Shem the Penman
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THE NEW GIRL
another one of those stories
IF YOU'RE UNDER 18, THIS STORY AIN'T FOR YOU. VAMOOSE.
[This is a sort of prequel to my other story "Unavoidably Detained." If you haven't read that one, go do so. After you finish this one, of course.]
Jerri Cosmatides was never sure exactly what she hated most about Missy Whitlock. A lot of it was the way Missy always came to school looking like she'd just stepped out of a Barbie doll box, tiny and perfect, with her blond hair neatly ponytailed or held back in a headband. Her clothes, always pink or some pastel color, invariably fit her perfectly and looked like something out of the pages of a style magazine. But Jerri also hated the faint Southern accent Missy spoke with, the one all the boys thought was hot and all the girls were trying to copy. And she hated the way Missy always seemed to be first with the answer in every class, and always right. And the way she kept herself aloof from everyone was irritating too. But what was worst was that Jerri couldn't even get a rise out of the new girl.
Everyone in school, from the principal on down, was afraid of Jerri. It'd been that way ever since she'd hit her growth spurt back in junior high and, almost overnight, discovered that she had become big enough to beat the crap out of all the people who had sneered at her raggedy clothes or her lousy grades. And in the process, Jerri had discovered that she had a natural talent and love for yanking people's chains. It wasn't even necessary for her to hit them -- she found that she could make most people crumple and cringe just as easily with a stare, a whispered put-down, a laugh. Those few who thought they could stand up to her quickly learned otherwise. Until Missy came to town.
It wasn't that the little blonde was openly defiant. It was just that she ignored Jerri completely. Jerri's best sneering glare was met with faintly raised eyebrows, and her nastiest threats and insults might have been comments on the weather for all the reaction Missy showed. And the others noticed it, too. When Jerri finally decided to get physical and knocked Missy sprawling with a neatly timed hip check as they passed in the hall, a dozen students immediately dropped to help Missy pick up her books, many of them giving Jerri dirty looks as they did so. This was bad. Normally, no one would have dared to lift a finger to help someone who was on Jerri's shit list.
"You ought to watch where you're going," she snapped as Missy got to her feet, dusting off her skirt. Missy didn't say anything. Jerri moved closer, her brown eyes locking on Missy's blue ones. "I said, you gonna apologize for bumping into me like that?"
"Probably not," Missy said. Breaths caught all through the hall as Jerri's fists clenched. But somehow she couldn't bring herself to hit her. There was something in Missy's eyes, something in the way she held herself, that made Jerri feel it would be a bad idea. The shrilling of the period bell split the tension. "Time for class," Missy said, and started walking down the hall as if nothing had happened, leaving a frustrated and incredulous Jerri behind her. "Come visit me sometime and I might apologize. I'm on Francis Street," she threw back over her shoulder.
"Yeah, like I want to come play dolls with you." Jerri tossed her head and walked off.
But curiosity got the better of her, and a few days later she found herself walking down Francis Street. It was a part of town Jerri rarely had occasion to come to. The houses had neatly manicured lawns spreading in every direction, and late-model foreign cars and SUVs filled the driveways. Missy's house was big and white and on a low hill, like something out of a book. It even had pillars out front. The door was opened by a slender Asian woman in a maid's uniform. She said nothing but merely stared at Jerri. Jerri, for her part, was beginning to feel seriously intimidated. The bimbo's parents were rich enough to have servants? But she was determined not to show any weakness, especially not in front of the new girl. She forced a sneer on her face and into her voice as she said, "Where's Missy? She better be here, or—"
"You made it. Good." Missy came up behind the maid, who stepped aside to let her confront Jerri face to face. The tiny blonde was wearing new-looking dark blue jeans, belted at the waist to show off her trim figure, and a green T-shirt with a dolphin on it. Just looking at her made the big girl feel scruffy in her baggy shorts and old Sonic Youth T-shirt, even though the holes in the shirt weren't that big and were barely noticeable. "Come on in."
Jerri stepped inside, and the maid shut the door behind her. Jerri looked around the foyer with astonishment disguised as boredom, taking in the highly polished hardwood floor, the dark brown paneling on the walls, the gold-and-crystal light fixture dangling above. Oh yeah, the girl had money. There were possibilities here ....
"Shoes," Missy said.
"Huh?" Jerri focused on the girl again.
"My parents adopted some local customs when we lived in Japan. They'd prefer we not wear shoes in the house." Glancing down, Jerri saw the maid was wearing soft carpet slippers, while Missy's small pale feet were bare. Pink nail polish, of course -- nothing else would be sickeningly cute enough for Little Miss Barbie. For a moment, Jerri considered telling her to go to hell and marching into the hall still shod, but she had to play it cool for now until she figured what she was going to do with Missy. Bending over, she unlaced her old Chuck Taylor All-Stars and kicked them into a corner. Her socks had large and definitely noticeable holes; feeling embarrassed again, she peeled them off and tossed the white wads after her shoes. Her feet looked and felt like snowshoes compared to Missy's neat little ones.
The maid vanished back into the house as Jerri followed Missy into a large living room, likewise expensively decorated. The furniture was white leather, chrome, and glass, and high picture windows on two walls made the room glow with light. Jerri had to fight the temptation to wiggle her toes in the lush white carpet. Stay cool, she reminded herself. Missy curled up on one end of the sofa next to a potted plant taller than she was, and Jerri dropped gracelessly into an easy chair across from her, letting her legs stick out.
"Noriko's gone to fetch refreshments," Missy said. "In the meantime, I'm glad you came."
"Uh-huh, yeah," Jerri said, glancing up at the high ceiling. "You lived in Japan?"
"Daddy works for the State Department," Missy said. "We've lived all over the world. Right now, he and Mother are in Washington for a meeting."
"Uh-huh," Jerri said again, and in her mind wheels were turning. Rich girl, big house, no parents -- the perfect ingredients for a party they'd be talking about all school year. All she had to do was get Little Miss Perfect to cooperate ... Missy was blathering on about how much she liked the town and the school, but Jerri tuned her out while she considered her plans. The maid came back
"I suppose you're wondering why I asked you over," Missy said.
"Nah," Jerri replied, bolting half her drink and wiping her lips on her arm. "You want to make friends, right? You can't stick by yourself forever. I was thinking -- "
"That's not quite it," Missy said, sipping at her own glass. "I wanted to talk about you -- how you've been treating me."
"Look, just forget it, huh?" Jerri said smoothly. "You just have to test a new person in school, you know? See how they can fit in. I bet I could help you ... "
And then the living room suddenly melted and ran like wet paint on glass, and the last thing Jerri saw before she pitched face-forward onto the carpet were Missy's pink toenails.
Jerri awoke and opened her eyes and saw nothing. She tried to raise her arms to touch her face, but though she felt her muscles contract, her arms did not move. She panicked then, trying to sit up and grab on to something, but even the most violent convulsion of her strong body produced only the tiniest movement. Quickly exhausted, she sagged back, the sound of her ragged breath loud in her ears.
After a while, she came to realize that she was lying on her back, blindfolded and tied firmly. She could feel the bonds, tight but not uncomfortable, all over -- wrists, elbows, upper thighs, knees, ankles. Even her head, fingers, and toes were being held by some kind of clamps. Her arms were stretched out to either side, palm-up, and her legs were held together by the bonds. More worrisome, she could feel that her shirt was gone, though she retained her shorts. She listened carefully, but couldn't hear anything. What the hell was going on? What sort of sick shit was Missy up to?
"What the hell's going on?" she demanded aloud, her heart thumping. As if called into existence by her voice, something hard and sharp touched the sole of one foot and, before the big girl could fully register its presence, scraped down the length of her arch. Jerri's leg jerked instinctively in her bonds and she gave a gasp that was half laughter. Immediately the same thing happened on her other foot, producing a stronger jerk and a stifled yelp. The little points began skating around and around each arch as Jerri clamped her mouth shut against a sudden flood of giggles. Her eyes widened under the blindfold with awful realization. They were fingernails, and she was being tickled!
A quiet voice sounded in her ears: "How ticklish are you?" Simultaneously, two sets of fingernails began crossing the skin of her stomach, left to right, right to left, digging into tender spots among the muscles, even as the torture of her sensitive feet continued. Jerri gulped and grunted as she fought the feelings racing along her nerves. Being tickled was bad. Being tickled by two people -- while blindfolded and immobile -- was something she'd never endured, even in her darkest dreams.
"Let me up!" she bawled. "You are going to be *so* -- " A giggle slipped out, breaking up her protest. Fingers teased the deep cave of her navel, tickling the hypersensitive skin around and inside; nails cruelly raked the entire ticklish length of her size 10 feet. Jerri's body writhed as much as the grip of the bonds would let her, and the desperate laughter came galloping out of her like stampeding horses: "Hah - hah - hah - haaaah!" The loud laughter only seemed to inspire her torturers to force more from her: the hands on her belly slipped to the sides of her waist and dug in, while the undersides of her pinioned toes were attacked by a nest of fluttering fingers that worked their way into the soft V between each pair of toes with tortuous delicacy. Jerri's gasps of laughter became one unified mirthful scream as her body slammed against the restraints. She struggled mindlessly, but the tickling went on without mercy ...
And then stopped. Jerri flopped down, gulping in great swallows of air and feeling beads of sweat meander their slow way down her sides. Her heart was pounding on her ribs and her entire body tingled. Her mind was a daze. Nobody had ever tickled her since she'd gotten big enough to pound anyone who tried, and it was astonishing -- not to mention a little frightening -- to learn that she could be driven beyond control so quickly and thoroughly. For the first time in years, she felt helpless and exquisitely vulnerable. Her torturers were moving around, and she tried to judge their positions from the no-sound of footfalls on a carpeted floor, the slight currents of air that washed over her bare skin ...
A sharp point touched Jerri just behind the ear, glided slowly down the side of her neck. Then more -- the very tips of nails, tracing along the soft length. Jerri couldn't hold back a gasp, and goosebumps rippled all over her. "Admit you're ticklish," the same quiet voice -- definitely Missy's, Jerri now realized -- said just as a probing finger introduced itself between two ribs on the other side of her body. Jerri jumped, and a whimper-giggle welled up in her, but she bit it back hard. She knew this game well enough -- she'd done it to other people many times, not with tickling but through other means. Tease them, provoke them, make them participate in their own humiliation. It was just a matter of finding the right buttons to push ... and in this case, the buttons were all over her body for her ticklers to find and toy with. What Jerri wasn't familiar with was being the victim of this kind of game, and her eyes went wide with panic behind the blindfold as more fingers dug into her ribs on both sides. Simultaneously, soft nails outlined her neck and ears, trailed down her bare arms toward the exposed vulnerability of her underarms ... The laughter forced itself past Jerri's lips in a scream that no one in school would ever have associated with her, and her body bucked convulsively as her underarms were tickled, her ribs and sides were poked and prodded in every sensitive spot.
Almost she pleaded for mercy. But Jerri knew the game, and she knew that when the target was begging you to stop was when you went after her the hardest. Impotent rage swelled in her at the indignity of it all. It was horribly frustrating. The more Jerri was teased and tormented, the angrier she got, but the fingers that deftly manipulated her body turned her shouts into shrieks of laughter, her furious struggles into frantic squirming, tickling her anger into hysteria. Only when she was too dizzy and breathless to yell any more did the tickling lessen. Fingers were replaced by different touches, lighter but no less maddening. The tips of what felt like feathers swept through her underarms and around her navel, and the multiple soft points of what could have been a hairbrush meandered the length of each trembling foot from ball to heel. It was almost pleasant after the merciless tickling she'd just endured, and for a long time Jerri just lay there and quivered, letting the giggles pour out of her.
But slowly she came back to herself, rankling at her helplessness, and began to fight again. Her lips pressed together, choking off the flow of laughter, and she forced herself to hold still despite the feathers in her ears and the pencil point scraping down one arch. The effort it took to resist even these little tickles was dismaying -- and her tormentors' reaction was swift. "Eeeee--hahahaHAAHAHAAHA!" Jerri howled as fingernails raked up sides and down soles in a flood of unbearable tickling, settling into the softest spots at the heights of her arches and at the top of her ribcage. The gentle stroking had kept her skin tingling and responsive, utterly vulnerable to the probing, tickling fingers.
"Okay, I'm ticklish!" she screeched in hysterical defeat. "I can't stand it! Please stop, please, please!" But her confession brought not mercy, but its complete opposite, just as she had half-expected. Fingertips wove swiftly among her toes, and Jerri began to feel as if the tickling would never stop, but the thought only made her scream louder ...
Then the blindfold snapped off, and Jerri, gasping for breath and blinking tears of laughter out of her eyes, found herself staring into Missy's face. The blonde had a tiny, chilling smile on her lips, and her fingertips rested lightly on Jerri's sweat-slicked sides. They were in a small windowless room, and by craning her neck Jerri could see she was restrained on a plain black-padded table, cuffs set into it holding her firmly. Missy was sitting on the edge of the table, watching her with amusement. Most astonishing, at the bottom of the table knelt the Japanese maid, still gently and distractingly fingering Jerri's feet.
"What is this?" Jerri croaked. "You're doing all this just to get back at me for ... " She broke off into a giggle as Noriko casually ran her fingers between her toes. "Tell her to stop that!"
"No. And this is hardly just revenge. You don't quite understand. Look." Jerri turned her head in the direction Missy indicated, and saw a microphone resting on the table next to her. "I have a recording of you being tickled," Missy said. "I'm sure you realize you got very ... vocal. What would happen to your reputation if copies of that tape started getting around ... ?"
"You fu -- !" Jerri roared, but Missy started tickling her ribs, and her angry outburst dissolved into embarrassing, hysterical squeals. "Aahahahahaha! Stop!!" the big girl yelped, but Missy only grinned as her body contorted in ticklish torment. When the rib-tickling stopped again, Jerri was silent, but her eyes blazed.
"It's so nice having someone besides Noriko to practice on for a change," Missy said happily. "I'm sure Nori agrees, too." The Japanese woman smiled briefly and then turned back to her methodical teasing of Jerri's feet, sweeping the backs of her nails up each sole in turn, then back down. It tickled unbearably, but Jerri's bound and helpless feet could barely twitch. Jerri, exhausted beyond caring, nevertheless squeaked and writhed and jumped at every touch.
"I've always found tickling very useful for making relationships clear. For instance, you know exactly where we stand now, don't you?"
"Yeah, you -- " Jerri stopped herself this time and settled for a snarl.
Missy only laughed and patted her cheek. "Cheer up." She wiggled her fingers in Jerri's helpless underarms, making her squirm again and turning the snarl into an agonized grin. "I don't really plan to use the tape, and I do want to be your friend. We won't have to do this again. Unless you want to, of course ... "
"I don't want -- " Jerri began, realized that it wasn't quite true, and decided not to pursue that thought further, instead saying, "What *do* you want with me?"
Missy smiled again -- not the smile of amusement at Jerri's suffering, but something more genuine. "I can use you."
"Use me?" Jerri mumbled, not liking the visions that filled her head.
"Not that way." Missy laughed. "You were right in what you said before. I do have some ideas on how I'm going to 'fit in' here, but they're rather special, and I could use some help. And I've been watching you -- you have the right instincts, and all you need is some training. And then ... " She smiled again, and to her astonishment, Jerri found herself smiling back. And it wasn't just because Noriko was still rhythmically tickling her toes.
another one of those stories
IF YOU'RE UNDER 18, THIS STORY AIN'T FOR YOU. VAMOOSE.
[This is a sort of prequel to my other story "Unavoidably Detained." If you haven't read that one, go do so. After you finish this one, of course.]
Jerri Cosmatides was never sure exactly what she hated most about Missy Whitlock. A lot of it was the way Missy always came to school looking like she'd just stepped out of a Barbie doll box, tiny and perfect, with her blond hair neatly ponytailed or held back in a headband. Her clothes, always pink or some pastel color, invariably fit her perfectly and looked like something out of the pages of a style magazine. But Jerri also hated the faint Southern accent Missy spoke with, the one all the boys thought was hot and all the girls were trying to copy. And she hated the way Missy always seemed to be first with the answer in every class, and always right. And the way she kept herself aloof from everyone was irritating too. But what was worst was that Jerri couldn't even get a rise out of the new girl.
Everyone in school, from the principal on down, was afraid of Jerri. It'd been that way ever since she'd hit her growth spurt back in junior high and, almost overnight, discovered that she had become big enough to beat the crap out of all the people who had sneered at her raggedy clothes or her lousy grades. And in the process, Jerri had discovered that she had a natural talent and love for yanking people's chains. It wasn't even necessary for her to hit them -- she found that she could make most people crumple and cringe just as easily with a stare, a whispered put-down, a laugh. Those few who thought they could stand up to her quickly learned otherwise. Until Missy came to town.
It wasn't that the little blonde was openly defiant. It was just that she ignored Jerri completely. Jerri's best sneering glare was met with faintly raised eyebrows, and her nastiest threats and insults might have been comments on the weather for all the reaction Missy showed. And the others noticed it, too. When Jerri finally decided to get physical and knocked Missy sprawling with a neatly timed hip check as they passed in the hall, a dozen students immediately dropped to help Missy pick up her books, many of them giving Jerri dirty looks as they did so. This was bad. Normally, no one would have dared to lift a finger to help someone who was on Jerri's shit list.
"You ought to watch where you're going," she snapped as Missy got to her feet, dusting off her skirt. Missy didn't say anything. Jerri moved closer, her brown eyes locking on Missy's blue ones. "I said, you gonna apologize for bumping into me like that?"
"Probably not," Missy said. Breaths caught all through the hall as Jerri's fists clenched. But somehow she couldn't bring herself to hit her. There was something in Missy's eyes, something in the way she held herself, that made Jerri feel it would be a bad idea. The shrilling of the period bell split the tension. "Time for class," Missy said, and started walking down the hall as if nothing had happened, leaving a frustrated and incredulous Jerri behind her. "Come visit me sometime and I might apologize. I'm on Francis Street," she threw back over her shoulder.
"Yeah, like I want to come play dolls with you." Jerri tossed her head and walked off.
But curiosity got the better of her, and a few days later she found herself walking down Francis Street. It was a part of town Jerri rarely had occasion to come to. The houses had neatly manicured lawns spreading in every direction, and late-model foreign cars and SUVs filled the driveways. Missy's house was big and white and on a low hill, like something out of a book. It even had pillars out front. The door was opened by a slender Asian woman in a maid's uniform. She said nothing but merely stared at Jerri. Jerri, for her part, was beginning to feel seriously intimidated. The bimbo's parents were rich enough to have servants? But she was determined not to show any weakness, especially not in front of the new girl. She forced a sneer on her face and into her voice as she said, "Where's Missy? She better be here, or—"
"You made it. Good." Missy came up behind the maid, who stepped aside to let her confront Jerri face to face. The tiny blonde was wearing new-looking dark blue jeans, belted at the waist to show off her trim figure, and a green T-shirt with a dolphin on it. Just looking at her made the big girl feel scruffy in her baggy shorts and old Sonic Youth T-shirt, even though the holes in the shirt weren't that big and were barely noticeable. "Come on in."
Jerri stepped inside, and the maid shut the door behind her. Jerri looked around the foyer with astonishment disguised as boredom, taking in the highly polished hardwood floor, the dark brown paneling on the walls, the gold-and-crystal light fixture dangling above. Oh yeah, the girl had money. There were possibilities here ....
"Shoes," Missy said.
"Huh?" Jerri focused on the girl again.
"My parents adopted some local customs when we lived in Japan. They'd prefer we not wear shoes in the house." Glancing down, Jerri saw the maid was wearing soft carpet slippers, while Missy's small pale feet were bare. Pink nail polish, of course -- nothing else would be sickeningly cute enough for Little Miss Barbie. For a moment, Jerri considered telling her to go to hell and marching into the hall still shod, but she had to play it cool for now until she figured what she was going to do with Missy. Bending over, she unlaced her old Chuck Taylor All-Stars and kicked them into a corner. Her socks had large and definitely noticeable holes; feeling embarrassed again, she peeled them off and tossed the white wads after her shoes. Her feet looked and felt like snowshoes compared to Missy's neat little ones.
The maid vanished back into the house as Jerri followed Missy into a large living room, likewise expensively decorated. The furniture was white leather, chrome, and glass, and high picture windows on two walls made the room glow with light. Jerri had to fight the temptation to wiggle her toes in the lush white carpet. Stay cool, she reminded herself. Missy curled up on one end of the sofa next to a potted plant taller than she was, and Jerri dropped gracelessly into an easy chair across from her, letting her legs stick out.
"Noriko's gone to fetch refreshments," Missy said. "In the meantime, I'm glad you came."
"Uh-huh, yeah," Jerri said, glancing up at the high ceiling. "You lived in Japan?"
"Daddy works for the State Department," Missy said. "We've lived all over the world. Right now, he and Mother are in Washington for a meeting."
"Uh-huh," Jerri said again, and in her mind wheels were turning. Rich girl, big house, no parents -- the perfect ingredients for a party they'd be talking about all school year. All she had to do was get Little Miss Perfect to cooperate ... Missy was blathering on about how much she liked the town and the school, but Jerri tuned her out while she considered her plans. The maid came back
"I suppose you're wondering why I asked you over," Missy said.
"Nah," Jerri replied, bolting half her drink and wiping her lips on her arm. "You want to make friends, right? You can't stick by yourself forever. I was thinking -- "
"That's not quite it," Missy said, sipping at her own glass. "I wanted to talk about you -- how you've been treating me."
"Look, just forget it, huh?" Jerri said smoothly. "You just have to test a new person in school, you know? See how they can fit in. I bet I could help you ... "
And then the living room suddenly melted and ran like wet paint on glass, and the last thing Jerri saw before she pitched face-forward onto the carpet were Missy's pink toenails.
Jerri awoke and opened her eyes and saw nothing. She tried to raise her arms to touch her face, but though she felt her muscles contract, her arms did not move. She panicked then, trying to sit up and grab on to something, but even the most violent convulsion of her strong body produced only the tiniest movement. Quickly exhausted, she sagged back, the sound of her ragged breath loud in her ears.
After a while, she came to realize that she was lying on her back, blindfolded and tied firmly. She could feel the bonds, tight but not uncomfortable, all over -- wrists, elbows, upper thighs, knees, ankles. Even her head, fingers, and toes were being held by some kind of clamps. Her arms were stretched out to either side, palm-up, and her legs were held together by the bonds. More worrisome, she could feel that her shirt was gone, though she retained her shorts. She listened carefully, but couldn't hear anything. What the hell was going on? What sort of sick shit was Missy up to?
"What the hell's going on?" she demanded aloud, her heart thumping. As if called into existence by her voice, something hard and sharp touched the sole of one foot and, before the big girl could fully register its presence, scraped down the length of her arch. Jerri's leg jerked instinctively in her bonds and she gave a gasp that was half laughter. Immediately the same thing happened on her other foot, producing a stronger jerk and a stifled yelp. The little points began skating around and around each arch as Jerri clamped her mouth shut against a sudden flood of giggles. Her eyes widened under the blindfold with awful realization. They were fingernails, and she was being tickled!
A quiet voice sounded in her ears: "How ticklish are you?" Simultaneously, two sets of fingernails began crossing the skin of her stomach, left to right, right to left, digging into tender spots among the muscles, even as the torture of her sensitive feet continued. Jerri gulped and grunted as she fought the feelings racing along her nerves. Being tickled was bad. Being tickled by two people -- while blindfolded and immobile -- was something she'd never endured, even in her darkest dreams.
"Let me up!" she bawled. "You are going to be *so* -- " A giggle slipped out, breaking up her protest. Fingers teased the deep cave of her navel, tickling the hypersensitive skin around and inside; nails cruelly raked the entire ticklish length of her size 10 feet. Jerri's body writhed as much as the grip of the bonds would let her, and the desperate laughter came galloping out of her like stampeding horses: "Hah - hah - hah - haaaah!" The loud laughter only seemed to inspire her torturers to force more from her: the hands on her belly slipped to the sides of her waist and dug in, while the undersides of her pinioned toes were attacked by a nest of fluttering fingers that worked their way into the soft V between each pair of toes with tortuous delicacy. Jerri's gasps of laughter became one unified mirthful scream as her body slammed against the restraints. She struggled mindlessly, but the tickling went on without mercy ...
And then stopped. Jerri flopped down, gulping in great swallows of air and feeling beads of sweat meander their slow way down her sides. Her heart was pounding on her ribs and her entire body tingled. Her mind was a daze. Nobody had ever tickled her since she'd gotten big enough to pound anyone who tried, and it was astonishing -- not to mention a little frightening -- to learn that she could be driven beyond control so quickly and thoroughly. For the first time in years, she felt helpless and exquisitely vulnerable. Her torturers were moving around, and she tried to judge their positions from the no-sound of footfalls on a carpeted floor, the slight currents of air that washed over her bare skin ...
A sharp point touched Jerri just behind the ear, glided slowly down the side of her neck. Then more -- the very tips of nails, tracing along the soft length. Jerri couldn't hold back a gasp, and goosebumps rippled all over her. "Admit you're ticklish," the same quiet voice -- definitely Missy's, Jerri now realized -- said just as a probing finger introduced itself between two ribs on the other side of her body. Jerri jumped, and a whimper-giggle welled up in her, but she bit it back hard. She knew this game well enough -- she'd done it to other people many times, not with tickling but through other means. Tease them, provoke them, make them participate in their own humiliation. It was just a matter of finding the right buttons to push ... and in this case, the buttons were all over her body for her ticklers to find and toy with. What Jerri wasn't familiar with was being the victim of this kind of game, and her eyes went wide with panic behind the blindfold as more fingers dug into her ribs on both sides. Simultaneously, soft nails outlined her neck and ears, trailed down her bare arms toward the exposed vulnerability of her underarms ... The laughter forced itself past Jerri's lips in a scream that no one in school would ever have associated with her, and her body bucked convulsively as her underarms were tickled, her ribs and sides were poked and prodded in every sensitive spot.
Almost she pleaded for mercy. But Jerri knew the game, and she knew that when the target was begging you to stop was when you went after her the hardest. Impotent rage swelled in her at the indignity of it all. It was horribly frustrating. The more Jerri was teased and tormented, the angrier she got, but the fingers that deftly manipulated her body turned her shouts into shrieks of laughter, her furious struggles into frantic squirming, tickling her anger into hysteria. Only when she was too dizzy and breathless to yell any more did the tickling lessen. Fingers were replaced by different touches, lighter but no less maddening. The tips of what felt like feathers swept through her underarms and around her navel, and the multiple soft points of what could have been a hairbrush meandered the length of each trembling foot from ball to heel. It was almost pleasant after the merciless tickling she'd just endured, and for a long time Jerri just lay there and quivered, letting the giggles pour out of her.
But slowly she came back to herself, rankling at her helplessness, and began to fight again. Her lips pressed together, choking off the flow of laughter, and she forced herself to hold still despite the feathers in her ears and the pencil point scraping down one arch. The effort it took to resist even these little tickles was dismaying -- and her tormentors' reaction was swift. "Eeeee--hahahaHAAHAHAAHA!" Jerri howled as fingernails raked up sides and down soles in a flood of unbearable tickling, settling into the softest spots at the heights of her arches and at the top of her ribcage. The gentle stroking had kept her skin tingling and responsive, utterly vulnerable to the probing, tickling fingers.
"Okay, I'm ticklish!" she screeched in hysterical defeat. "I can't stand it! Please stop, please, please!" But her confession brought not mercy, but its complete opposite, just as she had half-expected. Fingertips wove swiftly among her toes, and Jerri began to feel as if the tickling would never stop, but the thought only made her scream louder ...
Then the blindfold snapped off, and Jerri, gasping for breath and blinking tears of laughter out of her eyes, found herself staring into Missy's face. The blonde had a tiny, chilling smile on her lips, and her fingertips rested lightly on Jerri's sweat-slicked sides. They were in a small windowless room, and by craning her neck Jerri could see she was restrained on a plain black-padded table, cuffs set into it holding her firmly. Missy was sitting on the edge of the table, watching her with amusement. Most astonishing, at the bottom of the table knelt the Japanese maid, still gently and distractingly fingering Jerri's feet.
"What is this?" Jerri croaked. "You're doing all this just to get back at me for ... " She broke off into a giggle as Noriko casually ran her fingers between her toes. "Tell her to stop that!"
"No. And this is hardly just revenge. You don't quite understand. Look." Jerri turned her head in the direction Missy indicated, and saw a microphone resting on the table next to her. "I have a recording of you being tickled," Missy said. "I'm sure you realize you got very ... vocal. What would happen to your reputation if copies of that tape started getting around ... ?"
"You fu -- !" Jerri roared, but Missy started tickling her ribs, and her angry outburst dissolved into embarrassing, hysterical squeals. "Aahahahahaha! Stop!!" the big girl yelped, but Missy only grinned as her body contorted in ticklish torment. When the rib-tickling stopped again, Jerri was silent, but her eyes blazed.
"It's so nice having someone besides Noriko to practice on for a change," Missy said happily. "I'm sure Nori agrees, too." The Japanese woman smiled briefly and then turned back to her methodical teasing of Jerri's feet, sweeping the backs of her nails up each sole in turn, then back down. It tickled unbearably, but Jerri's bound and helpless feet could barely twitch. Jerri, exhausted beyond caring, nevertheless squeaked and writhed and jumped at every touch.
"I've always found tickling very useful for making relationships clear. For instance, you know exactly where we stand now, don't you?"
"Yeah, you -- " Jerri stopped herself this time and settled for a snarl.
Missy only laughed and patted her cheek. "Cheer up." She wiggled her fingers in Jerri's helpless underarms, making her squirm again and turning the snarl into an agonized grin. "I don't really plan to use the tape, and I do want to be your friend. We won't have to do this again. Unless you want to, of course ... "
"I don't want -- " Jerri began, realized that it wasn't quite true, and decided not to pursue that thought further, instead saying, "What *do* you want with me?"
Missy smiled again -- not the smile of amusement at Jerri's suffering, but something more genuine. "I can use you."
"Use me?" Jerri mumbled, not liking the visions that filled her head.
"Not that way." Missy laughed. "You were right in what you said before. I do have some ideas on how I'm going to 'fit in' here, but they're rather special, and I could use some help. And I've been watching you -- you have the right instincts, and all you need is some training. And then ... " She smiled again, and to her astonishment, Jerri found herself smiling back. And it wasn't just because Noriko was still rhythmically tickling her toes.
