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The Sarah Saga (F/M)

Wade

TMF Master
Joined
Sep 6, 2005
Messages
753
Points
18
There was a girl I knew in college named Sarah; we ran in some of the same circles but were never particularly chummy. She was super-serious, aloof, superior and not a little pretentious. I, on the other hand, was perfect in every way. Our relationship back then was often somewhat antagonistic, and so when she found out I was ticklish she used that against me with occasional ruthlessness.

After graduating I easily could have gone a lifetime without ever seeing Sarah again. But by chance our paths crossed, and as luck would have it she and the woman who would later become my wife really hit it off. Now they're best friends. Sarah's still not all that crazy about me, though.

At least she forgot about my being ticklish. Or she did until I, unwisely, reminded her. People on a certain online discussion board had recommended that the next time I saw Sarah I should see if she was ticklish and try to get revenge on her for her long-past attacks; it sounded like a good idea at the time. It wasn't.

I'd waited for an opportunity to tickle her to arise, preferably one when she was semi-helpless or otherwise unlikely to tickle back, and one never did. So it the night before she was to leave, I was running out of time and opportunities, and as she packed her stuff up I went up behind her, grabbed her sides, and tickled.

Nothing.

She turned around. I did it again. Nothing.

She smiled. "I'm not ticklish." She actually lifted her arms up as if to say: See? I ran my fingers up and down her sides and she didn't so much as flinch.

"Oh, well," I said.

"Yeah, I've never been ticklish," Sarah said. Then she looked at me. Recognition and remembrance dawned in her expression. And she said: "But YOU are."

"No," I said. "Not really."

"Yeah, you are!" Sarah said. "In college, you were super ticklish!"

"Oh, well, in college," I said, crossing my arms. "I grew out of that."

She grinned and reached for my abdomen. I lunged backwards. And a chase ensued with me scrambling to stay out of her reach and Sarah, never breaking her stride, pursuing me with steady and unflappable determination. "Don't make me chase you," she kept saying, each time with an increasingly menacing edge. "Wade. Don't make me chase you!"

Inevitably, I wound up cornered in the living room, my hands poised defensively in front of me as Sarah advanced. "Sarah," I said, trying not to giggle in anticipation, "Don't you dare!"

"Why not?" she said. "You're not ticklish anymore. You grew out of it. Remember?"

And her fingers were upon my sides and in my keyed-up ticklish state I convulsed and emitted a helpless whoop which Sarah found utterly hilarious. She kept tickling, her fingers gliding against my sides and stomach in that same relentless pincer-motion she used to use against me so effectively in college. I grabbed her wrists and tried to pry them away from my twitching sides but couldn't do it: she was still strong, and I was increasingly weakening. I started to sink to the floor, laughing constantly.

"Good thing you're not ticklish anymore," Sarah said loudly over my shrieks. "Or this would probably really bother you!"

She loomed over my wriggling and thrashing, her hands darting smoothly from one ticklish spot on my abdomen to the next as my hysteria steadily increased. "Don't," I shouted. "Stop," I squealed.

"Don't stop?" she said. "Okay. You must really like this."

Her hands dwelled on the sides of my abdomen, a spot which reliably makes me into a basket case. I arched my back and clenched my fists, giggling uncontrollably as her fingertips danced relentlessly on those spots; I believe I howled something that sounded like "Ohnohohoho." Sarah said, "I bet you wish you hadn't tickled me. Wish you hadn't tried tickling me? I bet you wish you hadn't."

There was a huge smile on Sarah's face as she tickled and tickled; she's loosened up since college and isn't so serious or repressed. But her mean streak's still there. She'd reduced me to a completely helpless writhing mess before she finally paused, gazing down appraisingly and approvingly at my panting, blushing figure. "You're a mess," she said, and left the room to go back to her packing, leaving me alone on the floor with my ignominy. The next morning she left with a friendly hug, inviting us to visit her anytime. There was no mischief in her eyes when she said it, and no hint of a sadistic subtext. I had no idea the series of events I'd set into motion.
 
I assume said "events" will soon be recounted here, Wade. I impatiently wait!
 
Great story! I hope that she got you again, and got your wife to help her. :D
 
A year or two later, Sarah and I found ourselves under the same roof for Thanksgiving. It was a small and motley gathering that year, composed primarily of people who didn't or couldn't or wouldn't travel home to see their families (this included me, my then-fiancee, and her sister) and also a couple of people who didn't want to see their families and so traveled here instead (this included my old college tormentor Sarah).

Dinner was over and everyone was sitting around talking idly. I was at the corner of the table with Sarah to my right; my fiancee's sister sat across from me, next to her boyfriend. My fiancee sat next to him.

I was teasing my future sister-in-law mercilessly about something (maybe I haven't mellowed or matured after all) and she was jokingly beseeching me to stop. "Sarah," she cried across the table, "Can't you control him?"

"I don't know," Sarah said in that wry and throaty voice of hers. "Maybe."

I should've seen this next part coming; I should've fled when I had the chance.

Next thing I knew I felt Sarah's fingers playing at my right side, scampering roughly down my ribs and across my waist and back up again.

Needless to say, I convulsed and shrieked.

"Guess I can control him, a little bit," Sarah said as she began to dart both her hands at my twitching abdomen and sides, me twisting in my seat and trying to smack her hands away.

"Oh, that's right," my future sister-in-law said. "Wade's really ticklish," I heard her say to her boyfriend, and just as I had successfully scooted my chair back away from the table enough to be able to spring away and escape, I discovered her standing to my left, her fingers crawling mischievously under my arm and across my ribs.

Giggling, I squealed "No! Please! Stop!" One or both of the women torturing me must have shot a glance--seeking permission?--over at my fiancee, because through my own hysterical giggles I could hear her say something like "Don't stop on my account."

If you've ever been tickled relentlessly while sitting in a chair you'll probably recognize this next part: as the twenty fingers continued their easy and merciless assault against my writhing abdomen I started that pointless slow-motion slide out of the chair and toward the floor, that maneuver that's less an escape strategy than it is a surrender to gravity. Their hands followed me guffawing all the way down--the slender, manicured, insidiously scuttling fingers of my fiancee's sister, and the brusque and assertively efficient big strong hands of Sarah. By this time I was emitting a mortifying sound that I can only roughly approximate here as GYEE HEE HEE, GYEE HEE HEE.

Next thing I knew I was on the rug, half under the table, the women looming over me, their hands still darting at whichever ticklish spot I was failing to defend at any given moment.

Then someone suggested opening another bottle of wine and they both abruptly stopped tickling me in order to partake.

I laid off teasing my fiancee's sister, at least for the rest of that evening.

It was a pretty minor tickle-attack in the bigger scheme of things. But it foreshadowed far more ruthless assaults in the future...
 
In retrospect, I probably should've seen the evolution of Sarah's playful sadism coming. As I mentioned, she discovered I was ticklish back when we were in college. And on one particular occasion she displayed a flash of the capacity for opportunistic, unmotivated attacks that would become so much more in evidence later in life.

Sarah and my then-girlfriend and I had been hanging around in my girlfriend's dorm room, and--as is my wont--I managed to spill coffee all over my shirt. My girlfriend indulgently offered to take the shirt down to the dorm laundry room for me. So she did, leaving me in her room, shirtless, standing across the room from Sarah.

Silence ensued. (Sarah and I often failed to find something to talk about.)

Then Sarah said, with her customary tact, "You're pretty hairy."

"Thanks," I said. More silence.

"Why are you standing like that?" Sarah asked. "Are you trying to hide... are you embarrassed that you're so hairy?"

I wasn't, for the record. And I could have said something about how Sarah had more fluffy brown hair on her muscular forearms than many women do. But I didn't. Instead, the master of the witty riposte, I said, "No."

"Then why are you standing like that?" Sarah said. "Are you afraid I'm going to tickle you?"

"No!" I said. (Also for the record: I don't know what she meant, "standing like that." My arms were crossed, but I'm convinced I was standing quite normally.)

"Why are you afraid I'm going to tickle you?" Sarah asked, a little contemptuous smile on her lips. "Are you more ticklish with your shirt off?"

"No!" I said, a little too quickly.

"You're more ticklish with your shirt off," Sarah said.

"Shut up," I said.

"I can't imagine how you could possibly be MORE ticklish," she said, her throaty voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Shut up," I said. "Stop saying that."

"Stop saying what?" Sarah said. "Ticklish?"

"Shut up," I said, only just realizing that I'd backed into the corner.

Sarah took a step toward me. "Ticklish," she said. "Ticklish. You don't like that? Ticklish. Ticklish. Ticklish."

Despite my best efforts to the contrary, now I was bending over a little at the waist, unable to fight the apprehension Sarah's behavior was triggering in me. And now she was slowly sauntering across the room toward me. I noticed her hands were slightly lifted to waist level, her fingers at the ready. Oh, crap.

"Ticklish," she said. "Ticklish. Ticklish. You don't like that word, Wade? Ticklish. Ticklish. Ticklish. Ticklish."

"I don't care about that word!" I said. Or started to say. Because Sarah had reached me by this point, and had darted her hand toward my bare abdomen, brushing her fingertips against it in a mischievous pincher motion. Needless to say, I twitched and giggled.

"God," Sarah said. "You're a mess." Then she started tickling me.

I tried to shield myself against Sarah's assault, but any really ticklish person knows how that goes: as soon as my arms jerked to cover a spot she'd just tickled, her hand would move to a new spot. For someone who wasn't a habitual tickler, Sarah had gotten devlishly good at tickling me: as I wriggled and convulsed in the corner her hands darted expertly at my sides, my stomach, my ribs and my neck, reducing me to a squirming mess.

"Ticklish," she said. "Ticklish. Ticklish."

If my ovesensitive nerve endings were my worst enemy, gravity came in a close second: as Sarah tickled and tickled, I inevitably sank to the floor. By the time my girlfriend returned from the laundry room, Sarah was looming over me and I was shrieking hysterically, emitting a particularly sharp yelp every time Sarah's blunt fingers brushed against a particularly vulnerable spot.

Sarah didn't stop when my girlfriend returned. Indeed, over my own giggling, I could hear my girlfriend say "Ooh, oh, watch this!" And the next thing I knew I felt her wickedly squeezing the tops of my knees. I threw my head back and howled as the two of them tickled and tickled to their heart's delight. Until something came along to distract them the way college students get distracted, leaving me to collect the tattered shreds of my dignity.

Needless to say, I remembered this incident for a long time. I sort of assumed that Sarah had forgotten it -- a momentary opportunity to pass the time by making me suffer -- but I would discover, eventually, that she definitely remembered it and the discoveries it occasioned.
 
Those are some great stories! Thank you for them. Would love to hear about the next occasions. :)
Hard to believe such a delightful tickler like Sara actually exists. I love her teasing manner. And you tell it so well.

Also, how do you know she's not a habitual tickler? ;) as you said yourself, you weren't very close to her, so who knows how she spends the time when you're not in her presence. If she's that good at tickling (and it certainly seems so), she must've gotten some practice. ;)
 
A year later, Sarah once again came through town for the holidays. Mostly stayed at my then-fiancee's place, but her last night in town she crashed on my sofa, for sundry convoluted and boring reasons (my then-fiancee's sister was staying with her that night and both of them were getting up insanely early the next morning to catch a flight, etc. etc. etc.)

So we're all hanging out at my place and my fiancee and her sister leave to go back to her place and there's Sarah sitting on my sofa. Intermittently over the previous couple of days I'd looked for an opening to try what other people on a certain online discussion board had been urging me to do--find her ticklish spot, she must have one somewhere, and then seize the opportunity to punish her for her frequent and merciless attacks on me in the past.

Opportunity never really presented itself, though. I knew her sides and abdomen were impervious. She never took her shoes off. Chances to poke under her arms were rare, and if my aim was off just a little it could come off very, very awkwardly.

But time was running out, and the idea of getting revenge was oh so tempting, and there she was sitting on the sofa idly reading, completely unsuspecting.

So I sat down next to her and firmly seized both of her knees.

Success!

Sarah pitched forward on the sofa, her book flying across the room, and gripped my forearms desperately. I held on to her knees for dear life and kept squeezing and tweaking. And she laughed. Instantly, wildly and helplessly. A giddy and high-pitched squeal of a laugh. In all the years I'd known Sarah I'd heard her laugh many times, sometimes heartily, but it was always a deep and throaty laugh, a laugh commensurate with her gravitas and demeanor. But this was a whooping, helpless, girlish giggle, and I think the mortifying sound of it pouring from her own mouth had as much to do with the embarrassed pink flush rising to Sarah's cheeks as anything else did.

She lurched back into the sofa cushions, eyes squeezed shut tight, unable to speak through her constant stream of giggles, her hands clasping my arms and struggling mightily to pull my hands from her knees--I fight I was winning, but barely, because Sarah's a strong girl.

She was trying to say something that started with "G," but her own laughter prevented her; it kept coming out as geeheehee, geeheehee. My determination to keep tickling her knees went beyond mere revenge at this point; I knew if I stopped she'dturn instantly to the task of destroying me.

Failing to pry my grip from her knees, Sarah let go, her hands flying helplessly up to her chest, elbows bent, palms up, an unintentional and automatic posture of surrender, one I recognized from having been driven into it many times myself, sometimes by Sarah--which kept me tickling.

I'd never heard her laugh like this. Her cheekbones were bright pink as she twisted and arched her back, her giggles a shrill and musical cascade. She started sliding slowly off the sofa and toward the floor, shirt riding up on her pale belly; I followed, of course, because to release her knees for even a second would mean my own doom. But leaning forward, staggering to follow her, reduced my position of strength, and as she finally landed on her back I had one foot on the floor and my other knee on the couch, trying to jockey for a more advantageous position. But she grabbed my arms and pulled and I tumbled onto my left shoulder next to her, no longer in contact with her vulnerable knees.

A lively and desperate scuffle ensued; lots of grabbing of wrists and shouldering of ribs, each of us fighting as if for our life. I'm not even sure what happened, specifically; I was focused entirely on trying to resist Sarah's weighted assaults and on trying to get my hands back on her knees.

Didn't work out though.

In the end, I found myself in the completely awkward position of lying on my back on the floor with Sarah sitting on my chest--with her back to me! In other words, her ass was close to my face--closer, anyway, than any face wants an ass to be if that ass doesn't belong to a girlfriend or wife. But obviously, ass/face proximity was, at that moment, absolutely the least of my worries.

I don't know if Sarah had any more idea how we'd ended up in this position than I did; our impromptu wrestling match had been so fevered and chaotic that I don't think she'd planned this outcome, at least not far in advance. But obviously it placed her at a distinct advantage.

I, of course, panicked. I felt more panicky about the prospect of this impending tickling than I'd ever felt before; I was humiliated that my whole body was writhing in alarmed anticipation, but I couldn't possibly stop it.

"Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah," I said. "I'm sorry I'm so sorry I apolo--!"

And that's when I felt her fingers on my abdomen, ten fingers, free and unimpeded, scrambling briskly in aimless circles on my stomach and sides. I shrieked. I shrieked and shrieked. If Sarah thought her melodious and girlish giggling was embarrassing, it had nothing on the ignominy of my helpless and animalistic shrieking.

Fingers on my stomach, fingers on my sides, fingers on my stomach and sides and stomach and sides for I don't know how long until...

Sarah lifted her hands from me. I couldn't see her face but there was barely a hint of a smile in her voice when she said, darkly, "I think you want me to do this to you."

"No I don't No I don't--"

"Why else would you be such a brat? You must like it. You must like it when I do this."

Which maybe meant she was going to stop!! This was promising.

"So I guess all I can do is tickle you and tickle you until you can't stand it anymore, until you never ever want it to happen to you again."

"NO Sarah PLEASE...!"

She turned her head, glancing over her shoulder. "And if that's not it? If you don't want me to do this? If you really just hate it? Well, then this is gonna be really bad." She turned away again. "Sorry 'bout that," she said. And more fingers on my stomach and my sides and my stomach and my sides.

My legs kicked and flailed pointlessly as I burst again into hysterical laughter. There was nothing else for me to do. Sarah's fingers scampered up and down my ribs, across my abdomen, past my love handles , because she wanted to make me squeal and writhe, and I had no choice: I had to squeal and writhe for as long as she wanted to make me do it.

How long was it before she stopped again? No idea. But she stopped again and I jumped in before she could say anything: "Sarah, please, I'll do anything you want, please no more, I'll do anything you want."

This seemed to interest and appease her. "You'll do anything I want, huh?"

"Anything, please yes, I promise."

"Well, okay," Sarah said. "I want you to suffer." Fingers on my ribs my sides my stomach my ribs my stomach my sides; giggles emitted from me in surprised and helpless protest.

She stopped again. "Which is good," she said, "because you're such a freakin' girl, it's easy to make you suffer."

"Sarah pleHEEHEEHEE--!" Stomach sides ribs ribs stomach sides.

Finally she stopped again. I was panting. I said, "Sarah, I promise, I'll never tickle you again."

"Um," she said, "no duh! I know you won't. That's not even an issue. I'm just trying to remember something."

What? But I wasn't about to ask, to enable her with clueless questions.

"This is what really kills you, isn't it?" she said as I felt her pulling my shirt up, exposing my abdomen. "This is what really used to kill you."

More involuntary writhing on my part. "Sarah, PLEASE...!"

"God, some things don't change, why are you still so freaking furry?" she said contemptuously. "You know there are places you can go to take care of that!"

And then the fresh and intolerable brushing of her fingertips across my bare skin, relentless, indomitable, so so so very ticklish! I was in renewed hysterics, reduced to nothing but the effects of her touch on my bare sides and stomach. Her fingers were warm and nimble and deft and strong and even in the haze of my hysteria I remember thinking "nothing in the universe could tickle more than this ever!"

"You know, Wade, you should take up bellydancing. I think you've got some aptitude." Her fingers scrambling in circles on either side of my navel, up to my rib cage and back down again, forcing my abdominal muscles to quiver and twitch, to recede and convulse under each swift touch. My laughter began to sound like blithering. "UNCLE!" I screamed. But apparently that doesn't work in real life.

The next coherent thought that arose incongruously in my brain was when I hoped, hoped so much, hoped fervently that she didn't notice the way my hysteria rose in pitch and desperation each time her fingers scampered across my love handle areas. But even as I thought that, as if she could read my mind, I felt her hands move to those areas and dwell there, fluttering and galloping in place, tickling and tickling and tickling and tickling. She could tell that this is what I couldn't stand: tickling fingers on my bare sides just above my waist, and so that was what she was gonna do to me, relentlessly, cruelly. I don't know if I've ever been so helpless in my life as I was at that moment, completely unable to do anything to stop the fluttering fingertips on my bare love handles; I felt like I was nothing but laughter, like laughter was all I was and all I could do. The torture, the constant laughter, began to go beyond giddy intolerability, to become almost bearable by becoming just a state of being: I am ticklishness, laughter is what I do. Almost.

Then. Finally. FINALLY. She stopped. And she said, "We have an understanding. You never tickle me again. You never try to tickle me again. You never allude to my being ticklish, around other people or just between us. Right?'

"Absolutely," I gasped.

"We have an understanding?"

"Yes, I promise."

"Because if you don't do that, I don't have to do this." Scampering up my abdomen; a fresh peal of involuntary giggles from me.

"I promise I PROMISE!" I coughed. "We have an understanding."

"Good. Because when you do that, and I do this, it reduces me. Takes me back to the old angry mean Sarah that I've been trying to leave behind. Right?"

"--Okay," I said.

"I'm probably gonna have to spend two therapist sessions just on having done this to you," she complained. "My therapist is gonna be all over this."

I don't think I even knew Sarah was in therapy. "--Sorry?" I said.

"And you don't ever annoy me in any way again, by being bratty or anything else," she said.

"How, how am I supposed to--?" But I was interrupted by renewed tickling above my waist; I convulsed and squealed. "YES I PROMISE I PROMISE!"

"Good." She sat back, pretty much crushing my chest under her, but I breathed shallowly and chose not to complain. She rested her hands on her hips, a job well done. "In college I wondered sometimes what it would be like if you got tickled until you couldn't take it anymore," she said. "Always people around in college, though, they would think it was weird. They'd think we had a flirtation or something stupid like that, think we liked each other or something, they wouldn't get it. Not like we get it."

"We have," I said, "an understanding."

Sarah flashed a merry smile at me over her shoulder. "Damn right," she said.
 
...this is one of the best stories I've read on here.

Like top five.

I think an understatement would be "good job"?
 
...this is one of the best stories I've read on here.

Like top five.

I think an understatement would be "good job"?

Wow. That's so flattering. I think an understatement would be "thank you!"
 
Shortly after that episode, I spoke briefly with Sarah when she called to talk to my then-fiancee. I asked her if she'd wound up having to talk about me with her therapist.

"Yes," she said. "It was so annoying."

What did her therapist say, I asked?

"She kept asking me things like, 'When someone's very ticklish like that, don't you think holding them down and tickling them qualifies as cruel?' And I was like 'YES! That's why I DID it!'" Also, she said, "You have no idea how annoying he can be! If you were there you would've done it too!"

Apparently she was instructed to try and not do things like that anymore. And she didn't, for quite a while. Must've required a lot of self-control on her part.

At one point, though -- and this was probably at least a year later -- she came close to breaking her resolve. Actually, yeah, it had to be more than a year later, because my wife and I were married by then. Sarah was in town. She, my wife, my wife's sister, and I were sitting around idly one night, watching the world go by.

I was sitting on the couch, and suddenly, apropos of nothing, my wife and her sister descended on me from either side and their fingers were upon my sides and stomach and I was thrown instantly into twitching and squirming.

Trying not to giggle, trying to block their nimble hands from my ribs and abdomen, writhing ridiculously, I launched into the ticklish person's usual litany of instinctive protests: "Stop! Don't! Stop! Quit it!" And then, burbling laughter starting to break through my words against my will: "Why am I always the one getting tickled?"

The attack abated somewhat--though it did not stop altogether; there were still fingers spidering at my sides, forcing my torso to twist and twitch--and my sister-in-law said, "Because you're ticklish."

Squirming, biting back the giggles, my hands darting from one set of encroaching fingers to another, I said, "But you're both ticklish why don't we tickle one of you??"

"Umm," my wife said, "Nope." And the fluttering fingertips ramped up again, scrambling across my stomach, plucking ruthlessly on my sides; I felt myself flinging back against the sofa cushions; I saw the battle rapidly being lost.

And across the room, past my tormentors' crisscrossed arms, I saw Sarah sitting serenely and benignly on the ottoman. The panic of the relentlessly tickled set in and:

"Sarah's ticklish!" I cried.

They stopped. Looming over me on the couch they stopped tickling me and looked at each other and looked at me. And then all three of us looked at Sarah. We were at a tipping point. If two or three of us besieged her and targeted her knees, I knew she'd be a goner.

Sarah's bearing was so authoritative, her self-control so rigorous, her moods so forbidding, that the notion of her being ticklish was mind-blowing to my wife and her sister. They'd stopped tickling me out of shock and surprise; they would have had the same reaction if I'd cried out instead "I'm a ficus plant!" The possibility of Sarah being ticklish was just as unlikely.

"Really??" my sister-in-law said in eager disbelief.

Of course, when the possibility of someone's being ticklish is raised, the next step is always the experimental tickling of that person. Between my knowledge of how sensitive Sarah's knees were and the fact that we outnumbered her 3-to-1, I was sure we could have her helpless in no time. All I had to do was confirm what I'd said, reassert my outlandish allegation, and the tide would turn.

My wife and sister-in-law were staring at Sarah, but Sarah was staring directly at me. She hadn't moved a muscle but her eyebrows were raised and her look spoke volumes: with those raised eyebrows she was reminding me of the last time she'd tickled me, of the promise she'd extracted from me never to tickle her again. She was silently but clearly threatening me with complete ticklish destruction at her hands at some unforeseen moment in the future. Nothing playful, nothing frivolous--just methodical and ruthless punishment, and we both knew she could and would do it and that I couldn't stop her. I could turn these women's torturous attention away from me at this moment and take Sarah down -- which would be so so so so so so satisfying, not to mention useful in the short run -- but Sarah was telling me, wordlessly, that I'd be ensuring my ticklish demise in the long run. I had a choice to make.

"Really?" my wife said.

Sarah stared silently at me. I stared back. I blinked. I swallowed.

"No, of course not," I said. "I'm kidding."

And instantly the two women had turned back to me and their hands were everywhere everywhere frigging EVERYwhere, stomach sides sides stomach neck knees sides. My wife and her sister giggled and taunted me.

"Liar."

"Big liar."

"You know what happens to liars? You know what we do to liars?"

"NO ee ee hee ee PLEASE!" (That last quote was from me.)

I thrashed and wriggled; I writhed and shrieked. I felt myself sliding off the sofa to the floor, my shirt riding up on my abdomen, someone's fingers spidering mercilessly across my convulsing tummy.

"Get his arms," I heard my wife say. "Hold his arms."

And through it all I glimpsed Sarah sitting blithely on the ottoman across the room, watching it all go down approvingly.
 
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Sounds like a pretty great saga - hopefully it doesn't end there. I'd like to see Sarah get her due. :)
 
Thanks as always for the compliments, guys.

I can guarantee the saga doesn't end there. As for Sarah getting her due... well, no spoilers, (and it's an ongoing relationship so the end hasn't been written yet), but right now the outlook is not optimistic...
 
A few months later we swung by Sarah's place on a trip through her hometown. During that visit we'd all been watching TV that night and a conflict erupted between me and Sarah about what to watch. I had the remote and tried to keep it from her; she, of course, endlessly practical, seized my sides and started tickling. Shrieking, I immediately released the remote and thrashed and writhed; she kept tickling for just a few milliseconds longer than she really needed to. And then that was all behind us.

And a few weeks after that, Sarah was coming to visit us for a few days. Sarah was due to arrive at our place soon for a visit, but I thought I had enough time to take a quick shower. While I did that, my wife was running around the house tidying up in a last-minute we're-about-to-have-guests-and-they-might-notice-we-live-like-pigs kind of mode. In her haste she scooped up the mound of dirty clothes I'd left on the bathroom floor, not noticing I guess that I didn't have any other clothes, dirty or otherwise, in the room.

When I turned off the shower I heard voices downstairs and realized that Sarah had arrived. I also discovered that my clothes were gone and, alas, so was my bath towel--another casualty of the eleventh-hour guest-is-coming better-do-some-laundry cleaning frenzy. The only thing I had at my disposal was sort of an oversized hand towel--pretty big, as hand towels go, but not as big as you'd want something to be to dry yourself off with, much less to be the only thing between your nakedness and the rest of the world.

Still, it seemed like I'd be safe. It wasn't a long dash from the bathroom to our bedroom. And Sarah would linger downstairs catching up with my wife for a while. So I dried off as best I could, held the towel around my waist--an awkward maneuver that required both hands, since it wasn't quite big enough for both ends to meet in the back--and I sprinted from the bathroom down the hall to our bedroom. Safe!

Except--

I burst into the bedroom to find Sarah standing in front of the mirror at my wife's dresser, arms overhead, pulling her hair back with one of my wife's hair ties. A big long drive, apparently the first thing she needed to do was ask my wife if she could borrow something to pull her hair back? Is this what women do?

So there I am with my towel, yelping in surprise. Sarah, hands overhead, messing with her hair, looked my way, registered the spectacle, and just started laughing. So did I, though not as freely.

"--Sorry," she chortled. "I'm sorry, Wade, I'll get out of here."

"No problem," I said, sheepish. "Uh, good to see you."

"Yeah, thanks," she said, making a beeline for the door. I stepped forward and sidled to the side and pressed my back against the wall, still holding the towel's ends behind me, prickling with involuntary anxiety about my position and her increasing proximity. I tried to relax by reminding myself: she's not a big tickler, she doesn't read tickling stories online, that's not where her brain's at, not every situation is an opportunity for tickling for her, this is perfectly safe, it's not even going to occur to her to tickle you. Relax. It's not even going to occur to her.

But.

As she passed, her hands moved -- or I imagined that they moved. It seemed like she was lifting them in my direction, her relaxed fingers in repose and seemingly no threat to anyone but she was just a few inches away and I'd been conditioned to be flinchy, so when I saw her hands move like that I, well flinched -- my abdominal muscles contracted, I twisted slightly at the waist, there was a sharp and apprehensive intake of breath. It was a fairly subtle involuntary response, but it was noticeable, and of course Sarah of all people was primed to notice it. It was a reflex, entirely involuntary, an accident; it came out just like breathing. And as soon as it came out I knew how dire a mistake it was.

Sarah stopped and turned to face me, a wry grin on her face.

"Problem, Wade?" she said.

My options were limited. I opted for throwing myself on her mercy.

"Sarah," I said. "Seriously. Don't tickle me."

She crossed her arms and tilted her head, looking at me appraisingly. "Why shouldn't I tickle you, exactly?"

"Because, because, you'd have to own up and talk about being mean in therapy," I said. "You hate that."

"I do," she said. "Of course, I'm overdue to talk about that anyway with our little fight over the remote last time I saw you, I haven't brought that up yet. So I'm going to have to do this anyway, could throw this in as a freebie."

"Sarah, c'mon," I said. "I'm kind of helpless here and..."

"Mm, not really talking me out of it here, Wade."

"I don't think Amanda would appreciate it," I said.

"Amanda!" Sarah hollered to my wife without moving from her spot. "Okay if I tickle your husband within an inch of his life?"

I heard my wife call up "Sure, go for it!"

I was feeling increasingly panicky. "She's only saying that because she, she doesn't now that I, y'know, that I'm mostly..."

Sarah called out again: "He's pretty much close to naked. Is that still okay?"

"Yeah, sure," my wife yelled cheerfully. "Just don't break him."

Sarah smiled smugly, her arms still crossed. "That settles that," she said.

I'd scooched along the wall until I was in a corner, which was unfortunate. I twisted slightly from side to side, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. "Sarah, c'mon."

Sarah planted her hands on her hips. "Wade, you're completely ridiculous. I have no intention of tickling you."

"Okay, uh, thanks..."

"Or I didn't," Sarah said, "until now." And suddenly her fingers were on my ribs, dancing and scrabbling. "This is a crisis entirely of your own making," she said. Surprised and panicked I emitted an urgent laugh that was sort of a high-pitched gurgle, a sound that no adult male should ever be heard to make. It was absurd enough that Sarah paused in her playful assault.

"Wow," she said. "New sounds from Wade."

"Sarah don't!" I cried. "I'll drop my towel."

Her look turned steely. "Don't," she said with a stern schoolmarmish finger pointing at me. "Do not under any circumstances drop that towel. I'll have nightmares for weeks, and you will be subject to my mockery for the rest of your life."

"Sarah, don't, I can't help it..."

"Help it," she ordered, and her fingers were scrabbling along my ribs again. I held tight to the towel with both hands, driven by compulsive modesty and fear of mortification, but as a result my sides were completely defenseless. I twisted from side to side--though not too far, as my ass was not entirely covered behind me--but nothing I did could shake those scampering fingers from my ribs. My giggles were coming in a steady stream now as my body jerked into a staccato series of tortured poses, swiveling, ducking, bending at the waist, but she just wouldn't stop. At this point the sounds I was making fell into the classic "heeheehee" category, a merry-sounding giggle that just encouraged Sarah to keep tickling and keep tickling.

Until she stopped.

Thank God.

I straightened up a little, trying not to seem winded. "Okay," I said wearily--but she interrupted me.

"You're probably feeling pretty lucky," she said.

"Yeah, I'm the luckiest boy in the world," I deadpanned. "I'll see you downstairs."

"Lucky," she continued, gesturing at my stomach with her open hand in a circular motion, "because I'm not tickling your whole abdominal area there."

I was struck by a giddy dread: apparently we weren't done here.

"I don't know if you're aware," Sarah continued, "but you happen to be afflicted with a drastically ticklish stomach."

"Okay, Sarah..."

"This is extremely rare," she said, raising the volume of her spiel to shut me up. "Because this condition is typically found only in eight-year-olds and in college cheerleaders."

I felt my cheeks flush warm. "Hey," I said.

This taunting and teasing wasn't Sarah's usual M.O. I had apparently caught her in either a really good or a really bad mood, and whichever it was she was unleashing it on me. Whichever it was, it didn't bode well.

But Sarah was still talking. "So you're very lucky," she said, "that I've been avoiding that area."

Her mouth twisted with a smile she seemed to be trying to suppress.

"Until now," she said. And her hands darted toward my stomach.

She was right, of course; she spoke from experience. My entire abdominal area is a tickle disaster zone. So standing there with my hands fixed behind me and her fingers rushing toward my bare stomach, I couldn't help it: I twitched violently and, well... I'm not proud of this, but... I squealed. Yes, that's right. I admit it. Apparently I'm a squealer.

Again, my repertoire of noises froze Sarah in her tracks. "Well," she said. "This is fun."

And her hands darted at a different abdominal spot and I twisted and squealed again. And she did it again, and I responded just as she wanted me to. Dart, twitch, squeal. Dart, twitch, squeal. Each time she stopped short of actually touching me, and each time I couldn't help but react anyway.

"Sarah," I said again, growing desperate.

"I didn't realize the air around you was actually ticklish as well," she said. Dart, twitch, squeal.

Here's the thing though about the dart-twitch-squeal game: unlike actual tickling, the effect does wear off. Eventually--belatedly, if you as me, but anyway--my body gets hip to the fact that her fingers are never actually making contact with my flesh, and the twitch/squeal response gets dialed way back. This disappointed her, I think.

"Okay," I said. "It's not working anymOOOOORE NO!!"

Which sounded like that because Sarah--sensibly, predictably--switched to actual tickling; her hands darted in and just kept going, and now her fingers were scampering and spidering across my stomach and sides, steady, unyielding, indomitable, the touches light and feathery in character but firm and steely in their relentlessness.

I'd thought I was giggling and shrieking before but now I was out of control. Jerking, thrashing, twisting, flinching, my torso undulating in the corner as if it had any hope whatsoever of evading Sarah's fingertips.

"Please!" I hiccuped through the cascading laughter. When most people tickle me I'm quick to plead with them--whatever it takes. But my longstanding adversarial friendship with Sarah has always made me loathe to give her the satisfaction of my begging. So when I start in with the "pleases"--which I nearly always do, eventually--it means I really don't think I can take much more.

Of course, she doesn't know that. Or she doesn't care.

"Ple-e-e-e-ease," I giggled hysterically, slumping against the wall, twisting each time her fingers wandered over a new sensitive spot.

"Don't drop that towel," she kept saying. "Don't you drop it."

And I didn't. All I wanted to do was throw my hands in front of me, try to fend her off, but the overriding imperative--hold the towel! Shield your gonads!--prevented me. And so as I slid writhing to the floor I couldn't do anything but squeal and laugh.

And I was laughing so hard, the giggles pouring deliriously forth in an uninterrupted mirthful-sounding stream, I couldn't really hear anything else but I swear it seemed like Sarah sighed contentedly as her scrabbling fingers followed me down to the floor, moving efficiently from a twitching spot near my navel to the love handles that she may have remembered were so deadly to me--or if she didn't remember, she rediscovered it pretty quick, because it seemed like her strong swift hands kept returning to my waist with increasing frequency and for increasing durations, lingering there as I arched my back and howled, my hands now pressing the towel against my front because wriggling on the floor increased the risk of my modesty's exposure.

"Have you gained a little weight, Wade?" Sarah said matter-of-factly as her hands wandered systematically from ticklish spot to ticklish spot, making chatty conversation as though I weren't laughing wildly on the floor. "You should try a spin class." Tickle, tickle; yelp, shriek. "You do this to me," she muttered, shaking her head, fingers darting and scribbling. "Why do you do this to me? You practically dare me to, and then I can't stop." Fingers dancing and scampering, me wriggling back and forth on the floor laughing helplessly, my bare abdomen an unmissable and defenseless target. Tickling me there like this was the easiest thing in the world; every brush of her fingers brought forth a new pitch of hysterics. "How could anyone stop, Wade?" Tickling tickling; hoarse and desperate giggling.

I don't know how long Sarah's fingers had been dancing cruelly around and above my waist when I noticed my wife crouching next to us; I dimly perceived an amused smile on her face. "Okay, don't kill him," she said, but it was as if her mouth and her hands were following different instructions, because even as she sweetly counseled Sarah to give me a break I realized her fingers were thrumming lightly up my ribs and toward my underarms.

I thin I've mentioned before that however ticklish I used to be with my wife, now that we're married her power over me has increased exponentially. Her well-placed fingertips can reduce me to a heap in record time, whereas when we were dating I usually had at least a semblance of a fighting chance.

So what I'm trying to say is, with Sarah attacking my abdomen and my wife's feathery fingers advancing maddeningly on my underarms, it is only understandable that that's the moment at which I let go of the towel.

It didn't go anywhere right away, but it was unsecured, and Sarah noticed immediately as if an alarm had gone off. Her hands were clapped to her eyes and she was fumbling her way out of the room--"Oh! The towel! He dropped the towel!"

After Sarah was gone my wife's fingers kept sweetly and savagely dive-bombing me for a few more seconds, their light and intolerable spidering throwing me into renewed hysterics, writhing naked on the floor as my pitiful towel was flung aside. But she stopped and kissed me head and cupped my flushed cheek in her hand as she said brightly: "Honey? We have a guest. Come on down now."

And my wife flounced away. And sheepishly I got dressed. And that night I think the three of us had some kind of couscous. Which I made, by the way.
 
So after that, Sarah went back home (she lived out of town).

She called to talk to my wife some weeks later. I took the liberty of asking if she'd felt obligated to mention her most recent assault on me to her therapist. "Yes," Sarah said, sounding very annoyed.

What did she say about it, I asked.

"What do you think she said? She didn't like it, she thought it was mean and I'm not supposed to be mean. She said I was exercising my least charitable impulses. No, she said I was letting you goad me into exercising my least charitable impulses."

What? I did nothing to invite this, I protested; there was no goading involved.

Sarah snorted. "Yeah, okay, whatever. She actually asked me if this was some kind of mutual playful thing we do, if the reason I do this to you sometimes is because you actually like it."

What'd you say?

"I said God, I hope not! If he liked it this would all be a huge waste of time! And she was like, well, in that case if he's really as ticklish as all that then this is really cruel behavior and I should make a priority of not doing it."

And what'd you say?

"I said then I don't have any way to punish you when you're being annoying."

But I'm never annoying.

"If I were there I would so punish you for that."

Did she say anything else?

"She said that if this were pain I were inflicting on you instead of tickling that I wouldn't be so quick to forgive myself for it, and really torturing you with tickling is no different from torturing you with pain."

And what'd you say?

"I said it's totally different, I would never torture you with pain, because pain wouldn't embarrass and humiliate you enough."

Yeah, I don't see what your therapist is talking about; you're obviously a total sweetheart.

"Whatever. I pretty much need to stop torturing you just so I can quit wasting money talking about you to my therapist."

That's fine by me.

"I know it is! Which also pisses me off. Go get your wife, I didn't want to talk to you in the first place."

And from that point forward, for about two years, Sarah exercised incredible self-restraint. We saw her several times, in several different contexts, and she didn't once tickle me. I confess I found myself taking advantage of the situation -- I maybe teased her a little more relentlessly than usual, was deliberately a little bit more annoying than I had to be -- and you could see the temptation flicker across her frustrated face, but she abstained. I was safe. I was bulletproof.

Until I wasn't, but that's the next chapter...
 
I don't know how you had such restraint. I know you said she never took her shoes off but if I were you I would have just found a way to take off her shoes and go to town on her feet the next time she tried anything. You would've definitely built up some tickling karma by that point.
 
So Sarah's good behavior stretched on for a year, and then another year. We continued to see her periodically, during which times, I confess, I would sometimes be obnoxious on purpose just to enjoy the spectacle of her glowering at the prospect of not being able to punish me with her preferred method of comeuppance. It's possible I was kind of a brat -- some might even say a dick -- during this time, but torturing her with her inability to torture me seemed like poetic justice at the time.

Then, about five years ago or so, as Sarah was continuing her 2+ year cruelty-free streak, my wife and I were planning a trip to her hometown, and Sarah mentioned that her therapist would welcome the chance to talk to me. It was by no means required but her therapist seemed to think it might be helpful. Sarah conveyed that she wasn't crazy about the idea, and the notion didn't really appeal to me, but SOMEone who shall remain nameless in the online tickling community exercised her powers of persuasion and talked me into agreeing to see her.

So in August of that year I found myself sitting in the office of Sarah's therapist as Sarah waited out in the waiting room.

"Thanks for coming," the therapist said, coming out from behind her desk and sitting in a chair directly across from me. "Please call me Frances."

"Okay," I said. "And, y'know, I'm Wade."

She smiled a bright, broad smile. "I know," she said. "Nice to meet you, Wade."

Okay: after everything Sarah had ever said about her therapist, about how demanding and authoritarian and unforgiving she was supposed to be, I don't know what I expected but I think I expected her to be physically and temperamentally imposing -- like a gym teacher or a headmistress. I definitely expected her to be older. Instead, Frances was fairly petite, and seemingly younger than me, and cute. Really cute. Hot, actually. The longer I sat in there with her, the more attractive she became. She has shoulder-length golden-brown hair, pulled back in a very pragmatic ponytail, and full dimpled cheeks and quick expressive eyebrows and these hazel eyes that sort of sparkle kaleidoscopically if you gaze into them too long. Also--because this is the kind of thing I notice--she was wearing this outfit with three-quarters sleeves and her hands and forearms were lovely: hands were smooth and shapely; arms were gently muscled with a glittering, golden down.

Okay, I'm dwelling on this too long. Just suffice it to say: she wasn't what I expected.

"Thanks for coming in, Wade, I really appreciate it," she said. "It's nice of you to take the trouble. You and Amanda are really good friends to Sarah."

"No problem."

"You should know," she said, sounding practiced and thorough, "that anything I share with you about Sarah is something she has explicitly authorized me to share. And you should also not feel obligated to share anything with me that you're not comfortable talking about." Everything she said was offered up with a warm and professionally inviting smile.

"Sounds good," I said.

"So," she said. "Sometimes Sarah tickles you."

I swallowed. This was really surreal, and potentially titillating in all sorts of inappropriate ways. "Yep," I said. "That's correct."

"Tell me about that," she said, leaning forward, propping an elbow on her knee and resting her chin on her pretty little fist.

"I mean, uh." What was there to say? "Yeah, she does, she... sometimes we clash, I guess, we don't always get along that well, moment-to-moment, I say or do things that antagonize her and she, yeah, as a result she tickles me."

"Okay," Frances said. Totally non-judgmental, totally friendly. Her whole manner was designed to make me relax, and it was totally working.

"She'll, like, hold me down and tickle me," I said. "Like, at length. Until I can't take it anymore."

"And you're very ticklish," Frances said, her chin still resting on her knuckles. She smiled gently. "You don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about. I'm not trying to embarrass you."

"Right, yeah," I said. "I guess I'm, yeah, I'm pretty ticklish."

"So why does she do this?"

"She does it because I can't stand it," I said. "She does it to torture me."

Frances lowered her arm so that both arms rested crossed on her knee and leaned forward a little. "And how do you, you know, react? When she's doing this?"

"How do I react?"

A quick nod. "When she's tickling you." When she said that her fingers sort of squinched in the air to signal a tickling motion.

"I mean... well, I mean, obviously." I grinned and gestured vaguely at Frances. "I mean, what do you do? When someone tickles you?"

She smiled politely. "I'm curious about what you do."

"I mean, I laugh. I, you know, laugh a lot. I laugh, like, uncontrollably, and I struggle."

"You struggle."

"Sure, it's involuntary. I laugh and I struggle, I try to get away..."

"You do try to get away," she said.

"Well, yeah."

"You try to get away, but you can't?"

"I mean, sometimes I do," I said.

"Do you usually?"

"I guess not, I guess usually I... don't get away," I said. "I mean, usually she's holding me down or she's got me cornered or something, and also when I'm being tickled my defenses go a little haywire, but I mean yes, I do struggle and I squirm and I tell her to stop."

Frances's eyes narrowed and she clasped her hands. "You do tell her to stop."

"I tell her to stop," I said. "I beg her to stop, I plead. Yeah."

"But while you're doing this, you're..." She gestured at me. "You're laughing."

"Right, yeah."

"You're begging her to stop but as you're doing that you're smiling and laughing," she said.

"Sure," I said. "I mean, she's tickling me. I mean... when you're getting tickled... or do you ever tickle people?"

Another patient and almost knowing smile from Frances, shutting that avenue of conversation down.

"But basically, you're unusually ticklish and this is torture for you," she said.

"Yes," I said.

Frances's chin resting in her palm. "Are you confident Sarah knows it's torture for you?"

"Yes," I said. "I'm sure. That's why she does it."

"But you two are friends," she said.

"Sure," I said.

"And it's not like... she's not causing you pain," she said. "She's not pulling your hair or sticking you with pins or burning you with matches or drawing blood."

"Well, no," I said. "That would be insane."

"But if she truly wanted to make you suffer, she could do these sorts of things," she said. "Instead, because you're friends, she does this other thing instead, which is competitive and agitating but also playful and friendly. The kind of thing friends or siblings might do to each other. Right?"

"I mean, sure," I said, "I guess." I was trying to figure out where this was going. Was Frances building a case for setting Sarah's tickling fingers loose on me again? "But I mean... she wouldn't do those other things, because she's not a sociopath, and because my wife would be angry with her, and you could get arrested for that sort of stuff. Also I think she knows that it, that I'm embarrassed."

"That you're embarrassed," Frances said.

"You know, that it embarrasses me... that uh, you know..."

"That you're so ticklish, you mean?" Frances said. "You think she knows that it embarrasses you that she can overpower you in this particular way, by tickling you." I swear her fingers flexed in the air again.

"Right," I said. "It's part of the, like, punishment. I wouldn't be embarrassed if she was pulling my hair, because nobody likes having their hair pulled. But this other thing, not everyone is so... yeah."

"It embarrasses you that you're vulnerable to her in this particular way," Frances said. "That she knows this about you and can exploit it, and you think that, for her, that embarrassment is one of the things she's punishing you with."

"Yes!" I said. It seemed like maybe I was in the clear.

"Do you ever get mad?"

"Sure," I said.

"I mean with Sarah." She sat back in her chair, crossing her arms. "Do you ever get angry with her? Tell her that you're angry with her that she does this to you?"

"Well, I mean..." I shrugged. "I mean, I'm laughing, so."

"I mean afterwards. Or the next day. Or whenever," Frances said, leaning forward again. "I would think that... it seems like if I were a terribly ticklish person and someone insisted on exploiting that, I might tell them that makes me angry. It seems like that kind of a conversation might get them to stop it."

"I guess not," I said. "I don't know. I guess it never occurred to me that was an option."

"Do you need it to be an option? Do you need to decide to get angry at someone?"

"I, no, I guess not, but..." I glanced out the window. "I guess I don't get that angry generally with people anyway. I'm not a very angry guy."

"But if someone is torturing you? Someone who knows that you're a painfully ticklish person is holding you down and tickling you for prolonged periods because she knows you can't tolerate it, you don't feel like you have the right to get angry and tell her that's enough?"

"I guess it never occurred to me," I said again. "I mean, I mean... I never get angry at other people, so."

"But when someone is torturing you, physically torturing you for fun," she began.

"No, that's what I mean, when other people tickle me, it never occurs to me to get mad, I just don't get mad," I said. "About that."

She cocked her head and squinted and lifted her fingers to her chin. "Who else tickles you?"

"I mean, you know, I mean... other people," I said. "When you're ticklish, people tickle you. If you're--. Are you not ticklish, or...? Do you, when you find out someone is ticklish, do you not...?"

She wasn't biting.

"Other people," I said. "Tickle me on occasion. I mean, my wife."

Frances shrugged and gave a sharp shake of the head. "Well, of course."

"Uh. My wife's sister, sometimes she, y'know, goes after me."

Frances's eyes narrowed. "Okay."

"My cousins, sometimes, when I was younger," I said. "Friends at college when I was in college. My coworkers."

"Your coworkers," Frances said, a little startled.

"I mean, not all of them," I said. "Some of my coworkers, yeah."

"At work, like at the office, they tickle you?"

"Not all the time."

"But are you saying, in a protracted way?"

"Not like Sarah," I said. "Obviously. But, you know... semi-protracted."

Frances nodded and stared at me.

"It's just something that happens," I said, "when you’re a ticklish person. It's an intolerable sensation and if I could make it not happen I would, but I also understand: the way I respond when I'm tickled, the laughing and the smiling and the noises and the squirming around, I mean, the involuntary responses are kind of almost designed to make people want to keep tickling you."

"Yeah," Frances said. "I suppose some people might respond in that way."

"So I don't hold it against people that they do it," I said. "But I try to avoid and escape it when I can. And Sarah makes it her business to try and prevent me from avoiding or escaping it."

"She does," Frances said, nodding. "Okay. And when was the last time that she, that Sarah...?" Again with the fingers fluttering in the air, both hands this time, almost like she was tickling an invisible rib cage.

"Long time," I said. "I mean, almost two years now I think."

Frances smiled wryly at me. "You must appreciate that."

"I was going to send you a muffin basket," I said.

Frances let out a charming bark of a laugh. "Well, thank you so much for coming in today, Wade," she said. "Like I said, you're a good friend to Sarah and she's lucky to have you and Amanda in her life."

I looked around. "Sooo... we're done?"

Frances smiled pleasantly and threw her hands up and let them come flopping back down in her lap. "We're done," she said. "I hope it wasn't uncomfortable for you at all."

"It was different," I said. "But no, yeah, it was fine, no problem."

Frances led me to the office door and opened it; Sarah stood up in the waiting room. She was going to come in and have her session now.

"You guys done talking about me?" Sarah said.

"What else is there to talk about?" I said.

"Thanks again, Wade," Frances said.

"Yeah," Sarah said with a sardonic grimace. "Thanks, Wade!"

I left the appointment feeling pretty confident that I'd maintained the status quo, that I'd successfully encouraged Frances to continue her moratorium on Sarah's tickling me. But it was also discombobulating and a little arousing, spending so much time talking about nothing but my ticklishness with an attractive stranger. I could totally see going to Frances for therapy, except insofar as I'd definitely fall for her and screw everything up.
 
Fascinating meeting with the therapist and well written. That therapist knows what up.
 
So. That encounter with Sarah's therapist happened, I guess, in August of 2011. The rest of that visit to Sarah's place concluded without incident, and we went back home. We continued to see Sarah once every few months, usually as she'd come to visit us, and she continued to refrain from tickling me, and I'd continue, on occasion, to taunt or goad her, gently, because I knew I could with impunity.

So, it must have been sometime in mid-2012, maybe? That Sarah was once again visiting us. It was a somewhat more protracted visit than usual; she was following up some potential job leads as she was considering making a move from her current career situation back home. It was yet another uneventful visit -- relaxing, reassuring, torment-free. Sarah was doing a lot of knocking around town on her own so we were each on different schedules much of the time.

One night, shortly before she was due to go back home, I was in the house alone, on the sofa, watching TV; my wife had just recently gotten into teaching yoga and/or Pilates or some such thing (I support her fully in her hobbies but I confess I don't speak Exercise) at a local fitness center and was off teaching an evening class. The door opened and Sarah trudged in, weary and discouraged after a generally unsuccessful day of trying to network her way to some new job opportunities.

"Hey," I called to her.

"Hey," she said.

I heard her drop her messenger bag on the floor by the door; I heard her clomp into the kitchen. I heard the freezer door open. And then I heard:

"Goddamnit!"

And then she was looming over me.

"Wade, did you finish that ice cream?"

"Uh," I said, "maybe."

"That was mine," she said.

"I thought Amanda bought it," I said.

"Amanda bought it but it was mine," she said. "She bought one for her and one for me and that one was mine."

"Um," I said. "Oops?"

"You dick," she cried, and lunged at me.

I couldn't help laughing as I caught her wrists in my hands and stumbled to get away from the sofa. "What are you doing?" I said.

"All I wanted," she said through gritted teeth, "when I got back, was that fucking ice cream." She kept trying to reach for me as if she were going to throttle me but I fought to keep her at bay.

"I think we have some yogurt," I said.

Her eyes blazed with disbelief and fury. "Okay, that does it," she said.

She was advancing on me, which meant I was stumbling backwards, her arms fighting stiffly against my grip. I was still chuckling; it was just so ridiculous. I wasn't even fighting back, because, I figured, what could she do to me? She was neutered, she was defanged. "Sarah," I said, "what are you doing?"

"I'm planning on murdering you," she said, still pressing forward.

I caught my hip on the corner of the sofa as I shambled backwards; I lost my balance. "That, that sounds messy," I said. "Hey, wait, look out, I'm gonna fall."

"Good," Sarah said.

"No seriously Sarah I'm gonna--" I slipped down on one knee with a painful thud and she took advantage of her leverage to wrestle me down onto my back. Which I kind of let her do. Fighting her off seemed like a hassle, and it would prolong this nonsense, and my show was on. I let her drop me and hoped we were almost done with this. She huffed officiously as she decidedly and deliberately straddled me with her legs and sat firmly on my chest.

"Oof!"

She straddled my chest, her hands planted on her thighs. My elbows rested uncomfortably against her bejeaned knees. For the first time all night she smiled a little bit. "Just like old times," she said.

"Ugh," I said, shifting my weight to try and get my chest to a comfortable place under her weight. "Yeah," I said. "Okay. You win. Now get off."

"No," she said.

"Sarah," I said. "I was watching something, now get off!"

"No," she said. "Maybe I'll sit here until you starve to death." She pursed her lips in a smug little smile. "Or, I don't know, maybe I'll tickle you."

The very suggestion sent a vestigial thrill of panic through me. "Yeah, right," I said.

"Yeah right what?" she said.

"You can't," I said. "Frances said so."

"No she didn't," Sarah said.

"This is stupid," I said. "Yes she did, you told me yourself, I talked to her myself, you're not supposed to, it's not good for you."

"She changed her mind about that," Sarah said.

I tried not to look worried. "She did not," I said. "When?"

"When you went in and talked to her. As soon as you left her office," Sarah said. "I sat down and she said I could stop worrying about tickling you, that it wasn't a productive use of my, like, psychological energy."

"She did not," I said. "I was there, I talked to her, everything was fine, why would she say that?"

"She said it seemed clear that you and I contributed equally to all the facets of our interpersonal dynamic, or some shit like that, and that I didn't have to be assuming full responsibility for it all the time or whatever."

I scrutinized Sarah's face for signs of joking. "I don't believe you," I said. "You're messing with me."

Sarah lifted her hands from her thighs and leaned back slightly. "Yeah," she said. "You're probably right." And with that I felt the old familiar agitating feeling of her fingertips brushing against my stomach through my shirt; every muscle in my body contracted and instantly the helpless giggles were pouring forth. "Ah!" I giggled. "Ah no ah no no no ah ah ah!"

Sarah removed her hands from my abdomen and crossed her arms, looking at me with a certain superiority. "Or then again," she said, "maybe I'm telling the truth."

"You can't do that," I said, my coolness gone, my breathing shallower. "You're going to have to report that to Frances, she's going to disapprove."

"I told you, Wade," she said, "Frances is out of the business of being your tickle monitor."

"That doesn't make any sense!" I cried. "That was months ago, that I was there. If she released you then why haven't you tickled me at all since?"

"Haven't felt like it," she said. She tilted her head back and forth and wiggled her shoulders in an attempt to look saucy. "Now, though, I feel like it." She uncrossed her arms, displayed her fingers in ready formation. "I really really feel like it."

"NO!" I said, squirming uneasily under her weight. "I don't believe you, I have to talk to Frances about this."

"I'll give you her email," she said. "I'll give you her phone number. Talk to her all you want. But." She flashed those fingers again and feinted back toward my abdomen. "In the meantime..."

"Oh no Sarah," I said, words pouring forth unbidden and instinctive. "No no wait."

She paused. "Although," she said.

"Yes, yeah," I said. "Although what?"

"What time is Amanda coming home?"

"She's due back any second now," I said. "She should be walking through the door any time now."

Sarah's eyes narrowed. She reached behind her again. "No really," she said. "What time?" And her fingers went to town on my stomach and sides again.

I was desperate to protect my abdomen from her practiced onslaught but helpless to do anything about it; my fists were balled up against my chest in a gesture of embarrassing impotence. I couldn't do anything but laugh, anyhow; Sarah was barely exerting herself and already I was in a mindless place of laughter and giddy suffering. I wriggled and thrashed under her weight but all I could do was take it. Then I remembered she was tickling me just to get the information she wanted -- what time was my wife coming home? Her tactics were flawless: the tickling drove me to a place where I needed needed needed to do something to make it stop, but it also scrambled my thinking so that I couldn't come up with a lie -- all I could do to make it stop was say the truth, the truth, which was --

"Nine o'clock," I brayed, and immediately the fingers receded from my sensitive spots. "She gets out at nine o'clock," I panted.

Sarah glanced at her watch. "Good," she said. "Because don't get me wrong: Amanda is great and all, but she's compassionate, and she seems very fond of you for some reason, and I can't imagine she'd be willing to let this go on as long as it needs to."

"Sarah, please, you've made your point..."

She crossed her arms again. "Now, how long has it been that I've been restraining myself, Wade? Two, three years? Four years? A long time, right?"

"Sarah, look..."

"Some guys in your situation would have taken advantage of all that time to develop some self-control, to cultivate some discipline, to master their weakness so that they wouldn't be so vulnerable if and when their protection went away," she said. "Other guys, I guess, would just spend all that time being bratty and annoying to me because they felt bulletproof and they assumed that was never ever going to change."

She looked down at me. I looked up at her. A delighted smile crinkled her eyes. Her arms were uncrossed again; she was leaning back again.

"Let's find out which kind of guy you are, shall we?"

"No no Sarah NO--"

And her fingers were upon me again, moving unimpeded up and down my sides and across my writhing stomach, fingertips in constant motion, bringing all manner of hysterics flooding to the surface in spite of my wild desire to fight the sensations. My head thrashed back and forth and my eyes were squeezed shut or nearly but it made the torture worse to know that Sarah was gazing placidly down at me from her perch above, relishing how her calm and constant unseen fingerwork behind her wrought such delightfully uncontrollable reactions. I hated being so helpless; I couldn't stand the smile that spread unbidden across my face, resented the high-pitched HEE-HEE-HEE giggling coming from my throat, the way my torso wriggled back in forth in a spastic parody of evasive maneuvers, the way my fists clenched pointlessly against my chest, my arms pressed awkwardly against her knees...

Wait a second, I thought: her knees!

Maybe I could get out of this.

Her fingertips scampered mercilessly down my sides, throwing my constant giggles into a higher pitch and sending me into a new involuntary convulsion that lifted my right shoulder off the floor and pressed the left one harder against it, but I had enough presence of mind left to grip both her kneecaps with my hands and start squeezing.

The effect was immediate: I felt her touch recede instantly from my abdomen as she lurched forward with an involuntary "Ah! Ah! Ahhh! Wade, STOP!"

I kept up the pressure, though, and I saw her grimacing with the effort of suppressing her laughter; she clawed at my hands, trying to pry them away from her knees, and I kept squeezing, and she couldn't get my hands off her knees, and I thought I felt her balance getting unstable, when suddenly she shifted tactics -- she steeled herself, removed her hands from my hands despite the debilitating ticklish sensations I was inflicting on her knees, and she reached behind her and seized my sides, hard. As far as she was concerned this was tickling for her life, and she kneaded my sides with a newfound firmness and ferocity that surprised and destabilized me; I shrieked, and -- my nervous system going haywire -- I instinctively released her knees, my hands abandoning that mission to leap to my torso's defense, even though there was nothing they could do.

Triumphant, Sarah released my sides, seized my hands, and with quick and brutal strength she deposited each of my arms under the pressure of one of her knees; both of my arms, at my sides, were now solidly pinned to the floor by her weight. I thrashed and wriggled but to no avail; I was now completely pinned down. In that position, the sight of Sarah looming above me, her hands free and fluttering and dangerous, was a little terrifying.

Sarah smirked with satisfaction at my new predicament. "Hey there, Wade," she said. "Helpless much?"

I squirmed wildly. "Sarah, Sarah, you've made your point...!"

"You know what," she said. "It's been so long since I've done this that I'm completely forgetting stuff. Like I totally forgot to do this..." And she reached behind her; I felt her fingers plucking at my T-shirt and tugging it up, exposing my stomach and sides. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I guess I'm pretty rusty. I'll do better next time."

I squirmed even more. Even the very prospect of feeling her firm brisk fingertips against my bare stomach was more than I could take. "Sarah, no, Sarah, wait, Sarah, don't touch my--!"

But that last sentence ended in an embarrassingly high-pitched trill of hysterical giggling as her fingertips alit on my bare stomach. That tickling was every bit as intolerable as I'd expected it to be, and the laughter that cascaded out of me had a wild and desperate edge to it.

"Don't touch your what?" Sarah spoke up so I could hear her over my own giggly caterwauling. "Don't touch your stomach?" Even through my hysterics I could see her eyebrows pinching together in an exaggeration of pretended regret. "Oooooh, Wade, I'm so sorry, but stomach-touching is a big part of the plan tonight. The agenda is pretty much all stomach-touching. I hope that's not going to be a problem."

Her fingertips made their way in a leisurely and methodical fashion all around my twitching abdomen. Like most people, Sarah didn't have a lot of different M.O.'s when it came to tickling -- it was an instinctive act and usually she went at it the way I could feel that she was doing now: her fingers together, their tips brushing back and forth against the surface of my skin almost like she was doing a hand-puppet. The pressure was light but relentless and one of the things that made it so intolerable was the way she'd just never stop: her hands made their way all across my sides and stomach and ribs and waist and back again, never stopping that indomitable brushing movement, never taking a break, creating explosive and incapacitating eruptions of ticklish sensations everywhere they went.

My hands were trapped and my abdomen was exposed and all I could do was wriggle under her weight and laugh; forming words was already beyond me. The laughter was constant and mindless; it paused only when I took a breath, and then it resumed with my next exhalation, the house echoing with my giggles.

Sarah finally stopped; I panted with relief. "You win," I said. "You win. Let me up."

Sarah glanced at her watch. "Oh, don't worry, we've got plenty of time, Wade. We're not done yet."

I writhed furiously under her weight; she didn't even budge. "C'mon, this is enough! You got me, let me go!"

"How long did we say it's been? Since last we did this?" She perched her hands on her hips. "Two, three years? I don't think we've made up for a couple of years already, do you?"

"Sarah this is AAAIEEHEE!"

Her fingers were on my stomach again and my body responded obligingly: convulsions, sharp and squealing giggles. Sarah smiled and shook her head, pausing in the tickling yet again to plant her palms on her thighs. "God, dude, you really do have such a sensitive tummy."

It wasn't like Sarah to use cutesy diminutives like "tummy," and hearing her use it to describe me was reflexively and unexpectedly embarrassing; I felt warmth rush to my cheeks and I turned my head to look at the wall, trying to hide it from her. I don't even think she noticed.

"I wonder what that's about," she went on. "I mean: why? I mean, look at you: obviously it's not like it confers some kind of evolutionary advantage, right?" She positioned her hands behind her again in a pose of readiness; my whole body tensed up. "I'd be happy to look into that, see if I can get some answers for the next time we do this."

"We don't have to do this a next time!" I cried out.

"Have you not met us?" Sarah said, but almost like she was talking to herself. "Of course there'll be a next time." And the fingers were on my sides and stomach again: sides and stomach, stomach and sides, and I jerked and wriggled and lost myself in laughter once again.

"Man, some things just don't ever change, do they," she said. "All your spots are still there. Like there's this spot... somewhere around here..." And I felt a pair of fingers flicking insistently in the vicinity above and around my navel, forcing a softer but just as helpless stream of shuddering giggles out of me. "...This spot," she continued, "where if you hit it right you can feel your stomach muscles just like wigging out underneath, this like violent electrical twitch. Hard to find it, though..." that pair of fingers kept exploring as my torso jerked back and forth in empty protest and my suffering laughter just kept coming. "...It's almost like it moves around. Is this it?" A sharp bark of laughter from me. "Not sure, it's hard to tell," she said.

"And then of course there's this place," she said. "THE place. The place you hoped I'd forget about..."

I knew I knew I knew where she was going. "Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah no don't Sarah please--!"

But her hands found their targets, the soft swells of flesh on either side just above the waist of my pants, and once again my protests dissolved in piercing cackles. As always her tactics changed upon landing there: her fingers went from brushing back and forth in formation and shifted to more of an arpeggio, each finger cycling softly against my side in an endless wavelike pattern.

My arms pinned, my abdomen bare, and the newly unleashed Sarah's fingers letting loose on one of my most maddening spots: I lost it.

It was all laughter. It was all giggles. I struggled because that's what my animal brain told my body to do but I didn't have any hope of getting away anymore; I sank helplessly into the tickling as if it were a thick warm ocean, its surface closing over my head. All I could do was laugh so that's all I did; her fingers on my sides weren't stopping and wouldn't stop and I vaguely remembered this feeling from the last time Sarah had sat on me and let me have it, something that nudged the torture toward something almost resembling bearability, and this time what that almost merciful feeling came from was a loss of hope. As long as I thought she might stop tickling me, as long as I thought I could bargain or threaten or talk her out of it, as long as I held out some hope of slipping away from the burden of my ticklishness, I couldn't stand it. It was too much. But hoping was ridiculous, and if I surrendered hope then the torture became just a little less acute.

And why not surrender hope? Sarah knew me too well--there's a weird intimacy we've developed over the years as she's explored and discovered the extent and profundity of my weakness; there's only one person in the world who's better equipped to incapacitate me with tickling, and that's my wife, and even she hasn't been tickling me for as many years as Sarah has. So it was pointless to hope to be able to resist Sarah's tickling, and it was pointless to hope that she might show mercy and relent. The behaviors I couldn't help submitting to -- the braying, girlish giggles; the impotent struggling -- were the very things that prodded Sarah to keep tickling me. Desperate as I was to escape it, my own body's involuntary responses ensured that it would keep coming. I couldn't fight it, this wasn't going to stop, and as soon as I acknowledged that, I sank into the wild and helpless laughter with something resembling acceptance. I heard my own convulsive giggles with an almost out-of-body clinical distance: EEEE-heeheehee, EEEE-heeheehee, is that always what I sound like when this happens to me? Is that what Sarah wants to make me do? EEEE-heeheehee, EEEE-heeheehee. Apparently so.

Eventually she stopped again and I took a ragged breath. "Okay," I panted. "Okay," I said. I wasn't sure if I could say anything else; language seemed remote and out of reach.

Sarah crossed her arms. "I think that's pretty close to long enough to make up for a couple of years off," she said. "How about you?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah."

"Okay," she said, and reached behind her again, her fingertips once again brushing my skin.

I jerked wildly. "Wait what are you doing, you said--?!"

"Oh," Sarah said. "Yeah. That was enough for the couple of years off, and for the ice cream," she said. "But now I gotta get you for grabbing my knees."

Panic overtook me. "Sarah, no, come on, please!"

Sarah shrugged. "Consequences, Wade. Can't have you thinking you can get my knees."

"I won't I won't do that I won't ever do that aGAAAAHAHAHA!"

Because her fingers were on me again, roaming around, setting off those eruptions. I thrashed under her, shrieking and laughing. I wasn't in that place anymore, the place where I was ticklishness and hope was gone and everything was almost bearable. That suggestion that we were done -- and the sudden taking away of that promise -- undid all that and suddenly I was just twitchy helpless giggling ticklish again and every taunting brush of her fingertips was giddy torture.

And she wasn't stopping.

I tried to beg her to stop but the laughter got in the way, and it was getting worse, it was taking over, soon (again) laughter would be all I could do. Besides, I'd begged her before, I'd always begged her, it never worked and so even if I could communicate with her how could she understand this tickling, more than all the other ticklings in which I writhed and giggled and squealed in exactly the same way, was pushing me beyond the edge of tolerability?

Didn't matter anyway because the laughter took over and language was gone and I couldn't move my vulnerable stomach and she knew exactly where and how to torture it, and when those fingertips resumed arpeggiating briskly against my sides above my waist I glimpsed blurry through squeezed-tight eyes Sarah's face up above me and she wasn't even watching me anymore, she was sort of gazing at an empty spot on the floor off to the side, in some kind of a reverie maybe, I didn't know, but increasingly I felt like if she didn't snap out of it and remove her fingers from my abdomen I was going to lose my mind.

And she did, finally -- snap out of it, remove her fingers from my skin, clap her hands once more on her thighs, and say "So have we learned something today? About other people's ice cream?"

"Yes, yeah, I promise," I mumbled.

She got off me and extended a hand and helped me up.

"Might've gone a little too far there, sorry," she said, looking uncharacteristically sheepish. "Probably won't be quite that bad next time."

"I really don't think there has to be a next time," I said.

Sarah smiled. "Have you not met us?" she said again.
 
Wade, your recounting of these encounters is wonderfully vivid. I'm quite jealous of your ability to remember such details.

This last entry was my favorite. The "I think we have some yogurt" line actually made me laugh out loud.

Like everyone else here, I am looking forward to reading about the next episode between you and your nemesis.
 
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