chickles_:)
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Hi everyone! 
I can’t believe I finally did it!
My first story on the site! 
First of all, let me thank you all so very much for taking a look at it. I really hope you enjoy this visit to my fantasy world.
Speaking of which, let me share a brief word of introduction.
After reading about how five soldiers of the Canadian division assigned to the International force in Afghanistan were killed by American airpower due to an American intelligence foul-up, I did some further reading about that country’s (Canada's) involvement in international affairs and that led to some unexpected discoveries. Add to that the recent scandals of American forces in Iraq and I thought I’d delve into an old fantasy of mine using a Canadian secret agent. –I thought it would make an interesting balance to the many stories out there featuring American agents.
So, No offence, to any Americans in the crowd.
Also, let me hasten to add that though written in the first person, the character of Felicity Frost isn’t really the kind of person I am – and, no, I’d rather we didn’t get all Freudian about that.
Also a couple of details:
The term “Semi”, I discovered, is an -uhm- uncomplimentary nickname used by NATO nations for American service men and women.
“Inspector” is a junior officer in the Commonwealth police ranking system.
RCMP: Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Canada’s national police service.
Métis: Official race name of French-Indian mixed blood.
“The Devil’s Brigade” was a unit of combined Can-Am troops in WW-2
Just to warn you, the first not-quite-third moves quickly, but primarily builds the story, sets the context, and introduces Felicity Frost and her friend Zoë.
The details and characters in the story are my own. However, the whole “South Pacific Islands” theme you might recognise as based on details in the excellent story “Captive” by “Ramos”
Lastly, the story is dedicated to “Rose” -of the Hidden Rose Garden site- imho the best tickle-story writer around. If I get to be half as good as she, I’ll be happy.
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A Nightmare to Remember MM…/f
“So, you wanna talk about it?”
Perched on the edge of my purple velvet upholstered ‘granny-chair’, one of the few sensuous luxuries I had indulged in keeping, after moving into the condo, I looked up at Zoë while French-braiding my dark hair still-damp from the shower after our run. “Talk about what?” I asked trying to look innocent. I fingered the final knot and, in spite of my resolve not to, grinned cheekily.
Her face said it all, “don’t even think about trying to play dumb, Felicity.”
I hated the way she did that to me. You know, looked at me like I might as well not even try to lie to her because she could read my thoughts better than I could. I might be an RCMP Inspector, attached to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service for the last six years but I have always been grateful that I never taught Zoë how to play poker.
If only Sam had been able to read me like that,,,
Then he probably wouldn’t have even dated you in the first place, chided my conscience, never mind married you, given you a son and then packed off with him to Saskatoon the day he found out you were a spy.
I glared at the ceiling. Saskatoon! Who, the hell, runs off to Saskatoon?
“You’re doing it again,” Zoë broke in on my thoughts.
“If you don’t mind,” I snapped back, “I already have a conscience, and she’s quite overindulged as it is, thank you very much.”
“Thinking about Adam are we?” Zoë asked pouring me a mug of chai.
“Gawd,” I sighed and rubbed fingers against my temples and eyes. When did I not think of him.
Seven years, four months, a week, and three days since he pushed his way out of me and into this crazy world, yet even so he’d still been a part of me. I glanced at the clock, six-thirty - four-thirty central standard time, I thought, musing again at the silly people of Saskatchewan who refused to go on daylight savings. He’ll be just coming home from hockey practice.
I smiled at my ever patient friend cum counsellor cum conscience and took the offered cup of chai as I curled both feet up locking them under my thighs. No matter what they say, blue jeans do not have the flexibility of a good pair of track pants.
“Sorry,” I said, my lips twitching in a smile that I quickly hid behind the mug.
“You were going to tell me what happened to you in Afghanistan.”
She’d spoken softly but her words shot through me like an electric shock, sending me choking on the chai.
For a moment I couldn’t breathe. For that moment I was back outside Kandahar struggling for air, unable to breathe even to shriek at the agony they put me through.
Oh Gawd!
I fought for air. gulped it in. curled foetal-like in my granny-chair arms tight to my sides clutching my mug to my middle.
“It’s okay, girl. Shhh.” Zoë reached out gently patted my back and slowly rubbed my arm. Her caress soothed through the sleeve of my exercise tunic. “You’re safe now, Fel, so let it out. Tell me what happened back there.”
I sat there for a moment hardly daring to crack open the door of memory, feeling, even as I did so, the body memory of that terrible ordeal. I pressed my eyes shut blocking it out. Zoë patiently encouraged. I opened my eyes again and slowly calmed my breathing.
“Oh Gawd, Zoë.” I covered my mouth and wept. The sound of liquid pouring into liquid drew me back. I grinned in spite of myself at the sight of my friend adding liberal amounts of Bermuda Gold to my mug of chai.
“Now, there’s a good girl,” she cooed lifting the mug to my lips, “drink up and tell aunt-Zoë the whole thing.”
The spiked drink almost burned sliding down my throat but it landed like a company of paratroopers fanning out to warm my insides. I hated to admit it, but it did make me feel better.
“Afghanistan,” I finally managed with a sigh. “Six years doing Ottawa’s secret ops and I’ve never been through an ordeal like that one.” I looked at her with a lopsided smile. And let the story unfold.
When Ottawa decided to send troops to Afghanistan to replace our American neighbours who’d been diverted to Iraq, it was pretty much a shoe-in that their expert linguist girl with the Status Métis father and Chinese-Bangladeshi mother would be on the first boat shipping out.
Yep not a drop of British blood in me. But that’s another story, like small wonder I always argued with history teachers as a child. It was one reason, too, why I’d fallen in love with Samuel MacDermott: Canada was nothing, I had told my parents, if not about combining races in harmony.
Hey, everyone’s a dreamer at 21.
But in Afghanistan, an experienced agent with dark hair and Middle Asiatic-like features and a knack for languages, meant someone who could penetrate deep. And for fifteen months three weeks and five days of Adam’s life, I’d done damn fine work, if I do say so myself.
Despite being a woman under thirty, or in some cases, because of it, -having a few curves in a male-dominated society never hurt in the art of coaxing information- I’d uncovered two El Qaeda cells, contacted a women’s passive resistance network and even discovered the hideout of one of the US Intelligence’s top 52 most wanted.
US Intelligence! There’s an oxymoron if ever I heard one! Gawd those bastards!
Zoë was rubbing my arm again and dosing me with another of her chai-liqueur combos.
“Anyway,” I told her, “it was just like f*****g Korea!”
Every agent knows the Korean War story of how we tried to warn the American commander that our rapid approach to the Yalu river had spooked the Communist Chinese. How’d we know? India, was China’s moral ally, we were India’s Commonwealth partner. But would Washington listen to us? Hell no. And so the Chinese pulled an end-run on our UN troops.
Same damn thing happened when I tried to tell them I knew where Shia-Masjid was hiding out.
How would I know? His illicit concubine gets her feminine laundry done in the back of Kandahar. I had befriended the washer women there.
By the time the US “Intelligence” was willing to listen to a little secluded gossip, our quarry had given them the slip.
Still, I have to admit, I definitely share my country’s envy for the one thing that American everything, including Intelligence services, has over us hands-down.
Money!
Girl, I tell you, the FBI, the CIA, the OAS, the KBB, you name the service, they all can practically write their own cheque and stamp their Republican president’s signature on it.
And the night I was sent in to penetrate a Taliban safe compound I could have kicked our Prime Minister up his financial-background ass, and her Excellency the Governor General too. With an election about to be called, they’d cut the damn budget and recalled my two partners back to Islamabad! Instead they wanted me to go in alone, scout the place and then play tour guide to seven of Uncle Sam’s finest.
Oh well, I’d tried to console myself, at least Bill Schmaker would be leading the American team. I’d worked with him before and as Yankee personnel went he was pretty sharp, not half bad to look at either.
What a total asshole he turned out to be!
So there I was commando-body suit under my totally black Taliban-approved body-hijab.
The one good thing about those outfits, is you don’t have to get all cammed up. Putting that gunk on your face is the absolute worst thing for your skin. It can take days to clear it out of your pores.
I made my way across the outer courtyard and up to the iron entrance door. Once again those feminine curves had come in handy evoking from a senior guard the number combination I needed to let myself in.
From here on there was little chance of being spotted, aware as I was from earlier scouting that only a handful of men were currently in the establishment. The plan was to take them for questioning, and to capture any documents.
Slipping past a couple of disinterested patrols, I made my way to the rendezvous point in the boiler room below the main house, chosen in part because the noise would mask our operations. Turns out it did a pretty fair job of masking other things too. But more of that later.
Purposely arriving five minutes early I stood guard by the door and waited for the Americans to appear from the sewer that ran in from the river.
And here’s where my latest cynicism for US “Intelligence” began. The rendezvous time passed five then ten minutes. I wondered if they were all right. A hundred possible complications raced through my mind.
But I’m a professional. I was on a mission. I was trained not to panic. Nevertheless I went to the sewer entrance to check – and saw a black shadow jump down from the ceiling.
I leapt behind a thermal pipe, drawing and pointing my Browning pistol in a single move. I’d just about fired when another shadow half jumped, half fell from the ceiling.
“OW! Gawdammit!” the male voice growled.
“Shit,” I whispered at them, stepping out from cover and lowering my pistol, “what the hell are you doing up there?”
“Abort, abort, abort!” The voice of the first man through the ceiling rasped. “We’ve been campram-ah-zed!” Before I could protest his boot hammered my hand sending my pistol clanging against the metalwork.
“What the hell?” I glared at him just in time to see him lunge at me. I barely dodged aside so that he grabbed air and fell heavily against a boiler.
I looked up as two more leapt down more successfully than the first two.
“Quick!” One of them shouted, “Get him before he warns the others.”
I twisted left of a punch, jumped a whip kick, and rolled under another grab to come up spinning to face my contacts-turned-adversaries. “It’s me you idiots!”
Whether these greenhorns had O.D.’ed on adrenaline or some other macho hormone I couldn’t tell. One thing was sure, they were big, angry, and could punch like freight train.
A two-by-four, it felt like it at least, hammered my cheekbone sending me sprawling to the cement floor. I scrambled up my head ringing and my face completely numb. I had to convince these idiots that I was on their side before someone, sent real Taliban troops down here to check out the commotion – and worse, I had to do it without hurting them, for pretty much the same reason.
The next couple of minutes saw me softly yelling the agreed-upon code sign while dodging most of their attacks.
My gut ached from a well placed kick and the other half of my face throbbed from a punch to match the first. Worse was my back that pinched where I’d fallen into a set of knobbly pipes.
I leapfrogged over Jim, the tallest one, wincing in empathy as his head collided with a large tap, then I spun into a judo move to flip Chip onto the floor. Chuck lunged at me and before I could think, I’d leapt up and grabbed a coldwater pipe swinging gymnastically forward over Chuck’s head - only to swing back into the waiting grasp of Greg the unit’s 2 i.C. He pulled at my waist, I kicked at his legs scoring two painful blows.
“You dumb jerk, it’s - Gyaaaaah.”
Somehow in the struggle his hand had slipped under my flak jacket and was squeezing against my lower ribs. I bit my lip hard muffling the hysterical laughter that his probing fingers forced out of me. But I couldn’t prevent my one hand from letting go of the pipe and clawing frantically at his fingers. Thus weakened by tickles and holding both our weights, my one-handed grip gave way and we plunged to the floor with Greg absorbing most of the fall.
Though shaken, I might have recovered to resume my evasive manoeuvres if our brief tussle had not given his men a chance to close in. I’d no sooner shaken off the fall than a dozen male hands had rolled me to my front, wrestled my arms behind my back and pinned them painfully against my body. One of the male hands grabbed the black scarf around my face and head and ripped it off sending my hair billowing out like a big black cloud.
Finally in the dim light a couple of them had a spark of actual intelligence.
“Hey, it’s a girl!”
“You’re right. Holy shit, weren’t we supposed to meet a girl down here?”
I rolled my eyes struggling to inhale against the weight of the lug sitting on me. “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.”
“Yeah,” Greg rose painfully from the floor, “we’re supposed to meet a Canuck chick. Turn her over.”
I glared as best I could back at Jim till he slowly rose from my back. The unmistakable leer on his face landed cold in my gut.
“It’s about time,” I said as rough hands turned me over and sat me up. I made to stand but the hands gripping my arms held me in place as Jim and Red plunked themselves on my shins.
“Not so fast, missy,” Greg said stepping into the “V” between my legs. He reached out and gripped my jaw. Secured as I was, I still twisted my face free and tried to bite him. I knew I shouldn’t have but I was way past too-pissed-off-to-care.
“Ain’t never seen a Canuck chick look dark as you. Eh boys?” heads shook murmuring agreement, “where you really from, missy?”
I glared up at him and panted out the pass phrase one more time. “I served in -the Devil’s Brigade.”
“Where’d you hear that?” he spat, “the moment you slaughtered our contact?” His hand whacked my cheek wrenching me against the arms that held me. I tasted salt.
“Listen you pig-headed Semi!” I spat out a dribble of blood. “I am your gawdamm contact! Inspector Felicity Frost, Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, born in Iroquois Falls, Ontario, raised in every freakin’ town from St. John’s to Beaver Creek big enough to have a curling rink till I was old enough to pay my way through university - which I did, by the way, in Peterborough Ontario. What the hell else do you need to know?”
Chest heaving partly from fury, partly, I admit from fear I watched this idiot lower himself in front of me, his face twisted in a smug grin – which I would have gladly removed with the toe of either boot had either boot been mine to freely kick with. But with Jim and Red firmly parked on my shins there was nothing for me to do but glare at the Sergeant crouching between my knees and hope he didn’t decide to ‘use’ me for something other than a guide.
“Actually,” he said, letting the fingers of one hand trail up the outside of my right thigh, “I want to know, how long it’s going to take for you to tell me who you really are,” he finished.
I swallowed the bile at the back of my throat and clamped my mouth shut fighting off the unbearable tickle as those fingers traced a path high enough around my thigh to get him arrested and back down the inside of my leg. The fingers reached my knee and pressed into the hollow.
“Eeep!” The squeak escaped before I could stop it as my whole body shivered.
“Ahh,” he said and grinned wickedly, letting his fingers probe some more at the inside of my knee. “Are you –ticklish, my dear?”
Oh GAWD!
I couldn’t help it, I gasped and shuddered barely suppressing the giggles by crushing my tongue between my molars.
“Perhaps we’ll have the truth out of you in no time at all, huh?
“Put her on her back, boys,” he ordered, “and pin her arms firmly above her head.”
I struggled, argued, fought, all the while mindful that to scream would invite death at the hands of the Taliban stationed here. But given that I had no leverage, the three US Marines, built like human tanks, easily pressed my arms helplessly to the floor high over my head. I twisted my head up just to confirm that my hands still responded to my will at least.
Fingers fiddled my ear. I jerked my head around to see Chuck leering down at me. “Woohoo guys, I think I found an erogenous zone.”
“F**k you!” I tried to spit but his meaty paw clamped over my mouth.
“Oooh, slow down girl,” he grinned wickedly, “you’ll want to be saving your energy for writhing. He leaned into my face so close I could smell the tobacco on his breath, “we’ll be peeling you shrieking off the ceiling before the Serge is finished with you,” he whispered.
I wondered, as he pulled away and finally let go of my mouth if a swift death from a Taliban bullet would be worse than what these lunatics had planned to do to make me lie about who I really was.
“Greg, that’s your name right?” I pulled my head up to look at him, trying a little charm. “Can’t we talk this over? Just please think for,,,”
“Give me that scarf!” Greg barked. “Can’t have her alerting her allies.”
Oh GAWD, they were really going to do it!
“Greg please! I’m telling the truth.” I strained to look up at him. “I’m Felicity Frost, your Canadian contact. For gawd’s sake sta-“ and that was the last intelligible word I said --for a very long time as Chuck pinched my mouth with one hand and stuffed the scarf in it with the other.
And that’s when my ally-tormentor suddenly revealed his unexpectedly sophisticated side as he began undoing my flak jacket.
“You know the trouble with torturers these days?” he asked as first one Velcro attachment then another gave way to his calm ministrations. “They always leave marks.” He tsked and shook his head. “I mean, how stupid is that, right? You whip someone, you shock someone, you cut off a thumb, and there’s something for them to show legal people later. So you get sued and the whole thing turns into one big fiasco.”
The bastard actually looked at me to see if I agreed with him!
“Anyway, I prefer something I read once about life in the South Pacific islands.” Having detached all the Velcro, he calmly opened my jacket and spread it wide as possible.
I pulled and twisted but the Marines pinning my arms and legs just laughed and held firm.
“Squirm all you like, missy,” said the guy on my left arm, “it gets me all hot.”
I glared at him – and wished I hadn’t. The sight of the expanding bulge in his pants nearly made me vomit into the scarf. I looked away struggling to breathe, wincing at the mocking laughter of the men holding me.
“Think she’s shy, Chip. Bet she prefers it nice and slow.”
Oh Gawd! I fought back the tears that threatened to seep out and tried to ignore Greg’s hideous pre-torture prattle.
“Those South Pacific Islanders, they discovered the perfect way to subdue indomitable captives yet still leave them able to work as slaves.” He gripped my cotton undershirt and tore it open from bottom to top with a single jerk.
Cool air teased against my tight and completely vulnerable belly.
“Can you guess what they used to do?”
I stared wide-eyed at the knife he drew and brought toward my breasts.
“Oh, this?” He looked at the knife and laughed. “No, nothing like that. This, is just to expose you.” He grinned down at me and slid the knife between the cups of my sports bra separating it in two. A flick of the blade exposed my modest breasts to seven pairs of leering eyes and locker-room snickers. I wanted to puke. I tried to hold their gaze to maintain a brave front but despite my resolve I couldn’t stop myself from looking away to escape the humiliation.
I sucked in air and clamped down on the scarf forcing down my supper as Greg’s ten grubby fingers touched my breasts circling around my nipples. “They discovered that the best way to break a stubborn slave,” he said, “was to tickle him, or often, her.”
My body arched rigid as he slowly slid those fingers feather-soft over my nipples and down, down my sides, and, back up again fluttering them against my sensitive skin. Nerves I never knew I had quivered and shook me out to the tips of my fingers and toes. A humiliating whimper escaped to amuse my torturers before I could muffle it by burying my face in my outstretched arm.
Reflex nerves twisted, pulled, arched, and twisted some more but nothing granted even a moment’s relief from those tormenting fingers that slithered over my tightly stretched skin between my underarms and waist band. Up and down, up and down, up and down, they teased wracking me between agonising ecstasy and heavenly pain.
“That’s it, girl,” Chip said making fun of my high pitched whimpers, “sing for us, nice and soft.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAKK! My body rippled in convulsive waves but they all just laughed at my cry of distress.
“Keep going, Serge!” Red encouraged struggling to hold my leg in place.
“As you can see, it was a foolproof method of control. No harm comes to the victim but the frantic desperate agony is enough to make anyone beg for mercy.” He smiled down at me and evoked a humiliating wail of despair from deep in my soul as his fingers moved further south to trace agonising circles at the hollow of my waist just above my hips. “Sooner or later, so I’m told, everyone succumbed. All they had to do was tickle, and tickle, and tickle, and tickle, and every one of their captives from the hardiest warrior to the bitchiest shrew could be made to eat their own shit.”
“HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” My body convulsed again wriggling frantically as his fingers gently danced across my quivering tummy.
My fingers splayed and clenched desperate to release tension building inside me at the incessant tickling.
“Needles to say, they also found that it was a remarkable tool of persuasion. Precisely because it left no damage to the person, and because there was always a never-ending supply of ticklers to take over, the victim’s intense suffering could be prolonged indefinitely, making it the perfect torture.”
The pads of his fingertips slid back down around my waist to tease the top of my hip bones.
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHK.” Again I vainly fought against the grip of my captors finally giving in to the urge to laugh out loud. I shuddered, whipping my head back and forth straining pulling with every muscle. Desperate for just one second of relief – A second that never came.
GYAAAAA-HAAAAAAAA-HAAAAAAAA”
“True,” he prattled on, “it sometimes drove a victim insane.” He sneered down at me and fluttered his fingers in a new pattern over my tummy making me squeal even higher.
“But.” Greg chuckled. “it never failed.”
“She’s as ticklish as my sister, Serge,” Jim quipped. The others chuckled.
“Try her ribs.” Chip suggested.
I lurched up the maximum centimetres my captors’ grip would allow. “-OHHH!”
“Definitely go for it.” Jim agreed.
“Are your ribs ticklish, honey?” Greg cooed as he let his fingers glide over my tummy toward the protruding round bones. “Are they? Right here?” Fingers wiggled sending Tickle-waves shooting through me. I screamed into the gag, arched and pulled.
“Woah!” the guy on my left arm called out as my writhing brought my arm several inches down before he re-pinned it. “Almost,” he grinned mockingly down at me, and wrapped a meaty hand around my elbow while gripping my wrist with his other and began slowly, inexorably leveraging my arm back to its original vulnerable position.
Meanwhile my initial shrieks had given way to hysterics. Writhing and pulling, twisting unable to escape the fingers that probed and prodded and worked me between and around my lower ribs.
“You see,” Greg grinned down at my face now wet from perspiration, “I can sit here and do this aaaall night. And if I get tired or my fingers need to stop, well there’s always these other guys who can fill in for me. Which means, my dear, there is no hope for relief or a moment’s rest for you.”
“AAAAAAAAHHH! - EASE -SAAAAH!” I screamed into the cloth binding my face.
“Let’s try your ribs higher up shall we? Tickle, tickle. Tickle, tickle, tickle,” he teased.
I pulled and strained desperate for the chance to yank my arms down, but the men holding me actually stretched my arms even higher tightening the skin around my ribs, making it more sensitive.
“EEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEE!” Fingers dug in wriggling and tickling. As they moved higher, he went to work with his thumbs.
“Here’s where it gets truly devilish,” he explained, “I force you to laugh in agony by tickling your ribs while arousing you against your will, by teasing your breasts.
Oh GAWD! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKK!
It was true! I had thus far survived the tickle-agony because it had a certain nature, but his sudden sexual teasing of my breasts and nipples sent my brain in a totally different direction evoking a moist longing down below that I could neither prevent nor satisfy but which made the tickle torture even more severe.
I shrieked and wept, arching in sensory agony, half wishing someone would touch me down there even as the very idea disgusted me. My body shuddered in another mad convulsion that would have hammered my head into a bloody pulp on the floor if one of the guys hadn’t gripped it from the back and forced it up.
I didn’t hear Greg say anything just caught the chuckle and nod through my tear-filled eyes. Suddenly the frantic agony of Greg’s tickling shot up a dozen times as other fingers circled against my underarms.
“NAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAA HAAAAAA HAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAA!!” I shrieked. Sweat pasted my hair to my face despite my frantic head tossing.
“Itchy-kitchy kitchy-koo,
Is the little girl tickish - under here too?”
I couldn’t breathe! Shrieking laughter had given way to grimaced silent heaving adding suffocation to the terrifying tortures the bastards inflicted on me.
Convulsing in mad breathless silence I dimly heard the Sergeant instruct Jim and Red to untie my boots.
Desperate agonised tears streamed down my sweat-covered face. I remember thinking the horrified thought that these maniacs intended to tickle me to death!
From somewhere I discovered the air in my lungs for one desperate life-begging shriek as fingernails scrabbled over my bare soles.
As the ringing in my head grew steadily louder and I edged toward unconsciousness, I confess I reached the point that I would actually have made up a story of being a Taliban leader, hell even the instigator of the 9-11 disaster if I thought it would save me from this hideous torment.
Except that I knew it wouldn’t. If they really believed me responsible for anything bad the torture would surely continue, and continue and continue until they’d tickled me to insanity or death or both.
I can only thank the God of my childhood, that I passed out at the very moment I heard Greg ask if any one had a Q-tip so he could test my belly button.
As a girl, I had never been much for winning tickle fights, but touch my button, and I always surrendered.
However long it was till I came to I have no idea. All I remember is moaning and giggling and feeling a horrible ache in every muscle of my body.
“Of course that’s her you f**k up!”
“But how was I,,,”
“Did she give the call sign?”
Well yeah, but it could have been faked,” Greg argued.
“Gawdammit!” I watched Bill Schmaker wind up to backhand the sergeant that had tickle-tortured me to within an inch of my life. But before I could encourage him to wallop the bejeezus out of the guy, Bill lowered his fist. “Thanks to you the whole damn mission’s gone scrub!”
“Thank God she’s coming around,” Bill crouched down near my face, “Fel, hey girl, you okay?”
I probably looked like hell. But I tried not to think about that as his tender smile greeted me. I swallowed painfully. My throat felt like it was on fire from all that screaming. So much for my career as a Soprano soloist, I joked with myself.
Oh Gawd, no more laughing!
He gently slid the gag from my thick dry mouth. Dimly I wondered why, now that I was rescued, my arms and legs were still pinned.
“You – recognise me.” I tried to smile. It hurt and I gave up. I blushed as his eyes noticed my exposed chest and half exposed hips.
“Yeah, yeah, Fel, I recognise you. The boys here tell me you put up a helluva fight.”
“Huh, and I’duv,” I swallowed dryly, “I’duv kicked your sorry ass – too. If you’d been around. So, gonna let me up, hon?” Beginning to revive I did smile at him, remembering a certain night dancing in Lahore – a night that had almost become something more.
He smiled and toyed with the gag. “No, I don’t think so.”
I was wide awake and lunged for him, or would have had the goons on me not reacted so quickly. “What? Are you insane? For God’s sake, Bill, you – you know me. Let me out of this nightmare!”
“Yeah I know you.” His smile remained but, I noticed, his normally bright blue eyes were full with suppressed anguish. “And you know my brother Dan.”
I nodded, “sure but what’s that,,”
“Dan got transferred to Iraq after your Canuck boys showed up here instead of helping out with the rest of us against Saddam. Dan was on patrol last night just outside of Baghdad, got ambushed by a bunch of GAWD-DAMN HUSSEIN LOVERS!”
I stared at Bill, my friend, or so I had thought and almost felt sorry for him. He’d gone mad with grief and now, as he forced open my mouth and gently, almost lovingly, put the gag back in, he intended to drive me mad with tickling.
“GAWW, OHHHH! -ILLL –LEASE!” I shook my head and pulled my aching muscles again weeping in spite of myself. God knew, I couldn’t endure that torture again, not even for a minute.
He smiled at me as he caressed my cheek and wiped my uncontrollable tears with his thumb. “You see, it’s that Maple Leaf you wear, Fel, it kind of makes you responsible. Dan died because of you, now you have to suffer for it.
“Where’s that Q-Tip.”
I fought to sit up, writhed and screamed, made the bastards that held me down work for every second of sadistic pleasure they’d get out of torturing me for Bill’s brother.
My eyes bulged as Bill, calmly twirled and lowered the Q-Tip the last few centimetres toward my belly button.
“-OHHH!!” I forced my head up shaking in desperation. “-ILLLLL –EAASE. –ITS -OT –OUR –AULT!!”
The wicked spinning white fuzz closed in. I could anticipate the agony. “-OHHH!!” I strained and pulled screaming for all I was worth. Bill paused hanging the tender sword of Damocles over the narrow crevice in my lower tummy.
“Agony, Fel, now do you feel my pain?”
Powerful soldiers’ hands pressed me down, pinning me with all their weight to the floor as the spinning Q-Tip plunged deep amid the most sensitive skin on my body. I shook and shrieked myself hoarse, my back arched and eyes bulged in a mask of agonised insanity.
Lightning blazed behind my eyes in a universe that had become the absolute pure eternal torture of a white fuzzy cotton twirling in the folds of my tummy.
My mouth moved “I’m Taliban!” I said over and over. And somewhere, in the my mad world of the tickle torture, I actually believed it was true!
“Oh - my – Gawd!” Zoë covered her mouth with one hand and stroked my back with the other as I shuddered doubled over in my granny chair sobbing.
We sat there like that for a long moment before tentatively Zoë asked the obvious question. “How, how did you escape?”
I sniffled reached for a tissue, blew my nose and chuckled. “I was rescued,” I said. I looked up at her and shook strands of hair that had pulled free of my braiding. “By the Taliban.” I giggled.
“Seems the tickle torture was making too much noise after all. When some of them descended on us it snapped Bill and the others out of their own momentary madness. I admit I was in pretty rough shape, but I managed to take one down.”
I blew my nose again, folded the tissue up and tossed it into the trash can.
The door bell rang. I backhanded my hair away and looked at Zoë.
She smiled clasped my hand. “I’ll get it,” she said confirming the obvious - that I looked horrible.
“Well, what have we here?” she said returning, her arms laden with a box full of the most gorgeous flowers.
“Give me that!” I flung myself off the chair and lunged for the card in her hand. But she laughed twisting free using the box as protection.
She read,
“To my dearest Felicity.”
“You were great. I was a total asshole.
If we can agree on that, maybe there’s hope for us??”
Love, Bill.
P.S. Next time, the laughs are on me. J”
That last line creased a thin smile across my face. Oh yeah, Bill. You better believe I’m going to find a way to hold you to that!
Thanks for reading, everyone. Hope you enjoyed it!
Love ya,
Chickles_
I can’t believe I finally did it!
My first story on the site! First of all, let me thank you all so very much for taking a look at it. I really hope you enjoy this visit to my fantasy world.
Speaking of which, let me share a brief word of introduction.
After reading about how five soldiers of the Canadian division assigned to the International force in Afghanistan were killed by American airpower due to an American intelligence foul-up, I did some further reading about that country’s (Canada's) involvement in international affairs and that led to some unexpected discoveries. Add to that the recent scandals of American forces in Iraq and I thought I’d delve into an old fantasy of mine using a Canadian secret agent. –I thought it would make an interesting balance to the many stories out there featuring American agents.
So, No offence, to any Americans in the crowd.
Also, let me hasten to add that though written in the first person, the character of Felicity Frost isn’t really the kind of person I am – and, no, I’d rather we didn’t get all Freudian about that.
Also a couple of details:
The term “Semi”, I discovered, is an -uhm- uncomplimentary nickname used by NATO nations for American service men and women.
“Inspector” is a junior officer in the Commonwealth police ranking system.
RCMP: Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Canada’s national police service.
Métis: Official race name of French-Indian mixed blood.
“The Devil’s Brigade” was a unit of combined Can-Am troops in WW-2
Just to warn you, the first not-quite-third moves quickly, but primarily builds the story, sets the context, and introduces Felicity Frost and her friend Zoë.
The details and characters in the story are my own. However, the whole “South Pacific Islands” theme you might recognise as based on details in the excellent story “Captive” by “Ramos”
Lastly, the story is dedicated to “Rose” -of the Hidden Rose Garden site- imho the best tickle-story writer around. If I get to be half as good as she, I’ll be happy.
***********************************************
A Nightmare to Remember MM…/f
“So, you wanna talk about it?”
Perched on the edge of my purple velvet upholstered ‘granny-chair’, one of the few sensuous luxuries I had indulged in keeping, after moving into the condo, I looked up at Zoë while French-braiding my dark hair still-damp from the shower after our run. “Talk about what?” I asked trying to look innocent. I fingered the final knot and, in spite of my resolve not to, grinned cheekily.
Her face said it all, “don’t even think about trying to play dumb, Felicity.”
I hated the way she did that to me. You know, looked at me like I might as well not even try to lie to her because she could read my thoughts better than I could. I might be an RCMP Inspector, attached to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service for the last six years but I have always been grateful that I never taught Zoë how to play poker.
If only Sam had been able to read me like that,,,
Then he probably wouldn’t have even dated you in the first place, chided my conscience, never mind married you, given you a son and then packed off with him to Saskatoon the day he found out you were a spy.
I glared at the ceiling. Saskatoon! Who, the hell, runs off to Saskatoon?
“You’re doing it again,” Zoë broke in on my thoughts.
“If you don’t mind,” I snapped back, “I already have a conscience, and she’s quite overindulged as it is, thank you very much.”
“Thinking about Adam are we?” Zoë asked pouring me a mug of chai.
“Gawd,” I sighed and rubbed fingers against my temples and eyes. When did I not think of him.
Seven years, four months, a week, and three days since he pushed his way out of me and into this crazy world, yet even so he’d still been a part of me. I glanced at the clock, six-thirty - four-thirty central standard time, I thought, musing again at the silly people of Saskatchewan who refused to go on daylight savings. He’ll be just coming home from hockey practice.
I smiled at my ever patient friend cum counsellor cum conscience and took the offered cup of chai as I curled both feet up locking them under my thighs. No matter what they say, blue jeans do not have the flexibility of a good pair of track pants.
“Sorry,” I said, my lips twitching in a smile that I quickly hid behind the mug.
“You were going to tell me what happened to you in Afghanistan.”
She’d spoken softly but her words shot through me like an electric shock, sending me choking on the chai.
For a moment I couldn’t breathe. For that moment I was back outside Kandahar struggling for air, unable to breathe even to shriek at the agony they put me through.
Oh Gawd!
I fought for air. gulped it in. curled foetal-like in my granny-chair arms tight to my sides clutching my mug to my middle.
“It’s okay, girl. Shhh.” Zoë reached out gently patted my back and slowly rubbed my arm. Her caress soothed through the sleeve of my exercise tunic. “You’re safe now, Fel, so let it out. Tell me what happened back there.”
I sat there for a moment hardly daring to crack open the door of memory, feeling, even as I did so, the body memory of that terrible ordeal. I pressed my eyes shut blocking it out. Zoë patiently encouraged. I opened my eyes again and slowly calmed my breathing.
“Oh Gawd, Zoë.” I covered my mouth and wept. The sound of liquid pouring into liquid drew me back. I grinned in spite of myself at the sight of my friend adding liberal amounts of Bermuda Gold to my mug of chai.
“Now, there’s a good girl,” she cooed lifting the mug to my lips, “drink up and tell aunt-Zoë the whole thing.”
The spiked drink almost burned sliding down my throat but it landed like a company of paratroopers fanning out to warm my insides. I hated to admit it, but it did make me feel better.
“Afghanistan,” I finally managed with a sigh. “Six years doing Ottawa’s secret ops and I’ve never been through an ordeal like that one.” I looked at her with a lopsided smile. And let the story unfold.
When Ottawa decided to send troops to Afghanistan to replace our American neighbours who’d been diverted to Iraq, it was pretty much a shoe-in that their expert linguist girl with the Status Métis father and Chinese-Bangladeshi mother would be on the first boat shipping out.
Yep not a drop of British blood in me. But that’s another story, like small wonder I always argued with history teachers as a child. It was one reason, too, why I’d fallen in love with Samuel MacDermott: Canada was nothing, I had told my parents, if not about combining races in harmony.
Hey, everyone’s a dreamer at 21.
But in Afghanistan, an experienced agent with dark hair and Middle Asiatic-like features and a knack for languages, meant someone who could penetrate deep. And for fifteen months three weeks and five days of Adam’s life, I’d done damn fine work, if I do say so myself.
Despite being a woman under thirty, or in some cases, because of it, -having a few curves in a male-dominated society never hurt in the art of coaxing information- I’d uncovered two El Qaeda cells, contacted a women’s passive resistance network and even discovered the hideout of one of the US Intelligence’s top 52 most wanted.
US Intelligence! There’s an oxymoron if ever I heard one! Gawd those bastards!
Zoë was rubbing my arm again and dosing me with another of her chai-liqueur combos.
“Anyway,” I told her, “it was just like f*****g Korea!”
Every agent knows the Korean War story of how we tried to warn the American commander that our rapid approach to the Yalu river had spooked the Communist Chinese. How’d we know? India, was China’s moral ally, we were India’s Commonwealth partner. But would Washington listen to us? Hell no. And so the Chinese pulled an end-run on our UN troops.
Same damn thing happened when I tried to tell them I knew where Shia-Masjid was hiding out.
How would I know? His illicit concubine gets her feminine laundry done in the back of Kandahar. I had befriended the washer women there.
By the time the US “Intelligence” was willing to listen to a little secluded gossip, our quarry had given them the slip.
Still, I have to admit, I definitely share my country’s envy for the one thing that American everything, including Intelligence services, has over us hands-down.
Money!
Girl, I tell you, the FBI, the CIA, the OAS, the KBB, you name the service, they all can practically write their own cheque and stamp their Republican president’s signature on it.
And the night I was sent in to penetrate a Taliban safe compound I could have kicked our Prime Minister up his financial-background ass, and her Excellency the Governor General too. With an election about to be called, they’d cut the damn budget and recalled my two partners back to Islamabad! Instead they wanted me to go in alone, scout the place and then play tour guide to seven of Uncle Sam’s finest.
Oh well, I’d tried to console myself, at least Bill Schmaker would be leading the American team. I’d worked with him before and as Yankee personnel went he was pretty sharp, not half bad to look at either.
What a total asshole he turned out to be!
So there I was commando-body suit under my totally black Taliban-approved body-hijab.
The one good thing about those outfits, is you don’t have to get all cammed up. Putting that gunk on your face is the absolute worst thing for your skin. It can take days to clear it out of your pores.
I made my way across the outer courtyard and up to the iron entrance door. Once again those feminine curves had come in handy evoking from a senior guard the number combination I needed to let myself in.
From here on there was little chance of being spotted, aware as I was from earlier scouting that only a handful of men were currently in the establishment. The plan was to take them for questioning, and to capture any documents.
Slipping past a couple of disinterested patrols, I made my way to the rendezvous point in the boiler room below the main house, chosen in part because the noise would mask our operations. Turns out it did a pretty fair job of masking other things too. But more of that later.
Purposely arriving five minutes early I stood guard by the door and waited for the Americans to appear from the sewer that ran in from the river.
And here’s where my latest cynicism for US “Intelligence” began. The rendezvous time passed five then ten minutes. I wondered if they were all right. A hundred possible complications raced through my mind.
But I’m a professional. I was on a mission. I was trained not to panic. Nevertheless I went to the sewer entrance to check – and saw a black shadow jump down from the ceiling.
I leapt behind a thermal pipe, drawing and pointing my Browning pistol in a single move. I’d just about fired when another shadow half jumped, half fell from the ceiling.
“OW! Gawdammit!” the male voice growled.
“Shit,” I whispered at them, stepping out from cover and lowering my pistol, “what the hell are you doing up there?”
“Abort, abort, abort!” The voice of the first man through the ceiling rasped. “We’ve been campram-ah-zed!” Before I could protest his boot hammered my hand sending my pistol clanging against the metalwork.
“What the hell?” I glared at him just in time to see him lunge at me. I barely dodged aside so that he grabbed air and fell heavily against a boiler.
I looked up as two more leapt down more successfully than the first two.
“Quick!” One of them shouted, “Get him before he warns the others.”
I twisted left of a punch, jumped a whip kick, and rolled under another grab to come up spinning to face my contacts-turned-adversaries. “It’s me you idiots!”
Whether these greenhorns had O.D.’ed on adrenaline or some other macho hormone I couldn’t tell. One thing was sure, they were big, angry, and could punch like freight train.
A two-by-four, it felt like it at least, hammered my cheekbone sending me sprawling to the cement floor. I scrambled up my head ringing and my face completely numb. I had to convince these idiots that I was on their side before someone, sent real Taliban troops down here to check out the commotion – and worse, I had to do it without hurting them, for pretty much the same reason.
The next couple of minutes saw me softly yelling the agreed-upon code sign while dodging most of their attacks.
My gut ached from a well placed kick and the other half of my face throbbed from a punch to match the first. Worse was my back that pinched where I’d fallen into a set of knobbly pipes.
I leapfrogged over Jim, the tallest one, wincing in empathy as his head collided with a large tap, then I spun into a judo move to flip Chip onto the floor. Chuck lunged at me and before I could think, I’d leapt up and grabbed a coldwater pipe swinging gymnastically forward over Chuck’s head - only to swing back into the waiting grasp of Greg the unit’s 2 i.C. He pulled at my waist, I kicked at his legs scoring two painful blows.
“You dumb jerk, it’s - Gyaaaaah.”
Somehow in the struggle his hand had slipped under my flak jacket and was squeezing against my lower ribs. I bit my lip hard muffling the hysterical laughter that his probing fingers forced out of me. But I couldn’t prevent my one hand from letting go of the pipe and clawing frantically at his fingers. Thus weakened by tickles and holding both our weights, my one-handed grip gave way and we plunged to the floor with Greg absorbing most of the fall.
Though shaken, I might have recovered to resume my evasive manoeuvres if our brief tussle had not given his men a chance to close in. I’d no sooner shaken off the fall than a dozen male hands had rolled me to my front, wrestled my arms behind my back and pinned them painfully against my body. One of the male hands grabbed the black scarf around my face and head and ripped it off sending my hair billowing out like a big black cloud.
Finally in the dim light a couple of them had a spark of actual intelligence.
“Hey, it’s a girl!”
“You’re right. Holy shit, weren’t we supposed to meet a girl down here?”
I rolled my eyes struggling to inhale against the weight of the lug sitting on me. “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.”
“Yeah,” Greg rose painfully from the floor, “we’re supposed to meet a Canuck chick. Turn her over.”
I glared as best I could back at Jim till he slowly rose from my back. The unmistakable leer on his face landed cold in my gut.
“It’s about time,” I said as rough hands turned me over and sat me up. I made to stand but the hands gripping my arms held me in place as Jim and Red plunked themselves on my shins.
“Not so fast, missy,” Greg said stepping into the “V” between my legs. He reached out and gripped my jaw. Secured as I was, I still twisted my face free and tried to bite him. I knew I shouldn’t have but I was way past too-pissed-off-to-care.
“Ain’t never seen a Canuck chick look dark as you. Eh boys?” heads shook murmuring agreement, “where you really from, missy?”
I glared up at him and panted out the pass phrase one more time. “I served in -the Devil’s Brigade.”
“Where’d you hear that?” he spat, “the moment you slaughtered our contact?” His hand whacked my cheek wrenching me against the arms that held me. I tasted salt.
“Listen you pig-headed Semi!” I spat out a dribble of blood. “I am your gawdamm contact! Inspector Felicity Frost, Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, born in Iroquois Falls, Ontario, raised in every freakin’ town from St. John’s to Beaver Creek big enough to have a curling rink till I was old enough to pay my way through university - which I did, by the way, in Peterborough Ontario. What the hell else do you need to know?”
Chest heaving partly from fury, partly, I admit from fear I watched this idiot lower himself in front of me, his face twisted in a smug grin – which I would have gladly removed with the toe of either boot had either boot been mine to freely kick with. But with Jim and Red firmly parked on my shins there was nothing for me to do but glare at the Sergeant crouching between my knees and hope he didn’t decide to ‘use’ me for something other than a guide.
“Actually,” he said, letting the fingers of one hand trail up the outside of my right thigh, “I want to know, how long it’s going to take for you to tell me who you really are,” he finished.
I swallowed the bile at the back of my throat and clamped my mouth shut fighting off the unbearable tickle as those fingers traced a path high enough around my thigh to get him arrested and back down the inside of my leg. The fingers reached my knee and pressed into the hollow.
“Eeep!” The squeak escaped before I could stop it as my whole body shivered.
“Ahh,” he said and grinned wickedly, letting his fingers probe some more at the inside of my knee. “Are you –ticklish, my dear?”
Oh GAWD!
I couldn’t help it, I gasped and shuddered barely suppressing the giggles by crushing my tongue between my molars.
“Perhaps we’ll have the truth out of you in no time at all, huh?
“Put her on her back, boys,” he ordered, “and pin her arms firmly above her head.”
I struggled, argued, fought, all the while mindful that to scream would invite death at the hands of the Taliban stationed here. But given that I had no leverage, the three US Marines, built like human tanks, easily pressed my arms helplessly to the floor high over my head. I twisted my head up just to confirm that my hands still responded to my will at least.
Fingers fiddled my ear. I jerked my head around to see Chuck leering down at me. “Woohoo guys, I think I found an erogenous zone.”
“F**k you!” I tried to spit but his meaty paw clamped over my mouth.
“Oooh, slow down girl,” he grinned wickedly, “you’ll want to be saving your energy for writhing. He leaned into my face so close I could smell the tobacco on his breath, “we’ll be peeling you shrieking off the ceiling before the Serge is finished with you,” he whispered.
I wondered, as he pulled away and finally let go of my mouth if a swift death from a Taliban bullet would be worse than what these lunatics had planned to do to make me lie about who I really was.
“Greg, that’s your name right?” I pulled my head up to look at him, trying a little charm. “Can’t we talk this over? Just please think for,,,”
“Give me that scarf!” Greg barked. “Can’t have her alerting her allies.”
Oh GAWD, they were really going to do it!
“Greg please! I’m telling the truth.” I strained to look up at him. “I’m Felicity Frost, your Canadian contact. For gawd’s sake sta-“ and that was the last intelligible word I said --for a very long time as Chuck pinched my mouth with one hand and stuffed the scarf in it with the other.
And that’s when my ally-tormentor suddenly revealed his unexpectedly sophisticated side as he began undoing my flak jacket.
“You know the trouble with torturers these days?” he asked as first one Velcro attachment then another gave way to his calm ministrations. “They always leave marks.” He tsked and shook his head. “I mean, how stupid is that, right? You whip someone, you shock someone, you cut off a thumb, and there’s something for them to show legal people later. So you get sued and the whole thing turns into one big fiasco.”
The bastard actually looked at me to see if I agreed with him!
“Anyway, I prefer something I read once about life in the South Pacific islands.” Having detached all the Velcro, he calmly opened my jacket and spread it wide as possible.
I pulled and twisted but the Marines pinning my arms and legs just laughed and held firm.
“Squirm all you like, missy,” said the guy on my left arm, “it gets me all hot.”
I glared at him – and wished I hadn’t. The sight of the expanding bulge in his pants nearly made me vomit into the scarf. I looked away struggling to breathe, wincing at the mocking laughter of the men holding me.
“Think she’s shy, Chip. Bet she prefers it nice and slow.”
Oh Gawd! I fought back the tears that threatened to seep out and tried to ignore Greg’s hideous pre-torture prattle.
“Those South Pacific Islanders, they discovered the perfect way to subdue indomitable captives yet still leave them able to work as slaves.” He gripped my cotton undershirt and tore it open from bottom to top with a single jerk.
Cool air teased against my tight and completely vulnerable belly.
“Can you guess what they used to do?”
I stared wide-eyed at the knife he drew and brought toward my breasts.
“Oh, this?” He looked at the knife and laughed. “No, nothing like that. This, is just to expose you.” He grinned down at me and slid the knife between the cups of my sports bra separating it in two. A flick of the blade exposed my modest breasts to seven pairs of leering eyes and locker-room snickers. I wanted to puke. I tried to hold their gaze to maintain a brave front but despite my resolve I couldn’t stop myself from looking away to escape the humiliation.
I sucked in air and clamped down on the scarf forcing down my supper as Greg’s ten grubby fingers touched my breasts circling around my nipples. “They discovered that the best way to break a stubborn slave,” he said, “was to tickle him, or often, her.”
My body arched rigid as he slowly slid those fingers feather-soft over my nipples and down, down my sides, and, back up again fluttering them against my sensitive skin. Nerves I never knew I had quivered and shook me out to the tips of my fingers and toes. A humiliating whimper escaped to amuse my torturers before I could muffle it by burying my face in my outstretched arm.
Reflex nerves twisted, pulled, arched, and twisted some more but nothing granted even a moment’s relief from those tormenting fingers that slithered over my tightly stretched skin between my underarms and waist band. Up and down, up and down, up and down, they teased wracking me between agonising ecstasy and heavenly pain.
“That’s it, girl,” Chip said making fun of my high pitched whimpers, “sing for us, nice and soft.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAKK! My body rippled in convulsive waves but they all just laughed at my cry of distress.
“Keep going, Serge!” Red encouraged struggling to hold my leg in place.
“As you can see, it was a foolproof method of control. No harm comes to the victim but the frantic desperate agony is enough to make anyone beg for mercy.” He smiled down at me and evoked a humiliating wail of despair from deep in my soul as his fingers moved further south to trace agonising circles at the hollow of my waist just above my hips. “Sooner or later, so I’m told, everyone succumbed. All they had to do was tickle, and tickle, and tickle, and tickle, and every one of their captives from the hardiest warrior to the bitchiest shrew could be made to eat their own shit.”
“HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” My body convulsed again wriggling frantically as his fingers gently danced across my quivering tummy.
My fingers splayed and clenched desperate to release tension building inside me at the incessant tickling.
“Needles to say, they also found that it was a remarkable tool of persuasion. Precisely because it left no damage to the person, and because there was always a never-ending supply of ticklers to take over, the victim’s intense suffering could be prolonged indefinitely, making it the perfect torture.”
The pads of his fingertips slid back down around my waist to tease the top of my hip bones.
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHK.” Again I vainly fought against the grip of my captors finally giving in to the urge to laugh out loud. I shuddered, whipping my head back and forth straining pulling with every muscle. Desperate for just one second of relief – A second that never came.
GYAAAAA-HAAAAAAAA-HAAAAAAAA”
“True,” he prattled on, “it sometimes drove a victim insane.” He sneered down at me and fluttered his fingers in a new pattern over my tummy making me squeal even higher.
“But.” Greg chuckled. “it never failed.”
“She’s as ticklish as my sister, Serge,” Jim quipped. The others chuckled.
“Try her ribs.” Chip suggested.
I lurched up the maximum centimetres my captors’ grip would allow. “-OHHH!”
“Definitely go for it.” Jim agreed.
“Are your ribs ticklish, honey?” Greg cooed as he let his fingers glide over my tummy toward the protruding round bones. “Are they? Right here?” Fingers wiggled sending Tickle-waves shooting through me. I screamed into the gag, arched and pulled.
“Woah!” the guy on my left arm called out as my writhing brought my arm several inches down before he re-pinned it. “Almost,” he grinned mockingly down at me, and wrapped a meaty hand around my elbow while gripping my wrist with his other and began slowly, inexorably leveraging my arm back to its original vulnerable position.
Meanwhile my initial shrieks had given way to hysterics. Writhing and pulling, twisting unable to escape the fingers that probed and prodded and worked me between and around my lower ribs.
“You see,” Greg grinned down at my face now wet from perspiration, “I can sit here and do this aaaall night. And if I get tired or my fingers need to stop, well there’s always these other guys who can fill in for me. Which means, my dear, there is no hope for relief or a moment’s rest for you.”
“AAAAAAAAHHH! - EASE -SAAAAH!” I screamed into the cloth binding my face.
“Let’s try your ribs higher up shall we? Tickle, tickle. Tickle, tickle, tickle,” he teased.
I pulled and strained desperate for the chance to yank my arms down, but the men holding me actually stretched my arms even higher tightening the skin around my ribs, making it more sensitive.
“EEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEE!” Fingers dug in wriggling and tickling. As they moved higher, he went to work with his thumbs.
“Here’s where it gets truly devilish,” he explained, “I force you to laugh in agony by tickling your ribs while arousing you against your will, by teasing your breasts.
Oh GAWD! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKK!
It was true! I had thus far survived the tickle-agony because it had a certain nature, but his sudden sexual teasing of my breasts and nipples sent my brain in a totally different direction evoking a moist longing down below that I could neither prevent nor satisfy but which made the tickle torture even more severe.
I shrieked and wept, arching in sensory agony, half wishing someone would touch me down there even as the very idea disgusted me. My body shuddered in another mad convulsion that would have hammered my head into a bloody pulp on the floor if one of the guys hadn’t gripped it from the back and forced it up.
I didn’t hear Greg say anything just caught the chuckle and nod through my tear-filled eyes. Suddenly the frantic agony of Greg’s tickling shot up a dozen times as other fingers circled against my underarms.
“NAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAA HAAAAAA HAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAA!!” I shrieked. Sweat pasted my hair to my face despite my frantic head tossing.
“Itchy-kitchy kitchy-koo,
Is the little girl tickish - under here too?”
I couldn’t breathe! Shrieking laughter had given way to grimaced silent heaving adding suffocation to the terrifying tortures the bastards inflicted on me.
Convulsing in mad breathless silence I dimly heard the Sergeant instruct Jim and Red to untie my boots.
Desperate agonised tears streamed down my sweat-covered face. I remember thinking the horrified thought that these maniacs intended to tickle me to death!
From somewhere I discovered the air in my lungs for one desperate life-begging shriek as fingernails scrabbled over my bare soles.
As the ringing in my head grew steadily louder and I edged toward unconsciousness, I confess I reached the point that I would actually have made up a story of being a Taliban leader, hell even the instigator of the 9-11 disaster if I thought it would save me from this hideous torment.
Except that I knew it wouldn’t. If they really believed me responsible for anything bad the torture would surely continue, and continue and continue until they’d tickled me to insanity or death or both.
I can only thank the God of my childhood, that I passed out at the very moment I heard Greg ask if any one had a Q-tip so he could test my belly button.
As a girl, I had never been much for winning tickle fights, but touch my button, and I always surrendered.
However long it was till I came to I have no idea. All I remember is moaning and giggling and feeling a horrible ache in every muscle of my body.
“Of course that’s her you f**k up!”
“But how was I,,,”
“Did she give the call sign?”
Well yeah, but it could have been faked,” Greg argued.
“Gawdammit!” I watched Bill Schmaker wind up to backhand the sergeant that had tickle-tortured me to within an inch of my life. But before I could encourage him to wallop the bejeezus out of the guy, Bill lowered his fist. “Thanks to you the whole damn mission’s gone scrub!”
“Thank God she’s coming around,” Bill crouched down near my face, “Fel, hey girl, you okay?”
I probably looked like hell. But I tried not to think about that as his tender smile greeted me. I swallowed painfully. My throat felt like it was on fire from all that screaming. So much for my career as a Soprano soloist, I joked with myself.
Oh Gawd, no more laughing!
He gently slid the gag from my thick dry mouth. Dimly I wondered why, now that I was rescued, my arms and legs were still pinned.
“You – recognise me.” I tried to smile. It hurt and I gave up. I blushed as his eyes noticed my exposed chest and half exposed hips.
“Yeah, yeah, Fel, I recognise you. The boys here tell me you put up a helluva fight.”
“Huh, and I’duv,” I swallowed dryly, “I’duv kicked your sorry ass – too. If you’d been around. So, gonna let me up, hon?” Beginning to revive I did smile at him, remembering a certain night dancing in Lahore – a night that had almost become something more.
He smiled and toyed with the gag. “No, I don’t think so.”
I was wide awake and lunged for him, or would have had the goons on me not reacted so quickly. “What? Are you insane? For God’s sake, Bill, you – you know me. Let me out of this nightmare!”
“Yeah I know you.” His smile remained but, I noticed, his normally bright blue eyes were full with suppressed anguish. “And you know my brother Dan.”
I nodded, “sure but what’s that,,”
“Dan got transferred to Iraq after your Canuck boys showed up here instead of helping out with the rest of us against Saddam. Dan was on patrol last night just outside of Baghdad, got ambushed by a bunch of GAWD-DAMN HUSSEIN LOVERS!”
I stared at Bill, my friend, or so I had thought and almost felt sorry for him. He’d gone mad with grief and now, as he forced open my mouth and gently, almost lovingly, put the gag back in, he intended to drive me mad with tickling.
“GAWW, OHHHH! -ILLL –LEASE!” I shook my head and pulled my aching muscles again weeping in spite of myself. God knew, I couldn’t endure that torture again, not even for a minute.
He smiled at me as he caressed my cheek and wiped my uncontrollable tears with his thumb. “You see, it’s that Maple Leaf you wear, Fel, it kind of makes you responsible. Dan died because of you, now you have to suffer for it.
“Where’s that Q-Tip.”
I fought to sit up, writhed and screamed, made the bastards that held me down work for every second of sadistic pleasure they’d get out of torturing me for Bill’s brother.
My eyes bulged as Bill, calmly twirled and lowered the Q-Tip the last few centimetres toward my belly button.
“-OHHH!!” I forced my head up shaking in desperation. “-ILLLLL –EAASE. –ITS -OT –OUR –AULT!!”
The wicked spinning white fuzz closed in. I could anticipate the agony. “-OHHH!!” I strained and pulled screaming for all I was worth. Bill paused hanging the tender sword of Damocles over the narrow crevice in my lower tummy.
“Agony, Fel, now do you feel my pain?”
Powerful soldiers’ hands pressed me down, pinning me with all their weight to the floor as the spinning Q-Tip plunged deep amid the most sensitive skin on my body. I shook and shrieked myself hoarse, my back arched and eyes bulged in a mask of agonised insanity.
Lightning blazed behind my eyes in a universe that had become the absolute pure eternal torture of a white fuzzy cotton twirling in the folds of my tummy.
My mouth moved “I’m Taliban!” I said over and over. And somewhere, in the my mad world of the tickle torture, I actually believed it was true!
“Oh - my – Gawd!” Zoë covered her mouth with one hand and stroked my back with the other as I shuddered doubled over in my granny chair sobbing.
We sat there like that for a long moment before tentatively Zoë asked the obvious question. “How, how did you escape?”
I sniffled reached for a tissue, blew my nose and chuckled. “I was rescued,” I said. I looked up at her and shook strands of hair that had pulled free of my braiding. “By the Taliban.” I giggled.
“Seems the tickle torture was making too much noise after all. When some of them descended on us it snapped Bill and the others out of their own momentary madness. I admit I was in pretty rough shape, but I managed to take one down.”
I blew my nose again, folded the tissue up and tossed it into the trash can.
The door bell rang. I backhanded my hair away and looked at Zoë.
She smiled clasped my hand. “I’ll get it,” she said confirming the obvious - that I looked horrible.
“Well, what have we here?” she said returning, her arms laden with a box full of the most gorgeous flowers.
“Give me that!” I flung myself off the chair and lunged for the card in her hand. But she laughed twisting free using the box as protection.
She read,
“To my dearest Felicity.”
“You were great. I was a total asshole.
If we can agree on that, maybe there’s hope for us??”
Love, Bill.
P.S. Next time, the laughs are on me. J”
That last line creased a thin smile across my face. Oh yeah, Bill. You better believe I’m going to find a way to hold you to that!
Thanks for reading, everyone. Hope you enjoyed it!
Love ya,
Chickles_
