sageoftruth
TMF Novice
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2005
- Messages
- 64
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Summary: Finally, it is Alyssa's turn. She has her friends right where she wants them. With all of them tied down and at her mercy, the artist in her yearns for inspiration, while the rest of her yearns simply to plunge her friends into the depth of hysteria.
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(Part 3)
With hands on hips, Alyssa grinned and mimicked Hannah’s upturned nose look. “Oh, that? I forgot to tell you guys, I learned some judo while I was away.”
“Indeed, ah… very impressive,” Hannah said. Alyssa did not reply. “Well, congratulations. You got us. Can you let us go now?”
Still nothing. “Look, this is funny and all, but enough’s enough!” Sandra said.
“Yes. Enough’s enough!” Brianna echoed. “Are you waiting for us to do something? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Oh, sorry,” Alyssa finally replied. “I was just busy taking this in. You three have never looked so vulnerable before.”
The three captive ladies blinked in surprise and all exchanged looks to make sure they’d all heard that correctly. “Well, that sent me all kinds of red flags,” Sandra said.
Brianna’s bare legs had begun to quiver. “S…stop toying with us! You’re seriously scaring me, Alyssa!”
“Wait everyone!” Hannah shouted silencing everyone. She then turned to Alyssa and shot her an uneasy smile. “What is it, Alyssa? Have we been too harsh when we tickled you? I apologize if we got carried away. If you’ll remove the handcuffs, we can sit and talk this out. That’s what friends do right…? Please?”
“Oh shit! Is that what this is about!?” Sandra shouted.
Alyssa laughed. “Oh, there’s no need to apologize.” She reached into her pocket and fished out her phone. She pushed back the fridge a few feet, set her phone on top of it, facing the futon and then set it to “record”.
“This isn’t what I think it is, is it?” Brianna asked. “Are we about to end up on the internet? Please tell me that I’m mistaken.”
Alyssa put up her hands. “Relax, guys. You have my word as a longtime friend that this recording will not be seen by anyone but us.”
Hannah began to pull at her restraints. “I’m more worried about what’s about to end up in that video?”
Brianna looked up at Alyssa, her nostrils flaring and her chest visibly expanding and contracting, but her face as blank as ever. “Look, Alyssa. I… understand that you have been our little tickle toy for the past… 15 years.” Her volume dropped as she said that, and her eyes briefly flicked downward. “…w…which IS a long time. Still, we all thought you were having fun too. You never spoke up about your displeasure, so you can’t hold this against us. Can you let us go already?”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the love of…!” She cut off mid-sentence and glared at Brianna. “Have you no tact whatsoever?” Her expression softened as she turned to Alyssa. “Alyssa, I’m sorry about what we have done to you. All of us owe you an apology. I, at least, should have been able to see the conflict brewing within you. Forgive me. I have failed you as a friend. Now please let us go!”
Alyssa giggled. “That was your line as Dawn in our junior-year high school play wasn’t it?”
“Drat!”
It hardly mattered to Alyssa. As she saw her three friends laid out before her, completely helpless, the countless times they’d tickled her breathless struck her as little more than a convenient excuse to do the same to back to them. She felt no anger, only a massive rush of manic energy as she thought of the things she could now do to them. She wanted to jump for joy, or turn her head towards the ceiling and laugh until she was out of breath. Was this for real? Was this finally happening?
Suppressing the urge to dive right in, she put her hands on her hips and stared down at them. “Look, you guys can call it whatever you want. ‘Revenge’, ‘fun between friends’ whatever. The point is, every sleepover we’ve had for the past 15 years, you guys would hold me down and tickle me until I couldn’t even get up off the floor. Now that we’re all grown up, we have our own agendas and may never get to do this again. Isn’t it fair that I have my fun for once?”
Brianna pondered. “I can’t argue with your logic, but there’s got to be some other way to make it up to you.”
Alyssa replied with a toothy grin and shook her head. “Nope.”
She gathered up the three blindfolds she’d given to them and slipped them over their heads. By then, Sandra and Brianna had joined Hannah in trying to break free from the handcuffs binding them to the radiator. “You’re blindfolding us?! You’ve got to be kidding!” Sandra objected. Alyssa responded by grabbing Sandra by the feet. “Ohoho no! You’re not touching my feet again!” She pulled her legs back and managed to get her feet free from Alyssa’s grasp, but her nylon stockings did not make it.
“Ooh! Looking good, Sandra,” Alyssa commented as she bared Sandra’s feet and exposed the light contrast between her soles and the rest of her feet, along with some bright red nail polish along her toes. “The suit was one thing, but now you paint your nails too? I’m definitely starting with you, but first…” After discarding the stockings, she wandered over to the musty storage room in the corner of the basement and dragged out a bag of supplies she’d gathered during a recent shopping spree. She pulled out an elastic belt with a sliding metal clasp and crept up to Sandra’s who was having trouble keeping still. Sandra covered one foot with the other, gripping the outer-edge of her wide-arched foot with her toes, then switched them, as she nonverbally asked herself which of her feet was more ticklish.
This only made it easier for Alyssa. She slipped the elastic belt around Sandra’s unsuspecting ankles and pulled hard on the metal clasp, binding both ankles together. Hannah and Brianna put up less of a fight, choosing instead to fight with words.
“Alyssa, this is all too sudden! Perhaps we should sit and talk about this for a moment,” Hannah suggested in a gentle but wavering voice.
“Yes, for God’s sake!” Brianna snapped. “This is going too far!”
Alyssa giggled at them. “Come on guys. We’ve got 15 years of tickle torture to make up for in one night. Let’s make this something we’ll all remember.”
Sandra, Brianna, and Hannah all talked over each other, creating a cacophony of voices as they tried to persuade her not to go through with this. Alyssa ignored them as she bound their ankles together. She then fetched a pair of bungee cords, hooked them onto the belts around Hannah and Brianna’s ankles and then hooked the other ends around a thin iron support in front of the futon. Sandra began to let her guard down, and gasped as Alyssa ran up and did the same for her.
The hard part was over. The trio could do nothing but beg, protest and attempt to negotiate as Alyssa applied massage oil to the soles of their feet and bound their big toes together with rubber bands. She then stood back and waited for them to fall silent, but they continued to complain and protests as if their words could keep her at bay. She knelt down and gave everyone’s arch a quick tickle, drawing gasps and yelps from all of them, and startling them into silence.
She stepped in front of the futon, facing her friends as if they were her audience. “So, now that everything’s all set up, welcome to the grand finale of our sleepover.” She turned towards the left side of the futon. “Sandra…”
Sandra jumped, or tried to, as her name was called. “Huh? What? What is it?”
Alyssa shot her a deep grin. “You and I didn’t start out on the right foot when we first met. You used to take my lunch money, scribble over my drawings, and tickle me during recess until I peed.”
Sandra’s hands and feet clenched as she was reminded of these. “Oh, come on! You’re not still mad about that are you?”
“…However,” Alyssa continued, “We both soon learned that friendship was much better for us than whatever it was we had before. I had a blast going to sporting events with you and playing around in the field. You taught me all I needed to know about being competitive and seeking to better myself in the physical department. If not for you, I never would have persevered in my Judo and I never would have found the strength and courage to pull this off.”
“Oh, wow. I’m glad to be of service,” Sandra grumbled, making no attempts to hide the sarcasm in her tone. “Any chance you could show your appreciation by - I dunno - not tickling me?”
Alyssa giggled. “Come on, Sandra. After all that boasting tonight about how you strong-armed those business men, you’re going to fold from a bit of tickling?” She fished a cold metallic hairpin out of the bag and watched as its blunted point create a tiny crevasse on the lower end of Sandra’s tangerine sole.
Sandra’s toes curled and small wrinkles began to form around the point of contact. “W…what is this?” she asked through trembling lips. She inhaled through clenched teeth as Alyssa began dragging the hairpin upward, leaving a short trail of sunken skin behind it. To keep things interesting, she gripped another hairpin in her other hand and traced it in random shapes across the remaining half of Sandra’s sole, encircling the ball of her foot, zig-zagging across her arch, and occasionally jumping up to trace small circles in her pudgy toes, which drew sharp breaths from her.
Despite her ordeal, Sandra was keeping it together, more or less. She breathed in and out in short, frequent breaths through half-puckered lips, and color began to form in her cheeks from the sheer effort of resisting. Alyssa’s motions were slow and inoffensive. On a back they would have made a comfortable massage, but the restraints on Sandra’s feet and toes, the lotion, and her own stubborn refusal to laugh, had turned it into a slow torture. Her shallow muscles began to bulge out from her arms and legs, each of them straining from the sheer exertion of staying in control of herself. She looked like she was only a small nudge away from bursting into several frustrated giggles.
Alyssa decided it was time to give her that nudge. Dropping the hairpin, she shifted her hand to the right and played an imaginary harp along the ball of her foot, trailing downward and across from there. Sandra’s eyes widened, her cheeks swelled for a second or two and then air burst from her lips, and then came that sweet cackle. “Pffffffffshihihihihit! Hahahahahahhaha!”
“You lose,” Alyssa said. She dropped the other hairpin and her fingers tickled up and down Sandra’s other foot, leaving a swath of stress wrinkles in their wake.
Sandra let loose a cry of despair and managed to pull her feet back half an inch for a moment before the bungee cord pulled them back into their fully outstretched position. “Nohohohoho! Yohohohou cheated! Hahahahaha! Nohohoho fingers please! Hahahahaha!” This only egged Alyssa on. Her grin deepened, and she fluttered her fingers faster and lighter across Sandra’s feet, watching with glee as the pitch of her helpless cackles rose, until her head was tilted back and crying towards the ceiling.
“I can’t cheat if I never made any rules,” Alyssa said. “There’s no need to be a poor sport. Do you know what I do to the feet of poor sports?” She reached forward and pressed her palm against Sandra’s toes. By itself, her hand was barely big enough to cover all ten toes, but when she pushed back on the big toes, all the others obediently fell in line, leaving Sandra’s bare feet stretched taut and shaking as she waited in silence for her next ordeal. “Do you know what I do to poor sports?” Alyssa repeated.
Sandra shook her head. “I don’t know! I don’t care anymore! You win! Please just let me go alreadee-yaahahahahahahaha!” Alyssa raked her fingernails across both taut, winkle-free soles, and Sandra jolted and her laughter began anew.
“Come on, Sandra. Don’t you know that quitters are the worst kind of poor sport?”
“SOHOHOHOHOHOHOHRRRY! PLEHEHEHEHEASE JUST STOP ALREADY! HAHAHAHA!” Sandra begged. Tears began to seep down beneath her blindfold, and when Alyssa granted her a short rest, Sandra’s breathing was loud and quick “Jesus! Who are you and what did you do with Alyssa?”
Alyssa giggled. “Don’t worry. It’s still me. If you need proof again, I know just the thing?” She climbed up onto the bed and straddled Sandra’s hips. “Remember when we went to the beach with your ex-boyfriend, Doug.”
Sandra began to calm a bit as she thought back. “How could I forget? That guy was so competitive. Worse than me even.”
“No kidding. Remember when the two of you wrestled?”
“Sure I do. The rotten little cheat! I almost had him and then he reached up and tickled my…” Sandra cut off with a gasp. “Oh, Hell no! Don’t you dare!” Ignoring her protests, Alyssa slipped her hands under Sandra’s tee shirt, and reached forward, inadvertently wiping some sweat from Sandra’s belly. “Alyssa, NO!”
Alyssa did not hear her. She saw Sandra’s apprehension and realized she’d struck gold. She set her fingers in motion and tickled up along Sandra’s toned sides, into her armpits. Sandra’s head shot back, slamming into the pillow and her body rocked up and down. “NOHOHOHOHOHOHO! OH GAHAHAHAHAHAHWDS NOHOHOHO!” she laughed, her cackle now a scream. Alyssa hung on with her hands and her knees, surprised that anyone could buck like this while tied down. As she hung on, Sandra’s sweat coated her shirt, knees, hands and undies, but she held on and continued to make Sandra writhe and laugh herself hoarse with her fingers. Two long veins ran along her arms she pulled against the cuffs, showing a singular determination to yank the radiator out of the wall behind her.
Her voice seized up suddenly and the laughter stopped. Her head hung in the air, her face an expression of silent hilarity as the color in her face began to darken. Alyssa was aware, but part of her was unconcerned. She’d waited 15 years for this moment and it was too glorious to stop now. However, the sight of Sandra desperately fighting to breathe was something the sensible, caring part of her could not ignore. She released her grip and rolled off the bed. Sandra let out the hoarsest gasp she had ever heard from her and then went silent. After a few seconds, she was able to speak. “What…the Hell…!? I couldn’t breathe…”
“Well, now’s your chance to catch your breath. I was going to move on to someone else, but if you want to take one for the team…” Sandra’s jaw snapped shut and she shook her head. “Good.”
Alyssa hurried to the sink to wash herself. When she returned, Sandra had caught her breath, but remained silent. However, Hannah then saw fit to break the silence. “What on Earth was that? Alyssa, what did you do to her? Is she okay?”
“No need to worry, she is fine,” Alyssa said. She wished she could be more certain of that. Had she gone too far? Was she overdoing it? Her hand reached behind her for the bungee cords, anchored to the metal bar. This was wrong. She had to stop.
She took one final look at the image before her: Her three beautiful friends tied side-by-side to a futon, unable to stop her from tickling them to her heart’s content. A grin returned to her face and her hand moved away from the bungee cords. It was too soon to stop. Her picture was incomplete and she was not untying anyone until she’d become intimately acquainted with how each of them reacted when tickled beyond their limits.
“Let’s move on. Hannah, my old friend…” she began with a flourish, “Ever since we met in the drama club back in 5th grade, I have admired you. I loved how you composed yourself in front of others, I admired your creativity, and I loved how beautiful you looked in those fancy blouses you used to wear to class. Without you as a role model, I never would have found my place in the artistic world, and I never would have found the inspiration to plan this whole event.”
“I’d be flattered, but these handcuffs are really killing the mood,” Hannah said. She turned her blinded gaze towards Alyssa. “It is not too late to turn back, Alyssa. I understand. You have something you’ve needed to get off your chest. We’ll sit and talk about this and everything will be fine.”
Her words gave Alyssa pause for a moment. She’d never opened up about these feelings to anyone except with strangers behind the curtain of anonymity online. Her offer was tempting to Alyssa, but easily overshadowed by the trim, alluring and perfectly-proportioned physique lying before her. She wondered to herself how many pedicures those shapely feet had received in the 15 years they’d been together, or how melodic her voice would sound in the throes of hysteria. She grinned to herself and pushed all of her hangups into the back of her mind.
She shot Hannah a chiding smirk. “Come on, Hannah. Don’t you think you’re overanalyzing this a bit? I think you’re just trying to get out of receiving your tickling.” Hannah did not reply. “You once said ‘art is an expression of your true self’, so allow me to ‘make some art.’” She withdrew an electric toothbrush with a small circle of stiff brush bristles from her bag and chuckled to herself as she approached the futon.
Hannah curled her oiled feet, exposing her black nail polish as her tickler drew near, but Alyssa had other plans for her. She grasped the bottom of Hannah’s tee shirt between her fingers and drew it back, exposing a soft belly that sported a Brazilian tan.
She placed her pointer finger on Hannah’s belly and traced light circles around the cute dip in the center of her belly, slowly drawing closer with each revolution. She felt the muscles in Hannah’s belly tense up and smiled as her finger strokes drew rich giggles from Hannah’s ink black lips. As soon as her finger had reached the outer edge of Hannah’s navel, Hannah let out a loud squeak and started squirming beneath Alyssa’s hand.
“See, this isn’t so bad, is it?” Alyssa asked, moving her finger outward so Hannah could respond.
Hannah paused for a moment, still unable to stop giggling. She shook her head and banished the giggles from her system. “…well…” Before she could utter another word, Alyssa switched on the electric brush, plunged it into Hannah’s navel. Hannah whooped and flew into a panicked fit of laughter, shattering her composed demeanor and flooding Alyssa’s ears with the screamiest laughter she’d ever heard from someone other than herself.
She loved it and smiled as she took it all in, imagining the speed lines from her drawing as Hannah snapped her head from side to side. She tilted the toothbrush, letting the churning bristles agitate the inner sides of Hannah’s sensitive navel, and making her release a deafening shriek. “Well well, Hannah. This laughter isn’t you at all. Who knew someone like you had a bit of Sandra in her?”
“Hey! What did you just say about me?” Sandra asked.
“Sorry, did you say something Sandra?” Alyssa asked. “I didn’t think so.” She switched off the electric brush and pulled it back, drawing a final yelp from Hannah as she swiped it across her belly.
“EeeheHEEEEEE…!” she cried before falling silent to catch her breath. Alyssa watched patiently as Hannah’s tanned belly rose and fell with every breath, savoring her friend’s vulnerability. When Hannah finally spoke, there was an edge in her tone. “Alyssa, you went too far! It’s time to stop this craziness!” Her tone carried authority, but her legs trembled beneath Alyssa’s ankles.
“In a moment. First, let’s see about those feet of yours.” Alyssa swiveled around to face the bound ankles behind her. She leaned forward and lay top the pair of legs beneath her. She then rested her own feet atop Hannah’s chest, noting with amusement how vulnerable they would be if Hannah wasn’t handcuffed. A part of her still suspected that any moment while she wasn’t looking, Hannah’s arm would clamp down over her ankles and she’d feel the unwelcome stroke of fingernails across her upturned soles, but she could feel Hannah’s heavy heartbeat against the tops of her feet and her anxiety evaporated. She was in charge now. Her past as “The ticklish one” no longer mattered.
Hannah’s feet appeared to fight with each other over whether to wiggle left or right as Alyssa reached forward and gripped both of them from opposite sides. After 15 years spent wearing the fanciest footwear her parents could afford, her feet had a tantalizing curve to them that guided Alyssa’s fingers towards the centers of her arches like a pair of handlebars. Bracing her thumbs against the roofs of Hannah’s feet, she curled all 8 of her remaining fingers inward.
“Whohohohoa! Wait! Wahahahait…You wehehehehere serious!? Nohohohohohoho stop thahahahat…!” Hannah’s feet curled in unison, forming two arches around the tips of Alyssa’s fingers. Alyssa had no intention of stopping. Hannah’s feet felt amazing. Apparently, even the hours onstage in gothic heels hadn’t been able to undo the effects of years of nonstop weekly pedicures. The warmth and smoothness of Hannah’s bare soles put the early afternoon experience with Sandra’s nylon-clad feet to shame. The touch of these curved soles warmed her fingertips and the reactions her fingertips elicited from her warmed Alyssa in other places as well.
Moving her fingers like a harpist, she trailed up across the ball of Hannah’s left foot while sliding down towards the heel of her right one, and grinned as the pulsing heartbeat under her feet kicked up a notch. “Eeeahahahahaha! Nononono don’t do that! Hahahahaha! What do you waahahahahaha? Whahahahaht can I do?!” Hannah’s voice slowly rose in pitch while her grasp of the English language wavered.
“Do you really want me to stop?” Alyssa asked. “Do you want me to leave your feet alone?”
Alyssa did not need to look behind her to know that her friend was nodding vigorously. A few strands of Hannah’s hair tumbled onto the sole of her bare foot and pulled back, making her twitch, if nothing else. “Yehehehes! For God’s sake, stop it! Hahahaahaha!” Hannah begged, her voice a loud squeak at this point.
Alyssa sported a devilish grin. “As you wish.” She released Hannah’s feet and pushed herself back up in to a kneeling position. Before Hannah could say another word, Alyssa snatched up the toothbrush, switched it on and returned it to Hannah’s bellybutton, eliciting a very satisfying wail of despair from Hannah’s lips before she lost herself to the ticklish frenzy once again.
“Aren’t you the dense one,” Alyssa chided over Hannah’s roars of laughter. “I’ve seen how you never let anything fuzzy ever touch your bellybutton. I haven’t forgotten your giggling episode way back when you had to play a sheep in elementary school, so why choose this over your feet?” Hannah could do nothing but cry out in frustration. “Does my teasing bother you? I learned it from the best.”
Hannah could do nothing but let out another cry. She was getting riled up, but so was Alyssa who was eager to see what else she could make this frazzled rock star do. “Okay, okay, I’ll give you a break. Want me to stop?”
“YEEEEES!” Hannah screamed, barely giving her a chance to finish her sentence.
“Want me to tickle your feet instead?” Alyssa asked.
“YEHEHEES, I… NOHOHOHO NO! WAHAHAHAIT! NO! YES! AAAARGH!”
“You’ll have to make up your mind, babe. Feet or belly button? You choose.” Alyssa giggled to herself as she watched Hannah wrestle with her dilemma. A calm and collected Hannah would have picked her feet without hesitation, but as she lay there, laughing herself senseless, and silently praying for a break, the thought of asking to be tickled anywhere was unthinkable.
“You can stay silent if you want, Hannah. If you want me to keep tickling your cute button that’s all you have to do. Want me to keep tickling your bellybutton?” Hannah shook her head. “Then tell me to tickle your feet.” This only made Hannah beat the pillow behind her and shake her head, so Alyssa offered some encouragement, courtesy of a few persistent finger strokes along the side of her tortured button. “SAY IT!”
“EEEAHAHAHAHAOK OK! TICKLE MY FEET! HAHAHAHAHA!” Hannah cried.
“As you wish.” In a flash, she jerked the toothbrush free, grabbed Hannah’s toes and turned the brush on the delicate undersides. Alyssa tightened her grip as Hannah’s feet jolted and struggled to pull free.
“NOHOHOHOHOHO YOHOHOHOU BAHAHAHASTARD! HAHAHAHA!” Hannah half-sobbed.
“Oh my! Did the prim and proper Hannah just utter a curse word?” Hannah did not respond, but black tears began to seep beneath the blindfold, leaving straight black lines on her deeply flushed cheeks. Alyssa took that as her cue. “Ok ok, I suppose we’d better move on, before you lose that sweet voice of yours.” She released Hannah’s toes and stepped off the futon.
Hannah fell back onto the futon and lay still, her bare belly rising and falling as she breathed deeply. “What… is wrong… with you?” she breathed.
Alyssa was unfazed. “Don’t give me that look. Now you know how it feels.”
Hannah jerked forward as far as the restraints would allow. “Nonsense…! When did I ever tickle you this badly…?”
Alyssa put her hands on her hips and stared down at her. “Hannah, if I was in your position right now, I’d be unconscious. Take a moment to think about that. Brianna needs my attention.”
(to be continued)
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(Part 3)
With hands on hips, Alyssa grinned and mimicked Hannah’s upturned nose look. “Oh, that? I forgot to tell you guys, I learned some judo while I was away.”
“Indeed, ah… very impressive,” Hannah said. Alyssa did not reply. “Well, congratulations. You got us. Can you let us go now?”
Still nothing. “Look, this is funny and all, but enough’s enough!” Sandra said.
“Yes. Enough’s enough!” Brianna echoed. “Are you waiting for us to do something? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Oh, sorry,” Alyssa finally replied. “I was just busy taking this in. You three have never looked so vulnerable before.”
The three captive ladies blinked in surprise and all exchanged looks to make sure they’d all heard that correctly. “Well, that sent me all kinds of red flags,” Sandra said.
Brianna’s bare legs had begun to quiver. “S…stop toying with us! You’re seriously scaring me, Alyssa!”
“Wait everyone!” Hannah shouted silencing everyone. She then turned to Alyssa and shot her an uneasy smile. “What is it, Alyssa? Have we been too harsh when we tickled you? I apologize if we got carried away. If you’ll remove the handcuffs, we can sit and talk this out. That’s what friends do right…? Please?”
“Oh shit! Is that what this is about!?” Sandra shouted.
Alyssa laughed. “Oh, there’s no need to apologize.” She reached into her pocket and fished out her phone. She pushed back the fridge a few feet, set her phone on top of it, facing the futon and then set it to “record”.
“This isn’t what I think it is, is it?” Brianna asked. “Are we about to end up on the internet? Please tell me that I’m mistaken.”
Alyssa put up her hands. “Relax, guys. You have my word as a longtime friend that this recording will not be seen by anyone but us.”
Hannah began to pull at her restraints. “I’m more worried about what’s about to end up in that video?”
Brianna looked up at Alyssa, her nostrils flaring and her chest visibly expanding and contracting, but her face as blank as ever. “Look, Alyssa. I… understand that you have been our little tickle toy for the past… 15 years.” Her volume dropped as she said that, and her eyes briefly flicked downward. “…w…which IS a long time. Still, we all thought you were having fun too. You never spoke up about your displeasure, so you can’t hold this against us. Can you let us go already?”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the love of…!” She cut off mid-sentence and glared at Brianna. “Have you no tact whatsoever?” Her expression softened as she turned to Alyssa. “Alyssa, I’m sorry about what we have done to you. All of us owe you an apology. I, at least, should have been able to see the conflict brewing within you. Forgive me. I have failed you as a friend. Now please let us go!”
Alyssa giggled. “That was your line as Dawn in our junior-year high school play wasn’t it?”
“Drat!”
It hardly mattered to Alyssa. As she saw her three friends laid out before her, completely helpless, the countless times they’d tickled her breathless struck her as little more than a convenient excuse to do the same to back to them. She felt no anger, only a massive rush of manic energy as she thought of the things she could now do to them. She wanted to jump for joy, or turn her head towards the ceiling and laugh until she was out of breath. Was this for real? Was this finally happening?
Suppressing the urge to dive right in, she put her hands on her hips and stared down at them. “Look, you guys can call it whatever you want. ‘Revenge’, ‘fun between friends’ whatever. The point is, every sleepover we’ve had for the past 15 years, you guys would hold me down and tickle me until I couldn’t even get up off the floor. Now that we’re all grown up, we have our own agendas and may never get to do this again. Isn’t it fair that I have my fun for once?”
Brianna pondered. “I can’t argue with your logic, but there’s got to be some other way to make it up to you.”
Alyssa replied with a toothy grin and shook her head. “Nope.”
She gathered up the three blindfolds she’d given to them and slipped them over their heads. By then, Sandra and Brianna had joined Hannah in trying to break free from the handcuffs binding them to the radiator. “You’re blindfolding us?! You’ve got to be kidding!” Sandra objected. Alyssa responded by grabbing Sandra by the feet. “Ohoho no! You’re not touching my feet again!” She pulled her legs back and managed to get her feet free from Alyssa’s grasp, but her nylon stockings did not make it.
“Ooh! Looking good, Sandra,” Alyssa commented as she bared Sandra’s feet and exposed the light contrast between her soles and the rest of her feet, along with some bright red nail polish along her toes. “The suit was one thing, but now you paint your nails too? I’m definitely starting with you, but first…” After discarding the stockings, she wandered over to the musty storage room in the corner of the basement and dragged out a bag of supplies she’d gathered during a recent shopping spree. She pulled out an elastic belt with a sliding metal clasp and crept up to Sandra’s who was having trouble keeping still. Sandra covered one foot with the other, gripping the outer-edge of her wide-arched foot with her toes, then switched them, as she nonverbally asked herself which of her feet was more ticklish.
This only made it easier for Alyssa. She slipped the elastic belt around Sandra’s unsuspecting ankles and pulled hard on the metal clasp, binding both ankles together. Hannah and Brianna put up less of a fight, choosing instead to fight with words.
“Alyssa, this is all too sudden! Perhaps we should sit and talk about this for a moment,” Hannah suggested in a gentle but wavering voice.
“Yes, for God’s sake!” Brianna snapped. “This is going too far!”
Alyssa giggled at them. “Come on guys. We’ve got 15 years of tickle torture to make up for in one night. Let’s make this something we’ll all remember.”
Sandra, Brianna, and Hannah all talked over each other, creating a cacophony of voices as they tried to persuade her not to go through with this. Alyssa ignored them as she bound their ankles together. She then fetched a pair of bungee cords, hooked them onto the belts around Hannah and Brianna’s ankles and then hooked the other ends around a thin iron support in front of the futon. Sandra began to let her guard down, and gasped as Alyssa ran up and did the same for her.
The hard part was over. The trio could do nothing but beg, protest and attempt to negotiate as Alyssa applied massage oil to the soles of their feet and bound their big toes together with rubber bands. She then stood back and waited for them to fall silent, but they continued to complain and protests as if their words could keep her at bay. She knelt down and gave everyone’s arch a quick tickle, drawing gasps and yelps from all of them, and startling them into silence.
She stepped in front of the futon, facing her friends as if they were her audience. “So, now that everything’s all set up, welcome to the grand finale of our sleepover.” She turned towards the left side of the futon. “Sandra…”
Sandra jumped, or tried to, as her name was called. “Huh? What? What is it?”
Alyssa shot her a deep grin. “You and I didn’t start out on the right foot when we first met. You used to take my lunch money, scribble over my drawings, and tickle me during recess until I peed.”
Sandra’s hands and feet clenched as she was reminded of these. “Oh, come on! You’re not still mad about that are you?”
“…However,” Alyssa continued, “We both soon learned that friendship was much better for us than whatever it was we had before. I had a blast going to sporting events with you and playing around in the field. You taught me all I needed to know about being competitive and seeking to better myself in the physical department. If not for you, I never would have persevered in my Judo and I never would have found the strength and courage to pull this off.”
“Oh, wow. I’m glad to be of service,” Sandra grumbled, making no attempts to hide the sarcasm in her tone. “Any chance you could show your appreciation by - I dunno - not tickling me?”
Alyssa giggled. “Come on, Sandra. After all that boasting tonight about how you strong-armed those business men, you’re going to fold from a bit of tickling?” She fished a cold metallic hairpin out of the bag and watched as its blunted point create a tiny crevasse on the lower end of Sandra’s tangerine sole.
Sandra’s toes curled and small wrinkles began to form around the point of contact. “W…what is this?” she asked through trembling lips. She inhaled through clenched teeth as Alyssa began dragging the hairpin upward, leaving a short trail of sunken skin behind it. To keep things interesting, she gripped another hairpin in her other hand and traced it in random shapes across the remaining half of Sandra’s sole, encircling the ball of her foot, zig-zagging across her arch, and occasionally jumping up to trace small circles in her pudgy toes, which drew sharp breaths from her.
Despite her ordeal, Sandra was keeping it together, more or less. She breathed in and out in short, frequent breaths through half-puckered lips, and color began to form in her cheeks from the sheer effort of resisting. Alyssa’s motions were slow and inoffensive. On a back they would have made a comfortable massage, but the restraints on Sandra’s feet and toes, the lotion, and her own stubborn refusal to laugh, had turned it into a slow torture. Her shallow muscles began to bulge out from her arms and legs, each of them straining from the sheer exertion of staying in control of herself. She looked like she was only a small nudge away from bursting into several frustrated giggles.
Alyssa decided it was time to give her that nudge. Dropping the hairpin, she shifted her hand to the right and played an imaginary harp along the ball of her foot, trailing downward and across from there. Sandra’s eyes widened, her cheeks swelled for a second or two and then air burst from her lips, and then came that sweet cackle. “Pffffffffshihihihihit! Hahahahahahhaha!”
“You lose,” Alyssa said. She dropped the other hairpin and her fingers tickled up and down Sandra’s other foot, leaving a swath of stress wrinkles in their wake.
Sandra let loose a cry of despair and managed to pull her feet back half an inch for a moment before the bungee cord pulled them back into their fully outstretched position. “Nohohohoho! Yohohohou cheated! Hahahahaha! Nohohoho fingers please! Hahahahaha!” This only egged Alyssa on. Her grin deepened, and she fluttered her fingers faster and lighter across Sandra’s feet, watching with glee as the pitch of her helpless cackles rose, until her head was tilted back and crying towards the ceiling.
“I can’t cheat if I never made any rules,” Alyssa said. “There’s no need to be a poor sport. Do you know what I do to the feet of poor sports?” She reached forward and pressed her palm against Sandra’s toes. By itself, her hand was barely big enough to cover all ten toes, but when she pushed back on the big toes, all the others obediently fell in line, leaving Sandra’s bare feet stretched taut and shaking as she waited in silence for her next ordeal. “Do you know what I do to poor sports?” Alyssa repeated.
Sandra shook her head. “I don’t know! I don’t care anymore! You win! Please just let me go alreadee-yaahahahahahahaha!” Alyssa raked her fingernails across both taut, winkle-free soles, and Sandra jolted and her laughter began anew.
“Come on, Sandra. Don’t you know that quitters are the worst kind of poor sport?”
“SOHOHOHOHOHOHOHRRRY! PLEHEHEHEHEASE JUST STOP ALREADY! HAHAHAHA!” Sandra begged. Tears began to seep down beneath her blindfold, and when Alyssa granted her a short rest, Sandra’s breathing was loud and quick “Jesus! Who are you and what did you do with Alyssa?”
Alyssa giggled. “Don’t worry. It’s still me. If you need proof again, I know just the thing?” She climbed up onto the bed and straddled Sandra’s hips. “Remember when we went to the beach with your ex-boyfriend, Doug.”
Sandra began to calm a bit as she thought back. “How could I forget? That guy was so competitive. Worse than me even.”
“No kidding. Remember when the two of you wrestled?”
“Sure I do. The rotten little cheat! I almost had him and then he reached up and tickled my…” Sandra cut off with a gasp. “Oh, Hell no! Don’t you dare!” Ignoring her protests, Alyssa slipped her hands under Sandra’s tee shirt, and reached forward, inadvertently wiping some sweat from Sandra’s belly. “Alyssa, NO!”
Alyssa did not hear her. She saw Sandra’s apprehension and realized she’d struck gold. She set her fingers in motion and tickled up along Sandra’s toned sides, into her armpits. Sandra’s head shot back, slamming into the pillow and her body rocked up and down. “NOHOHOHOHOHOHO! OH GAHAHAHAHAHAHWDS NOHOHOHO!” she laughed, her cackle now a scream. Alyssa hung on with her hands and her knees, surprised that anyone could buck like this while tied down. As she hung on, Sandra’s sweat coated her shirt, knees, hands and undies, but she held on and continued to make Sandra writhe and laugh herself hoarse with her fingers. Two long veins ran along her arms she pulled against the cuffs, showing a singular determination to yank the radiator out of the wall behind her.
Her voice seized up suddenly and the laughter stopped. Her head hung in the air, her face an expression of silent hilarity as the color in her face began to darken. Alyssa was aware, but part of her was unconcerned. She’d waited 15 years for this moment and it was too glorious to stop now. However, the sight of Sandra desperately fighting to breathe was something the sensible, caring part of her could not ignore. She released her grip and rolled off the bed. Sandra let out the hoarsest gasp she had ever heard from her and then went silent. After a few seconds, she was able to speak. “What…the Hell…!? I couldn’t breathe…”
“Well, now’s your chance to catch your breath. I was going to move on to someone else, but if you want to take one for the team…” Sandra’s jaw snapped shut and she shook her head. “Good.”
Alyssa hurried to the sink to wash herself. When she returned, Sandra had caught her breath, but remained silent. However, Hannah then saw fit to break the silence. “What on Earth was that? Alyssa, what did you do to her? Is she okay?”
“No need to worry, she is fine,” Alyssa said. She wished she could be more certain of that. Had she gone too far? Was she overdoing it? Her hand reached behind her for the bungee cords, anchored to the metal bar. This was wrong. She had to stop.
She took one final look at the image before her: Her three beautiful friends tied side-by-side to a futon, unable to stop her from tickling them to her heart’s content. A grin returned to her face and her hand moved away from the bungee cords. It was too soon to stop. Her picture was incomplete and she was not untying anyone until she’d become intimately acquainted with how each of them reacted when tickled beyond their limits.
“Let’s move on. Hannah, my old friend…” she began with a flourish, “Ever since we met in the drama club back in 5th grade, I have admired you. I loved how you composed yourself in front of others, I admired your creativity, and I loved how beautiful you looked in those fancy blouses you used to wear to class. Without you as a role model, I never would have found my place in the artistic world, and I never would have found the inspiration to plan this whole event.”
“I’d be flattered, but these handcuffs are really killing the mood,” Hannah said. She turned her blinded gaze towards Alyssa. “It is not too late to turn back, Alyssa. I understand. You have something you’ve needed to get off your chest. We’ll sit and talk about this and everything will be fine.”
Her words gave Alyssa pause for a moment. She’d never opened up about these feelings to anyone except with strangers behind the curtain of anonymity online. Her offer was tempting to Alyssa, but easily overshadowed by the trim, alluring and perfectly-proportioned physique lying before her. She wondered to herself how many pedicures those shapely feet had received in the 15 years they’d been together, or how melodic her voice would sound in the throes of hysteria. She grinned to herself and pushed all of her hangups into the back of her mind.
She shot Hannah a chiding smirk. “Come on, Hannah. Don’t you think you’re overanalyzing this a bit? I think you’re just trying to get out of receiving your tickling.” Hannah did not reply. “You once said ‘art is an expression of your true self’, so allow me to ‘make some art.’” She withdrew an electric toothbrush with a small circle of stiff brush bristles from her bag and chuckled to herself as she approached the futon.
Hannah curled her oiled feet, exposing her black nail polish as her tickler drew near, but Alyssa had other plans for her. She grasped the bottom of Hannah’s tee shirt between her fingers and drew it back, exposing a soft belly that sported a Brazilian tan.
She placed her pointer finger on Hannah’s belly and traced light circles around the cute dip in the center of her belly, slowly drawing closer with each revolution. She felt the muscles in Hannah’s belly tense up and smiled as her finger strokes drew rich giggles from Hannah’s ink black lips. As soon as her finger had reached the outer edge of Hannah’s navel, Hannah let out a loud squeak and started squirming beneath Alyssa’s hand.
“See, this isn’t so bad, is it?” Alyssa asked, moving her finger outward so Hannah could respond.
Hannah paused for a moment, still unable to stop giggling. She shook her head and banished the giggles from her system. “…well…” Before she could utter another word, Alyssa switched on the electric brush, plunged it into Hannah’s navel. Hannah whooped and flew into a panicked fit of laughter, shattering her composed demeanor and flooding Alyssa’s ears with the screamiest laughter she’d ever heard from someone other than herself.
She loved it and smiled as she took it all in, imagining the speed lines from her drawing as Hannah snapped her head from side to side. She tilted the toothbrush, letting the churning bristles agitate the inner sides of Hannah’s sensitive navel, and making her release a deafening shriek. “Well well, Hannah. This laughter isn’t you at all. Who knew someone like you had a bit of Sandra in her?”
“Hey! What did you just say about me?” Sandra asked.
“Sorry, did you say something Sandra?” Alyssa asked. “I didn’t think so.” She switched off the electric brush and pulled it back, drawing a final yelp from Hannah as she swiped it across her belly.
“EeeheHEEEEEE…!” she cried before falling silent to catch her breath. Alyssa watched patiently as Hannah’s tanned belly rose and fell with every breath, savoring her friend’s vulnerability. When Hannah finally spoke, there was an edge in her tone. “Alyssa, you went too far! It’s time to stop this craziness!” Her tone carried authority, but her legs trembled beneath Alyssa’s ankles.
“In a moment. First, let’s see about those feet of yours.” Alyssa swiveled around to face the bound ankles behind her. She leaned forward and lay top the pair of legs beneath her. She then rested her own feet atop Hannah’s chest, noting with amusement how vulnerable they would be if Hannah wasn’t handcuffed. A part of her still suspected that any moment while she wasn’t looking, Hannah’s arm would clamp down over her ankles and she’d feel the unwelcome stroke of fingernails across her upturned soles, but she could feel Hannah’s heavy heartbeat against the tops of her feet and her anxiety evaporated. She was in charge now. Her past as “The ticklish one” no longer mattered.
Hannah’s feet appeared to fight with each other over whether to wiggle left or right as Alyssa reached forward and gripped both of them from opposite sides. After 15 years spent wearing the fanciest footwear her parents could afford, her feet had a tantalizing curve to them that guided Alyssa’s fingers towards the centers of her arches like a pair of handlebars. Bracing her thumbs against the roofs of Hannah’s feet, she curled all 8 of her remaining fingers inward.
“Whohohohoa! Wait! Wahahahait…You wehehehehere serious!? Nohohohohohoho stop thahahahat…!” Hannah’s feet curled in unison, forming two arches around the tips of Alyssa’s fingers. Alyssa had no intention of stopping. Hannah’s feet felt amazing. Apparently, even the hours onstage in gothic heels hadn’t been able to undo the effects of years of nonstop weekly pedicures. The warmth and smoothness of Hannah’s bare soles put the early afternoon experience with Sandra’s nylon-clad feet to shame. The touch of these curved soles warmed her fingertips and the reactions her fingertips elicited from her warmed Alyssa in other places as well.
Moving her fingers like a harpist, she trailed up across the ball of Hannah’s left foot while sliding down towards the heel of her right one, and grinned as the pulsing heartbeat under her feet kicked up a notch. “Eeeahahahahaha! Nononono don’t do that! Hahahahaha! What do you waahahahahaha? Whahahahaht can I do?!” Hannah’s voice slowly rose in pitch while her grasp of the English language wavered.
“Do you really want me to stop?” Alyssa asked. “Do you want me to leave your feet alone?”
Alyssa did not need to look behind her to know that her friend was nodding vigorously. A few strands of Hannah’s hair tumbled onto the sole of her bare foot and pulled back, making her twitch, if nothing else. “Yehehehes! For God’s sake, stop it! Hahahaahaha!” Hannah begged, her voice a loud squeak at this point.
Alyssa sported a devilish grin. “As you wish.” She released Hannah’s feet and pushed herself back up in to a kneeling position. Before Hannah could say another word, Alyssa snatched up the toothbrush, switched it on and returned it to Hannah’s bellybutton, eliciting a very satisfying wail of despair from Hannah’s lips before she lost herself to the ticklish frenzy once again.
“Aren’t you the dense one,” Alyssa chided over Hannah’s roars of laughter. “I’ve seen how you never let anything fuzzy ever touch your bellybutton. I haven’t forgotten your giggling episode way back when you had to play a sheep in elementary school, so why choose this over your feet?” Hannah could do nothing but cry out in frustration. “Does my teasing bother you? I learned it from the best.”
Hannah could do nothing but let out another cry. She was getting riled up, but so was Alyssa who was eager to see what else she could make this frazzled rock star do. “Okay, okay, I’ll give you a break. Want me to stop?”
“YEEEEES!” Hannah screamed, barely giving her a chance to finish her sentence.
“Want me to tickle your feet instead?” Alyssa asked.
“YEHEHEES, I… NOHOHOHO NO! WAHAHAHAIT! NO! YES! AAAARGH!”
“You’ll have to make up your mind, babe. Feet or belly button? You choose.” Alyssa giggled to herself as she watched Hannah wrestle with her dilemma. A calm and collected Hannah would have picked her feet without hesitation, but as she lay there, laughing herself senseless, and silently praying for a break, the thought of asking to be tickled anywhere was unthinkable.
“You can stay silent if you want, Hannah. If you want me to keep tickling your cute button that’s all you have to do. Want me to keep tickling your bellybutton?” Hannah shook her head. “Then tell me to tickle your feet.” This only made Hannah beat the pillow behind her and shake her head, so Alyssa offered some encouragement, courtesy of a few persistent finger strokes along the side of her tortured button. “SAY IT!”
“EEEAHAHAHAHAOK OK! TICKLE MY FEET! HAHAHAHAHA!” Hannah cried.
“As you wish.” In a flash, she jerked the toothbrush free, grabbed Hannah’s toes and turned the brush on the delicate undersides. Alyssa tightened her grip as Hannah’s feet jolted and struggled to pull free.
“NOHOHOHOHOHO YOHOHOHOU BAHAHAHASTARD! HAHAHAHA!” Hannah half-sobbed.
“Oh my! Did the prim and proper Hannah just utter a curse word?” Hannah did not respond, but black tears began to seep beneath the blindfold, leaving straight black lines on her deeply flushed cheeks. Alyssa took that as her cue. “Ok ok, I suppose we’d better move on, before you lose that sweet voice of yours.” She released Hannah’s toes and stepped off the futon.
Hannah fell back onto the futon and lay still, her bare belly rising and falling as she breathed deeply. “What… is wrong… with you?” she breathed.
Alyssa was unfazed. “Don’t give me that look. Now you know how it feels.”
Hannah jerked forward as far as the restraints would allow. “Nonsense…! When did I ever tickle you this badly…?”
Alyssa put her hands on her hips and stared down at her. “Hannah, if I was in your position right now, I’d be unconscious. Take a moment to think about that. Brianna needs my attention.”
(to be continued)
