The Carver
A Tale from The Tickling Tavern
By Toetruck
(Part One of Two)
M/F, nudity, marijuana, alcohol, bondage.
Talk about a perfect victim.
He sat alone at a table near the end of the bar, happily sipping irish whiskey.
Jill slowly strutted through the tavern. She was tall, with long beautiful legs and a face that channelled the film noir princess Veronica Lake.
It was a small but lively crowd this night, and a celtic fiddle player was stomping a loud beat while he played. Two pretty Coleens had kicked off their shoes and were dancing a wild jig in their stocking feet. The crowd was clapping in time and singing along with the song as the fiddle player led them.
Jill saw the little man pull out a thick wad of bills from his pocket and peel a few off as the waitress filled his glass. ’Big Tipper’ she thought to herself.
She strolled in front of him and pretended to watch the dancers, even tapped her foot to the music. When she turned to look at him he smiled, winked, and gestured to the empty chair on the other side of his table. She returned the smile, walked a few sultry steps to the chair he had offered, and sat down. She was careful to give him a glimpse of her nylon wrapped thighs and calves as she crossed her legs.
“Buy you a drink, me pretty?” he asked in a thick Irish accent.”
“You can buy me a tequila paralyzer, if you like.” she smiled seductively at him. He waved the waitress back and tipped heavily when she returned with the drink. Jill shook her head ever so slightly at the way he seemed to be flaunting his roll of cash. ’Sucker’ she thought, ‘that will soon be mine’.
“Haven’t been here before, have you me pretty?” he asked.
“No I haven’t. I don’t know what drew me to this place...I guess when I heard the fiddle playing as I walked past the entrance...and I was just curious.” she sipped her drink and smiled at him. He was strange looking to say the least...just a tiny fellow with an impossibly large and powerful pair of forearms and hands. He had red sideburns and a little goatee, and drank whiskey as if it were water. “I am amazed at some of the wood carving...all the fancy braided trim and the furniture...it looks hand made.”
“Indeed it was all carved by hand.” he informed her, “By a true artist...and if there is one thing an Irishman knows, it’s art.” he gulped down the rest of his drink and waved the waitress over again.
And so it went. They chatted about art, music, and booze. They drank some more. She started giving him signals, trying to initiate an invitation to go someplace private.
Yet from somewhere inside her own mind, call it an instinct, a voice even, she was getting the feeling that perhaps it would be better to simply cut bait and run. She had no concrete reason to feel this way, but an instinct is not based on concrete evidence.
She dangled her high heel pump on the tip of her big toe. His eyes seemingly fixed on her nylon covered foot. Another round of drinks came.
Another round of drinks again.
Jill should have trusted her instincts. After years of preying on the unwary, she should have listened to her internal radar. It had always allowed her to escape capture. She simply grew over-confident with each new victim, became too comfortable with the whole ruse. The bait and trap game became a tired pantomime for her, and so she became complacent, downright sloppy. Her final undoing, it seemed, would be her own vanity. She couldn’t fathom how any man could resist her silken charms and turn the tables on her so completely.
How many others had she done this to? That question entered her mind as she slowly climbed the stairs, deliberately adding a little side-to side action to her hips, well aware that her intended victim was climbing the stairs behind her, eye level with her perfect ass.
It should have seemed too easy this time. Her intended target, this pug-ugly little Irishman had a very obvious fetish for female feet. She knew the type, or at least thought she did. He probably spent every evening in this very same hotel. Probably ogled all the ladies in the tavern downstairs until finally staggering upstairs so he could pull his pud and get off thinking about all the pretty ladies in their sheer hosiery, teasing him with their shoe dangling and foot posing antics. She noticed how his ears, which seemed malformed...pointed like Mr. Spocks almost, would seem to rise up ever so slightly whenever she crossed and then uncrossed her legs under the table. She was certain that the delicate sound of her nylon clad legs and calves rubbing against each other was silently driving him crazy. She believed that his fate was sealed when he raised his eyebrows at the barely audible sound of her high heel pump dropping empty to the floor.
The final straw was when she dropped the shoe from her other shapely foot and placed both her smooth soles firmly against his crotch. The little man looked into her eyes, grinned a toothy grin that somehow radiated an unexpectedly warm, celtic charm, and winked at her. ”Shall we take a room upstairs, me’ pretty?“ he asked her in a voice thick with booze and lust. She blushed the blush that she had practiced and used on so many other men. He got up from the table and staggered accross the floor, disappearing through the doors which led to the hotel’s front desk. He emerged a moment later with the key to one of the rooms upstairs.
Turning left at the top of the very last flight of stairs, the little man inserted the key into the lock of an ancient oaken door and turned. The lock seemed to make a lot of strange mechanical noise from single turn of the key, almost as though it operated on a system of tumblers and sprockets and gears. This made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up for reasons that she did not understand. She started to have uneasy doubts about the plan, but she had allowed herself too much alcohol this particular evening and the doubts were easily squashed by liquid courage.
She was feeling for the tiny nickle plated handgun in her purse as the little man swung the door wide open. She didn’t plan on ever using it. She simply felt a sweep of nervous paranoia as the inside of the room met her eyes. A tingling sensation that started in her toes climbed up her skin till it set her hair up like a jolt of static electricity. As she stepped into the room, sharp heels clicking againsts the ancient hardwood, her nipples grew hard, yet the room was cozy warm, and the air had a very mild sweetness, like orchids after a rain. Her fingers released the little weapon and, instead, withdrew the large flask of whiskey she always kept with her.
Another strange tingle rose from her feet as the door closed behind her and she slowly clicked around the old room. Just the structure of the suite rocked her back on her heels slightly, making her feel a bit dizzy. The place seemed all of one continuous design, a mind numbing array of celtic braids and interwoven vines, all carved out of a rich, dark mahogany type of wood that flowed from one piece of furniture to the other. The walls were of solid, flat wood panels which were inlaid with tribal patterns. Green men and cherubs poked out from behind leaf clusters and creeping vines, all carved from the same polished, dark red wood. And all over exotic birds, parrots, owls, and laughing nymphs, all sculpted in amazing detail. Feathers and foliage were everywhere. They adorned the window sills, the corners of the room, even the ceiling fan, rotating ever so slowly over a pale orange light which cast the whole room in a gently pulsing halloweenesque glow.
Jill felt a short gasp leave her throat when she looked at the bed. She had travelled all over the world and seen and stolen many antiques from many a cultured man. Priceless Samurai swords and Victorian dueling pistols had been aquired as nonchalantly as bowling trophies. Yet she had never, in her entire life, seen a bed quite like this.
It looked like something that H.R. Giger might have attempted if he were trying to channel the Brothers Grimm. The bed itself was monstrous, big enough for a party of five. The headboard was inset with an amazingly detailed woodcarving depicting a wild and incomprehensible assortment of scenarios; nymphs with laughing faces engaging in playful wrestling antics. One pair of tiny feminine figures was holding the ankles of a third while the forked ends of a flowery vine appeared to be stroking the soles of the little victims feet. Another scenario was the opposite... a flowery vine was wrapped around a squirming nymph’s ankles while two of her sisters with smiles carved into their little faces, seemed to be tickling their victim’s soles with tiny finger tips. Jill felt another wave of strange tingling coming from her own feet, but this time it stayed with her longer and mixed with a feeling of nervous titillation...she had no idea why she was feeling these things. Her nipples were almost painfully hard now as they strained against the soft fabric of her bra.
The rest of the bed carvings carried the same theme...mythological creatures that seemed to be on some kind of perverse “tickle rampage” with the small female figures that invariably found themselves helpless in the wild panicky throes of hysterical laughting fits. The bedposts were braided coils that climbed towards the ceiling and tapered into wooden spheres which were polished to a mirror finish. Jill could actually see her own reflection in the glassy image. She felt butterflies in her tummy that she hadn’t felt since...
A strange and incredibly powerful feeling of deja-vu overwelmed her and her heart started to beat faster.
She looked at the helpless, giggling nymphs in the carved wood and her mind replayed foggy old memories for her...the long buried memories of a squealing college girl running away from...she tried to dismiss the memories...but the uneasy feelings lingered.
The little Irishman sat on the edge of the bed and smiled a cheshire cat smile at her. He lifted two glasses off the end table with one large hand and held them both out to her with a wink. She stared idiotically at him for a long moment, her attention still scrambled by her strange fascination with the bed and the carvings that seemed to envelope the entire room. She gave her head a slight shake and giggled nervously. Then put her come hither smile back on as she poured the warm amber liquid from her flask into the glasses.
She began the ritual by sipping seductively on her drink and staring into his eyes...they were piercing eyes though and something she saw in them made it difficult to look away. She giggled nervously again, even as she palmed the tiny pill that was to be slipped into his drink, as was her routine.
She leaned forward and very gently, softly kissed the little man on the lips, with just a tease of tongue...she new it would take away all his attention...and she was right. The little man closed his eyes as she kissed him while she opened hers and zeroed in on his half filled glass; dropped the pill in and watched it turn into a tiny fizzing comet of nearly invisible bubbles.
She kissed him again then stepped back and smiled as she slowly began to unbutton her sweater. It was at this point in the ritual that she usually found herself making silent guesses to herself as to when the victim would be rendered unconcious...before or after she removed her bra. She was a bit of an exhibitionist and liked to perform a little strip tease as a prelude to tying her ko’d victim to the bed and making off with cash, credit cards and jewellery. The dance usually caused the unwary target to take a big swallow of his drink which, laced with barbituate, would shut the victim’s lights out quickly and thoroughly and with no resistance at all.
‘I like to WOW em to sleep’ she would joke to herself as the pill would take it’s toll.
But for some strange reason, after dancing for ten minutes and stripping down to her panties and designer hose...on this night, her victim swallowed his drink in one gulp, smacked his lips, and poured himself another.
When she met his gaze as she unfastened her bra she followed his eyes down to her nipples...and realized that they were harder than they had ever been in her life...her crotch was growing warm as well and her skin was tingling as if an army of tiny ants were marching all over her from toes to ears.
She stood still for a moment as if in a trance, the come hither look long replaced by a mask of wide eyed confusion and bewilderment. Her bare breasts were perky and the whisper of the breeze from the overhead fan was giving them goose bumps. Her ankles felt weak and her nylon encased knees shook.
The little man pulled a leather pouch from his vest pocket and removed a small pipe and a black cardboard matchbox . He dumped the contents of the pouch onto the night table beside the bed and gestured with one outstretched finger for her to come get a closer look.
She gasped as she looked at the small, firm buds and leaves...it was the palest green she had ever seen on a marijuana plant...it almost glowed.
The buds and leaves were sweet and gentle on her throat, almost like smoking from an ice bong, she thought, an experience she had enjoyed in an Amsterdam coffee house as a backpacking teenage runaway who had decided to tour Europe at the expense of whatever rich man got lonely and drunk enough and wound up in her path.
She took three gentle pulls from the pipe as he held it for her. They exchanged no words. He took a few pulls, and then smiled while she inhaled the cannibis resin. She let out another nervous giggle as she slowly sank down on a pillow at the head of the bed. She extended her long silken legs and curled her toes inside her pumps.
She was trying to relax her body the way she always did when she smoked pot, but for some reason her heart was beating even harder than before.
The room began to move around her then and she had another feeling of deja vu followed immediately by a crystal clear memory...of herself as a young sorority sister ...running...squealing and running from the mean sisters who were going to initiate her by...
Jill went trance like as the memory flooded her every sense. She was nineteen and she was trying to get through a terrifying hazing...when she chickened out and ran...
They gave chase up the stairs...she ran as fast as her shapely legs would go...squealing and giggling at the game...she was almost to the safety of her room when...
Sitting on the edge of the bed, the little man offered her one more pull from his pipe...she inhaled obediently...the smoke made her cheeks cramp up into two intoxicated bubbles of flushed pink flesh. Her eyes narrowed into slits and her full red lips pulled back in a smile of unfettered bliss.
Jill felt a wave of panic wash over her, yet her body had gone limp and a warm feeling of euphoria was mixing with the fear. Even though she was seemingly paralyzed, her skin continued to tingle and grow goosebumps, her nipples were totally aroused now and she found herself amazed at the fact that she was absolutely terrified at what was happening...at her total and sudden loss of control here, while she simultaneously longed to have her skin caressed...all over...she thought she was losing her mind completely.
Nothing she had experienced in either coffee house or opium den could compare to the feelings that were assailing her senses. Her groin ached for contact and she tried to grind her hips against the pillow under her. All she succeeded in doing was to slide her body down until she lay flat on her back, staring helplessly up at the ceiling. She started to giggle uncontrollably and felt a bolt of delicious adrenaline course through her nervous system as the room seemed to swirl around her.
The little man had gotten to his feet now and looked down at her with a gentle smile. She looked up at him and laughed drunkenly, as if his very appearance was amusing to her, he returned the favor, nodding and chuckling.
The room continued to move around her and she became aware of the bed frame seeming to shift and move under it’s own power. The ceiling fan, with it’s sculpted wooden blades, seemed to be getting lower. The coils of braided rope carved out of the wooden bedposts appeared to take on a serpentine quality as they began uncoiling from around the four corners and formed a row of undulating nooses lined up at the foot of the bed and the top of the headboard. Jill blinked once...twice...and on the third blink of her disbelieving eyes the thick braided cords which were supposed to be wood descended on her wrists and ankles as gently and swiftly as a silk net on a butterfly.
At first, Jill had no idea of her predicament. She felt the cords encircle her limbs, seemingly under their own power, yet she could only punctuate the experience by letting out another uneasy giggle. The braids were carved of wood, she was certain, but when they gripped her limbs they felt soft and warm...almost alive!
The smoke she had inhaled seemed to magnify all of the sensations of the room around her; the breeze from the ceiling fan on her sensitive breasts, the soft cords of enchanted rope that were ever so gently tightening around her ankles and wrists and slowly pulling her arms up over her head seemed to cause the stretched skin over her ribs to come alive with sensitivity. It seemed like the air was charged with a high energy electricity that was stimulating her skin in ways she had never felt before.
‘I’m dreaming all of this’ she thought...“that little irish guy has some real ass kickin weed and I went nappy time and this is aaaaaaaall a dream...” she stopped and caught herself when she realized that she was now talking out loud...she realized with horror that the solid wooden braids that were carved from the bedposts had turned into some kind of warm, leathery coils that had just wrapped around her wrists and ankles like unstoppable pythons, and now held her firmly spread eagle on the bed. She felt the pangs of fear and yet...all that would come out of her at that moment of stark realization was a deep throaty laugh.
The little irishman laughed as well. He tapped the pipe on the bottom of his shoe, then casually sat beside the helpless, squirming form on the bed. Still smiling, he leaned over her and said in a low, warm, poets voice, ”I’m glad you see the humor in all of this. Fer sure n’ it would break me own sad little heart if ya didn’t get inta this larcenous line o work fer anything less than a long, hard laugh!” He seemed to find this amusing and so he jumped to his feet and did a little impromptu riverdance style jig. This made Jill laugh for reasons she couldn’t even begin to fathom in her hazy state.
She tried to fight for rational thought, even tried to force the panic she was feeling to over ride the euphoria that held her brain captive. Everytime she tried to contemplate the danger she was in...everytime she tried to kick into survival mode and think of a way out of her predicament, her body and mind would be swept with a current of powerful sensate energy, like every cell of her being was being washed with it’s own warm water jet...but some of the jet streams were needle thin and the sensation forced out an uncontrollable laughter.
“I see that you’ve taken a liking to the interior design hereabouts...” he grinned a toothy grin and sat back down near her on the bed. “This room is indeed a marvel of invention and artistic prowess is it not, me pretty?” at the word “pretty”, Jill giggled again and nodded in giddy agreement.
The little man continued, “Indeed, this room was once the room of a great inventor... The Carver...a MASTER...master craftsman of extra ordinary genius and limitless talent. The Carver lived here for over fifty years and did business with everyone from Asian toymakers to German magicians and Swiss clockmakers. He lived his work and he never married. The wood..and his tools...were his bride.”
”Every once in a while though, after completing a big project say, The Carver would treat himself to a drink or two at the tavern downstairs.“ The little man looked deep into Jill’s eyes. She felt the memory invade her thinking again...the memory of being chased, in pyjamas, until she is grabbed by too many limbs, and held down, just like now, and...
”Then one day,“ he continued,” This lonely genius who had never married, happened upon a lady of rare beauty. Now, The Carver was a genius with all things mechanical, to be certain, but with the ways of women...especially the beautiful ones...he had considerable blindspots.”
Jill found herself relaxing into the story, as if hypnotized by the sound of his voice. ”And as fate would have it, he was LURED BY AN ENCHANTRESS with a penchant for SPIKING...the DRINKS...of her companions...with SLEEPING POTIONS...and MAKING OFF with all manner of loot and jewel.” these last words were spoken with distinct slowness and clarity, and he looked deep into her eyes until he was satisfied with what he saw there.
He definitely saw fear...for she was shivering with fear now. Her arms tried vainly to resist the pull of the thick woven cords that encircled her wrists. And the cords around her ankles were so thick that she may as well have had her calves locked in a set of stocks. The little man got up and walked around to the end of the bed near her helpless feet. He smiled, winked, then made her cry out in both terror and delight as he firmly grasped the point of her high heel in his thick, powerful fingers and started to pull the shoe from her stocking foot.
“Okay mister.....what???shhhhwhat?” she was slurring and could barely speak, and a horror was engulphing her now as she felt the gentle pulling on her shoe, tried as hard as she could to contort her foot to keep her shoe on...knowing all too well that it was hopeless. She giggled helplessly as the nervous impulses from her foot sent tiny ripples of electricity up her calf and into her spine...she closed her eyes as tightly as she could but that was no comfort because it was then her mind decided to torture her with the memory she had been running away from with every ounce of will power she could muster...then the memory floodgates burst open...
The sorority sisters were too strong...they laughed as they held her arms over her head...pinning the top half of her body to the bed. A freckle faced girl was doing something terrible to her now...she had both of Jill’s ankles trapped between her thighs...long fingernails were dancing on the soles of Jill’s helpless feet. And Jill, since as far back as she could remember, had always been so horrifyingly ticklish that the mere mention of the word “tickle” made her toes instinctively curl and the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The fingernails tickled and teased the soft soles and the laughter was ripped from her aching lungs. The other evil sisters, not to be outdone, were maddeningly gentle to her ribs, tummy, underarms, and neck. When the tickling fingers arrived at her ears she squealed a high pitched squeal that nearly shattered all the mirrors and windows in the house. Yet the sisters continued to torture their defenceless toy.
Lying stretched out on the bed now, with the little man’s deep melodic voice telling his strange story, she felt the old emotions of the college hazing tickle terror creep into her conciousness...the strange mix of fascination and fear, panic and arousal, the total loss of control and the irrisistible force of the laughter being stolen from her taught, helpless body...she felt the warm “pop” as her foot finally lost it’s struggle to keep it’s shoe on, and she realized that she was in terrible danger from the mere fact that the simple sensation of the fresh air on the sole of her moist, silky, stocking sole was enough to cause her foot to stir in ticklish anticipation. ”Hey...Mishter..“ she slurred in a drunken giggle,”....you jussht leave my shooooezzz alone...do you hear me?” and as stoned and as giggly as she felt, she herself could detect the panic in her voice.
End Part One
A Tale from The Tickling Tavern
By Toetruck
(Part One of Two)
M/F, nudity, marijuana, alcohol, bondage.
Talk about a perfect victim.
He sat alone at a table near the end of the bar, happily sipping irish whiskey.
Jill slowly strutted through the tavern. She was tall, with long beautiful legs and a face that channelled the film noir princess Veronica Lake.
It was a small but lively crowd this night, and a celtic fiddle player was stomping a loud beat while he played. Two pretty Coleens had kicked off their shoes and were dancing a wild jig in their stocking feet. The crowd was clapping in time and singing along with the song as the fiddle player led them.
Jill saw the little man pull out a thick wad of bills from his pocket and peel a few off as the waitress filled his glass. ’Big Tipper’ she thought to herself.
She strolled in front of him and pretended to watch the dancers, even tapped her foot to the music. When she turned to look at him he smiled, winked, and gestured to the empty chair on the other side of his table. She returned the smile, walked a few sultry steps to the chair he had offered, and sat down. She was careful to give him a glimpse of her nylon wrapped thighs and calves as she crossed her legs.
“Buy you a drink, me pretty?” he asked in a thick Irish accent.”
“You can buy me a tequila paralyzer, if you like.” she smiled seductively at him. He waved the waitress back and tipped heavily when she returned with the drink. Jill shook her head ever so slightly at the way he seemed to be flaunting his roll of cash. ’Sucker’ she thought, ‘that will soon be mine’.
“Haven’t been here before, have you me pretty?” he asked.
“No I haven’t. I don’t know what drew me to this place...I guess when I heard the fiddle playing as I walked past the entrance...and I was just curious.” she sipped her drink and smiled at him. He was strange looking to say the least...just a tiny fellow with an impossibly large and powerful pair of forearms and hands. He had red sideburns and a little goatee, and drank whiskey as if it were water. “I am amazed at some of the wood carving...all the fancy braided trim and the furniture...it looks hand made.”
“Indeed it was all carved by hand.” he informed her, “By a true artist...and if there is one thing an Irishman knows, it’s art.” he gulped down the rest of his drink and waved the waitress over again.
And so it went. They chatted about art, music, and booze. They drank some more. She started giving him signals, trying to initiate an invitation to go someplace private.
Yet from somewhere inside her own mind, call it an instinct, a voice even, she was getting the feeling that perhaps it would be better to simply cut bait and run. She had no concrete reason to feel this way, but an instinct is not based on concrete evidence.
She dangled her high heel pump on the tip of her big toe. His eyes seemingly fixed on her nylon covered foot. Another round of drinks came.
Another round of drinks again.
Jill should have trusted her instincts. After years of preying on the unwary, she should have listened to her internal radar. It had always allowed her to escape capture. She simply grew over-confident with each new victim, became too comfortable with the whole ruse. The bait and trap game became a tired pantomime for her, and so she became complacent, downright sloppy. Her final undoing, it seemed, would be her own vanity. She couldn’t fathom how any man could resist her silken charms and turn the tables on her so completely.
How many others had she done this to? That question entered her mind as she slowly climbed the stairs, deliberately adding a little side-to side action to her hips, well aware that her intended victim was climbing the stairs behind her, eye level with her perfect ass.
It should have seemed too easy this time. Her intended target, this pug-ugly little Irishman had a very obvious fetish for female feet. She knew the type, or at least thought she did. He probably spent every evening in this very same hotel. Probably ogled all the ladies in the tavern downstairs until finally staggering upstairs so he could pull his pud and get off thinking about all the pretty ladies in their sheer hosiery, teasing him with their shoe dangling and foot posing antics. She noticed how his ears, which seemed malformed...pointed like Mr. Spocks almost, would seem to rise up ever so slightly whenever she crossed and then uncrossed her legs under the table. She was certain that the delicate sound of her nylon clad legs and calves rubbing against each other was silently driving him crazy. She believed that his fate was sealed when he raised his eyebrows at the barely audible sound of her high heel pump dropping empty to the floor.
The final straw was when she dropped the shoe from her other shapely foot and placed both her smooth soles firmly against his crotch. The little man looked into her eyes, grinned a toothy grin that somehow radiated an unexpectedly warm, celtic charm, and winked at her. ”Shall we take a room upstairs, me’ pretty?“ he asked her in a voice thick with booze and lust. She blushed the blush that she had practiced and used on so many other men. He got up from the table and staggered accross the floor, disappearing through the doors which led to the hotel’s front desk. He emerged a moment later with the key to one of the rooms upstairs.
Turning left at the top of the very last flight of stairs, the little man inserted the key into the lock of an ancient oaken door and turned. The lock seemed to make a lot of strange mechanical noise from single turn of the key, almost as though it operated on a system of tumblers and sprockets and gears. This made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up for reasons that she did not understand. She started to have uneasy doubts about the plan, but she had allowed herself too much alcohol this particular evening and the doubts were easily squashed by liquid courage.
She was feeling for the tiny nickle plated handgun in her purse as the little man swung the door wide open. She didn’t plan on ever using it. She simply felt a sweep of nervous paranoia as the inside of the room met her eyes. A tingling sensation that started in her toes climbed up her skin till it set her hair up like a jolt of static electricity. As she stepped into the room, sharp heels clicking againsts the ancient hardwood, her nipples grew hard, yet the room was cozy warm, and the air had a very mild sweetness, like orchids after a rain. Her fingers released the little weapon and, instead, withdrew the large flask of whiskey she always kept with her.
Another strange tingle rose from her feet as the door closed behind her and she slowly clicked around the old room. Just the structure of the suite rocked her back on her heels slightly, making her feel a bit dizzy. The place seemed all of one continuous design, a mind numbing array of celtic braids and interwoven vines, all carved out of a rich, dark mahogany type of wood that flowed from one piece of furniture to the other. The walls were of solid, flat wood panels which were inlaid with tribal patterns. Green men and cherubs poked out from behind leaf clusters and creeping vines, all carved from the same polished, dark red wood. And all over exotic birds, parrots, owls, and laughing nymphs, all sculpted in amazing detail. Feathers and foliage were everywhere. They adorned the window sills, the corners of the room, even the ceiling fan, rotating ever so slowly over a pale orange light which cast the whole room in a gently pulsing halloweenesque glow.
Jill felt a short gasp leave her throat when she looked at the bed. She had travelled all over the world and seen and stolen many antiques from many a cultured man. Priceless Samurai swords and Victorian dueling pistols had been aquired as nonchalantly as bowling trophies. Yet she had never, in her entire life, seen a bed quite like this.
It looked like something that H.R. Giger might have attempted if he were trying to channel the Brothers Grimm. The bed itself was monstrous, big enough for a party of five. The headboard was inset with an amazingly detailed woodcarving depicting a wild and incomprehensible assortment of scenarios; nymphs with laughing faces engaging in playful wrestling antics. One pair of tiny feminine figures was holding the ankles of a third while the forked ends of a flowery vine appeared to be stroking the soles of the little victims feet. Another scenario was the opposite... a flowery vine was wrapped around a squirming nymph’s ankles while two of her sisters with smiles carved into their little faces, seemed to be tickling their victim’s soles with tiny finger tips. Jill felt another wave of strange tingling coming from her own feet, but this time it stayed with her longer and mixed with a feeling of nervous titillation...she had no idea why she was feeling these things. Her nipples were almost painfully hard now as they strained against the soft fabric of her bra.
The rest of the bed carvings carried the same theme...mythological creatures that seemed to be on some kind of perverse “tickle rampage” with the small female figures that invariably found themselves helpless in the wild panicky throes of hysterical laughting fits. The bedposts were braided coils that climbed towards the ceiling and tapered into wooden spheres which were polished to a mirror finish. Jill could actually see her own reflection in the glassy image. She felt butterflies in her tummy that she hadn’t felt since...
A strange and incredibly powerful feeling of deja-vu overwelmed her and her heart started to beat faster.
She looked at the helpless, giggling nymphs in the carved wood and her mind replayed foggy old memories for her...the long buried memories of a squealing college girl running away from...she tried to dismiss the memories...but the uneasy feelings lingered.
The little Irishman sat on the edge of the bed and smiled a cheshire cat smile at her. He lifted two glasses off the end table with one large hand and held them both out to her with a wink. She stared idiotically at him for a long moment, her attention still scrambled by her strange fascination with the bed and the carvings that seemed to envelope the entire room. She gave her head a slight shake and giggled nervously. Then put her come hither smile back on as she poured the warm amber liquid from her flask into the glasses.
She began the ritual by sipping seductively on her drink and staring into his eyes...they were piercing eyes though and something she saw in them made it difficult to look away. She giggled nervously again, even as she palmed the tiny pill that was to be slipped into his drink, as was her routine.
She leaned forward and very gently, softly kissed the little man on the lips, with just a tease of tongue...she new it would take away all his attention...and she was right. The little man closed his eyes as she kissed him while she opened hers and zeroed in on his half filled glass; dropped the pill in and watched it turn into a tiny fizzing comet of nearly invisible bubbles.
She kissed him again then stepped back and smiled as she slowly began to unbutton her sweater. It was at this point in the ritual that she usually found herself making silent guesses to herself as to when the victim would be rendered unconcious...before or after she removed her bra. She was a bit of an exhibitionist and liked to perform a little strip tease as a prelude to tying her ko’d victim to the bed and making off with cash, credit cards and jewellery. The dance usually caused the unwary target to take a big swallow of his drink which, laced with barbituate, would shut the victim’s lights out quickly and thoroughly and with no resistance at all.
‘I like to WOW em to sleep’ she would joke to herself as the pill would take it’s toll.
But for some strange reason, after dancing for ten minutes and stripping down to her panties and designer hose...on this night, her victim swallowed his drink in one gulp, smacked his lips, and poured himself another.
When she met his gaze as she unfastened her bra she followed his eyes down to her nipples...and realized that they were harder than they had ever been in her life...her crotch was growing warm as well and her skin was tingling as if an army of tiny ants were marching all over her from toes to ears.
She stood still for a moment as if in a trance, the come hither look long replaced by a mask of wide eyed confusion and bewilderment. Her bare breasts were perky and the whisper of the breeze from the overhead fan was giving them goose bumps. Her ankles felt weak and her nylon encased knees shook.
The little man pulled a leather pouch from his vest pocket and removed a small pipe and a black cardboard matchbox . He dumped the contents of the pouch onto the night table beside the bed and gestured with one outstretched finger for her to come get a closer look.
She gasped as she looked at the small, firm buds and leaves...it was the palest green she had ever seen on a marijuana plant...it almost glowed.
The buds and leaves were sweet and gentle on her throat, almost like smoking from an ice bong, she thought, an experience she had enjoyed in an Amsterdam coffee house as a backpacking teenage runaway who had decided to tour Europe at the expense of whatever rich man got lonely and drunk enough and wound up in her path.
She took three gentle pulls from the pipe as he held it for her. They exchanged no words. He took a few pulls, and then smiled while she inhaled the cannibis resin. She let out another nervous giggle as she slowly sank down on a pillow at the head of the bed. She extended her long silken legs and curled her toes inside her pumps.
She was trying to relax her body the way she always did when she smoked pot, but for some reason her heart was beating even harder than before.
The room began to move around her then and she had another feeling of deja vu followed immediately by a crystal clear memory...of herself as a young sorority sister ...running...squealing and running from the mean sisters who were going to initiate her by...
Jill went trance like as the memory flooded her every sense. She was nineteen and she was trying to get through a terrifying hazing...when she chickened out and ran...
They gave chase up the stairs...she ran as fast as her shapely legs would go...squealing and giggling at the game...she was almost to the safety of her room when...
Sitting on the edge of the bed, the little man offered her one more pull from his pipe...she inhaled obediently...the smoke made her cheeks cramp up into two intoxicated bubbles of flushed pink flesh. Her eyes narrowed into slits and her full red lips pulled back in a smile of unfettered bliss.
Jill felt a wave of panic wash over her, yet her body had gone limp and a warm feeling of euphoria was mixing with the fear. Even though she was seemingly paralyzed, her skin continued to tingle and grow goosebumps, her nipples were totally aroused now and she found herself amazed at the fact that she was absolutely terrified at what was happening...at her total and sudden loss of control here, while she simultaneously longed to have her skin caressed...all over...she thought she was losing her mind completely.
Nothing she had experienced in either coffee house or opium den could compare to the feelings that were assailing her senses. Her groin ached for contact and she tried to grind her hips against the pillow under her. All she succeeded in doing was to slide her body down until she lay flat on her back, staring helplessly up at the ceiling. She started to giggle uncontrollably and felt a bolt of delicious adrenaline course through her nervous system as the room seemed to swirl around her.
The little man had gotten to his feet now and looked down at her with a gentle smile. She looked up at him and laughed drunkenly, as if his very appearance was amusing to her, he returned the favor, nodding and chuckling.
The room continued to move around her and she became aware of the bed frame seeming to shift and move under it’s own power. The ceiling fan, with it’s sculpted wooden blades, seemed to be getting lower. The coils of braided rope carved out of the wooden bedposts appeared to take on a serpentine quality as they began uncoiling from around the four corners and formed a row of undulating nooses lined up at the foot of the bed and the top of the headboard. Jill blinked once...twice...and on the third blink of her disbelieving eyes the thick braided cords which were supposed to be wood descended on her wrists and ankles as gently and swiftly as a silk net on a butterfly.
At first, Jill had no idea of her predicament. She felt the cords encircle her limbs, seemingly under their own power, yet she could only punctuate the experience by letting out another uneasy giggle. The braids were carved of wood, she was certain, but when they gripped her limbs they felt soft and warm...almost alive!
The smoke she had inhaled seemed to magnify all of the sensations of the room around her; the breeze from the ceiling fan on her sensitive breasts, the soft cords of enchanted rope that were ever so gently tightening around her ankles and wrists and slowly pulling her arms up over her head seemed to cause the stretched skin over her ribs to come alive with sensitivity. It seemed like the air was charged with a high energy electricity that was stimulating her skin in ways she had never felt before.
‘I’m dreaming all of this’ she thought...“that little irish guy has some real ass kickin weed and I went nappy time and this is aaaaaaaall a dream...” she stopped and caught herself when she realized that she was now talking out loud...she realized with horror that the solid wooden braids that were carved from the bedposts had turned into some kind of warm, leathery coils that had just wrapped around her wrists and ankles like unstoppable pythons, and now held her firmly spread eagle on the bed. She felt the pangs of fear and yet...all that would come out of her at that moment of stark realization was a deep throaty laugh.
The little irishman laughed as well. He tapped the pipe on the bottom of his shoe, then casually sat beside the helpless, squirming form on the bed. Still smiling, he leaned over her and said in a low, warm, poets voice, ”I’m glad you see the humor in all of this. Fer sure n’ it would break me own sad little heart if ya didn’t get inta this larcenous line o work fer anything less than a long, hard laugh!” He seemed to find this amusing and so he jumped to his feet and did a little impromptu riverdance style jig. This made Jill laugh for reasons she couldn’t even begin to fathom in her hazy state.
She tried to fight for rational thought, even tried to force the panic she was feeling to over ride the euphoria that held her brain captive. Everytime she tried to contemplate the danger she was in...everytime she tried to kick into survival mode and think of a way out of her predicament, her body and mind would be swept with a current of powerful sensate energy, like every cell of her being was being washed with it’s own warm water jet...but some of the jet streams were needle thin and the sensation forced out an uncontrollable laughter.
“I see that you’ve taken a liking to the interior design hereabouts...” he grinned a toothy grin and sat back down near her on the bed. “This room is indeed a marvel of invention and artistic prowess is it not, me pretty?” at the word “pretty”, Jill giggled again and nodded in giddy agreement.
The little man continued, “Indeed, this room was once the room of a great inventor... The Carver...a MASTER...master craftsman of extra ordinary genius and limitless talent. The Carver lived here for over fifty years and did business with everyone from Asian toymakers to German magicians and Swiss clockmakers. He lived his work and he never married. The wood..and his tools...were his bride.”
”Every once in a while though, after completing a big project say, The Carver would treat himself to a drink or two at the tavern downstairs.“ The little man looked deep into Jill’s eyes. She felt the memory invade her thinking again...the memory of being chased, in pyjamas, until she is grabbed by too many limbs, and held down, just like now, and...
”Then one day,“ he continued,” This lonely genius who had never married, happened upon a lady of rare beauty. Now, The Carver was a genius with all things mechanical, to be certain, but with the ways of women...especially the beautiful ones...he had considerable blindspots.”
Jill found herself relaxing into the story, as if hypnotized by the sound of his voice. ”And as fate would have it, he was LURED BY AN ENCHANTRESS with a penchant for SPIKING...the DRINKS...of her companions...with SLEEPING POTIONS...and MAKING OFF with all manner of loot and jewel.” these last words were spoken with distinct slowness and clarity, and he looked deep into her eyes until he was satisfied with what he saw there.
He definitely saw fear...for she was shivering with fear now. Her arms tried vainly to resist the pull of the thick woven cords that encircled her wrists. And the cords around her ankles were so thick that she may as well have had her calves locked in a set of stocks. The little man got up and walked around to the end of the bed near her helpless feet. He smiled, winked, then made her cry out in both terror and delight as he firmly grasped the point of her high heel in his thick, powerful fingers and started to pull the shoe from her stocking foot.
“Okay mister.....what???shhhhwhat?” she was slurring and could barely speak, and a horror was engulphing her now as she felt the gentle pulling on her shoe, tried as hard as she could to contort her foot to keep her shoe on...knowing all too well that it was hopeless. She giggled helplessly as the nervous impulses from her foot sent tiny ripples of electricity up her calf and into her spine...she closed her eyes as tightly as she could but that was no comfort because it was then her mind decided to torture her with the memory she had been running away from with every ounce of will power she could muster...then the memory floodgates burst open...
The sorority sisters were too strong...they laughed as they held her arms over her head...pinning the top half of her body to the bed. A freckle faced girl was doing something terrible to her now...she had both of Jill’s ankles trapped between her thighs...long fingernails were dancing on the soles of Jill’s helpless feet. And Jill, since as far back as she could remember, had always been so horrifyingly ticklish that the mere mention of the word “tickle” made her toes instinctively curl and the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The fingernails tickled and teased the soft soles and the laughter was ripped from her aching lungs. The other evil sisters, not to be outdone, were maddeningly gentle to her ribs, tummy, underarms, and neck. When the tickling fingers arrived at her ears she squealed a high pitched squeal that nearly shattered all the mirrors and windows in the house. Yet the sisters continued to torture their defenceless toy.
Lying stretched out on the bed now, with the little man’s deep melodic voice telling his strange story, she felt the old emotions of the college hazing tickle terror creep into her conciousness...the strange mix of fascination and fear, panic and arousal, the total loss of control and the irrisistible force of the laughter being stolen from her taught, helpless body...she felt the warm “pop” as her foot finally lost it’s struggle to keep it’s shoe on, and she realized that she was in terrible danger from the mere fact that the simple sensation of the fresh air on the sole of her moist, silky, stocking sole was enough to cause her foot to stir in ticklish anticipation. ”Hey...Mishter..“ she slurred in a drunken giggle,”....you jussht leave my shooooezzz alone...do you hear me?” and as stoned and as giggly as she felt, she herself could detect the panic in her voice.
End Part One
