You may want to read my previous story, Freak! (part 1 and part 2), before reading this one.
And as always, feedback is appreciated. Enjoy!
*****
The freaks get their revenge
John practically sprinted the entire distance from his last class to his dorm. He wasn’t hurrying because he had to, but just because he was so eager for this night to get started. Even though he and Anya had been seeing each other for several weeks now, they had never been on a “real” date. But now he had finally gotten around to officially asking her out; they would grab the train downtown, spend an hour or two seeing some sights and gawking at prices in fancy stores where they couldn’t afford to shop, and then have dinner at the nice-yet-affordable restaurant where he had made reservations. She had laughed at him when he told her his plan, ruffling his hair and calling him “cute,” but she seemed to think the idea was sweet and had of course accepted.
It was something of a relief to him. Even just planning the date had made their connection feel more real. They had done everything backwards, starting the most intensely physical relationship he had ever had before they knew much of anything about each other except their names and their mutual interest in tickling. The weeks that followed were full of bondage, tickling, and mind-blowing sex, broken up by devouring pizza or Chinese food while watching Netflix. As amazing as all this was to him, it was nice to be doing something that felt more normal, traditional, even.
It was also nice to be doing something that he had suggested. For most of their time together, Anya had set the pace, taking him along for the ride of his life. Not that he had any complaints, but he was happy to show that he was capable of taking the initiative in something.
He finally reached his room, shrugging off his backpack while he unlocked the door. He intended to toss the bag onto his bed as the door swung open, but body and mind both ground to a halt when he say that the intended target was already occupied.
“Hello, John.”
The voice made his blood run cold. He wanted to scream, to throw things, to turn on his heel and head back out the door. Against all these different options, the programmed response won out, and he croaked a reply in a quiet voice.
“Hello, Emily.”
*****
I had to admit that I was pleased with myself. So far, everything seemed to be going according to plan. I wanted John back, maybe not for keeps, but at least long enough to make sure I really wasn’t missing out on anything worthwhile. Any length of time would count as long as I could win him back from that red-haired whore who had snatched him up after I dumped him.
Yes, I had been the one to dump John. And, yes, I had humiliated him by also letting word of his tickle fetish to be spread around campus (really, that had mostly been the doing of my loudmouthed friends, but I had been the one to tell them in the first place), but none of that mattered. My mom had told me I was one of those kids who would leave one toy to go play with something else, but would want the first toy back as soon as I saw someone else playing with it. And if I couldn’t have it back, I’d rather break it than watch someone else having fun with it. They say old habits die hard, and now that I was older, I apparently felt the same way about boyfriends, too.
John had been the “safe” boyfriend, the nice guy who I could pick up at the beginning of school and count on being loyal until I could make friends and move on to something better, and I was about ready to do that. Him telling me his secret to was just too good an opportunity to pass up. I had the perfect excuse. Why did I leave such a nice guy? Oh, because he was fucking weird.
Then Anya came along and ruined it. The fact that John had had gotten over me so quickly and so completely stung quite a bit. And then there was the fact that the skank who snatched him up had apparently bounced gone from guy to guy looking for one who could satisfy her supposedly insatiable libido, and John was the one who finally did the trick. My little meek and mild John, who would hardly do so much as kiss me without asking if it was alright first, was now regularly shacking up with this older slut. What the hell? And now people were looking at me funny for giving him up over something as stupid as tickling. There were way more creepy and weird kinks out there, right?
And this is how I wound up lying on John’s bed, stripped down to the sexiest underwear I owned, waiting for him to come home from his last class. Paul, John’s roommate, had been there when I arrived, just as she planned. Paul was a loyal friend and knew that John would want nothing to do with me, but I knew that Paul still kind of had a thing for me, so actually getting him to let me in hadn’t been hard. Show some cleavage, shed some fake tears, tell my sad story about how bad I felt about how things had ended and I really need to tell John I was sorry. Oh, and I needed to do it alone, so could Paul please find somewhere else to be fore the next few hours? Yes? Well, thank you and goodbye.
Easy. Now came the hard part: convincing John himself. And judging by his look of shock and anger when he came into the room and saw me there, I knew that I had my work cut out for me.
I had my speech prepared, lines already memorized. I had practiced in front of a mirror, figuring out which parts to make most sympathetic, when to tear up, how to make my big brown eyes look remorseful. Being a theater major has its perks. I told him about how his confession had le startled and confuse, that I hadn’t meant for his secret get out like that, and besides, that had been my friend’s fault anyway. I told him it had all been a mistake, and I wanted him back.
John remained silent throughout all this. I was good at reading people’s faces – a skill acquired by learning to fake emotions for performances – and John in particular was an open book. I could tell he was thinking over what I had just told him. After a few moments his eyes widened, only slightly, as though he only just now fully realized what was being offered here. He relaxed some, and he seemed to look legitimately pleased, although he did his best to hide it. It made sense, his being cautious. The breach of trust between us was real and that it would be difficult to overcome, but his reaction gave me reason to be optimistic.
“So…you’re saying you want me back? Like, totally back. I end things with Anya and the two of us start going out again?”
I nodded, maybe too eagerly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s what I want.”
“But you know…what I told you…that night.” John swallowed. “That’s…that’s just a part of who I am. It still is. I still…have those desires. If you really want me back, I need to know that you’re okay with that.”
I nodded again. “I’ve thought about that. Like I said, I overreacted. It just…surprised me is all. But it’s really not a big deal.”
“So you’ll let me tickle you? If we get back together.”
“Yes. If we get back together.”
John looked uncertain, which made me panic slightly. I was so close to making this work!
“I need to know that you’re okay with it.”
“John, I just said…”
He shook his head. “I need you to prove it. I need you to let me tickle you. Today. Now.”
I had expected this, him asking to tickle me, and was ready to accept. Putting up with a little tickling was a small price to pay for this plan to succeed. I had intended to hold off agreeing except as a last resort, but things were going so well and I was afraid of losing this momentum if I hesitated. Still, I didn’t want to accept without some sort of assurance.
“How do I know this isn’t a trick? How do I know you’d actually break up with her after?” He had never lied to me before, and I didn’t think that he was now, but still, I had to be sure.
“Fine.” Without hesitating, John pulled out his phone and started typing. He showed me the screen as he worked, pulling up Anya in his contacts list and sending her a brutally short message: Ran into Emily and she said she’s sorry. We’re going to try to work it out, so you and I need to break up. Thanks for everything. He clicked send as I watched, somewhat dumbstruck that he had broken up with Anya via text like that. That was so rude and out of character for him that I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t just watched it.
And that was it. I had won. I’d keep up my end of the bargain – this tickling thing probably wasn’t going to be that bad, and even if it was, it was only this once. I would at least need to stay with him for a few days to watch the fallout between him and Anya, make sure that their relationship was ruined beyond all hope of recovery. Then I’d know that he really did choose me over her, and after that I’d was free to dump him again if that’s what I really wanted. But I’d have to wait and see.
John placed the phone on his desk, silencing it, probably so we wouldn’t be disturbed by the texts and voicemails that were sure to follow. “Now, time for your part. I need to know that you’ll let me tie you up and tickle you now.”
“I said you could.”
“I know. But I need to hear you say it.”
“Okay, fine. John, I want you to tie me up and tickle me.” I raised an eyebrow. “Good enough?” I hoped so; the sooner they could get started, the sooner it would be over (and the sooner I’d be able to see what John did once his phone started blowing up).
John nodded. “Good enough. Ah, lay down on the bed. I need to find…”He started looking around the room, apparently trying to find anything he could use as a substitute for ropes. A necktie, the belt from a bathrobe, an ACE bandage…these and a few other items were gathered and put to use.
I was really surprised at how good he was at it once he finally started to tie me to the bed. I tried not to think too hard about it, about how he must have learned how to do this from his time spent with Anya. At least I could take some pride in knowing that I was now the center of John’s attention. He wrapped my ankles together securely, then fastened them to the bottom frame of the bed. It was snug, but not uncomfortable, and I realized after a few test tugs that I wouldn’t be able to slip free even if I wanted to. I had never been tied up before, and had never really thought about trying it, but I was starting to understand the appeal. If he had something else in mind other than tickling, I might have been into it. That gave me an idea.
“Hey, this is kinda sexy.” I squirmed around a bit, trying to look enticing. “Do you maybe wanna make out instead?” It was worth a shot.
“Maybe after.” John didn’t even look up. He was busy unlacing a gym shoe he had picked up off the floor.
“What’s that for?”
“I’m going to use the laces tie your big toes back. It’ll help keep your feet still, and will stretch out your soles. Makes ‘em more sensitive.”
Holy shit, Who even thinks about stuff like that? What kind of a person bothers trying to find a way to tickle someone better? Was there even really a skill involved with something like this? I was having second thoughts as John wound the laces around my big toes several times, tying them together. He had just started tying the loose ends of the laces to my ankle restraints when a knock at the door made me almost jump out of my skin.
“It’s open,” John called without looking up from his work.
I was horrified. How could he let someone else in to see me like this? She would be ashamed! I mean, having a third party witness me being tied to his bed would only confirm that he really was done with Anya, but still, I was in my underwear for crying out loud!
The door opened and a tall redhead entered the room. Anya![i/] I had never really gotten a good look at her before, and I had to admit, I was jealous. She had a slender and athletic frame with some pretty fantastic breasts that she had crammed into a dark blue evening dress. Her legs were long and shapely, and some expensive-looking heels were strapped on her feet, showing off her painted toenails. She gave us a look of confusion she took in what was in front of her. “John, what the actual fuck is going on?”
I held my breath. Being caught in the act like this was ten times effective as John’s text alone would have been, but I still wasn’t sure that I wanted to be this close to this situation as it unfolded. She was keeping her cool, but there was a look in Anya’s eyes that said she would go full psycho if she didn’t like the answer.
John just smiled as he put the final knot in the laces and rose to his feet. “Anya, meet Emily. Emily, Anya.”
Anya raised her eyebrows. “Emily? That Emily?” She shot me a look of pure hate. John just nodded, still smiling. I could only swallow nervously.
“Yeah,” John said, “she came here to seduce me, talking about how she was sorry and wanted me back and blah, blah, blah. I figured that she just wanted to break us up because she’s jealous.”
Oh, shit. I felt like someone dumped a bucket of ice water on my. He knew! He had known all along! I couldn’t believe I had been so transparent.
Anya nodded, the picture becoming clearer. “Okay, but how did that end with her tied to you bed?”
“She said she’d let me tickle her if I broke up with you.” John was grinning.
“Oh, so you broke up with me, did you?”
“Yeah. I sent you a text.”
Anya laughed. “You broke up with me in a text? Dude, that’s low.”
John just shrugged. “It worked.”
But wait.... John had actually sent the text, right? What was so funny? Anya apparently hadn’t seen it yet, but how would he have known she wouldn’t get it? Anya must have noticed my confusion.
“I busted my phone yesterday. Dropped it. I’m getting a new one tomorrow.”
I felt my cheeks flush with a mixture of shame and rage. He had tricked me! My plan had been a bust from the moment he walked in the door, and I was the last to know. And I was still tied to his bed, which should have been an urgent cause for concern, but I was too pissed off in that moment to be thinking clearly.
“Okay, fine, yes, I was trying to break you two up. I am jealous, or was, anyway, but not anymore. I don’t want anything to do with you freaks, ever. So let me go and I’ll never see either of you again!”
“No.” Anya’s response was immediate and casual. “It sounds like you made an agreement with John, and I think you should be held to that.”
“I don’t care! If you don’t let me go, I’ll scream. I’ll them that you kidnapped me!” I did my best, but it occurred to me that it was hard to sound threatening when you were nearly naked and tied up.
“And if you do, I’ll play them this.” John went to his desk and retrieved his phone. After hitting a few buttons, voices came from the speakers:
Now, time for your part. I need to know that you’ll let me tie you up and tickle you now.
I said you could.
I know. But I need to hear you say it.
Okay, fine. John, I want you to tie me up and tickle me.
John stopped the recording, looking triumphant. I was speechless. He must have set his phone to record back when I thought he was silencing it. “That…that doesn’t change anything.” Even I thought that my voice sounded meek and uncertain as I said it. “You still have to let me go if I tell you.”
“Yeah, maybe. But what I could do then is sent this audio to all tour friends. Let them know that you came crawling back to me, asking to be tied up and tickled to win me back, and that it didn’t work.”
No I had no doubt that he would go through with it. He would do it without a second thought, humiliating me just like I had humiliated him. It was probably no less than I deserved, but not something I could allow to happen.
I started begging. “John, listen…”
“No, you listen. I opened up to you, and you mocked me, rejected me. And then you betrayed me to your friends and let them humiliate me. And now you try ruin the only good thing that came from that…” John stammered a bit, his eyes welling up. “Anya is the only thing that kept me sane after that. Do you not understand that?”
I was shaken by John’s angry outburst. Anya placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. He regained his composure and spoke again. “I would have left you alone. I would have gotten over it, even forgiven you, if you hadn’t come back, if you hadn’t tried this. But I think that now I deserve some payback, so you have to decide: are you going to let us tickle you, or should we send this recording to everyone you know?”
I didn’t want either option, but tickling by far seemed like the lesser of the two evils. I had already planned for that. My friends finding out about what went on here today was a different matter. Still, I phrased my decision in terms of rejecting the most undesired option rather than saying I chose the alternative. I told John not to release the audio; I would endure the tickling as agreed.
“We have to gag her.” Anya’s cool but immediate response caught me off guard.
“What? No!”
John looked disappointed. “Do we have to? I want to hear her laugh.”
“Too risky. We can’t trust her to be quiet.”
My heart dropped. I was already completely helpless as long as they had me tied up; if they took away my ability to scream or call for help, they’d be able to do pretty much anything to me. “No, please don’t,” I begged. I didn’t have to use any of my acting talents in order to sound pathetic. “I’ll be quiet, I promise. I won’t scream.”
John, looking disappointed, shook his head. “No, she’s right. You may not be able to help yourself. You don’t want to get caught, do you?” He went over to his dresser and removed a white ankle sock from the top drawer. I have to admit that it took me a few moments to realize his intentions.
“No! Gross! You are not putting that thing in my mouth.” The idea of something that had been on his foot going into my mouth bothered me almost as much as the idea of not being able to tell them to stop if the tickling got to be too much (or yell for help if they didn’t stop).
He tried to sound reassuring. “It’s fine. It’s clean. It’s just a piece of cloth…”
“That’s been on your foot! Keep it away from me!”
“Emily, shut up and open your mouth, or I’ll pull one out of the hamper and make you use that.” Anya’s voice was cold and matter-of-fact as she threatened this, and there was no doubt in my mind that she meant it. Defeated, I opened wide and let John insert the wadded-up sock into my mouth. Anya followed this by rolling up a threadbare hand towel and placing that over my mouth, tying it behind my head. I mumbled a few curses at them, testing the limits of my speech, but the noises I was able to make no longer sounded like words.
Anya looked at me, hands on her hips. “Nice job with the bondage, Johnny-boy.”
“Thanks. I just made do with what I had.” He looked and sounded proud.
“Well, nice work.” Anya walked over to the door and locked it. “We should probably get a move on. You start. You’re the one that needs revenge, after all, but I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off her for long.”
John just nodded in agreement and settled in at the foot of the bed. I craned my neck to look at what he was doing, but all I could see was his head. He was staring at my feet, studying them. I could see the wheels turning inside his head. I laid my head back down and stared at the ceiling above me, hoping that whatever he was cooking up in that perverted little brain of his would be over quickly.
A jolt shot through my entire body. I could feel it starting in the soles of both feet, traveling up my legs, up my spine, and exploding into my brain. I let out a startled shriek and was suddenly grateful for the gag. I had planned on toughing it out, holding in my laughter for as long as I could, but I now knew that would be much harder than I thought.
All he had done was to take a single finger tip – one on each foot – and run it firmly down the arch, from the base of my toes to the middle of my heels. That was it, but my heart was already racing. When was the last time anyone had tickled me on my bare foot? I couldn’t remember. I could remember it happening, and I remembered that I was ticklish there, but the actual feel of it was long forgotten. Was I more ticklish back then, or more ticklish now? I didn’t have long to think about this, and if I had known that those few brief seconds were the only tickle-free moments I would have for what would feel like an eternity, I would have spent them differently. Maybe I would have steeled myself against what was coming, or offered up some kind of prayer. But I would have done something, anything, other than think about tickling.
The fingers came back, once again drawing a torturous path from the top of each sole to the bottom, but this time they didn’t leave. Instead, those fingers traced their way back to the top, then back down again. Up, down. Up, down. The tempo never altered, but the trails the fingers forged would shift slightly to one side or another on each stroke, so that eventually no spot on my bare soles would remain untouched.
I went ballistic. I couldn’t stop laughing. I pulled at the restraints as hard as I could, twisted from side to side, bounced and flopped on the bed like a fish out of water, but nothing I did could pull my poor feet away from the ticklish touch of the boy at the end of the bed. My reaction grew stronger as the single fingertips were joined by another. Now two fingers were tickling each foot simultaneously, never once breaking contact or altering their steady rhythm. Up, down. Up, down.
I guessed correctly that a third finger would soon join the others. I laughed and babbled uselessly into the gag as John’s touch sank into my skin, sending wave after relentless wave of sensation coursing into my brain, shutting out almost everything else, everything else besides tickle. I was keenly aware of how each additional finger amplified these sensations, and that John had not yet run out of fingers. The anticipation was chilling. The mere idea that the tickling even could get worse was bad enough, but the knowledge that it was actually going to…that was torture in and of itself.
The steady pace of the fingers vanished as soon as the last finger was brought into play, replaced with wild, fast-paced and unpredictable scribbling and scratching that seemed to cover every square inch of my sensitized soles at once. I couldn’t stand it. I screamed. I begged and pleaded, as though he could actually understand me. Actually, I was sure that he could understand me, but he just didn’t care. He was evil. He wanted me to suffer, and he made me suffer. Part of me knew that I deserved it, but this was shut down by another part that said that no one deserved this.
I tried counting the seconds – Locomotive one…locomotive two…locomotive three… – partly as a distraction and partly because I was actually curious how long the tickling was going on. I lost my ability to keep track after about the eighteenth locomotive, after John found a particularly sensitive spot right in the center of my arch. I tried to think, what actually was the longest amount of time I had been tickled before this? What was average? Probably only a few seconds, really. Just a few pokes in the side or some knee squeezes from friends or cousins. It never lasted long. The worst times probably were at the hands of older relatives, but even those incidents would only have lasted a minute, maybe two, and they hadn’t been the relentless, non-stop tickling I was receiving now. This experience was completely new, like I had never really known what tickling really was until just now.
My thoughts were interrupted as a sound other than my own muffled screams and laughter floated into my consciousness. It sounded faint, like the speaker was very far away, but I distinctly heard a cruel female voice say “Alright, fuck waiting. I need in on this.”
I felt the bed on either side of me sink and opened my eyes – I hadn’t even realized that I had shut them – to see Anya poised above me, a sadistic, contented grin spreading across her face. She was straddling me, her weight holding me down even more, like I wasn’t tied up tight enough already. “I should probably give him more time alone with you, but I can’t help it. I don’t get to tickle girls very often – not like this, anyway.” She brought her nails – I could tell they were recently manicured – into contact with my sides, near the bottom ribs. The tickling on my feet hadn’t let up at all, and I was again surprised that my brain could process even more tickling. Her touch was light, delicate…almost pleasant, in a way, or would have been if it wasn’t for all the other tickling. She stroked her long nails up and down my ribs and across my tummy as she spoke.
“I do tickle other girls, of course, but it’s hard to get one to let me tie her up. With guys, it’s easy. You just have to let them think they’re getting sex. With girls you have to be more playful. I start a lot of tickle fights, for instance. I lose, sometimes, but that’s fun, too.”
Fun? How could it be fun? The fact that Anya and John apparently enjoyed getting tickled like this was almost as perverted as the fact that they liked doing it to other people.
She stopped tickling and leaned forward, pressing against me and putting her mouth close to my ear. “In a way, I think I should thank you for everything you’ve done. If you hadn’t dumped John the way you did, I probably never would have found him. And if you hadn’t been an idiot and tried to steal him away from me today, I wouldn’t be able to do this.” Her nails fluttered briefly in my armpits. That sensation from that gentle touch rivaled all of the awful things that John was currently doing to my feet.
“I’m not going to thank you, though,” she continued, smiling at my reaction to her nails. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. That boy down there? The one torturing your feet? I like him. A lot. And you hurt him. You hurt him more than you probably know. And I can’t forgive you for that.”
Anya sat back up and unleashed hell on my upper body. Her fingers seemed to know me already, and they sought out ticklish places I didn’t know I had and mercilessly exploited them. My collarbones. My hips. A small patch of skin in my lower back, on either side of my spine. And my armpits. Oh, God, my armpits. No other part of me had been as ticklish as those. It was torture, pure and simple. I’d arch my back and scream whenever her nails ventured into that spot. And they did, often. She could tell that I was most ticklish there, so she wouldn’t leave them alone. No matter where else her hands explored, I knew it wouldn’t be long before they returned there. John, meanwhile, had changed his focus and was now attacking my toes, scratching at their bases and prodding his fingers in between.
As I lay there, completely helpless and unable to do anything to stop what these freaks were doing to me, it occurred to me why they called this ‘tickle torture.’ It was torture. Real, actual torture. I would have done anything they wanted to make the tickling stop. I would have spilled every secret I had. I would have given them my credit cards. I would have agreed to do any depraved or debasing thing they commanded me to, if only they would stop. It suddenly made me sick to think of all of the times I had seen tickle torture used in cartoons and children’s shows. It had seemed innocent before, a way of sparing children’s minds from depictions of ‘real’ torture, but I don’t think the people who had written those scenes truly understood what their characters were experiencing. It was hellish.
A new sensation jolted me from those thoughts. Something new was happening with my feet. John’s fingers were no longer tormenting me – thank God! –, but something new had taken their place, something firm and flexible. It felt wet, too, as it slid with ease over my left sole, not tickling as much as the fingers had, but still enough that I would have been laughing and squirming even without Anya currently tweaking my ribcage. It wasn’t until the unknown object reach my toes and started darting in between them that I realized what it was. It was John’s tongue! He was licking my feet!
Somehow the realization of how gross and weird this was amplified the ticklish feeling of it. I tried to struggle to get away, but of course I couldn’t. I felt his lips enclose some of my smaller toes completely, nibbling and sucking on them as his tongue continued to snake its way among them. Then I felt Anya’s fingers return to my armpits and lost it completely. I realized for the first time that I was crying. It may have only just started, but it may have started earlier. I couldn’t be sure. The awareness of what my body was doing to itself had taken the back seat while the feelings they were forcing into me took the wheel.
Anya seemed to notice that something different was going on, and she changed as well. She started tickling the tops of my breasts, which were exposed by the low-cut bra I was wearing. It tickled, which was no surprise; by now I figured that any part of my body capable of feeling touch was able to be tickled. What did surprise me, though, was that it almost felt…good.
“Looks like someone has ticklish boodies,” Anya taunted as she tickled them more and more. “That’s fun, isn’t it? I wonder if…” A single finger snuck under the lacey edge of the fabric cupping my left breast. Somehow, the skin underneath felt even more sensitive. The lone nail found its target: my nipple. I squealed. The ticklish feeling rivaled the intensity of my armpits, but it was mixed with something else: pleasure. I actually liked the feeling of her tickling my nipple! I felt violated. My own body had betrayed me.
“See, it’s fun,” Anya cooed at me. “There are even more fun places to tickle, if you know where to look.”
Her weight shifted and felt even more fingers on my waist, tracing the top edge of my panties. My feet were still being tortured, but this was different, erotic. I gasped and squirmed as the teasing fingers followed every edge of the material, tickling my thighs, my ass, in between my legs. Sometimes a nail or two would venture under a seam, and once again the newly exposed flesh was even more ticklish.
It felt so wrong, so shameful, that I was actually relieved when her fingers stopped teasing and started tickling my ribs again. The relief was short-lived, though, because the tickles she was giving me now were more vigorous than the ones before. She was tickling harder, poking, squeezing, digging.
The tickling was scrambling my brain, making my lose my grip on reality. I started having a series of vivid thoughts. Calling them daydreams would make them seem trivial, but they weren’t quite hallucinations, either. I refuse to call them fantasies. But I kept getting the odd impression that I was somewhere else, watching things happen to my body while, still feeling every bit of it. Reality changed around me, placing my helpless, laughing other self in different scenarios, forced to witness my torture as well as experience it.
First, I saw myself in a run-down cabin in the woods, a small shack far out of the way where no one would ever find me. Anya had taken me there after kidnapping me. Either she had been afraid I would tell the authorities about how she and John had tortured me, or she thought that I was going to make another move on John, or she just loved torturing me so damn much that she wanted to do it over and over again. Whatever the reason, I was now her prisoner. She had tied me, naked, and used her nails to tickle me into screaming hysterics. She would do this for hours, days, even. Maybe she’d eventually let me go, but not before I’d lost my mind from the tickling. I’d spend the rest of my days in a mental institution, laughing uncontrollably whenever I was touched.
Next, I was John’s wife. He had never revealed his dark secret while we were dating, and I had never dumped him. We eventually got married and tonight, our wedding night, and he decided to reveal his true self to me. Tied to the bed and helpless, I could do nothing but beg as he ravished my ticklish body with his fingers and tongue.
“No, baby! Please, please just stop. Stop! Baby, please.” My pleas fell on deaf ears. Imaginary John didn’t care any more than the real one did. He like me this way, powerless. He could dominate me this way, control me – mind, body, and soul – just with tickling. I would do anything he wanted me to, anything he asked to make tickling stop, even for a little while. I’d be his servant, his slave, catering to his every whim. But mostly he would just want to torture me. He would do this to me every day, every night. He had me for life, until death do us part.
The nightmare came crashing down as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving me in the real world. It was almost a relief, appreciated by my mind but not by my body which was still being ravaged by relentless tickling. At least this was temporary. John and Emily had a goal in mind: to punish me for my transgressions. That debt would eventually be paid, if it hadn’t been already.
That last bit was a sticking point for me. Hadn’t I been punished enough for what I had done to the two of them? A second nightmare crept in: I was actually being punished for everything I had done wrong, ever, to anyone. They were all there, lined up the door, watching my torture as they patiently waited their turn. They taunted me, telling me how much worse it would get once they had their turn. I was in hell, and I was going to pay for all my sins, with interest.
“I’m sorry!” I screamed. “I’m so sorry! I’ll never do it again. I’ll be good, I promise. Just make it stop!”
I was screaming this in the real world, too, whether my captors understood my message or not. I think that Anya was teasing me again, punctuating her tickles with baby talk, but I couldn’t make sense of the words she was using. John in the meanwhile had stopped using his tongue and was scraping my soles with something small and pointed. It moved rapidly in short, brisk movements, randomly changing directions as it traveled across my soles. I would find out later that it was a ballpoint pen, which he had used to write the word ‘TICKLE’ over and over again across the bottoms of my feet. I was horrified when I discovered it. Trying to wash it off felt like reliving the torture all over again, but I had to get it all off that night. If any of my friends or roommates had seen it, who knows what they would have done?
The rest of my torture was a blur. I remember only bits and pieces: something fuzzy being rubbed between each of my toes; a single fingernail scratching the front of my underwear; butterfly kisses on my neck; my thighs being squeezed, kneaded like bread dough. And I remember noises coming from me, inhuman, animal noises that didn’t sound like laughter anymore. Eventually even those went away. They had tickled me so much that I couldn’t even laugh anymore.
I don’t even remember when the tickling finally stopped. I may have passed out, but there was just suddenly a realization that I was free. The restraints that held me to the bed were gone, as was the sock that had been stuffed into my mouth. John and Anya stood at the side of the bed, looking down at me. John looked almost sympathetic. Anya, not so much.
I was told to get dressed and leave. My arms and legs were heavy, my hands were shaking and my entire body tingled, but I obeyed, pulling on my discarded clothes and hastily putting on my shoes, not bothering to lace them. It felt so good to have something covering my feet again. I was reaching for the door when Anya stopped me.
“We have a deal, right? No one ever knows about what went on here today. And you’ll keep away from us from now on.”
I nodded, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “I promise,” I croaked. My voice was nearly gone. “I’ll never tell anyone about this. You’ll never see me again.” I almost added Please, please don’t take me back to the cabin, but I remembered that hadn’t actually happened.
“Good.”
I was dismissed. I left as quickly as I could on my wobbly legs; I would have run out of there if I could, but I was too tired. And I made good on my word. I avoided the two of them for the rest of the semester. After that, I transferred to a different college altogether, out on the east coast, far away from either of them.
*****
After Emily left the room, John and Anya sat on the edge of the bed, next to where Emily had been restrained for the better part of an hour. They were both in a bit of a daze over what had just transpired, John especially. He stared straight ahead straight ahead, not moving, rarely blinking. Anya finally broke the silence.
“John?”
“Yeah?” There was no emotion in his voice
“That was not a good thing. What we just did.”
“Yeah.” He replied in the same dreary monotone.
“Seriously. I mean, we could get in huge trouble for that. If she told. We could get expelled. We could probably get arrested.”
“Yeah.”
There was another long silence.
“John?”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to fuck me, John.”
Anya pounced, pushing him onto the bed, kissing him, unbuttoning his pants. John passively accepted all this, lifting up his hips as she removed his pants and underwear in one pull, also snagging his socks along the way. He sat up as she removed his shirt. She pushed him back down and grabbed his wrists, moving them towards the top of the bed frame. It was easy to see where she was going with this; the restraints that had held Emily there moments ago were still there, ready to accept a new victim.
As she continued to tie him to the bed, John wondered if there was any hope in still making their dinner reservations as planned. Maybe if she was satisfied quickly enough, maybe there would be time for a quick shower and to make themselves presentable again. But the thought of salvaging their ‘normal’ date started evaporating as soon as she started blowing him.
John wondered if anything about their relationship would ever be ‘normal.’ He decided that probably wasn’t a bad thing. Normal was overrated. He had found something better than normal. His last coherent thought, right before Anya started tickling him behind his balls, turning his brain into Jell-O, was that he needed to propose to this girl. Not today, not next week, but sometime before she graduated and had the chance to move away. He wanted them to be together forever. He had to at least try to make that happen, or he would regret it every day for the rest of his life.
And as always, feedback is appreciated. Enjoy!
*****
The freaks get their revenge
John practically sprinted the entire distance from his last class to his dorm. He wasn’t hurrying because he had to, but just because he was so eager for this night to get started. Even though he and Anya had been seeing each other for several weeks now, they had never been on a “real” date. But now he had finally gotten around to officially asking her out; they would grab the train downtown, spend an hour or two seeing some sights and gawking at prices in fancy stores where they couldn’t afford to shop, and then have dinner at the nice-yet-affordable restaurant where he had made reservations. She had laughed at him when he told her his plan, ruffling his hair and calling him “cute,” but she seemed to think the idea was sweet and had of course accepted.
It was something of a relief to him. Even just planning the date had made their connection feel more real. They had done everything backwards, starting the most intensely physical relationship he had ever had before they knew much of anything about each other except their names and their mutual interest in tickling. The weeks that followed were full of bondage, tickling, and mind-blowing sex, broken up by devouring pizza or Chinese food while watching Netflix. As amazing as all this was to him, it was nice to be doing something that felt more normal, traditional, even.
It was also nice to be doing something that he had suggested. For most of their time together, Anya had set the pace, taking him along for the ride of his life. Not that he had any complaints, but he was happy to show that he was capable of taking the initiative in something.
He finally reached his room, shrugging off his backpack while he unlocked the door. He intended to toss the bag onto his bed as the door swung open, but body and mind both ground to a halt when he say that the intended target was already occupied.
“Hello, John.”
The voice made his blood run cold. He wanted to scream, to throw things, to turn on his heel and head back out the door. Against all these different options, the programmed response won out, and he croaked a reply in a quiet voice.
“Hello, Emily.”
*****
I had to admit that I was pleased with myself. So far, everything seemed to be going according to plan. I wanted John back, maybe not for keeps, but at least long enough to make sure I really wasn’t missing out on anything worthwhile. Any length of time would count as long as I could win him back from that red-haired whore who had snatched him up after I dumped him.
Yes, I had been the one to dump John. And, yes, I had humiliated him by also letting word of his tickle fetish to be spread around campus (really, that had mostly been the doing of my loudmouthed friends, but I had been the one to tell them in the first place), but none of that mattered. My mom had told me I was one of those kids who would leave one toy to go play with something else, but would want the first toy back as soon as I saw someone else playing with it. And if I couldn’t have it back, I’d rather break it than watch someone else having fun with it. They say old habits die hard, and now that I was older, I apparently felt the same way about boyfriends, too.
John had been the “safe” boyfriend, the nice guy who I could pick up at the beginning of school and count on being loyal until I could make friends and move on to something better, and I was about ready to do that. Him telling me his secret to was just too good an opportunity to pass up. I had the perfect excuse. Why did I leave such a nice guy? Oh, because he was fucking weird.
Then Anya came along and ruined it. The fact that John had had gotten over me so quickly and so completely stung quite a bit. And then there was the fact that the skank who snatched him up had apparently bounced gone from guy to guy looking for one who could satisfy her supposedly insatiable libido, and John was the one who finally did the trick. My little meek and mild John, who would hardly do so much as kiss me without asking if it was alright first, was now regularly shacking up with this older slut. What the hell? And now people were looking at me funny for giving him up over something as stupid as tickling. There were way more creepy and weird kinks out there, right?
And this is how I wound up lying on John’s bed, stripped down to the sexiest underwear I owned, waiting for him to come home from his last class. Paul, John’s roommate, had been there when I arrived, just as she planned. Paul was a loyal friend and knew that John would want nothing to do with me, but I knew that Paul still kind of had a thing for me, so actually getting him to let me in hadn’t been hard. Show some cleavage, shed some fake tears, tell my sad story about how bad I felt about how things had ended and I really need to tell John I was sorry. Oh, and I needed to do it alone, so could Paul please find somewhere else to be fore the next few hours? Yes? Well, thank you and goodbye.
Easy. Now came the hard part: convincing John himself. And judging by his look of shock and anger when he came into the room and saw me there, I knew that I had my work cut out for me.
I had my speech prepared, lines already memorized. I had practiced in front of a mirror, figuring out which parts to make most sympathetic, when to tear up, how to make my big brown eyes look remorseful. Being a theater major has its perks. I told him about how his confession had le startled and confuse, that I hadn’t meant for his secret get out like that, and besides, that had been my friend’s fault anyway. I told him it had all been a mistake, and I wanted him back.
John remained silent throughout all this. I was good at reading people’s faces – a skill acquired by learning to fake emotions for performances – and John in particular was an open book. I could tell he was thinking over what I had just told him. After a few moments his eyes widened, only slightly, as though he only just now fully realized what was being offered here. He relaxed some, and he seemed to look legitimately pleased, although he did his best to hide it. It made sense, his being cautious. The breach of trust between us was real and that it would be difficult to overcome, but his reaction gave me reason to be optimistic.
“So…you’re saying you want me back? Like, totally back. I end things with Anya and the two of us start going out again?”
I nodded, maybe too eagerly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s what I want.”
“But you know…what I told you…that night.” John swallowed. “That’s…that’s just a part of who I am. It still is. I still…have those desires. If you really want me back, I need to know that you’re okay with that.”
I nodded again. “I’ve thought about that. Like I said, I overreacted. It just…surprised me is all. But it’s really not a big deal.”
“So you’ll let me tickle you? If we get back together.”
“Yes. If we get back together.”
John looked uncertain, which made me panic slightly. I was so close to making this work!
“I need to know that you’re okay with it.”
“John, I just said…”
He shook his head. “I need you to prove it. I need you to let me tickle you. Today. Now.”
I had expected this, him asking to tickle me, and was ready to accept. Putting up with a little tickling was a small price to pay for this plan to succeed. I had intended to hold off agreeing except as a last resort, but things were going so well and I was afraid of losing this momentum if I hesitated. Still, I didn’t want to accept without some sort of assurance.
“How do I know this isn’t a trick? How do I know you’d actually break up with her after?” He had never lied to me before, and I didn’t think that he was now, but still, I had to be sure.
“Fine.” Without hesitating, John pulled out his phone and started typing. He showed me the screen as he worked, pulling up Anya in his contacts list and sending her a brutally short message: Ran into Emily and she said she’s sorry. We’re going to try to work it out, so you and I need to break up. Thanks for everything. He clicked send as I watched, somewhat dumbstruck that he had broken up with Anya via text like that. That was so rude and out of character for him that I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t just watched it.
And that was it. I had won. I’d keep up my end of the bargain – this tickling thing probably wasn’t going to be that bad, and even if it was, it was only this once. I would at least need to stay with him for a few days to watch the fallout between him and Anya, make sure that their relationship was ruined beyond all hope of recovery. Then I’d know that he really did choose me over her, and after that I’d was free to dump him again if that’s what I really wanted. But I’d have to wait and see.
John placed the phone on his desk, silencing it, probably so we wouldn’t be disturbed by the texts and voicemails that were sure to follow. “Now, time for your part. I need to know that you’ll let me tie you up and tickle you now.”
“I said you could.”
“I know. But I need to hear you say it.”
“Okay, fine. John, I want you to tie me up and tickle me.” I raised an eyebrow. “Good enough?” I hoped so; the sooner they could get started, the sooner it would be over (and the sooner I’d be able to see what John did once his phone started blowing up).
John nodded. “Good enough. Ah, lay down on the bed. I need to find…”He started looking around the room, apparently trying to find anything he could use as a substitute for ropes. A necktie, the belt from a bathrobe, an ACE bandage…these and a few other items were gathered and put to use.
I was really surprised at how good he was at it once he finally started to tie me to the bed. I tried not to think too hard about it, about how he must have learned how to do this from his time spent with Anya. At least I could take some pride in knowing that I was now the center of John’s attention. He wrapped my ankles together securely, then fastened them to the bottom frame of the bed. It was snug, but not uncomfortable, and I realized after a few test tugs that I wouldn’t be able to slip free even if I wanted to. I had never been tied up before, and had never really thought about trying it, but I was starting to understand the appeal. If he had something else in mind other than tickling, I might have been into it. That gave me an idea.
“Hey, this is kinda sexy.” I squirmed around a bit, trying to look enticing. “Do you maybe wanna make out instead?” It was worth a shot.
“Maybe after.” John didn’t even look up. He was busy unlacing a gym shoe he had picked up off the floor.
“What’s that for?”
“I’m going to use the laces tie your big toes back. It’ll help keep your feet still, and will stretch out your soles. Makes ‘em more sensitive.”
Holy shit, Who even thinks about stuff like that? What kind of a person bothers trying to find a way to tickle someone better? Was there even really a skill involved with something like this? I was having second thoughts as John wound the laces around my big toes several times, tying them together. He had just started tying the loose ends of the laces to my ankle restraints when a knock at the door made me almost jump out of my skin.
“It’s open,” John called without looking up from his work.
I was horrified. How could he let someone else in to see me like this? She would be ashamed! I mean, having a third party witness me being tied to his bed would only confirm that he really was done with Anya, but still, I was in my underwear for crying out loud!
The door opened and a tall redhead entered the room. Anya![i/] I had never really gotten a good look at her before, and I had to admit, I was jealous. She had a slender and athletic frame with some pretty fantastic breasts that she had crammed into a dark blue evening dress. Her legs were long and shapely, and some expensive-looking heels were strapped on her feet, showing off her painted toenails. She gave us a look of confusion she took in what was in front of her. “John, what the actual fuck is going on?”
I held my breath. Being caught in the act like this was ten times effective as John’s text alone would have been, but I still wasn’t sure that I wanted to be this close to this situation as it unfolded. She was keeping her cool, but there was a look in Anya’s eyes that said she would go full psycho if she didn’t like the answer.
John just smiled as he put the final knot in the laces and rose to his feet. “Anya, meet Emily. Emily, Anya.”
Anya raised her eyebrows. “Emily? That Emily?” She shot me a look of pure hate. John just nodded, still smiling. I could only swallow nervously.
“Yeah,” John said, “she came here to seduce me, talking about how she was sorry and wanted me back and blah, blah, blah. I figured that she just wanted to break us up because she’s jealous.”
Oh, shit. I felt like someone dumped a bucket of ice water on my. He knew! He had known all along! I couldn’t believe I had been so transparent.
Anya nodded, the picture becoming clearer. “Okay, but how did that end with her tied to you bed?”
“She said she’d let me tickle her if I broke up with you.” John was grinning.
“Oh, so you broke up with me, did you?”
“Yeah. I sent you a text.”
Anya laughed. “You broke up with me in a text? Dude, that’s low.”
John just shrugged. “It worked.”
But wait.... John had actually sent the text, right? What was so funny? Anya apparently hadn’t seen it yet, but how would he have known she wouldn’t get it? Anya must have noticed my confusion.
“I busted my phone yesterday. Dropped it. I’m getting a new one tomorrow.”
I felt my cheeks flush with a mixture of shame and rage. He had tricked me! My plan had been a bust from the moment he walked in the door, and I was the last to know. And I was still tied to his bed, which should have been an urgent cause for concern, but I was too pissed off in that moment to be thinking clearly.
“Okay, fine, yes, I was trying to break you two up. I am jealous, or was, anyway, but not anymore. I don’t want anything to do with you freaks, ever. So let me go and I’ll never see either of you again!”
“No.” Anya’s response was immediate and casual. “It sounds like you made an agreement with John, and I think you should be held to that.”
“I don’t care! If you don’t let me go, I’ll scream. I’ll them that you kidnapped me!” I did my best, but it occurred to me that it was hard to sound threatening when you were nearly naked and tied up.
“And if you do, I’ll play them this.” John went to his desk and retrieved his phone. After hitting a few buttons, voices came from the speakers:
Now, time for your part. I need to know that you’ll let me tie you up and tickle you now.
I said you could.
I know. But I need to hear you say it.
Okay, fine. John, I want you to tie me up and tickle me.
John stopped the recording, looking triumphant. I was speechless. He must have set his phone to record back when I thought he was silencing it. “That…that doesn’t change anything.” Even I thought that my voice sounded meek and uncertain as I said it. “You still have to let me go if I tell you.”
“Yeah, maybe. But what I could do then is sent this audio to all tour friends. Let them know that you came crawling back to me, asking to be tied up and tickled to win me back, and that it didn’t work.”
No I had no doubt that he would go through with it. He would do it without a second thought, humiliating me just like I had humiliated him. It was probably no less than I deserved, but not something I could allow to happen.
I started begging. “John, listen…”
“No, you listen. I opened up to you, and you mocked me, rejected me. And then you betrayed me to your friends and let them humiliate me. And now you try ruin the only good thing that came from that…” John stammered a bit, his eyes welling up. “Anya is the only thing that kept me sane after that. Do you not understand that?”
I was shaken by John’s angry outburst. Anya placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. He regained his composure and spoke again. “I would have left you alone. I would have gotten over it, even forgiven you, if you hadn’t come back, if you hadn’t tried this. But I think that now I deserve some payback, so you have to decide: are you going to let us tickle you, or should we send this recording to everyone you know?”
I didn’t want either option, but tickling by far seemed like the lesser of the two evils. I had already planned for that. My friends finding out about what went on here today was a different matter. Still, I phrased my decision in terms of rejecting the most undesired option rather than saying I chose the alternative. I told John not to release the audio; I would endure the tickling as agreed.
“We have to gag her.” Anya’s cool but immediate response caught me off guard.
“What? No!”
John looked disappointed. “Do we have to? I want to hear her laugh.”
“Too risky. We can’t trust her to be quiet.”
My heart dropped. I was already completely helpless as long as they had me tied up; if they took away my ability to scream or call for help, they’d be able to do pretty much anything to me. “No, please don’t,” I begged. I didn’t have to use any of my acting talents in order to sound pathetic. “I’ll be quiet, I promise. I won’t scream.”
John, looking disappointed, shook his head. “No, she’s right. You may not be able to help yourself. You don’t want to get caught, do you?” He went over to his dresser and removed a white ankle sock from the top drawer. I have to admit that it took me a few moments to realize his intentions.
“No! Gross! You are not putting that thing in my mouth.” The idea of something that had been on his foot going into my mouth bothered me almost as much as the idea of not being able to tell them to stop if the tickling got to be too much (or yell for help if they didn’t stop).
He tried to sound reassuring. “It’s fine. It’s clean. It’s just a piece of cloth…”
“That’s been on your foot! Keep it away from me!”
“Emily, shut up and open your mouth, or I’ll pull one out of the hamper and make you use that.” Anya’s voice was cold and matter-of-fact as she threatened this, and there was no doubt in my mind that she meant it. Defeated, I opened wide and let John insert the wadded-up sock into my mouth. Anya followed this by rolling up a threadbare hand towel and placing that over my mouth, tying it behind my head. I mumbled a few curses at them, testing the limits of my speech, but the noises I was able to make no longer sounded like words.
Anya looked at me, hands on her hips. “Nice job with the bondage, Johnny-boy.”
“Thanks. I just made do with what I had.” He looked and sounded proud.
“Well, nice work.” Anya walked over to the door and locked it. “We should probably get a move on. You start. You’re the one that needs revenge, after all, but I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off her for long.”
John just nodded in agreement and settled in at the foot of the bed. I craned my neck to look at what he was doing, but all I could see was his head. He was staring at my feet, studying them. I could see the wheels turning inside his head. I laid my head back down and stared at the ceiling above me, hoping that whatever he was cooking up in that perverted little brain of his would be over quickly.
A jolt shot through my entire body. I could feel it starting in the soles of both feet, traveling up my legs, up my spine, and exploding into my brain. I let out a startled shriek and was suddenly grateful for the gag. I had planned on toughing it out, holding in my laughter for as long as I could, but I now knew that would be much harder than I thought.
All he had done was to take a single finger tip – one on each foot – and run it firmly down the arch, from the base of my toes to the middle of my heels. That was it, but my heart was already racing. When was the last time anyone had tickled me on my bare foot? I couldn’t remember. I could remember it happening, and I remembered that I was ticklish there, but the actual feel of it was long forgotten. Was I more ticklish back then, or more ticklish now? I didn’t have long to think about this, and if I had known that those few brief seconds were the only tickle-free moments I would have for what would feel like an eternity, I would have spent them differently. Maybe I would have steeled myself against what was coming, or offered up some kind of prayer. But I would have done something, anything, other than think about tickling.
The fingers came back, once again drawing a torturous path from the top of each sole to the bottom, but this time they didn’t leave. Instead, those fingers traced their way back to the top, then back down again. Up, down. Up, down. The tempo never altered, but the trails the fingers forged would shift slightly to one side or another on each stroke, so that eventually no spot on my bare soles would remain untouched.
I went ballistic. I couldn’t stop laughing. I pulled at the restraints as hard as I could, twisted from side to side, bounced and flopped on the bed like a fish out of water, but nothing I did could pull my poor feet away from the ticklish touch of the boy at the end of the bed. My reaction grew stronger as the single fingertips were joined by another. Now two fingers were tickling each foot simultaneously, never once breaking contact or altering their steady rhythm. Up, down. Up, down.
I guessed correctly that a third finger would soon join the others. I laughed and babbled uselessly into the gag as John’s touch sank into my skin, sending wave after relentless wave of sensation coursing into my brain, shutting out almost everything else, everything else besides tickle. I was keenly aware of how each additional finger amplified these sensations, and that John had not yet run out of fingers. The anticipation was chilling. The mere idea that the tickling even could get worse was bad enough, but the knowledge that it was actually going to…that was torture in and of itself.
The steady pace of the fingers vanished as soon as the last finger was brought into play, replaced with wild, fast-paced and unpredictable scribbling and scratching that seemed to cover every square inch of my sensitized soles at once. I couldn’t stand it. I screamed. I begged and pleaded, as though he could actually understand me. Actually, I was sure that he could understand me, but he just didn’t care. He was evil. He wanted me to suffer, and he made me suffer. Part of me knew that I deserved it, but this was shut down by another part that said that no one deserved this.
I tried counting the seconds – Locomotive one…locomotive two…locomotive three… – partly as a distraction and partly because I was actually curious how long the tickling was going on. I lost my ability to keep track after about the eighteenth locomotive, after John found a particularly sensitive spot right in the center of my arch. I tried to think, what actually was the longest amount of time I had been tickled before this? What was average? Probably only a few seconds, really. Just a few pokes in the side or some knee squeezes from friends or cousins. It never lasted long. The worst times probably were at the hands of older relatives, but even those incidents would only have lasted a minute, maybe two, and they hadn’t been the relentless, non-stop tickling I was receiving now. This experience was completely new, like I had never really known what tickling really was until just now.
My thoughts were interrupted as a sound other than my own muffled screams and laughter floated into my consciousness. It sounded faint, like the speaker was very far away, but I distinctly heard a cruel female voice say “Alright, fuck waiting. I need in on this.”
I felt the bed on either side of me sink and opened my eyes – I hadn’t even realized that I had shut them – to see Anya poised above me, a sadistic, contented grin spreading across her face. She was straddling me, her weight holding me down even more, like I wasn’t tied up tight enough already. “I should probably give him more time alone with you, but I can’t help it. I don’t get to tickle girls very often – not like this, anyway.” She brought her nails – I could tell they were recently manicured – into contact with my sides, near the bottom ribs. The tickling on my feet hadn’t let up at all, and I was again surprised that my brain could process even more tickling. Her touch was light, delicate…almost pleasant, in a way, or would have been if it wasn’t for all the other tickling. She stroked her long nails up and down my ribs and across my tummy as she spoke.
“I do tickle other girls, of course, but it’s hard to get one to let me tie her up. With guys, it’s easy. You just have to let them think they’re getting sex. With girls you have to be more playful. I start a lot of tickle fights, for instance. I lose, sometimes, but that’s fun, too.”
Fun? How could it be fun? The fact that Anya and John apparently enjoyed getting tickled like this was almost as perverted as the fact that they liked doing it to other people.
She stopped tickling and leaned forward, pressing against me and putting her mouth close to my ear. “In a way, I think I should thank you for everything you’ve done. If you hadn’t dumped John the way you did, I probably never would have found him. And if you hadn’t been an idiot and tried to steal him away from me today, I wouldn’t be able to do this.” Her nails fluttered briefly in my armpits. That sensation from that gentle touch rivaled all of the awful things that John was currently doing to my feet.
“I’m not going to thank you, though,” she continued, smiling at my reaction to her nails. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. That boy down there? The one torturing your feet? I like him. A lot. And you hurt him. You hurt him more than you probably know. And I can’t forgive you for that.”
Anya sat back up and unleashed hell on my upper body. Her fingers seemed to know me already, and they sought out ticklish places I didn’t know I had and mercilessly exploited them. My collarbones. My hips. A small patch of skin in my lower back, on either side of my spine. And my armpits. Oh, God, my armpits. No other part of me had been as ticklish as those. It was torture, pure and simple. I’d arch my back and scream whenever her nails ventured into that spot. And they did, often. She could tell that I was most ticklish there, so she wouldn’t leave them alone. No matter where else her hands explored, I knew it wouldn’t be long before they returned there. John, meanwhile, had changed his focus and was now attacking my toes, scratching at their bases and prodding his fingers in between.
As I lay there, completely helpless and unable to do anything to stop what these freaks were doing to me, it occurred to me why they called this ‘tickle torture.’ It was torture. Real, actual torture. I would have done anything they wanted to make the tickling stop. I would have spilled every secret I had. I would have given them my credit cards. I would have agreed to do any depraved or debasing thing they commanded me to, if only they would stop. It suddenly made me sick to think of all of the times I had seen tickle torture used in cartoons and children’s shows. It had seemed innocent before, a way of sparing children’s minds from depictions of ‘real’ torture, but I don’t think the people who had written those scenes truly understood what their characters were experiencing. It was hellish.
A new sensation jolted me from those thoughts. Something new was happening with my feet. John’s fingers were no longer tormenting me – thank God! –, but something new had taken their place, something firm and flexible. It felt wet, too, as it slid with ease over my left sole, not tickling as much as the fingers had, but still enough that I would have been laughing and squirming even without Anya currently tweaking my ribcage. It wasn’t until the unknown object reach my toes and started darting in between them that I realized what it was. It was John’s tongue! He was licking my feet!
Somehow the realization of how gross and weird this was amplified the ticklish feeling of it. I tried to struggle to get away, but of course I couldn’t. I felt his lips enclose some of my smaller toes completely, nibbling and sucking on them as his tongue continued to snake its way among them. Then I felt Anya’s fingers return to my armpits and lost it completely. I realized for the first time that I was crying. It may have only just started, but it may have started earlier. I couldn’t be sure. The awareness of what my body was doing to itself had taken the back seat while the feelings they were forcing into me took the wheel.
Anya seemed to notice that something different was going on, and she changed as well. She started tickling the tops of my breasts, which were exposed by the low-cut bra I was wearing. It tickled, which was no surprise; by now I figured that any part of my body capable of feeling touch was able to be tickled. What did surprise me, though, was that it almost felt…good.
“Looks like someone has ticklish boodies,” Anya taunted as she tickled them more and more. “That’s fun, isn’t it? I wonder if…” A single finger snuck under the lacey edge of the fabric cupping my left breast. Somehow, the skin underneath felt even more sensitive. The lone nail found its target: my nipple. I squealed. The ticklish feeling rivaled the intensity of my armpits, but it was mixed with something else: pleasure. I actually liked the feeling of her tickling my nipple! I felt violated. My own body had betrayed me.
“See, it’s fun,” Anya cooed at me. “There are even more fun places to tickle, if you know where to look.”
Her weight shifted and felt even more fingers on my waist, tracing the top edge of my panties. My feet were still being tortured, but this was different, erotic. I gasped and squirmed as the teasing fingers followed every edge of the material, tickling my thighs, my ass, in between my legs. Sometimes a nail or two would venture under a seam, and once again the newly exposed flesh was even more ticklish.
It felt so wrong, so shameful, that I was actually relieved when her fingers stopped teasing and started tickling my ribs again. The relief was short-lived, though, because the tickles she was giving me now were more vigorous than the ones before. She was tickling harder, poking, squeezing, digging.
The tickling was scrambling my brain, making my lose my grip on reality. I started having a series of vivid thoughts. Calling them daydreams would make them seem trivial, but they weren’t quite hallucinations, either. I refuse to call them fantasies. But I kept getting the odd impression that I was somewhere else, watching things happen to my body while, still feeling every bit of it. Reality changed around me, placing my helpless, laughing other self in different scenarios, forced to witness my torture as well as experience it.
First, I saw myself in a run-down cabin in the woods, a small shack far out of the way where no one would ever find me. Anya had taken me there after kidnapping me. Either she had been afraid I would tell the authorities about how she and John had tortured me, or she thought that I was going to make another move on John, or she just loved torturing me so damn much that she wanted to do it over and over again. Whatever the reason, I was now her prisoner. She had tied me, naked, and used her nails to tickle me into screaming hysterics. She would do this for hours, days, even. Maybe she’d eventually let me go, but not before I’d lost my mind from the tickling. I’d spend the rest of my days in a mental institution, laughing uncontrollably whenever I was touched.
Next, I was John’s wife. He had never revealed his dark secret while we were dating, and I had never dumped him. We eventually got married and tonight, our wedding night, and he decided to reveal his true self to me. Tied to the bed and helpless, I could do nothing but beg as he ravished my ticklish body with his fingers and tongue.
“No, baby! Please, please just stop. Stop! Baby, please.” My pleas fell on deaf ears. Imaginary John didn’t care any more than the real one did. He like me this way, powerless. He could dominate me this way, control me – mind, body, and soul – just with tickling. I would do anything he wanted me to, anything he asked to make tickling stop, even for a little while. I’d be his servant, his slave, catering to his every whim. But mostly he would just want to torture me. He would do this to me every day, every night. He had me for life, until death do us part.
The nightmare came crashing down as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving me in the real world. It was almost a relief, appreciated by my mind but not by my body which was still being ravaged by relentless tickling. At least this was temporary. John and Emily had a goal in mind: to punish me for my transgressions. That debt would eventually be paid, if it hadn’t been already.
That last bit was a sticking point for me. Hadn’t I been punished enough for what I had done to the two of them? A second nightmare crept in: I was actually being punished for everything I had done wrong, ever, to anyone. They were all there, lined up the door, watching my torture as they patiently waited their turn. They taunted me, telling me how much worse it would get once they had their turn. I was in hell, and I was going to pay for all my sins, with interest.
“I’m sorry!” I screamed. “I’m so sorry! I’ll never do it again. I’ll be good, I promise. Just make it stop!”
I was screaming this in the real world, too, whether my captors understood my message or not. I think that Anya was teasing me again, punctuating her tickles with baby talk, but I couldn’t make sense of the words she was using. John in the meanwhile had stopped using his tongue and was scraping my soles with something small and pointed. It moved rapidly in short, brisk movements, randomly changing directions as it traveled across my soles. I would find out later that it was a ballpoint pen, which he had used to write the word ‘TICKLE’ over and over again across the bottoms of my feet. I was horrified when I discovered it. Trying to wash it off felt like reliving the torture all over again, but I had to get it all off that night. If any of my friends or roommates had seen it, who knows what they would have done?
The rest of my torture was a blur. I remember only bits and pieces: something fuzzy being rubbed between each of my toes; a single fingernail scratching the front of my underwear; butterfly kisses on my neck; my thighs being squeezed, kneaded like bread dough. And I remember noises coming from me, inhuman, animal noises that didn’t sound like laughter anymore. Eventually even those went away. They had tickled me so much that I couldn’t even laugh anymore.
I don’t even remember when the tickling finally stopped. I may have passed out, but there was just suddenly a realization that I was free. The restraints that held me to the bed were gone, as was the sock that had been stuffed into my mouth. John and Anya stood at the side of the bed, looking down at me. John looked almost sympathetic. Anya, not so much.
I was told to get dressed and leave. My arms and legs were heavy, my hands were shaking and my entire body tingled, but I obeyed, pulling on my discarded clothes and hastily putting on my shoes, not bothering to lace them. It felt so good to have something covering my feet again. I was reaching for the door when Anya stopped me.
“We have a deal, right? No one ever knows about what went on here today. And you’ll keep away from us from now on.”
I nodded, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “I promise,” I croaked. My voice was nearly gone. “I’ll never tell anyone about this. You’ll never see me again.” I almost added Please, please don’t take me back to the cabin, but I remembered that hadn’t actually happened.
“Good.”
I was dismissed. I left as quickly as I could on my wobbly legs; I would have run out of there if I could, but I was too tired. And I made good on my word. I avoided the two of them for the rest of the semester. After that, I transferred to a different college altogether, out on the east coast, far away from either of them.
*****
After Emily left the room, John and Anya sat on the edge of the bed, next to where Emily had been restrained for the better part of an hour. They were both in a bit of a daze over what had just transpired, John especially. He stared straight ahead straight ahead, not moving, rarely blinking. Anya finally broke the silence.
“John?”
“Yeah?” There was no emotion in his voice
“That was not a good thing. What we just did.”
“Yeah.” He replied in the same dreary monotone.
“Seriously. I mean, we could get in huge trouble for that. If she told. We could get expelled. We could probably get arrested.”
“Yeah.”
There was another long silence.
“John?”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to fuck me, John.”
Anya pounced, pushing him onto the bed, kissing him, unbuttoning his pants. John passively accepted all this, lifting up his hips as she removed his pants and underwear in one pull, also snagging his socks along the way. He sat up as she removed his shirt. She pushed him back down and grabbed his wrists, moving them towards the top of the bed frame. It was easy to see where she was going with this; the restraints that had held Emily there moments ago were still there, ready to accept a new victim.
As she continued to tie him to the bed, John wondered if there was any hope in still making their dinner reservations as planned. Maybe if she was satisfied quickly enough, maybe there would be time for a quick shower and to make themselves presentable again. But the thought of salvaging their ‘normal’ date started evaporating as soon as she started blowing him.
John wondered if anything about their relationship would ever be ‘normal.’ He decided that probably wasn’t a bad thing. Normal was overrated. He had found something better than normal. His last coherent thought, right before Anya started tickling him behind his balls, turning his brain into Jell-O, was that he needed to propose to this girl. Not today, not next week, but sometime before she graduated and had the chance to move away. He wanted them to be together forever. He had to at least try to make that happen, or he would regret it every day for the rest of his life.
