Strelnikov
4th Level Red Feather
- Joined
- May 7, 2001
- Messages
- 1,820
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by Strelnikov
Copyright 2003 by the author
Professor Hannah Davis scowled. She was wearing her “second hat” today – Dean of Students (Acting) at Commonwealth University – and it was giving her a headache.
Hannah was a stubbornly single, casually bohemian academic in her mid-thirties. She was quite tall, lean but sturdy, with thick auburn hair falling to her shoulder blades. Her dark-rimmed eyeglasses reinforced the serious set of her face, with its cool, gray eyes, sharp nose, high cheekbones, and a hint of olive in her complexion.
The old gent who had previously held the post had died quietly in his sleep a month before. Hannah had been offered the job on a permanent basis – not bad, she thought, for the skinny kid from south Georgia she once had been – because the Trustees felt that CU needed more women administrators.
She had refused. She liked being a Professor of History – and she was good at it. But she had accepted the job on an Acting basis until the Search Committee could find a suitable replacement.
At first, it wasn’t as bad as Hannah had expected. The day-to-day operation of the Dean’s Office was in the capable hands of Mrs. Johnson, the long-time secretary. It had been Mrs. Johnson’s misfortune that opportunities for women were much more limited in her youth; her grandmotherly exterior concealed a razor-sharp mind and a genuine talent for organization. Hannah would not have dreamed of interfering, any more than she would have disrespected the woman and addressed her by her first name. She was content to warm the seat and sign off on the papers Mrs. Johnson gave her.
But discipline couldn’t be delegated – Hannah had to handle that herself.
No good deed goes unpunished, she reflected. Mrs. Johnson had placed seven Student Records on the Dean’s desk – her desk – yesterday afternoon. The problem they represented had been festering since the start of the academic year. Now, just short of Spring Break, it had landed in Hannah’s lap.
She had been through them all. They gave the bare bones, some hints of the personalities behind them, but nothing more. She would have to interview these girls, get a feel for them, before she could make informed decisions. Toward that end, she had “requested” their presence in her office; she would talk with four of them first thing this morning, and the three main participants just before lunch.
Hannah reviewed what she knew about them:
Shannon Graham – a Junior English Lit major, from Kansas City. She was the Resident Advisor, or RA, on the first floor of Kipling Hall, a Freshman women’s dorm. She was supposed to ease the transition of her young charges to college life, and to apply gentle correction if they stepped out of bounds. Apparently, she hadn’t been very good at it.
The others were Freshmen who had been entrusted to Shannon’s care. As one would expect at a major university, they were an eclectic group. They were:
Danielle Deaver and Tara Lynch, the two miscreants – or so Shannon Graham had said, in a rambling and somewhat hysterical email to Hannah. They were from the same little mountain town in northeast Tennessee – the sort of place where most of the young people left as soon as they could, and the ones who stayed sat on the porch with rifles across their knees. The girls were apparently long-time friends – they had arranged to room together. Hannah guessed that both were the first members of their families to attend college.
Lindsey Eckard, a home-schooled preacher’s kid from Northeast Arizona. Coming here had probably been an eye-opener for her.
Michelle Haviland, from a small town in northwest Maine, hard up against the border of Canada’s Quebec Province. She was a legacy, Hannah recalled – both parents had graduated from CU. She had two older sisters in attendance too – a Junior and a first-year Grad student. Grad students had quasi-faculty status, Hannah vaguely recollected having met the older girl at a faculty tea.
Alicia Jemison. She was an Air Force brat, had attended three different high schools and who knows how many schools before that.
Natalie Lasko, from Pittsburgh. The name had probably been “Laskowski” or something similar a century ago, before being truncated by an Immigration official at Ellis Island who couldn’t be bothered to spell the whole name.
Mrs. Johnson keyed the intercom and said, “Professor Davis, your 9 AM appointments are here – Miss Eckard, Haviland, Jemison and Lasko.”
Hannah glanced at her watch – 9 AM straight up. “Mrs. Johnson, I’ll see all four young ladies together, if you please,” she replied. With mild surprise, she realized that her speech had the accent, cadence, even the phrasing of her native south Georgia, two generations ago. She had assumed the persona of her late grandmother, a formidable Southern matriarch who had ruled her extended family with an iron hand. Well, she could do far worse – Nana’s encouragement was one of the main reasons Hannah was where she was today.
“Close the door and be seated,” she told them.
Hannah let them stew while she glanced through an open folder on her desk. It was a prop – a male professor of another generation might instead have made a production of lighting a pipe. When they started to fidget, she closed the folder and regarded them cooly.
“Y’all were involved in this little circus since the beginning last fall,” she said. “If y’all weren’t full participants, y’all were at least co-conspirators. Tell me your story, from the beginning. And don’t lie to me – it will be the worse for you if you do.”
Another pause, and then Michelle Haviland took a deep breath. “Well, Professor Davis, it started this way…”
***
“Bye, girls!” Michelle Haviland’s mom called from the car window. “See you at Thanksgiving.”
“Bye, Mom and Dad!” Michelle – Shelly to family and friends – called back.
Shelly’s sister Ashley said, “Have a safe trip!”
Stacy, her other sister, added, “We’ll take good care of her.” As their parents drove away, she said, “Come on, p’tite soeur, we’ll walk you back to your dorm.”
The three sisters shared a strong family resemblance. All three were the same physical type – small and trim like their québécois forbears, with fit and shapely bodies. All three were tanned, dressed in t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops.
Shelly was the youngest, a 19-year-old Freshman. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and hazel eyes. A former high school cheerleader, her personality could best be described as “effervescent”.
Stacy, the easy-going middle sister, was a 21-year-old Junior majoring in Hospitality Management. She had curly shoulder-length brown hair and soft brown eyes. She worked part-time at the local Persian restaurant.
Ashley was the oldest at 23, a first-year Grad student and teaching assistant in the Math department. She had short dark blonde hair and cool gray eyes. She was sober and capable, a first-born overachiever, always very much in control of herself. Ashley’s tan was magnificent – she had spent the previous summer working as a lifeguard at a beach resort.
Shelly’s sisters shared an apartment off campus, and she expected to move in with them next year. For now, though, she was a resident of Kipling Hall, a Fresman women’s dorm.
Kipling Hall was one of four identical buildings – the others were Burns, Tennyson and Byron – built in the early 1950’s to accommodate the growing postwar student population. They were unadorned red brick boxes with metal-framed windows, now softened somewhat by a growth of ivy, bordering a grassy quadrangle.
The RA on Shelly’s floor was leaving the building as the sisters climbed the steps to the main entrance. Shannon Graham was 21, a Junior majoring in English Lit. She was medium height, shapely, with brown eyes and long blonde hair worn in a pony tail. She had the sort of all-American good looks that people think of when someone says “farmer’s daughter” – though in fact she had grown up in the suburbs of Kansas City. She, too, wore t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops.
“Hello, Shannon,” Stacy said. There was a noticeable lack of warmth in her voice.
“Stacy! What are you… Oh, I see – your little sister.”
“Ayuh,” Stacy said, her Maine accent a little stronger than usual. “Take good care of her.”
“I’ll take care of them all,” Shannon said sharply. “Now if you’ll excuse me…” And she slipped past them, headed toward the Student Union.
“What was that all about?” Shelly asked.
“She lived down the hall from me our Freshman year, in Tennyson Hall, across the quad. There’s some…history,” Stacy replied. “Watch your back, Little Sis.”
“And on that cheerful note,” Ashley said, “we’ll bid you good night. You know where we live. Don’t be a stranger.”
Shelly hugged her sisters and headed into the building. The start of classes was still a week off. So far, Shelly was the only girl who had showed up.
The main entrance was at one end of the building; it opened into a vestibule. On the right of the vestibule was a mail room faced with glass-front mail boxes. On the left was a sort of pulpit and a sign-out board, both long disused, artifacts of the time when female students had a curfew. Past the vestibule, straight ahead, were the stairs to the upper floors; to the right was a lounge.
A long hallway led off the lounge, with a second staircase and a fire door at the end. The hallway was lined with double-occupancy rooms, arranged in pairs that shared a common bathroom between them. Each room held two built-in dresser/closet units, two desks, two straight chairs, and two beds. The beds were that odd size found only in college dorms, that are impossible to find sheets that fit. The paired rooms connected through the common bathroom, so that each girl had one primary and two secondary room mates.
The only deviation from the pattern was the first rooms on the right. The room nearest the lounge was a storage room. The RA had the other room and a bathroom to herself.
The place had all the warmth and architectural charm of a cellblock. The interior walls were painted concrete block, the floor institutional green linoleum tile. The indestructible lounge furniture was ugly and hideously uncomfortable. Still, these were the cheapest accomodations on campus. Shelly’s family wasn’t rich – with three girls in college, cheap counted for a lot.
Shelly’s room was at the far end of the hallway, to the right of the fire door. That’s probably a good thing, Shelly thought as she unlocked her door. Sister Stacy was pretty much imperturbable – if Shannon had gotten crosswise of Stacy, Shelly wanted to keep her distance as much as possible.
Her neighbors across the hall moved in the following morning. Danielle Deaver was a little shorter than medium height, nicely tanned, with a fit and shapely body, long dark brown hair and gray eyes. Tara Lynch was tall and slender – she had a crooked grin and the map of Ireland on her face. Her hair was an unruly mop of black curls, over fair skin and startling blue eyes. They were small-town girls like herself, had grown up on neighboring farms in the mountains of northeast Tennessee. Friends since childhood, they had arranged to room together at school.
Danielle was the dominant one of the two – she was certainly more outgoing than her quiet friend. And she was much sharper than she chose to appear. Shelly had the impression that she often used that to her advantage. Aha! someone might think – this kid just fell off the hay truck. Too late, they would realize that they were had.
She liked them both. Small towns were much the same all over the country – Neo-Classical court houses, men in overalls, pickup trucks with shotguns in the back window and so forth. The Tennessee girls spoke with soft mountain accents, Shelly with a Down East twang – but they understood each other perfectly.
There had been one more arrival – Shelly’s own room mate, in fact. But the girl had taken one look into the room, burst into tears and said, “Take me home, Mom.” It looked like Shelly would have the room to herself, at least for now.
The three girls had lunch at the dining hall – known, for reasons that became obvious, as “The Trough”. Afterward, Shelly went back to her room to read while the others unpacked.
She heard a burst of wild laughter from across the hall an hour or so later. It faded, then came back stronger than before. It went on and on. It had to be pretty loud, Shelly thought, for her to hear it through a closed door.
She stepped out into the hall and listened at Tara and Danielle’s door. That was the source of the laughter, sure enough. What on earth…?
Shelly propped the fire door open and stepped outside, around the building to her neighbors’ open window. The laughter sounded louder now. The ground fell away on this side – the window sills were maybe seven feet up. But there was ivy growing on the building. Shelly was agile, and didn’t weigh much. She kicked off her flip-flops and climbed.
They hadn’t bothered to close the blinds. Shelly peeked in and saw Tara lying hogtied on her tummy on her bed. Danielle kneeled behind her, ticking her feet with both hands. Tara laughed like mad, eyes closed, red faced as the tickling fingers explored her soft feet.
Shelly was the youngest of three sisters, and so had endured her share of tickling. She had given some back, too. But this went far beyond what she and her sisters had ever done.
Danielle scrabbled her nails on Tara’s heels, drew figure-eight’s and other tickling shapes in her arches, then tickled both soles, watching the toes twitch and curl. Tara squirmed, laughing wildly, trying desperately to escape the tickling, but Danielle had a knee on either side of Tara’s, holding her in place. She was laughing too, from sheer high spirits.
Danielle held her friend’s toes back and tickled under them, then back and forth across the stretched out soles. Tara lost it and laughed herself breathless.
“Get down from there!” a voice said sharply. Busted!
Shelly looked around and saw Shannon standing there, her hands on her hips. She climbed back down and stepped back into her flip-flops.
“What do you think you’re doing, Shelly?” Shannon asked. “Spying on your neighbors? Well, I won’t stand for it! You’ll treat your neighbors with respect, or you won’t stay here for long.”
“OK, OK, Shannon,” Shelly said.”It won’t happen again.”
“It had better not,” Shannon replied.
Another girl moved into the room next door to Danielle and Tara later that afternoon. Natalie Lasko was from Pittsburgh. She was a petite girl with shoulder-length fiery red hair, bright blue eyes and freckled fair skin. A former high school soccer player, she was fit and athletic-looking without being muscular. She was cheerful and outgoing, with an even temper and a ready smile. Natalie’s personality and Shelly’s were complementary – the two girls bonded instantly.
Shelly helped her new friend unpack. While they were working, the laughter started again from the next room.
“They’re at it again,” Shelly said.
“What?” Natalie asked.
“Come on – I’ll show you. You’d never believe it otherwise.”
They walked through the bathroom and tried the knob on the other door. It was unlocked – they pulled it open a few inches to watch.
This time, Danielle was the recipient of the tickle torture. Tara threaded a piece of coarse twine between Danielle’s toes and drew it back and forth, forcing a stream of ticklish laughter. She tickled between each pair of toes, then held them back and tickled the soft skin underneath. Danielle laughed her head off.
The hogtie, Shelly saw, was accomplished with a well-worn set of leather straps. These two had obviously been doing this to each other for a very long time indeed. But the straps seemed superfluous at the moment, because Danielle wasn’t resisting at all. It seemed that she was the more ticklish of the pair. Maybe she had all the fight tickled right out of her – she was certainly laughing hard enough.
Tara paused after five minutes or so. She noticed Shelly and Natalie for the first time.
“Well, y’all come on in,” she said. “Don’t stand there gawking. Haven’t y’all ever seen somebody getting tickled before?”
“Ayuh,” Shelly said. “My sisters and I do this sometimes. But we’ve never tied each other up, and never taken it this far.” She pronounced the words “nevah” and “fah.”
Danielle rolled onto her side and blinked away tears of laughter. “Well, we do it this way because one of us – tickler or ticklee – would get hurt if we didn’t.”
“We learned that the hard way,” Tara added. “Anyway, y’all make yourselves at home. I’m going down the hall to get some Cokes out of the machine in the lounge.”
There was a nervous silence after Tara left – neither Shelly or Natalie quite knew what to say to a hogtied girl. But then the Devil poked Shelly in the ribs. She kneeled on the bed behind Danielle and rolled the girl back onto her tummy.
“Hey! What are you…? OH NO! Sta-haha-ap! Don’t… hehehe… tickle!” Danielle said as Shelly traced a fingernail in a circle in her arch.
“What?” Shelly said. “I can’t heah you. You want me to tickle?”
“NOOOOO! HAHAHAHA-hehe-HAHAHA-HAHAHA!” Danielle laughed as Shelly dug in, scratching and scrabbling the soft soles.
“Shelly, don’t you think…” Natalie said, alarmed.
“My sisters and I do this too,” Shelly said. “This won’t hurt her. Come on, help me.”
“I don’t know…” Natalie said dubiously.
“Oh, come on!” Shelly said. Her tickling fingers picked up speed. Danielle arched her back and laughed her head off.
“OK, why not?” Natalie replied, against her better judgement. She kneeled next to Shelly, who considerately moved over and concentrated her effort on one foot.
Natalie tickled hesitantly at first, but Shelly more than made up for it. As the Little Sis, Shelly had learned tickling from the inside. Now that she had reached her full growth, the contests with her sisters were a lot more even. She had actually become skilled enough to win tickle fights, especially with Ashley. And now Danielle was the beneficiary.
Danielle laughed like a madwoman as Shelly’s fingernails roamed over her ticklish foot. Natalie kept pace on the other, gaining confidence as she followed along. The girls held Danielle’s toes back, drew circles around the balls of her feet, then scratched and scrabbled the soles in the exact center, along the crease. They flicked their nails in Danielle’s arches, producing streams of giggles. They drew circles, squares and other tickling shapes on her heels – Danielle laughed harder, tears of laughter rolling down her cheeks. And then they tickled Danielle’s arches, just in front of the heels, and Danielle’s laughter went off the chart.
Shelly and Natalie were still tickling when Tara got back to the room.
“Hey! Stop it!” she yelled. “Leave her alone!”
“Why?” Shelly asked. “You were tickling her.” But they stopped anyway and stood up, leaving their victim sweating and panting on the bed.
“Let… it… be,” Danielle gasped out. “It’s… OK.”
Tara unstrapped Danielle. The girl rolled onto her back, shuffled her feet on the covers to get the tickle off, then sat up. “Wooo!” she said. “That really tickled! Where did y’all learn that?”
“My sisters,” Shelly replied. “Natalie is just a talented amateur.”
“No hard feelings,” Danielle said. “Let me take a shower, and we can go to The Trough for supper.”
And so it ended – or so Shelly and Natalie thought.
The girls in the room on the other side of Shelly’s bathroom arrived the next day.
Lindsey Eckard was a preacher’s kid from Notheast Arizona. She was a little taller than medium height, slender and graceful, with fair skin and brown hair that fell to her shoulder blades. She had high cheekbones with a dusting of freckles, a straight nose, a mouth a little too wide for conventional beauty. Her eyes were that indeterminate color that can appear blue or gray, or green, or even hazel.
At age 19, Lindsey was a work in progress – a cute girl, no great beauty, with a sunny, open disposition. In a few more years, she would be absolutely stunning. The signs were there for anyone who cared to look – she had classic supermodel features and bone structure. Her smile transformed her. When she smiled, she was radiant.
Alicia Jemison was an Air Force brat who had lived on USAF bases all over the world. She was a small girl, trim and fit-looking, with brown eyes and long, straight dark brown hair. She moved with the tigerish grace and economy of motion of a dancer.
Alicia looked Mediterranean – Greek, maybe – but wasn’t. Her family name was the tipoff – she was a Seneca Indian. “Pure-blooded Seneca” is an oxymoron. Alicia’s ancestor Mary Jemison, captured by raiders in 1758, was just one of many “White Indians” adopted into the Seneca Nation. Alicia’s European facial features were the expression of that part of her bloodline.
Shelly liked them both. It looked like she had lucked out as regards her neighbors – these two fit right in. Hopefully, Natalie’s room mate would fit in too.
Natalie’s roommate arrived the next day. Eve Stanton was a petite, pretty brunette with shoulder-length hair and green-flecked hazel eyes. She had a perky smile that dimpled her cheeks. She had no discernible tan, even now at the end of summer.
Eve was superficially friendly and outgoing but… there was something about her. Shelly caught the girl checking herself out in the dresser mirror as she talked with the others. It was like a performance, Shelly reflected. There was something false and brittle about it all.
Shelly held her tongue. Natalie had to live with this girl, after all.
Shelly, Lindsey and Alicia always left the bathroom doors open unless someone was actually inside. It was like living in a suite. But across the hall, the doors stayed closed now.
It was just as well, Natalie said later. Danielle and Tara made no secret of their odd “hobby”, and still tickled each other on a regular basis. Eve hated the very idea, and said so loudly and frequently. Natalie didn’t openly disagree – she wanted to keep the peace if at all possible.
Shelly was unlocking her door the following Saturday afternoon when Danielle and Tara’s door burst open. Four hands grabbed her and dragged her into their room. She went over backwards and landed on the floor, on the mock-Turkish throw rug the girls had. They flipped one side of it over her and rolled. Without quite realizing how it had happened, Shelly found herself rolled up in the carpet like a burrito, with only her head and feet sticking out.
She found her voice. “Hey! Let me go!” she yelled, struggling. But the rug was rolled too tightly – she couldn’t get out.
Danielle and Tara picked her up and laid her face-up on Tara’s bed.
“Remember the other day, when you tickled Danielle?” Tara asked sweetly. She pulled off one of Shelly’s flip-flops and dropped it on the floor.
“I sure do,” Danielle said. She pulled off the other flip-flop and dropped it next to the first.
Horrified realization came to Shelly. “OH NOOO! Not that! I’m sooo ticklish – I couldn’t stand it!”
“Should have thought of that before,” Danielle said. “We’re gonna make you sing!” She began tracing circles in Shelly’s arch. Shelly burst into ticklish laughter.
Tara joined in, dusting Shelly’s soles with an old-fashioned shaving brush. Shelly’s laughter went up a notch.
Then both girls went to work, and Shelly howled with forced mirth. Their fingernails scratched and scrabbled her soles, arches, heels, and back to the soles again as Shelly laughed and laughed. They held her toes back and tickled under them, then side to side on the stretched out soles. They drew circles and spirals on her heels, then continued up onto the arches. Shelly bucked and squirmed, laughing at the top of her lungs.
They gave her a break, just long enough to catch her breath, then started in again. They had already found the sweet spots – in the middle of her soles, along the creases – and tickled her there until she thought she would go crazy. Her sisters were good, but this was far beyond anything she had experienced at their hands. She laughed helplessly, all the fight tickled out of her, her soprano laugh ringing off the block walls.
They tickled her breathless, then unrolled her and helped her to stand. She was soaked in sweat, exhausted, her throat dusty dry.
“Congratulations!” Danielle said. “You’ve just been initiated into the East Tennessee Songbird Society!”
“You sing pretty well. Welcome, sister!” Tara added.
“I… had that… coming.” Shelly gasped. She was a little unsteady on her feet. “Songbird Society… Does that…” She paused, drew breath, started over. “Does that mean I get to tickle too?”
Danielle glanced at Tara and winked. “Maybe,” she said, easing Shelly toward the door. “Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk.”
Shelly found herself outside their closed door, with a thoughtful look on her face. East Tennessee Songbird Society, indeed!
She knocked on Natalie’s door – she wanted to talk it over with her friend. As it happened, Natalie had just gotten out of the shower. She came to the door in her robe, barefoot, toweling her red hair, and invited Shelly in. Shelly got a drink of water, then kicked off her flip-flops and laid on her tummy on Natalie’s bed, idly kicking her feet in the air while she waited for Natalie to put herself back together. Her abs and ribs were a little sore from laughing.
“They got you too, didn’t they?” Natalie asked.
“Ayuh… What do you mean, “too”? ”
“They’ve tickled me silly the last three nights.”
“And you haven’t said anything about it to anybody?” Shelly demanded.
Natalie blushed. “I found out that I enjoyed it. They ambushed me the first time, to get even for when we tickled Danielle. I went back for more because I like being tickled. It’s… exhilarating.” A little defensively: “Why not? We all enjoy it, and we aren’t hurting anybody else!”
“You know, the tickle fights I had with my sisters were kinda fun,” Shelly said thoughtfully. “I wonder…”
But Eve came in then, so Shelly and Natalie went to supper. They continued their discussion there, decided on a course of action, knocked on Danielle and Tara’s door when they came back. When it opened…
“TICKLE FIGHT!” they yelled, and attacked the others. The fight got pretty rowdy for a while, with plenty of laughing, giggling and squealing. Danielle and Tara eventually gained the upper hand, and Shelly and Natalie got tickled senseless again. But a grand time was had by all.
It turned into a game after that, and took on a life of its own. The rules were simple: Danielle and Tara tried to tickle every girl on the floor. The others, for their part, tried to avoid being tickled. Alicia and Lindsey were easy, it got harder as the others figured out what was going on. But Danielle and Tara were devious and persistent, and added to their score anyway.
One of the other girls on the floor had an uncle who worked for a movie theater chain; she had him send her a bunch of leftover studio promo material. The girls who had been tickled by the Tennessee Toe Ticklers each got a “T3” pin as a sign of her initiation.
For most, once was enough – a rite of passage of sorts. But Shelly, Natalie, Lindsey and Alicia enthusiastically joined in the tickle play themselves, and even helped Danielle and Tara catch the more recalcitrant girls. It was all good natured fun.
By Thanksgiving, Danielle and Tara had gotten them all. All but one, that is – they excluded Eve Stanton because they disliked her. Superficially friendly, in reality Eve was selfish and manipulative, vindictive, surly when she didn’t get her way. After the first month, everyone on their end of the floor – even Lindsey, an innocent if ever there was one – had seen through her. And there the matter rested until just before Christmas break.
***
Shelly wound down. Hmmm, thought Hannah. She had taken part in similar games herself, during her own Freshman year. But these girls were far more… adventurous… than Hannah and her friends had been.
“Please continue,” she said.
Natalie picked up the thread of the narration from Shelly, a little nervously. “It came to a head just before first semester finals…”
***
It was a Sunday afternoon in December, and semester final exams started a week from tomorrow. Natalie and Eve had been in their room, studying hard, and Natalie was wound up tight. She needed something to help her relax. Fortunately, it was ready at hand.
She kicked off her slippers, crossed through the bathroom and knocked on Danielle and Tara’s door. “Got a few minutes?” she called out.
Danielle let her in. “Three guesses what you want – and the first two don’t count. Well, we’re always happy to be of service.”
Tara tossed her a short strap. She slipped it under Natalie’s belt at the small of her back, crossed her friend’s wrists over it and made them fast.
Natalie and Danielle sat side-by-side on the bed. Danielle reached down for Natalie’s ankles, swung the girl’s legs up and into her lap. She rolled up the jeans legs a few turns and strapped the ankles together. Then the girls arranged themselves with Natalie’s ankles resting on Danielle’s right thigh, Danielle’s left thigh resting over Natalie’s shins with the left foot tucked behind the right calf to lock it in place. It was a simple but effective leg lock.
Natalie wiggled her bare toes. “Do your worst!” she said with happy anticipation.
Danielle started slow, teasing with little nail flicks. Natalie giggled like a little girl while Danielle traced a fingernail lightly along the bottoms of her feet. Then light scratching, and the giggles were continuous.
“Sta-haha-ap te-hehehe-easing! Tickle me-hehehe!” Natalie said through the giggles.
“Suits me,” Danielle said, and did just that, fingernails flying across the ticklish soles. Natalie threw her head back and laughed at the top of her lungs.
Natalie’s feet were extremely ticklish all over – Danielle and Tara hadn’t discovered any particular sweet spot, though they had tried, to Natalie’s ticklish delight. Danielle’s tickling fingers roamed the bottoms of Natalie’s feet, producing streams of ticklish laughter. She scratched the heels, traced figure-eight’s in both arches, scrabbled on the soles while the toes twitched and curled, then back down to the ticklish heels.
Tara put a selection of implements on the bed next to Danielle. Danielle switched to one-hand tickling and selected an electric tooth brush. She spread Natalie’s toes and tickled between each pair, and Natalie collapsed backward on the bed, laughing like mad, all strength tickled out of her.
“Hey, save some for me!” Tara said.
“Hush your mouth!” Danielle replied, grinning. “You’ll get your turn. Isn’t that right, Natalie?”
But Natalie was laughing too hard to answer.
The shaving brush was next, dusting the soles, arches, heels, and back to the arches. Then a hairbrush, the type with round plastic knobs on the bristles. Natalie laughed her head off, red faced, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Danielle had threaded a piece of string between her toes and was drawing it back and forth, producing more wild laughter, when the bathroom door burst open.
“Dammit, are you gonna keep this up all night?” Eve demanded. “I’m trying to study!” She looked at Natalie, her hands on her hips. “And look at you! How can you allow people to treat you this way? Geez Louise, show some self respect!”
Danielle paused in the toe tickling. Natalie blinked away tears of laughter. “She’s… right,” she said, still short of breath. “Untie… me.”
“It’s about time you stood up for yourself,” Eve said.
Natalie shuffled her feet on the bed to get the tickle off while she tried to get her breathing and heart rate normal again. She stood up.
“Come on, Eve, let’s go,” she said.
They walked back through the bathroom to their own room, Eve in the lead. But then Natalie grabbed Eve’s wrist, twisted it behind her back, shoved it up between her shoulder blades, and ran her forward onto her bed. She bent, grabbed Eve’s ankles, heaved the girl’s legs up on the bed and scrambled after, sitting on Eve’s hips facing aft.
“Ow! Hey! What the hell are you doing? STOP IT!” Eve yelled. She struggled, trying to buck Natalie off.
Natalie grabbed Eve’s ankles again and pulled. She wrapped a leg around Eve’s shins and tucked it under the upraised knee of the other – the figure-four leg lock.
“You’re right, Eve,” Natalie said as she pulled off Eve’s socks, exposing her bare feet. “I shouldn’t let people treat me badly. And now I’m gonna pay you back for all your bitchiness!”
“NOOOO! DON’T TICKLE! I HATE IT!” Eve yelled, struggling again. But with both legs out of play, she lacked leverage.
Natalie just dug in, fingernails flicking snd scratching on Eve’s soles. Eve bucked violently and burst into helpless ticklish laughter. She had a great tickle laugh too, a sweet soprano. She could have been a real asset, Natalie thought. Too bad she’s such a bitch.
Natalie tickled two-handed down Eve’s arches toward her heels. The spots on the arches just in front of the heels were off-the-scale ticklish. Eve laughed her head off at the top of her lungs and quit struggling, all resistance tickled out of her.
Natalie kept tickling the sweet spots while Eve laughed and laughed. She eased off a little every so often, and tickled onto the heels, or up the arches to the soles, or held the toes back and tickled the soft skin underneath. But always she came back to THE SPOT. Eve slipped into ticklish delirium, laughing like a madwoman.
Natalie’s tickling fingers speeded up. Eve lost it and laughed herself breathless.
“Damn, you’re good,” Tara said from her seat on Natalie’s bed.
“Must have learned it from us,” Danielle added.
Natalie got up, leaving Eve gasping on the bed. “Help yourselves. I’ll be right back.”
Eve had started laughing again by the time Natalie knocked on Shelly’s door. “I’m moving in with you, Shelly,” she said. “I’ve had it with Eve. Help me move.”
Danielle and Tara had hogtied Eve by the time they got back – the girl was laughing her head off again as they tickled her feet. By then, Alicia and Lindsey had come out of their room to investigate. They helped too, so the move didn’t take long. They worked to the musical accompaniment of Eve’s helpless laughter.
Shelly took a turn at tickling Eve, then Alicia. Even Lindsey tickled her – she lacked skill, but not enthusiasm. They kept it up for over an hour while Eve laughed her head off. Natalie finished with more tickle torture that reduced Eve to red faced, gasping silent laughter again.
“See, Eve, I don’t let people treat me badly any more,” Natalie said on her way out. “Aren’t you proud of me?”
Eve stuck it out until the end of exam week, then left school and disappeared. Good riddance, Natalie thought – she won’t be missed.
***
“Do I understand correctly that y’all tortured Miss Stanton and drove her out of school?” Hannah asked them.
“She had it coming!” Natalie said, unrepentant.
“That’s as may be,” Hannah said. “But she never complained – there’s no record of it if she did. And if it didn’t go down on paper, officially it never happened. What did your RA have to say about your… activities?”
“Shannon’s a pain-in-the-butt control freak, but she was clueless at first,” Shelly replied. “Once she figured out what was going on, she tried to stop it, but she couldn’t catch us at it, and no one complained.”
“And why should they?” Alicia asked. “It was just harmless fun.”
“Except for Miss Stanton,” Hannah said sharply. “And Miss Graham too, or y’all wouldn’t be here. Continue, if you please.”
Alicia and Lindsey glanced at each other. “I’ll take it from here,” Alicia said. “As Shelly said, Shannon’s a control freak…”
***
It so happened that Shelly and Alicia were exactly the same size. Since they were on friendly terms, that had effectively doubled the size of both girls’ wardrobes. Shelly had been looking through Alicia’s closet the first week of school when she found a costume, a thing of bright canary yellow satin, sequins and filmy veils.
“Hey, what’s this?” Shelly asked, holding it up.
Alicia took it from her, selected a few more items from a dresser drawer. “I’ll show you,” she said, and stepped into the bathroom.
Alicia emerged and struck a pose. It was a belly dancer’s outfit, complete with finger cymbals. The jewelry – a necklace, bracelets, anklets and belt – was made of silvery coins.
“Wow!” Lindsey said.
“One of my mom’s friends – another Air Force wife – is a Lebanese Christian,” Alicia explained. “The base Welfare Committee at Ramstein hired her to give belly dance lessons as part of a fitness program for us dependants. I’ve been doing it since I was 14 years old – it’s good exercise.”
One look at Alicia’s flat abs and shapely legs revealed the truth of that.
“Hey!” Shelly said. “My sister works at a Persian restaurant. She said the owner is looking for a new dancer. You ought to give him a call.”
Alicia had auditioned with Stacy’s boss the next day for the dancing job at his restaurant. Her physical appearance was a bonus – in costume, she looked Middle Eastern. Mr. Mooshie was glad to have her. His previous dancer, a member of his large extended family, had decided to start a family; she was now hors de combat, with twins in the oven.
It was a good gig – Alicia had been at it for seven months now, since the second week of school. She worked two 20-minute sets, twice a week. Like the wait staff, she got a free meal and minimum wage. She made 10 times as much from tips.
Her second set of the night had just ended. She put a long raincoat on over her costume, put her tip roll in the pocket, stepped into her shoes, then left the restaurant through the kitchen door.
She heard giggling as she unlocked her door. The room was empty – she shucked off her coat and shoes and padded across the hall barefoot, still in costume.
The giggling had turned into wild ticklish laughter by then – Lindsey was really getting it! No one else on the floor paid the slightest attention any more – these days, the tickling was all consensual. It wasn’t coming from Danielle and Tara’s room. They were in the room next door then, the one where Natalie and Eve had lived.
Alicia rapped on the door, a Morse Code “A”. Danielle opened it – Tara was still tickling Lindsey. Officially, the room was vacant, locked up. Danielle had slipped the lock, and the two girls had turned it into a tickle chamber. They had built two sets of stocks – like all farm kids, they were handy with tools. Now Lindsey sat in one of the room’s straight chairs, hands tied behind her back, ankles in the stocks. She laughed like mad as Tara’s tickling fingers roamed the bottoms of her ticklish feet.
Poor Lindsey! She had lost a wager, and this was her forfeit. She was easily the most ticklish of them all, and these two had really been giving her the treatment. She was sweaty, red faced, her long brown hair a mess. She had stopped struggling, all resistance tickled out of her. All she could manage was to laugh, and laugh some more.
Alicia sighed. “OK, Danielle,” she said. “Tie me up and tickle me too.” Joining the party meant that Tara and Danielle couldn’t double-team Lindsey. Alicia liked her roomie – getting tickled was a small enough price to pay to give her a break.
Lindsey kept laughing as Danielle tied Alicia’s hands and locked her ankles in the stocks. “Hey, check this out!” Danielle said. “We ought to make a video – something with a Harem Girl theme.”
Tara replied, “Sounds good to me.” She never missed a beat – Lindsey’s ticklish laugh filled the room.
“Ewww!” Danielle said when she took a closer look at Alicia’s feet. They were gray on the bottom. She danced barefoot – in public places like restaurants, even carpets that get vacuumed twice a day are filthy.
“Well, I’ve got a solution for that,” Danielle said. She went into the bathroom, came back with a basin of warm soapy water and an electric tooth brush.
“You’re a Seneca, right?” Danielle asked. “Well, I’m part Cherokee. We never took scalps like y’all did – we counted coup in other ways. Not like this either-” She traced figure-eight’s in Alicia’s arch with a fingernail, producing a stream of giggles. “-but times change, and we have to change with them.”
She dipped the brush in the soapy water and started on Alicia’s toes. Alicia burst into ticklish laughter.
Danielle scrubbed each toe, then held them back and started under them, across the stretched out soles. The soapy water provided extra lubricant, so the toothbrush tickled a lot worse than it would otherwise. Alicia arched her back and laughed at the top of her lungs.
Danielle ran the brush up and down the exact middle of her right sole, along the crease. She circled the brush around the balls of Alicia’s feet in figure-eight’s, in smaller and smaller loops to cover every inch of ticklish flesh, then moved on to the center of the left sole while ticklish laughter poured out of her victim. She gave Alicia a breather – Alicia blinked away tears of laughter and glanced over at Lindsey, who was still laughing like a madwoman. She burst into laughter again as Danielle finished scrubbing her soles and worked her way down toward the ticklish heels.
Alicia and Lindsey were laughing too hard to hear the door open – their first warning was when the tickling stopped abruptly. Shannon stood in the room, pass key in hand, eyes flashing with anger.
“Look at this place!” she said to Danielle and Tara. “You two have been a bad influence from the beginning, and now you’ve gone too far! I’m gonna write you up over this. You can explain it to the Dean!”
The two ticklers released their ticklees from the stocks. Danielle whispered in Alicia’s ear, “Take your roomie and go back to your room. Y’all don’t want any part of what’s gonna happen next.”
They found themselves outside the door. It slammed behind them.
***
And there the story ended. Either they didn’t know what had happened next, or they weren’t talking.
Probably the latter, Hannah thought. “Very well,” she said. “Thank you for coming. Y’all are free to go.”
The four girls scrambled for the door, relief evident on their faces.
Hannah thought it over. So far, with just one exception, she had heard nothing really actionable – and there was no record of that exception. She had appointments with the RA and the other two girls at 11 AM. She would reserve judgement, and see how things shook out.
A little later, through the open door to the outer office, Hannah heard Mrs. Johnson say, “Why, hello, dear. What are you doing back here again?”
“Danielle and Tara are my friends,” Lindsey said simply.
Interesting. The Tennessee Toe Ticklers had inspired loyalty in this girl. Her character was one of Cromwellian rectitude – she didn’t give loyalty easily or lightly. That bore thinking about.
A soft Southern voice spoke, quietly, as if talking to herself:
“What are the bugles blowin’ for?” said Files-on-Parade.
Mrs. Johnson picked up on it and responded with the next line: “To turn you out, to turn you out,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
Dani Deaver indeed! thought Hannah. The poem was obscure – the fact that this girl knew it said something about her.
Danielle again: “What makes you look so white, so white?” said Files-on-Parade.
Mrs. Johnson: “I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
“Knock it off, Danielle,” said a third voice, this one with a touch of Corn Belt rasp in it.
“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Johnson said in an icy voice. “We were playing a game – a literary game – one I doubt you would understand. What’s your major anyway, Miss Graham – Computer Science?”
“English Lit,” Shannon replied.
“Then shame on you.”
Oops! Showtime. “Mrs. Johnson, please send Miss Graham in now,” Hannah said.
She regarded Shannon across the desk. No uneasiness in this one, only a feeling of righteous anger. She wanted the Tennesseans’ hides nailed to the barn door.
“Miss Graham, you’ve made some serious allegations,” Hannah said, holding up a printout of the girl’s email. “I wonder if you would care to amplify on them.”
“You’re da- ” She caught herself. “Darn right I would! Those two were trouble from the beginning…”
***
The trouble started at the far end of the hall, so Shannon was slow to catch on. Before she realized what was happening, the tickling games had taken firm hold and were spreading toward the lounge.
Shannon had an absolute horror of tickling. Her three older brothers had tickled her mercilessly while she was growing up – still did, when they were home together on holidays. When she had complained to Mom, they had rolled their eyes and said, “Oh, Mom! We’re just tickling her!”
“Just tickling her!” It was torture!
She resolved to put a stop to it, but ran up against a wall of silence. The “T3” pins proliferated, and no one complained.
Shannon would hear a burst of ticklish laughter, and knock on the door to investigate. When it opened, she would find a grinning Danielle and Tara and the room’s barefoot occupant, red faced and short of breath. There would be a tape of “The Lucy Show” playing on the VCR, the live studio audience laughing like lunatics at Lucy’s antics. There would be a pause after she left, and then the laughter would start again.
She knew what they had done to Eve Stanton, and thought she had them then. But Eve hadn’t complained either – she had just bailed out. It drove Shannon crazy!
But Danielle and Tara had gotten careless. Their tickle chamber was disgusting – sick – when Shannon discovered it, she knew she had cause to send them to the Dean. Maybe, if she was lucky, they would get expelled.
But they had a surprise in store for her…
The door closed behind Alicia and Lindsey. No matter – Shannon wasn’t after them.
“All right, you’ve had it!” she said to Danielle. “Leave those… things... where they are and get out of here. I’m sending you both to the Dean.”
She turned to leave. Too late, she saw that Tara was between her and the door. “Get out of my way,” she snarled.
Suddenly she felt her elbows grabbed from behind. She stumbled backward, sat down hard as her legs made contact with the edge of a chair seat. Then constriction, as both elbows were zip-tied to the uprights of the chair back. She yelped and tried to stand, but someone flipped a rope across her hips and tied it behind the chair, holding her in place.
“Goddammit! Let me GO!” she shouted furiously. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She struggled against the bonds. It was no use – she was had.
Danielle sat in the other chair. Tara fetched another from her own room and did likewise. Each girl grabbed one of Shannon’s ankles and flipped off a shoe.
“OH SHIT! HAHAHAHAHA-HAHAHA-HAHAHAHA!” Shannon laughed as the two girls spider walked their nails across her bare soles. It tickled worse – much worse – than she could have imagined.
The tickling filled Shannon’s universe as the two scratched and scrabbled their nails along the bottoms of her feet. Her tormentors tickled between her toes, under them, down the soles and arches onto the ticklish heels. She laughed helplessly while they tickled her heels, her ticklish laughter echoing off the hard block walls. Up the arches to her soles again, keeping pace, while she howled with forced mirth. Then the balls of her feet, under her big toes, where it really, really tickled. Shannon threw her head back and laughed her head off at the top of her lungs.
They tickled her until she was red faced and sweaty. They held her on the edge, never letting her zone out, while she laughed and laughed. They kept it up for a long, longtime. Then back to the balls of her feet again, and they picked up the pace. It was more than she could bear. She laughed herself breathless.
Tara untied the rope. Danielle stuck a “T3” pin on the front of Shannon's sweat shirt and cut the zip ties. “OK, Shannon. We’re through,” Danielle said. “Write us up, and be damned!”
***
Shannon finished her story, the indignation and anger evident in her voice. Hannah looked down and made notes on a lined legal pad, buying time while she thought furiously. Yes, the others had treated this girl badly, but her own incompetence at her assigned task was a contributing factor.
Hannah looked up, her decision made.
“Miss Graham,” she said, “I regard this incident as a Freshman prank that went too far. You suffered no real harm except, perhaps, to your dignity.”
“No harm?” Shannon responded angrily. “They’re tickle maniacs! They nearly tickled me to death! I want them off my floor! I want them expelled!”
Hannah looked back at her silently for a moment, then spoke. “Miss Graham, this is your first year as an RA, is it not?” The girl nodded. “It will be your last. You have no talent for it.” She raised a hand, cutting off Shannon’s protest. “Yes, I know – free room and board are part of your financial aid. The University will find another task for you next year, one for which you are better suited.
“In the meantime, you would do well to remember that you live in a dormitory, not a barracks. Your charges are young women, most of them away from home for the first time, and not the Black Tyrone. And you’re an RA, not Captain Crook O’Neill.”
Blank incomprehension. Hannah sighed inwardly – what did her colleagues in the English Department teach these days?
“I will remove Miss Deaver and Miss Lynch from your floor, Miss Graham,” Hannah said. “As for the rest, I’ll inform you of my decision. You are free to go.”
“But…” Shannon started.
“You’re dismissed, Miss Graham,” Hannah said with a touch of asperity.
Shannon walked out, head up, a spot of high color burning on each cheekbone. She didn’t slam the door – not quite.
“Mrs. Johnson, please send Miss Deaver and Miss Lynch in now.”
The taller girl, Hannah saw, was the archetype of the Scotch-Irish who had settled the southern mountains. Her friend – a touch of Cherokee in that one, or maybe Melungeon.
Both were frightened – and they should be. They would lose their financial aid if they were expelled. They would be hard pressed to replace it. Without it, their college careers were ended – they would end up back home. In a few years, both would be married to men who cut pulpwood for a living, with not enough money and too many kids.
“Do not be afraid,” Hannah said gently. “You will find justice here.”
“Professor Davis,” Danielle said nervously, “that’s exactly what we’re afraid of!”
That settled it. The girl had read Shelby Foote: Robert E. Lee had said Hannah’s last line to one of his erring soldiers. Danielle had come back with the soldier’s response, nearly word for word. Hannah had to find a way to keep this girl – and her friend too, she supposed.
“I trust that y’all realize the seriousness of your situation,” Hannah said. “Y’all assaulted Miss Graham, held her against her will, some would say that y’all tortured her. If this incident had taken place off campus, y’all would be facing charges of assault and battery, unlawful imprisonment, maybe kidnapping as well. Have y’all anything to say for yourselves?”
They shook their heads, miserable.
“The University has an arrangement of long standing with the local authorities,” Hannah continued. “If there’s gunfire, or blood, they step in. In all other cases, they turn a blind eye to anything that takes place on campus. We handle it ourselves. That’s my responsibility.
“I regard this incident as a Freshman prank that went too far. It does not merit your expulsion from the University. But…” Hannah raised a finger. “…I cannot allow y’all to stay in Kipling Hall. I will direct the campus Housing Authority to cancel your room contracts, effective the start of Spring Break. Y’all need to find another place to live – off campus.
“Furthermore, I’m placing both of y’all on Double Secret Probation. Here’s what that means: I will hold my report of this incident in my personal file. Stay out of trouble for the rest of the academic year, and I will shred it. It will be as if none of this had ever happened.”
Her expression, stern already, became more so. “If either of y’all comes to my attention in that time, for any reason, y’all will both be gone so fast that there will be a clap of thunder as the air fills the void where your bodies had been. Do-I-make-myself-clear.”
“Yes, ma’am!” they chorused, relief evident on both of their faces.
“Then you’re dismissed. Leave the door open.”
Lindsey had waited for her friends in the outer office. “Well, how did it go?” she asked them.
Danielle answered her:
For they’re done with Dani Deaver, you can ‘ear the quickstep play,
The Regiment’s in column, an’ they’re marchin’ us away;
Ho! The young recruits are shakin’, an’ they’ll want their beer to-day,
After hangin’ Dani Deaver in the mornin’!
Mrs. Johnson laughed out loud, and even Hannah had to stifle a laugh. This girl was definitely a keeper!
“Oh, shut up!” Tara said.
***THE END***
Afterword…
Hannah Davis first appeared in “Sabbatickle” by Capt. Spalding, aka Tee Hee Lawrence, posted elsewhere on this forum. The description is his, more or less verbatim. She is used with his kind permission.
Mary Jemison was a real person, with many present-day descendants. Visit the Seneca Nation of Indians website ( www.sni.org ) and scroll down to the bottom of the home page. Note the webmaster’s name – he’s one of them.
The poetry consists of slightly bowlderized excerpts from Rudyard Kipling’s “Danny Deever”. Crook O’Neill and the Black Tyrone are from his “The Ballad of Boh Da Thone”.
This is not a Tickle Street story, but fans of my work will have noticed that it is rather closely related – see TS Chapter 9,“A Matter of Honor”. The time frame is about the same as TS Chapter 16, “Penance”. I’ll probably write more crossover stories – I like the characters too much to leave them idle and un-tickled.
Hope you enjoyed the story. As before, constructive criticism is always welcome.
Strelnikov
(Edited 27 July 09 - typos corrected, I hope.)
Copyright 2003 by the author
Professor Hannah Davis scowled. She was wearing her “second hat” today – Dean of Students (Acting) at Commonwealth University – and it was giving her a headache.
Hannah was a stubbornly single, casually bohemian academic in her mid-thirties. She was quite tall, lean but sturdy, with thick auburn hair falling to her shoulder blades. Her dark-rimmed eyeglasses reinforced the serious set of her face, with its cool, gray eyes, sharp nose, high cheekbones, and a hint of olive in her complexion.
The old gent who had previously held the post had died quietly in his sleep a month before. Hannah had been offered the job on a permanent basis – not bad, she thought, for the skinny kid from south Georgia she once had been – because the Trustees felt that CU needed more women administrators.
She had refused. She liked being a Professor of History – and she was good at it. But she had accepted the job on an Acting basis until the Search Committee could find a suitable replacement.
At first, it wasn’t as bad as Hannah had expected. The day-to-day operation of the Dean’s Office was in the capable hands of Mrs. Johnson, the long-time secretary. It had been Mrs. Johnson’s misfortune that opportunities for women were much more limited in her youth; her grandmotherly exterior concealed a razor-sharp mind and a genuine talent for organization. Hannah would not have dreamed of interfering, any more than she would have disrespected the woman and addressed her by her first name. She was content to warm the seat and sign off on the papers Mrs. Johnson gave her.
But discipline couldn’t be delegated – Hannah had to handle that herself.
No good deed goes unpunished, she reflected. Mrs. Johnson had placed seven Student Records on the Dean’s desk – her desk – yesterday afternoon. The problem they represented had been festering since the start of the academic year. Now, just short of Spring Break, it had landed in Hannah’s lap.
She had been through them all. They gave the bare bones, some hints of the personalities behind them, but nothing more. She would have to interview these girls, get a feel for them, before she could make informed decisions. Toward that end, she had “requested” their presence in her office; she would talk with four of them first thing this morning, and the three main participants just before lunch.
Hannah reviewed what she knew about them:
Shannon Graham – a Junior English Lit major, from Kansas City. She was the Resident Advisor, or RA, on the first floor of Kipling Hall, a Freshman women’s dorm. She was supposed to ease the transition of her young charges to college life, and to apply gentle correction if they stepped out of bounds. Apparently, she hadn’t been very good at it.
The others were Freshmen who had been entrusted to Shannon’s care. As one would expect at a major university, they were an eclectic group. They were:
Danielle Deaver and Tara Lynch, the two miscreants – or so Shannon Graham had said, in a rambling and somewhat hysterical email to Hannah. They were from the same little mountain town in northeast Tennessee – the sort of place where most of the young people left as soon as they could, and the ones who stayed sat on the porch with rifles across their knees. The girls were apparently long-time friends – they had arranged to room together. Hannah guessed that both were the first members of their families to attend college.
Lindsey Eckard, a home-schooled preacher’s kid from Northeast Arizona. Coming here had probably been an eye-opener for her.
Michelle Haviland, from a small town in northwest Maine, hard up against the border of Canada’s Quebec Province. She was a legacy, Hannah recalled – both parents had graduated from CU. She had two older sisters in attendance too – a Junior and a first-year Grad student. Grad students had quasi-faculty status, Hannah vaguely recollected having met the older girl at a faculty tea.
Alicia Jemison. She was an Air Force brat, had attended three different high schools and who knows how many schools before that.
Natalie Lasko, from Pittsburgh. The name had probably been “Laskowski” or something similar a century ago, before being truncated by an Immigration official at Ellis Island who couldn’t be bothered to spell the whole name.
Mrs. Johnson keyed the intercom and said, “Professor Davis, your 9 AM appointments are here – Miss Eckard, Haviland, Jemison and Lasko.”
Hannah glanced at her watch – 9 AM straight up. “Mrs. Johnson, I’ll see all four young ladies together, if you please,” she replied. With mild surprise, she realized that her speech had the accent, cadence, even the phrasing of her native south Georgia, two generations ago. She had assumed the persona of her late grandmother, a formidable Southern matriarch who had ruled her extended family with an iron hand. Well, she could do far worse – Nana’s encouragement was one of the main reasons Hannah was where she was today.
“Close the door and be seated,” she told them.
Hannah let them stew while she glanced through an open folder on her desk. It was a prop – a male professor of another generation might instead have made a production of lighting a pipe. When they started to fidget, she closed the folder and regarded them cooly.
“Y’all were involved in this little circus since the beginning last fall,” she said. “If y’all weren’t full participants, y’all were at least co-conspirators. Tell me your story, from the beginning. And don’t lie to me – it will be the worse for you if you do.”
Another pause, and then Michelle Haviland took a deep breath. “Well, Professor Davis, it started this way…”
***
“Bye, girls!” Michelle Haviland’s mom called from the car window. “See you at Thanksgiving.”
“Bye, Mom and Dad!” Michelle – Shelly to family and friends – called back.
Shelly’s sister Ashley said, “Have a safe trip!”
Stacy, her other sister, added, “We’ll take good care of her.” As their parents drove away, she said, “Come on, p’tite soeur, we’ll walk you back to your dorm.”
The three sisters shared a strong family resemblance. All three were the same physical type – small and trim like their québécois forbears, with fit and shapely bodies. All three were tanned, dressed in t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops.
Shelly was the youngest, a 19-year-old Freshman. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and hazel eyes. A former high school cheerleader, her personality could best be described as “effervescent”.
Stacy, the easy-going middle sister, was a 21-year-old Junior majoring in Hospitality Management. She had curly shoulder-length brown hair and soft brown eyes. She worked part-time at the local Persian restaurant.
Ashley was the oldest at 23, a first-year Grad student and teaching assistant in the Math department. She had short dark blonde hair and cool gray eyes. She was sober and capable, a first-born overachiever, always very much in control of herself. Ashley’s tan was magnificent – she had spent the previous summer working as a lifeguard at a beach resort.
Shelly’s sisters shared an apartment off campus, and she expected to move in with them next year. For now, though, she was a resident of Kipling Hall, a Fresman women’s dorm.
Kipling Hall was one of four identical buildings – the others were Burns, Tennyson and Byron – built in the early 1950’s to accommodate the growing postwar student population. They were unadorned red brick boxes with metal-framed windows, now softened somewhat by a growth of ivy, bordering a grassy quadrangle.
The RA on Shelly’s floor was leaving the building as the sisters climbed the steps to the main entrance. Shannon Graham was 21, a Junior majoring in English Lit. She was medium height, shapely, with brown eyes and long blonde hair worn in a pony tail. She had the sort of all-American good looks that people think of when someone says “farmer’s daughter” – though in fact she had grown up in the suburbs of Kansas City. She, too, wore t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops.
“Hello, Shannon,” Stacy said. There was a noticeable lack of warmth in her voice.
“Stacy! What are you… Oh, I see – your little sister.”
“Ayuh,” Stacy said, her Maine accent a little stronger than usual. “Take good care of her.”
“I’ll take care of them all,” Shannon said sharply. “Now if you’ll excuse me…” And she slipped past them, headed toward the Student Union.
“What was that all about?” Shelly asked.
“She lived down the hall from me our Freshman year, in Tennyson Hall, across the quad. There’s some…history,” Stacy replied. “Watch your back, Little Sis.”
“And on that cheerful note,” Ashley said, “we’ll bid you good night. You know where we live. Don’t be a stranger.”
Shelly hugged her sisters and headed into the building. The start of classes was still a week off. So far, Shelly was the only girl who had showed up.
The main entrance was at one end of the building; it opened into a vestibule. On the right of the vestibule was a mail room faced with glass-front mail boxes. On the left was a sort of pulpit and a sign-out board, both long disused, artifacts of the time when female students had a curfew. Past the vestibule, straight ahead, were the stairs to the upper floors; to the right was a lounge.
A long hallway led off the lounge, with a second staircase and a fire door at the end. The hallway was lined with double-occupancy rooms, arranged in pairs that shared a common bathroom between them. Each room held two built-in dresser/closet units, two desks, two straight chairs, and two beds. The beds were that odd size found only in college dorms, that are impossible to find sheets that fit. The paired rooms connected through the common bathroom, so that each girl had one primary and two secondary room mates.
The only deviation from the pattern was the first rooms on the right. The room nearest the lounge was a storage room. The RA had the other room and a bathroom to herself.
The place had all the warmth and architectural charm of a cellblock. The interior walls were painted concrete block, the floor institutional green linoleum tile. The indestructible lounge furniture was ugly and hideously uncomfortable. Still, these were the cheapest accomodations on campus. Shelly’s family wasn’t rich – with three girls in college, cheap counted for a lot.
Shelly’s room was at the far end of the hallway, to the right of the fire door. That’s probably a good thing, Shelly thought as she unlocked her door. Sister Stacy was pretty much imperturbable – if Shannon had gotten crosswise of Stacy, Shelly wanted to keep her distance as much as possible.
Her neighbors across the hall moved in the following morning. Danielle Deaver was a little shorter than medium height, nicely tanned, with a fit and shapely body, long dark brown hair and gray eyes. Tara Lynch was tall and slender – she had a crooked grin and the map of Ireland on her face. Her hair was an unruly mop of black curls, over fair skin and startling blue eyes. They were small-town girls like herself, had grown up on neighboring farms in the mountains of northeast Tennessee. Friends since childhood, they had arranged to room together at school.
Danielle was the dominant one of the two – she was certainly more outgoing than her quiet friend. And she was much sharper than she chose to appear. Shelly had the impression that she often used that to her advantage. Aha! someone might think – this kid just fell off the hay truck. Too late, they would realize that they were had.
She liked them both. Small towns were much the same all over the country – Neo-Classical court houses, men in overalls, pickup trucks with shotguns in the back window and so forth. The Tennessee girls spoke with soft mountain accents, Shelly with a Down East twang – but they understood each other perfectly.
There had been one more arrival – Shelly’s own room mate, in fact. But the girl had taken one look into the room, burst into tears and said, “Take me home, Mom.” It looked like Shelly would have the room to herself, at least for now.
The three girls had lunch at the dining hall – known, for reasons that became obvious, as “The Trough”. Afterward, Shelly went back to her room to read while the others unpacked.
She heard a burst of wild laughter from across the hall an hour or so later. It faded, then came back stronger than before. It went on and on. It had to be pretty loud, Shelly thought, for her to hear it through a closed door.
She stepped out into the hall and listened at Tara and Danielle’s door. That was the source of the laughter, sure enough. What on earth…?
Shelly propped the fire door open and stepped outside, around the building to her neighbors’ open window. The laughter sounded louder now. The ground fell away on this side – the window sills were maybe seven feet up. But there was ivy growing on the building. Shelly was agile, and didn’t weigh much. She kicked off her flip-flops and climbed.
They hadn’t bothered to close the blinds. Shelly peeked in and saw Tara lying hogtied on her tummy on her bed. Danielle kneeled behind her, ticking her feet with both hands. Tara laughed like mad, eyes closed, red faced as the tickling fingers explored her soft feet.
Shelly was the youngest of three sisters, and so had endured her share of tickling. She had given some back, too. But this went far beyond what she and her sisters had ever done.
Danielle scrabbled her nails on Tara’s heels, drew figure-eight’s and other tickling shapes in her arches, then tickled both soles, watching the toes twitch and curl. Tara squirmed, laughing wildly, trying desperately to escape the tickling, but Danielle had a knee on either side of Tara’s, holding her in place. She was laughing too, from sheer high spirits.
Danielle held her friend’s toes back and tickled under them, then back and forth across the stretched out soles. Tara lost it and laughed herself breathless.
“Get down from there!” a voice said sharply. Busted!
Shelly looked around and saw Shannon standing there, her hands on her hips. She climbed back down and stepped back into her flip-flops.
“What do you think you’re doing, Shelly?” Shannon asked. “Spying on your neighbors? Well, I won’t stand for it! You’ll treat your neighbors with respect, or you won’t stay here for long.”
“OK, OK, Shannon,” Shelly said.”It won’t happen again.”
“It had better not,” Shannon replied.
Another girl moved into the room next door to Danielle and Tara later that afternoon. Natalie Lasko was from Pittsburgh. She was a petite girl with shoulder-length fiery red hair, bright blue eyes and freckled fair skin. A former high school soccer player, she was fit and athletic-looking without being muscular. She was cheerful and outgoing, with an even temper and a ready smile. Natalie’s personality and Shelly’s were complementary – the two girls bonded instantly.
Shelly helped her new friend unpack. While they were working, the laughter started again from the next room.
“They’re at it again,” Shelly said.
“What?” Natalie asked.
“Come on – I’ll show you. You’d never believe it otherwise.”
They walked through the bathroom and tried the knob on the other door. It was unlocked – they pulled it open a few inches to watch.
This time, Danielle was the recipient of the tickle torture. Tara threaded a piece of coarse twine between Danielle’s toes and drew it back and forth, forcing a stream of ticklish laughter. She tickled between each pair of toes, then held them back and tickled the soft skin underneath. Danielle laughed her head off.
The hogtie, Shelly saw, was accomplished with a well-worn set of leather straps. These two had obviously been doing this to each other for a very long time indeed. But the straps seemed superfluous at the moment, because Danielle wasn’t resisting at all. It seemed that she was the more ticklish of the pair. Maybe she had all the fight tickled right out of her – she was certainly laughing hard enough.
Tara paused after five minutes or so. She noticed Shelly and Natalie for the first time.
“Well, y’all come on in,” she said. “Don’t stand there gawking. Haven’t y’all ever seen somebody getting tickled before?”
“Ayuh,” Shelly said. “My sisters and I do this sometimes. But we’ve never tied each other up, and never taken it this far.” She pronounced the words “nevah” and “fah.”
Danielle rolled onto her side and blinked away tears of laughter. “Well, we do it this way because one of us – tickler or ticklee – would get hurt if we didn’t.”
“We learned that the hard way,” Tara added. “Anyway, y’all make yourselves at home. I’m going down the hall to get some Cokes out of the machine in the lounge.”
There was a nervous silence after Tara left – neither Shelly or Natalie quite knew what to say to a hogtied girl. But then the Devil poked Shelly in the ribs. She kneeled on the bed behind Danielle and rolled the girl back onto her tummy.
“Hey! What are you…? OH NO! Sta-haha-ap! Don’t… hehehe… tickle!” Danielle said as Shelly traced a fingernail in a circle in her arch.
“What?” Shelly said. “I can’t heah you. You want me to tickle?”
“NOOOOO! HAHAHAHA-hehe-HAHAHA-HAHAHA!” Danielle laughed as Shelly dug in, scratching and scrabbling the soft soles.
“Shelly, don’t you think…” Natalie said, alarmed.
“My sisters and I do this too,” Shelly said. “This won’t hurt her. Come on, help me.”
“I don’t know…” Natalie said dubiously.
“Oh, come on!” Shelly said. Her tickling fingers picked up speed. Danielle arched her back and laughed her head off.
“OK, why not?” Natalie replied, against her better judgement. She kneeled next to Shelly, who considerately moved over and concentrated her effort on one foot.
Natalie tickled hesitantly at first, but Shelly more than made up for it. As the Little Sis, Shelly had learned tickling from the inside. Now that she had reached her full growth, the contests with her sisters were a lot more even. She had actually become skilled enough to win tickle fights, especially with Ashley. And now Danielle was the beneficiary.
Danielle laughed like a madwoman as Shelly’s fingernails roamed over her ticklish foot. Natalie kept pace on the other, gaining confidence as she followed along. The girls held Danielle’s toes back, drew circles around the balls of her feet, then scratched and scrabbled the soles in the exact center, along the crease. They flicked their nails in Danielle’s arches, producing streams of giggles. They drew circles, squares and other tickling shapes on her heels – Danielle laughed harder, tears of laughter rolling down her cheeks. And then they tickled Danielle’s arches, just in front of the heels, and Danielle’s laughter went off the chart.
Shelly and Natalie were still tickling when Tara got back to the room.
“Hey! Stop it!” she yelled. “Leave her alone!”
“Why?” Shelly asked. “You were tickling her.” But they stopped anyway and stood up, leaving their victim sweating and panting on the bed.
“Let… it… be,” Danielle gasped out. “It’s… OK.”
Tara unstrapped Danielle. The girl rolled onto her back, shuffled her feet on the covers to get the tickle off, then sat up. “Wooo!” she said. “That really tickled! Where did y’all learn that?”
“My sisters,” Shelly replied. “Natalie is just a talented amateur.”
“No hard feelings,” Danielle said. “Let me take a shower, and we can go to The Trough for supper.”
And so it ended – or so Shelly and Natalie thought.
The girls in the room on the other side of Shelly’s bathroom arrived the next day.
Lindsey Eckard was a preacher’s kid from Notheast Arizona. She was a little taller than medium height, slender and graceful, with fair skin and brown hair that fell to her shoulder blades. She had high cheekbones with a dusting of freckles, a straight nose, a mouth a little too wide for conventional beauty. Her eyes were that indeterminate color that can appear blue or gray, or green, or even hazel.
At age 19, Lindsey was a work in progress – a cute girl, no great beauty, with a sunny, open disposition. In a few more years, she would be absolutely stunning. The signs were there for anyone who cared to look – she had classic supermodel features and bone structure. Her smile transformed her. When she smiled, she was radiant.
Alicia Jemison was an Air Force brat who had lived on USAF bases all over the world. She was a small girl, trim and fit-looking, with brown eyes and long, straight dark brown hair. She moved with the tigerish grace and economy of motion of a dancer.
Alicia looked Mediterranean – Greek, maybe – but wasn’t. Her family name was the tipoff – she was a Seneca Indian. “Pure-blooded Seneca” is an oxymoron. Alicia’s ancestor Mary Jemison, captured by raiders in 1758, was just one of many “White Indians” adopted into the Seneca Nation. Alicia’s European facial features were the expression of that part of her bloodline.
Shelly liked them both. It looked like she had lucked out as regards her neighbors – these two fit right in. Hopefully, Natalie’s room mate would fit in too.
Natalie’s roommate arrived the next day. Eve Stanton was a petite, pretty brunette with shoulder-length hair and green-flecked hazel eyes. She had a perky smile that dimpled her cheeks. She had no discernible tan, even now at the end of summer.
Eve was superficially friendly and outgoing but… there was something about her. Shelly caught the girl checking herself out in the dresser mirror as she talked with the others. It was like a performance, Shelly reflected. There was something false and brittle about it all.
Shelly held her tongue. Natalie had to live with this girl, after all.
Shelly, Lindsey and Alicia always left the bathroom doors open unless someone was actually inside. It was like living in a suite. But across the hall, the doors stayed closed now.
It was just as well, Natalie said later. Danielle and Tara made no secret of their odd “hobby”, and still tickled each other on a regular basis. Eve hated the very idea, and said so loudly and frequently. Natalie didn’t openly disagree – she wanted to keep the peace if at all possible.
Shelly was unlocking her door the following Saturday afternoon when Danielle and Tara’s door burst open. Four hands grabbed her and dragged her into their room. She went over backwards and landed on the floor, on the mock-Turkish throw rug the girls had. They flipped one side of it over her and rolled. Without quite realizing how it had happened, Shelly found herself rolled up in the carpet like a burrito, with only her head and feet sticking out.
She found her voice. “Hey! Let me go!” she yelled, struggling. But the rug was rolled too tightly – she couldn’t get out.
Danielle and Tara picked her up and laid her face-up on Tara’s bed.
“Remember the other day, when you tickled Danielle?” Tara asked sweetly. She pulled off one of Shelly’s flip-flops and dropped it on the floor.
“I sure do,” Danielle said. She pulled off the other flip-flop and dropped it next to the first.
Horrified realization came to Shelly. “OH NOOO! Not that! I’m sooo ticklish – I couldn’t stand it!”
“Should have thought of that before,” Danielle said. “We’re gonna make you sing!” She began tracing circles in Shelly’s arch. Shelly burst into ticklish laughter.
Tara joined in, dusting Shelly’s soles with an old-fashioned shaving brush. Shelly’s laughter went up a notch.
Then both girls went to work, and Shelly howled with forced mirth. Their fingernails scratched and scrabbled her soles, arches, heels, and back to the soles again as Shelly laughed and laughed. They held her toes back and tickled under them, then side to side on the stretched out soles. They drew circles and spirals on her heels, then continued up onto the arches. Shelly bucked and squirmed, laughing at the top of her lungs.
They gave her a break, just long enough to catch her breath, then started in again. They had already found the sweet spots – in the middle of her soles, along the creases – and tickled her there until she thought she would go crazy. Her sisters were good, but this was far beyond anything she had experienced at their hands. She laughed helplessly, all the fight tickled out of her, her soprano laugh ringing off the block walls.
They tickled her breathless, then unrolled her and helped her to stand. She was soaked in sweat, exhausted, her throat dusty dry.
“Congratulations!” Danielle said. “You’ve just been initiated into the East Tennessee Songbird Society!”
“You sing pretty well. Welcome, sister!” Tara added.
“I… had that… coming.” Shelly gasped. She was a little unsteady on her feet. “Songbird Society… Does that…” She paused, drew breath, started over. “Does that mean I get to tickle too?”
Danielle glanced at Tara and winked. “Maybe,” she said, easing Shelly toward the door. “Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk.”
Shelly found herself outside their closed door, with a thoughtful look on her face. East Tennessee Songbird Society, indeed!
She knocked on Natalie’s door – she wanted to talk it over with her friend. As it happened, Natalie had just gotten out of the shower. She came to the door in her robe, barefoot, toweling her red hair, and invited Shelly in. Shelly got a drink of water, then kicked off her flip-flops and laid on her tummy on Natalie’s bed, idly kicking her feet in the air while she waited for Natalie to put herself back together. Her abs and ribs were a little sore from laughing.
“They got you too, didn’t they?” Natalie asked.
“Ayuh… What do you mean, “too”? ”
“They’ve tickled me silly the last three nights.”
“And you haven’t said anything about it to anybody?” Shelly demanded.
Natalie blushed. “I found out that I enjoyed it. They ambushed me the first time, to get even for when we tickled Danielle. I went back for more because I like being tickled. It’s… exhilarating.” A little defensively: “Why not? We all enjoy it, and we aren’t hurting anybody else!”
“You know, the tickle fights I had with my sisters were kinda fun,” Shelly said thoughtfully. “I wonder…”
But Eve came in then, so Shelly and Natalie went to supper. They continued their discussion there, decided on a course of action, knocked on Danielle and Tara’s door when they came back. When it opened…
“TICKLE FIGHT!” they yelled, and attacked the others. The fight got pretty rowdy for a while, with plenty of laughing, giggling and squealing. Danielle and Tara eventually gained the upper hand, and Shelly and Natalie got tickled senseless again. But a grand time was had by all.
It turned into a game after that, and took on a life of its own. The rules were simple: Danielle and Tara tried to tickle every girl on the floor. The others, for their part, tried to avoid being tickled. Alicia and Lindsey were easy, it got harder as the others figured out what was going on. But Danielle and Tara were devious and persistent, and added to their score anyway.
One of the other girls on the floor had an uncle who worked for a movie theater chain; she had him send her a bunch of leftover studio promo material. The girls who had been tickled by the Tennessee Toe Ticklers each got a “T3” pin as a sign of her initiation.
For most, once was enough – a rite of passage of sorts. But Shelly, Natalie, Lindsey and Alicia enthusiastically joined in the tickle play themselves, and even helped Danielle and Tara catch the more recalcitrant girls. It was all good natured fun.
By Thanksgiving, Danielle and Tara had gotten them all. All but one, that is – they excluded Eve Stanton because they disliked her. Superficially friendly, in reality Eve was selfish and manipulative, vindictive, surly when she didn’t get her way. After the first month, everyone on their end of the floor – even Lindsey, an innocent if ever there was one – had seen through her. And there the matter rested until just before Christmas break.
***
Shelly wound down. Hmmm, thought Hannah. She had taken part in similar games herself, during her own Freshman year. But these girls were far more… adventurous… than Hannah and her friends had been.
“Please continue,” she said.
Natalie picked up the thread of the narration from Shelly, a little nervously. “It came to a head just before first semester finals…”
***
It was a Sunday afternoon in December, and semester final exams started a week from tomorrow. Natalie and Eve had been in their room, studying hard, and Natalie was wound up tight. She needed something to help her relax. Fortunately, it was ready at hand.
She kicked off her slippers, crossed through the bathroom and knocked on Danielle and Tara’s door. “Got a few minutes?” she called out.
Danielle let her in. “Three guesses what you want – and the first two don’t count. Well, we’re always happy to be of service.”
Tara tossed her a short strap. She slipped it under Natalie’s belt at the small of her back, crossed her friend’s wrists over it and made them fast.
Natalie and Danielle sat side-by-side on the bed. Danielle reached down for Natalie’s ankles, swung the girl’s legs up and into her lap. She rolled up the jeans legs a few turns and strapped the ankles together. Then the girls arranged themselves with Natalie’s ankles resting on Danielle’s right thigh, Danielle’s left thigh resting over Natalie’s shins with the left foot tucked behind the right calf to lock it in place. It was a simple but effective leg lock.
Natalie wiggled her bare toes. “Do your worst!” she said with happy anticipation.
Danielle started slow, teasing with little nail flicks. Natalie giggled like a little girl while Danielle traced a fingernail lightly along the bottoms of her feet. Then light scratching, and the giggles were continuous.
“Sta-haha-ap te-hehehe-easing! Tickle me-hehehe!” Natalie said through the giggles.
“Suits me,” Danielle said, and did just that, fingernails flying across the ticklish soles. Natalie threw her head back and laughed at the top of her lungs.
Natalie’s feet were extremely ticklish all over – Danielle and Tara hadn’t discovered any particular sweet spot, though they had tried, to Natalie’s ticklish delight. Danielle’s tickling fingers roamed the bottoms of Natalie’s feet, producing streams of ticklish laughter. She scratched the heels, traced figure-eight’s in both arches, scrabbled on the soles while the toes twitched and curled, then back down to the ticklish heels.
Tara put a selection of implements on the bed next to Danielle. Danielle switched to one-hand tickling and selected an electric tooth brush. She spread Natalie’s toes and tickled between each pair, and Natalie collapsed backward on the bed, laughing like mad, all strength tickled out of her.
“Hey, save some for me!” Tara said.
“Hush your mouth!” Danielle replied, grinning. “You’ll get your turn. Isn’t that right, Natalie?”
But Natalie was laughing too hard to answer.
The shaving brush was next, dusting the soles, arches, heels, and back to the arches. Then a hairbrush, the type with round plastic knobs on the bristles. Natalie laughed her head off, red faced, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Danielle had threaded a piece of string between her toes and was drawing it back and forth, producing more wild laughter, when the bathroom door burst open.
“Dammit, are you gonna keep this up all night?” Eve demanded. “I’m trying to study!” She looked at Natalie, her hands on her hips. “And look at you! How can you allow people to treat you this way? Geez Louise, show some self respect!”
Danielle paused in the toe tickling. Natalie blinked away tears of laughter. “She’s… right,” she said, still short of breath. “Untie… me.”
“It’s about time you stood up for yourself,” Eve said.
Natalie shuffled her feet on the bed to get the tickle off while she tried to get her breathing and heart rate normal again. She stood up.
“Come on, Eve, let’s go,” she said.
They walked back through the bathroom to their own room, Eve in the lead. But then Natalie grabbed Eve’s wrist, twisted it behind her back, shoved it up between her shoulder blades, and ran her forward onto her bed. She bent, grabbed Eve’s ankles, heaved the girl’s legs up on the bed and scrambled after, sitting on Eve’s hips facing aft.
“Ow! Hey! What the hell are you doing? STOP IT!” Eve yelled. She struggled, trying to buck Natalie off.
Natalie grabbed Eve’s ankles again and pulled. She wrapped a leg around Eve’s shins and tucked it under the upraised knee of the other – the figure-four leg lock.
“You’re right, Eve,” Natalie said as she pulled off Eve’s socks, exposing her bare feet. “I shouldn’t let people treat me badly. And now I’m gonna pay you back for all your bitchiness!”
“NOOOO! DON’T TICKLE! I HATE IT!” Eve yelled, struggling again. But with both legs out of play, she lacked leverage.
Natalie just dug in, fingernails flicking snd scratching on Eve’s soles. Eve bucked violently and burst into helpless ticklish laughter. She had a great tickle laugh too, a sweet soprano. She could have been a real asset, Natalie thought. Too bad she’s such a bitch.
Natalie tickled two-handed down Eve’s arches toward her heels. The spots on the arches just in front of the heels were off-the-scale ticklish. Eve laughed her head off at the top of her lungs and quit struggling, all resistance tickled out of her.
Natalie kept tickling the sweet spots while Eve laughed and laughed. She eased off a little every so often, and tickled onto the heels, or up the arches to the soles, or held the toes back and tickled the soft skin underneath. But always she came back to THE SPOT. Eve slipped into ticklish delirium, laughing like a madwoman.
Natalie’s tickling fingers speeded up. Eve lost it and laughed herself breathless.
“Damn, you’re good,” Tara said from her seat on Natalie’s bed.
“Must have learned it from us,” Danielle added.
Natalie got up, leaving Eve gasping on the bed. “Help yourselves. I’ll be right back.”
Eve had started laughing again by the time Natalie knocked on Shelly’s door. “I’m moving in with you, Shelly,” she said. “I’ve had it with Eve. Help me move.”
Danielle and Tara had hogtied Eve by the time they got back – the girl was laughing her head off again as they tickled her feet. By then, Alicia and Lindsey had come out of their room to investigate. They helped too, so the move didn’t take long. They worked to the musical accompaniment of Eve’s helpless laughter.
Shelly took a turn at tickling Eve, then Alicia. Even Lindsey tickled her – she lacked skill, but not enthusiasm. They kept it up for over an hour while Eve laughed her head off. Natalie finished with more tickle torture that reduced Eve to red faced, gasping silent laughter again.
“See, Eve, I don’t let people treat me badly any more,” Natalie said on her way out. “Aren’t you proud of me?”
Eve stuck it out until the end of exam week, then left school and disappeared. Good riddance, Natalie thought – she won’t be missed.
***
“Do I understand correctly that y’all tortured Miss Stanton and drove her out of school?” Hannah asked them.
“She had it coming!” Natalie said, unrepentant.
“That’s as may be,” Hannah said. “But she never complained – there’s no record of it if she did. And if it didn’t go down on paper, officially it never happened. What did your RA have to say about your… activities?”
“Shannon’s a pain-in-the-butt control freak, but she was clueless at first,” Shelly replied. “Once she figured out what was going on, she tried to stop it, but she couldn’t catch us at it, and no one complained.”
“And why should they?” Alicia asked. “It was just harmless fun.”
“Except for Miss Stanton,” Hannah said sharply. “And Miss Graham too, or y’all wouldn’t be here. Continue, if you please.”
Alicia and Lindsey glanced at each other. “I’ll take it from here,” Alicia said. “As Shelly said, Shannon’s a control freak…”
***
It so happened that Shelly and Alicia were exactly the same size. Since they were on friendly terms, that had effectively doubled the size of both girls’ wardrobes. Shelly had been looking through Alicia’s closet the first week of school when she found a costume, a thing of bright canary yellow satin, sequins and filmy veils.
“Hey, what’s this?” Shelly asked, holding it up.
Alicia took it from her, selected a few more items from a dresser drawer. “I’ll show you,” she said, and stepped into the bathroom.
Alicia emerged and struck a pose. It was a belly dancer’s outfit, complete with finger cymbals. The jewelry – a necklace, bracelets, anklets and belt – was made of silvery coins.
“Wow!” Lindsey said.
“One of my mom’s friends – another Air Force wife – is a Lebanese Christian,” Alicia explained. “The base Welfare Committee at Ramstein hired her to give belly dance lessons as part of a fitness program for us dependants. I’ve been doing it since I was 14 years old – it’s good exercise.”
One look at Alicia’s flat abs and shapely legs revealed the truth of that.
“Hey!” Shelly said. “My sister works at a Persian restaurant. She said the owner is looking for a new dancer. You ought to give him a call.”
Alicia had auditioned with Stacy’s boss the next day for the dancing job at his restaurant. Her physical appearance was a bonus – in costume, she looked Middle Eastern. Mr. Mooshie was glad to have her. His previous dancer, a member of his large extended family, had decided to start a family; she was now hors de combat, with twins in the oven.
It was a good gig – Alicia had been at it for seven months now, since the second week of school. She worked two 20-minute sets, twice a week. Like the wait staff, she got a free meal and minimum wage. She made 10 times as much from tips.
Her second set of the night had just ended. She put a long raincoat on over her costume, put her tip roll in the pocket, stepped into her shoes, then left the restaurant through the kitchen door.
She heard giggling as she unlocked her door. The room was empty – she shucked off her coat and shoes and padded across the hall barefoot, still in costume.
The giggling had turned into wild ticklish laughter by then – Lindsey was really getting it! No one else on the floor paid the slightest attention any more – these days, the tickling was all consensual. It wasn’t coming from Danielle and Tara’s room. They were in the room next door then, the one where Natalie and Eve had lived.
Alicia rapped on the door, a Morse Code “A”. Danielle opened it – Tara was still tickling Lindsey. Officially, the room was vacant, locked up. Danielle had slipped the lock, and the two girls had turned it into a tickle chamber. They had built two sets of stocks – like all farm kids, they were handy with tools. Now Lindsey sat in one of the room’s straight chairs, hands tied behind her back, ankles in the stocks. She laughed like mad as Tara’s tickling fingers roamed the bottoms of her ticklish feet.
Poor Lindsey! She had lost a wager, and this was her forfeit. She was easily the most ticklish of them all, and these two had really been giving her the treatment. She was sweaty, red faced, her long brown hair a mess. She had stopped struggling, all resistance tickled out of her. All she could manage was to laugh, and laugh some more.
Alicia sighed. “OK, Danielle,” she said. “Tie me up and tickle me too.” Joining the party meant that Tara and Danielle couldn’t double-team Lindsey. Alicia liked her roomie – getting tickled was a small enough price to pay to give her a break.
Lindsey kept laughing as Danielle tied Alicia’s hands and locked her ankles in the stocks. “Hey, check this out!” Danielle said. “We ought to make a video – something with a Harem Girl theme.”
Tara replied, “Sounds good to me.” She never missed a beat – Lindsey’s ticklish laugh filled the room.
“Ewww!” Danielle said when she took a closer look at Alicia’s feet. They were gray on the bottom. She danced barefoot – in public places like restaurants, even carpets that get vacuumed twice a day are filthy.
“Well, I’ve got a solution for that,” Danielle said. She went into the bathroom, came back with a basin of warm soapy water and an electric tooth brush.
“You’re a Seneca, right?” Danielle asked. “Well, I’m part Cherokee. We never took scalps like y’all did – we counted coup in other ways. Not like this either-” She traced figure-eight’s in Alicia’s arch with a fingernail, producing a stream of giggles. “-but times change, and we have to change with them.”
She dipped the brush in the soapy water and started on Alicia’s toes. Alicia burst into ticklish laughter.
Danielle scrubbed each toe, then held them back and started under them, across the stretched out soles. The soapy water provided extra lubricant, so the toothbrush tickled a lot worse than it would otherwise. Alicia arched her back and laughed at the top of her lungs.
Danielle ran the brush up and down the exact middle of her right sole, along the crease. She circled the brush around the balls of Alicia’s feet in figure-eight’s, in smaller and smaller loops to cover every inch of ticklish flesh, then moved on to the center of the left sole while ticklish laughter poured out of her victim. She gave Alicia a breather – Alicia blinked away tears of laughter and glanced over at Lindsey, who was still laughing like a madwoman. She burst into laughter again as Danielle finished scrubbing her soles and worked her way down toward the ticklish heels.
Alicia and Lindsey were laughing too hard to hear the door open – their first warning was when the tickling stopped abruptly. Shannon stood in the room, pass key in hand, eyes flashing with anger.
“Look at this place!” she said to Danielle and Tara. “You two have been a bad influence from the beginning, and now you’ve gone too far! I’m gonna write you up over this. You can explain it to the Dean!”
The two ticklers released their ticklees from the stocks. Danielle whispered in Alicia’s ear, “Take your roomie and go back to your room. Y’all don’t want any part of what’s gonna happen next.”
They found themselves outside the door. It slammed behind them.
***
And there the story ended. Either they didn’t know what had happened next, or they weren’t talking.
Probably the latter, Hannah thought. “Very well,” she said. “Thank you for coming. Y’all are free to go.”
The four girls scrambled for the door, relief evident on their faces.
Hannah thought it over. So far, with just one exception, she had heard nothing really actionable – and there was no record of that exception. She had appointments with the RA and the other two girls at 11 AM. She would reserve judgement, and see how things shook out.
A little later, through the open door to the outer office, Hannah heard Mrs. Johnson say, “Why, hello, dear. What are you doing back here again?”
“Danielle and Tara are my friends,” Lindsey said simply.
Interesting. The Tennessee Toe Ticklers had inspired loyalty in this girl. Her character was one of Cromwellian rectitude – she didn’t give loyalty easily or lightly. That bore thinking about.
A soft Southern voice spoke, quietly, as if talking to herself:
“What are the bugles blowin’ for?” said Files-on-Parade.
Mrs. Johnson picked up on it and responded with the next line: “To turn you out, to turn you out,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
Dani Deaver indeed! thought Hannah. The poem was obscure – the fact that this girl knew it said something about her.
Danielle again: “What makes you look so white, so white?” said Files-on-Parade.
Mrs. Johnson: “I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
“Knock it off, Danielle,” said a third voice, this one with a touch of Corn Belt rasp in it.
“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Johnson said in an icy voice. “We were playing a game – a literary game – one I doubt you would understand. What’s your major anyway, Miss Graham – Computer Science?”
“English Lit,” Shannon replied.
“Then shame on you.”
Oops! Showtime. “Mrs. Johnson, please send Miss Graham in now,” Hannah said.
She regarded Shannon across the desk. No uneasiness in this one, only a feeling of righteous anger. She wanted the Tennesseans’ hides nailed to the barn door.
“Miss Graham, you’ve made some serious allegations,” Hannah said, holding up a printout of the girl’s email. “I wonder if you would care to amplify on them.”
“You’re da- ” She caught herself. “Darn right I would! Those two were trouble from the beginning…”
***
The trouble started at the far end of the hall, so Shannon was slow to catch on. Before she realized what was happening, the tickling games had taken firm hold and were spreading toward the lounge.
Shannon had an absolute horror of tickling. Her three older brothers had tickled her mercilessly while she was growing up – still did, when they were home together on holidays. When she had complained to Mom, they had rolled their eyes and said, “Oh, Mom! We’re just tickling her!”
“Just tickling her!” It was torture!
She resolved to put a stop to it, but ran up against a wall of silence. The “T3” pins proliferated, and no one complained.
Shannon would hear a burst of ticklish laughter, and knock on the door to investigate. When it opened, she would find a grinning Danielle and Tara and the room’s barefoot occupant, red faced and short of breath. There would be a tape of “The Lucy Show” playing on the VCR, the live studio audience laughing like lunatics at Lucy’s antics. There would be a pause after she left, and then the laughter would start again.
She knew what they had done to Eve Stanton, and thought she had them then. But Eve hadn’t complained either – she had just bailed out. It drove Shannon crazy!
But Danielle and Tara had gotten careless. Their tickle chamber was disgusting – sick – when Shannon discovered it, she knew she had cause to send them to the Dean. Maybe, if she was lucky, they would get expelled.
But they had a surprise in store for her…
The door closed behind Alicia and Lindsey. No matter – Shannon wasn’t after them.
“All right, you’ve had it!” she said to Danielle. “Leave those… things... where they are and get out of here. I’m sending you both to the Dean.”
She turned to leave. Too late, she saw that Tara was between her and the door. “Get out of my way,” she snarled.
Suddenly she felt her elbows grabbed from behind. She stumbled backward, sat down hard as her legs made contact with the edge of a chair seat. Then constriction, as both elbows were zip-tied to the uprights of the chair back. She yelped and tried to stand, but someone flipped a rope across her hips and tied it behind the chair, holding her in place.
“Goddammit! Let me GO!” she shouted furiously. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She struggled against the bonds. It was no use – she was had.
Danielle sat in the other chair. Tara fetched another from her own room and did likewise. Each girl grabbed one of Shannon’s ankles and flipped off a shoe.
“OH SHIT! HAHAHAHAHA-HAHAHA-HAHAHAHA!” Shannon laughed as the two girls spider walked their nails across her bare soles. It tickled worse – much worse – than she could have imagined.
The tickling filled Shannon’s universe as the two scratched and scrabbled their nails along the bottoms of her feet. Her tormentors tickled between her toes, under them, down the soles and arches onto the ticklish heels. She laughed helplessly while they tickled her heels, her ticklish laughter echoing off the hard block walls. Up the arches to her soles again, keeping pace, while she howled with forced mirth. Then the balls of her feet, under her big toes, where it really, really tickled. Shannon threw her head back and laughed her head off at the top of her lungs.
They tickled her until she was red faced and sweaty. They held her on the edge, never letting her zone out, while she laughed and laughed. They kept it up for a long, longtime. Then back to the balls of her feet again, and they picked up the pace. It was more than she could bear. She laughed herself breathless.
Tara untied the rope. Danielle stuck a “T3” pin on the front of Shannon's sweat shirt and cut the zip ties. “OK, Shannon. We’re through,” Danielle said. “Write us up, and be damned!”
***
Shannon finished her story, the indignation and anger evident in her voice. Hannah looked down and made notes on a lined legal pad, buying time while she thought furiously. Yes, the others had treated this girl badly, but her own incompetence at her assigned task was a contributing factor.
Hannah looked up, her decision made.
“Miss Graham,” she said, “I regard this incident as a Freshman prank that went too far. You suffered no real harm except, perhaps, to your dignity.”
“No harm?” Shannon responded angrily. “They’re tickle maniacs! They nearly tickled me to death! I want them off my floor! I want them expelled!”
Hannah looked back at her silently for a moment, then spoke. “Miss Graham, this is your first year as an RA, is it not?” The girl nodded. “It will be your last. You have no talent for it.” She raised a hand, cutting off Shannon’s protest. “Yes, I know – free room and board are part of your financial aid. The University will find another task for you next year, one for which you are better suited.
“In the meantime, you would do well to remember that you live in a dormitory, not a barracks. Your charges are young women, most of them away from home for the first time, and not the Black Tyrone. And you’re an RA, not Captain Crook O’Neill.”
Blank incomprehension. Hannah sighed inwardly – what did her colleagues in the English Department teach these days?
“I will remove Miss Deaver and Miss Lynch from your floor, Miss Graham,” Hannah said. “As for the rest, I’ll inform you of my decision. You are free to go.”
“But…” Shannon started.
“You’re dismissed, Miss Graham,” Hannah said with a touch of asperity.
Shannon walked out, head up, a spot of high color burning on each cheekbone. She didn’t slam the door – not quite.
“Mrs. Johnson, please send Miss Deaver and Miss Lynch in now.”
The taller girl, Hannah saw, was the archetype of the Scotch-Irish who had settled the southern mountains. Her friend – a touch of Cherokee in that one, or maybe Melungeon.
Both were frightened – and they should be. They would lose their financial aid if they were expelled. They would be hard pressed to replace it. Without it, their college careers were ended – they would end up back home. In a few years, both would be married to men who cut pulpwood for a living, with not enough money and too many kids.
“Do not be afraid,” Hannah said gently. “You will find justice here.”
“Professor Davis,” Danielle said nervously, “that’s exactly what we’re afraid of!”
That settled it. The girl had read Shelby Foote: Robert E. Lee had said Hannah’s last line to one of his erring soldiers. Danielle had come back with the soldier’s response, nearly word for word. Hannah had to find a way to keep this girl – and her friend too, she supposed.
“I trust that y’all realize the seriousness of your situation,” Hannah said. “Y’all assaulted Miss Graham, held her against her will, some would say that y’all tortured her. If this incident had taken place off campus, y’all would be facing charges of assault and battery, unlawful imprisonment, maybe kidnapping as well. Have y’all anything to say for yourselves?”
They shook their heads, miserable.
“The University has an arrangement of long standing with the local authorities,” Hannah continued. “If there’s gunfire, or blood, they step in. In all other cases, they turn a blind eye to anything that takes place on campus. We handle it ourselves. That’s my responsibility.
“I regard this incident as a Freshman prank that went too far. It does not merit your expulsion from the University. But…” Hannah raised a finger. “…I cannot allow y’all to stay in Kipling Hall. I will direct the campus Housing Authority to cancel your room contracts, effective the start of Spring Break. Y’all need to find another place to live – off campus.
“Furthermore, I’m placing both of y’all on Double Secret Probation. Here’s what that means: I will hold my report of this incident in my personal file. Stay out of trouble for the rest of the academic year, and I will shred it. It will be as if none of this had ever happened.”
Her expression, stern already, became more so. “If either of y’all comes to my attention in that time, for any reason, y’all will both be gone so fast that there will be a clap of thunder as the air fills the void where your bodies had been. Do-I-make-myself-clear.”
“Yes, ma’am!” they chorused, relief evident on both of their faces.
“Then you’re dismissed. Leave the door open.”
Lindsey had waited for her friends in the outer office. “Well, how did it go?” she asked them.
Danielle answered her:
For they’re done with Dani Deaver, you can ‘ear the quickstep play,
The Regiment’s in column, an’ they’re marchin’ us away;
Ho! The young recruits are shakin’, an’ they’ll want their beer to-day,
After hangin’ Dani Deaver in the mornin’!
Mrs. Johnson laughed out loud, and even Hannah had to stifle a laugh. This girl was definitely a keeper!
“Oh, shut up!” Tara said.
***THE END***
Afterword…
Hannah Davis first appeared in “Sabbatickle” by Capt. Spalding, aka Tee Hee Lawrence, posted elsewhere on this forum. The description is his, more or less verbatim. She is used with his kind permission.
Mary Jemison was a real person, with many present-day descendants. Visit the Seneca Nation of Indians website ( www.sni.org ) and scroll down to the bottom of the home page. Note the webmaster’s name – he’s one of them.
The poetry consists of slightly bowlderized excerpts from Rudyard Kipling’s “Danny Deever”. Crook O’Neill and the Black Tyrone are from his “The Ballad of Boh Da Thone”.
This is not a Tickle Street story, but fans of my work will have noticed that it is rather closely related – see TS Chapter 9,“A Matter of Honor”. The time frame is about the same as TS Chapter 16, “Penance”. I’ll probably write more crossover stories – I like the characters too much to leave them idle and un-tickled.
Hope you enjoyed the story. As before, constructive criticism is always welcome.
Strelnikov
(Edited 27 July 09 - typos corrected, I hope.)
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