Capt. Spalding
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Hannah Davis returns in a substantially revised "Sabbatickle" (FF>F, feet)
To herald the presentation of the third—and most torturous!—misadventure of Professor Hannah Davis, titled A JAR FULL OF LAUGHTER—Coming soon!-- allow me, please, to offer again Hannah’s debut ticklefest—significantly revised (for the better, I hope). Its sequel, A TICKLISH MATRICULATION, will follow soon, revised, as well, with a considerably extended, ah, climax.
*This revised FF>F tale is copyright 2002 by the author.
*This tale is intended only for readers 18 and older, please. (You there with the fake beard
and the phony deep voice! You’re not fooling anybody! I saw MONTY PYTHON’S THE LIFE OF BRIAN, too. Besides, the stoning’s been rescheduled for Thursday….) All three
of this story’s principals are 18 or over, as well. (In the immortal words of Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire: “I may be cwazy, but I ain’t goin’ to Alcatwaz!”)
*Forgiveness begged from George S. Kaufman, Harry Ruby, Bert Kalmar, and Groucho Marx for Clarice’s homage to Captain Spaulding, the African Explorer…Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! Hoo-raaaaaay!
*Dedicated to all the terrific teachers in my life. I would never tickle any of them without
their consent. (Really! Honest! Well, most of the time, anyway….)
SABBATICKLE
By Tee Hee Lawrence
The antique clock from Great Aunt Dora’s Savannah estate chimed the half-hour.
“All in all, it’s been a most productive sabbatical,” thought Hannah Davis, as she stretched with cat-like satisfaction. “Ah’m redolent with research, Ah’m realizin’ mah writin’ readily, and Ah’ve even found time to radically revise mah lecture notes. Ah must confess that Ah’m quite pleased with mahself.”
Hannah, her workaholism notwithstanding, was enjoying a few moments away from her study, with its tireless computer. She was resting in the recliner that her last lover had given her before their recent indefinite separation. She chuckled as she said aloud, “Ack-too-ally, dahhhhhrlin’, Aaaahhhh’m ‘loungin’,” campily drawing out the words the way her lover always did, to poke gentle fun at Hannah’s Dixie accent. The chair was intended to remind Hannah, as the gift card stated in stylish cursive sweeps, “on occasion, to kick off your shoes and recline wa-ay back, gazing over your long, lovely toes at the campus far beyond your bay window.” From the snug living room in her modest cottage on the Hill—well away from her neighbors—she, her eyes misting with sad, sweet nostalgia, gazed upon the panoramic view of the winding road leading to the stately college town below.
Hannah was quite tall, lean but sturdy, with thick auburn hair falling to her shoulder blades. Her dark-rimmed eyeglasses reinforced the serious set of her face, with its cool, gray eyes, sharp nose, high cheekbones, and a hint of olive in her complexion. She was a stubbornly single, casually bohemian academic in her mid-thirties with a visage very striking, markedly so when she smiled—all too rare lately when she was on campus—and especially so when she laughed broadly—rarer still, her amusement giving her sober features a fleeting, irresistible radiance. Her work, as an associate professor in History, American Studies, at the venerable college in this quaint New England town, consumed her, even during the fleeting weeks of her sabbatical. Since her lover, a fellow instructor at the college, had left her—and for that matter, the country—long months ago, she had few real distractions. She’d become dour and driven, sober and solitary since the separation.
In class, her students, seduced by her striking appearance, daring intellect, challenging teaching, and sharp, cooly deployed wit, had always been keen to disturb her poker face. They strove mightily to upend her dignified demeanor. It was considered quite a coup, indeed, to get her to smile at a remark; further, provoking Prof. Davis to laugh out loud was of blue moon frequency, earning the provoker envied bragging rights. Oh, the fantasies inspired in her charges by the affectionate desire to induce radiant smiles and musical Dixie-belle laughter in Hannah Davis, to lighten this beauty up, especially in recent months as sadness suffused her already pointedly serious manner. Hannah’s laughter, girlishly high-pitched, was in marked contrast to her usual smoky contralto speaking voice, and thus, was all the more fervidly
sought by such dreamers.
The object of said fantasies “lounged”—clad in an old school sweatshirt and blue jeans--in the chair, only slightly reclined (the extreme position being quite a challenge to emerge from), idly dangling the scruffy Birkenstock sandal from the toes of her powder-blue ankle-socked right foot. She glanced over at an adjacent bookcase, and noticed the tall white plume, its silken edges a milky brown, standing in a thin crystal flute perched in front of some slipcased academic journals on top. Leaning against the base of the flute was a greeting card inscribed, “Happy Birthday, Hannah. You are sorely missed. The Irregulars.”
Hannah smiled, ruefully. The present had arrived a couple of weeks before, sent by some colleagues she hadn’t seen in quite a while. “They’re sweet to think of me,” she thought, “but wicked as well.” For the generous feather—and the greeting from the Irregulars, ever hopeful of her return—were bound to awaken in Hannah memories of times steeped in laughter, when she and her lover were stalwart Irregulars and—
She sighed. No, her lover had gone for good. Being with the Irregulars only heightened her sense of loss. Hannah had thrown herself into a solitary, almost penitential regimen of curriculum design for the History Department, added to nigh obsessive labor on airtight articles for scholarly journals. The latter she hoped to use to interest a major university press in an ambitious book proposal on Southern progressive women following The War Between the States. There was no time for memories, no time for regret, certainly no time for silly laughter. Even now, after only a few minutes break, the siren call of work was tickling her ears, calling her back to her study, when—
After laboring up the rough, snaking road, an orange VW Beetle settled in front of the cottage. Hannah watched as two young women, probably the age of most of her students, if not a bit younger, tumbled out. Each dragged a small, wheeled travel case to the door, and one, the blonde, also shouldered a small lavender knapsack. The blonde was maybe five feet tall, with a solidly Rubenesque figure, a page bob over her cherubic features and cerulean (indeed!) lipstick and fingernails; she wore a smoky turtleneck sweater over navy corduroys and work boots. Her partner, a head taller, now preparing with tongue pressed to cheek to pound away the brass open-book-styled door knocker, was rail thin and slightly dark—perhaps Mediterranean or North African—with an oiled, jet black pony tail, and was clad entirely noir: sweatshirt, mid-thigh leather skirt, nylons, and—surprising for a brisk fall day—abbreviated leather sandals.
Hannah sighed. She wouldn’t really mind a diversion from the self-pity that rose in her when her nose was off the grindstone. After all, it had been several days since she’d even seen anyone. She feared, though, that they were selling something, and she was, well, rather susceptible to students selling to pay for their studies. They really could do with her as they wished…
She finally answered the door after a dozen or so ferocious knocks, nearly pulling the taller young woman, still gripping the knocker, into the foyer.
“Whoa!” yelped the pony-tailed one.
“Sorry,” apologized Hannah, successfully, as usual, suppressing a smile at this near slapstick. “Are you two lost? ”
“Gosh, I hope not!” beamed the smaller one. “Aren’t you Mrs. Higgenson?”
“No, alas not. Higgenson? Higgenson? Ah can’t say that Ah know any neighbor by that name.”
“Damn!” blurted tall-and-dark, as she slumped to sit on her case.
“Easy, Nikki!” remonstrated the blonde. Turning to Hannah, she smiled brightly and said, “Hi! I’m Clarice, and this dejected specimen is Nikki.”
“’Lo,” pouted Nikki.
“Pleased to meet you both.”
“Likewise,” returned Clarice. “Only we’d be more pleased if you were Mrs. Higgenson, and we could show your our wares. We drove all the way up…” (She looked ruefully downhill behind her.) “…and these sample cases are sooo heavy. I can’t understand how we screwed up.”
“Well, it is a very winding road, with many hidden turn-offs. You could easily miss a particular house on your first try.”
“Sa-ay,” ventured Clarice, her cherubic features alight, “You wouldn’t be interested in seeing our really marvelous selection, would you?”
“Here it comes,” thought Hannah. “Selection of what?” she volleyed.
“Why, European designer shoes,” Clarice declaimed, with the skill of a carnival barker. “The likes of which you’ll not find otherwise in a podunk like this.”
“Hmm . . .” Hannah mused, looking down at her worn sandals and wiggling her toes. “Ah’m really a Birkenstock type of gal.” Her second toe on her left foot popped through a hole in her sock. “And not exactly a creature of fashion.”
“Oooo, how cute!” crooned Nikki, staring raptly at Hannah’s escaped toe, long and smooth with a neat, clear-polished nail.
Quickly covering her partner’s reverie, Clarice offered, “C’mon, you couldn’t wear those to a wedding or a first dinner date. Do you work at the College?”
“Why, yes. How did you know?”
Clarice quickly observed, “If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem like the very dignified professorial type, prone to department teas and commencements.” Hannah couldn’t help her sad smile as, her glasses sliding to the tip of her nose, she thoughtfully shook her head yes. The glowing blonde pressed, “So, whaddaya say?”
Glancing sideways, Hannah saw doe-eyed Nikki rubbing her shoulder wearily and found sales resistance weakening. “You two are students?”
“Well, we’re expecting to be,” piped Clarice, “after we produce some sales and can get a leg up on the tuition.”
That did it! “C’mon, you’ve got your foot in the door. You can show me the shoes—for a few minutes anyway.” Finally closing the front door, Hannah led them into the living room, all the while oblivious to the expression--clearly “Gotcha!”--that was exchanged between the two younger women. They very quickly—before she could change her mind, hustled their cases into the living room.
Clarice pronounced, “This recliner looks real comfortable. We’ll set up here where you can relax.” They began to lay out their stock as Hannah bemusedly watched. Clarice, eyeing the recliner knowingly, with an anticipatory smile, placed the lavender knapsack unopened beside it.
Hannah, hearing her stomach growl, blushed and wondered aloud, “Hmm! When did Ah eat last?” Moving to the kitchen, she said over her shoulder, “Can Ah get you two anythin’? A sandwich? Coke? English or herbal tea?”
The two, perhaps thinking they’d better accept Hannah’s hospitality now, because—they hoped-- she would be in no shape to offer it later, chirped, “Yeah, whatever. I’d love a peppermint tea!” and “Thank you, yes! Twining’s for me!”
When Hannah returned with tea and cookies (“Wow, right out of Goodbye, Mr. Chips!” thought Clarice.), the eager ones, as she affectionately observed, had put many single and paired shoes on either side of themselves as they knelt together in front of the lounger. They entreated her to sit and place her feet on the slightly elevated footrest. She was disarmed of whatever skepticism she might have felt by their spunk and by their youthful prettiness (and the sleek sexiness of Nikki’s nylon covered feet, when the quieter one doffed her sandals). Clarice applied what she hoped was the clincher, saying, “And, for letting us disrupt your quiet afternoon by showing our selection, please accept from us a complimentary foot massage and our own, patented ‘Tootsie Tattoos’.”
Hannah, blithely unaware at how easily she was slipping into their trap, did smile at that. “Oh, mah!” she purred in her Southern contralto. “Ah do believe you ladies are tryin’ to seduce me! What are ‘Tootsie Tattoos’?”
“Uh-uh-uhhh!” Clarice said in mock remonstration. “No dessert ‘til you eat your vegetables. Now, shall we start our sales pitch?”
“Mah feet, as you might say, are in your hands.”
Barely able to conceal their excitement, the two guests each took one of Hannah’s feet and— imagining striptease melodies—first pulled off her sandals and, then, slowly, peeled off her ankle socks. They silently sighed at the long, smooth loveliness of her bare feet. Hannah had indulged in a long soak in a hot tub (where she sometimes retreated when a well-rooted stump needed dynamiting in her writing) that morning, and the sweet scent of sarsaparilla bath oil rose off of the warm, moist pink flesh of her attractively wrinkled soles, teasing their nostrils and setting their fingers twitching in eagerness.
Moving out of her reverie with some effort, Clarice did most of the talking, with Nikki sometimes echoing an expansive adjective in the spiel, as the two aggressively adorned her feet and affixed her attention with a rapid succession of heels, straps, slides, sandals, and slippers. Early on, while Nikki tried a few sequined slides on Hannah’s left foot, Clarice reached for the knapsack, opened it, slipped her hand into it, and, making sure that Hannah was intent on Nikki, removed a very compact camcorder, setting it on the floor next to the recliner.
As she then proffered a stiletto heel for Hannah to consider, Clarice thought back to the late summer and a class that she and Nikki, just out of high school, were auditing at the behest of a college recruiter seeking uncommitted “townies.” The class concerned 19th Century U.S. history, the topic was “Women’s Activism in the Reconstruction South,” and the lecturer was Hannah Davis.
The topic would normally have driven them outdoors, but the teacher herself was magnetic. She was very attractive but oh-so-serious, and soft-spoken with a seductive Southern accent. She was neatly attired in a long-sleeved white blouse, with a burgundy sweater over her shoulders, and a long pleated beige skirt ending just above her Birkenstock clogs. At one point in the class, she sat on the front of her desk and dangled her clogs. Occasionally, her shoes would drop to the floor, revealing—her sole concession to the summer heat—her tanned, slender bare feet. Even from the back row of the hall, their eyes were transfixed by her pink-soled feet that waved in mid-air, her long toes wiggling distractingly, idly seeking her fallen clogs.
Nudging the equally mesmerized Nikki, Clarice whispered, “Nik’, you don’t suppose the Prof there might be the slightest bit… ticklish, d’ya? ” Her tall pal giggled and added, “ It would be fun to tease those toes.”
After the class, the pair mingled in the lounge outside the lecture hall, managing to make the instructor the topic of discussion. They learned of her famed serious demeanor, and the hunger of her students to induce her laughter. After pumping for known details of Hannah’s life and habits—and her upcoming sabbatical—Clarice and Nikki came away from a knot of smugly skeptical students with a hefty wager that, before her return in the winter quarter, these two tyros would provide irrefutable proof of Hannah Davis laughing long and loudly, without restraint.
Hatching the cunning “working-our-way-to-college” scheme--with selling shoes the way to Hannah’s tantalizing tootsies--the peppery blonde and the shy, lanky one engaged in weeks of cunning preparation. When their own stylish collections didn’t suffice, they “borrowed their “stock” from their mothers and sisters and from certain interested parties. The contents of the mysterious lavender knapsack were chosen meticulously as well, with quiet Nikki being especially creative.
“And here we are, at last,” thought Clarice, “hoping Prof. Davis will do her part to win us that bet. Holiday shopping days are almost upon us.”
Throughout the pretense of trying shoes on Hannah’s peds, the devious duo had been testing her ticklishness. An “inadvertent” stroke under her toes here, an “accidental” scampering of fingertips across her soles there. After one such test, Hannah had jerked noticeably and only half suppressed a giggle. Clarice asked, “Whoops! Sorry! Sensitive?”
“Heh-heh. Yeah, just a little bit,” confided the teacher, although her raised eyebrow and ensuing embarrassed giggle emphasizing the word little was a tacit admission that there was nothing “little” about it. At that point Clarice and Nikki exchanged quick smiles, figuratively smacking palms over their heads. Catching Hannah stifling a yawn (and dreaming of the article notes calling from her desk), Clarice decided to proceed with the fun part of the operation.
Dropping the last shoe, she announced, “O.K., you’ve been a lovely audience, but now it’s time for your prize.”
“Oh, you needn’t bother,” Hannah said, all set to rise from the recliner, help them pack, and send them on their way. “Ah would like a pair of those ruby slippers.” She didn’t want them to depart without a sale.
Clarice thought that to be shown the door now, with Hannah’s feet in their grasp, almost at their mercy, would be beyond endurance. She and an equally desperate Nikki leapt up to push their host gently back into the lounger.
The blonde blurted, “Good choice! Thanks! But we really must insist now on presenting you the complimentary treats you’ve earned.”
“Thank you back, but Ah really must return to work.” Hannah drawled, gentle exasperation edging her honeyed voice, as she attempted to rise again from the chair. “A foot massage would probably lead to a nap and then where would I be?”
“Uh, O.K., the massage is out,” Clarice vamping deftly, “but you must, you simply must accept some Tootsie Tattoos. If you don’t like ‘em, why, they’re temporary, of course.” She held her breath with a last gambit. “Plus Nikki is so proud of her tattoo artistry.”
“Oh, yes, please let me tattoo a cute design on a toe or two. Please?” Nikki wiggled her own toes in the air as she pleaded, and Hannah’s resistance vanished with the siren scritching sound of toes rubbing nylon.
“Well . . . as long as they’re not permanent, not too extreme, and don’t require a Sistine Chapel time frame to apply,” she surrendered, leaning back.
“Don’t worry,” assured Clarice, and in barely disguised triumph added, ”We’re certain you’ll be so tickled by our work.”
The devilish duo had Hannah settle as far back as possible in the recliner and asked her to prop her feet so they dangled over the quite elevated footrest, under which they slid the sample cases—the better to fix the chair at its extreme position. Clarice quickly reached into the knapsack and removed two handfuls, one of which she passed to Nikki, saying to Hannah, “Now, to keep your feet very, very still for the detail work, we’ll need to bind them.”
“Huh? Oh, Ah can keep still without you going to all that trouble.”
“No trouble. And you said yourself that your feet were a bit… sensitive.” Clarice reasoned. She stroked under Hannah’s toes with a forefinger for emphasis. Hannah gasped
and yanked her foot away for a moment. Nodding her head, Clarice added, “Uh-huh. Toes do tend to be terribly tender, don’t they? If you keep pulling away, it will take much longer. Who knows, then, when you’d get back to work?”
Clarice’s appeal to Hannah’s logic disarmed the teacher, and each trickster proceeded to hurriedly, securely wrap one end of a nylon stocking around one of Hannah’s ankles and the other end to the underside of the footrest. “Nylon: the miracle of the age,” quipped Clarice, ostensibly taking Hannah’s hands in hers to mollify the prof’s obvious consternation at their pains but really blocking her view as, with lightning speed, Nikki wrapped another stocking around Hannah’s ankles, binding them tightly together.
“Hey! Is that really necessary?” Hannah tried to rise from the lounger, but the binding and her extremely reclined position made that impossible.
“Why, Professor Davis, how y’all do carry on!” clowned the blonde in a mockery of Hannah’s Southern tones.
Nikki giggled, and added, in an impersonation more Algerian than Alabaman, “Yes, one would think you all don’t trust us with your sweet li’l’ ol’ feet and your tender li’l’ ol’ toes.”
Clarice drawled broadly, “What my learned friend means is that your now wholly helpless, endearin’ly exposed, supremely sensitive soles and terrifically-tender-to-the-touch toes are the means to our ends,” as she, with florid deliberation, reached below, raised the lavender knapsack portentously, and placed it, between herself and Nikki, below Hannah’s feet.
Quite unable to pull her bare feet free, Hannah felt a curious mixture of anger, fear and thrill shiver through her. She was angry that she’d been so easily gulled by these two, so like her students that she’d allowed their good looks and apparent innocent industry to disarm her. She was afraid that they intended to rob her, perhaps torturing her for bank PINs and where her valuables—like the heirloom silver and jewels—were hidden. And the torture might not end there, as they might have designs on the College as well, pumping her for computer passwords or campus security details.
Yet, though she was loathe to admit it, it was undeniably thrilling, being made helpless by two nylon-wielding young beauties, who, even more perversely exciting, had declared mischievous intent towards her extremely sensitive, utterly vulnerable bare feet, now at the mercy of the fingertips hovering just beyond her toes. If nothing else, her pride demanded, however, that she overcome her nascent excitement and try to reason her way out of this fix.
Adopting a mollifying, pedagogic tone, Hannah said, “Now, ladies, a joke’s a joke. Ah’ve work to do. Release me, now, please, and there’ll be no hard feelin’s.” She wiggled her toes nervously as the two silently exchanged bemused smiles. She joked, “C’mon, let me go and I’ll order a few more pairs of shoes. You certainly know how to close a sale.” The two reached below, and Hannah heard zippers being opened, and saw the pair’s smiles widen. Waggling her feet for emphasis, Hannah quickly added, “Hellooo! Did you hear me, ladies? Please untie mah feet!” Her eyes darted to a wireless phone, its display glowing faintly, resting against the spines of some books on the adjacent bookcase.
The clever conspirators were now removing, with slow, ritualized delight, an assortment of objects from the knapsack and arraying them on the footrest on either side of Hannah’s feet. When Hannah saw what they were—a multitude of feathers of varying lengths and textures, numerous paintbrushes, shaving brushes, hairbrushes, cosmetic brushes, and what looked like an electric toothbrush(!) —she truly began frantic struggle. They did mean to torture her—and in a most fiendish way! She found, however, that the stockings very effectively held her ankles, together and firmly, to the footrest. Also, the chair’s extremely reclined position, fixed by the sample cases, left her body tilted back, sunken deeply in its plush cushions, and her straining hands were unable to reach and release her bare feet, dangling more than a yard above the floor. She’d be absolute putty in their hands, helpless under such torture, unless…
Pointing suddenly to the window and looking beyond, she shouted, “Look! Someone’s coming! Help! Oh, help!”
The two kneelers bolted upright, whipping their heads around. Nikki whimpered, “Oh, no!” as the pair jumped to the sides of the picture window, hiding themselves while desperately peering out. Hannah snatched the phone off of the bookcase and placed it in her lap. Nikki whimpered, “Where did they go? I-I see no one!” Hannah tried to furtively summon help by phone (not expediting matters by punching 411 rather than 911 after dithering precious seconds over whether this truly was an emergency) before a disgusted Clarice sneered, “Jeez! That old gag! And we fell for it!”
Embarrassed but relieved, the two, their eyes twinkling with wicked glee, returned to loom over the reclining Hannah. She was frantically if clumsily punching the pad and whispering doubtful hellos into the phone, and the cherubic blonde nudged her tall, dark friend. They exchanged knowing nods before, giggling and tsking and muttering “Oh, no, you don’t!”, they jumped back besides Hannah’s tied feet. Shrieking “Kitchey-kitchey-koo!” each brought ten wiggling fingers to one of her helpless bare soles. Hannah yelped and jerked, the phone bouncing out of her hands and landing on the floor well beyond her reach.
Struggling to contain her welling giggles as their fingers danced on, Hannah blurted, “Wuh-wuh-wah-why-why are you-you-hoo-hoo doing this?”
While Nikki’s fingertips assumed a torturously light tracing of both soles, Clarice picked up the felled phone and, switching it off, placed it well beyond Hannah’s reach. She chuckled at the professor, whose face was reddening as her lips fought mightily to withhold her laughter. “A convenient wireless phone is such a comfort, wouldn’t you agree?” the blonde teased as she knelt back beside Nikki, whom she nudged to stop her delighted, delicate tickling.
Striking a contemplative pose with chin in hand, the blonde inquired of their rapidly respiring hostess, “Now, why would such nice young…entrepreneurs want to”—here she fluttered her fingers near Hannah’s toes, which flinched— “tickle without mercy a perfectly serious but presently helpless college professor? Nikki?”
Her partner, itching to tickle again, offered, “To hear—to hear her laugh truly—madly—deeply?”
“Well, yes, naturally, but…” Clarice offered, as she picked up the camcorder. She peered through the viewfinder at Hannah, as she continued with, “We made a potentially lucrative wager concerning your sense of humor and need irrefutable proof of it in order to win.” She moved to one end of a shelf hanging from the wall next to the bookcase and, resting the camcorder upon it, focussed it until she had a tight head-and-shoulders shot of Hannah’s left side. “We just need you to relax, ma’am, and laugh like crazy,” Clarice concluded, and she pressed the record button.
Settling back next to the impatient Nikki, Clarice asked, “Now, ma’am, for the record, will you please identify yourself?”
Still straining to loosen her bonds, Hannah announced, “Record? Now, this is outrageous! Stop that camera!”, trying to sound more courageous than she felt. This was worse than she’d imagined. Robbery would have been bad enough. The thought of being tickled silly on a tape for the entire college—if not the world—to see was terrifying! The scandal could be ruinous to her authority as a teacher, her standing in the Department, and her publishing contracts. She was even more alarmed about the loss of control that being tickled engendered, and which a part of herself, dormant for months, seemed all too eager to welcome. She was determined to fight herself as she would resist her tormentors. “It won’t work. Ah won’t laugh. Nope! You can’t make me!” Hannah folded her arms and adopted a defiant gaze through the bay window.
After broadly stifling a feigned yawn, Clarice blew upon the wiggling fingertips of her right hand. She “polished” them with comic insouciance upon her shirt at her chest. With her left hand, she easily and firmly yanked back Hannah’s valiantly struggling right toes. After a pregnant pause, she plunged her right fingertips, with their short but sharp cerulean nails, into the soft flesh under the historian’s wriggling digits. Hannah bucked, but, closing her eyes, biting down on her lower lip, and shaking her head, she struggled to remain silent.
Clarice, not trying to hide her own amusement, cracked, “Oh, stubborn, eh?” She redoubled her efforts, slowly dragging her nails hard along Hannah’s sole from toes to heel and back. Hannah’s face was noticeably reddening, but she withheld any sound. Relentlessly digging her nails into the sole just above the heel, Clarice teased, “I might stop if you’ll just tell our audience your name.” Hannah’s mouth quivered as she forcefully shook her head “no.”
Sensing her friend’s impatience to participate, Clarice nodded her head at Hannah’s left foot. Nikki, dark eyes glistening, carefully selected from the footrest a small stiff crimson feather, which looked as if it had been extracted from a child’s play Indian headdress. She pried back the desperately scrunching left toes of the teacher and began to barely tease their tender underside with the silken tip of the feather. With her eyes fixed on her delicately torturous work, she sweetly said, “Please, Ma’am, tell all of us your name. Tell us!” She began grazing the feathertip upon Hannah’s arch with unsurpassed subtlety, before swirling the silken tip lightly along the pink, tender outer edge of the sole.
Hannah felt a fluttering flock of giggles beginning to take wing in her middle. Clarice’s nails stroking her right foot were agony enough, but with Nikki adding such tender torture of her left, Hannah felt her resolve to deny them her laughter failing…
Her undoing began when Clarice, now wickedly spidering her nails under Hannah’s right instep, squealed in a high, babyish voice, “Kitchey-kitchey-kitchey! Some-body’s about to laugh! I can tell! Say your name, and we might stop!” It was cinched when Nikki pulled wide her big and second toes, and proceeded to saw the feather between them, as she chirped, “Tickle-tickle! Tell us your name! Tickle-tickle!” Hannah’s eyes flew open, and she surrendered, her lips yielding…
“Ha-ha-NO!-heh-heh-STOP!-ha-ha-Hannah-ahhahaha-Hannah!-ahhahahahaha. . .”
“No-no-no!” insisted Nikki, as she released Hannah’s toes and swept the feathertip over and under them with cunning persistence. “We must have your full name.”
“And your occupation!” Clarice added, as she briskly stroked Hannah’s fleshy heel.
“<shriek!> Nuh-no-oh-ho-ho-noyoucan’t-hehheh-youcan’tmakeme-heehee-AHHAHAHAHA!-Allright!-hehheh-Hannah-hahaha-Hannah Da-ohhoho-Davis!-hehhehhehheh-Ah-hahah-Ah-heh-Ah teach-hee-hee-teach at the-hehheh-co-ahha-college!-AHHAHAHAHAHHH! Ple-hee-heese st-ahha-sstop!-ahhaha…”
Clarice suddenly ceased tickling and nudged Nikki, who, sighing, desisted as well.
Nigh breathless, Hannah giggle-panted, “Stop! Heh! Oh, please, please stop! Heh-heh-heh! You’re being so…so cruel!” Even as she said this, Hannah regretted it. Begging
them to stop tickling her, besides being an affront to her dignity, was most likely futile and
even counterproductive. Such pleading—she knew from experience-- was more likely to incite, rather than dissuade, an empowered tickler. But, she couldn’t help herself. She simply was too ticklish…
“Heh-heh! Ah’ll buy—heh—Ah’ll buy more shoes! Ah’ll buy all the shoes! Heh-heh!
Everythin’ you’ve got! Only, please, please let me go!”
“Oh, how can you speak of puttin’ shoes on such totally ticklish bare feet?” Clarice offered, again in a mockery of Hannah’s Dixie accent. “Your sweet Dixie laughter is really divine, m’am. Do you really want us to stop tickling your absolutely, irresistibly helpless tootsies?”
“Yes, please! Ah really can’t stand it! If you only knew how ticklish Ah am … what it does to me… .” Hannah’s entreaty trailed off when she realized with horror the ghastly error of her admission. “Uh-oh . . . N-now, now w-wait, p-please!”
Clarice and Nikki exchanged wicked looks, timed a beat, and, with banshee cries of “Kitchey-kitchey-koo!” fell upon her feet with giggling abandon. As they resumed the fiendish tickling, Hannah surrendered to hysterical laughter, quite unable to fully articulate futile pleas for mercy or to threaten them convincingly.
“HA-HA-HA-HA-STUH-AH-AH-AH-HA-ST-STAHPP!-AHHAHAHA-YOU-ahha-WAIT-heehee-Ah-ahha-AH’LL-hehheh-AHHAHAHAHAAA . . .!”
Nikki, after a few minutes of twirling a shaving brush across Hannah’s upper sole, began working a blush applicator intently between her toes. She studiously, silently tickled, her tongue on occasion poking out of the corner of her mouth as she stroked each toe in turn.
“OHMIGOD!-WHA-HA-HA-HA-AH-HA-HA!-Plee-hee-hee-plee-hee-heeese-STAHHPTHAT!-OHHAHAHAHAHAAA . . .”
Clarice, by contrast, was a tickling chatterbox. “Tickle-tickle-tickle, dear teacher.” She was running her plump fingertips, with their short sky-blue nails, on Hannah’s right foot from toes to heel and back. “My heavens! Can this be the reputedly serious Professor Davis, who never smiles, and never laughs? I had been under the impression it was tough to make you laugh!”
Adopting a Julia Child voice impression, she announced, “When I come upon a tough foot, I tenderize it by utilizing a French technique of kneading right under the toes.” Her relentless fingertips stroked there, and Hannah howled anew. “At last, one produces the tastiest tenderfoot.” Whereupon, Clarice gave the right sole a long lick, and Hannah yelped and jerked spectacularly. After a few more equally effective licks upon the tips of Hannah’s toes, Clarice resumed mercilessly digging her fingertips under and between them.
“<shriek>HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-NUH-NUH-NAHT-THAHAT!-hahaha-S-sstop!-Stahahahaha-Sssstopitpleeheeheese!-AHHAHAHAAAA . . .”
Clarice giggled and nudged her partner. “God, I’m good! Look at her laugh!”
Nikki, who had stopped brushing to sit back on her heels and pout, insisted, “I could make her laugh even more with my kisses!”
With a puckish smile, Clarice withdrew and gestured to Hannah’s flailing feet. “OK, Nik’, you’re on!” The dark-haired teen set her giggling face close to Hannah’s soles and began softly kissing and lightly flicking her tongue all over the creamy insteps, the soft balls like cherries, the shapely twitching toes, and the fleshy heels tapping the air.
The instructor, utterly bereft of will, emitted a cascade of laughter with varying shrieks, gasps, chortles, moans, and sputters. Her eyes were often squeezed shut, though copious tears streamed from them, and her face was a crimson beacon. Her hands seemed to gesture through the air as if she were a madly moved marionette. Nikki’s tickling by mouth was all the more effective because Hannah found such warm and wet torment of her tootsies to be undeniably
exciting. Her anxiety over her weakening resistance to this libidinous stimulation gave her shrieks of laughter a desperate, hysterical edge.
“N-now-heh-heh-n-now y-you sto-haha-op t-that! EEEEEE-HEE-HEE-HEEHEEHEEEEE! Oh-ho-plee-heeheese d-do-hohoho-don’t! Ah can’t—hehhehheh-Ah
can’t-teeheeheehee-s-stand ihihihiht! Stop-ahhaha-AHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!”
After a few minutes of watching Nikki’s mouth at play, Clarice, with eager, complementary sadism, began rubbing Hannah’s right sole with the coarse bristles of an old hairbrush. She brushed vigorously up and down the middle of the soft, reddened wrinkly sole with obvious glee.
“<snort> OH-HA-HA-HA-HEE-NO-NO-HO-HO-HA-HA-HEE <gasp>AHHAHAHAAAA . . ..”
At times in her laughter, Hannah’s blurry (for her glasses had long since been propelled from her red, teary face) gaze was transfixed by a baleful red light on the camcorder,
pitilessly recording her helpless laughter for her students, her colleagues, the campus, the town,
far-flung alumni—indeed, she thought, as her hysteria peaked, the entire world!—to see. And it could get even worse, if she couldn’t quell the erotic excitement slowly, inexorably building within her. Thank goodness her sweatshirt was hiding the telltale arousal of her nipples, and her jeans covered well her damp panties! But, for how long? These two were threatening to tickle her right out of a tenured teaching chair, out of her contracts with a number of academic presses, and her pending research fellowship! And all she could do was laugh and laugh!
“No!-No!-OHHOHOHO! C’mon! AAAH-HAHAHA! Please! HEEEEHEEHEEHEE!”
Clarice and Nikki settled into a leisurely and varied torment of the hysterical Hannah, over what to her seemed like hours, utilizing almost all of the tools on the footrest to induce all sorts of laughter from her. She giggled helplessly as they brushed her insteps; chortled convulsively when they cruelly caressed her arches; snickered sappily as they traced their names on her heels, howled and writhed while they playfully counted her digits, painted between them, and feathered their tops; screeched when they raced their spidery digits along her long soles (while Clarice “called” the racing of “The Hannah Davis Stakes,” announcing the winner only after a slow-motion replay); and gasped and guffawed as they gleefully dusted, swept, and scratched the soft, wrinkled, increasingly reddened lengths of her soles. All this was in addition to her hilarious squeals of protest when Clarice joined Nikki in frequently kissing and licking her feet, as they both obviously found this tickle-tasting to be habit-forming (although Clarice’s mouthplay was much harder than Nikki’s, for she bit where Nikki nibbled).
“DOHON’T DO THAT! <shriek> AH S-SAID STAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAP!”
Finally, after innumerable “kitcheys,” “kootchies,” and “little piggies,” they did. First it was Clarice, who stopped to admire the intense red glow infusing Hannah’s weakly waggling right foot. She considered the camcorder perched above, fat and happy with no doubt ample evidence of Hannah’s helpless honey-toned Dixie laughter. She nudged a most reluctant Nikki to stop tongue-teasing Hannah’s soles. They sat back on their heels, hearing the professor’s laughter subside into giggles, and watching her bleary eyes slowly come to focus upon them.
With inspired malice, without touching Hannah, Clarice quickly shouted, “Kitchey-kitchey-koo!”
Quite taken by this cunning suggestion, Hannah’s eyes snapped shut as she shrieked, “NOOOO! AHHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!”
Nikki, delighted by Clarice’s ploy, clutched her friend’s shoulder to get her attention, before pinching Hannha’s big left toe and blurting, “Who laughs when we tickle-tickle?” Hannah shrieked anew with another burst of laughter. Their sustained tickling had so stimulated and sensitized her that, not only was she by now unable to restrain her hilarity at their touch, but the mere threat of more such torture had her hysterical as well.
Clarice shook her head and muttered, “Wow! Even her imagination’s ticklish!” She got up and walked towards the kitchen in back. “Watch her. I need somethin’ to drink. You?”
Nikki stood and stretched her lanky form. “Oh, yes! I crave a beer!”
From the back, Clarice cried, “Well, you’re in luck. The professor’s fridge is stocked with Cracker microbrews. How does a Chattahouchee Pine Nut Ale sound?”
Hannah’s hilarity finally had petered off to light tittering when she saw Nikki stretching by the bay window. Under the camcorder’s pitiless gaze, they’d reduced her to helpless laughter, but, despite being tickled silly, she was not without her wits. With swift determination, she grunted and reached forward, her fingers straining for the nylons holding her ankles. She was fighting gravity and her laughter weakened muscles. Her feet pulled at the stockings. With enough time, she might stretch the fabric. With enough time and the aid of her desperately stretching fingertips, she might slip her ankles from the nylons. With enough time…
Nikki idly glanced back and, surprised by Hannah’s forceful effort, shouted, “Clarice! She’s getting loose!” Resourcefully realizing just what would immediately suspend the escape attempt, Nikki stroked Hannah’s reddened soles with ten determined fingers.
Hannah howled, “Dammit, no-no-naha-ahhahaha-Stop! AHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!”
Clarice thundered into the living room with two sweating bottles of beer in one hand and a bag of blue corn chips spilling from the other. “Is she givin’ you trouble?” she bellowed.
“It’s all right. I got her laughing just in time. But she was working herself free.”
Clarice examined the looped stockings. Satisfied that they held Hannah’s ankles firmly, and that her friend had exaggerated the danger—perhaps merely to find an excuse to start tickling the professor’s lovely bare feet again—she sighed with relief and offered one of the bottles to her friend. Nikki took it in one hand as she continued tickling with the other.
Clarice took a healthy swig of brew. She said to Hannah, who was giggling helplessly again, “So, trying to end our fun early, huh?” She waved the neck of the bottle near Hannah’s toes, which flinched at its approach. “I love my beer ice cold. Do you? Or, more precisely, do your tender tootsies? Let’s find out.”
She held the top of the captive right foot as she pressed the icy, wet bottle against Hannah’s warm toes and upper sole. Hannah shrieked and bucked in the chair. “AIIIIIEEEEEE! STAAAHHHHPPPP!”
“I could go back to that fridge and bring back a whole tray full of ice cubes. How would you like that, Ms. Houdini?”
“NONONO! P-P-PLEEHEEHEEHEESE!”
Clarice took another long pull from the bottle, then set it aside. Just above Hannah’s wary toes, she brought her hands together and loudly cracked her knuckles as she pointedly smirked at the captive.
Hannah, fearing the worst, bleated, “Now, look, haven’t you had enough? Ah’m asking—begging you to let me go! You’ve got that damned recording. Take it and go!”
“Not just yet, Red,” Clarice drawled. “We need one more confession from you for the
record.”
After a moment’s teasing deliberation, she picked up a short hard rubber brush from the assortment piled on the footrest. At home, she used it to stroke the family beagle, Pudge, into tail-wagging esctasy. Would it have a similar effect on their captive when applied to her doggies? Hannah certainly thought so, as she gasped, “No!” With a smile stretching to a grin, the blonde pulled Hannah’s right toes back and began to brush the quivering sole from toes to heel and back again, relentlessly. Hannah immediately collapsed into giggling spasms.
“Heh-heh-hehhehheh! Geh-he-hehhehheht t-thahehheht off me! Stahha-hahahahahap!”
Again determined not to be outdone, Nikki grabbed a thin-handled paintbrush with a small head of coarse black filaments from the footrest. She pulled back on Hannah’s left toes and began daubing between the delicate digits with the teasing tip of the brush. Hannah could not restrain a shriek, and a flood of guffaws.
“EEEEEEEEEE! Oh, Lawd, now s-sta-haha-hop that! Eee-hee-heeee! Aaaaah-ha-ha-ha! AHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!”
Clarice took the occasion of Hannah’s renewed hysteria to tease her with the revelation that she had noticed the teacher earlier stealing glances at Nikki’s feet. “Maybe you were dreamin’, Prof’, of kitchey-kitchey-cooing this dark cutie yourself. I saw you licking your lips as you studied her sleek, silky tootsies!”
“HA-HA-AH-HA-HA <gulp> OH-HO-OH-HO-NO-NO <snort> AH-HA-HA-HAHAHAAA . . ..”
Brushing up-and-down, Clarice taunted, “Oooooh, yes! You, a respected faculty member of this august college in this upstanding community, were plotting to tickle-tickle-tickle poor, shy innocent Nikki yourself, weren’t you?” The shy one was laughing herself now as if she were being tickled, and not herself mercilessly brushing Hannah’s tender instep.
Hannah blushed further and grinned haplessly as she chortled, “NO-NA-HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! PLE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HEEEEEEEEEESE!”
Clarice continued mercilessly brushing up-and-down along Hannah’s increasingly reddening high arch. She drawled, “C’mon, Hannah Honey…confess! You were intending to tickle Nikki silly. You’ve got a major tickling fetish! Admit it! Why else would you keep something like this handy?” She dropped the rubber brush and sprang to her feet. On tiptoe, she reached up to the top of the bookcase and plucked the magnificent feather out of the flute. She brought it and the gift card down as she knelt beside Hannah’s right foot again. She nudged Nikki to stop her tickling.
Waving the card at Hannah, Clarice teased, “Who are the Irregulars, Prof’? And why would they give you this feather—from some owl or eagle or some other whackin’ great big bird—unless you’ve got a thing for tickling. You! The serious paragon of the History Department! Who would believe it?” She barely grazed the downy-soft brown edge of the feather across the pads of Hannah’s right toes, and the foot jerked as if shocked.
Hannah was equally shocked by this new line of interrogation. She simply couldn’t reveal what she knew about the Irregulars, not with that camcorder busy. However, with such a superb tickling tool in the hands of these merciless monsters, how long could she bear to laugh—and not betray her erstwhile pals?
Clarice grinned and purred, “I’m betting, Prof, that you—and the Irregulars—are secretly into tickling, big time. Well, the feather, my dear wicked Hannah, is on the other foot now, eh? I want you to look straight into the pretty little camcorder and admit that you love tickling.” Hannah cleared her throat and looked stubbornly away.
Clarice brandished the large feather above the cowering feet. She smirked, “No, huh? Well, it’s kitchey-coo until you do. Nik’, hold ‘em still.” Obediently, Nikki knelt beside Hannah’s legs and held the tops and sides of the professor’s bare feet, so they were effectively immobile. Turning the feather in her hand so that she held the plume as if preparing to write, Clarice began to trace the wrinkles of Hannah’s long, reddened soles with the hard nub of the quill. Having anticipated a feathery touch, Hannah was unprepared for the quill’s point skittering on her sensitized soles, and she was lost to laughter immediately.
“AH-HA-HEE-HEE-Ohmercy!-HA-HA-NO-NO<gasp>TEE-HEE-HEE-STUH-HA-HA-HAAP!-<shriek> Nahahaha-n’more-ohho-OHOHOHOHO-HAHAHA-Plee-heehee-HEHHEHHEHHEH . . .”
Clarice was comprehensive and ruthless in the quill’s tickley journey across Hannah’s helpless feet. For many minutes, Hannah’s howls of hilarity were punctuated only by Clarice’s occasional “Talk, Prof’!” or “I wonder what this line signifies!” Hannah’s laughter was complemented by Nikki’s high-pitched giggles, as if the tickling was being transmitted through Nikki’s hands from the struggling bare feet they restrained.
Hannah flailed in her web of laughter, her disciplined mind wondering in spite of her hilarity how her tormentors—whom she had never met before today—could have known how hopelessly ticklish her feet were. It’s not as if it were common knowledge around the campus, Lord knows. The only ones who knew were the providers of the killer quill that Clarice was now so expertly wielding: the Irregulars.
And how did Clarice sense Hannah’s serious interest in erotic tickling, something which, even if she hadn’t practiced it in an age, she had been so careful to indulge in,
circumspectly, only amongst the Irregulars? A confession to such an interest—and revelations
about the Irregulars—truly would spell disaster not only for her—but many of her colleagues!
She must resist!
But how long could she under such tickling? Laughing uproariously—her sides aching, her throat raw, and her feet so maddeningly sensitized--she simply couldn’t take much more. She was afraid she’d not only lose control of her bladder—embarrassing enough, not to mention messy-- but her libido as well, which, even helpless with laughter, she was loath to do in front of two women of undergraduate age, let alone the damnable blinking camcorder. With Clarice intent now on “writing” across her sensitive heels, Hannah was not only nearly laughing her lovely Southern head off, but her steadily moving hips betrayed the fires thus being stoked in her long-sleeping pleasure center. She feared that if she gave in to long quiescent lust now, she’d gladly babble anything. So, she was yet determined to fight her hilarity, her bladder, and her arousal…
“AH-HA-HA-HA-HEE-HEE-EEE-NUFF-PLEEHEE-HEE-NUFF-AHHAHAHAHAAAAA . . ..”
Perspiration beading on her forehead with her inner struggle, a desperate Hannah received a respite when Clarice withdrew the quill point. The blonde smiled at her partner, still tugging on Hannah’s wiggling toes, and said, “OK, Nikki, you’re plain as glass. You’re dying to use this on Ms. Tenderfoot here, aren’t ya? Let’s switch.”
At those words, with any pretense to dignity long abandoned, Hannah wailed, “Oh, please! Ah-Ah can’t stand it! Won’t you please stop?” For, however susceptible she was to Clarice’s vigorous tickling, she feared more the subtle touch of this tall, dark and quiet young woman. Nikki’s delicate tickling might make suppressing her arousal impossible.
“God!” said an outraged Clarice. “How selfish can you be? At least let Nikki have her chance with your killer feather!”
Nikki, upon receiving the quill, giggled like a child finally being given the chance to run the electric mixer in the cake batter. She sat herself on her stocking heels and waited as Clarice got a firm grip on Hannah’s panicked peds, their sweaty soles completely helpless. The Algerian beauty held the quill so that Hannah could see that she meant to use the soft, brown- edged, pale feather. Hannah shut her eyes as the silken tip neared her toes, moaning, “Oooh,
shiiiit!”
It was the last coherent thought she’d have for many minutes.
“Aiiieeeee! Stopstopstopstop! Heh-heh-hehhehheh! Hee-hee-heeheehee! Lawd! Ah-ha-ahhahahahaha! <shriek> AHHAHAHAAAAA! <gasp> AHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!”
Nikki, with the concentration of the most meticulous miniaturist, ever so carefully stroked the silken feather tip under one toe, then between it and the next, then under the next,
then between that one and the next—from big toe to pinky toe and back, over and over. Her
tickling was never more than a maddening tease, and she altered her stay on one particular toe,
or pushed the feather to different extents between toes enough to keep Hannah constantly
on edge—and giggling as a result all the more helplessly.
Clarice, bringing her considerable strength to bear holding Hannah’s feet still for Nikki’s surgical stimulation, leered, “C’mon, Professor! Tell us you love to be tickled! Admit it!”
Clarice’s taunt brought Hannah to her senses enough to fear that her nipples were telegraphing her arousal for her—and the camera—to see! She was so wet between her legs that she was certain that, soon, no verbal confession would be necessary. Oh, to be so undone by the tenderness of one’s toes! It was as mortifying as it was exciting!
Keeping the hilarious Hannah guessing, Nikki swept the silken upper blade of the feather across the moist, red, and wrinkled expanse of Hannah’s soles—around the balls, down the arch, behind the heels, and up the outer edges. Quite soon, however, the giggling Nikki returned the tip of the feather to its devastatingly subtle course under Hannah’s toes, held quite firmly open by the determined Clarice, who teased, “Such ticklish toes! And they’re all ours! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! C’mon, Hannah! Confess!”
Hannah pressed her head deeply into the back cushion of the recliner and rocked from side to side as the laughter simply poured out of her. She was so hysterical that for a moment she’d quite forgotten what the dumb blonde wanted her to confess to! It would be so easy to give in to the call of her throbbing honey pot! Focussing her teary eyes on the camcorder’s red light amidst her toe-twitching agony, she didn’t want the world to know she could be tickled to climax! She wouldn’t let these hellions make her dance ecstatically! Nor could she betray the Irregulars, no matter how electrifying the feather’s tip felt between her toes!
In her struggle, her eyes squeezed shut, streaming tears, and her mouth was stretched wide in a helpless grin as, nigh breathlessly, she laughed almost soundlessly. Hannah was at
even her formidable wits’ end, when—
From over the fireplace, the antique clock from her Great Aunt Dora’s Savannah estate chimed five o’clock. Clarice whipped her head around and exclaimed, “Yee-ow! If we’re
late for the reception tonight, we can kiss the catering job good-bye!” She turned to consider their patsy.
Perhaps, gazing upon the sweat-soaked, exhausted, helplessly giggling Hannah Davis, her auburn bangs plastered to her forehead, her hands and feet weakly flailing as she whispered wanly “N-n’more” and “P-please” between giggles, Clarice was touched by a scintilla of remorse. Well, maybe, but she smiled as she glanced up at the camcorder, which certainly held all they would need of the hilarious undoing of this dignified Professor. She stopped holding Hannah’s bare feet, and turned back to Nikki.
“Nik’, we gotta go! Your folks will make you go to the College if you lose this job, and
mine’ll throw me out!”
“I suppose you’re right,” the thin, dark Nikki conceded, although she continued to direct the large feather lightly upon the soles of the giggling Hannah’s reanimated feet.
Thus, Clarice pulled one case from under the footrest and began cramming it with hastily collected shoes. Nikki, happy that her partner wasn’t yet nagging her to help, stopped the feathering so that she might “tattoo,” with yellow and black markers, a smiley face on the tip of each of the redhead’s big toes (which caused Hannah to sputter with renewed hilarity).
Then, sighing, Nikki began shoving the remaining shoes in the other case. Clarice returned the multitude of tickling tools to the lavender knapsack, although she couldn’t resist a last bit of hairbrushing shrieking Hannah’s right sole, before Nikki, done packing, chastised her.
The pair then took turns bringing all to the Beetle. While one loaded the Bug outside, inside, the other sneaked tickles on Hannah’s still-tied and hopelessly overstimulated peds, until the other griped and stomped back in, and the roles reversed. Hannah, silly with laughter, witnessed this slapstick with relief (They were leaving at last!) and a tangle of frustrations (How could she stop them from getting away with that recording?!? Did she really want them to leave at all—and to stop tickling her?).
“Ah-ha-ahhahaha-Ohstopplease-heehee-Wuh-wait-hehheh-le-heh-lemmeloose-hoohoo-Wait!”
Clarice, returned from the last shlep to the Beetle, chortled, “What’s that, professor? You’d like us to stay, spend the night, and tickle you until dawn?” Clarice swirled her forefinger across Hannah’s insteps and the academic’s laughter bubbled to another shrieking high.
“Hello, we must be going!” the blonde sang in her best Marxian contralto. “I’m glad we came, but just the same, we must be going! Tra-la!” She pulled back the right toes and playfully kissed underneath them as Hannah gasped and giggled. Spotting the smiley faces that Nikki had drawn on the big toes, Clarice tweaked them and chortled, “Yup! The happiest toes in town!”
As the clock chimed the quarter hour, Clarice barked,“O.K., Nikki! To the chariot!” The dark one raced out to start the VW.
Clarice continued to tickle Hannah while loosening the nylons holding the latter’s ankles to the footrest. “Now, Prof. Davis, we were just having a little fun. I’ll bet you haven’t laughed like this since the last all-nighter you spent reading your students’ papers.” Hannah, through her guffaws, however angry she was at this moment, had to agree about everything except the slur against her students’ papers: those never tickled her like this!
Seeing the teacher beginning to lower the footrest and to untangle her ankles, Clarice edged to the door, caught herself, and, leaping to the bokcase, grabbed the camcorder. “Whoops! ‘Can’t forget this now, can we? After all, the ‘evidence’ for our wagering suckers is no laughing matter, ‘cept for you!” She secured the camcorder as a fullback would a football, then made a final tickle flourish as she passed the recliner. Hannah fell back laughing into the chair before finally kicking free of the nylons, but not before Clarice had dashed out the door and jumped into the Beetle, which sent pebbles flying as it careened around the cul-de-sac and put-putted downhill.
Fondly cradling the camcorder in the passenger seat, Clarice slapped her forehead and moaned, “Oh-no, Nik’! We forgot to try that damned electric toothbrush. ‘Bet she would’ve hit the ceiling!”
“She would’ve flown laughing to the campus and we wouldn’t need that recording!” giggled Nikki, dancing her dark slender fingers upon the wheel. And the pair whooped, hollered, and poked each other all the way down to the stately old town.
In their wake, Hannah—breathless, embarrassed, more than a little (she admitted) exhilarated—contemplated calling the police. What, then, could she report? An assault? (On her—Ahem!-- feet?) A sexual assault? (And confess that the tickling had dramatically aroused her?) Theft? (They apparently took nothing, outside of beer and chips.) Vandalism? (Nothing damaged. Well, she did wet her pants.) Menacing? (That Mutt and Jeff pair? And no threats were made upon their departure.)
She noticed a gold slingback on the floor under the bookcase. Bending to retrieve it, she spotted the small bright red feather fluttering on the floor near the lowered footrest. She picked both up and unsteadily rose on quivering legs. She saw that Nikki had thoughtfully returned the killer quill to its flute on the bookcase. She plucked it down and, after locking the front door (in case her erstwhile guests decided to stage an encore), carried it, with the evidence of the invaders, into the kitchen. She sat at the breakfast nook with a soothing peppermint tea (Something stronger would soon follow.) and, rubbing her still sensitized and tingling tender feet, she pondered…
“Lawd, Ah’ve still so much work to do before next term’s classes begin, but can Ah concentrate after what those two did to me? Ladies, you may rue the day you disturbed this hermit’s sabbatical.
“Well, Ah’ve still a few weeks left. Time enough, perhaps, to don my deerstalker. First, learn where a particular recording surfaces on campus.” She considered the slingback, resting on the counter. “Then, find out who the ‘auteurs’ are, and flush them out.” She tickled her palm with the little red feather. “And finally,” she smirked, slipping the red feather into the shoe, “reciprocate their tender mercies.”
She picked up the great white plume. Stroking her nose with it, she conceded, “After all these months, I may have to elicit the aid of a few erstwhile colleagues who, like myself, are fond of a good tickling. They’d know how to deal with the likes of Clarice and Nikki.” Spinning the quill between her thumb and forefinger before her eyes, she mused, “Just wait ‘til
those two meet the Irregulars, more formally called…The Vellication Irregulars.”
Then, Hannah Davis shivered as she thought, “Brrr! At least those little fiends spared me that damned electric toothbrush…” Looking down, she saw that the tips of her big toes were telling her to “Have a nice day!”
To herald the presentation of the third—and most torturous!—misadventure of Professor Hannah Davis, titled A JAR FULL OF LAUGHTER—Coming soon!-- allow me, please, to offer again Hannah’s debut ticklefest—significantly revised (for the better, I hope). Its sequel, A TICKLISH MATRICULATION, will follow soon, revised, as well, with a considerably extended, ah, climax.
*This revised FF>F tale is copyright 2002 by the author.
*This tale is intended only for readers 18 and older, please. (You there with the fake beard
and the phony deep voice! You’re not fooling anybody! I saw MONTY PYTHON’S THE LIFE OF BRIAN, too. Besides, the stoning’s been rescheduled for Thursday….) All three
of this story’s principals are 18 or over, as well. (In the immortal words of Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire: “I may be cwazy, but I ain’t goin’ to Alcatwaz!”)
*Forgiveness begged from George S. Kaufman, Harry Ruby, Bert Kalmar, and Groucho Marx for Clarice’s homage to Captain Spaulding, the African Explorer…Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! Hoo-raaaaaay!
*Dedicated to all the terrific teachers in my life. I would never tickle any of them without
their consent. (Really! Honest! Well, most of the time, anyway….)
SABBATICKLE
By Tee Hee Lawrence
The antique clock from Great Aunt Dora’s Savannah estate chimed the half-hour.
“All in all, it’s been a most productive sabbatical,” thought Hannah Davis, as she stretched with cat-like satisfaction. “Ah’m redolent with research, Ah’m realizin’ mah writin’ readily, and Ah’ve even found time to radically revise mah lecture notes. Ah must confess that Ah’m quite pleased with mahself.”
Hannah, her workaholism notwithstanding, was enjoying a few moments away from her study, with its tireless computer. She was resting in the recliner that her last lover had given her before their recent indefinite separation. She chuckled as she said aloud, “Ack-too-ally, dahhhhhrlin’, Aaaahhhh’m ‘loungin’,” campily drawing out the words the way her lover always did, to poke gentle fun at Hannah’s Dixie accent. The chair was intended to remind Hannah, as the gift card stated in stylish cursive sweeps, “on occasion, to kick off your shoes and recline wa-ay back, gazing over your long, lovely toes at the campus far beyond your bay window.” From the snug living room in her modest cottage on the Hill—well away from her neighbors—she, her eyes misting with sad, sweet nostalgia, gazed upon the panoramic view of the winding road leading to the stately college town below.
Hannah was quite tall, lean but sturdy, with thick auburn hair falling to her shoulder blades. Her dark-rimmed eyeglasses reinforced the serious set of her face, with its cool, gray eyes, sharp nose, high cheekbones, and a hint of olive in her complexion. She was a stubbornly single, casually bohemian academic in her mid-thirties with a visage very striking, markedly so when she smiled—all too rare lately when she was on campus—and especially so when she laughed broadly—rarer still, her amusement giving her sober features a fleeting, irresistible radiance. Her work, as an associate professor in History, American Studies, at the venerable college in this quaint New England town, consumed her, even during the fleeting weeks of her sabbatical. Since her lover, a fellow instructor at the college, had left her—and for that matter, the country—long months ago, she had few real distractions. She’d become dour and driven, sober and solitary since the separation.
In class, her students, seduced by her striking appearance, daring intellect, challenging teaching, and sharp, cooly deployed wit, had always been keen to disturb her poker face. They strove mightily to upend her dignified demeanor. It was considered quite a coup, indeed, to get her to smile at a remark; further, provoking Prof. Davis to laugh out loud was of blue moon frequency, earning the provoker envied bragging rights. Oh, the fantasies inspired in her charges by the affectionate desire to induce radiant smiles and musical Dixie-belle laughter in Hannah Davis, to lighten this beauty up, especially in recent months as sadness suffused her already pointedly serious manner. Hannah’s laughter, girlishly high-pitched, was in marked contrast to her usual smoky contralto speaking voice, and thus, was all the more fervidly
sought by such dreamers.
The object of said fantasies “lounged”—clad in an old school sweatshirt and blue jeans--in the chair, only slightly reclined (the extreme position being quite a challenge to emerge from), idly dangling the scruffy Birkenstock sandal from the toes of her powder-blue ankle-socked right foot. She glanced over at an adjacent bookcase, and noticed the tall white plume, its silken edges a milky brown, standing in a thin crystal flute perched in front of some slipcased academic journals on top. Leaning against the base of the flute was a greeting card inscribed, “Happy Birthday, Hannah. You are sorely missed. The Irregulars.”
Hannah smiled, ruefully. The present had arrived a couple of weeks before, sent by some colleagues she hadn’t seen in quite a while. “They’re sweet to think of me,” she thought, “but wicked as well.” For the generous feather—and the greeting from the Irregulars, ever hopeful of her return—were bound to awaken in Hannah memories of times steeped in laughter, when she and her lover were stalwart Irregulars and—
She sighed. No, her lover had gone for good. Being with the Irregulars only heightened her sense of loss. Hannah had thrown herself into a solitary, almost penitential regimen of curriculum design for the History Department, added to nigh obsessive labor on airtight articles for scholarly journals. The latter she hoped to use to interest a major university press in an ambitious book proposal on Southern progressive women following The War Between the States. There was no time for memories, no time for regret, certainly no time for silly laughter. Even now, after only a few minutes break, the siren call of work was tickling her ears, calling her back to her study, when—
After laboring up the rough, snaking road, an orange VW Beetle settled in front of the cottage. Hannah watched as two young women, probably the age of most of her students, if not a bit younger, tumbled out. Each dragged a small, wheeled travel case to the door, and one, the blonde, also shouldered a small lavender knapsack. The blonde was maybe five feet tall, with a solidly Rubenesque figure, a page bob over her cherubic features and cerulean (indeed!) lipstick and fingernails; she wore a smoky turtleneck sweater over navy corduroys and work boots. Her partner, a head taller, now preparing with tongue pressed to cheek to pound away the brass open-book-styled door knocker, was rail thin and slightly dark—perhaps Mediterranean or North African—with an oiled, jet black pony tail, and was clad entirely noir: sweatshirt, mid-thigh leather skirt, nylons, and—surprising for a brisk fall day—abbreviated leather sandals.
Hannah sighed. She wouldn’t really mind a diversion from the self-pity that rose in her when her nose was off the grindstone. After all, it had been several days since she’d even seen anyone. She feared, though, that they were selling something, and she was, well, rather susceptible to students selling to pay for their studies. They really could do with her as they wished…
She finally answered the door after a dozen or so ferocious knocks, nearly pulling the taller young woman, still gripping the knocker, into the foyer.
“Whoa!” yelped the pony-tailed one.
“Sorry,” apologized Hannah, successfully, as usual, suppressing a smile at this near slapstick. “Are you two lost? ”
“Gosh, I hope not!” beamed the smaller one. “Aren’t you Mrs. Higgenson?”
“No, alas not. Higgenson? Higgenson? Ah can’t say that Ah know any neighbor by that name.”
“Damn!” blurted tall-and-dark, as she slumped to sit on her case.
“Easy, Nikki!” remonstrated the blonde. Turning to Hannah, she smiled brightly and said, “Hi! I’m Clarice, and this dejected specimen is Nikki.”
“’Lo,” pouted Nikki.
“Pleased to meet you both.”
“Likewise,” returned Clarice. “Only we’d be more pleased if you were Mrs. Higgenson, and we could show your our wares. We drove all the way up…” (She looked ruefully downhill behind her.) “…and these sample cases are sooo heavy. I can’t understand how we screwed up.”
“Well, it is a very winding road, with many hidden turn-offs. You could easily miss a particular house on your first try.”
“Sa-ay,” ventured Clarice, her cherubic features alight, “You wouldn’t be interested in seeing our really marvelous selection, would you?”
“Here it comes,” thought Hannah. “Selection of what?” she volleyed.
“Why, European designer shoes,” Clarice declaimed, with the skill of a carnival barker. “The likes of which you’ll not find otherwise in a podunk like this.”
“Hmm . . .” Hannah mused, looking down at her worn sandals and wiggling her toes. “Ah’m really a Birkenstock type of gal.” Her second toe on her left foot popped through a hole in her sock. “And not exactly a creature of fashion.”
“Oooo, how cute!” crooned Nikki, staring raptly at Hannah’s escaped toe, long and smooth with a neat, clear-polished nail.
Quickly covering her partner’s reverie, Clarice offered, “C’mon, you couldn’t wear those to a wedding or a first dinner date. Do you work at the College?”
“Why, yes. How did you know?”
Clarice quickly observed, “If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem like the very dignified professorial type, prone to department teas and commencements.” Hannah couldn’t help her sad smile as, her glasses sliding to the tip of her nose, she thoughtfully shook her head yes. The glowing blonde pressed, “So, whaddaya say?”
Glancing sideways, Hannah saw doe-eyed Nikki rubbing her shoulder wearily and found sales resistance weakening. “You two are students?”
“Well, we’re expecting to be,” piped Clarice, “after we produce some sales and can get a leg up on the tuition.”
That did it! “C’mon, you’ve got your foot in the door. You can show me the shoes—for a few minutes anyway.” Finally closing the front door, Hannah led them into the living room, all the while oblivious to the expression--clearly “Gotcha!”--that was exchanged between the two younger women. They very quickly—before she could change her mind, hustled their cases into the living room.
Clarice pronounced, “This recliner looks real comfortable. We’ll set up here where you can relax.” They began to lay out their stock as Hannah bemusedly watched. Clarice, eyeing the recliner knowingly, with an anticipatory smile, placed the lavender knapsack unopened beside it.
Hannah, hearing her stomach growl, blushed and wondered aloud, “Hmm! When did Ah eat last?” Moving to the kitchen, she said over her shoulder, “Can Ah get you two anythin’? A sandwich? Coke? English or herbal tea?”
The two, perhaps thinking they’d better accept Hannah’s hospitality now, because—they hoped-- she would be in no shape to offer it later, chirped, “Yeah, whatever. I’d love a peppermint tea!” and “Thank you, yes! Twining’s for me!”
When Hannah returned with tea and cookies (“Wow, right out of Goodbye, Mr. Chips!” thought Clarice.), the eager ones, as she affectionately observed, had put many single and paired shoes on either side of themselves as they knelt together in front of the lounger. They entreated her to sit and place her feet on the slightly elevated footrest. She was disarmed of whatever skepticism she might have felt by their spunk and by their youthful prettiness (and the sleek sexiness of Nikki’s nylon covered feet, when the quieter one doffed her sandals). Clarice applied what she hoped was the clincher, saying, “And, for letting us disrupt your quiet afternoon by showing our selection, please accept from us a complimentary foot massage and our own, patented ‘Tootsie Tattoos’.”
Hannah, blithely unaware at how easily she was slipping into their trap, did smile at that. “Oh, mah!” she purred in her Southern contralto. “Ah do believe you ladies are tryin’ to seduce me! What are ‘Tootsie Tattoos’?”
“Uh-uh-uhhh!” Clarice said in mock remonstration. “No dessert ‘til you eat your vegetables. Now, shall we start our sales pitch?”
“Mah feet, as you might say, are in your hands.”
Barely able to conceal their excitement, the two guests each took one of Hannah’s feet and— imagining striptease melodies—first pulled off her sandals and, then, slowly, peeled off her ankle socks. They silently sighed at the long, smooth loveliness of her bare feet. Hannah had indulged in a long soak in a hot tub (where she sometimes retreated when a well-rooted stump needed dynamiting in her writing) that morning, and the sweet scent of sarsaparilla bath oil rose off of the warm, moist pink flesh of her attractively wrinkled soles, teasing their nostrils and setting their fingers twitching in eagerness.
Moving out of her reverie with some effort, Clarice did most of the talking, with Nikki sometimes echoing an expansive adjective in the spiel, as the two aggressively adorned her feet and affixed her attention with a rapid succession of heels, straps, slides, sandals, and slippers. Early on, while Nikki tried a few sequined slides on Hannah’s left foot, Clarice reached for the knapsack, opened it, slipped her hand into it, and, making sure that Hannah was intent on Nikki, removed a very compact camcorder, setting it on the floor next to the recliner.
As she then proffered a stiletto heel for Hannah to consider, Clarice thought back to the late summer and a class that she and Nikki, just out of high school, were auditing at the behest of a college recruiter seeking uncommitted “townies.” The class concerned 19th Century U.S. history, the topic was “Women’s Activism in the Reconstruction South,” and the lecturer was Hannah Davis.
The topic would normally have driven them outdoors, but the teacher herself was magnetic. She was very attractive but oh-so-serious, and soft-spoken with a seductive Southern accent. She was neatly attired in a long-sleeved white blouse, with a burgundy sweater over her shoulders, and a long pleated beige skirt ending just above her Birkenstock clogs. At one point in the class, she sat on the front of her desk and dangled her clogs. Occasionally, her shoes would drop to the floor, revealing—her sole concession to the summer heat—her tanned, slender bare feet. Even from the back row of the hall, their eyes were transfixed by her pink-soled feet that waved in mid-air, her long toes wiggling distractingly, idly seeking her fallen clogs.
Nudging the equally mesmerized Nikki, Clarice whispered, “Nik’, you don’t suppose the Prof there might be the slightest bit… ticklish, d’ya? ” Her tall pal giggled and added, “ It would be fun to tease those toes.”
After the class, the pair mingled in the lounge outside the lecture hall, managing to make the instructor the topic of discussion. They learned of her famed serious demeanor, and the hunger of her students to induce her laughter. After pumping for known details of Hannah’s life and habits—and her upcoming sabbatical—Clarice and Nikki came away from a knot of smugly skeptical students with a hefty wager that, before her return in the winter quarter, these two tyros would provide irrefutable proof of Hannah Davis laughing long and loudly, without restraint.
Hatching the cunning “working-our-way-to-college” scheme--with selling shoes the way to Hannah’s tantalizing tootsies--the peppery blonde and the shy, lanky one engaged in weeks of cunning preparation. When their own stylish collections didn’t suffice, they “borrowed their “stock” from their mothers and sisters and from certain interested parties. The contents of the mysterious lavender knapsack were chosen meticulously as well, with quiet Nikki being especially creative.
“And here we are, at last,” thought Clarice, “hoping Prof. Davis will do her part to win us that bet. Holiday shopping days are almost upon us.”
Throughout the pretense of trying shoes on Hannah’s peds, the devious duo had been testing her ticklishness. An “inadvertent” stroke under her toes here, an “accidental” scampering of fingertips across her soles there. After one such test, Hannah had jerked noticeably and only half suppressed a giggle. Clarice asked, “Whoops! Sorry! Sensitive?”
“Heh-heh. Yeah, just a little bit,” confided the teacher, although her raised eyebrow and ensuing embarrassed giggle emphasizing the word little was a tacit admission that there was nothing “little” about it. At that point Clarice and Nikki exchanged quick smiles, figuratively smacking palms over their heads. Catching Hannah stifling a yawn (and dreaming of the article notes calling from her desk), Clarice decided to proceed with the fun part of the operation.
Dropping the last shoe, she announced, “O.K., you’ve been a lovely audience, but now it’s time for your prize.”
“Oh, you needn’t bother,” Hannah said, all set to rise from the recliner, help them pack, and send them on their way. “Ah would like a pair of those ruby slippers.” She didn’t want them to depart without a sale.
Clarice thought that to be shown the door now, with Hannah’s feet in their grasp, almost at their mercy, would be beyond endurance. She and an equally desperate Nikki leapt up to push their host gently back into the lounger.
The blonde blurted, “Good choice! Thanks! But we really must insist now on presenting you the complimentary treats you’ve earned.”
“Thank you back, but Ah really must return to work.” Hannah drawled, gentle exasperation edging her honeyed voice, as she attempted to rise again from the chair. “A foot massage would probably lead to a nap and then where would I be?”
“Uh, O.K., the massage is out,” Clarice vamping deftly, “but you must, you simply must accept some Tootsie Tattoos. If you don’t like ‘em, why, they’re temporary, of course.” She held her breath with a last gambit. “Plus Nikki is so proud of her tattoo artistry.”
“Oh, yes, please let me tattoo a cute design on a toe or two. Please?” Nikki wiggled her own toes in the air as she pleaded, and Hannah’s resistance vanished with the siren scritching sound of toes rubbing nylon.
“Well . . . as long as they’re not permanent, not too extreme, and don’t require a Sistine Chapel time frame to apply,” she surrendered, leaning back.
“Don’t worry,” assured Clarice, and in barely disguised triumph added, ”We’re certain you’ll be so tickled by our work.”
The devilish duo had Hannah settle as far back as possible in the recliner and asked her to prop her feet so they dangled over the quite elevated footrest, under which they slid the sample cases—the better to fix the chair at its extreme position. Clarice quickly reached into the knapsack and removed two handfuls, one of which she passed to Nikki, saying to Hannah, “Now, to keep your feet very, very still for the detail work, we’ll need to bind them.”
“Huh? Oh, Ah can keep still without you going to all that trouble.”
“No trouble. And you said yourself that your feet were a bit… sensitive.” Clarice reasoned. She stroked under Hannah’s toes with a forefinger for emphasis. Hannah gasped
and yanked her foot away for a moment. Nodding her head, Clarice added, “Uh-huh. Toes do tend to be terribly tender, don’t they? If you keep pulling away, it will take much longer. Who knows, then, when you’d get back to work?”
Clarice’s appeal to Hannah’s logic disarmed the teacher, and each trickster proceeded to hurriedly, securely wrap one end of a nylon stocking around one of Hannah’s ankles and the other end to the underside of the footrest. “Nylon: the miracle of the age,” quipped Clarice, ostensibly taking Hannah’s hands in hers to mollify the prof’s obvious consternation at their pains but really blocking her view as, with lightning speed, Nikki wrapped another stocking around Hannah’s ankles, binding them tightly together.
“Hey! Is that really necessary?” Hannah tried to rise from the lounger, but the binding and her extremely reclined position made that impossible.
“Why, Professor Davis, how y’all do carry on!” clowned the blonde in a mockery of Hannah’s Southern tones.
Nikki giggled, and added, in an impersonation more Algerian than Alabaman, “Yes, one would think you all don’t trust us with your sweet li’l’ ol’ feet and your tender li’l’ ol’ toes.”
Clarice drawled broadly, “What my learned friend means is that your now wholly helpless, endearin’ly exposed, supremely sensitive soles and terrifically-tender-to-the-touch toes are the means to our ends,” as she, with florid deliberation, reached below, raised the lavender knapsack portentously, and placed it, between herself and Nikki, below Hannah’s feet.
Quite unable to pull her bare feet free, Hannah felt a curious mixture of anger, fear and thrill shiver through her. She was angry that she’d been so easily gulled by these two, so like her students that she’d allowed their good looks and apparent innocent industry to disarm her. She was afraid that they intended to rob her, perhaps torturing her for bank PINs and where her valuables—like the heirloom silver and jewels—were hidden. And the torture might not end there, as they might have designs on the College as well, pumping her for computer passwords or campus security details.
Yet, though she was loathe to admit it, it was undeniably thrilling, being made helpless by two nylon-wielding young beauties, who, even more perversely exciting, had declared mischievous intent towards her extremely sensitive, utterly vulnerable bare feet, now at the mercy of the fingertips hovering just beyond her toes. If nothing else, her pride demanded, however, that she overcome her nascent excitement and try to reason her way out of this fix.
Adopting a mollifying, pedagogic tone, Hannah said, “Now, ladies, a joke’s a joke. Ah’ve work to do. Release me, now, please, and there’ll be no hard feelin’s.” She wiggled her toes nervously as the two silently exchanged bemused smiles. She joked, “C’mon, let me go and I’ll order a few more pairs of shoes. You certainly know how to close a sale.” The two reached below, and Hannah heard zippers being opened, and saw the pair’s smiles widen. Waggling her feet for emphasis, Hannah quickly added, “Hellooo! Did you hear me, ladies? Please untie mah feet!” Her eyes darted to a wireless phone, its display glowing faintly, resting against the spines of some books on the adjacent bookcase.
The clever conspirators were now removing, with slow, ritualized delight, an assortment of objects from the knapsack and arraying them on the footrest on either side of Hannah’s feet. When Hannah saw what they were—a multitude of feathers of varying lengths and textures, numerous paintbrushes, shaving brushes, hairbrushes, cosmetic brushes, and what looked like an electric toothbrush(!) —she truly began frantic struggle. They did mean to torture her—and in a most fiendish way! She found, however, that the stockings very effectively held her ankles, together and firmly, to the footrest. Also, the chair’s extremely reclined position, fixed by the sample cases, left her body tilted back, sunken deeply in its plush cushions, and her straining hands were unable to reach and release her bare feet, dangling more than a yard above the floor. She’d be absolute putty in their hands, helpless under such torture, unless…
Pointing suddenly to the window and looking beyond, she shouted, “Look! Someone’s coming! Help! Oh, help!”
The two kneelers bolted upright, whipping their heads around. Nikki whimpered, “Oh, no!” as the pair jumped to the sides of the picture window, hiding themselves while desperately peering out. Hannah snatched the phone off of the bookcase and placed it in her lap. Nikki whimpered, “Where did they go? I-I see no one!” Hannah tried to furtively summon help by phone (not expediting matters by punching 411 rather than 911 after dithering precious seconds over whether this truly was an emergency) before a disgusted Clarice sneered, “Jeez! That old gag! And we fell for it!”
Embarrassed but relieved, the two, their eyes twinkling with wicked glee, returned to loom over the reclining Hannah. She was frantically if clumsily punching the pad and whispering doubtful hellos into the phone, and the cherubic blonde nudged her tall, dark friend. They exchanged knowing nods before, giggling and tsking and muttering “Oh, no, you don’t!”, they jumped back besides Hannah’s tied feet. Shrieking “Kitchey-kitchey-koo!” each brought ten wiggling fingers to one of her helpless bare soles. Hannah yelped and jerked, the phone bouncing out of her hands and landing on the floor well beyond her reach.
Struggling to contain her welling giggles as their fingers danced on, Hannah blurted, “Wuh-wuh-wah-why-why are you-you-hoo-hoo doing this?”
While Nikki’s fingertips assumed a torturously light tracing of both soles, Clarice picked up the felled phone and, switching it off, placed it well beyond Hannah’s reach. She chuckled at the professor, whose face was reddening as her lips fought mightily to withhold her laughter. “A convenient wireless phone is such a comfort, wouldn’t you agree?” the blonde teased as she knelt back beside Nikki, whom she nudged to stop her delighted, delicate tickling.
Striking a contemplative pose with chin in hand, the blonde inquired of their rapidly respiring hostess, “Now, why would such nice young…entrepreneurs want to”—here she fluttered her fingers near Hannah’s toes, which flinched— “tickle without mercy a perfectly serious but presently helpless college professor? Nikki?”
Her partner, itching to tickle again, offered, “To hear—to hear her laugh truly—madly—deeply?”
“Well, yes, naturally, but…” Clarice offered, as she picked up the camcorder. She peered through the viewfinder at Hannah, as she continued with, “We made a potentially lucrative wager concerning your sense of humor and need irrefutable proof of it in order to win.” She moved to one end of a shelf hanging from the wall next to the bookcase and, resting the camcorder upon it, focussed it until she had a tight head-and-shoulders shot of Hannah’s left side. “We just need you to relax, ma’am, and laugh like crazy,” Clarice concluded, and she pressed the record button.
Settling back next to the impatient Nikki, Clarice asked, “Now, ma’am, for the record, will you please identify yourself?”
Still straining to loosen her bonds, Hannah announced, “Record? Now, this is outrageous! Stop that camera!”, trying to sound more courageous than she felt. This was worse than she’d imagined. Robbery would have been bad enough. The thought of being tickled silly on a tape for the entire college—if not the world—to see was terrifying! The scandal could be ruinous to her authority as a teacher, her standing in the Department, and her publishing contracts. She was even more alarmed about the loss of control that being tickled engendered, and which a part of herself, dormant for months, seemed all too eager to welcome. She was determined to fight herself as she would resist her tormentors. “It won’t work. Ah won’t laugh. Nope! You can’t make me!” Hannah folded her arms and adopted a defiant gaze through the bay window.
After broadly stifling a feigned yawn, Clarice blew upon the wiggling fingertips of her right hand. She “polished” them with comic insouciance upon her shirt at her chest. With her left hand, she easily and firmly yanked back Hannah’s valiantly struggling right toes. After a pregnant pause, she plunged her right fingertips, with their short but sharp cerulean nails, into the soft flesh under the historian’s wriggling digits. Hannah bucked, but, closing her eyes, biting down on her lower lip, and shaking her head, she struggled to remain silent.
Clarice, not trying to hide her own amusement, cracked, “Oh, stubborn, eh?” She redoubled her efforts, slowly dragging her nails hard along Hannah’s sole from toes to heel and back. Hannah’s face was noticeably reddening, but she withheld any sound. Relentlessly digging her nails into the sole just above the heel, Clarice teased, “I might stop if you’ll just tell our audience your name.” Hannah’s mouth quivered as she forcefully shook her head “no.”
Sensing her friend’s impatience to participate, Clarice nodded her head at Hannah’s left foot. Nikki, dark eyes glistening, carefully selected from the footrest a small stiff crimson feather, which looked as if it had been extracted from a child’s play Indian headdress. She pried back the desperately scrunching left toes of the teacher and began to barely tease their tender underside with the silken tip of the feather. With her eyes fixed on her delicately torturous work, she sweetly said, “Please, Ma’am, tell all of us your name. Tell us!” She began grazing the feathertip upon Hannah’s arch with unsurpassed subtlety, before swirling the silken tip lightly along the pink, tender outer edge of the sole.
Hannah felt a fluttering flock of giggles beginning to take wing in her middle. Clarice’s nails stroking her right foot were agony enough, but with Nikki adding such tender torture of her left, Hannah felt her resolve to deny them her laughter failing…
Her undoing began when Clarice, now wickedly spidering her nails under Hannah’s right instep, squealed in a high, babyish voice, “Kitchey-kitchey-kitchey! Some-body’s about to laugh! I can tell! Say your name, and we might stop!” It was cinched when Nikki pulled wide her big and second toes, and proceeded to saw the feather between them, as she chirped, “Tickle-tickle! Tell us your name! Tickle-tickle!” Hannah’s eyes flew open, and she surrendered, her lips yielding…
“Ha-ha-NO!-heh-heh-STOP!-ha-ha-Hannah-ahhahaha-Hannah!-ahhahahahaha. . .”
“No-no-no!” insisted Nikki, as she released Hannah’s toes and swept the feathertip over and under them with cunning persistence. “We must have your full name.”
“And your occupation!” Clarice added, as she briskly stroked Hannah’s fleshy heel.
“<shriek!> Nuh-no-oh-ho-ho-noyoucan’t-hehheh-youcan’tmakeme-heehee-AHHAHAHAHA!-Allright!-hehheh-Hannah-hahaha-Hannah Da-ohhoho-Davis!-hehhehhehheh-Ah-hahah-Ah-heh-Ah teach-hee-hee-teach at the-hehheh-co-ahha-college!-AHHAHAHAHAHHH! Ple-hee-heese st-ahha-sstop!-ahhaha…”
Clarice suddenly ceased tickling and nudged Nikki, who, sighing, desisted as well.
Nigh breathless, Hannah giggle-panted, “Stop! Heh! Oh, please, please stop! Heh-heh-heh! You’re being so…so cruel!” Even as she said this, Hannah regretted it. Begging
them to stop tickling her, besides being an affront to her dignity, was most likely futile and
even counterproductive. Such pleading—she knew from experience-- was more likely to incite, rather than dissuade, an empowered tickler. But, she couldn’t help herself. She simply was too ticklish…
“Heh-heh! Ah’ll buy—heh—Ah’ll buy more shoes! Ah’ll buy all the shoes! Heh-heh!
Everythin’ you’ve got! Only, please, please let me go!”
“Oh, how can you speak of puttin’ shoes on such totally ticklish bare feet?” Clarice offered, again in a mockery of Hannah’s Dixie accent. “Your sweet Dixie laughter is really divine, m’am. Do you really want us to stop tickling your absolutely, irresistibly helpless tootsies?”
“Yes, please! Ah really can’t stand it! If you only knew how ticklish Ah am … what it does to me… .” Hannah’s entreaty trailed off when she realized with horror the ghastly error of her admission. “Uh-oh . . . N-now, now w-wait, p-please!”
Clarice and Nikki exchanged wicked looks, timed a beat, and, with banshee cries of “Kitchey-kitchey-koo!” fell upon her feet with giggling abandon. As they resumed the fiendish tickling, Hannah surrendered to hysterical laughter, quite unable to fully articulate futile pleas for mercy or to threaten them convincingly.
“HA-HA-HA-HA-STUH-AH-AH-AH-HA-ST-STAHPP!-AHHAHAHA-YOU-ahha-WAIT-heehee-Ah-ahha-AH’LL-hehheh-AHHAHAHAHAAA . . .!”
Nikki, after a few minutes of twirling a shaving brush across Hannah’s upper sole, began working a blush applicator intently between her toes. She studiously, silently tickled, her tongue on occasion poking out of the corner of her mouth as she stroked each toe in turn.
“OHMIGOD!-WHA-HA-HA-HA-AH-HA-HA!-Plee-hee-hee-plee-hee-heeese-STAHHPTHAT!-OHHAHAHAHAHAAA . . .”
Clarice, by contrast, was a tickling chatterbox. “Tickle-tickle-tickle, dear teacher.” She was running her plump fingertips, with their short sky-blue nails, on Hannah’s right foot from toes to heel and back. “My heavens! Can this be the reputedly serious Professor Davis, who never smiles, and never laughs? I had been under the impression it was tough to make you laugh!”
Adopting a Julia Child voice impression, she announced, “When I come upon a tough foot, I tenderize it by utilizing a French technique of kneading right under the toes.” Her relentless fingertips stroked there, and Hannah howled anew. “At last, one produces the tastiest tenderfoot.” Whereupon, Clarice gave the right sole a long lick, and Hannah yelped and jerked spectacularly. After a few more equally effective licks upon the tips of Hannah’s toes, Clarice resumed mercilessly digging her fingertips under and between them.
“<shriek>HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-NUH-NUH-NAHT-THAHAT!-hahaha-S-sstop!-Stahahahaha-Sssstopitpleeheeheese!-AHHAHAHAAAA . . .”
Clarice giggled and nudged her partner. “God, I’m good! Look at her laugh!”
Nikki, who had stopped brushing to sit back on her heels and pout, insisted, “I could make her laugh even more with my kisses!”
With a puckish smile, Clarice withdrew and gestured to Hannah’s flailing feet. “OK, Nik’, you’re on!” The dark-haired teen set her giggling face close to Hannah’s soles and began softly kissing and lightly flicking her tongue all over the creamy insteps, the soft balls like cherries, the shapely twitching toes, and the fleshy heels tapping the air.
The instructor, utterly bereft of will, emitted a cascade of laughter with varying shrieks, gasps, chortles, moans, and sputters. Her eyes were often squeezed shut, though copious tears streamed from them, and her face was a crimson beacon. Her hands seemed to gesture through the air as if she were a madly moved marionette. Nikki’s tickling by mouth was all the more effective because Hannah found such warm and wet torment of her tootsies to be undeniably
exciting. Her anxiety over her weakening resistance to this libidinous stimulation gave her shrieks of laughter a desperate, hysterical edge.
“N-now-heh-heh-n-now y-you sto-haha-op t-that! EEEEEE-HEE-HEE-HEEHEEHEEEEE! Oh-ho-plee-heeheese d-do-hohoho-don’t! Ah can’t—hehhehheh-Ah
can’t-teeheeheehee-s-stand ihihihiht! Stop-ahhaha-AHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!”
After a few minutes of watching Nikki’s mouth at play, Clarice, with eager, complementary sadism, began rubbing Hannah’s right sole with the coarse bristles of an old hairbrush. She brushed vigorously up and down the middle of the soft, reddened wrinkly sole with obvious glee.
“<snort> OH-HA-HA-HA-HEE-NO-NO-HO-HO-HA-HA-HEE <gasp>AHHAHAHAAAA . . ..”
At times in her laughter, Hannah’s blurry (for her glasses had long since been propelled from her red, teary face) gaze was transfixed by a baleful red light on the camcorder,
pitilessly recording her helpless laughter for her students, her colleagues, the campus, the town,
far-flung alumni—indeed, she thought, as her hysteria peaked, the entire world!—to see. And it could get even worse, if she couldn’t quell the erotic excitement slowly, inexorably building within her. Thank goodness her sweatshirt was hiding the telltale arousal of her nipples, and her jeans covered well her damp panties! But, for how long? These two were threatening to tickle her right out of a tenured teaching chair, out of her contracts with a number of academic presses, and her pending research fellowship! And all she could do was laugh and laugh!
“No!-No!-OHHOHOHO! C’mon! AAAH-HAHAHA! Please! HEEEEHEEHEEHEE!”
Clarice and Nikki settled into a leisurely and varied torment of the hysterical Hannah, over what to her seemed like hours, utilizing almost all of the tools on the footrest to induce all sorts of laughter from her. She giggled helplessly as they brushed her insteps; chortled convulsively when they cruelly caressed her arches; snickered sappily as they traced their names on her heels, howled and writhed while they playfully counted her digits, painted between them, and feathered their tops; screeched when they raced their spidery digits along her long soles (while Clarice “called” the racing of “The Hannah Davis Stakes,” announcing the winner only after a slow-motion replay); and gasped and guffawed as they gleefully dusted, swept, and scratched the soft, wrinkled, increasingly reddened lengths of her soles. All this was in addition to her hilarious squeals of protest when Clarice joined Nikki in frequently kissing and licking her feet, as they both obviously found this tickle-tasting to be habit-forming (although Clarice’s mouthplay was much harder than Nikki’s, for she bit where Nikki nibbled).
“DOHON’T DO THAT! <shriek> AH S-SAID STAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAP!”
Finally, after innumerable “kitcheys,” “kootchies,” and “little piggies,” they did. First it was Clarice, who stopped to admire the intense red glow infusing Hannah’s weakly waggling right foot. She considered the camcorder perched above, fat and happy with no doubt ample evidence of Hannah’s helpless honey-toned Dixie laughter. She nudged a most reluctant Nikki to stop tongue-teasing Hannah’s soles. They sat back on their heels, hearing the professor’s laughter subside into giggles, and watching her bleary eyes slowly come to focus upon them.
With inspired malice, without touching Hannah, Clarice quickly shouted, “Kitchey-kitchey-koo!”
Quite taken by this cunning suggestion, Hannah’s eyes snapped shut as she shrieked, “NOOOO! AHHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!”
Nikki, delighted by Clarice’s ploy, clutched her friend’s shoulder to get her attention, before pinching Hannha’s big left toe and blurting, “Who laughs when we tickle-tickle?” Hannah shrieked anew with another burst of laughter. Their sustained tickling had so stimulated and sensitized her that, not only was she by now unable to restrain her hilarity at their touch, but the mere threat of more such torture had her hysterical as well.
Clarice shook her head and muttered, “Wow! Even her imagination’s ticklish!” She got up and walked towards the kitchen in back. “Watch her. I need somethin’ to drink. You?”
Nikki stood and stretched her lanky form. “Oh, yes! I crave a beer!”
From the back, Clarice cried, “Well, you’re in luck. The professor’s fridge is stocked with Cracker microbrews. How does a Chattahouchee Pine Nut Ale sound?”
Hannah’s hilarity finally had petered off to light tittering when she saw Nikki stretching by the bay window. Under the camcorder’s pitiless gaze, they’d reduced her to helpless laughter, but, despite being tickled silly, she was not without her wits. With swift determination, she grunted and reached forward, her fingers straining for the nylons holding her ankles. She was fighting gravity and her laughter weakened muscles. Her feet pulled at the stockings. With enough time, she might stretch the fabric. With enough time and the aid of her desperately stretching fingertips, she might slip her ankles from the nylons. With enough time…
Nikki idly glanced back and, surprised by Hannah’s forceful effort, shouted, “Clarice! She’s getting loose!” Resourcefully realizing just what would immediately suspend the escape attempt, Nikki stroked Hannah’s reddened soles with ten determined fingers.
Hannah howled, “Dammit, no-no-naha-ahhahaha-Stop! AHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!”
Clarice thundered into the living room with two sweating bottles of beer in one hand and a bag of blue corn chips spilling from the other. “Is she givin’ you trouble?” she bellowed.
“It’s all right. I got her laughing just in time. But she was working herself free.”
Clarice examined the looped stockings. Satisfied that they held Hannah’s ankles firmly, and that her friend had exaggerated the danger—perhaps merely to find an excuse to start tickling the professor’s lovely bare feet again—she sighed with relief and offered one of the bottles to her friend. Nikki took it in one hand as she continued tickling with the other.
Clarice took a healthy swig of brew. She said to Hannah, who was giggling helplessly again, “So, trying to end our fun early, huh?” She waved the neck of the bottle near Hannah’s toes, which flinched at its approach. “I love my beer ice cold. Do you? Or, more precisely, do your tender tootsies? Let’s find out.”
She held the top of the captive right foot as she pressed the icy, wet bottle against Hannah’s warm toes and upper sole. Hannah shrieked and bucked in the chair. “AIIIIIEEEEEE! STAAAHHHHPPPP!”
“I could go back to that fridge and bring back a whole tray full of ice cubes. How would you like that, Ms. Houdini?”
“NONONO! P-P-PLEEHEEHEEHEESE!”
Clarice took another long pull from the bottle, then set it aside. Just above Hannah’s wary toes, she brought her hands together and loudly cracked her knuckles as she pointedly smirked at the captive.
Hannah, fearing the worst, bleated, “Now, look, haven’t you had enough? Ah’m asking—begging you to let me go! You’ve got that damned recording. Take it and go!”
“Not just yet, Red,” Clarice drawled. “We need one more confession from you for the
record.”
After a moment’s teasing deliberation, she picked up a short hard rubber brush from the assortment piled on the footrest. At home, she used it to stroke the family beagle, Pudge, into tail-wagging esctasy. Would it have a similar effect on their captive when applied to her doggies? Hannah certainly thought so, as she gasped, “No!” With a smile stretching to a grin, the blonde pulled Hannah’s right toes back and began to brush the quivering sole from toes to heel and back again, relentlessly. Hannah immediately collapsed into giggling spasms.
“Heh-heh-hehhehheh! Geh-he-hehhehheht t-thahehheht off me! Stahha-hahahahahap!”
Again determined not to be outdone, Nikki grabbed a thin-handled paintbrush with a small head of coarse black filaments from the footrest. She pulled back on Hannah’s left toes and began daubing between the delicate digits with the teasing tip of the brush. Hannah could not restrain a shriek, and a flood of guffaws.
“EEEEEEEEEE! Oh, Lawd, now s-sta-haha-hop that! Eee-hee-heeee! Aaaaah-ha-ha-ha! AHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!”
Clarice took the occasion of Hannah’s renewed hysteria to tease her with the revelation that she had noticed the teacher earlier stealing glances at Nikki’s feet. “Maybe you were dreamin’, Prof’, of kitchey-kitchey-cooing this dark cutie yourself. I saw you licking your lips as you studied her sleek, silky tootsies!”
“HA-HA-AH-HA-HA <gulp> OH-HO-OH-HO-NO-NO <snort> AH-HA-HA-HAHAHAAA . . ..”
Brushing up-and-down, Clarice taunted, “Oooooh, yes! You, a respected faculty member of this august college in this upstanding community, were plotting to tickle-tickle-tickle poor, shy innocent Nikki yourself, weren’t you?” The shy one was laughing herself now as if she were being tickled, and not herself mercilessly brushing Hannah’s tender instep.
Hannah blushed further and grinned haplessly as she chortled, “NO-NA-HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! PLE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HEEEEEEEEEESE!”
Clarice continued mercilessly brushing up-and-down along Hannah’s increasingly reddening high arch. She drawled, “C’mon, Hannah Honey…confess! You were intending to tickle Nikki silly. You’ve got a major tickling fetish! Admit it! Why else would you keep something like this handy?” She dropped the rubber brush and sprang to her feet. On tiptoe, she reached up to the top of the bookcase and plucked the magnificent feather out of the flute. She brought it and the gift card down as she knelt beside Hannah’s right foot again. She nudged Nikki to stop her tickling.
Waving the card at Hannah, Clarice teased, “Who are the Irregulars, Prof’? And why would they give you this feather—from some owl or eagle or some other whackin’ great big bird—unless you’ve got a thing for tickling. You! The serious paragon of the History Department! Who would believe it?” She barely grazed the downy-soft brown edge of the feather across the pads of Hannah’s right toes, and the foot jerked as if shocked.
Hannah was equally shocked by this new line of interrogation. She simply couldn’t reveal what she knew about the Irregulars, not with that camcorder busy. However, with such a superb tickling tool in the hands of these merciless monsters, how long could she bear to laugh—and not betray her erstwhile pals?
Clarice grinned and purred, “I’m betting, Prof, that you—and the Irregulars—are secretly into tickling, big time. Well, the feather, my dear wicked Hannah, is on the other foot now, eh? I want you to look straight into the pretty little camcorder and admit that you love tickling.” Hannah cleared her throat and looked stubbornly away.
Clarice brandished the large feather above the cowering feet. She smirked, “No, huh? Well, it’s kitchey-coo until you do. Nik’, hold ‘em still.” Obediently, Nikki knelt beside Hannah’s legs and held the tops and sides of the professor’s bare feet, so they were effectively immobile. Turning the feather in her hand so that she held the plume as if preparing to write, Clarice began to trace the wrinkles of Hannah’s long, reddened soles with the hard nub of the quill. Having anticipated a feathery touch, Hannah was unprepared for the quill’s point skittering on her sensitized soles, and she was lost to laughter immediately.
“AH-HA-HEE-HEE-Ohmercy!-HA-HA-NO-NO<gasp>TEE-HEE-HEE-STUH-HA-HA-HAAP!-<shriek> Nahahaha-n’more-ohho-OHOHOHOHO-HAHAHA-Plee-heehee-HEHHEHHEHHEH . . .”
Clarice was comprehensive and ruthless in the quill’s tickley journey across Hannah’s helpless feet. For many minutes, Hannah’s howls of hilarity were punctuated only by Clarice’s occasional “Talk, Prof’!” or “I wonder what this line signifies!” Hannah’s laughter was complemented by Nikki’s high-pitched giggles, as if the tickling was being transmitted through Nikki’s hands from the struggling bare feet they restrained.
Hannah flailed in her web of laughter, her disciplined mind wondering in spite of her hilarity how her tormentors—whom she had never met before today—could have known how hopelessly ticklish her feet were. It’s not as if it were common knowledge around the campus, Lord knows. The only ones who knew were the providers of the killer quill that Clarice was now so expertly wielding: the Irregulars.
And how did Clarice sense Hannah’s serious interest in erotic tickling, something which, even if she hadn’t practiced it in an age, she had been so careful to indulge in,
circumspectly, only amongst the Irregulars? A confession to such an interest—and revelations
about the Irregulars—truly would spell disaster not only for her—but many of her colleagues!
She must resist!
But how long could she under such tickling? Laughing uproariously—her sides aching, her throat raw, and her feet so maddeningly sensitized--she simply couldn’t take much more. She was afraid she’d not only lose control of her bladder—embarrassing enough, not to mention messy-- but her libido as well, which, even helpless with laughter, she was loath to do in front of two women of undergraduate age, let alone the damnable blinking camcorder. With Clarice intent now on “writing” across her sensitive heels, Hannah was not only nearly laughing her lovely Southern head off, but her steadily moving hips betrayed the fires thus being stoked in her long-sleeping pleasure center. She feared that if she gave in to long quiescent lust now, she’d gladly babble anything. So, she was yet determined to fight her hilarity, her bladder, and her arousal…
“AH-HA-HA-HA-HEE-HEE-EEE-NUFF-PLEEHEE-HEE-NUFF-AHHAHAHAHAAAAA . . ..”
Perspiration beading on her forehead with her inner struggle, a desperate Hannah received a respite when Clarice withdrew the quill point. The blonde smiled at her partner, still tugging on Hannah’s wiggling toes, and said, “OK, Nikki, you’re plain as glass. You’re dying to use this on Ms. Tenderfoot here, aren’t ya? Let’s switch.”
At those words, with any pretense to dignity long abandoned, Hannah wailed, “Oh, please! Ah-Ah can’t stand it! Won’t you please stop?” For, however susceptible she was to Clarice’s vigorous tickling, she feared more the subtle touch of this tall, dark and quiet young woman. Nikki’s delicate tickling might make suppressing her arousal impossible.
“God!” said an outraged Clarice. “How selfish can you be? At least let Nikki have her chance with your killer feather!”
Nikki, upon receiving the quill, giggled like a child finally being given the chance to run the electric mixer in the cake batter. She sat herself on her stocking heels and waited as Clarice got a firm grip on Hannah’s panicked peds, their sweaty soles completely helpless. The Algerian beauty held the quill so that Hannah could see that she meant to use the soft, brown- edged, pale feather. Hannah shut her eyes as the silken tip neared her toes, moaning, “Oooh,
shiiiit!”
It was the last coherent thought she’d have for many minutes.
“Aiiieeeee! Stopstopstopstop! Heh-heh-hehhehheh! Hee-hee-heeheehee! Lawd! Ah-ha-ahhahahahaha! <shriek> AHHAHAHAAAAA! <gasp> AHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!”
Nikki, with the concentration of the most meticulous miniaturist, ever so carefully stroked the silken feather tip under one toe, then between it and the next, then under the next,
then between that one and the next—from big toe to pinky toe and back, over and over. Her
tickling was never more than a maddening tease, and she altered her stay on one particular toe,
or pushed the feather to different extents between toes enough to keep Hannah constantly
on edge—and giggling as a result all the more helplessly.
Clarice, bringing her considerable strength to bear holding Hannah’s feet still for Nikki’s surgical stimulation, leered, “C’mon, Professor! Tell us you love to be tickled! Admit it!”
Clarice’s taunt brought Hannah to her senses enough to fear that her nipples were telegraphing her arousal for her—and the camera—to see! She was so wet between her legs that she was certain that, soon, no verbal confession would be necessary. Oh, to be so undone by the tenderness of one’s toes! It was as mortifying as it was exciting!
Keeping the hilarious Hannah guessing, Nikki swept the silken upper blade of the feather across the moist, red, and wrinkled expanse of Hannah’s soles—around the balls, down the arch, behind the heels, and up the outer edges. Quite soon, however, the giggling Nikki returned the tip of the feather to its devastatingly subtle course under Hannah’s toes, held quite firmly open by the determined Clarice, who teased, “Such ticklish toes! And they’re all ours! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! C’mon, Hannah! Confess!”
Hannah pressed her head deeply into the back cushion of the recliner and rocked from side to side as the laughter simply poured out of her. She was so hysterical that for a moment she’d quite forgotten what the dumb blonde wanted her to confess to! It would be so easy to give in to the call of her throbbing honey pot! Focussing her teary eyes on the camcorder’s red light amidst her toe-twitching agony, she didn’t want the world to know she could be tickled to climax! She wouldn’t let these hellions make her dance ecstatically! Nor could she betray the Irregulars, no matter how electrifying the feather’s tip felt between her toes!
In her struggle, her eyes squeezed shut, streaming tears, and her mouth was stretched wide in a helpless grin as, nigh breathlessly, she laughed almost soundlessly. Hannah was at
even her formidable wits’ end, when—
From over the fireplace, the antique clock from her Great Aunt Dora’s Savannah estate chimed five o’clock. Clarice whipped her head around and exclaimed, “Yee-ow! If we’re
late for the reception tonight, we can kiss the catering job good-bye!” She turned to consider their patsy.
Perhaps, gazing upon the sweat-soaked, exhausted, helplessly giggling Hannah Davis, her auburn bangs plastered to her forehead, her hands and feet weakly flailing as she whispered wanly “N-n’more” and “P-please” between giggles, Clarice was touched by a scintilla of remorse. Well, maybe, but she smiled as she glanced up at the camcorder, which certainly held all they would need of the hilarious undoing of this dignified Professor. She stopped holding Hannah’s bare feet, and turned back to Nikki.
“Nik’, we gotta go! Your folks will make you go to the College if you lose this job, and
mine’ll throw me out!”
“I suppose you’re right,” the thin, dark Nikki conceded, although she continued to direct the large feather lightly upon the soles of the giggling Hannah’s reanimated feet.
Thus, Clarice pulled one case from under the footrest and began cramming it with hastily collected shoes. Nikki, happy that her partner wasn’t yet nagging her to help, stopped the feathering so that she might “tattoo,” with yellow and black markers, a smiley face on the tip of each of the redhead’s big toes (which caused Hannah to sputter with renewed hilarity).
Then, sighing, Nikki began shoving the remaining shoes in the other case. Clarice returned the multitude of tickling tools to the lavender knapsack, although she couldn’t resist a last bit of hairbrushing shrieking Hannah’s right sole, before Nikki, done packing, chastised her.
The pair then took turns bringing all to the Beetle. While one loaded the Bug outside, inside, the other sneaked tickles on Hannah’s still-tied and hopelessly overstimulated peds, until the other griped and stomped back in, and the roles reversed. Hannah, silly with laughter, witnessed this slapstick with relief (They were leaving at last!) and a tangle of frustrations (How could she stop them from getting away with that recording?!? Did she really want them to leave at all—and to stop tickling her?).
“Ah-ha-ahhahaha-Ohstopplease-heehee-Wuh-wait-hehheh-le-heh-lemmeloose-hoohoo-Wait!”
Clarice, returned from the last shlep to the Beetle, chortled, “What’s that, professor? You’d like us to stay, spend the night, and tickle you until dawn?” Clarice swirled her forefinger across Hannah’s insteps and the academic’s laughter bubbled to another shrieking high.
“Hello, we must be going!” the blonde sang in her best Marxian contralto. “I’m glad we came, but just the same, we must be going! Tra-la!” She pulled back the right toes and playfully kissed underneath them as Hannah gasped and giggled. Spotting the smiley faces that Nikki had drawn on the big toes, Clarice tweaked them and chortled, “Yup! The happiest toes in town!”
As the clock chimed the quarter hour, Clarice barked,“O.K., Nikki! To the chariot!” The dark one raced out to start the VW.
Clarice continued to tickle Hannah while loosening the nylons holding the latter’s ankles to the footrest. “Now, Prof. Davis, we were just having a little fun. I’ll bet you haven’t laughed like this since the last all-nighter you spent reading your students’ papers.” Hannah, through her guffaws, however angry she was at this moment, had to agree about everything except the slur against her students’ papers: those never tickled her like this!
Seeing the teacher beginning to lower the footrest and to untangle her ankles, Clarice edged to the door, caught herself, and, leaping to the bokcase, grabbed the camcorder. “Whoops! ‘Can’t forget this now, can we? After all, the ‘evidence’ for our wagering suckers is no laughing matter, ‘cept for you!” She secured the camcorder as a fullback would a football, then made a final tickle flourish as she passed the recliner. Hannah fell back laughing into the chair before finally kicking free of the nylons, but not before Clarice had dashed out the door and jumped into the Beetle, which sent pebbles flying as it careened around the cul-de-sac and put-putted downhill.
Fondly cradling the camcorder in the passenger seat, Clarice slapped her forehead and moaned, “Oh-no, Nik’! We forgot to try that damned electric toothbrush. ‘Bet she would’ve hit the ceiling!”
“She would’ve flown laughing to the campus and we wouldn’t need that recording!” giggled Nikki, dancing her dark slender fingers upon the wheel. And the pair whooped, hollered, and poked each other all the way down to the stately old town.
In their wake, Hannah—breathless, embarrassed, more than a little (she admitted) exhilarated—contemplated calling the police. What, then, could she report? An assault? (On her—Ahem!-- feet?) A sexual assault? (And confess that the tickling had dramatically aroused her?) Theft? (They apparently took nothing, outside of beer and chips.) Vandalism? (Nothing damaged. Well, she did wet her pants.) Menacing? (That Mutt and Jeff pair? And no threats were made upon their departure.)
She noticed a gold slingback on the floor under the bookcase. Bending to retrieve it, she spotted the small bright red feather fluttering on the floor near the lowered footrest. She picked both up and unsteadily rose on quivering legs. She saw that Nikki had thoughtfully returned the killer quill to its flute on the bookcase. She plucked it down and, after locking the front door (in case her erstwhile guests decided to stage an encore), carried it, with the evidence of the invaders, into the kitchen. She sat at the breakfast nook with a soothing peppermint tea (Something stronger would soon follow.) and, rubbing her still sensitized and tingling tender feet, she pondered…
“Lawd, Ah’ve still so much work to do before next term’s classes begin, but can Ah concentrate after what those two did to me? Ladies, you may rue the day you disturbed this hermit’s sabbatical.
“Well, Ah’ve still a few weeks left. Time enough, perhaps, to don my deerstalker. First, learn where a particular recording surfaces on campus.” She considered the slingback, resting on the counter. “Then, find out who the ‘auteurs’ are, and flush them out.” She tickled her palm with the little red feather. “And finally,” she smirked, slipping the red feather into the shoe, “reciprocate their tender mercies.”
She picked up the great white plume. Stroking her nose with it, she conceded, “After all these months, I may have to elicit the aid of a few erstwhile colleagues who, like myself, are fond of a good tickling. They’d know how to deal with the likes of Clarice and Nikki.” Spinning the quill between her thumb and forefinger before her eyes, she mused, “Just wait ‘til
those two meet the Irregulars, more formally called…The Vellication Irregulars.”
Then, Hannah Davis shivered as she thought, “Brrr! At least those little fiends spared me that damned electric toothbrush…” Looking down, she saw that the tips of her big toes were telling her to “Have a nice day!”
