"Inescapably Ticklish"

***This tickle tale is copyright 2001 by the author.<br>***It is not meant for readers under 18.
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***Continuing my vain (in every sense of the word) efforts to again be a regular contributor here, I again offer an oldie--first seen on TICKLETOWN when dinosaurs ruled the earth--making its TMF debut. Those familiar with my methods will no doubt be shocked to learn that I didn't feel the need to revise it one bit. (Pause while the sky falls, the world ends, and celestial trumpets are heard...)

A curious magician and her ambitious assistant sneak into an escape artist’s workshop only to stumble onto the awful truth that they’re both…

INESCAPABLY TICKLISH
by Tee Hee Lawrence

A hush had fallen over an audience usually preoccupied with flirtatious banter, wireless phone conversations, or brave assurances that the evening’s run of bad luck in the casino couldn’t continue. The good time Charlies and Charlenes were focussing their attention on the trunk submerged in the glass tank bathed in the spotlight on stage. Only the light background music of the small pit orchestra could be heard.

“Two minutes remain, ladies and gentlemen,” announced the emcee, his gold earring flashing in the glare of a little spot stage right. “The valiant young daredevil has been trapped underwater for 60 seconds. You saw the audience members test the materials; you witnessed the laborious bondage and entrapment of the Great Loudini. Handcuffed, rolled into a fiberglass net, encased in a thick, heavy sack, wrapped in iron anchor chains secured by a padlock certified as pickproof by a licensed and bonded locksmith, dumped into a steel and hardwood trunk with its lock welded shut, and finally submerged in the icy 200 gallons of water in the tank before your eyes.

“One minute-and-a-half, ladies and gentlemen. Can the Great Loudini possibly escape this death trap at all—let alone within the three minutes she assured us before she was bound and encased and submerged? Will we have to call upon the services of the two beefy axe-wielding studs”--(Another spot caught the two stagehands clad as lumberjacks and hefting large fire axes stage left.)—“to free our fearless escapologist? Will we have to call on the paramedics waiting”--(A third spot found two more stagehands clad in white, each wearing a surgical mask and a stethoscope, and doing business with the valves and gauges of a large gas tank between them, at the back of the hall.) —“to bring her back from the brink of death—if they can!

“One minute to go, folks! You should know, that should events turn tragic this evening”--(He motioned to stage right where a gaunt, bearded man wearing a black frock coat and missionary hat, stepped onstage holding a large gold-embossed bible to his heart. Clean-shaven, he was a veteran blackjack dealer. His denomination varied with each performance.) —“we have on call the Reverend August Personage, who has put a good word in”--(The Reverend raised his eyes Heavenward.) —“for our brave heroine.

“Thirty seconds! It is deathly quiet and still in that tank. Has the Great Loudini finally found a trap even she cannot escape? The faint of heart should turn away….”

The orchestra stopped playing, except the percussionist, whose steady drum roll now swelled in intensity. The audience was raptly attentive, all small talk—even the clinking of cocktail glasses--having ceased with the ascendance of the rolling snare.

“Fifteen seconds, ladies and gentlemen! Will she do it? She will need your help now. Give her the encouragement to escape! Count down with me. Ten-nine-eight…”

There was a concussive sound from the tank. “…seven-six-five…”

The trunk, standing on one end, shuddered and then, with a burst of bubbles, yawned open. A figure emerged and kicked free from a bright orange net.

“…four-three…”

The figure grabbed the rim of the tank and pulled itself up and out of the water, streaming liquid and ice onto the elevated platform alongside. “…two-one…Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back…the Great Loudini!” The figure accepted a helping hand from the “lumberjacks,” whose strong arms lifted it out of the tank and provided support down the slippery steps to the stage.

Bounding forward, the figure removed a black bathing cap, unleashing a cascade of long red tresses almost to her hips, clearly revealing—as did her skintight black bodysuit-- a young woman, perhaps 5’6”, with the firm physique of a dancer. She, her green eyes flashing, stepped forward to acknowledge and bask in the frenetic applause of the crowd. Smiling broadly, arms extended, she bowed repeatedly as the crowd whistled stamped, and adopted the chant, “Lou! Lou! Lou! Lou…!” It was a full five minutes before Bette Louise Tanner surrendered the stage--now strewn with flowers, hastily scrawled passionate notes, and even a few high-denomination casino tokens--to the next act. New props had been moved on stage before a red curtain dropped in front of the solved waterlogged deathtrap.

The audience was still murmuring beneath the emcee’s introduction as Magical Mona Merlin took the stage. She cast a striking figure: 5’, 10” tall, with a pretty round face marked by serious dark sloe eyes, a black top hat perched upon short lacquer black bangs, and her wiry frame clad in white tie, black silk blouse, white tailcoat, short tight, white skirt, black wide fishnet stockings and reflective black and white pumps. She was assisted by the 5’, 5” blond Alyssa, whose robust, suntanned figure was clad far more revealingly in a backless, sequined, ultramarine micro dress and glittering canary mules, and who never doused her broad, cherry-lipped incandescent smile beneath her red feathered headpiece. The two were facing an audience that was not only conversing about The Great Loudini’s escape, but which was eagerly placing drink orders and making rest room trips delayed by the prior drama. A fair bit of the crowd seemed to have decided that this was a good time to return to the casino. Nonetheless, Mona Merlin (nee Joanne Kim) and Alyssa Lewis--their dismay at the audience’s distraction betrayed only by darting glances at the loudest and the most restless— soldiered on with confident skill.

First, Mona pulled a white silk kerchief from her breast pocket and, after waving its ordinariness at the audience, produced one…two…three white doves from its folds, as Alyssa settled a tall, freestanding perch nearby. Mona placed the doves on the perch and covered them with a green kerchief, which she almost instantly snapped away to reveal instead a venerable, green parrot preening itself. The still unsettled audience applauded politely. Alyssa then offered Mona a tabloid newspaper, which the statuesque magician crumpled energetically, only then to spread wide her hands, bringing forth a bouquet of roses wrapped in a fresh copy of the tabloid. The applause became more attentive. Alyssa brought a short set of stairs, upon which rested a Slinky, to the table. Mona removed her hat and set it brim up at the foot of the stairs. Alyssa started the Slinky moving downstairs, and it proceeded to slink right into her boss’ topper. Mona casually struck a match, tossed it into the hat, from which a flash burst. Eyebrows waggling, Mona reached into the hat and pulled out a small, curling black snake. Alyssa, who had been smiling at the audience, then screeched when Mona waved the snake before her eyes. The crowd, significantly reduced but finally settled, chuckled and applauded respectfully.

Mona then waded a bit into the audience, where she asked a patron if she could borrow the cell phone on the table before him. After bringing it to her ear and asking, “Hello?” she shook it bemusedly and returned it to the table. She covered the phone with a voluminous red kerchief, and reached behind her for the mallet that Alyssa suddenly produced for her. With a look of comical zeal, Mona brought the mallet down smartly upon the kerchief—the thwack! earning chortles and gasps from the crowd, while a bilious expression formed upon the lender’s face. Mona looked under the kerchief, gave a dubious shake of her head, and placed a consoling hand upon the patron’s shoulder as the audience tittered nervously. She swept the kerchief away and pocketed it, leaving nothing behind, as the laughter built. After an agonizing pause for the patron, she reached for the purse of his companion, opened it, and held it out to him. His face alight, he reached within and brought out his cell phone to the crowd’s respectful applause, sprinkled with a few whistles and cheers.

The audience finally theirs, Mona and Alyssa used cards and coins, ropes and cones, rings and spheres, flaming torches and vessels of water to effect an impressive, seamless series of illusions. For the grand finale, Alyssa, with a predatory look, pulled a tipsy, furiously blushing bride to the stage and offered her a rose, which the bride waved to those cheering at her table. Mona reached behind a tall shoji screen, from which she flourished a razor-tipped foil. She fluidly stepped towards the guest and in one swift motion beheaded the blossom from its long stem, as the bride’s eyes popped and the audience snickered. Mona returned the foil behind the screen.

Alyssa stepped downstage unfurling a tape measure. She then turned to the amused bride and, holding one end of the measure to the floor with her foot, extended it up alongside the “volunteer,” until she reached the top of the bride’s veiled black coiffure. She then brought the tape, with her finger pointing to the height measured, to Mona, who smiled broadly. Both women then rubbed their hands greedily and turned simultaneously to crook forefingers at the giggling, red-faced bride. Mona clapped her hands. From beyond stage left, two stagehands rolled out a coffin-shaped box, set upon a four-wheeled gurney, downstage center. Mona raised the lid and lowered the front panel to show its emptiness. Her assistant then rotated the gurney quickly, revealing a solitary round hole at one end, a solid back, and two smaller holes a bit apart at the other end.

The two women guided the bride alongside the box, and after whispering instructions to her—with Alyssa at one point turning to the audience, to whom she made clear her doubts as to the bride’s sanity—helped her lie down within. They quickly closed the box. Her head, with her white bridal veil practically trailing upon the floor, extended from one side of the box, and her lace stocking feet, clad in bone white, high-heeled sandals, extended from the other. Mona and Alyssa knocked all sides of the box and rotated it swiftly to confirm its unmarked integrity.

Mona then stepped back to the screen and folded it, revealing an umbrella stand holding twelve foils similar to the one she’d displayed earlier. Meanwhile, Alyssa, at the foot of the box, pointed at the bride’s feet, and with a wink and a leer at the audience, slid off one of the sandals. She then playfully spidered her fingers upon the violently waving foot as the bride squealed. Mona rolled the stand to the head of the box and brandished one foil for the giggling bride to see. She impatiently looked at Alyssa, who--with obvious regret--stopped tickling the trapped foot.

The orchestra segued from background tunefulness to a dramatic fanfare, followed by a rhythmic wave of strings and drums. Moving before the box and waving the foil in the air, Mona turned and plunged it to the hilt through the top of the coffin. The point clearly appeared through the bottom. In rapid succession, Mona thrust the remaining foils through the top, front, and back, each thrust marked by a sting from the orchestra and most by squeals from the bride. The twelve foils glinting in the stage lights, Mona rotated the box to the applause of the crowd. Alyssa then winked and resumed tickling the exposed foot, to the bride’s hilarious dismay, and the increased applause and laughter of the audience.

The two women then rapidly removed the foils, released their captive, and with her unevenly balanced between them, stood downstage to bow and bask in the applause. Alyssa made a show of presenting the bride, first, another rose, then, the purloined sandal, and sent her back to her party as the curtain fell. Mona staged a little encore: beckoning a teenaged boy onto the stage and presenting him with a birthday cupcake, complete with lit candles, from under her red kerchief. To solid applause, Mona and Alyssa bowed again, as the curtain fell with finality.

Shortly, in their dressing room, the pair sat quietly before their long, shared vanity. They seemed too weary even to remove their makeup and costumes. Mona had lit a cigarette, which she passed to her assistant, who took a few dejected puffs before returning it. Their dresser Birdie, a small but formidable older woman with curly silver hair and a cigarette set in her lips, set a steaming mug of green tea before Mona and a bottle of beer before Alyssa. They sipped silently while Birdie, after casting a dubious look at them, went into the bathroom to draw a bath for Mona.

Alyssa took the cigarette, puffed, and, with a cloud of smoke, muttered, “Well, tonight should have told you everything you needed to know, Stringbean. We were absolutely great, but while they were watching us, they were still buzzing about her.”

Mona nodded and sipped from the mug in her left hand. Periodically, in her reverie, she would extend her right arm, stretch open her long hand, and—as if from mid-air, produce a playing card, usually a queen, or an ace. While the audience response had been good—enthusiastic even— she had sensed throughout their act that the crowd was still preoccupied with the exploits of Bette Lou Tanner. Mona was a gifted illusionist, as technically competent in her craft as BLT was in hers. She felt that she and Alyssa had a solid act with crowd-warming shtick and, frankly, no lack of sex appeal. The magician was certainly no less attractive than Lou was. Indeed, with her broad shoulders, long legs, and with sensual features that drew the best aspects of her Korean artist mom and her Swedish-American pilot dad, Mona was actually more of a pin-up candidate than the escape artist. ‘Lys’s figure and cheesecake get-up hardly suffered in comparison to BLT either. She accepted the cigarette back from Alyssa.

Alyssa swigged her beer, coughed, and continued, “She gets tied up, dumped in a tank, and emerges to proposals of marriage and a standing O. We perform miracle after miracle to half the house and a third of the eyes and, if we’re lucky, get pawed at the hotel bar afterwards by losers who couldn’t tell us apart from the concierge.” She swung her right ankle upon her left knee, slipped off her high-heeled slipper, and rubbed her bare foot, her toenails painted a glittering canary. Admiring her wiggling toes, she cracked, “Even if we did our act stark naked, we wouldn’t get the buzz she gets.” She plucked the smoking butt from her partner’s fingers.

The Great Loudini, however, Mona thought, had an aura of charismatic confidence around her that drew every eye and set every heart thrilling. Off-stage, her looks were pleasant, but hardly extraordinary. On stage, she seemed to radiate allure and magic. Mona envied that ineffable star quality. She felt that it came from the potential for danger—even death—that was Louise’s stock-in-trade. Mona’s legerdemain, no matter how skillful, couldn’t match the Great Loudini’s act for drama, she thought, as she set down her cup and an ace of clubs and began smearing cream on her face to remove her makeup.

Now Mona could have asked more forcefully of management to be spared the thankless task of following Lou on stage. Good as they were, the act’s place on the bill ensured that they’d serve as a room clearer. They could have taken the act to another house; there certainly had been serious offers. Alyssa routinely nagged Mona, though, about thinking bigger: about convincing Lou to join the acts in a tandem tour.

“At the beginning, we’d open for her,” Alyssa projected, “with our gags and illusions complementing her great dramatic escape. Then, after she’d trained us in the escape arts, we’d fuse the acts.” The little blonde’s eyes lit up as she imagined, “Think what an attraction three gorgeous daredevil escape artists would be. How spectacular would that water torture bit be if all three of us emerged simultaneously at the end! Wow!”

“Sure, ‘Lys,” Mona said, as she began pulling an endless series of colorful silk handkerchiefs from her breast pocket, “I can see Lou willing to tour with us as a warm-up, but I hardly see her taking us into the act. Besides, I enjoy doing simple white magic.” Finally, tied at the end of the absurdly long silk rainbow, was a white cotton facecloth, which Mona removed and began using to wipe the cream off of her face.

Alyssa rolled her eyes, drained her bottle, and, the cigarette dancing in a corner of her mouth, said, “That’s fine, but the circuit is groaning with acts full of magic cards, kerchiefs, and boxes. If we can at least get her to tutor us in the escape biz, we could retool our act. You could still do the small stuff, while I could cap the act with a great escape. We wouldn’t need her then at all. We’d be headliners.” She paused, her eyes dreamily beholding brightly-lit marquees with the names “Lewis and Merlin.” She rested her left ankle on her right knee, let her slide drop with a clunk, and began rubbing her bare left foot. Not looking up, she wearily asked, “Did you ask BLT again tonight about us?”

“Yeah, I did,” Mona muttered, peeling off a long fake eyelash. “She repeated that she really wasn’t looking for apprentices these days. She said that she’s too busy honing her secrets to share them.”

For the past few weeks, the pair had cornered Lou at every opportunity to beg entry at least to the escapologist’s workshop, which was behind a locked steel door in the cellar of this very theatre. They assured her that they would just be flies on the wall, not disturb her a bit, if she’d allow them to watch her design her traps and train herself to defy them. Louise, while flattered by the fawning attention of the statuesque magician and her combustible eager second, admitted that, where her work was concerned, she was compulsively secretive. Perhaps later, when her reputation as a world-class escape artist was secure, she would take on an apprentice. Not before…

“Uh-huh. She keeps telling me that, too.” Alyssa mused. “Well, I don’t blame her for holding her cards close to the vest, especially when they’re aces in the hole. Maybe she doesn’t think we’re serious enough.” She held the cigarette between her lips and leaned back, folding her hands behind her head.

“Maybe not,” interjected Mona, seeming to pluck a goose quill out of the air. “If she saw you cutting the ham with all that tickling on stage, I’m not surprised.” She reached across to flick the feather tip under her partner’s exposed pale and smoothly shaven underarm.

“Aieee!” screamed Alyssa, leaping to her feet as the chair toppled back and her cigarette tumbled in a shower of sparks and ash down the front of her costume. Slapping the sequined fabric, she turned to Mona, who had deftly dropped the feather and, fighting to keep a straight face, commenced at plucking her eyebrows. “Look, Jo-anne!” Alyssa sneered, using the birth name her partner disliked. “Tickling a tipsy cutie like that is about all the fun I really get from the act. And it gets more laughs than your goofy D’Artagnan imitation.” She cast a dopey expression as she broadly mimed a foil thrust.

Birdie emerged from the bathroom to pick up Alyssa’s chair. “You two aren’t going to start throwin’ things like the other night, are you? Your bath is ready, Mon’. And it’s time you hit the shower, half-pint. You both better hurry, or you’ll miss the shuttle bus to the party.”

“Oh, the party!” Mona cried, slapping her forehead. “I completely forgot.” She stood and swigged the grassy dregs of her tea.

Alyssa grabbed her partner’s forearm and sang, “Hey, Bird’? Why don’t you cut out early and grab that bus? You’ve been talkin’ about this bash all week; it’d be a shame if you missed it.” Mona looked baffled until she caught her partner’s wink in the mirror.

The party was a celebration of Lou Tanner’s 27th birthday--which would actually be the week after, when she’d be in L.A. participating in a Fox TV special about young illusionists—and her recent signing of a long-term contract with the entertainment conglomerate that ran the casino. It was to be held in the wee hours at WingDing’s, a trendy Asian Fusion restaurant with a wait staff of singing cross-dressers, and virtually everyone connected with the casino theatre was invited.

“’Provided you babes will make nice and bathe yourselves without drowning,” Birdie cracked. She looked at Mona, who waved a seeming empty hand in the air. Suddenly it held a billowing bouquet of silk flowers, which she offered to Alyssa, asking, “Friends again?” The blonde accepted the bouquet and kissed the back of Mona’s hand. She said, “’See, Birdie, we still love each other.”

Birdie looked skeptical, but said, “Ooo-kaay.” She grabbed her purse, but hesitated at the door.

We’ll catch up with you later, Birdie,” Mona assured her as she wrapped an arm around Alyssa’s shoulder. Alyssa smiled and formed a devil’s horn with one hand over Mona’s slanted top hat. Apparently convinced, the dresser created a breeze with her leave taking.

After a moment, Mona plopped back into her chair, stared at her partner in the mirror and said, “O.K., ‘half pint.’ What’s the deal?”

Alyssa sat and, leaning back in her chair, crossed her bare ankles upon the dressing table. She removed a thick key on a brass key ring from a drawer and began twirling it. She said, “’Guess what door this monster key opens?”

“’Lys, I’m real tired….”

“While you were taking your beauty nap the other afternoon,” the blonde declaimed, “I was dallying with Steiner, that porky assistant stage manager, who was showing me his locked cabinet of keys for the theatre complex.” She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Well, you know how I can dally. I distracted Steiner enough to get the key to the cabinet off his ring. Then, when he—most reluctantly, I might add—went away in answer to a page, I plucked this marked key out of the cabinet. The key to the sanctum sanctorum of the Great Loudini!”

“You didn’t…” Mona marveled. “But-but why?”

Alyssa looked bemusedly at her partner and, with exasperation, said, “Magical Mona…. Look, dear, this is the key to Tanner’s studio. Everyone—especially the guest of honor—is going to be at that orgy at WingDing’s until dawn’s early light. Even the Great Loudini won’t escape her hangover until afternoon. This gives us hours to peruse her studio: scoping her gimmicks, making notes, taking pictures, maybe even ‘borrowing’ a sample diagram or doodad. If she won’t help us escape this rut we’re in, we’ll help ourselves.”

“I-I dunno, ‘Lys’,” Mona cautioned. “Besides the chance we might get caught—We can forget her ever training us then!—it’s a serious breach of professional ethics. Trade secrets are sacred amidst illusionists. Some have even been handed down as legacies. This isn’t like lifting jewelry or, say, power tools. It’s-it’s….”

“Fine!” Alyssa snapped, withdrawing her legs and slamming the chair forward to the floor. “You’re too ‘ethical’ for the steps necessary to take your career—our careers—to the next level. Go to the party. Get drunk. Kiss Tanner’s feet, for all I care. I can do this myself.”

“No, sport,” Mona insisted, as she rose and affectionately squeezed her partner’s sides, earning a yelp. “We’re a team. You’re right. We’re nothing to the Great Loudini. She won’t mind our taking a tour of her workshop, provided that we’re careful to be sure she doesn’t find out.”

Alyssa jumped out of her chair and raised her hands to fend off further playful tickles. “Trust me,” she assured, with a wink. “What could possibly go wrong?”

*******

The party beckoning, backstage had emptied with a riotous flight. The elderly, partially deaf night watchman Fernando quickly found himself alone. His footsteps echoed throughout the dim backstage as he walked behind the beam of his Maglite. He peered in each of the offices, dressing rooms, and property rooms, taking care to lock each and rattle its doorknob before moving on. Down in the cellar, he walked by the storerooms and workshops, pausing only by Lou Tanner’s studio. There he unlocked the heavy door only long enough to offer the little gray cat she kept there some shredded roast chicken he’d wrapped up from supper. He paused to marvel for a second at the construction clutter filling the room. Then, after petting the cat purring at his ankles, he locked up the studio, before trudging upstairs and locking the cellar door behind him.

Once he was satisfied that he was indeed alone, and everything was secure, he doused most of the remaining lights. Then, he waddled to the closet dubbed his office--there to light up an Acapulco blunt, open the first of many cervezas, and tune in the 50,000-watt station from Tijuana, as was his wont in the long overnight. He would walk his rounds again before the end of his solitary shift—but not for a while yet, and there were some nights when he never returned to the cellar…

Not long after, as a Mexican ballad echoed through the dark and deserted backstage, the door to Magical Mona Merlin’s dressing room eased open. Alyssa tip-toed out, her canary mules replaced by backless satin slippers. She hugged the wall, intently eyeing the light streaming from the partly closed door of Fernando’s office. She didn’t see or hear Mona, treading softly in black kid leather flats, step out behind her. When Mona’s long, chilly fingers clutched her bare shoulder from behind. Alyssa barely stifled her startled cry as Mona shushed her.

“OK, OK!” hissed Alyssa. “Get out in front where I can friggin’ see you!” She adjusted her disarrayed feathered headpiece and gave her partner a directive push.

The two pussyfooted in tandem past the guard’s office to the cellar door. Except for their softer footwear, they had, at Mona’s suggestion, kept their costumes on. In case they ran into the guard—or anyone else—in their wee hours’ snooping, she had reasoned, they could always claim that they had botched a trick during their last performance and wouldn’t think of leaving ‘til they’d made it right. (This seemed rather lame to Alyssa, especially since she was left more than half-naked and still wearing the damned feathers above.) They, however, as featured performers—however overshadowed-- did truly have a rehearsal and storage room down below, although it served mostly to hold Alyssa’s astonishing shoe collection, easily the world’s biggest outside the Philippines.

So they used their own key to the cellar door, and they descended the dim staircase, still stepping to a muffled Mexican beat. When Alyssa’s flashlight suddenly went dark, Mona snapped her fingers, causing little yellow flames to appear on her own thumb and forefinger. Alyssa distractedly said “Thanks,” and shook her flashlight to life before doing a double take as Mona blew out her fingertips. “Showoff,” mumbled Alyssa. “I hope you left the doves and that damned python back in the dressing room.”
They soon arrived in front of the steel door marked: “Absolutely No Visitors---L. Tanner.” Alyssa handed Mona a pair of plastic gloves to don, and she pulled on a pair herself. (They were taking no chances in case BLT was as much a student of Sherlock Holmes as she was of Harry Houdini.) Alyssa spoke with mock brightness to her taller friend, “If you can manage to restrain the magician in you for just a little while…”

“Spoilsport,” answered Mona.

Nodding to the sign, Alyssa chuckled and quipped, “We’re not visiting, we’re snooping!” She unlocked the door, and it creaked theatrically when they pushed it open and quickly closed it behind themselves with a thud. They played their flashlight beams about, seeking a light switch. Suddenly their lights caught two fiery eyes, and a dark shape leapt yowling upon them from a shelf. The two women gasped and dropped their flashlights. Mona recovered hers first and shined it directly on what turned out to be a small, friendly, now shin-rubbing gray cat.

“Oh shit! That thing nearly gave me a coronary!” gasped Alyssa.
“Awww, it’s just a sweet, little pussycat,” assured Mona. She made kissing sounds and pet the loudly purring feline.

“Well, if this is Louise’s idea of a watchdog,” muttered Alyssa, “we’re home free. Scat!” The cat mewed and darted under a cluttered workbench on the other side of the room, from where she could warily eye the intruders.

Mona’s beam found a wall switch and she turned on the fluorescent tubes hanging from the low ceiling. As the lights hummed, the two women beheld cabinets, safes, coffins, and glass tanks in various stages of construction. They walked about, rapping on sides, lifting lids, and peering into the unfinished traps. They hefted heavy chains and fingered massive padlocks. Alyssa giggled as she modeled a straitjacket hanging on a clotheshorse.

“Careful, ’Lys’,” cautioned Mona. “Let’s try and leave things as we found them. Lou’s the type to notice anything misplaced.” She then sneezed, and muttered, “I think I’m allergic to all the cat fur and sawdust in the air here.”

“Wait,” said Alyssa, clicking on a circular fan standing besides one of the worktables. “This should relieve some of the stuffiness and clear the air.” The fan built up a healthy breeze as it swiveled 180 degrees back and forth, although it rocked a bit unsteadily on its tall plastic base.

They continued browsing about the room, with Alyssa taking numerous pictures with her pocket-sized digital camera. Soon, however, they were drawn to the center of the room, and to what clearly, below a hanging incandescent work light—which lanky Mona reached up to switch on—was Lou’s chief work-in-progress. Resting upon a trio of sturdy sawhorses was a stainless steel-edged wooden cube with lacquered black sides. It was, thought Mona, a bit bigger than a curbside mailbox—perhaps four feet square. On top of the box, amidst sawdust and nails, nuts and bolts, were crowded assorted tools, a couple of pairs of handcuffs, a large key on a coiling rubber key holder, a wind-up fur-covered toy mouse (hiding apparently from the kitty), lengths of chain and rope, an unopened can of black paint with a new, narrow, soft bristle paintbrush atop, an open cup of yogurt, a soft drink bottle—the last two both not quite empty--and a small handheld buffer. Mona picked up the last and clicked it on; it hummed slightly as its small circular brush rotated. “‘Must be how she got such a high polish on the box,” she thought.

Clicking it off, she peered into the yogurt cup. Sniffing at its sour half-full contents, the fastidious Mona said, “Ugh!” and took a long stride away from the cube. A conga line of tiny black ants was moving between the yogurt cup, the soda bottle, and one edge of the cube. They hugged one lacquered side of the cube and ran down one sawhorse. Below, the ants disappeared in a tangled mess of Day-Glo plastic netting, odd pieces of wood and metal, a wide-open pair of unpainted wooden stocks, and more tools, ropes, and chains piled under the cube. They reappeared as a thin two-lane black ant way stretching to a hole at the base of a cinder block wall.

“Damn, Mona! They’re just a few friggin’ tiny ants,” insisted Alyssa. “OK, I’ll admit Lou could take some housekeeping hints from Heloise.” She then jerked a thumb at a mock-up sign she’d uncovered resting on an easel alongside the cube. It read, in sketchy calligraphy: “Challenge of the Inescapable Cube.” Smiling broadly, she said, “Wow! I think we hit the jackpot here! This must be her new death trap. And we can ferret out its secrets at our leisure.” She took a few pictures from different angles.

Then, she snatched the key from on top and, fitting it into a keyhole on the near face—the only side with the slightest apparent opening—she said, chuckling, “Open, sez Alyssa.” She turned the key, and the entire near side of the cube opened forth like a door. “Cool!” Alyssa gushed. She pulled off her feathered headpiece and set it upon the cube with the key and her camera. She kicked off her slippers, and, clicking on her flashlight, clambered barefoot into the cube.

“’Lys’, be careful,” Mona said.

“Whaddaya think, Mon’?” Alyssa teased, her voice somewhat reverberating in the cube. “Lou rigged this box with poison gas and scorpions? Relax.” She was feeling the walls within. “The inside is even plainer than the outside. The wood is painted a flat black in here. It looks solid, but I’m betting this thing is rigged with hidden tools and emergency switches and maybe even a trapdoor.”

Mona didn’t like it when Alyssa bossed her around and belittled her concerns to boot. She pouted and, clicking on the buffer, mischievously brought its soft circular brush whirling against the upturned pink soles of her partner’s bare feet. “Look out!” she shouted.

Alyssa shrieked and bumped her head soundly against the roof. She drew her legs up under her in the cube and turned, red-faced, to Mona, who was whistling as she intently examined the switched-off buffer in her hand. Exasperated, the blonde muttered, “You just can’t control yourself, can you? I’m doing this for you. At least you can do something to help me!” Regaining her composure, she began feeling at the roof near the back of the cube.
“Mona, shine your light here. It’s just a matter of finding—Aha!”

“What?” Mona cried, stretching her neck and pointing her flashlight to the spot her partner found.

“It’s a…notch under the roof back here,” Alyssa said, fumbling with something above her. “’Can’t-can’t seem to get it to do anything, but maybe if we both pressed against the spot….”

Mona placed the portable buffer and her top hat upon the cube and slipped her long fishnet-clad feet out of her flats. Clutching her flashlight, she squeezed her way into the cube behind her partner. She reached a long arm over Alyssa’s shoulder and felt along the roof by her partner’s pushing fingers. Their combined weight on one side of the cube caused it to shift slightly on the sawhorses.

Creaking ominously, the cube side swung closed behind Mona, solidly bumping her butt. She cried, “Aughh!” as she tumbled into her partner. There was a click as the door slammed shut.

“Quit clowning, Mona!” shouted Alyssa. “And stop crowding me!” Indeed the little blonde found she had little room to move with her lanky friend pressed in beside her. “Ow! Get off my toes!”

Mona reflexively said “ ’Sorry!” Then, after pushing behind her with all her strength for a moment, the magician sighed and, in a very tiny voice, whispered, “The door’s locked.”

“So what?” said Alyssa. “Find the keyhole on the inside and unlock it.”

“I can’t feel any keyhole on this side,” said Mona uneasily. “If there is one, it must be really well hidden. The wall’s perfectly smooth. Besides, the key is…”

“Don’t tell me!”

“…still outside on top…” said Mona, her voice trailing.

Alyssa grabbed Mona’s ribs and screamed, “You idiot! You-left-the-key-out-side?”

Mona squealed, “Aieee! Ha-ha-ha-ha! S-stop, s-s-stop that, ‘Lys’. That tickles!” She wriggled in Lys’ grasp and, helplessly giggling, began snaking her fingers under her partner’s bare arms. Alyssa whooped and said, “No fair! I’m almost naked! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Stop that!”

“Only if—ha-ha—you stop first!”

“OK, heh, truce, heh-heh, truce! Girl, I hate being tickled! I just can’t stand it!”

“I know. Me, too,” Mona said, giggling. “OK, truce.”

Each warily lowered her hands in the eerie flash-lit darkness. “Thank to you, ‘Magical’ Mona,” Alyssa snapped, “shaking the box apart with laughter by tickling each other may be our only way out.”

‘C’mon, ‘Lys’. You found that notch. Let’s see if it does something. Lou must have built some gimmicks into this box to help her escape!”

The two fumbled to located the indentation, a fingertip-sized notch, that Alyssa had noticed over her head. Mona’s strong fingers pushed Alyssa’s aside and felt at the notch, until a very subtle click was heard, and a small panel slid open in the roof, sending a narrow shaft of light into the box to complement their small flashlights. “Ah!” cried Mona. “A crack in the cube! It must be a way for someone to sneak help to her in a pinch, I guess.”

“Great. We can’t get out through there,” pouted the assistant.

“No, but maybe you can reach through and grab the key.”

“I thought you said there was no keyhole on the inside.”

“There must be one. It’s just hard to find it with my back to the door. C’mon, reach through and feel towards the front of the roof. That’s where you tossed the key.”

Alyssa slid her small right hand through the thin opening, and, unknowingly, through a slightly open handcuff positioned over the slot. As she moved her hand towards the front of the box, she dragged the cuff and bumped it against a cup of nails. The steel circle locked with a click around her wrist.

“Uh-oh! What’s that?” she wondered aloud.

“The key! Did you find it?” asked Mona, insistently.

“Uh, no. Not yet. I-I dunno if I can reach far enough,” the blonde said, straining to get her elbow through the slot. In sweeping around the top of the box with her hand, Alyssa moved the feathered headpiece so that it precariously balanced on the edge of the cube. She also upset the soft drink bottle, which fell over, causing the few inches of sweet, flat liquid within to slowly drip onto the roof and, after puddling there, to gradually form a narrow stream. Scattered from the bottle in the commotion, the tiny black ants patiently regrouped. As if an order had instantaneously flashed through the troops, even the ants lined up for the yogurt cup veered off to address the newly accessible soft drink. Soon a disciplined line of ants commingled with the sweet stream, which was creeping slowly towards the slot through which Alyssa’s forearm was awkwardly extended.

Alyssa, puffing with exertion, said, “Lessee if I can get my other hand through here.” She set her flashlight, beaming up, on the floor of the cube. With effort, she slipped her dainty left hand through the slot as well. She reached toward the front of the box with both hands, not realizing that her left wrist had passed through the open handcuff dangling from her right wrist. She also pushed the second pair of handcuffs and the soft, furry toy mouse several inches towards the front of the cube..

“Hey!” Mona cried happily. “I’ve found another notch in the roof over my head. If I press hard right here—yes! Here’s another opening.” She eagerly slid her left hand through the narrow opening. Her wrist snaked through one open side of the perfectly positioned second pair of handcuffs.

Alyssa’s fingers, stretched to their utmost along the roof of the box, finally felt the curled rubber attached to the key. “I-I think I found it!” she cried. “It’s right at the tips of my fingers, probably near your hand.”
Mona said, “Wait. Let me help,” as she groped blindly about. However, she succeeded only in twining fingers with Alyssa. Their fumbling hands pushed the key over the edge. It tinkled onto the floor below the door of the cube, near the yawning set of wooden stocks.

“Where is it?” Mona yelped. Her wildly flailing hand bumped against a small toolbox, and the handcuff locked with a click around the cuff of her sleeve. Mona muttered, “Oh, what now…?” As she tried and failed to pull her hand inside, she dragged the toy mouse to the edge of the opening.

“Dammit! I think the key fell to the floor!” whined Alyssa. In her disappointment, she pulled her hands back, bumping a hammer that locked the handcuff upon her left wrist. She thus found herself unable to pull either hand back into the box.

“Hey!” she bleated. “I’m stuck! Handcuffs, I think! I can’t bring my hands in!”

“I dunno how, but a ‘cuff’s caught my hand, too!” snapped Mona, trying futilely to slip her second hand through the opening in hopes of freeing herself. Her hands, long dexterous fingers and all, were larger than her friend’s were. The narrow slot only permitted one of Mona’s through. “‘Course, it doesn’t matter ‘cause we can’t reach the key now anyway.”

“Mona, you’re the magician in this act. Can’t you open these handcuffs?” Alyssa suggested. As she struggled in the cuffs, the stream of warm, sweet, sticky soft drink, laden with many of the tiny black ants, moved closer to the opening above her.

“Look, Houdini I’m not, remember? But, look! I still have one hand free!” Mona said with mock cheerfulness. Giving in to her mischievous side, even in her frustration at their dire situation, she smiled and reached towards her friend. “I guess we will have to do what you suggested. Y’know, shake the box open with laughter.” Her twitching fingers settled in one of Alyssa’s exposed underarms. “Tickle-tickle-tickle!”

Alyssa shrieked, “Hey! Ha-ha-stop! I-ha-ha-ha-I‘m stuck! Ah-ha-ha-ha-staaahp! Wait, Mona-ah-ha-ha-ha-haaa!” The resulting frenzied movements of her hands above pushed a coil of rope against the feathered headpiece, which fell off of the roof. It floated and landed on the floor a few feet behind the cube. The breeze from the standing fan, swiveling from side-to-side faithfully across the room, met in due course the tall, thin, and sequined red plumes rising from the headpiece. The breeze, with each pass, pushed the adornment, its tendrils busily waving, a few inches back along the floor towards the cube.

“Whose idea was this whole sneaky business?” Mona teased, her fingers hovering just off of her friend’s sensitive armpit. “And who carelessly tossed the key on the roof and then let it fall to the floor? You! That’s who! Guilty as charged! The sentence of this court is… endless tickling!”

Alyssa shrieked and stammered, “Ha-ha! W-wait, Mon’! P-please! Stahhahaap! My toes feel-eeek! --another notch--ahahhaaa-- in the middle of-ha the floor of the ha-box.”

“Where?” Mona cried, grabbing a flashlight and shining it where Alyssa’s left big toe was pointing.

“H-here. Maybe it’s another opening, huh? And you can reach through it and grab the key.”

“Or maybe a saw to widen these openings and cut our hands loose.” Mona mused. “Move your foot so I can press the pressure point for the slot.” She pressed her fingertips around the notch, and soon a square hole larger than the roof slots combined slid open in the center of the floor of the cube. “This ‘inescapable’ cube has more holes than a Swiss cheese.”

“Yeah, but every time we open one,” Alyssa cracked, “we seem to get in deeper.”

“I think, grouchy, you need more tickling.”

“No-no-no!”

“OK, then. Shut up and reach through the hole.”

“Huh? In case you forgot, my hands are caught.”

“You couldn’t reach the floor with your hands anyway. The cube is set too high off the floor. Slip your leg through the hole and feel about the floor with your toes for that key or a crowbar. Anything!”

Alyssa thrust her left leg to the knee into the hole, and almost immediately snarled in frustration. “Hey! Now I’m…caught on something below.” Indeed, she had thrust her bare foot through the tangled web of Day-Glo plastic netting, and her ankle had been effectively snagged. No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t raise her foot more than six inches off the floor, and hardly at all from side-to-side.

“Brilliant,” snapped Mona. “Here, let me try!” Limbering her long leg, she squeezed it to her thigh through the hole alongside her friend’s. She tried to maneuver her foot so that her toes, wiggling within the wide mesh of her black fishnet stocking, could explore the area of the floor below the front of the cube. Probing blindly, her foot bumped into the bottom half of the open wooden stocks and settled sole up upon one of the semicircles atop the base. The top half of the stocks shuddered and slammed down, with the unfinished wood now snugly encircling Mona’s ankle and the latch on the side of the stocks closing firmly. Try as she might, she couldn’t free her foot from the tight hold of the latched stocks. It would have been a simple matter for someone to open the latch with the touch of a finger, but no such helpful digit was available.

“I-I can’t believe this!” howled Mona, trying to tug her foot—with its fishnet stocking covered sole facing up—free. Meanwhile, Lou’s little gray cat, attracted by Alyssa’s struggles in the netting and Mona’s foot waggling in the stocks, sniffed about underneath the cube.

Thus it was, at this point, Alyssa had both hands handcuffed on top of the cube, while Mona had one so restrained. Underneath the cube, Alyssa’s petite bare foot, canary toenail polish flashing on her tiny toes above her very soft pink sole, was held just above the floor by the entwining plastic netting. Nearby, Mona’s sleek foot--the wide mesh of her black fishnet stocking hardly covering the tenderness of her long toes and her pale, generously-wrinkled sole --was firmly bound below the locked door of the cube by the latched stocks.

It was then that Mona, in the shock of her foot’s entrapment, nudged, with her ‘cuffed wrist, the toy mouse, which had been skirting the edge of the slot over her head. Said mouse tumbled into the cube and landed upon her neck, right above the loosened collar of her dress shirt. She shouted, “Aiee!” and tried to shake off what for all she knew in the dim confines was a real mouse. Instead, her movements allowed the small soft-furred toy, barely larger than her thumb, to slip under her collar and slide between her breasts and settle just below her bare navel. “Aiee! S-something’s in my shirt!” She began groping at her middle, trying to grasp it through the fabric of her shirt with her fingers. She only managed to yank the toy’s tail, which was unfortunate, as that served as the switch to activate the mouse. It was watch battery-powered and designed to wriggle and skitter and in general resemble an actual living mouse for Lou’s cat to toy with.

Activated, the mock mouse began to circumnavigate Mona’s sensitive torso. Its entire furry body vibrated. Its tiny rubber feet wiggled. Its bristly plastic whiskers twitched. The lively little toy, in its vibrating, wriggling course over Mona’s right hip, across her lower back, upon her left hip, and, with a swerve, into the softness of her navel, tickled Mona insidiously. She began giggling helplessly and slapped at the elusive intruder. “Oh, no! Ahhh! Heh-heh-g-get out of there-heh-hehhehheh! Oh-ha-hahahahaaaa…” Her flailing cuffed hand above tipped over the yogurt cup, its lip landing just shy of the roof’s edge at the front of the cube. The fruity yogurt in the bottom of the cup oozed towards the edge.

Alyssa, at first, couldn’t help but be amused, and giggled at Mona’s ridiculous plight—It served her right after tickling someone’s helpless armpits! —but soon regretted that her hands weren’t free to help her friend. For, it was just then that the stream of soda pop above arrived at the slot. It struck her wrists and split into two sticky trails flowing down her bare arms. “Oooh, yuuuck!” she moaned. It wasn’t until the icky fluid reached her exposed armpits that she became aware of an additional crawling sensation. “Ooooo! What the…heh-heh…Mona! Heh-heh-help me! Something’s-oooo-hehhehheh-on me! Oh-hahahahaaaaaa…”

She couldn’t see that each trail bore a marching line of the tiny black ants, their little legs lightly stepping upon her unprotected bare flesh, and thus tickling her terribly. Arriving at her armpits almost simultaneously, the two sticky streams then differed in their downward course. One stream passed down her right armpit and slipped under her costume, leading the busy little ants over one breast and across her tummy, before pooling in her navel. The other stream slipped over a shoulder blade, skied down her naked back before reaching her costume and oozing between her buttocks to soak her panties. The little black ants faithfully followed the streams to their ends before allowing themselves to become more expansive in their light-footed explorations. Soon, Alyssa’s arms and torso were aquiver with dozens upon dozens of ants, tirelessly tickling her in their instinctive quest for sustenance.

“YEARGH-AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAA! MONAAAAA-HAHAHAHAAAA!”

Mona’s head snapped up at Alyssa’s full-throated scream of laughter, and she instinctively brought her hand up to try and brush off the tiny black ants she saw moving along Alyssa’s flashlit arms. However, the furry toy mouse slid from her navel to scamper under her belt, and her hand jerked back to grab it. Her attempts to reach under her shirt and extract it, however, only pushed its vibrating, wiggling, and twitching form into her underpants. There it was, energetically dancing its soft furriness between her hips, wiggling its tiny rubber feet in her curly black hair, and poking his twitching whiskers between her legs. She howled with helpless laughter as the little mouse ceaselessly tickled her most sensitive area in a light, capricious, but
most persistent manner.

“AIEEEEEE! Heeheehee! N-no-hohohohohoooo! AIEEEEE! Heehee-ehhehheh-ohhehhehheeeeeeh-staaahpahhahahaaaa…”

Still, Mona had presence of mine enough to finally direct her free hand into her pants. Despite its maddening tickling, she might have concentrated enough to grab the mock mouse, had not the first cool dollop of yogurt landed with a plop upon the heel of the sole of her trapped foot outside. The first big sweet drop was followed quickly by another, and another. Soon a smear of fruity yogurt had spread along her fishnet-stocking sole and a healthy amount had settled upon the bottoms of her long toes.

The creeping chilly cultured milk itself was just a minor distraction, however, compared to what followed. The little gray cat, nose atwitch over the scent of sweet yogurt dripping over warm flesh, tracked the smell until it faced Mona’s trapped sole. Then, it sat before the smeared sole and began to gently lap at the yogurt. In the cube, Mona screamed, “OHHONOOO! AH-HA-AHHAHAHAHAHAAAA!” In spite of her foot’s frenzied waggling and her toes’ wild wiggling, the cat patiently licked at the dairy bar spread before it. Its flexible, rough tongue swept across the ball of her foot. It enjoyed long licks along her instep. Raising two paws to steady himself, the cat stretched and lapped attentively at the soft center of her sole. Then, with infinite patience, it sought out the yogurt hiding between Mona’s long toes, licking ever so delicately the soft flesh therein. As the yogurt continued to drip down from above, the kitty tirelessly pursued its tickley tonguing…

Mona finally realized what was tickling her foot, and hysterically entreatied, “Oh-ho-ho-oh, kitty, plee-hee-hee-heese! Ni-ai-ai-aice, kitty! AIEEEE! Sta-ha-hahahahaaap, kitty! Plee-hee-hee-hee-heeeese!” Her hand was ineffectually groping for the mock mouse in her pants, which had slipped between her cheeks, and was now wiggling its tickling way across her buttocks. Between the mouse and the cat, she was laughing in helpless abandon.

Alyssa, herself hysterical from the ants waltzing upon her tender torso, nonetheless registered that howling Mona would be no help at all. She, giggling continuously, resolved to try and rub off what ants she could against the wall of the cube. Below, her ankle was hopelessly tangled in the plastic netting. Her quite tender and completely unprotected bare foot waggled several inches off of the floor.

Across the room, the swiveling fan, wobbling on its stand, finally listed too much to one side and crashed to the floor. It remained on, however, maintaining a steady breeze in the direction of the cube. The strong, steady breeze pushed the feathery headpiece under the cube until it was wedged amidst some odds and ends, directly beneath Alyssa’s foot. In the continuous draft from the fan, the numerous red plumes waved. Their feathery tips barely reached the soft sole of Alyssa’s foot, but the haphazard sweeps of the plumes provided comprehensive tickling from her sensitive heel to her even touchier tiny toes.

In the cube, Alyssa’s eyes widened comically with her awareness of this added tickle torture. Try as she might, she simply could not move her foot away from the ever-teasing tendrils of the headpiece. The plumes, as if directed purposefully by the fallen fan, snaked between her tender toes, skittered into the deep wrinkles of her upper sole, scampered across her curvaceous arch, slithered upon her pillowy heel and sashayed along the silken sides of her foot. This ceaseless feathering of her helpless foot, combined with the ants capering upon her exposed skin and literally in her pants, was more than she could stoically bear.

“AIIIIIE! HEH-HEH-HEELLLP! Ah-ha-ha-eh-heh-heh-hehhehheh! Oh-hahaha-HA-HA-HA-AH-HAHAHAHAAAAAA…”

Mona, her soft sole being scratchily, persistently licked and her naughty bits being relentlessly teased, roiled risibly alongside the mirthful Alyssa.

“Nuh-nah-hahahaha! Tee-hee-hee-hee-heeee! Heh-heh-hehhehhehheeee! OhGodHAHAHAHAHAAAA! Ki-ih-ih-ihteeeee! Heeheehee! STAHAHAHAHAAAAP! AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAA….”

How long their loud laughter echoed in The Great Loudini’s workshop, they, of course, were in no condition to measure or say. It could have gone on for hours, and for more hours still, especially if their expectations of a very late return to the workshop of its mistress proved right.

However, as dawn peeked over the Strip, one of the revelers at the still progressing party for Betty Lou Tanner snorted in drunken disdain at her insistence than she could free herself from a pair of Rhinewerks handcuffs, famed for their tenacity, in less than one minute. Indignant at the doubter—the sexist chairman of Local 99 of The International Brotherhood of Escape Artists—Lou stormed out of the party with her boyfriend Dave in tow. “I’ll show him,” she snorted, anger coloring her face to complement her flaming tresses. “I’ve a pair of those cuffs in my workshop. We’ll get ‘em and bring ‘em back to show that pig that I can too get out of them in a minute.”

She fired up her Ford pick-up and roared towards the casino. Dave, a beefy six-footer with a sandy ponytail, bounced in the passenger seat, with his cowboy hat squashing against the roof. He swallowed and, trying to mollify her, said, “Easy, honey, easy! No sense makin’ us escape from a wreck ‘fore we even get the damn cuffs. Dammit, I wish you weren’t so damn touchy.”

“Listen, Dave,” she said, her green eyes narrowing with determination. “I’m the best there is! Nobody gets away with dissing The Great Loudini. Certainly not that second-rate old bastard. Who the hell invited him anyway? Wait’ll you see his look when I beat the cuffs and chuck ‘em in his fat face! Why…”

“Look out for that semi!” shouted Dave. “I believe you, OK? Now get below 80, or we’ll be studyin’ the deadbolts at the County lock-up!” He was praying all the way to the casino parking lot.

Shortly, Fernando, swearing in Spanish under his breath as he left the comfort of his music-filled office, answered the clamor at the stage door. He was surprised to see Lou bark a curt “Hi!” and barge past him to the doorway to the cellar. Dave shrugged helplessly at him and hurried to keep up with her. He only caught up with her as she froze--her head tilted as if intently listening—at the steel door to her workshop.

He muttered, “What’s….” She shushed him and rested her ear upon the door. He shrugged and followed suit. He heard something, a… howling, muffled by the door. “Is that your cat?” he asked.

“My cat doesn’t laugh,” she murmured. “Huh? Then who…?” he mumbled.

Setting her jaw, she unlocked the door and said, “Someone picked the wrong time to try and rip me off!” Dave almost fell into the workshop as she pushed opened the door with strength unexpected in such a modestly built woman.

Even more unexpected was the tableaux they found in the already-lit workshop. High-pitched laughter was pouring out of “The Inescapable Cube” resting on the sawhorses in the room’s center. Three hands, stuck in handcuffs, desperately waggled over the roof of the cube. Two left legs stuck out through its floor. The bare one had become snarled in some netting hanging from the sawhorses. The other, clad in a fishnet stocking, had somehow gotten latched in the wooden stocks Lou had recently shoved under the cube.

Lou and Dave exchanged amazed glances. They could see what was causing the laughter from the cube’s hapless occupants. Trapped sole up in the stocks, the stocking foot, dripping with yogurt from a cup upset upon the roof, was being methodically licked by Lou’s little gray cat, Scott Free. The cat hadn’t even stopped his licking to greet his mistress, as he customarily did when she entered. The bare foot was being lightly but comprehensively brushed by the red plumes of a feathered headpiece being animated by the breeze from a toppled floor fan. Both feet quivered in ticklish agony, and the two women trapped in the cube howled in hysterical reverberation at slightly different octaves.

Lou thought that the headpiece below and the top hat on the roof looked familiar, and the laughter had recognizable qualities. She bent down to pick up the cube’s key, fallen beside the lapping cat. Not yet stopping Scott Free, she straightened up and unlocked the cube’s front side. She and Dave were astonished to behold the bedraggled, wriggling and mirth-racked forms of two fellow performers.

“Mona! Alyssa!” Lou cried. “Oh, you poor things!” The two women, caught in the brightness filling the cube, managed to squeak out a few pleas for help amidst their giggles and chortles. Mona was trying futilely to crane her neck to spy what her helplessly laughing partner was seeing. Lou bent down and shooed away Scott Free, who with noticeable reluctance fled the tasty foot. She barked “Dave!” and motioned to the headpiece. He knelt and grabbed it, after which he flung it at the cat seated and licking its paws across the room.

Hearing that their laughter and their cries for help were only somewhat abated, Lou thrust her head and shoulders into the cube. She spotted a shape scampering crazily under Mona’s skirt, right upon her behind. As Lou watched in wonder, the shape in Mona’s skirt slipped into the crack between the magician’s butt cheeks and spun there. As a direct result, Mona’s giggles tumbled into squeals and she wiggled even more violently. Lou shook herself out of bemused fascination. She tugged at the waist of Mona’s skirt, slipped a hand inside, and grabbed the wriggling shape. Bursting into laughter when she saw it was Scott Free’s automated toy mouse, she dangled it by the tail in front of the immeasurably relieved perspiring face of Mona Merlin.

Mona, to her credit, almost immediately croaked, “’Lys’!” She brushed with her free hand at the ants that were still traversing her friend. Lou, seeing Alyssa’s plight, leaned out of the cube and rustled among the roof’s clutter. She thrust herself back in, holding the paintbrush, and, shoving Mona aside (causing the still bound magician to painfully protest), she began rapidly brushing what ants she could see off of the blonde’s near side. When that side seemed clear, she brushed Alyssa’s bare back as well as she was able. Though she was still twitching and giggling from the ants roaming within her costume, it was soon obvious that ‘Lys’ was free of most of her tiny tickling tormentors.

Meanwhile, Dave had righted the cup and bottle on the roof of the cube and had toweled up the sticky messes. He had even given Mona’s stocking foot a wipe, to her momentary renewed amusement. He was just about to unlatch the stocks and free her foot, when he felt Lou’s restraining hand, which then motioned him to back away.

“So, Mona…Alyssa,” Lou began, as she leaned with folded arms against the open door. “We had missed you at the party.” She paused to listen to Alyssa titter every now and then, before adding, “We had even been a little worried about you…thought you might have had an accident.”

“Lou,” Dave said impatiently, “let’s free ‘em so we can get back to the party. Where are those special Kraut handcuffs?”

“Just a moment, big guy,” Lou replied, giving him a sly smile before turning again to the cubed pair. “I’d like to hear their story. Well?”

“OK, OK,” said Mona, still somewhat breathless. “We just wanted to take a peek at your workshop….”

“You were spying!” snapped Lou.

“Well, uh, I dunno if it was, ah, you know… YES, OK, all right! We were spying,” conceded Mona. “But, Lou, it was only because we love your act, and you wouldn’t take us on as apprentices, so we decided just to take a little peek….”

“Mona! Heh-heh-heh,” Alyssa said, her desperation flecked with renewed giggles due to the ants tickling her tummy. “Heh-heh, L-Lou! Heh! Plee-hee-heese l-let us l-loose! I’m goin’ ha-ha nuts!”

“Why, sure, sweetie,” Lou said. She reached up to the small toolbox on the roof and picked out a ring holding two tiny keys from its scrambled contents. Whirling the ring on the tip of one finger, she continued, “I’m really impressed at how totally…bollixed up you two got yourselves. You know…”--She leaned against the door and, tilting her head back, winked at Dave. —“…you can’t learn how to escape from a solid trap until you learn how to solidly trap yourselves. And you certainly did that very well.”

“You can say that again,” mumbled Mona. “Heh-heh! R-right,” giggled Alyssa.

“So, all right,” Lou went on, “I’ll take you both on as apprentices…provided you can pass a simple ‘audition.’ I’m holding the keys to your handcuffs. I’m going to place them in your hands. All you have to do is open the handcuffs. When you do, Dave and I will free your poor trapped feet below.”

She motioned to Dave, who walked over and allowed her to whisper in his ear. She concluded her instructions with a snicker. Dave knew better than to argue with Lou, although he couldn’t hide a sly smile at her intentions.

“Well?” Lou asked finally. “Do you accept the challenge?”

“Ah, well, uh…” stammered Mona. “Sure. Right. Anything to get out of this.”

“Tee-hee! C’mon,” giggled Alyssa, “g-gimme-hehheh-the key-hee!”

Lou reached above the roof of the cube and placed one key in Mona’s hand and the other in Alyssa’s hands. Then she leaned into the cube and purred, “Of course, I do want to make things…interesting for you. One only benefits from an exercise if it offers some difficulty.” She briefly tickled under Mona’s raised arm and then wiggled her fingertips under each of Alyssa’s exposed armpits. The two jerked and squealed. As Lou retreated, they exchanged puzzled looks before concentrating on opening their handcuffs.

Lou sat below, cross-legged before the stocks. An exultant and wicked smile spread across her face as she considered Mona’s lovely foot, black fishnet stocking stretched across her damp red sole. She held the shiny black bristles of the paintbrush mere inches away from the foot helplessly wriggling before her. There was a tinkle from above.

“Er… Lou,” Mona bleated, “I just dropped the key. Could you…”

Lou stood, picked up the key off of the floor of the cube, and placed it again in Mona’s hand. Then she sat down again, leaned forward, and held down Mona’s long, wiggling toes. She began to “paint” with the coarse-bristled brush from the base of Mona’s toes to her heel and back again. She giggled with pleasure at Mona’s immediate, spirited reaction.

Mona, whose tender foot had been further softened by the yogurt and dreadfully sensitized by the cat’s tongue, was electrified by Lou’s brushwork. “Oh, no! No-no-no-no! Aaaiiieee!Ah-ha-ha-ahhahaha-ahhahahahaaaaa! Stopstopstopstaaaaahp-pa-ha-ha-ha-hahahahahaaaaaaaa…!” As if her laughter was shaking them out of her, periodically a playing card would appear in her free hand before drifting to the floor of the cube, soon littered with nearly a full deck.

Dave shivered a bit at Lou’s obvious pleasure, but that didn’t prevent him from smiling as he turned to Alyssa’s fetching bare foot, waggling under the Day-Glo net in which her ankle was securely snagged. He knelt and grasped her heel. He switched on the electric buffer and began to lightly play its whirling bristles across the softness of her sole.

Above, Alyssa, who actually had been about to unlock one of the ‘cuffs holding her, shrieked and burst into hearty laughter. “Yearghhh! Yeee-ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa! You-you-hoohooheehee! Quit it-heh-heh-ehhh-hehhehhehheeeh! Ah-hahahahaaaaaaaaaa…!”

Dave noticed right away, whenever he pulled open the desperately scrunching toes and applied the brush firmly under them, that Alyssa’s words collapsed in giggling squeals. He thus pointedly concentrated his efforts on her tiny digits. He had, by this time, completely lost any desire to return to the party at WingDing’s.

Despite her mounting hilarity, Alyssa did manage to free one wrist. She pulled her free hand into the cube. However, the brush whirling under her tender toes and the few ants still prancing in her underpants combined at this point to roil her with belly laughs. She tried to grab Mona to steady herself and regain her composure. However, she missed the grab, and, instead, her twitching fingers poked her partner’s tummy.

Mona’s eyes flashed at this apparent betrayal by her friend. Laughing giddily while Lou
“painted” her sole--and despite being only a key twist away from freeing herself above, she diverted her free hand to violently tickle Alyssa’s exposed underarm. The two cubed performers then became locked in a pattern of mutually assured tickling, as each tried parrying the other’s fingers while sneaking in quick five-fingered tickles herself. Laughing with abandon now, and caught in such a compulsive cycle of reciprocal tickling, would they ever be free?

Below, Lou and Dave were counting on them not being able to free themselves--even when handed the keys to their freedom. The escape artist and her boyfriend were simply having too much fun tickling the magician and her assistant. The ticklers were now using their fingertips as well to provide teasing variations to their cunning brushwork. Lou chuckled as she mercilessly dug her strong, slim fingers between Mona’s long, sensitive toes, while pushing the coarse bristles of the brush through the wide mesh along Mona’s silken instep. Dave had trapped Alyssa’s tiny, tender toes in a tickle pincer. While the whirling filaments of the buffer teased the canary-nailed tops of her toes, Dave was snaking his fingertips into the pale softness underneath the futilely scrunching digits. The melodic laughter pouring from the trapped intruders only seemed to instill in their tormentors an unrelieved craving for more.

So, the lithe and lanky Magical Mona Merlin and her perky assistant Alyssa Lewis finally had the full attention of the Great Loudini. She was indeed teaching them about the perils facing the novice escape artist. And they were absolutely, inescapably tickled about it!

Across the room, perched atop a horizontal, half-painted Iron Maiden, rocking gently
in chains hanging from the ceiling, Scott Free stopped his grooming long enough to yawn and
momentarily observe the ever unfathomable behavior of bipeds…

***The author assures all those who might invite him to dinner that he now attempts his famous tablecloth trick only well after dessert and coffee have been served. He’s bound to get it right one of these tries…

i'll invite you to dinner, TeeHee, as long as you provide the entertainment, and its not pulling a tablecloth off a full table. stories i would want stories. another great one teehee, your sense of humour is awesome. and the way they got into predicament after predicament was foreseen yet original as well. hope you find more from your archive to post here, or (hint hint) maybe a brand neew one? love them.

isabeau

Good Story

Thank You! You wouldn't believe how long I've been searching for this story since I first read it in Tickle Town (before it turned into a pay-site). Thank you!

always loved this story - especially the yogurt scene! hope to see something new soon!

What a Great Halloween Gift!

A story of this calibre is as rare as hen's teeth. Thank you and Happy Tickling, my friend.

The Prestige pales in comparison....

awesome story never read one ilike that. I hope you continue writing more stories teehee

thats a good one!