s nylon-clad soles.

“Heeeeey, no fair!” yelped Sacha, as she yanked her feet back and sat upon them. “This is supposed to be discussion.” She stuck out her tongue at Hannah, who chuckled softly, saying in fond, Southern tones, “Forgive me, darlin,’ but I was jus’ demonstrating a bamboozling. Be thankful your ticklish tootsies could escape.”

Interjecting, Rachel, in her husky smoker’s voice, attempted the gravity of a Madeline Albright. “Now, Hannah, if you want us to help you, and not fall upon you”—her eyebrows wagging—“ in a gleeful reenactment of the crime, you’ll recall and honor the rules of discussion and corral your frisky fingers.” Rachel, the elder of the group, was a veteran of the school’s English Department, with the title of Senior Poet, which she often joked should be printed on a sash that she could wear around campus. “I must admit, my dear, that the thought of you being reduced by those two charlatans to an overflowing giggle fountain gives me pause. Penetrating the famed dignified Davis façade takes some doing.”

“I’m sure when we find the two ladies, they’ll be happy to offer us their expertise with Hannah’s most sensitive spots,” chortled Shaundra Manley, the Business Administration instructor, twirling one of her beaded brown ‘locks as a melodramatic villain does his mustache. The full-figured, brown-eyed, 29-year-old, at 6’1” the tallest present, stared at the three long toes visible through Hannah’s worn woolen socks. “She’s been away so long that I’m no longer certain just where they are,” she mused, with a Jamaican lilt in her voice, “though I’m open to rediscovery.”

“Putting aside my motivation,” Hannah riposted, ignoring Shaundra’s salacious stare, “I would hope that the Vellication Irregulars would seek to discipline rogue ticklers blithely threatening the group’s hegemony in our chosen perversion.”

“Hah!” snorted Dr. Valeria Gotteborg, the fortyish, roly-poly Norwegian psychologist, her pale blue eyes dancing merrily beneath her short curly pale red hair. “Perversion! You sound, Hannah, as if you were ‘born again’ during your absence. Perversion: a term loaded with such self-loathing that I shudder. I prefer shuddering with laughter to shuddering with self-loathing, thank you.” She stretched, pointedly exposing her midriff and pink-hosed soles, all spectacularly sensitive.

“Careful, VeeGee,” cautioned Gelsomina Orrechio, her dark, almond-shaped eyes flashing, and her right forefinger wiggling in the universal gesture of a tickle threatened. “One should always be very careful what one wishes.” The 27-year-old olive-skinned, ebon-pigtailed botanist, 5’7” and built like the solid triathalonist she was at the University of Turin, then suggested, “Wouldn’t our pursuit of these youthful interlopers be in violation of our pledge to leave undergraduates untickled in the name of academic ethics?”

“Yeah, right! You’re a fine one to lecture, Geli!” mocked Shaundra. “Weren’t you the one who boasted of finding a new use for specimens gathered with one of your field trip cuties last spring?”

“Why, I…,” protested Geli, unable to hide her sexy, gap-toothed smile.

“’Nothing, girls, but-a nothing tickles botanical interns like a fiddlehead fern!’” clowned Sacha, her Russian accent colliding with her intent to mimic Geli’s Italian one. Sacha’s hands shot out to parry Geli’s attempt to reply via the blonde’s underarms.

“Order, ladies, order!” Rachel waved the feather duster that served as gavel this evening.

“Then there was the classified ad we placed in the Weekly Gazette for ‘volunteer test subjects, modest stipend offered’,” Lucia Sierra Montanez, the compact, ruddy-skinned, 37-year-old political science research fellow, with a bowl-cut of thick, straight copper hair, reminded all with a rueful smile. “ Virtually everyone Osvaldo and I interviewed was an undergraduate,” referring to her husband, a demographer and fellow Irregular.

“Oh, that disaster!” moaned Rachel. “We never should have entertained ‘Chiro when he cooked up that scheme.” The chair was referring to another Irregular--Junchiro Yamaguchi (“Chiro Kootchy” to his friends here), away on an archaeological dig in Turkey—who had concocted a scheme to tickle hapless “test subjects” as part of an alleged government study. The interviews to find a few amply ticklish volunteers were lengthy and tedious, the tickling in almost every case brief and blasé, and, to maintain the pretense, they had to pay those people! And it all came with the risk of exposure for the Irregulars! (But, that, as well, is an Irregular tale for another day. . .)

“In the matter at hand, though, I think these two hellions have demanded our attention by tricking our dear Hannah,” pronounced Valeria.

“Yes, and they’re obviously tickle enthusiasts as well as foot connoisseurs—a wicked combination,” chimed in Shaundra, admiring her bare brown right foot and wiggling her long toes, their nails painted a luscious mango.

“It does seem clear that they coolly targeted you, Hannah,” Rachel mused. “How did they ever learn that you’re so ticklish—and where you’re most…susceptible?” She pointedly nodded at Hannah’s feet, each with toes wiggling nervously through holes in her socks.

“More importantly,” intoned Shaundra. “Could they have stumbled upon your role in the Irregulars? You didn’t blab about us while they were featherin’ those toes, did you?” She nodded as Rachel had.

“Ah-Ah’m certain our group’s secret is safe,” quavered Hannah. “Ah’m sure they would have gloated if they had truly known anything about the Irregulars, once they had me helpless.” She met Shaundra’s smirk and added indignantly, “Oh, and they naturally came upon that ‘birthday gift’ and card that you fools had sent me. They tried to force me to tell them who ‘The Irregulars’ were. They damned near tickled me to death with the perfect plume that you had so thoughtfully provided—as if they needed another!!” The others averted their eyes when hers accusedly swept the room. “But, believe me, Ah didn’t talk. Ah laughed. Ah howled. Ah wet my pants. But Ah didn’t betray this group!” She had bolted upright in her chair.

Rachel cleared her throat and said, quietly, “We know you didn’t, Hannah. Relax, please.”

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence. Sacha broke it, by innocently asking, “Did you really wet your pants?” Everyone, including Hannah, burst into laughter, and the tension dissolved.

However, as the group took a break for refreshments, left unsaid by the historian was her dawning suspicion that one of these Vellication Irregulars could indeed have set her up for her giggling ordeal. The Girrlzz Squad was a staunch sisterhood—but one of her “sisters,” she reasoned, must have steered those two schemers to her door! The cunning little vixen had been provided knowledge not only of the professor’s vulnerability to tickling but her predilection for tickling as well. That would explain the flaunting of Nikki’s stocking feet (which certainly distracted Hannah—as they must have known it would) and Clarice’s taunting of their captive’s yearning to tickle those feet. How could they have known, unless…

“Which one?” wondered Hannah. “Which of my ‘sisters’ wanted me so mercilessly tickled, and why?”

“The other day in the lounge at the Student Union,” offered Lucia, who wore silver-framed bifocals, which were always sliding down and sailing off her wide ruddy nose, to land, held by a lanyard, bouncing upon her ample chest. “ I did come upon some students closely gathered around a TV on with the sound real low. When I asked what was so interesting, they stopped the tape they were playing and fumbled out an explanation that it was a ‘stupid party video.’ It was ‘disappeared’ immediately. Highly suspicious behavior.”

“Was it Luci?” considered Hannah. She remembered dropping by Luci and Osvaldo’s a few terms ago to pick up some chart design software, only to find the Chicana sweetly dozing in a mesh hammock gently swaying between two venerable oaks in the backyard. Her left leg had slipped through the mesh and was, from the knee down, below the hammock. How could anyone, especially an Irregular, resist the temptation provided by that plump foot with the sandal dangling precariously from its toes? A few light strokes upon the soft sole from a passing historian’s forefinger, and the toes twitched off the shoe. Unprotected now, the bare bronze foot was helpless before Hannah’s five-fingered fiesta, and Luci’s giggling eruption from siesta saw her minutes later comically upended from the wildly swinging hammock. “Just you wait!” Lucia had vowed through a mouthful of acorns, as Hannah fled with the disk Osvaldo had already given her. She’d been wary around Lucia after that, expecting a specific retaliation that never came…

Pushing her eyeglasses to the top of her nose, Lucia concluded, “You know, I would swear now that I heard crazed laughter coming from that TV.”

“Oh-ho!” chortled Sacha, raising her arms and baring her midriff with its tattoo of pi. “The percentiles shout that the ‘party video’ starred Ha-Ha-Hannah!”

“Good God! If the campus file sharers get hold of that tape, they’ll be copies everywhere!” wailed Hannah. “I’ll have to lecture wearing steel-reinforced boots! Every one of my students will come to class with a feather,” She then wondered to herself if Sacha recalled when the group, a year earlier, was painting Rachel’s basement, then a work-in-progress. At one point, the mathematician had fully extended both arms overhead, guiding a roller across the ceiling. Her tee shirt lifted well above her belt. Hannah immediately daubed Sacha’s exposed navel, just below pi, with a brush. The blonde squealed, tumbled from her precarious perch on a teetering chair onto a drop clothed couch, where she lay, mumbling in Russian, with a coat of cream white across her puss.

Luci shouted, “Ooooh-hoooo!” and suddenly Sacha was beset by a blur of eager hands pinning her wrists and ankles, slipping off her laceless hi-tops and pulling her shirt over her head, and brandishing bristly brushes against the ticklish tenderness thus exposed. The ensuing giggly chaos saw her richly painted and totally gang-tickled, for which she sarcastically thanked the instigating Hannah over the post-paint spring rolls and Chardonnay.

Snapping Hannah out of her reverie, Valeria tsk-tsked, “Well, your students will have to wait their turn. After all, we saw you first!”

Now Hannah was reminded of how merciless she had been at the annual campus Renaissance Fair sixteen months earlier, when she had steered a mead-tipsy Dr. Gooteborg over to a tent where funds were being raised for charity. With all of the Southern sweetness at her command, she persuaded Valeria to allow herself to be locked into a set of stocks, there to be subject to the whim of the highest bidder. Previous occupants had been doused with buckets full of water or had their hapless faces painted blue or subjected to other such silliness.

Once Valeria was secure—and before the adjunct from European Studies who was moderating the fundraiser could begin his pitch—Hannah slyly sidled behind him and whispered like a Hellspawn in his ear, “Ah have it on the best authority that Dr. G. has the most ticklish feet imaginable.” Without turning to see who was planting the wicked seed, the barker cried, “What am I bid for a unique opportunity? Feather the Freudian for five minutes!” He plucked the goose quill adorning his own period cap and waved it as he added, “Make her laugh and support a worthy cause all at once.”

The bidding was swift and spirited. Within minutes, Valeria was protesting futilely as chuckling students, dressed as maids to the Medicis, stripped her feet of their Reeboks and white cotton socks. Looming before her was the sobering sight of a student, whose paper on Jungian analysis she’d once trashed, kneeling and holding the goose quill before her pink and sweaty bare feet, achingly tender after a long day walking the Fair. Valeria giggled nervously
as the members of the crowd shushed each other in anticipation. The barker raised a heralded
pennant, waited a beat, and then snapped it downward, as he shouted, “Commence!”

Oh, the oaths the redhead had uttered—amidst her howls of hilarity—as the student, with serene satisfaction, maneuvered both ends of the goose quill atop her feet, upon her soles and between the splendidly sensitive Valerian toes! Early in her torment, she managed somehow to lock eyes with Hannah, quietly smiling and standing far back in the cheering crowd. Hannah had the audacity to wink at her, a self-congratulation for tricking a veteran Irregular into a very public ticklish situation.

Far from five minutes, it must have been a good twenty minutes before VeeGee’s husband, Lars--a chain-smoking drama coach who bemusedly indulged his wife’s Irregular inclinations—stepped in to rescue her. The quite undone psychologist stalked off to find Hannah, but all the rest of the Fair never did catch the historian in hopes of getting her into the stocks and out of her shoes and--

Back in the basement, Shaundra crooned, “Oooo, Hannah, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes—and especially not out of them—if that tape reaches the Dean’s office. You know what a closeted Puritan fetishist she is! And then,” she cackled, “there’s the Internet! Randall”—her lover (a campus technician)—“is always telling me how quickly and pervasively any media file can be disseminated.”

“Lovely,” mumbled Hannah. She thought back many months to the time she tip-toed behind Shaundra, whose arms were full of financial journals clear up to her nose, as the economist fumbled with her keys in the otherwise empty corridor outside her office. For Hannah, smilingly surveying her oblivious colleague, wearing a thin sleeveless cotton dress, her underarms conveniently exposed, her sides and ample hips barely protected—it was simply a irresistible opportunity!

Still, Hannah hovered her fingertips tantalizingly just beyond Shaundra’s bare armpits for long seconds. She waited with admirable patience until the very moment when the Jamaican, balancing the journals precariously upon one hand, was straining with the other to insert the painstakingly sorted key into the lock.

Then, hooting and shrieking, “Tickle-tickle-tickle!” Hannah plunged her wiggling fingers into Shaundra’s underarms —quickly sliding down to administer a skillful ten-fingered ribs-tickle and then a strong, playful squeeze upon her hips. The economist screamed, “AIEEEE! NOHOHOHOOOO!” before descending in a hail of journals.

The last thing that Hannah heard, before she escaped into a conveniently waiting elevator, was the half-buried Shaundra’s hollered “You can run, Davis, but you can’t hide! I know where you live, ‘Bama Babe, and I know where you’re most ticklish!” The historian managed to evade the economist for a week, until the heat of pursuit apparently wore off. Were Clarice and Nikki the long-awaited instruments of Shaundra’s revenge?

“Who knows?” giggled Shaundra, with a wink at Hannah. “After seeing the tape, we may even want to apprentice the two girls as Irregulars! Catching you unaware with your shoes off impresses me!

“Take them on as Irregulars? Is that wise, considering their youth?” cautioned Gelsomina, as she removed the gold-rimmed granny glasses she wore for effect (as her vision was flawless). She used one earpiece to scratch under her arm.

“Is my nemesis formidable Geli?” pondered Hannah. There was that picnic the Irregulars enjoyed two springs ago, when Geli, showing off her athleticism, had peeled off her sweater in the ambitious April sun and clambered hand-over-hand way out on a thick branch of a venerable willow overhanging the lake. Rachel, who was helping Valeria and Lucia to prepare a heaping fresh salad, warned her that the water was probably very chilly. Geli assured her, though, that she could hang out there as long as she wished. Meanwhile, Hannah tiptoed to the base of the other side of the massive willow.

“You are all a bunch of old women,” Geli had said, as she hung alternately by one arm and then the other, the cork soles of her espadrilles inches above the murky water. Hannah spat into her hands and began to climb the tree, unseen by Geli, who continued, “No wonder academics are held in such low esteem in America, if such sorry physical specimens are common.” Geli herself may only have been 5’, 7”, but her upper body, clad only in a sports bra, was impressively taut with muscle. And, as her bicycle shorts revealed, her legs were firm and corded, too. Indeed, the joke in the group was that, when she didn’t want to give something up, she just clamped it between her thighs; they were that strong. “What a bunch of couch tomatoes!”

“That’s potatoes!” snapped Valeria.

“Those, too!” huffed Geli, as she began swinging from both arms. “Name any vegetable you want.” She stopped and stuck out her tongue at Shaundra, who was standing on the
shore with her hands on her hips. “On second thought, that would be an insult to the plant kingdom. This tree should be a role model for you. She’s strong and stable.” And Geli resumed
her swinging, adding, “Like me!”

Hannah, had, by now, circumspectly climbed until she was slightly above and behind the botanist, who was still quite intent on showing off. Hannah wrapped her own long jeans-clad legs around a thick bough and allowed herself to hang directly behind Geli’s back.

Rachel tossed capers into the salad as Luci vigorously tossed it. The poet called, “C’mon, Gelsomina. We’re ready to add injury to insult against the plant kingdom by eating this salad. Get your superior butt down here.”

“I’m not leaving this tree until I hear the word ‘please,’” insisted Geli.

Hanging upside down behind her, Hannah cried, “Please!” and fervidly dug her long fingers into Geli’s unprotected sides. The Italian shrieked a desperate “EEEEEEE! NO! NO!” She tried turning to see her ambusher. “NO! HEH-HEH-HEHHEHHEH!” Her eyes squeezed shut as she tried kicking backwards in order to dislodge her attacker and to build momentum for a lurch forward. “HEEHEEHEE! STOP, YOU…!” And she might have succeeded, too, had Hannah not brought her probing fingers up to Geli’s highly vulnerable armpits. “EYAAH! AAH!-HAAA! HAHAHAAA! NOOOO…!” screeched Geli, before plunking fully clothed into the chilly water. She emerged amuck with one shoe gone, but she never cornered the prankish but elusive historian that day . . .

“Oh, Geli,” chided Valeria, “we know you prefer them young!” She, then, had to tuck her stocking feet under her seat when the botanist growled and made a swipe at them.

“I think I know a way to flush out your tormentors, Hannah,” suggested Rachel. “Maybe they’re willing to sell that tape to an anonymous faculty member making an irresistible offer. Perhaps they’re even greedy enough to accept an invitation to effect the sale at the isolated home of said faculty member. Naturally, they’d be invited downstairs to the discreet, well-appointed basement to view the tape on a very big screen, whereupon they would find themselves subjects of a new production, directed by Professor Hannah Davis.”

Hannah found Rachel’s idea exciting, and said so, but she was nagged by memories of a tickle video night at VeeGee’s last winter. The squad members had been snuggled together--four squeezed onto a couch, three sprawled at the foot of the couch—facing a TV showing a video titled “A Tickling Habit.” Onscreen, Mother Superior was featherdusting the bare feet of a barely stirred novitiate, who was wearing a nun’s veil—and nothing else. Deciding she wouldn’t been missing much, Valeria took this opportunity to replenish their snacks from the kitchen. They would not need more drinks. They were still working on the fourth bottle of the
Nouveau Beaujolais that Shaundra had provided, and hadn’t yet touched the third pitcher
of kickass margaritas that Luci had whipped up.

Sitting with her back against the sofa between Hannah’s legs, Rachel yawned with theatrical loudness. Geli shushed her. Rachel began snaking a finger into a hole in the sock under Hannah’s right toes. The historian yanked her foot away and hid her toes under the couch. She caught Rachel peeking up mischievously at her, and made a face at the poet.

As Mother Superior began fluttering her fingers under another novice’s arms, Hannah thought that Rachel may have been the eldest Squad member (and virtually the eldest Irregular), but she deferred to no one when it came to energy and playfulness. The poet tickled with as
much delight as any of them, and easily responded to tickling with a bubbling, girlish laughter. Rachel once coolly attributed her own hyperticklishness to a lifetime reading and writing poetry. She had observed, “Poetry keeps me sensitive—in every way!”

Now, as the novice onscreen laughed unconvincingly and Rachel’s fingers furtively pursued Hannah’s toes. The poet yawned again and said, “Y’know, if, in an ecumenical spirit, they’d have cast a nice Jewish girl as the novice, she’d really laugh.” She stretched her arms over her head.

Hannah said, “Uh-huh!” Seizing the moment, she grabbed the poet’s wrists tightly and shouted, “Hey, sisters! Let’s see for ourselves how a nice Jewish girl laughs!”

Rachel giggled and cried, “Nooooo-ho-ho, Hannah!” She tried to pull her arms away, but the historian had positioning and leverage over her, and was far stronger besides.

Hannah held her grip, suggesting, “’Better keep her from kickin’!”

Sacha, who’d been sitting to Hannah’s right, leaped off the sofa to pin Rachel’s right ankle to the carpet, chuckling, “Great idea! I claim a foot!” Luci, from Hannah’s left, pounced upon Rachel’s left ankle, crowing, “I get the other!” The two of them made fast work of removing Rachel’s Earth shoes and candy-stripe socks, baring her pale, soft, and rather dainty feet.

Fearing the worst, Rachel was already giggling helplessly. “Yoo-hoo-hoo leave my feet alone!” Almost simultaneously, Sacha and Luci each dug five fingers under Rachel’s tiny wiggling toes. She squealed, “HEEHEEHEE! Not therehehhehheh, you bitchesehehehehehheh…!”

The remaining Irregulars rolled towards Rachel, seeking out her tender spots, as directed by Hannah. Geli and Shaundra had slipped their eager hands under Rachel’s sweater.
As she gyrated haplessly, their fingers wiggled under her arms, down her sides and across her tummy.

Hannah reminded them, “Get her li’l’ outie, get her li’l outie. She hates that!”

Rachel howled, “NOOOOOWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA…!”

Hannah insistently reminded hostess Valeria, who had rushed in from the kitchen
upon hearing the shouts and laughter, that the poet’s legendary “worst spots” were her hypersensitive knees. Rachel immediately giggled, “Hahaha-ohno-nonoohohohooo…!”

VeeGee snickered, and knelt over to unbutton and unzipper Rachel’s pants. She jumped back and cried, “Take ‘em away!” Sacha and Luci stopped their toe tickling long enough to grab her pants and swiftly whisk them off. Rachel was so bedeviled by
the upper body tickling that they easily regained holds on her ankles, and resumed their expert toe teasing.

VeeGee gleefully began squeezing just above each of Rachel’s bare knees. The poet
shrieked even louder, and continued doing so as the redhead’s fingers found the tender flesh behind her knees.

All the while, as five Irregulars delightedly tickled their sister, Hannah, with her mouth
pressed close to Rachel’s ear, continued directing the others and teasing the poet relentlessly in her Dixie drawl. “Shauny, stroke her hipbone. Sacha, scratch her toe tops. Mah, mah, Rae, you sure are putting those lifeless cows on screen to shame.” Hannah was the only Irregular still aware of the screen, where the desultory video was still running. The Mother Superior was badly faking climax as the rebellious novices sucked her toes. Rachel’s hysterical laughter was completely eclipsing the soundtrack, and Hannah was sure that was no loss. “If only we could
capture giggly you on tape, we’d make a fortune!”

VeeGee jumped up and cried, “I’m on it.” She dashed out of the room, returning second later with a camcorder, which she focussed on the hysterical poet. She started shooting,
singing, “Rachel, darling, smile!”

Crimson-faced, soaked with perspiration, Rachel vainly tried to hide her face as she chortled, “Oh-no-hohohohoho! Stahhahapit, VeeGeeheeheeheeheeheeheeee…!”

Hannah drawled in her ear, “Rachel Klamour, you’re a kitchey-coo video star.”

Rachel was finally granted mercy, after who-knew-how-long of having her hilarity recorded. (Viewing the tape would subsequently be a part of every Irregular gathering, like the singing of “Take Me Out to The Ballgame” at ballparks for the seventh inning stretch. Shaundra
also continually threatened to upload the tape to a files-sharing group.) Thirstily downing a proffered margarita, Rachel left no doubt who was responsible for her “screen test.”

She fixed her violet eyes on Hannah and said, “I will never rest until Professor Davis
stars in her very own laugh fest.”

Now, nearly a year later, in Rachel’s basement, Hannah shivered and admitted to herself. “Did Rae make good on her threat?” She surveyed the chattering group before her. “It could be any one of them. I’ve tickled plenty of motivation into each.”

“We’re agreed, then,” Rachel offered, “on the general plan for recovering Hannah’s…ah, honor…as soon as possible, say, by the start of term.”

“The devil’s in the details, though,” warned Shaundra.

Thus, the seven Irregulars moved into a tight huddle to hammer out those devilish details…

******

Ten days later, Professor Hannah Davis seemed to have her class in the palm of her hand. She was wrapping up her opening lecture in The Women’s Suffrage Movement: 1865-1920, the course she’d long planned, and had readied during her sabbatical. She had been able to make the final course preparations only because her sister Irregulars had assured her that they would make all preparations for Clarice and Nikki in the meantime. Now, she stood, clad in a brown tweed jacket over a maize blouse, a long brown woolen skirt, maize knee-his, and fleece-lined ankle boots, leaning back against the front of her desk, preparing to throw the floor open for questions before dismissal.

Perhaps it was just her imagination that, when she slipped her right foot out of her new, very warm boot—a Christmas present worn for the first time with the morning’s light snow—and flexed her stocking toes, her students’ eyes, formerly fixed on two assigned memoirs she was holding, were in unanimity drawn to her wiggling digits. Did her smoky, bespectacled eyes catch a glimpse of a long feather being brandished by someone seated in a shadowy back row? And was that a stage-whispered “Kitchey-kitchey-koo…” followed by ill-stifled giggles from a group to her right?

“Oh-no!” Hannah thought. “As Ah feared, my students have been…compromised by that tape those two little fiends circulated. Oooo! Ah can hardly wait for this evening, when Ah’ll meet that pair again, with mah sisters around me.”

With the class dismissed after an awkward, but blessedly brief Q&A, Hannah, relieved that no one had sneaked a feather onto her desk in the exodus, gathered up her materials and hastened to her office for a late afternoon meeting with a doctoral candidate. The meeting ran long, and thus she was shocked when she glanced at her watch to see that it showed nearly 7 PM. That shock was nothing compared to that which froze her as she was locking her office door. A generous arc of feathers crowned her nameplate fixed to the door. Hurling her scarf around her neck, she smiled ruefully as she contemplated the fate she had in store for dear Clarice and Nikki—and set off for what promised to be a very interesting meeting of the Girrlzz Squad of the Vellication Irregulars.

******

And, thus, Hannah found herself, as the clock neared eight, holding a red feather in one hand, and a gold slingback pump in the other, seated in a recliner in Rachel’s dimly-lit basement. Five Irregulars could barely contain their anticipation as they huddled in the shadows around her. And Hannah couldn’t quite quell her butterflies…

She had to admit that her sisters had followed through on their plan splendidly. Lucia had discreetly acquired—through the student who had been jealously guarding the tape that day in the Union—a phone number for a certain Clarice Witciewicz, a 19-year-old salesclerk at a shoe store in town, who frequented the campus and its night spots. Clarice then received a call from Rachel, who introduced herself as “a poet from the College, who gave readings and led workshops at the high school”—perhaps Clarice, a recent graduate, remembered her. Rachel said she’d heard through one of her students—How virulent is the scuttlebutt on campus! —about a particular video which displayed a faculty rival getting her cootchy-coo comeuppance, a copy of which she wanted for tactical political purposes. (“Oh…blackmail! Cool!” Rachel reported Clarice as interjecting.)

The poet offered to buy the tape for an outrageous sum, and, further, gushed that she would love to meet such a clever young woman and the lovely, thin, exotic companion Clarice was seen with on campus. (Rachel’s source in the high school office revealed that Nikki was the Algerian born Dominique Harad, almost 19, who, nearly two years earlier, had been exiled by her parents in France to live with relatives in America, apparently to foil an indiscreet romance. She and wild neighbor Clarice had bonded very tightly, said the source.) And so, the very day before, Sacha had called Hannah to confirm that the two unsuspecting teens would be dropping in at Rachel’s this night to deal their stolen laughter.

It wasn’t really until a few minutes ago, seated in the dim light apart from the whisperers anticipating “justifiable ticklecide” (as Shaundra coined it), that Hannah’s own expectations were being crowded by a tickling uneasiness in her mind. Her gratefulness on the night of her return--where they had encouraged her to concentrate on her new course while they set everything up—had buried her suspicions that an Irregular had betrayed her to her young torturers.

Now, however, she saw her exclusion in the preparations as evidence that they still considered her a lapsed Irregular. She had been amused the day before when Luci, Valeria, and their husbands had pulled up in an SUV, insisting they had to transport her recliner to Rachel’s basement. Sitting in it now--at their insistence--in the extreme upright position, with her stocking feet dangling off of the footrest, high above a few unopened pairs of nylons, however, all of her past, unanswered tickle attacks against her sisters seem to loom in her imagination. Further, she wondered why the shrewdly scheming Clarice and Nikki would risk exposure to a faculty member who might just be entrapping them for the police?

Hannah’s racing ruminations ceased with the sounds of footsteps and voices upstairs, culminating in Rachel’s loud assurance that her guests “must join me in my newly-finished basement to enjoy your wicked tape on my enormous TV screen.” As the basement door opened, five Irregulars shushed each other and scurried under the stairs. A chatty Rachel led Clarice (her short full figure sporting a Navy sweat suit with white piping, white socks, and baby blue Nikes, while her blonde bangs now boasted strawberry streaks) and Nikki (her thin frame noir from ponytail to oversize sweatshirt to denim skirt to nylons to Doc Martens) clomping down the stairs. When the trio reached bottom, Rachel stepped aside, flicked a wall switch, and made a sweeping arm flourish toward the spotlit Hannah. The poet casually said, “I think you know Professor Davis.”

Hannah, twirling in her hand the red feather-- left behind with the slingback that day they’d tickled her silly, crossed her feet on the footrest and, with unctuous Southern politeness, said, “Well, Clarice and Nikki, what goes around, comes around. Won’t you join us? And take your shoes off?”

“Oh, yes! That’s a must,” trilled Rachel, standing before them. “My basement’s white, fluffy carpet means no shoes.” Five Irregulars placed themselves between the two guests and the stairs. A slowly retreating Nikki almost stumbled into them. Glancing nervously behind, the
two guests hastily slipped out of their footwear. Rachel quickly bent down and snatched the Nikes and Doc Martens up, saying, “You won’t be needing these for a while.” She disappeared for a moment, and returned without them.

Shaundra boomed, “’S’matter, girls? Cold feet? I’m sure Hannah can think of a way
to warm ‘em up!”

Hannah wiggled her feet on the footrest and purred, “Ah certainly can!”

Clarice, to her credit, after a beat, smiled sweetly and coolly chirped, “Hi, Prof.! That position bring back any memories?” She waved the unmarked cassette she was holding in her hand.

Hannah’s smile tightened a bit, and her smoky eyes glared at them as she said, “Honey, Ah would remind you that she who laughs last laughs best.”

“I give up, Prof.,” Clarice teased. “Which grand Southern belle said that? Scarlett O’Hara? Dolly Parton?”

Nikki, bleating as the Irregulars gently moved her and Clarice ever closer to the recliner, said, “Ah, P-Professor? You-you wouldn’t be thinking…no, you can’t….”

“Uh-huh,” Hannah said with undisguised glee. She was about to rise from the recliner when she felt a firm yet gentle restraining hand upon her shoulder. It belonged to Shaundra, who murmured, “Wait a minute, Hannah dear. Before we can deal with these two properly, why don’t you show us again how they trapped you? I can’t believe you couldn’t get loose.”

“Oh, uh, sure, Shauny,” Hannah said, the wary prickling at the back of her neck mitigated by what she figured was the immediate realization of her payback. She leaned as far back as she could in the recliner, leaving her stocking feet dangling over the edge of the footrest, raised to its maximum. “See, I was set all the way back. It’s impossible to get up and reach your feet when they’re tied just right.”

“I still don’t see it,” said Shaundra, standing by Hannah’s right shoulder, upon which she drummed five long, fiery-red-nailed fingers.

“Yeah,” added Geli, standing by her left shoulder, “if your hands weren’t tied, why couldn’t you stop them?”

Luci knelt by Hannah’s left foot and offered, “Maybe if we tied your feet as they did, Hannah, we could see how it works before we try it on these two.”

“Well, uh…sure, but…” Hannah blurted.

Luci interrupted, saying, “Good! Your feet were bare that day, right?” Without waiting for a reply, she grabbed Hannah’s left ankle and reached up under Hannah’s skirt, slid her fingers along her leg (The historian emitted a startled “Hey!”), and began to peel off her knee-hi. Valeria knelt by the other side and began to pull off Hannah’s right knee-hi. The psychologist said, “You want us to get this right, don’t you? You’d like to pay these fresh-faced fiends in kind?””

“Ah, yes, but…” Hannah said ineffectually, as the two women at her feet swiftly stripped off her stockings, soon leaving her pink, sweaty bare toes wiggling atop the footrest.

Nikki, being hemmed in near the recliner by Rachel, moaned, “Aw, the tattoo’s gone,” as she observed that the smiley face that she had mischievously drawn on Hannah’s left big toe on that tickling day weeks before had faded. “Hey, mine, too,” giggled Clarice, thinking of her similar graffito on Hannah’s right big toe. Feeling Sacha crowd her, she added, “’Bet that took a lot of scrubbing, eh, Prof.?”

“They weren’t so temporary, no,” Hannah growled, her irritation at the blonde keeping her from protesting. Meanwhile, Luci and Valeria had ripped open the packages of nylons. They then swiftly and efficiently wrapped each ankle tightly with one end of a stocking and secured the other end to a bar under the footrest.

“How’s that knot?” beamed Luci. Hannah’s shapely bare feet, their long toes and generously wrinkled soles moist and pink, were bound to and overhanging the footrest several inches apart. Hannah wiggled them nervously. This was becoming all too familiar.

“That can’t be all they did,” mused Shaundra aloud. “She can still move her feet sideways some. And what’s to keep her from lowering the footrest?”

“Well, they wrapped another stocking around my ankles, holding them tightly together,” Hannah said helpfully, as she was impatient to end this bondage primer and get her hands on Clarice and Nikki. With another nylon, Luci proceeded to restrain the ankles as Hannah directed. Valeria then stretched yet another stocking from bound ankles to footrest, making for a very firm restraint, Hannah thought, as her highly sensitive and vulnerable bare toes twitched uneasily.

“And I think this solves the other problem,” said Rachel, as she set an unfolded wooden tray table under the footrest to keep it from being lowered.

“See, my feet are helpless,” Hannah said to break the satisfied silence that ensued. “And I’m reclining too far back to reach forward.” She was raising her arms theatrically to demonstrate her futile reach, when Shaundra and Geli grabbed and swiftly raised them behind her head. Sacha produced a pair of linked leather cuffs, which the Russian quickly strapped onto Hannah’s wrists. The cuffs’ chain was padlocked to an o-ring welded high on the padded pillar behind the chair.

Hannah shouted, “Hey! What are you…!” Before she knew it, her wrists were as firmly bound as her ankles, her long arms stretched above to their utmost.

Shaundra loomed over her, intoning, “Now I believe you can’t wriggle free.”

“Wow, I thought ‘Nik’ and I were slick, but, heh-heh, you guys…” chuckled Clarice.

Hannah spluttered, “W-wait a minute! A-ah thought we were going to teach them a lesson!”

“Indeed we are,” observed Rachel. “This sub-group of the Vellication Irregulars is
going to demonstrate to these aspiring young members how to tickle someone so that she holds back nothing, so that she loses self-control…completely.”

Tugging ineffectually at her bonds, Hannah giggled, as if sharing a joke. “Heh-heh-heh!
O.K., you scared me good and proper. Hee-hee! Ah know I was AWOL from the group for
a long while. But, ha-ha, Ah’m back!”

“As we planned. And while our guests concentrated their field study upon your lovely feet,” Geli said, unbuttoning and opening wide Hannah’s maize blouse, revealing the historian’s full breasts. “Here in the lab, we’d like to explore some other promising areas.”

Sacha teased, “Ooo, Hannah! Tsk-tsk-tsk! No bra!”

Hannah blushed as her darkened nipples, exposed to the basement’s slight chill, came to attention (expressing the excitement that she was increasingly failing to suppress within).

Lucia chuckled, “Heh, why, I believe they’re glad to see us, Hannah!” She tweaked Hannah’s big left toe. “Tickled, one might say.”

“Or soon will be,” added Rachel, who blew on Hannah’s breasts, apparently making them gladder still

Hannah was beside herself, feeling like a stereotypical Southern Reconstruction widow who’s just realized that a sweet-talkin’, high-hatted carpetbagger has ridden away with the deed to her plantation and all her keepsake jewelry. She shouted, “Snookered! By my own sister Irregulars!” She futilely tugged at her bonds as she continued with, “All of you were working with these two little terrors all along, weren’t you? It was a vellication conspiracy!”

“Who do you think happened to meet these two young ladies outside your classroom one day last August?” pointed out Luci as she playfully tweaked the rest of Hannah’s long, soft right toes. “I quickly realized that we could incorporate their desire to profit from your laughter with our need to return you to our ranks. They were most receptive to our tutelage on the subject of the ticklish Hannah Davis.”

Geli chimed in with, “I provided them with directions to and photo references of your place. I made them study your living room, emphasizing this very comfortable chair.”

“I taught them a new use for their old nylon stockings,” giggled Shaundra, buffing her fingernails proudly on her wool-covered breast.

Sacha bubbled with, “We all gave them new tickling tools and pointers how to best use them!”

“Not to mention some of the best shoes from our wardrobes,” VeeGee added. “Good thing three of us wear a size nine, like you.”

“Damn!” Hannah cried, shaking her head. “I should have realized something was fishy when every shoe they tried on fit perfectly!”

“Hannah, dear,” cooed Rachel, “you might have seen our collusion sooner, but you allowed your pining for your departed love and your compulsive work to overcome you. You needlessly punished yourself by avoiding your Irregular pals, those who know the real, ticklesome you!” She took the cassette from Clarice and slipped it into the nearby VCR. In an instant, the enormous screen was filled with a close-up of a completely hilarious Hannah, whose laughter echoed in the room.

“For months, you wouldn’t come to us,” purred Geli, tapping some fingertips lightly upon the exposed left underarm of Hannah, who yelped and jerked. “So, with the eager assistance of Clarice and Nikki, we came to you.”

“Providing laughter…” Sacha giggled, giving Hannah a quick poke to the tummy.

“…and an urgent motivation to return to us,” continued Luci, who indulged in a slow and solitary forefinger’s stroke along Hannah’s quivering right instep.

“After all,” said Shaundra with a playfully raised eyebrow, “we each felt obligated”—here her fingers grazed one side of Hannah’s ribcage—“ to remind you how therapeutic being tickled….”

“…or tickling another can be when one has the blues,” VeeGee concluded, walking one spidery hand along Hannah’s tender left sole.

Hannah had shut her eyes, determined not to laugh, when the Irregulars around her stepped away. She opened her eyes to see Rachel, with her arms around the shoulders of Clarice and Nikki, approach the chair.

“Clarice, Nikki,” Rachel said, beaming at the two teens by her sides, “We of the Girrlzz Squad of the Vellication Irregulars welcome new blood. However, you are very young, so, while the first stage of your initiation went well”—nodding to the screen—“we’d like a closer look at your managing of a ticklish situation.”

“Ah, ha-ha, wait-wait a minute!” a desperate Hannah offered, her eyes darting from one gleeful Irregular’s face to the next. “I’ll-I’ll admit that I’ve been a mite distracted lately. But I-I always intended to come back…”

Clarice, with a wicked smile, nudged Nikki, and asked, “Right or left?” The dark, thin one knelt beside Hannah’s right side, her partner beside Hannah’s left.

Shaking the chain overhead, her quickening breaths sprinkled with nervous giggles, Hannah pleaded, “Now-now, really! Not these two again! It’s-it’s not fair! It’s…”

Her words collapsed into a flood of giggles and guffaws as the two teens began to dance their fingers under Hannah’s arms, down her sides, and across her wiggling belly.

“AIEEE! HELP! Ah-ha-ah-ha-hahahaHAHAHAAAH! NO-NO! Oh-ho-hehhehheh-EEK!”

“Ah, swee-ut music!” cheered Shaundra. “Go, girls! Play those ribs!”

Clarice was indeed eagerly digging into Hannah’s right side with one hand, while she was delicately spidering her other fingers upon the tied teacher’s exposed underarm. Nikki’s tongue slipped between her lips as she slid her fingers under the waistband of Hannah’s skirt. She assiduously began to knead Hannah’s hips, thus causing a violent eruption of hilarity.

“YAH-HA-GOD! AHHA! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-HAAAH! <shriek> Ah-ha-ah-ha-ahhahahahaaaaaa-AHHAHAHAHAAAAA…”

The six Irregulars, awash in Hannah’s laughter flowing live and on tape, could restrain themselves no longer. They eagerly selected tickley implements from the card table. Then, jockeying for position, they, too, fell upon their bound sister like starving women ushered into a Thanksgiving feast.

“Oh-ho-hee-hee-oh! I’ll-HA!-I’ll-heh-get-heh-get-heh-AHHAHAHAAAA! ‘Get you all back! AHHAHAHAHAAAAH…”

“Yes, yes, in your dreams,” crooned VeeGee, as she pulled back the toes of Hannah’s left foot and applied a little coarse paintbrush under the tender digits, which twitched like mad. Shaundra was moving a rubber-tipped hairbrush up-and-down upon the sole of the ineffectually waggling right foot. Sacha was waiting, with rapidly crumbling patience, to apply the rotating brush of the small portable shoe buffer to Hannah’s inviting soles. Seizing an opening, she slipped the buffer between Hannah’s tender feet and, with a soft whir, brushed along their delicate arches.

“YOU-hoohoohoo-ahhaha-hehheh-J-JUST-ahhaha-W-WAIT!<shriek>STOP! AHHAHAHAA…”

Geli, meanwhile, had bumped Clarice out of the way, saying, “OK, rookie. Watch an expert.” She began to deliver minute, maddening pinches to Hannah’s underarms, provoking plenty of paroxysms in the historian.

“GAAH! Eh-heh-hee-hee! ST-ST-STAAHHP! Nono-ohho-heh-hehhehheh-EEEK! Heeheehee…”

Rachel had donned a pair of silken gloves, fiendishly augmented from fingertips to wrists with a layer of tiny brushes. Shouting, “Gangway!” she plunged over Nikki and grasped at Hannah’s sides, with occasional swirling detours over her hips.

“AIIIE! NO! Ah-ha-hahahahHAHAAH! Oooh! YOU-ha-YOU-hoohoo-OLD-hahahahaaaaa…”

“Yeeeeees?” clowned Rachel, as she slid her merciless mitts across her ribs and under the bound academic’s arms, seeking elusive sweet spots. “Do I hear an ageist slur from an historian?” Hannah’s frenzied yelps indicated that Rachel’s fingers and tongue had hit their mark!

Lucia had plucked a long, wide feather from a Cherokee headdress (Rachel’s souvenir—inspiring vellication verses within her the moment she saw it--from a recent poet’s conference in northeast Georgia)
crowning one of the bookshelves. She settled herself on her heels facing Hannah’s temporarily relieved
feet. Resting her chin in her cupped right hand, and propping her right elbow on her right knee, with her left hand she teased the top of the historian’s feet with the tip of the feather, from the toes to the ankles to the back of the heels. Then, her serene smile of contentment becoming a grin, she swept the trapped, flexing soles with broad flourishes of the feather blade across the outer edges and the heels. After a few delirious freestyle minutes, she snagged Hannah’s heel and probed carefully between the long toes with the feather tip. Catching Hannah’s frenzied eyes and intoxicated by her peals of unrestrained laughter, Luci found herself laughing robustly, “Heh-heh-hmm-hehhehheh-AHHAHAHAHA….” even as she tickled.

“Look, guys!” Valeria crowed, pointing to the hilarious Lucia. “Tickle transference!”

Geli, who was taking a breather by the electronic entertainers, was muting “Hannah’s Ha-Ha-Hits” to begin playing a CD of “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” as she observed, “Surely, VeeGee, you’ve had ample experience observing that with undergraduates during office hours.”

“Why, yes, Gelsomina,” Valeria volleyed, her eyebrows knitting, “you simply must come over and try my couch, complete with restraints, on for size.” She tiptoed behind the botanist--who was intent again on the CD player--and slipped her fingers briskly into the Italian’s armpits. It was fortunate, then, for the whooping leaping Geli that the basement finishes included padded overhead pipes.

When Luci’s feather flagged, quiet, unassuming Nikki slipped in beside her and began rapidly fluttering the pads of her fingertips, with delicious delicacy, upon Hannah’s left sole. She began with the tender pads of the teacher’s toes, which scrunched desperately, merely encouraging the ceaselessly fluttering fingers to light instead on the wrinkled upper sole, then to hydroplane along the arch, to bottom out teasing Hannah’s fleshy heel, before beginning the slow, torturous return march upward. Throughout this display of fingertips as hummingbird’s wings, Nikki’s dark eyes were alight with intense pleasure, and her lips formed a sly, lemon-twist smile. Hannah’s latest height of hilarity didn’t keep the historian from acknowledging this latest torment with a frenzied look at the dark one.

“Wha-ha-ha-ah-ha-ha-AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! STOPPIT!You-ha-you little-heh-b-bi-ih-hehhehheh <shriek>…”

“The kid’s pre-eet-ty good,” conceded Shaundra, as she knelt to Nikki’s left. “Lord, Hannah, I’m sure glad that your puppies are her field of dreams and not mine!” The economist’s ensuing shriek was caused by a sneaky Sacha buffing her bare pink soles, upturned behind her, with the polisher.

“Hey!” protested Shaundra, giggling, leaping. “We’re trying to concentrate here!”

“Sorry,” mocked Sacha, “but your ‘puppies’ needed polishing.”

Throughout all this breathtakingly varied tickle torture, Hannah, despite her virtually continuous laughter, wrestled with conflicting emotions. She was infused, initially, with self-righteous anger at being so manipulated by her sisters and their new allies. This was matched by her disgust at herself for not following her misgivings and deducing from now obvious clues what the set-up had been. However, these feelings were eclipsed by a building affection for her sisters, who were going to such pains to restore her good spirits and to draw her back among them. Each loving stroke and mischievous poke seemed to elicit more warmth towards her sisters within her.

Sisterly affection wasn’t the only warmth infusing her as the teasing proceeded. Her laughter was accompanied by sounds indicating plainly that each touch was further stimulating her pleasure centers as well. Her increasing gasps and moans reflected the ripples of excitement expanding outward from her redolently moist sexual triangle. She could feel her juices flowing and a delicious tension slowly, steadily building…

Rachel had clearly noticed the steamy signs as well. Why, Hannah’s excited olive-tinged nipples were practically vibrating to a blur atop the pale splendor of her breasts!
The poet snickered, “Uh-huh. OK, folks! I believe it’s time for Hannah’s scintillating sprint to glory.” Nearly as one, the conspirators stopped their tickling.

“Oh, God…oh!” croaked a sweat-drenched Hannah, her stimulated toes convulsing, her knees knocking, her hair a snaky disaster, her hands clenching high overhead.

The climax of Hannah’s proper reintroduction to the Vellication Irregulars saw a grinning Clarice seated facing the bound beauty’s feet. Nikki, with tongue stretching dark cheek, hovered over the historian’s heaving chest. Rachel, as host, Chair, and Senior, leaned over her colleague’s middle with the grandest brown-edged white feather from the phalanx of crystal inkwells. Sacha excitedly held a whistle to her mouth as she reset a Bulova stopwatch. The four other Irregulars bounced nearby on itchy feet, awaiting the endgame. Someone
had silenced the Mozart.

For interminable seconds, the basement was eerily silent, except for Hannah’s rapid respiration. Then came the shrill shriek of Sacha’s whistle. An exuberant Irregular cheer went up.

Clarice, like a pianist enacting a frenzied closing to a final movement, danced her ten fingers with athletic abandon across Hannah’s glowing, gyrating peds. She pressed closer to dig her fingers under and between the struggling toes. She allowed her blonde bangs to trail teasingly as well on the tops of the teacher’s trapped toes. She crooned, “Kitchey-kitchey-coo, Prof! I’m never gonna stop! ‘ Love these toes! Kitchey-coo!”

“AIEEE! OH! OH, GOD! <gasp> HA-HAHAHA-AHHAHAHAHA!<snort>NO-OHHOHOHOHO…”

Meanwhile, Nikki, applying the same delicately fluttering fingertips that had proved so effective upon Hannah’s bare foot, set them upon the historian’s quivering breasts. Her rapidly waving digits barely grazed the professor’s erect nipples and their tremulous environs. Every so often, she made a quick insinuation into Hannah’s armpits as well. “Tickle, tickle,” she breathlessly whispered. “Tickle, tickle.”

“YI! YI! YI! HA-HA-AH-HA-HA<pant> Nomore-ple-hee-heese! No-heh-heh-hehhehheh-m-more <gasp> HA-AHHAHAHAHAAA! <shriek>”

Rachel, between the two young ticklers, calmly lifted the waistbands of Hannah’s skirt and underwear (which conveniently fit the historian loosely thanks to weight loss from overwork). “’Bet no one’s tickled you here in a while!” she teased. She then, almost humming with practiced assurance, danced the feather amidst the short reddish curls upon Hannah’s mound. With a microsurgeon’s skill, she teased her colleague’s passionate lower lips until they were swollen to bursting. Then, she allowed the feather tip to delicately venture within, as Hannah’s laughter grew heavy with impassioned breathing. “Who’s a ticklish girl then?” Rachel
crowed repeatedly in her best East Endglish.

“She’s nearly there!” shouted Sacha. Others cried, “C’mon, Clarice, you’re supposed to be a virtuoso!” and “Oooo, Nikki’s an evil one!” and “The plume’s a poet’s mightiest weapon!”

Holding each quaking foot, Clarice began planting soft, gentle kisses on each toe in turn. She then lasciviously licked up-and-down the middle of Hannah’s salty soles. Finally, the cherubic strawberry blonde pried back the long, lovely toes to take innumerable tiny, teasing tastes between them.

Hannah was twitching like a divinely inspired Holy Roller. Had she ever been so deliberately drawn to the edge of satisfaction, only to precariously sway there for eternal, delirious seconds?

Nikki was drumming with expert lightness along Hannah’s ribcage and across her belly, causing the professor to gyrate her middle as if to a demon’s bazouki. The quiet one withdrew for a moment, only to catch the tip of each nipple between thumb and forefinger, which pinched and rolled gently…

It seemed to Hannah as if each giggle and gasp echoed throughout her body. The spring of her passion coiled so tightly, so tightly…

Rachel’s feather tip twirled upon just the right fraction of Hannah’s tender button…

“AHHAHAHAHHAH! <gasp> Heehee-Tha-that’s <gasp> that’s I-IT! <gasp>”

As she felt Hannah shudder violently in the ensuing second of silence, Rachel whispered, “Oh, yeah….” Sacha activated the stopwatch with a flourish.

Hannah practically levitated the chair. Only the ascending percussive pulses pounding through her pubis exceeded the exercised beating of her heart. Clarice and Nikki could barely keep their tickling fingers on Hannah’s thrashing body as the professor’s rhythmic roars of passion echoed for long minutes. Then, silence…save for Hannah’s loud, giggle-strewn breathing…

The Irregulars whooped as one. Sacha waved the stopped watch, saying, “A new record!” Valeria smirked, “It’s not how long you make it, but….”

“Well?” Shaundra asked as she loomed over Hannah’s flushed face.

“Don’t ask,” Hannah exhaled.

“Don’t tell,” Lucia suggested.

******

An Irregular gathering at Rachel’s meant good and ample food and drink, and this unusually lively meeting was no exception. The seven Irregulars, plus their two new apprentices (When Rachel used the term, Clarice rolled her eyes.), dined on moussaka and a tremendous salad, with Sacha offering a plate of blinis and Geli her celebrated waffle cookies. Shaundra, the practicing oeneophile, had brought a vintage Bordeaux, complementing Rachel’s solid Australian house wine. Despite the late hour and the classes looming the following day (Already most of the instructors had composed their “sudden sickness” phone calls.), all ate and drank heartily.

Special care was taken to see that the fledgling Irregulars were eating and (with a breezy wave to the law) drinking to their fullest. With an eye on their rising and falling wineglasses, Rachel was notching her napkin discreetly with her fork. She watched with concern as the two at one point weaved their way to the bathroom together. Then, she nodded to Geli, who spiced their wineglasses before they returned, laughing together and poking each other.

Hannah, her face positively aglow, on her lips an omnipresent smile the likes of which her students could only dream about, rose to make a toast.

“To all of you, dear Irregulars, who welcomed me back and brought me to my senses when I became too wrapped up with work, solitude, and my damned self-pity.”

“Hear, hear!”

“That’s a toast?”

“Shut up!”

“Shhh!”

Clarice, more than a little tipsy, was clearly battling sleepiness (surprising because she usually held her drink quite well, thank you). She emptied her just refilled glass and rose, unsteadily, to offer, with just the glass, “Prof., me and Nik’ just want you to know what a blast it was to make you laugh and, uh, you know. It…was…awesome!” Suddenly, as if she were a marionette whose strings had been severed, she fell back into her chair, fast asleep.

Nikki’s eyelids fluttered closed as her head settled upon her arms folded upon her plate. She immediately was snoring sweetly.

“Well, the pleasure was all mine,” blushed Hannah, “and, to my shame, it may not be over yet.”

“That was a good wine, Shaundra,” Lucia said.

The economist mumbled, “Yeah, ‘shame to tamper with theirs.”

Geli countered with, “C’mon, I just added a touch of ‘nighty-‘night powder to their glasses. They won’t be out very long.”

“Long enough, I trust,” the Chairpoet pronounced, “for us to bring this party to a fitting close.”

(Continued below...)

"A TICKLISH MATRICULATION" concludes...

Hannah’s recliner in Rachel’s basement was soon jam packed with apprentice Irregulars. Clarice and Nikki sat squeezed, side-by-side, therein, their upper bodies restrained by a comical amount of packing tape and twine to the armrests and back. They were extremely reclined, their ankles bound together by nylon stockings and secured by more stockings, so that their feet hung over the edge of the footrest. (Shaundra noted, with pride, “I’m the best at what I do!”)

Most of the Irregulars were seated, in folding chairs and on beanbag pillows, around the recliner. Geli was across the room focussing a camcorder--perched on a tripod—upon the pair bound in the recliner. Hannah was seated cross-legged, facing the footrest, with her head resting on her hands. With her smoky eyes barely above their toes, she was watching the prankish pair slowly awaken with obvious keen anticipation.

The two’s realization of their new perspective was not long in coming, as they struggled desperately. “Hey!” “Oh, no!” “What th--?” “We thought we were members now!”

“I’m certain you shall be,” offered Rachel, poorly restraining her smile. “But we thought Professor Davis would be only too happy to help us discover something vital in any prospective member.”

Leaning against the padded pillar behind them and looming overhead, Shaundra said, “You sweet young things clearly can ‘dish it out.’ ”

Valeria, perching on the left armrest, trilled, “But how well do you enjoy facing—heh-heh-heh—the feather?” Her eyes sparkled as she twirled one of the signature white Irregular plumes against her own chin.

Clarice and Nikki froze for a second, their eyes wide with terror. Then, they redoubled their futile straining to escape their copious bonds.

Hannah, trying not to betray her impatience, whistled faintly as she rolled Clarice’s thin white cotton socks down over her plump heels. “S-stop t-that! D-don’t!” stammered Clarice, her cool quite undone by this reversal. Hannah, humming with a wicked smile, tugged with playful slowness in turn at the toe of each sock, until she had pulled it off of Clarice’s splaying toes, desperate to hang onto their meager protection.

Finally, helplessly barefoot, the little Rubenesque blonde waggled her little, soft, pink, babyfat feet, pouting, “Y-you’re wasting your time. You can forget it. I’m-I’m not at all ticklish. I’m tough. You’ll see!” Hannah blew on the fingers of her left hand before asking, “Can I crack this safe?” She ever-so-gently raked Clarice’s soles with the tips of her fingernails. The “tough” one’s feet jerked, while she all too obviously bit her lower lip.

“Methinks the young lady doth protest too much,” crooned Rachel.

“’Methinks’, huh?” giggled Sacha. “I’ll have to remember that one!”

Her smile widening to a hungry grin, Hannah slowly slid over on the plush white carpet until she was centered before Nikki’s feet, trembling despite their sheer coating of stretched black nylon. “Aw! Are your tootsies chilly, Nikki dear?” Hannah asked with syrupy solicitude.
“Should I rub them?” She began to hum “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” as she ran one finger along the flexing tops of Nikki’s sleek, black nylon-sheathed toes. Nikki shuddered, curled her toes, and unsuccessfully suppressed a giggle.

“My goodness, Hannah,” Luci marveled, “one would think you had a grudge against these young ladies!”

“Professor Davis, please!” pleaded Nikki. “You-you can’t do this! It’s-it’s unethical for tenured faculty to take advantage of young people like this.” The Irregulars were stunned
into silence. This was more than they’d heard the dark young woman say all evening.

Rachel recovered first, sneering, “Look who’s talking about ‘taking advantage’: the quiet one who tickles like she works for the Islamic Jihad.”

“How do you expect to graduate to full Irregular status,” asked VeeGee, as she flicked the magnificent white plume upon the pair’s evasive noses, “if you won’t sit still in class?”

Clarice shouted, “I’ll pee!” “So will I!” cried Nikki.

“That’s why you’re sweating on a vinyl seat cover, you two,” Rachel intoned. “This is a fully equipped Vellication Irregular facility.”

“Furthermore,” growled Shaundra, “you two deserve disciplining for exceeding your mandate and trying to tickle Hannah into revealing all she knew about us on tape. You nearly blew it for all of us!”

“O.K. We got a little carried away,” Clarice conceded. She thrust her jaw at Hannah. “It was easy cuz she’s so ticklish!”

“Well, Ah plan on getting ‘a little carried away’ now, too,” Hannah cooed, as she
dragged one nail down Clarice’s right foot, which jerked. Clarice bit her lip and looked away.
Valeria rather ceremonially handed the great plume to Hannah.

Hannah continued, “You see, mah dear, I’ve got a theory I’d like to prove. Ah believe
that a person tickles the way she herself likes to be tickled. You, Clarice, tickled mah feet hard and fast. Could it be that you ‘like’ it that way?” She held Clarice’s bare right foot and ran the nub of the great quill deeply along the sole. The blonde barely suppressed a yelp as she squeezed her eyes shut and buried her head in the plush seat back.

“Heh-heh! Could be!” Sacha giggled.

“Now, Nikki here,” Hannah lectured, “she drove me crazy with her gently calculated touch.” She turned the white feather around in her hand. Holding Nikki’s left stocking foot still,
she grazed the bottoms of her toes with the feather tip. Nikki closed her eyes while shaking her head violently from side-to-side and giggling, “Tee-hee-hee-no-no-no-plee-hee-heese!” Hannah continued feathering, as she observed, “Ah may be onto something here, too, hmmm?”

Lucia chuckled, “Heh-heh! Hannah Davis, vellication empiricist.”

Geli, peering through the viewfinder of the camcorder, announced, “OK, I’m ready, Hannah.” She gave the historian a thumbs-up. To the trapped pair, she said, “I hope you two laugh as videogenically as Hannah did. I’ve got a nice tight shot of your beaming faces. You’ll
be the hits of the Web.”

“Oh, shit, no!” Clarice protested.

Hannah slid the great feather behind one ear and slipped on Rachel’s wicked gloves. She flexed her feathery fingers and waved them over the captive’s flinching feet. Then, having second thoughts, she removed the gloves and rubbed her bare hands together. Fanning her long fingers, she smiled and said, “This calls, as Gelsomina would say, for ‘mani a piedi, a capella’.”

“Brava!” shouted Geli. “Action!”

For a second, Hannah seemed unsure whom to tickle first. She brought her left fingers up alongside Clarice’s pudgy pink toes, which clenched fearfully, as Clarice spat, “You bitch! Keep off! I’m warnin’ ya!” Hannah stilled her hand, however, and dropped it.

Then her right forefinger approached the top of Nikki’s high arches, sheer with dark nylon. Nikki shut her eyes and, shivering, moaned, “N-no! D-don’t! Please!” Hannah’s fingertip stopped just shy of the stretched stocking, though, and was soon withdrawn.

Over Hannah’s shoulder, Valeria whispered, “Hannah, you’re positively fiendish!”

Hannah shrugged and muttered, “Oh, hell!” She suddenly brought five wildly wiggling fingers to bear on the soles of each prisoner. Both screamed and burst into laughter. Clarice pounded her head into the seat back and barked loud bursts of hard laughter from her mouth opened wide. Nikki squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head from side to side, and peppered the room with giggles and gasps from a mouth forming a quivering ‘o’.” With rapt concentration, Hannah danced her fingers with rapid synchronicity along the helpless soles of her erstwhile tormentors for several minutes, as her Irregular sisters hooted and cheered her on.

Hannah stopped suddenly for a moment. Clarice and Nikki sighed with relief and gasped for breath. Hannah rubbed her hands together as if to reinvigorate weary fingers. Luci stepped behind her and began to massage her shoulders, cooing, “Tired already, Hannah? You are out of condition. Come on! Don’t let these two off so easily!” The tied tyros reacted with horror at the suggestion that their torment was not yet over.

“N-n-no-no more!” begged Nikki.

“Huh-huh-h-have a heart, P-prof!” panted Clarice. “Enough already!”

Hannah chuckled and shifted over a bit, so she might peer over Clarice’s wiggling pink toes to meet the blonde’s pleading eyes. With mock Dixie innocence, the historian teased, “Ah thought you said you weren’t ticklish, Clarice? ‘Guess you were fibbin’, huh? ‘Like the day you came to my house and pretended you were workin’ your way through school, when all you wanted was to make me laugh mah head off. So, I think I’ll tickle…tickle…tickle you …forever!” Clarice shrieked as her tender feet felt Hannah’s ten fingers dig in emphatically on the last word. Hannah crooned, “Aaaaa-haaaaah!” as she mercilessly swept her fingertips across the pink, wrinkly soles of the haplessly waggling peds. She aggressively snaked her fingertips between Clarice’s desperately clenching toes.

“Go, Hannah, go!” cheered Sacha.

“Hey, Clarice!” teased Rachel. “You’re ‘tough,’ remember?”

Clarice’s face turned cherry red as she squeezed her eyes shut and pounded her head against the seat back. She screamed, “STA-HAHAHAAAP! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…!” After several uninterrupted minutes of such delicious torment, she was left soaked with sweat, limp, and gasping.

Catching Nikki’s apprehensive ebon eyes, Hannah shifted over her trembling nylon feet and purred, “Nikki, you’re always so quiet! Even when you ever so gently nearly tickled me to death, you barely said a word. Let’s see if this gets you soundin’ off!”

Hannah began rapidly wiggling her fingers so that the pads of her fingertips barely touched the sheer nylon surface of Nikki’s soles. She maintained this maddeningly light stimulus up-and-down Nikki’s feet, over and over, never tickling one spot very long, barely grazing the stockings upon the soft flesh from the long, thin toes, along the high arch, to the soft narrow heel and back.

“Plee-heeheeheeheeheese, Pro-hoho-fe-hehheh-hehheheh-sor! Hee-hee! Heeheeheeheeheeeee! Heh-heh-hehhehhehheh! Eeeeeee-heeheeheeheeeeee…!”

Such subtle touches, transmitted and augmented by the nylon stretched across her feet, soon reduced Nikki, her mouth stretched wide, to a state of breathy, near-silent giggles sprinkled with guttural chuckles and desperate mewlings. She appeared to reach the height of such hilarity when Hannah ever so delicately grazed the tops of her feet with her fingernails

“L-leave her alone!” Clarice breathlessly insisted. “She hates that!”

“Thanks, blabbermouth!” Shaundra cracked. “Now we know!”

Clarice, still panting furiously, glared at Shaundra and spat, “I’ll catch you someday, bitch, with y-your shoes off. And you’ll beg me to stop!”

Shaundra cocked her head and mused, “Oh, is that so?” She selected a rubber-tipped hairbrush from the nearby card table. She peered down at Clarice and added, “’Not if you die laughing tonight!” She stepped to the foot of the recliner and knelt next to Hannah, who was
still busy gently tickling Nikki.

“I know this is your party, Hannah, but may I join you?”

“Please do,” winked Hannah, not allowing the hapless Nikki a second’s mercy.

With a wicked chuckle, Shaundra began vigorously brushing Clarice’s wildly waving feet. Clarice shrieked with laughter. “OH-NO-NO! STAHHHHPAHHAHAHAHA…!” The economist doggedly dug the rubber-tipped bristles into the soft soles. She dragged the brush
from toes to heel and back, over and over, until the soles glowed a fiery red, to match the blonde’s hilarious sweaty face.

The sight and sound of Clarice’s hysteria seemed to pull Geli from the camcorder. She
poked Sacha’s side. The mathematician giggled and assumed supervision of the video. Geli
knelt beside Hannah and whispered into her ear. “Please, Hannah, let me spell you for a bit.”

Hannah gradually stopped tormenting Nikki’s feet. The dark one’s sigh of relief
was practically an aria. Geli helped the historian rise to her feet. Hannah nodded at the breathless Nikki and said, “Honey, are you in for it now! Geli, she’s yours.”

Gel grinned, “Thank you, Professor.” She knelt before Nikki’s stocking feet and
licked her lips. Placing her hands firmly on the top of the feet, Geli leaned forward and began
to plant the slightest of kisses on the balls of Nikki’s soles.

Nikki squealed, “Nahnahnahnotthaaaaaat! I beg youhoohoohoohooo! Ah-ha-ha-hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa…!” She emitted cascade of giggles, pitched at such a high register as to occasionally exceed the usual range of human hearing.

Geli giggled and, breathing heavily, ran her lips along the smoky nylon, expertly teasing
the warm, moist flesh underneath. When her kisses approached Nikki’s toes, she noticed a
marked heightening of the thin one’s giggles. Thus, she then concentrated on cunningly flicking
her tongue under the delicate digits. She pushed the soft, wet tip of her tongue into the nylon
between the toes, causing the sheer fabric to tantalizingly graze the most sensitive skin there.
Nikki’s fountain of giggles became suffused with noticeable moans of pleasure.

“Someone’s getting excited!” observed Sacha, zooming a close-up of Nikki’s closed eyes and quivering mouth.

Rachel rested a hand on Shaundra’s shoulder, and the Jamaican Irregular gave way
to the poet, who knelt with purposeful eyes at Clarice’s feet. Wasting no time on preliminaries,
Rachel grabbed the blonde’s sweaty, livid right foot and drew the big toe into her mouth. She
moved her head up-and-down, sliding her lips on the toe from tip to base. Her tongue explored
avidly between the first two toes.

Clarice’s eyes widened and she gasped, “Oh, Christ! Duh-duh-don’t do that! Hee-hee-hehhehheh! Pleeeeheeheeheehahahahahaaaaaa…!” Soon, her laughter was peppered with
gasps and moans as well. Her crimson face, with her blonde bangs darkened with sweat upon her forehead and ears, met cheek and jowl with Nikki’s, panting and perspiring copiously. They shuddered with laughter and arousal as they rubbed energetically against each other.

As Rachel’s mouth romped upon Clarice’s plump bare feet and Geli’s kisses tirelessly teased Nikki’s sleek, stocking tootsies, the Irregulars cheered and whistled their approval.
Clarice and Nikki not only were tickling prodigies, but each was hopelessly ticklish herself.

Valeria, stroking Clarice’s brow, purred, “Our promising tyro ticklers are proving wonderfully responsive!”

Luci, playfully brushing Nikki’s ear with one of the grand plumes, observed,
“Indeed! Pee may not be all they offer us, hmmm?”

Still, even after many minutes of such delicious torture, Clarice and Nikki refused to surrender. They would not let this collection of academic old bags undo them so easily. Nope,
they could hold out, no matter how much they laughed, in spite of the excitement threatening
to overwhelm them. They’d show them.

Indeed they would. For it was then that Rachel and Geli withdrew, happily licking their lips. Clarice fought for breath to stammer, “S-s-see! T-told you we were t-tough! We beat you!”

Professor Hannah Davis, hands behind her back, returned to kneel before the four helpless feet. She smiled and said, “Remember, dears, that day you ambushed me at home?
You tickled mah poor feet every which way…almost. You used every tool you brought…
except one. Maybe if you had used it, you would have broken me completely, made me betray
my sisters, and revealed mah…passion.”

“Yeah?” snarled Clarice. “So?”

“Oh, nothing…” Hannah mused, “except that you may have forgotten…but Ah didn’t.”
She brought her hands forward. Each held a cordless electric toothbrush. She brought the brushes just above the nervously wiggling toes. She clicked the brushes on. They buzzed and vibrated ominously.

Clarice shouted, “Hey, now! Come ooooonnnn! You can’t do this!”

Nikki, closing her eyes, whimpered, “Oh, mother! Teehee! Oh, no…!”

As Hannah applied the blurred brushes to their toes, Rachel announced, over their renewed howls of laughter, “Welcome, Clarice and Nikki, to the Vellication Irregulars!”

MEETING ADJOURNED. (OK, everyone help and let’s pick up all these damned feathers….)

HANNAH RETURNS!
WE MEET ANOTHER IRREGULAR!
THE ROOKIES SHINE IN THE CLUTCH!
TWO NEW ‘AMATEURS’ GET THEIRS!

All to be found in...

"A JAR FULL OF LAUGHTER"

COMING VERY SOON!

(It had better. Before Strelnikov’s saintly patience expires….)

Great series! Looking forward to "A Jar Full of Laughter."

more magnificence from a master

Would that I had the patience to return to old works and make them new again. A classic immeasurably improved. Looking forward to more.

I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful offering! Thank you so much for the work you did on it, it's fantastic. The characters are deep, the plot works superbly and the dialog is rich. Excellent, excellent work, my friend.

Here I am, wanting to repost a reply worthy of such a tale, or epic as it were, and I can think of nothing that won't sound low brow to an author of this magnitude. I'm floored by the Captain's intelligence, his attention to detail, and his three dimensional characters. He hasn't just told us a story here; he's weaved a richly textured quilt of images and interactions that have me almost believing this is a work of fact, and not one of fiction. Not only has he painted a vibrant world of believability (sp?) into which we can dive wholeheartedly, but he's left us so many loose ends, so much room for preludes and sequels and spinoffs and flashbacks, that I can't help but thirst for more.

My hat is off to you Capt (if I wore a hat that is).

Laughter

Hey! Who let this dirigible in here?

<p>(Blush)Thank you for the kind words. (And to think, I don't believe any of these posts were from my mother. Well, maybe one...)<p>
<p>If you'll excuse me, I need to vent this swelled head a bit, or I'll float away...<p>

Saintly patience? Moi?

Superb as usual, Captain. I had thought that the original version of this story stopped a few hours short of where it should. This time, the townie rogues got theirs, as they deserved.

Regards to Lauren.

Strelnikov