Strelnikov
4th Level Red Feather
- Joined
- May 7, 2001
- Messages
- 1,820
- Points
- 0
by Strelnikov
Copyright 2003 by the author
Well, that’s that, thought Emily MacDonald as the movers drove away from the house. This is home now.
Emily just missed being beautiful. The elements were all there – she was a petite girl with a trim and shapely figure, a luxuriant mane of fiery red hair, bright green eyes, skin so fair it seemed almost translucent. But there was something about her…
No one had expected Emily to survive the car wreck that killed her mother and grandmother. That she had was a testament to the skill of the EMT’s and medical people who had worked on her, and to her own amazing level of vitality. The reconstructive surgery had been superb. It took close inspection – a degree of familiarity she would not allow – to see the fine scars, nearly invisible against her fair skin, that started in her hairline and extended down her body to her upper thighs. The disfiguring scars were inside, where they didn’t show.
She had spent three months in the hospital, and nearly a year in rehab. Emily’s old friends had visited her in the hospital at first, but she hadn’t encouraged them. They had all drifted away, long before she was released to complete her convalescence at home. Not that Emily minded – she was a different girl after the wreck.
Her main social outlet was Science Fiction conventions. She attended about one a month, driving there in an elderly Toyota that she had inherited from her grandmother. She liked the cons. Like many con attendees, she used a “badge name” – for the duration of the weekend, she was simply Maureen. As was customary, the other attendees accepted her as such and asked no questions she was unwilling to answer.
Her father had taken his 20-and-out from the State Troopers and found a job with the Tieson City Police Department. They had moved as Emily was finishing her convalescence and getting ready to start back to school. She would begin her senior year at Tieson City High School in two weeks. It was an ending of sorts, but a new beginning too.
Speaking of which… Her father had already started his new job, and had delegated the move-in to Emily. She should really start unpacking. But she still wasn’t physically back to 100%. She would wait until he came home and was available to help. Until then, she would do a little exploring.
Should she take the Toyota? No – she would get a better feel for the place on her bicycle. The late August day was warm and sunny. She changed into jeans shorts and an old, soft gray t-shirt, stepped back into her sandals, and went to the garage for her bicycle and helmet.
Tickle Street (what an odd name!) had been built about 20 years ago, 27 two-story suburban houses on roughly half-acre lots. It was somewhat isolated. It ran a quarter-mile eastward from Johnson’s Ferry Road, with a cul-de-sac at the end. To the east, past the cul-de-sac, Owl Creek ran south-to-north in a steep ravine. There was a wooded area, roughly a mile square, to the north. South of the street was a municipal park. Emily’s new home was about midway along the north side of the street.
As she mounted the bike, a young woman sprinted past the house headed west. She was fair-skinned, freckled, athletic looking, with dark hair worn in a page bob. She wore jogging shorts, a tank top and sneakers, and she was running flat out.
Three other girls, similarly dressed, pursued her. These three were tanned, with long dark hair – sisters from the look of them. They caught up with the first girl three houses down. There was a brief, silent struggle, and the first girl wound up on her back with one of the others straddling her waist and another holding her hands pinned over her head. The third sister grabbed the girl’s ankles in an arm lock and pulled off her shoes and socks.
“VICKIEEE! VERONICA! NOOOOO!” the first girl yelled.
The girl on top and the one holding the wrists – twins, Emily saw now – shared the response between them.
“Hey, Joanna…”
“…you thought you…”
“…could get away…”
“…from us but…”
“…WE GOTCHA ANYWAY!” they finished in chorus.
The third girl flicked her fingernails along the bottom of one bare foot, toes to heel.
”Hehehe! Brittanee-hehe! Sta-hahaha-ap!” her victim begged.
In response, Brittany scrabbled her nails on the girl’s arches, just in front of the heels. Joanna laughed her head off at the top of her lungs.
Vicky pushed up the bottom of the laughing Joanna’s tank top and tickled Joanna’s sides, then onto the tummy, crossing over, and back to the ticklish sides. She tickled up and down the ribcage and the sides, over and over, while Joanna howled with forced mirth. Veronica switched to a one-hand grip on Joanna’s wrists, shifted her weight to anchor it, and reached down to circle a single fingernail around the girl’s navel. Joanna arched her back and laughed like a madwoman.
Tickle Street indeed! I wonder what that’s all about? Well, it’s none of my business, thought Emily as she cycled past them, the ticklish laughter fading in the distance.
She came to Johnson’s Ferry Road at the head of the street. The road, she knew, ran north to the interstate and beyond to the bridge over the river (the ferry was long gone) and in the other direction toward downtown Tieson City. She turned left and headed south. The park, she saw, was in a bend of the creek, which bordered it on the east and south. It had a playground, outdoor basketball and tennis courts, a softball diamond, and a good-sized swimming pool, now full of children. Across the bridge, south of the creek, was the high school, built in the red brick Federal style favored by the Depression-era WPA. Then a section of older houses, and finally Main Street and the original business district.
Tieson City was a former farm-to-market town that had morphed into a bedroom community when the interstate came through 40 years ago. The generica – fast food places, grocery stores, chain drug stores, car lots, discount stores and the like – were out near the interstate. The businesses downtown specialized in providing personalized service to local customers and appeared to be doing well. The mercantile store had been walmarted out of business – the building was now the public library. But she saw a barber shop and a hairdresser, full-service auto repair, another place that serviced bicycles and lawn mowers, two insurance agencies, a florist, jeweler, dry cleaner, hardware, drug store. The drug store, she saw, had a soda fountain – apparently the owner wanted to give potential customers another reason to trade with him rather than with the chains out by the interstate.
Emily cycled past the city hall complex, police and fire station, post office, and continued to the old railroad depot. The trains hadn’t run in years – the building was now a local museum. She stopped and discovered that it held boring local trivia – it was mainly a social club for blue-haired old ladies who had lived in Tieson City their whole lives.
There was a small liberal arts college just outside town, but exploring that could wait. By now, it was mid-afternoon, and she had skipped lunch. She decided to check out the soda fountain and then head home.
ROSEN’S REXALL PHARMACY, the sign said, and underneath, Soda Fountain – Soup and Sandwiches. Inside, the place was about what she had expected. Along the left wall was a sales counter with inexpensive jewelry, watch bands, reading glasses and so forth, flanked on each end by a greeting card rack and a magazine rack. Just past the magazine rack was the lunch counter and soda fountain, with two marble-topped tables and bent-wire chairs beyond. The center of the store had the usual drug store stuff – over-the-counter medicines, rupture trusses, corn plasters, liniments, cheap toys, hair goop, sunglasses and sunblock. The pharmacy counter was in the back of the store.
Emily walked past the soda fountain and saw a ball cap and an apron resting on the end of the counter, a pair of white backless sneakers on the floor below. Otherwise, the place seemed empty. She was about to call out when…
There was a burst of soprano laughter from somewhere in the back of the store. It faded to giggles, then back to wild uncontrolled laughter again. It went on and on.
Emily followed the sound to the open door of what appeared to be a stock room. She peeked inside and saw two young women, one with shoulder-length ash blonde hair, the other with long dark hair. They were sitting on cardboard crates. The blonde, she saw, had her bare feet in the other girl’s lap, her ankles trapped by a simple leg-lock. The brunette tickled the blonde’s feet with great skill and enthusiasm, producing streams of helpless ticklish laughter.
Emily backed away. She hated being tickled – she detested the sensation and the loss of control. She was about to leave when a male voice said, “Can I help you, young lady?”
The speaker was in his late 40’s, with thinning hair that was turning from dark to gray. He wore a pharmacist’s smock – the proprietor, apparently.
“Oh… Hi. I came in to get a milk shake, but…” In the back room, the ticklish laughter continued. If anything, it was louder now – the blonde was really getting it!
“SARA!” he shouted. The laughter stopped instantly.
“Yes, Daddy?”
“You and Candice can play later. Right now, you’re supposed to be working – and you’ve got a customer!”
The two girls came out of the back room, poking each other in the ribs and giggling – they obviously weren’t afraid of their boss. The blonde girl, Emily noticed, was a little beauty, with crystal blue eyes and a very trim and shapely body. The other had long dark brown hair, beautiful green eyes and a deep tan. She was built like Dolly Parton: a small girl with a narrow waist and amazing upper body development. Both wore khaki shorts and white collared shirts with Rosen’s Rx embroidered on the front.
“Hi. I’m Candice Wade,” the blonde said. “What can I get for you?” She stepped into the shoes at the end of the counter and put on the apron and cap while her friend took a seat at the counter next to Emily. “I’m Sara Rosen – my folks own this place,” the other girl said.
Emily introduced herself and ordered a chocolate milkshake. The others stayed to pass the time as she drank it. Both, she found out, would be seniors at TCHS this year. And they were neighbors – Sara lived across Tickle Street from Emily’s new home, and Candice lived on the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. Sara and Candice had been working part-time at the drug store since they were 16. Candice had inherited her job from her older sister, Nicole, when the older girl went away to college; it was that sort of place.
Emily said little. She wanted little to do with her classmates, rebuffed their advances politely, without comment or elaboration. She kept to herself and minded her own business, and required the same courtesy from everyone else.
Her milkshake finished, she cycled back north on Johnson’s Ferry Road toward home. Daywatch at the TCPD ended at 3:30 PM, her father would go off shift soon, and she wanted to be at home when he got there.
As she was opening the garage door, she heard a commotion across the street and two doors down – a male laugh, raised female voices, and… more female laughter! More tickling? She crossed the street to investigate.
A pretty little blonde girl in shorts and t-shirt was sprawled on her back on the front porch, struggling, feet in the air, with a big young guy with short brown hair standing over her, holding her ankles in an arm lock. He tickled her feet with his free hand – the girl was red faced, laughing helplessly. Another girl, an attractive hazel-eyed brunette with blonde streaks in her long brown hair, yanked at his arm, trying to get him to turn loose of the blonde. “Michael! STOP IT! Leave Nicole alone!” she shouted. He ignored her and kept on tickling while Nicole laughed and laughed.
By now the tickle torture had been going on for three or four minutes. The blonde had stopped struggling – she just laid there, laughing her head off as his fingers flicked across her ticklish soles. The brunette, frustrated, kicked the guy (her brother, apparently) in the butt. She was barefoot, so she didn’t do him any harm, but he instantly turned the blonde loose and rounded on her. She turned away and ran for it.
But he caught her and hooked her legs out from under her, plopped her face down on the lawn. He straddled her hips facing aft, grabbed a foot and tickled it, and now the brunettte was laughing her head off at the top of her lungs. He had obviously done this before – he knew where the ticklish spots were, and tickled them all.
The blonde – Nicole? – had gotten her breath back by then, and ran up to him. But she spotted Emily standing there and stopped. “Michael! MICHAEL! Stop! We have a visitor!” she said.
Michael looked up, still tickling. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Michael Gabreski, this is my sister Melissa and her friend Nicole Wade. Are you our new neighbor?”
Melissa just laughed, struggling desperately to escape. But with one leg out of play, she didn’t have much leverage, and besides, he had to outweigh her by at least 100 lbs.
“Er… yes, I’m Emily MacDonald,” she said. “Don’t you think you ought to let her go?”
“Nah… It’s the first time this week, she’ll be OK,” he said, and kept on tickling.
Melissa laughed, and laughed some more, red faced, tears of laughter streaming down her face. She wasn’t struggling any more – all the fight had been tickled out of her.
But he relented and quit. He stood and gave Melissa a hand up. “Care to join us?” he asked.
Emily saw that he was looking at her sandaled feet. “Maybe later,” she lied, and backed away.
She saw her father’s black pickup turn into their driveway and hurried home.
“Hi, Emily!” he called out. “Anything exciting happen today?”
“Not really,” she replied. He’d never believe it anyway – a street infested with tickle maniacs! Is it the name? What is it about this place?
***THE END***
Copyright 2003 by the author
Well, that’s that, thought Emily MacDonald as the movers drove away from the house. This is home now.
Emily just missed being beautiful. The elements were all there – she was a petite girl with a trim and shapely figure, a luxuriant mane of fiery red hair, bright green eyes, skin so fair it seemed almost translucent. But there was something about her…
No one had expected Emily to survive the car wreck that killed her mother and grandmother. That she had was a testament to the skill of the EMT’s and medical people who had worked on her, and to her own amazing level of vitality. The reconstructive surgery had been superb. It took close inspection – a degree of familiarity she would not allow – to see the fine scars, nearly invisible against her fair skin, that started in her hairline and extended down her body to her upper thighs. The disfiguring scars were inside, where they didn’t show.
She had spent three months in the hospital, and nearly a year in rehab. Emily’s old friends had visited her in the hospital at first, but she hadn’t encouraged them. They had all drifted away, long before she was released to complete her convalescence at home. Not that Emily minded – she was a different girl after the wreck.
Her main social outlet was Science Fiction conventions. She attended about one a month, driving there in an elderly Toyota that she had inherited from her grandmother. She liked the cons. Like many con attendees, she used a “badge name” – for the duration of the weekend, she was simply Maureen. As was customary, the other attendees accepted her as such and asked no questions she was unwilling to answer.
Her father had taken his 20-and-out from the State Troopers and found a job with the Tieson City Police Department. They had moved as Emily was finishing her convalescence and getting ready to start back to school. She would begin her senior year at Tieson City High School in two weeks. It was an ending of sorts, but a new beginning too.
Speaking of which… Her father had already started his new job, and had delegated the move-in to Emily. She should really start unpacking. But she still wasn’t physically back to 100%. She would wait until he came home and was available to help. Until then, she would do a little exploring.
Should she take the Toyota? No – she would get a better feel for the place on her bicycle. The late August day was warm and sunny. She changed into jeans shorts and an old, soft gray t-shirt, stepped back into her sandals, and went to the garage for her bicycle and helmet.
Tickle Street (what an odd name!) had been built about 20 years ago, 27 two-story suburban houses on roughly half-acre lots. It was somewhat isolated. It ran a quarter-mile eastward from Johnson’s Ferry Road, with a cul-de-sac at the end. To the east, past the cul-de-sac, Owl Creek ran south-to-north in a steep ravine. There was a wooded area, roughly a mile square, to the north. South of the street was a municipal park. Emily’s new home was about midway along the north side of the street.
As she mounted the bike, a young woman sprinted past the house headed west. She was fair-skinned, freckled, athletic looking, with dark hair worn in a page bob. She wore jogging shorts, a tank top and sneakers, and she was running flat out.
Three other girls, similarly dressed, pursued her. These three were tanned, with long dark hair – sisters from the look of them. They caught up with the first girl three houses down. There was a brief, silent struggle, and the first girl wound up on her back with one of the others straddling her waist and another holding her hands pinned over her head. The third sister grabbed the girl’s ankles in an arm lock and pulled off her shoes and socks.
“VICKIEEE! VERONICA! NOOOOO!” the first girl yelled.
The girl on top and the one holding the wrists – twins, Emily saw now – shared the response between them.
“Hey, Joanna…”
“…you thought you…”
“…could get away…”
“…from us but…”
“…WE GOTCHA ANYWAY!” they finished in chorus.
The third girl flicked her fingernails along the bottom of one bare foot, toes to heel.
”Hehehe! Brittanee-hehe! Sta-hahaha-ap!” her victim begged.
In response, Brittany scrabbled her nails on the girl’s arches, just in front of the heels. Joanna laughed her head off at the top of her lungs.
Vicky pushed up the bottom of the laughing Joanna’s tank top and tickled Joanna’s sides, then onto the tummy, crossing over, and back to the ticklish sides. She tickled up and down the ribcage and the sides, over and over, while Joanna howled with forced mirth. Veronica switched to a one-hand grip on Joanna’s wrists, shifted her weight to anchor it, and reached down to circle a single fingernail around the girl’s navel. Joanna arched her back and laughed like a madwoman.
Tickle Street indeed! I wonder what that’s all about? Well, it’s none of my business, thought Emily as she cycled past them, the ticklish laughter fading in the distance.
She came to Johnson’s Ferry Road at the head of the street. The road, she knew, ran north to the interstate and beyond to the bridge over the river (the ferry was long gone) and in the other direction toward downtown Tieson City. She turned left and headed south. The park, she saw, was in a bend of the creek, which bordered it on the east and south. It had a playground, outdoor basketball and tennis courts, a softball diamond, and a good-sized swimming pool, now full of children. Across the bridge, south of the creek, was the high school, built in the red brick Federal style favored by the Depression-era WPA. Then a section of older houses, and finally Main Street and the original business district.
Tieson City was a former farm-to-market town that had morphed into a bedroom community when the interstate came through 40 years ago. The generica – fast food places, grocery stores, chain drug stores, car lots, discount stores and the like – were out near the interstate. The businesses downtown specialized in providing personalized service to local customers and appeared to be doing well. The mercantile store had been walmarted out of business – the building was now the public library. But she saw a barber shop and a hairdresser, full-service auto repair, another place that serviced bicycles and lawn mowers, two insurance agencies, a florist, jeweler, dry cleaner, hardware, drug store. The drug store, she saw, had a soda fountain – apparently the owner wanted to give potential customers another reason to trade with him rather than with the chains out by the interstate.
Emily cycled past the city hall complex, police and fire station, post office, and continued to the old railroad depot. The trains hadn’t run in years – the building was now a local museum. She stopped and discovered that it held boring local trivia – it was mainly a social club for blue-haired old ladies who had lived in Tieson City their whole lives.
There was a small liberal arts college just outside town, but exploring that could wait. By now, it was mid-afternoon, and she had skipped lunch. She decided to check out the soda fountain and then head home.
ROSEN’S REXALL PHARMACY, the sign said, and underneath, Soda Fountain – Soup and Sandwiches. Inside, the place was about what she had expected. Along the left wall was a sales counter with inexpensive jewelry, watch bands, reading glasses and so forth, flanked on each end by a greeting card rack and a magazine rack. Just past the magazine rack was the lunch counter and soda fountain, with two marble-topped tables and bent-wire chairs beyond. The center of the store had the usual drug store stuff – over-the-counter medicines, rupture trusses, corn plasters, liniments, cheap toys, hair goop, sunglasses and sunblock. The pharmacy counter was in the back of the store.
Emily walked past the soda fountain and saw a ball cap and an apron resting on the end of the counter, a pair of white backless sneakers on the floor below. Otherwise, the place seemed empty. She was about to call out when…
There was a burst of soprano laughter from somewhere in the back of the store. It faded to giggles, then back to wild uncontrolled laughter again. It went on and on.
Emily followed the sound to the open door of what appeared to be a stock room. She peeked inside and saw two young women, one with shoulder-length ash blonde hair, the other with long dark hair. They were sitting on cardboard crates. The blonde, she saw, had her bare feet in the other girl’s lap, her ankles trapped by a simple leg-lock. The brunette tickled the blonde’s feet with great skill and enthusiasm, producing streams of helpless ticklish laughter.
Emily backed away. She hated being tickled – she detested the sensation and the loss of control. She was about to leave when a male voice said, “Can I help you, young lady?”
The speaker was in his late 40’s, with thinning hair that was turning from dark to gray. He wore a pharmacist’s smock – the proprietor, apparently.
“Oh… Hi. I came in to get a milk shake, but…” In the back room, the ticklish laughter continued. If anything, it was louder now – the blonde was really getting it!
“SARA!” he shouted. The laughter stopped instantly.
“Yes, Daddy?”
“You and Candice can play later. Right now, you’re supposed to be working – and you’ve got a customer!”
The two girls came out of the back room, poking each other in the ribs and giggling – they obviously weren’t afraid of their boss. The blonde girl, Emily noticed, was a little beauty, with crystal blue eyes and a very trim and shapely body. The other had long dark brown hair, beautiful green eyes and a deep tan. She was built like Dolly Parton: a small girl with a narrow waist and amazing upper body development. Both wore khaki shorts and white collared shirts with Rosen’s Rx embroidered on the front.
“Hi. I’m Candice Wade,” the blonde said. “What can I get for you?” She stepped into the shoes at the end of the counter and put on the apron and cap while her friend took a seat at the counter next to Emily. “I’m Sara Rosen – my folks own this place,” the other girl said.
Emily introduced herself and ordered a chocolate milkshake. The others stayed to pass the time as she drank it. Both, she found out, would be seniors at TCHS this year. And they were neighbors – Sara lived across Tickle Street from Emily’s new home, and Candice lived on the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. Sara and Candice had been working part-time at the drug store since they were 16. Candice had inherited her job from her older sister, Nicole, when the older girl went away to college; it was that sort of place.
Emily said little. She wanted little to do with her classmates, rebuffed their advances politely, without comment or elaboration. She kept to herself and minded her own business, and required the same courtesy from everyone else.
Her milkshake finished, she cycled back north on Johnson’s Ferry Road toward home. Daywatch at the TCPD ended at 3:30 PM, her father would go off shift soon, and she wanted to be at home when he got there.
As she was opening the garage door, she heard a commotion across the street and two doors down – a male laugh, raised female voices, and… more female laughter! More tickling? She crossed the street to investigate.
A pretty little blonde girl in shorts and t-shirt was sprawled on her back on the front porch, struggling, feet in the air, with a big young guy with short brown hair standing over her, holding her ankles in an arm lock. He tickled her feet with his free hand – the girl was red faced, laughing helplessly. Another girl, an attractive hazel-eyed brunette with blonde streaks in her long brown hair, yanked at his arm, trying to get him to turn loose of the blonde. “Michael! STOP IT! Leave Nicole alone!” she shouted. He ignored her and kept on tickling while Nicole laughed and laughed.
By now the tickle torture had been going on for three or four minutes. The blonde had stopped struggling – she just laid there, laughing her head off as his fingers flicked across her ticklish soles. The brunette, frustrated, kicked the guy (her brother, apparently) in the butt. She was barefoot, so she didn’t do him any harm, but he instantly turned the blonde loose and rounded on her. She turned away and ran for it.
But he caught her and hooked her legs out from under her, plopped her face down on the lawn. He straddled her hips facing aft, grabbed a foot and tickled it, and now the brunettte was laughing her head off at the top of her lungs. He had obviously done this before – he knew where the ticklish spots were, and tickled them all.
The blonde – Nicole? – had gotten her breath back by then, and ran up to him. But she spotted Emily standing there and stopped. “Michael! MICHAEL! Stop! We have a visitor!” she said.
Michael looked up, still tickling. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Michael Gabreski, this is my sister Melissa and her friend Nicole Wade. Are you our new neighbor?”
Melissa just laughed, struggling desperately to escape. But with one leg out of play, she didn’t have much leverage, and besides, he had to outweigh her by at least 100 lbs.
“Er… yes, I’m Emily MacDonald,” she said. “Don’t you think you ought to let her go?”
“Nah… It’s the first time this week, she’ll be OK,” he said, and kept on tickling.
Melissa laughed, and laughed some more, red faced, tears of laughter streaming down her face. She wasn’t struggling any more – all the fight had been tickled out of her.
But he relented and quit. He stood and gave Melissa a hand up. “Care to join us?” he asked.
Emily saw that he was looking at her sandaled feet. “Maybe later,” she lied, and backed away.
She saw her father’s black pickup turn into their driveway and hurried home.
“Hi, Emily!” he called out. “Anything exciting happen today?”
“Not really,” she replied. He’d never believe it anyway – a street infested with tickle maniacs! Is it the name? What is it about this place?
***THE END***
