Michelle came out of her slumber like a hesitant turtle from its shell. The cotton-like fog around her mind receded, and her eyes blinked to life. There was not much to see: a single dusty light illuminated the immediate area around her, leaving everything beyond that in darkness. Almost everything: the dark blue of early night filtered through the unmistakable color and pattern of stained-glass windows. A church? She was in a church?
Wait…why was she waking up? When had she fallen asleep? How―?
That was when her sense of touch started to kick in. Her body rushed to tell her several things at once. First, from the lack of weight and warmth on her top, it was clear she had no shirt on. Pants, socks, and shoes, yes, but no shirt. No bra, either. A flare of panic; social conditioning took over, and she covered herself. Well, she tried to. After only the single attempt to cross her arms over her chest, tactile awareness spread to the corners of her body. She stood with her arms spread out to the sides and her legs pressed tightly together. Ropes pressed into strategic parts of her limbs―her wrists and elbows, and more than one place on her legs. She tried to look at these bindings and discovered one more: another rope or strap ran across her forehead, keeping her head firmly against the surface behind her. For there was a surface; it felt like polished wood.
Michelle’s heart began to race. Someone had kidnapped her. And stripped her! Oh, no no no. She started to scream for help, which told her the final fact about her predicament: she was gagged. She didn’t care. She kept screaming anyway. It was better than doing nothing.
The screaming didn’t have the effect she wanted, but it did have one. Clipped footsteps emerged from behind her, and she tensed. Soon, a robed figure followed. It was dressed in maroon, and the only other features were the hands―looking long-fingered and dexterous―and a stubbled chin in the depths of the hood. Michelle’s voice cut off, and she just stared in terror.
A grin sprang from inside the hood. “You’re awake! Good. We can get down to business.”
Michelle tried to stop her mind from galloping to places she didn’t want it to go. She didn’t want to think about what he might mean. She was sure she’d find out soon enough―but she’d go through a hundred more horrible scenarios if she let herself.
“This church,” he began, pacing, “has particular methods of dealing with sinners. I’m proud to say we have an excellent success record of conversion, partly because we are aggressively evangelical.” While his speech didn’t sound canned, something about it made it seem like he’d said it before. “We’ve selected you to be the next to submit to the process, in the hopes you’ll repent.”
Sinners? She almost wanted to roll her eyes despite the dire situation. What imaginary, trumped-up sins had he conjured in his mind? She was Jewish, and not particularly religious at that. Maybe that was it. Who knew? What did it matter, anyway? It’s not like it meant anything. She supposed he wasn’t going to tell her what she was supposed to repent for. That would make too much sense.
“This is a healing, cathartic ritual, with emphasis on self-reflection.” He walked off to the side. She would have followed him with her eyes if not for the head strap. “We encourage you to view yourself as you are and come to terms with the punishment you’ve brought upon yourself. Only through acceptance of your torment―which is parallel to the torment of being apart from Christ―can you hope to be saved.”
A faint rumbling and not-so-faint squeaking came to her ears. It sounded like he was rolling something across the altar floor. Once he returned, she saw it was a full-length mirror. He parked it directly opposite her, giving her a clear view of herself basking in the thin but harsh light from above.
There she was: her short, brown hair, glasses, and thin face. She looked upon her body, which she’d regarded in the past with varying levels of approval. She was rail-thin and gangly and didn’t weigh much. Her breasts, on the other hand, were round and full, but not ill-proportioned. Other than them, her pale torso was all straight lines without an ounce of fat. Her stomach, while not muscled, was tight and faintly defined, with a navel that she’d always thought of as a bit of a novelty: somewhere in between an innie and an outie.
She was, as she’d felt, stretched in a cross shape―and it was against a cross, an ornate one. She was bound along the wood, but there was a sort of mini platform right under her feet so she could stand. Probably a good thing―otherwise, the ropes would be digging into her from the gravity. Another abnormality in the cross was near the top: directly above the horizontal bar, there was a break in the wood before it resumed at her head. In its place, thin metal bars connected the horizontal piece to the head piece, but from the sides, so that the space below the head piece was just empty air.
“I’m sure you’re wondering,” the twisted monk said, “what such a set-up is for. Why the specific position, why the…erm, choice of dress and lack thereof?” He smirked. “I enjoy the prospect of the unrepentant thinking of exactly what purpose it all serves. They very rarely guess.”
Michelle had indeed been pondering that, but less as an interesting thought experiment and more of a frantic consideration of options. Damn. She’d told herself she wouldn’t do that.
He sidled up to her and slunk to her side, putting his mouth near her ear. She shied away as much as she was able, which wasn’t much. His breath smelled foul. Maybe he didn’t believe in toothpaste.
“This ritual…is prolonged tickling torture.”
The words sunk in slowly, and them doing so while she looked at herself in the mirror had its intended effect. She fully understood the position she was in.
She started to throw herself against the ropes. No, no, no, no! Not that! She hated being tickled! It was as unbearable as pain. It would be bad enough if he just had her cornered in a locked room, but this was so much worse. She wouldn’t be able to protect herself. There weren’t even clothes in the way.
Now it made sense. She was only naked on the top because he was only looking to tickle her. He wasn’t interested in anything else. There would be no distractions.
Seeming unconcerned by her escape attempts, he moved in front of her, blocking the mirror for the time being. “We’ll revisit the self-reflection after a session or two,” he said, right before brandishing his hands. Terrible, terrible weapons. She almost would have rather seen him holding pincers. He lowered them out of her vision, and she thrashed more. Michelle couldn’t even see how close his hands were, given the strap at her head. She wouldn’t know he’d strike until the moment he did.
The first touch of his fingertips against her sides shot a bolt of electricity through her, causing her body to jerk and spasm. And the second. And the third. Then, she lost track as his fingers began to move more independently. They scampered up and down her sides quickly and efficiently, tasting every bit of skin on their way.
The laughter poured out of her right away, stopped only by the gag. She couldn’t keep it in. She never could. Until this point, she’d mostly survived by coming clean about her ticklishness to people from the get-go and putting a hard stop to it with a serious, no-nonsense voice. It came off as rude, but what was her alternative? If she just stammered it, no one took her seriously. It was literally her only option. Well, that or running away. Or punching them.
This man had taken every one of those options from her. Despite her panicked efforts, she could do nothing about his hands playing with her ticklish body. They trekked from her hips to her armpits and back again. They walked up the ridges of her ribs, dug into the tender flesh of her underarms and walked right back down to goose her waist. It didn’t matter. It never mattered where on her sides people poked her, it was all agony.
The gag felt like a tight canvas cloth over her mouth, minimizing the movement of her lips. She did all she could to plead anyway, although she couldn’t even understand herself. She only knew what she intended to say. No! Please, come on! Stop! Fucking stop! Not that he would have if he’d heard her, of course. She squeezed her eyes shut and just shot muffled laughter into the gag.
As talkative as the man had been before, he kept silent now. Maybe he was too focused. She certainly felt his focus. Right now, he was spidering all over her ribcage, expanding and contracting with her frenetic breaths. She squirmed and jerked violently, trying to pull in her elbows again and again. The fact that it kept not working didn’t matter in the slightest. Her impulses didn’t want to listen.
Michelle didn’t know how long it was before he stopped. Time began for her again once he did, seconds ticking along for the length of seconds as opposed to minutes. She took deep breaths and coughed, silently willing the tingling ghosts of his fingers to leave her physical memory. He stepped to one side and revealed the mirror once again. Her sides were starkly pink against the paleness of her front, and her chest heaved. Her hairline and collar shined with sweat; she saw it before she felt it.
“Rejection of God,” he intoned, “carries with it an unfathomable arrogance. To think yourself better, more knowing than the Father of All Creation…” He paused, shaking his head. “As we grow up, as we gain more knowledge, some find it tempting to eschew humility and subservience. But no matter how much we grow, we’re still children of God. Sometimes, we need reminding how much like children we still are. Do you feel that yet?”
A whole helping of bullshit. What was she supposed to do, repent now? Kind of hard with the gag. Too bad, she would say anything to get out of this. She’d agree to anything, take any oaths he wanted. Who cared? Who was going to make her answer for it?
“When you tickle a child,” he continued, “do you consider her sex? Do you see her as woman, or him as man?” He waved his hand in disgust. “No. Forget…” He hovered his hands around her breasts, as though displaying them on stage. “Forget these. Your nakedness is not about allure. If it was, it would be total. This is economical. Your torso is ticklish, so your torso is bare.”
Now he was going full rant. What a loon. Please keep talking, she wanted to say. I will listen to a day-long sermon and stay awake the whole time. Swear to…well you know. Anything. Anything else.
It was not to be. Once he had his say, he reassumed his position. She immediately started protesting and shaking her head.
“Think on what I’ve said,” he advised. “Hopefully you will have made some progress after another session.”
How will you KNOW? she had time to think, right before his hands hit and sent her back into hell. He ravaged her body as if he’d never stopped, and Michelle writhed as if she hadn’t moved all day. As he revisited the length of her sides like they were at home there, she clenched her hands into fists and twisted her arms every which way, hoping to wriggle loose. A long shot, but she was getting desperate. She took every chance to move, even if it did no good. She even jerked from side to side, just to give one set of ribs or one armpit some respite, but all that did was invite even crueler torment on the other side. Her shrieks of laughter took on a frustrated edge as he just. Kept. Tickling.
Then, he stopped again. Well, he didn’t stop, exactly. He moved up to her boobs, and abruptly changed his tactic. He dragged his nails all around their surface, from the bottoms to the sides, past her nipples and back again. It definitely still tickled―light tickling was still bad for her―but at least she could think again.
She giggled something fierce and kept shaking her head. Wasn’t he just saying something about how she shouldn’t be sexualized and forget about her breasts? Unsurprising hypocrisy from a guy, even a psycho like this one. But then again, who knew? Maybe he did just see them as another tickle target.
Whatever his motives, she prayed he would continue. When she’d woken up, she wouldn’t have dreamed she would wish for him to play with her boobs. But that’s the point she was at. She wasn’t kidding when she said anything else.
Still not so lucky. He gave up after only half a minute when he saw the difference in the effect, and returned to her sides, bouncing her back to life. He resumed his pattern of exploring them and got far too comfortable for her liking in doing it. She would have thought doing the same thing over and over would desensitize her. It didn’t. Her sides were like an unending battery, the space between each rib like its own electric node, jolting its own pitch of laughter from her. He scribbled inside her armpits, at one point making camp there for a while, taking full advantage of the immobile pockets of flesh. She would have slammed her head against the wood if she was able, just to make the sensations stop sending her alarm bells to her consciousness. They didn’t seem to understand she couldn’t do anything.
It was more and more of the same: until, one time, when he was at the sides of her waist. Instead of going back up to her ribs, he converged his hands onto her stomach. Switching to her breasts hadn’t done much of anything. This was a different story.
She’d never singled her stomach out as exclusively ticklish or anything; she responded to mischievous pokes there the same way as anywhere else. Still, the brand new area made her buck her body off the cross, straining the ropes further. His fingers delved into her abs, nothing between them and the muscle, and she wailed. While her reaction to him tickling her sides was mostly trying to bring her arms in, when he tickled her stomach, she more wanted to curl up into a ball. Not that that was any more possible.
Stop! Pleeease! Hot tears formed at the corners of her eyes. Michelle had heard before about being tickled to the point of crying. She guessed she was at that point.
Seemingly heartened by this greater success than her boobs, the monk settled into her stomach for fuller exploration. He sent a series of pokes into her upper and lower midriff, which might well have elicited a different shriek every time. Then, his hands darted around like pincers, giving soft, momentary squeezes into her flesh. He brought his nails into play, scribbling all over her belly. That seemed to be one of his favorite techniques, right up there with digging into her abs. But he gave each technique his due. Joy.
He even scratched her belly button, which made her yelp. No one had ever touched her there before. She’d had no idea it was ticklish. Turned out, it was. Horribly so. He gently drew his nail back and forth across her navel, making her shake her head and babble and try to dodge him. Her thin, knobbly arms strained with all their muscle against the bonds holding them, all for a chance at knocking his hand away. No good. And she swore, it was like he tickled even more cruelly every time she tried particularly hard to stop him.
Then―she didn’t know why she didn’t expect this―he gave her a raspberry. His stubble made it so, so much worse. She screamed achingly into her gag, bowing her back as much as she could. It didn’t make much difference in how stretched out her stomach was, and it was there, waiting and helpless, for his second raspberry. His third. His fourth. Tears streamed down her cheeks now, and she considered he might just never stop this time.
He did eventually, of course. He stepped away once again, but then moved to the mirror and pulled it closer to her. Her image grew and came into sharper relief, showing her just how bad of shape she was in. Her stomach now sported the same angry pink stripes as her sides, and her whole torso shined with sweat. Breath after breath came raggedly from her lungs.
“I hope you understand,” he said softly. “Embrace your vulnerability and open yourself up to the Lord. The Son gave himself to the Father on a cross. Why should we think we are too good for that?”
Michelle responded by coughing into the gag. Her mind was dull, absorbing his words without examining them or turning them over. She just accepted everything now.
“I think you are close,” he murmured appreciatively. “One more session ought to do the trick.”
No, she thought tiredly, gaze unfocused. Please. Why me? She didn’t have the energy to protest, though she was sure it would come roaring back at his first touch.
But he didn’t step back in front of her. He walked away toward the back of the altar. Was he going to get something? No, the mirror told her otherwise: he re-emerged behind her. Was he going to tickle her from behind?
“You thought I didn’t know, I suspect,” he said. “Maybe you forgot, yourself.” That’s when he reached through the gap in the cross and squeezed the back of her neck.
The touch bolted straight through her brain. Every muscle tensed to the breaking point, her eyes widened, and a scream caught in her throat.
“Beautiful,” he said, and started squeezing in earnest.
She didn’t laugh so much at first as mewl loudly into the canvas. She didn’t even struggle. That’s how much it locked her body up. Wave after wave of NO crashed into her as his fingers applied agonizing pressure. How did he know?? This was the spot she absolutely couldn’t stand. Who else was ticklish on the back of their neck? He could not have guessed it!
Finally, the sensation hit home, and her head and shoulders went to work. Her shoulders sashayed from side to side trying to dodge. Her head tried to do the same, but that strap held as strong as ever. That’s why it was there, wasn’t it? Not so that she couldn’t look around or had to look into the mirror or something. He had planned this all along.
One shriek shot out after another. She wasn’t sure she was even smiling anymore. It was pure torture, no dancing around it. Not that all of this wasn’t, up till now, but this newest feeling didn’t twist her into some caricature of happiness. No, she just screamed as though being branded. Over and over again.
Michelle watched herself thrust out her chest in a vain attempt to distance herself from his hand, though her form was blurry to her, given the tears. PLEASE, she yelled in her head. NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE!!!!
Eventually, he stopped, but only to reach around the cross and renew his ticklish ministrations to her upper body. She felt her smile come back due to the return to more familiar ticklish territory, but she was still falling apart. Her throat burned raw from screeching and begging, and her skin even felt tender from the constant touch. She still fought to get free, but her arms were bloodless, weak, and partly numb. If only any of those uncomfortable sensations overrode the tickling, she would welcome them. Of course, they did not.
Michelle had never thought, never bothered to itemize her ticklish sides. What a silly notion. However, now that she was being paid careful, methodical attention for so long, she began to notice gradations. Her lower torso drove her ever so slightly more bonkers than her upper torso. Her slim waist was becoming the major source of her cracking sanity, especially when he reached around and played with that newly-discovered ticklish nub in the middle of her stomach.
Her vision cleared whenever her tears escaped her eyes and before new ones formed. She could not spare the discipline to look away from her reflection, even though she knew it would be against his wishes. As he intended, the image burned into her mind. His hands crawling all over her, seeking every little spot that she knew, before he even touched down, would be unbearably ticklish. All the bindings on her arms and legs that ensured he could keep doing what he was doing, with no retribution. As she absorbed through sight the hopelessness of her predicament, she began to sob wretchedly.
The moment she did, the tickling shockingly slowed, then stopped. As she gulped air, she heard him take a breath near her ear, and….
POUND POUND POUND POUND.
The great front doors of the church rattled. A mixture of voices leaked in from the other side, some shouts by the sound of it. Metal, small metal rattled. Handling a lock? A lock! Michelle kept sobbing, but in relief. She was saved!
The monk took a step back. “Did the sound escape?” he whispered to himself. “Or did I lose track of time…?”
He cleared his throat. “No matter,” he said. He moved back in front of her, as he had many times before by now, except his movements were rushed, ungraceful. “It is a shame I’m unable to complete my lesson,” he said. “But I think you have made great progress. Just remember: put your trust in the Lord. Let Him guide you, and be ever humble.” Before the last syllable had gotten out, he was running for the back exit.
In less than a minute, she thought the door had burst open. She wasn’t sure, because the pulse in her neck was beating unusually fast, and bright spots obscured what was happening. She felt herself slipping down, down, down into blackness as footsteps surged up the aisle.
--------------
Later, as they brought her around and cleaned her up, giving her plenty of water and treating her rope burns, the cops came to ask questions―once she was covered up, of course. She hesitantly told them what happened. She was afraid they would laugh, but the cops and paramedics were only sympathetic and even a little scared. At least they knew right away it would be horrible, probably because they saw the shape she was in―or because they were ticklish themselves. But they couldn’t imagine. Not really.
The cops had left, and one of the paramedics was finishing the application of some ointment on her wrist, when Michelle remembered something.
“He…” She tried to work moisture into her mouth, even after all that water. “He was…going to say something. Before they knocked. I need to know…I need him to tell me…”
The paramedic looked surprised. “Honey…I don’t know what he would have said. But how could you want him back just to hear that. Be glad he’s gone, and hope they get him soon.”
Michelle understood the medic’s confusion. She couldn’t explain it herself, just then. Her mind wanted to shut down, stop fighting. But it was like…he put her through that, all that. She wanted, no, needed him to have finished his grand opus. Given the closing monologue. As though it would justify everything, and stop her from needing to ask, nobody in particular, why. Why, why, why?
--------------
Konstantin trudged through sewer water on his custom escape route. He was supremely confident he had succeeded. Even if the police found the trapdoor concealed behind the Michelangelo replica, he would be too far ahead by the time they did. They would be too preoccupied with the girl.
Speaking of whom, he hoped with all his immortal soul that he had done some good for her, made some difference. Secularization was taking hold of the young at record speed, and there were fewer and fewer devout to stem the tide.
He spied his own crude chalk cross marking on the wall and made the climb up the ladder nearby. With a heave, he threw aside the manhole cover and emerged into a deserted alley. His safe house was nearby. Once he―
A telephone rung jarringly from around the corner. He paused. He knew what that was. He had to know the landscape around the area very well. That was the pay phone on streetside.
He was about to continue on his way…but curiosity overtook him. Pay phones were not trackable. There was no reason to worry…
He discarded his dripping robe (it would be the most recognizable) and sloshed toward the sound. He rounded the corner, and indeed no one was at the kiosk. He picked up the receiver, hesitated, and put it to his ear.
“Hello?”
“You’re speaking to a friend,” a deep, calm voice said. “That’s the first thing for you to know. I have a proposition for you and ask that you hear it out.”
Konstantin discreetly checked around him, out of instinct. The man intrigued him. No need to trust him, of course, but nothing could be lost from letting him speak. “Continue.”
“My organization has been following your activities,” the voice went on. “We’re impressed with your…dedication to your craft. We thought you would be interested in meeting with like-minded people. We are great admirers of your methods and practice them ourselves. We’d like to invite you to join us. You can continue your pursuits, but with vast new resources at your disposal.”
Konstantin let that sit for a moment, mind churning with the possibilities. “But are you,” he asked at last, “men of God?”
The voice chuckled. “You could say we have a higher purpose. So. Do I have your attention?”
The monk’s lips curled into a smile.
Wait…why was she waking up? When had she fallen asleep? How―?
That was when her sense of touch started to kick in. Her body rushed to tell her several things at once. First, from the lack of weight and warmth on her top, it was clear she had no shirt on. Pants, socks, and shoes, yes, but no shirt. No bra, either. A flare of panic; social conditioning took over, and she covered herself. Well, she tried to. After only the single attempt to cross her arms over her chest, tactile awareness spread to the corners of her body. She stood with her arms spread out to the sides and her legs pressed tightly together. Ropes pressed into strategic parts of her limbs―her wrists and elbows, and more than one place on her legs. She tried to look at these bindings and discovered one more: another rope or strap ran across her forehead, keeping her head firmly against the surface behind her. For there was a surface; it felt like polished wood.
Michelle’s heart began to race. Someone had kidnapped her. And stripped her! Oh, no no no. She started to scream for help, which told her the final fact about her predicament: she was gagged. She didn’t care. She kept screaming anyway. It was better than doing nothing.
The screaming didn’t have the effect she wanted, but it did have one. Clipped footsteps emerged from behind her, and she tensed. Soon, a robed figure followed. It was dressed in maroon, and the only other features were the hands―looking long-fingered and dexterous―and a stubbled chin in the depths of the hood. Michelle’s voice cut off, and she just stared in terror.
A grin sprang from inside the hood. “You’re awake! Good. We can get down to business.”
Michelle tried to stop her mind from galloping to places she didn’t want it to go. She didn’t want to think about what he might mean. She was sure she’d find out soon enough―but she’d go through a hundred more horrible scenarios if she let herself.
“This church,” he began, pacing, “has particular methods of dealing with sinners. I’m proud to say we have an excellent success record of conversion, partly because we are aggressively evangelical.” While his speech didn’t sound canned, something about it made it seem like he’d said it before. “We’ve selected you to be the next to submit to the process, in the hopes you’ll repent.”
Sinners? She almost wanted to roll her eyes despite the dire situation. What imaginary, trumped-up sins had he conjured in his mind? She was Jewish, and not particularly religious at that. Maybe that was it. Who knew? What did it matter, anyway? It’s not like it meant anything. She supposed he wasn’t going to tell her what she was supposed to repent for. That would make too much sense.
“This is a healing, cathartic ritual, with emphasis on self-reflection.” He walked off to the side. She would have followed him with her eyes if not for the head strap. “We encourage you to view yourself as you are and come to terms with the punishment you’ve brought upon yourself. Only through acceptance of your torment―which is parallel to the torment of being apart from Christ―can you hope to be saved.”
A faint rumbling and not-so-faint squeaking came to her ears. It sounded like he was rolling something across the altar floor. Once he returned, she saw it was a full-length mirror. He parked it directly opposite her, giving her a clear view of herself basking in the thin but harsh light from above.
There she was: her short, brown hair, glasses, and thin face. She looked upon her body, which she’d regarded in the past with varying levels of approval. She was rail-thin and gangly and didn’t weigh much. Her breasts, on the other hand, were round and full, but not ill-proportioned. Other than them, her pale torso was all straight lines without an ounce of fat. Her stomach, while not muscled, was tight and faintly defined, with a navel that she’d always thought of as a bit of a novelty: somewhere in between an innie and an outie.
She was, as she’d felt, stretched in a cross shape―and it was against a cross, an ornate one. She was bound along the wood, but there was a sort of mini platform right under her feet so she could stand. Probably a good thing―otherwise, the ropes would be digging into her from the gravity. Another abnormality in the cross was near the top: directly above the horizontal bar, there was a break in the wood before it resumed at her head. In its place, thin metal bars connected the horizontal piece to the head piece, but from the sides, so that the space below the head piece was just empty air.
“I’m sure you’re wondering,” the twisted monk said, “what such a set-up is for. Why the specific position, why the…erm, choice of dress and lack thereof?” He smirked. “I enjoy the prospect of the unrepentant thinking of exactly what purpose it all serves. They very rarely guess.”
Michelle had indeed been pondering that, but less as an interesting thought experiment and more of a frantic consideration of options. Damn. She’d told herself she wouldn’t do that.
He sidled up to her and slunk to her side, putting his mouth near her ear. She shied away as much as she was able, which wasn’t much. His breath smelled foul. Maybe he didn’t believe in toothpaste.
“This ritual…is prolonged tickling torture.”
The words sunk in slowly, and them doing so while she looked at herself in the mirror had its intended effect. She fully understood the position she was in.
She started to throw herself against the ropes. No, no, no, no! Not that! She hated being tickled! It was as unbearable as pain. It would be bad enough if he just had her cornered in a locked room, but this was so much worse. She wouldn’t be able to protect herself. There weren’t even clothes in the way.
Now it made sense. She was only naked on the top because he was only looking to tickle her. He wasn’t interested in anything else. There would be no distractions.
Seeming unconcerned by her escape attempts, he moved in front of her, blocking the mirror for the time being. “We’ll revisit the self-reflection after a session or two,” he said, right before brandishing his hands. Terrible, terrible weapons. She almost would have rather seen him holding pincers. He lowered them out of her vision, and she thrashed more. Michelle couldn’t even see how close his hands were, given the strap at her head. She wouldn’t know he’d strike until the moment he did.
The first touch of his fingertips against her sides shot a bolt of electricity through her, causing her body to jerk and spasm. And the second. And the third. Then, she lost track as his fingers began to move more independently. They scampered up and down her sides quickly and efficiently, tasting every bit of skin on their way.
The laughter poured out of her right away, stopped only by the gag. She couldn’t keep it in. She never could. Until this point, she’d mostly survived by coming clean about her ticklishness to people from the get-go and putting a hard stop to it with a serious, no-nonsense voice. It came off as rude, but what was her alternative? If she just stammered it, no one took her seriously. It was literally her only option. Well, that or running away. Or punching them.
This man had taken every one of those options from her. Despite her panicked efforts, she could do nothing about his hands playing with her ticklish body. They trekked from her hips to her armpits and back again. They walked up the ridges of her ribs, dug into the tender flesh of her underarms and walked right back down to goose her waist. It didn’t matter. It never mattered where on her sides people poked her, it was all agony.
The gag felt like a tight canvas cloth over her mouth, minimizing the movement of her lips. She did all she could to plead anyway, although she couldn’t even understand herself. She only knew what she intended to say. No! Please, come on! Stop! Fucking stop! Not that he would have if he’d heard her, of course. She squeezed her eyes shut and just shot muffled laughter into the gag.
As talkative as the man had been before, he kept silent now. Maybe he was too focused. She certainly felt his focus. Right now, he was spidering all over her ribcage, expanding and contracting with her frenetic breaths. She squirmed and jerked violently, trying to pull in her elbows again and again. The fact that it kept not working didn’t matter in the slightest. Her impulses didn’t want to listen.
Michelle didn’t know how long it was before he stopped. Time began for her again once he did, seconds ticking along for the length of seconds as opposed to minutes. She took deep breaths and coughed, silently willing the tingling ghosts of his fingers to leave her physical memory. He stepped to one side and revealed the mirror once again. Her sides were starkly pink against the paleness of her front, and her chest heaved. Her hairline and collar shined with sweat; she saw it before she felt it.
“Rejection of God,” he intoned, “carries with it an unfathomable arrogance. To think yourself better, more knowing than the Father of All Creation…” He paused, shaking his head. “As we grow up, as we gain more knowledge, some find it tempting to eschew humility and subservience. But no matter how much we grow, we’re still children of God. Sometimes, we need reminding how much like children we still are. Do you feel that yet?”
A whole helping of bullshit. What was she supposed to do, repent now? Kind of hard with the gag. Too bad, she would say anything to get out of this. She’d agree to anything, take any oaths he wanted. Who cared? Who was going to make her answer for it?
“When you tickle a child,” he continued, “do you consider her sex? Do you see her as woman, or him as man?” He waved his hand in disgust. “No. Forget…” He hovered his hands around her breasts, as though displaying them on stage. “Forget these. Your nakedness is not about allure. If it was, it would be total. This is economical. Your torso is ticklish, so your torso is bare.”
Now he was going full rant. What a loon. Please keep talking, she wanted to say. I will listen to a day-long sermon and stay awake the whole time. Swear to…well you know. Anything. Anything else.
It was not to be. Once he had his say, he reassumed his position. She immediately started protesting and shaking her head.
“Think on what I’ve said,” he advised. “Hopefully you will have made some progress after another session.”
How will you KNOW? she had time to think, right before his hands hit and sent her back into hell. He ravaged her body as if he’d never stopped, and Michelle writhed as if she hadn’t moved all day. As he revisited the length of her sides like they were at home there, she clenched her hands into fists and twisted her arms every which way, hoping to wriggle loose. A long shot, but she was getting desperate. She took every chance to move, even if it did no good. She even jerked from side to side, just to give one set of ribs or one armpit some respite, but all that did was invite even crueler torment on the other side. Her shrieks of laughter took on a frustrated edge as he just. Kept. Tickling.
Then, he stopped again. Well, he didn’t stop, exactly. He moved up to her boobs, and abruptly changed his tactic. He dragged his nails all around their surface, from the bottoms to the sides, past her nipples and back again. It definitely still tickled―light tickling was still bad for her―but at least she could think again.
She giggled something fierce and kept shaking her head. Wasn’t he just saying something about how she shouldn’t be sexualized and forget about her breasts? Unsurprising hypocrisy from a guy, even a psycho like this one. But then again, who knew? Maybe he did just see them as another tickle target.
Whatever his motives, she prayed he would continue. When she’d woken up, she wouldn’t have dreamed she would wish for him to play with her boobs. But that’s the point she was at. She wasn’t kidding when she said anything else.
Still not so lucky. He gave up after only half a minute when he saw the difference in the effect, and returned to her sides, bouncing her back to life. He resumed his pattern of exploring them and got far too comfortable for her liking in doing it. She would have thought doing the same thing over and over would desensitize her. It didn’t. Her sides were like an unending battery, the space between each rib like its own electric node, jolting its own pitch of laughter from her. He scribbled inside her armpits, at one point making camp there for a while, taking full advantage of the immobile pockets of flesh. She would have slammed her head against the wood if she was able, just to make the sensations stop sending her alarm bells to her consciousness. They didn’t seem to understand she couldn’t do anything.
It was more and more of the same: until, one time, when he was at the sides of her waist. Instead of going back up to her ribs, he converged his hands onto her stomach. Switching to her breasts hadn’t done much of anything. This was a different story.
She’d never singled her stomach out as exclusively ticklish or anything; she responded to mischievous pokes there the same way as anywhere else. Still, the brand new area made her buck her body off the cross, straining the ropes further. His fingers delved into her abs, nothing between them and the muscle, and she wailed. While her reaction to him tickling her sides was mostly trying to bring her arms in, when he tickled her stomach, she more wanted to curl up into a ball. Not that that was any more possible.
Stop! Pleeease! Hot tears formed at the corners of her eyes. Michelle had heard before about being tickled to the point of crying. She guessed she was at that point.
Seemingly heartened by this greater success than her boobs, the monk settled into her stomach for fuller exploration. He sent a series of pokes into her upper and lower midriff, which might well have elicited a different shriek every time. Then, his hands darted around like pincers, giving soft, momentary squeezes into her flesh. He brought his nails into play, scribbling all over her belly. That seemed to be one of his favorite techniques, right up there with digging into her abs. But he gave each technique his due. Joy.
He even scratched her belly button, which made her yelp. No one had ever touched her there before. She’d had no idea it was ticklish. Turned out, it was. Horribly so. He gently drew his nail back and forth across her navel, making her shake her head and babble and try to dodge him. Her thin, knobbly arms strained with all their muscle against the bonds holding them, all for a chance at knocking his hand away. No good. And she swore, it was like he tickled even more cruelly every time she tried particularly hard to stop him.
Then―she didn’t know why she didn’t expect this―he gave her a raspberry. His stubble made it so, so much worse. She screamed achingly into her gag, bowing her back as much as she could. It didn’t make much difference in how stretched out her stomach was, and it was there, waiting and helpless, for his second raspberry. His third. His fourth. Tears streamed down her cheeks now, and she considered he might just never stop this time.
He did eventually, of course. He stepped away once again, but then moved to the mirror and pulled it closer to her. Her image grew and came into sharper relief, showing her just how bad of shape she was in. Her stomach now sported the same angry pink stripes as her sides, and her whole torso shined with sweat. Breath after breath came raggedly from her lungs.
“I hope you understand,” he said softly. “Embrace your vulnerability and open yourself up to the Lord. The Son gave himself to the Father on a cross. Why should we think we are too good for that?”
Michelle responded by coughing into the gag. Her mind was dull, absorbing his words without examining them or turning them over. She just accepted everything now.
“I think you are close,” he murmured appreciatively. “One more session ought to do the trick.”
No, she thought tiredly, gaze unfocused. Please. Why me? She didn’t have the energy to protest, though she was sure it would come roaring back at his first touch.
But he didn’t step back in front of her. He walked away toward the back of the altar. Was he going to get something? No, the mirror told her otherwise: he re-emerged behind her. Was he going to tickle her from behind?
“You thought I didn’t know, I suspect,” he said. “Maybe you forgot, yourself.” That’s when he reached through the gap in the cross and squeezed the back of her neck.
The touch bolted straight through her brain. Every muscle tensed to the breaking point, her eyes widened, and a scream caught in her throat.
“Beautiful,” he said, and started squeezing in earnest.
She didn’t laugh so much at first as mewl loudly into the canvas. She didn’t even struggle. That’s how much it locked her body up. Wave after wave of NO crashed into her as his fingers applied agonizing pressure. How did he know?? This was the spot she absolutely couldn’t stand. Who else was ticklish on the back of their neck? He could not have guessed it!
Finally, the sensation hit home, and her head and shoulders went to work. Her shoulders sashayed from side to side trying to dodge. Her head tried to do the same, but that strap held as strong as ever. That’s why it was there, wasn’t it? Not so that she couldn’t look around or had to look into the mirror or something. He had planned this all along.
One shriek shot out after another. She wasn’t sure she was even smiling anymore. It was pure torture, no dancing around it. Not that all of this wasn’t, up till now, but this newest feeling didn’t twist her into some caricature of happiness. No, she just screamed as though being branded. Over and over again.
Michelle watched herself thrust out her chest in a vain attempt to distance herself from his hand, though her form was blurry to her, given the tears. PLEASE, she yelled in her head. NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE!!!!
Eventually, he stopped, but only to reach around the cross and renew his ticklish ministrations to her upper body. She felt her smile come back due to the return to more familiar ticklish territory, but she was still falling apart. Her throat burned raw from screeching and begging, and her skin even felt tender from the constant touch. She still fought to get free, but her arms were bloodless, weak, and partly numb. If only any of those uncomfortable sensations overrode the tickling, she would welcome them. Of course, they did not.
Michelle had never thought, never bothered to itemize her ticklish sides. What a silly notion. However, now that she was being paid careful, methodical attention for so long, she began to notice gradations. Her lower torso drove her ever so slightly more bonkers than her upper torso. Her slim waist was becoming the major source of her cracking sanity, especially when he reached around and played with that newly-discovered ticklish nub in the middle of her stomach.
Her vision cleared whenever her tears escaped her eyes and before new ones formed. She could not spare the discipline to look away from her reflection, even though she knew it would be against his wishes. As he intended, the image burned into her mind. His hands crawling all over her, seeking every little spot that she knew, before he even touched down, would be unbearably ticklish. All the bindings on her arms and legs that ensured he could keep doing what he was doing, with no retribution. As she absorbed through sight the hopelessness of her predicament, she began to sob wretchedly.
The moment she did, the tickling shockingly slowed, then stopped. As she gulped air, she heard him take a breath near her ear, and….
POUND POUND POUND POUND.
The great front doors of the church rattled. A mixture of voices leaked in from the other side, some shouts by the sound of it. Metal, small metal rattled. Handling a lock? A lock! Michelle kept sobbing, but in relief. She was saved!
The monk took a step back. “Did the sound escape?” he whispered to himself. “Or did I lose track of time…?”
He cleared his throat. “No matter,” he said. He moved back in front of her, as he had many times before by now, except his movements were rushed, ungraceful. “It is a shame I’m unable to complete my lesson,” he said. “But I think you have made great progress. Just remember: put your trust in the Lord. Let Him guide you, and be ever humble.” Before the last syllable had gotten out, he was running for the back exit.
In less than a minute, she thought the door had burst open. She wasn’t sure, because the pulse in her neck was beating unusually fast, and bright spots obscured what was happening. She felt herself slipping down, down, down into blackness as footsteps surged up the aisle.
--------------
Later, as they brought her around and cleaned her up, giving her plenty of water and treating her rope burns, the cops came to ask questions―once she was covered up, of course. She hesitantly told them what happened. She was afraid they would laugh, but the cops and paramedics were only sympathetic and even a little scared. At least they knew right away it would be horrible, probably because they saw the shape she was in―or because they were ticklish themselves. But they couldn’t imagine. Not really.
The cops had left, and one of the paramedics was finishing the application of some ointment on her wrist, when Michelle remembered something.
“He…” She tried to work moisture into her mouth, even after all that water. “He was…going to say something. Before they knocked. I need to know…I need him to tell me…”
The paramedic looked surprised. “Honey…I don’t know what he would have said. But how could you want him back just to hear that. Be glad he’s gone, and hope they get him soon.”
Michelle understood the medic’s confusion. She couldn’t explain it herself, just then. Her mind wanted to shut down, stop fighting. But it was like…he put her through that, all that. She wanted, no, needed him to have finished his grand opus. Given the closing monologue. As though it would justify everything, and stop her from needing to ask, nobody in particular, why. Why, why, why?
--------------
Konstantin trudged through sewer water on his custom escape route. He was supremely confident he had succeeded. Even if the police found the trapdoor concealed behind the Michelangelo replica, he would be too far ahead by the time they did. They would be too preoccupied with the girl.
Speaking of whom, he hoped with all his immortal soul that he had done some good for her, made some difference. Secularization was taking hold of the young at record speed, and there were fewer and fewer devout to stem the tide.
He spied his own crude chalk cross marking on the wall and made the climb up the ladder nearby. With a heave, he threw aside the manhole cover and emerged into a deserted alley. His safe house was nearby. Once he―
A telephone rung jarringly from around the corner. He paused. He knew what that was. He had to know the landscape around the area very well. That was the pay phone on streetside.
He was about to continue on his way…but curiosity overtook him. Pay phones were not trackable. There was no reason to worry…
He discarded his dripping robe (it would be the most recognizable) and sloshed toward the sound. He rounded the corner, and indeed no one was at the kiosk. He picked up the receiver, hesitated, and put it to his ear.
“Hello?”
“You’re speaking to a friend,” a deep, calm voice said. “That’s the first thing for you to know. I have a proposition for you and ask that you hear it out.”
Konstantin discreetly checked around him, out of instinct. The man intrigued him. No need to trust him, of course, but nothing could be lost from letting him speak. “Continue.”
“My organization has been following your activities,” the voice went on. “We’re impressed with your…dedication to your craft. We thought you would be interested in meeting with like-minded people. We are great admirers of your methods and practice them ourselves. We’d like to invite you to join us. You can continue your pursuits, but with vast new resources at your disposal.”
Konstantin let that sit for a moment, mind churning with the possibilities. “But are you,” he asked at last, “men of God?”
The voice chuckled. “You could say we have a higher purpose. So. Do I have your attention?”
The monk’s lips curled into a smile.
